Get Inside the Head of a Critical Role Villain in This Novel Preview

The world of tabletop precise play sequence Critical Role is endlessly increasing, from the exhibits themselves, to comics, animated sequence, and naturally, novels. While our final seems to be on the world of Critical Role books took us into the previous of two of Vox Machina’s heroes, our newest is a have a look at a villain from the world of the Mighty Nein.

io9 has an unique look inside Madeleine Roux’s new novel The Mighty Nein—The Nine Eyes of Lucien, a brand new novel out subsequent month that explores the previous of one in every of Critical Role’s most memorable foes, the mysterious Lucien. The Tiefling grasp of the Tombtakers, Lucien performed a serious position within the group’s first marketing campaign because the adventurer group often called the Mighty Nein, after the wild success of their Vox Machina sequence. The Nine Eyes of Lucien, set earlier than the occasions of the marketing campaign, follows the younger Tiefling blood hunter as he crosses fateful paths with the Tombtakers on a brand new mission… and discovers a promise of energy that he can’t resist.

Check out an excerpt from The Nine Eyes of Lucien under, as Lucien and his new allies discover the tables turned in a job gone unsuitable.

The entire place was as aromatic and low-cost because the ale it served. The first flooring contained solely two seen rooms—­the mixed kitchen and pantry within the again, and the big, open serving and consuming space the place that they had been haggling. The predominant room had a couple of dozen or so tables scattered randomly, with equally random numbers of mismatched chairs. Three wrought-­iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Deg and Sundry clearly had an affinity for looking, or knew somebody who did, as many alternative stuffed and preserved heads embellished the partitions. Lucien had tried not to have a look at them all through the night, perturbed by their ghoulish, moldering look.

The kitchen was partially hidden behind the only bar counter. The cellar they wanted could be again there, however it was pointless to method when he may already hear blades being unsheathed.

“Is it walking into a trap if you know the bloodbath is coming?” Lucien mused, taking a fast head rely.

“Ha! You’re just lucky I arrived when I did,” Brevyn replied. “No chance you could crack this many skulls without me.”

“My dear, why would I want to?”

She drew a pointy, gold hairpin from her mess of yellow-­blond hair. The lengthy waves tumbled free as she drew the pointed fringe of the pin down her forearm. Blood seeped by means of the wound, then sprayed right into a mist, drawn in two streams towards her fists. Hard, black stone rippling with molten hearth fashioned round her palms—­palms that instantly began swinging. A mercenary on the desk behind them crumpled in a heap earlier than he even knew the battle had begun.

Lucien took the excessive floor, stepping from his personal chair onto the tavern desk earlier than leaping onto the counter. Mugs and pewter plates scattered. He flicked a dagger out of his belt, one previously hid by his lengthy, oiled coat. He nicked the pores and skin of his center chest, elemental energy rising from his veins, manipulated, and pulled to his blade, giving the weapon a crackling sheen of ice.

The floorboards and rafters shook because the mercenaries filling the inn flung again their cloaks and coats to disclose their very own arsenals. Lucien watched the barmaid dive behind the counter, cowering underneath his toes. Brevyn didn’t waste an on the spot, grabbing the desk that they had simply vacated, lifting it excessive over her head and grunting, throwing it throughout the room and pinning a flailing dwarf beneath. Eight of the remaining ten mercenaries turned their consideration on Brevyn, rightly assessing her because the bigger menace. But Lucien was not with out fangs. A dwarf and a halfling in mottled, tawny cloaks and pale leather-based armor dove towards the counter.

The dwarf swung her heavy pike, attempting to comb Lucien’s legs. He nimbly danced down the size of the counter, tossing his dagger into the air, catching it by the pointed tip, after which hurling it with lethal velocity on the dwarf’s dominant hand, shards of ice following. The blade and shards struck true, then have been drawn again by a gust of Lucien’s magic and dispatched once more to slice throughout the halfling’s throat.

The pike clattered to the ground, an arterial spray hitting the wounded dwarf as she flailed for her weapon, disarmed. Through the blood, Lucien noticed a form like a black shadow slide down the steps.

Brevyn had taken up one other desk, utilizing this one to defend herself from the onslaught of blows aimed her means. She used it like a battering ram, shoving onerous towards the our bodies piled up on the opposite aspect—­however the tide pushed again, trapping Brevyn towards the far wall. Lucien hopped down from the bar counter, kicking the injured dwarf onerous within the head and knocking her out. He then scooped up the now limp and more and more lifeless halfling, heaving him up into the air over the group of advancing mercenaries.

Cree, flattened towards the wall close to the door, noticed her alternative without delay. She raised her arms, catching the halfling, not along with her palms however with a spell. The halfling stopped in midair, suspended above his comrades, the gash throughout his neck weeping freely. That blood provided Cree what she wanted, energy surging by means of her palms, a darkish miasma emanating from her palms, the spell step by step encircling the mercenaries, binding them, holding them.

Those closest to Cree observed first, crying out and struggling towards the magic. It was the right distraction for Brevyn. She dropped the defend desk and swung mightily along with her molten-­rock-­encrusted fists. The mercenaries have been surrounded, and whereas one or two managed to land a blow on her, it was nothing a little bit of Cree’s magic couldn’t treatment later.

More chaos, extra blood. More blood, extra energy.

Only a second later the fray was violent sufficient to provide Cree one other huge surge, the ground slippery with blood, permitting her to plunge the entire mess of scrabbling, preventing, gnashing thugs right into a deep, on the spot sleep.

Bodies thudded to the ground, a sudden, horrible silence descending on the inn.

A cup rolled away towards the door. The barmaid, shaking, poked her head up above the counter. She had taken a pewter plate, holding it with each trembling palms to guard her face.

“Is . . . Is it over?”

Nobody answered her. Brevyn kicked apart a couple of ineffective limbs blocking her means, tearing off the underside little bit of her tunic to wrap round a lower on her higher arm. Lucien, Cree, and Brevyn wordlessly marched towards the again room, Lucien producing the important thing for the cellar from his coat pocket. As they handed, he flicked the barmaid one final tip.

Reprinted from Critical Role: The Mighty Nein—The Nine Eyes of Lucien by Madeleine Roux and Critical Role. Copyright © 2022 by Gilmore’s Glorious Goods LLC. Published by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein—The Nine Eyes of Lucien is ready to launch from Penguin Random House on November 1—discover out the place you’ll be able to pre-order here.

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