Literature / The Vagrant Trilogy

The Vagrant Trilogy is a series of books written by Peter Newman.

The world has been transformed, ripped apart by infernal forces that invaded from the Breach. Hundreds of thousands fought to contain the initial invasion, but failed. The entire army was lost, including Gamma, one of the Seven immortal rulers of the world. Her corpse was fought over by the greatest of the infernals, eventually claimed by the Usurper.

The Blasted Lands are a tortured, tainted land full of broken technology, strange monsters, and people willing to do anything to survive. Far to the north the land is clean and whole, but infernal armies fight constantly to expand their reach, fighting against the land itself. The remaining six members of the Seven sit in the Shining City and mourn their loss while their followers try to hold the line. The legendary Seraph Knights have been reduced to a handful of half-trained squires and traditionalist veterans.

And then there is the Vagrant, a singing knight who cannot sing, just trying to keep his tiny family safe.

The books in the series are:

• The Vagrant (released May 2016)
• The Malice (released March 2017)
• The Seven (released October 2017)

The series as a whole provides examples of:

• Bio-Augmentation: Of a sort. The Uncivil uses "necrotech" to enhance her followers. This consists of dead limbs infused with her essence and grafted onto humans, giving them powers and abilities that have nothing to do with the original function of the limbs.
• Binary Suns: There are two suns in the world because Massassi was the anchor of our reality and as she weakened over time, cracks formed on the sun. The moment she died, the sun split into two and soon after the breach opened. When Alpha destroyed Delta's sword, reality further broke down and now there are three suns in the sky.
• Broken Pedestal: Each novel has someone becoming disenchanted with the Seven. The first two books, it was the Vagrant and later Vesper, finding out that the Seven had withdrawn within themselves. In the 3rd book, the Seven are taking action but the genocidal campaign they're waging and their in-fighting, is alarming their Knight subordinates. Massassi was this for Gamma, who resented how Massassi was losing her drive as she aged further.
• The Corruption: Infernal essence twists living flesh, dead flesh, and the land itself. However, it also goes the other way—the world itself burns infernals, which is why they have to taint the land for every step they take. The Usurper can't travel much farther north than the Fallen Palace, while the Uncivil found a way to survive with a cloak of corpses, and the First spreads himself through humans and uses them as shields.
• Cool Sword: The Malice is an intelligent, Magitek sword with a single eye that once belonged to the fallen Seven, Gamma. It's the Malice's hatred and power against the demons that enables the Vagrant to cut his way from the demon breach to the city of the Seven.
• Crapsack World: It's the future and humanity benefited from advances such as bionics and mecha. Then the demonic invasion happens and a good chunk of humanity has been extinguished and the survivors on the outskirts are eking out an existence as prey or slaves to demons in feudal towns, or they're living as bandits. The areas untouched by the demons, still retain their idyllic, high-tech existence but the godlike Seven who should have saved the world are still in mourning over the loss of one of their own, and have stopped caring about the invasion gaining ground.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: This is the cultural and technological level of the regions still under Seven control.
• God-Emperor:
  • The Seven have ruled the world for a thousand years, preparing for the Breach to open and the infernals to spew forth. Unfortunately, a thousand years is a long time to wait, even for immortals, and by the time the attack comes, they have allowed the defenses to lapse.
  • Before the Infernal invasion, Massassi is the undisputed ruler of the world and it's through her godlike power that the Seven were made.
  • The Uncivil is worshiped by her half-alive cultists, who repair her cloak of corpses in exchange for grafts and enhancements.
• Golem: What the Seven actually are. Massassi made impressive-looking metal statues with wings and infused them with her Essence and a portion of her personality. These statues were brought to life and imbued with a portion of the aging God-Empress's power.
• Hell on Earth: It's after the defeat of the Seven, so hordes of demonic spirits are pouring through a reality breach almost unchecked. To make matters worse, the demons are capable of reproducing once they possess a human body. So half-human/demon hybrids are emerging to further the world's troubles.
• Hive Mind: Since infernals can share memories with a touch, this is common.
  • Unbound infernals are so tied up in their Hive Mind that it is extremely difficult for them to tell where one stops and another begins. It's even possible that they have no true individuals until one randomly develops an ego and claws its way out of the writhing mass.
  • The Usurper's minions are bound directly to it, so consumed by its power that they can't even think of rebelling. As they get farther from the Usurper, its power wanes, and they begin to have unique thoughts—assuming, of course, that they can survive so far from the Usurper without its power sustaining them.
  • The Uncivil puts pieces of her essence into dead flesh which she then grafts onto her cultists, augmenting them while simultaneously giving her a whisper into their minds.
  • The First spread its essence across hundreds of humans to shield itself from the press of the world. It has one primary body that has its mind overwritten completely, but all the others are linked. They can see through each other's eyes but retain their own free will, not to mention the physical enhancements.
• The Legions of Hell: It's a full scale demon invasion, as ethereal demonic forces pour through a gate to take up bodies and corrupt what they possess.
• Literal Split Personality: The Seven derive their personalities from Massassi granting each of them a portion of her character. Alpha got her perfectionism (which led to him murdering people that he as less perfect than himself), Beta has her attention to detail - allowing the meticulous Beta to govern effectively and calm Alpha's rages, Gamma has Massassi's drive and ambition - this will lead her to be the one who has the drive to fight the Infernals, and Delta has inherited Massassi's later doubts. Epsilon, Theta and Eta were made when Massassi was in a mental fog and so they tend to be docile.
• The Load: Vesper is this twice in the series! The first time is justifiable as she's an infant who's being taken along by the Vagrant in his journey. In the 2nd book, Vesper is a young girl who's a naïve pacifist in a demon-haunted post-apocalypse world. To stop her knightly escort from slaughtering a town full of not-so-innocent townies and troopers, she orders her escort to surrender and disarm. This allows her to escape, but puts her knights in the clutches of slaves to the demons. She also pays up front without haggling to a very suspicious old man and she gets rewarded with an ambush, that her remaining escort had to fight through.
• Lost Technology: To the humans living under demonic rule, the technological marvels of the past can no longer be built as that knowledge and infrastructure base is gone. So the ultratech items that are getting used up in these areas, don't have any replacements. The areas that are still under the control of the Seven, don't have this problem.
  • The infernal-slaying magitek weapons created by Massassi cannot be reproduced, so any of these weapons that are lost are gone for good.
• Magitek: Magical powers discovered in the future can be used to infused high tech items. It's the magical powers and these resultant magitek items that the demons truly fear about humans.
• No Gender: Infernals by default have no gender. The Uncivil chose hers at random, and the First and the Man-Shape appear to just use the gender of their primary bodies.
• Our Demons Are Different: Unbound infernals are amorphous things with no clear personality. It takes effort for them to gain a form to protect themselves from the world. In addition to the Usurperkin and the Uncivilkin, there are other lesser infernals with no allegiance and little intelligence.
• Schizotech: In the demon-ruled population centres, people are plowing fields and blacksmithing by hand, but there's still a stock of high-tech remnants such as advanced medicine and high-tech ballistic firearms though these are dwindling.
• Science Fantasy: Armoured knights carrying laser guns and enchanted high-tech swords fight alongside their immortal sorcerer sovereigns, against an demonic invasion.
• The Undead: The Uncivil wraps herself in a cloak of animated corpses to protect her essence from the world. She creates strange beasts out of dead flesh and bone (like the bonewings, rib cages splayed out like wings with skin stretched between them), as well as enhancing her cultists with necrotech.