The Tales of the Fallen

by Nescher Pyscher

Overview

Tales of the Fallen opens in a sewer at the end of the world. Mankind has poisoned itself with the toxic excesses of an ultra-modern society. The earth has been pillaged, and mankind is partying its way to the Apocalypse with blind eyes and deafened ears.

One man, Solly Mont, knows what is coming. He knows how to rebuild from the ashes, and he can see where mankind needs to be led to prevent this from happening again.

He's done it before, after all.

His wife, Titiana—the abdicated Queen of Faery, and now the keeper of The Beller Inn, the finest bar and restaurant in all of the Outrealms—fetches him home to celebrate their anniversary. His gift to her is the unabridged story of his life, aided by his unparalleled skill in the power of Storyweaving—mankind's mightiest magic.

Solly's story is an exploration of the experiences common to humanity through the eyes of one immortal man.

Solly's master, the anthropomorphization of the virtue Wisdom, gave him the power of a god. Nothing humanity could achieve was beyond him, and even the spirits of earth and air bowed to his will. Being only human, Solly allowed the might and majesty of his gift to overwhelm his common sense, and in the end, he spurned his humanity. At the very end of his life, when everything he had accomplished was burning into dust and ash, Wisdom came to him offering her slavery as a path to redemption. Solly agreed and Wisdom stripped him of his name, his power and his very sense of self; a gift and a curse that allows him to relearn his manhood after losing the powers of a god. He took the name Solly Mont, and he agreed to do her bidding without question.

He was now a Soldier in the fight of order against chaos. Solly's teacher Taliesin Sungmeister, introduces him to the mysteries of magic, teaching him how to travel through space and time, and showing him his enemies. Theirs is a friendship beyond measure and far surpassing that of teacher and student.

Jack O'Green, a lying Green Man—or a leprechaun, or a vampire, or a fairy, depending on what he feels like telling you—joins him in his fight. His story is part of the whole. He has lived among humans for tens-of-thousands of years, and his insights are invaluable. He is bitter, cynical, mean, petty, crude and crafty, but loyal to a fault, even if he is unwilling to admit it to himself. He fights alongside Solly Mont for reasons of his own.

Cain, the son of Adam, represents the forces of chaos. An immortal with even more power than Solly has, Cain yearns for the final death of the last star and the unbridled hunger of the void. He has sold his soul to Solly's enemies and promises to kill Solly.

Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall is a Storyweaver himself, and he is waiting for Solly in the first place Wisdom sends him after he receives his training in magic from Taliesin. Shadow is a shaman of the People; a tribe of humanity that escaped to the Arctic Circle shortly before the Apocalypse. They are a tribe of hunter-gatherers who live according to a strict regimen of laws designed to keep this tiny enclave of humanity alive long enough to repopulate the earth. Shadow tells him the story of Weaver-of-Shadows: a proud father whose beautiful, perfect son—on track to be the next chief—is killed during the ritualistic hunt of manhood. It is Shadow who tells Solly the story of mankind's final end, and it is Shadow who tasks him with the impossible. Solly has to save Shadow's people from extinction at the hands of Weaver's vengeful spirit. If he doesn't, mankind will die.

Along the way to accomplishing his personal goals, Solly has to participate in life. He exists alongside the people he is trying to save, and their goals, desires, needs and wants often become his.

Solly's tale is a quest and the history of humanity from beginning to end. Peopled with gods, monsters, demons, fairies and the people and places common to humanity, Tales of the Fallen is a story about storytelling, and the salvation of the entire universe by one man having the strength to redeem himself and preserve the smallest piece of the life he loves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780615523873
Publisher:	Argus Enterprises International
Publication date:	09/05/2011
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Nescher Pyscher—his real name! Honest!—lives in southeast Ohio with his wife, his son, two cats, an orange tree, a cactus, several dozen house plants, and a hundred ghosts.

His parents are fun and interesting people who spent quite a lot of time in unventilated tee-pees in the 1970s. Certain ideas were indelibly engraved on his brain, and Nescher's personality reflects that. Rocking from one cult to another, Nescher grew up with some really weird ideas about life and his place in it. Tales of the Fallen, Nescher's first novel, is informed by many of these experiences, and observant readers can find little chunks of post-1970s-Nescher spread across its pages like jelly.

Nescher has delivered furniture, made bourbon, dug graves; been a nurse, a Soldier, an author and a poet. His hands are dirty to the elbows on any given day and his fingernails usually have something unidentifiable drying underneath them.

He doesn't like talking about himself much, but he thinks of himself as a father/husband/kept man first and a storyteller second. His book, Itchy Whispers—a collection of short stories—can be found at Amazon.com, his writings can be found all over the internet, and his column, Tattoos and Baby Food, about his adventures in stay-at-home-Daddy-ing can be read twice a week at The Daily Jeffersonian. His goal is not so much to be a household name as to be less of a shmuck if and when he manages to grow up.