the Bite of Beak: Book I

Ajasenchia was a brutal, formless void before the Eyrieans swooped down from their holy mountain on their screeching warbirds and gifted the light of civilization to every savage heathen they encountered below. For hundreds of years, the Eyriean Empire maintained the peace between warring tribes and constructed her great works in lands lacking imagination, but a new crisis has exposed the chink in her shining armor. Her nests are rife with revolt and assassination. Enemies that once feared the bite of the beak now swarm around her in anticipation of delivering the killing blow. Others try to salvage the imperial apparatus in order to serve their own visions of what is just. Into this maelstrom marches Lasio Calcrangio, a devout imperial who will do whatever it takes to protect what the empire built. His nephew Lotretias, a budding young dramatist, has no such attachment to the glories of the past. Lotretias dreams of an idyllic world that can only be realized by the pen of a dramatist. W. Gilan Selzarli, the leader of the Dramatists' Guild, taught Lotretias to dream of a world without empire, but he also tutors Mabo Krabara, the current ruler of the empire, on how to rule the world. Their first official act together was to swear in Tacloprea Phalcar as the newest imperial servant, an actress who plays the part of a soldier for a nation she would rather watch burn. Moggidupus, on the other hand, would gladly serve the empire and drink the blood of its enemies, so long as it incorporated him and his sons into its imperial tapestry. In Andrew Welch's debut comic book, you will witness the triumph, tragedy, and fury of an empire in collapse. Mind the rubble, and pay heed to the bird, lest you suffer...The Bite of the Beak.

Pagina's: 144, Paperback, Independently published