Control: The Dark Gods
I, Dalton Lewis, wrote my longest and most ambitious novel, The Dark Gods. In it Kanziel has a new emperor who is opposed to slavery — and Tyzen, a province within Kanziel, enslaves many thousands of people.
Tyzen wants to secede from the rest of Kanziel — they want to keep their slaves. Tyzen believes in slavery — adamantly, fanatically, passionately. They are willing to die for their belief in slavery — and others are willing to fight for the money it makes them.
I tried to create a fantasy-realm retelling of the American Civil War. In it a forty-four-year-old constable has experienced a lot in his life — military schooling, fired from the military, a decade of drinking, and then with a war looming soldiers are needed. The people who fired him now need his special set of skills — he is the only one who can compete with Tyzen’s generals. He needs to defeat the seemingly impossible generals in the Tyzen military — which is better trained and better led than the Kanziel forces.
My friend Finnegan and I worked really hard to work on the lore for the gods and the universe. The dark gods, Jisa and Malaray, are gods that show up in the story. Jisa is the god of the dead and necromancy. He remembers the dead and helps people to communicate with their dead loved ones. Malaray is the goddess of chaos, anarchy, and freedom. Her paladins are the premier fighting unit in Kanziel. She wants freedom for everyone in Kanziel and will fight for that to happen.
In Tyzen Karma Townes is sick of her family owning slaves. She wants to do something to free slaves and fight back. She has been basking in mana herbs every day of her life to make her into the most powerful mage imaginable. Her little sister is created to be the first vampire — but there are people who don’t want that to happen…
Slavery happens on the Sinc/Townes estate/plantation. The estate is a unique and interesting setting where anything can happen — and does. Slaves try to escape, spells are cast, people are imprisoned, plans are made, and murders happen on a regular basis.
A hundred years before the novel’s start humans took over the Empire of Kanziel from the elven emperor. The elf god-king died trying to save as many of the civilians as he could as the empire’s capital, Mycere, was sacked and burned to the ground. One year later the orcs and elves took the Empire back from the humans, and Tyzenion — the orc god-king — punished the humans by inventing slavery. He felt that humans deserved to be slaves to put them in what he felt was their rightful place.
Please give my novel a chance as I worked very hard on it.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
