After their ill-fated attempt to capture the mysterious and deadly VANDRYSS and her cohorts in the port city of UNTERMER, THE CREEPING BAM are forced to regroup and lick their wounds (some more serious than others, especially for SHAY) as they look for fresher angles in their hunt to find GAEL's missing father and uncover the truth behind this increasingly worrying conspiracy. The trail produces a promising lead in retired smuggler ORRIC JAMMUND, but also places them in the sights of cold-blooded corrupt noble REFIK HONTIRESK.

While they find fresh allies to aid them along the way(including a few with ties to more than one member's past), their current misadventure has just become a good deal more complicated – Hontiresk, keen to wash his hands of this inconvenience once and for all, has hired THE ERRANT NIGHTS, a seasoned rival gang of sellswords from the Southern lands of ABHARET, led by lethal dragonhalf warrior DRAMRATH MALLYS, to "accident" them away as discreetly as possible …

This is a love letter and homage to the high-fantasy worlds of the tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and Warhammer and the sword & sorcery cinema and literature I fell in love with as a kid growing up in the 80s, from Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian (and the awesome Schwarzenegger movie, STILL my favourite fantasy film EVER), The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and Ron Howard and George Lucas' Willow, to the more grown-up and edgy worlds of grimdark masters George RR Martin and (my all-time favourite) Joe Abercrombie, as well as a BIG DOLLOP of Terry Pratchett's immortal Discworld series.

IMPORTANT: This story contains material which some readers may consider to be mature, such as battle violence, some strong language and occasional sexual scenes. If this is not your kind of thing, this story is not for you.

I am also serializing this story on Tumblr, Wattpad and Quotev