The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn
Tyler Whitesides
Kingdom of Grit #1

The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn Summary

Ardor Benn and his partner Raekon Dorrel (Raek) are introduced by pulling a ruse on a local mobster to steal some ashings (money made from dragon scales). Ard is a “ruse artist extraordinaire” and he and Raek frequently con nobles and fellow criminals. In their escape from the regulators we learn about the use of “grit”, a substance obtained by processing dragon poop. Depending on what the dragon ate, the powder produces a range of effects. In this escape they use drift grit, which produces a cloud inside of which everything is weightless.

Isle Halavend seeks out Ardor Benn for a job. Him and Ard speak about the details inside of a cloud of memory grit, meaning they will forget what they talked about when it burns out, but Ard makes a mark to let himself know he accepted the job. Halavend is a holy isle of wayfarism, the predominant religion in the greater chain of islands people live on. He promises Ard a one million ashing payout if he succeeds in the job.

Ard returns to the mooring (place where holy isles hang out), and takes the boat to cove 23 where he meets with Halavend and a Trothian Agrodite priestess named Lyndel. Trothian’s are a blue skinned people who have long been oppressed but recently given equal rights by King Pethredote. They tell Ard they want him to steal the royal regalia and process it into visitant grit. Visitant grit is obtained by having a dragon consume fertilized dragon eggshell, however all of the bull (male) dragons died out recently so only sow (female) dragons are left, meaning you can’t get any more fertilized eggs and thus the dragons will die out. The royal regalia is the last known fertilized dragon egg in existence.

Quarrah Khai is a thief in Beripent, the seat of the king and largest city on the island of Espar. She breaks into a noble's house planning to steal a painting but meets Ard and Raek instead, who recruit her to help with the job. The group rents out a hidden room in a bakery from a Trothian woman named Mearet, where they can plan the rest of the ruse. Ard schedules a meeting with Elbrig Taut and Cinza Ortemion for the following day.

Ard and Quarrah meet with Elbrig and Cinza, who are eccentric disguise managers. They have created the personas of Dale Hizror and Azania Fyse for Ard and Quarrah, respectively. Dale is a composer and Azania is his new fiancee. They plan to integrate them into high society and get Dale to claim credit for writing the “unclaimed symphony”, King Pethredote’s favorite piece of music. The goal is to steal the royal regalia at the Grotenisk festival in 6 cycles. Grotenisk the Destroyer was a dragon raised in captivity 250 years ago who went crazy and burned part of Beripent.

Halavend and Lyndel have been working together to uncover what they call a “new doctrine”. They have combined parts of both of their religions in order to try to uncover the cause of a mysterious disease called moonsickness. If someone is left on the island of Pekal (where the dragons live) during the night of the full moon, they go crazy and become super violent. This is incurable and no one knows precisely what causes it, but now Halavend thinks they figured it out, and the extinction of the dragons will mean that it will begin to spread to other islands in the greater chain. Halavend has to be careful however, since Prime Isle Chauster is suspicious of him and does not approve of his research.

Ard and Quarrah, disguised as Dale and Azania, go to a ball before an upcoming concert and mingle with the rich and noble people. Dale drops hints that should lead to people suspecting he wrote the unclaimed symphony, and they become friends with the conductor of the king’s orchestra, Lorstan Grale. The disguises are successful and they get invited to the upcoming concert, which Azania gets asked to fill in as soloist for since they made the previous soloist sick.

At the concert they use silence grit and a trapdoor to have Quarrah pretend to sing but in reality Cinza is the one singing from directly beneath her. After they finish Lorstan Grale announces to the crowd that Dale Hizror is the composer of the unclaimed symphony. Their plan seems to be going great but then a group of regulators enters the room and warns the crowd that the criminal Ardor Benn is most likely hiding somewhere in this room. Ard and Quarrah have no idea how they suspected that, but in order to escape Ard removes his disguise in a backroom and holds Azania “hostage” while they escape, racing back to the apartment belonging to Dale to change and return to the concert pretending he got knocked unconscious.

The next day the king personally visits Dale Hizror and asks him to be the featured composer at the Grotenisk festival, which is what they wanted. The next step is to create a forgery of the royal regalia so no one knows it was stolen. They hire a forger but he needs to touch the royal regalia to make a good copy. Meanwhile, Halavend and Lyndel discovered that King Pethredote intentionally poisoned the bull dragons, bringing about the end of the species, and he worked with Prime Isle Chauster to destroy all pre existing dragon shell. For some reason Pethredote does not want anyone else to have visitant grit. It is a very powerful grit that can summon Paladan Visitants, beings that kill any who see or hear them, but it does not always work. Pethredote famously used to usurp the previous bad king, and Captain Oriar famously failed to summon a paladin to stop Grotenisk from burning much of the city 250 years ago.

Ard and Raek devise a plan to let the forger get near the king and touch the regalia, but the day of the ruse, Ard (disguised as Dale) questions the king about poisoning the dragons and gets him to admit it but threatens Dale never to tell a soul. Dale pretends to get shot to save the king, and the forger comes to help disguised as a doctor. They pull it off successfully and Dale lies low for a while in order to “heal”.

The opportunity to steal the regalia finally comes and Ard sneaks Quarrah into the throne room, but Quarrah runs into upgraded security only to discover the regalia is not there. Dale meets with the king and sees him wearing the regalia and knows something is wrong. The king tells him he was warned someone would try to steal it, and they should have the thief trapped in the throne room. Dale, Pethredote, and the regulator captain approach the thief (Quarrah) who is trapped in barrier grit. Ard knows he has to do something so he begins to think of a plan then throws a pot of memory grit. When it runs out, Quarrah is disguised as a regulator and slips into the crowd, and Dale has revealed himself to be Ardor Benn and holds the king hostage before surrendering, however the king is still wearing the royal regalia, although Ard does not know if it is the real or fake one.

Ard is in a prison, trying to figure out who could have betrayed their plans to the king when the conductor, Lorston Grale comes to see him. Lorston reveals himself to be Elbrig Taut in disguise, with this being a character he has played for many years. He lets Ard know he is working on a plan to get him out the night of the Grotenisk festival so he and Quarrah can do what they need to do. Elbrig and Quarrah also make a plan to use illusion grit to make people think Azania is singing while in reality Quarrah is figuring out where the (hopefully) real royal regalia is and stealing it. Illusion grit works by “recording” anything in its detonation cloud then when another batch of illusion grit is ignited it replays whatever was last recorded in that same location.

On the night of the festival, Raek and Isle Halavend help Ard escape prison, and Cinza sings while the illusion of Quarrah is on stage. Raek waits in a carriage outside and Ard and Quarrah sneak into the throne room. Regulators start to shoot at them but Ard realizes he must have hidden the regalia inside the skull of Grotenisk which is kept as a decoration in the throne room, with a massive fire burning inside. They use cold grit to retrieve the regalia and make their escape, with Quarrah slipping back into the role of Azania as the concert ends. However the king, who she knew was suspicious of Azania, offers to let her ride home in his own carriage to keep her safe. She is forced to agree in front of the crowds but on the ride smells smoke and realizes it is a fuse burning. Quarrah barely escapes before the carriage explodes.

Ard is left with no option but to assume Raek is betraying them to the king for some reason, so begins to leave him out of some details of his plans. Ard and Raek assemble a makeshift harvesting team to go to Pekal and feed the dragon shell regalia to a dragon and make visitant grit. Quarrah has never been before and is distrustful of some of the criminals they hired to help. They crash land an airship on the island but are met almost immediately by the king’s own harvesting team, who somehow knew they were coming. Some of their members die and they run off. Raek warns Ard that he saw Tanalin Phor.

The group's “caller” , a young girl named Nemery successfully lures a dragon over and it eats the shell fragments, and Ard and Nemery chase after it while the rest of the group follows more slowly. Ard and Nemery talk and Ard realizes he is still more Wayfarist than he believed and can feel the “urging of the homeland” to make certain actions. Meanwhile, Raek and Quarrah are talking and Raek realizes Ard thinks he is the traitor. He also tells her about Ard and Tanalin. They all used to be harvesters together 7 years ago on Pekal and Ard and Tanalin dated, but in Ard’s first ever ruse he pretended to die to keep Tanalin free of blame and never revealed he was alive to her, despite still loving her for much of that time. Quarrah is angry since she and Ard have been developing a very close relationship and she wishes he had told her about this.

They all meet up as the dragon makes its excrement, but right after they extract all the slag (useful part of the poop), Tanalin’s crew show up and they have to flee again, but Quarrah gets captured and Nemery is injured. Ard hired some pirates to meet them off the coast but he and his group need to jump down and Nemery is too hurt for that. Ard goes and meets Tanalin to try to free Quarrah. He tells her about what has been going on and stuff and she is angry but agrees to look away while Quarrah runs and take Nemery home.

Tanalin pretends to shoot Ard to fool her crew and then takes her group back to the harbor after finding Nemery. Ard feels like he finally is over Tanalin but Quarrah is still angry with him. Raek and Ard also talk it out and realize neither is the traitor, they have been partners for too long. They make it off the island and successfully convert the slag into visitant grit.

Isle Halavend plans to meet with Lyndel soon, when Prime Isle Chauster and the King show up at his mooring cove. They tell him they know about Ard and the ruse, and have received word that Ardor is dead. They explain that the Trothian baker, Mearet, had been feeding them information this entire time. They want Halavend to confess and tell them what else he knows about the ruse but he refuses so they drown him. Right before he is about to die Lyndel shows up and stabs the Prime Isle. Pethredote flees as Lyndel helps Halavend. He tells her that apparently the king and prime isle know how to successfully summon a paladin visitant, but he does not know what it is. As he flees the king shoots Halavend in the chest and he dies.

Raek, Ard, and Quarrah return to Beripent to find it in chaos. Lyndel meets them at their bakery hideout and kills Mearet before she can stab Ard, and then helps them flee from the regulators who were hiding in their secret room. She tells them King Pethredote has revoked all his protections for Trothians and they are now being hunted in the streets. They regroup at an old abandoned building to make a new plan.

Lyndel tells them Halavend is dead and reveals everything they had discovered. The reason people don’t get moonsick on other islands is actually due to the dragons, the great beasts absorb a strange energy emitted by the moon and keep it from reaching the people further away. To confirm this Halavend’s young pupil, Isless Malla, traveled to Pekal and stayed during a moon passing to record what happened, sacrificing herself in the process. If the dragons die out so will all human life in the greater chain. Ard knows they need to interrogate the king to learn how to successfully detonate visitant grit. His plan is to pretend to use it in front of the king and then have Rake pretend to be one of the fiery paladins.

They make their preparations and ask Pethredote for a parley. Due to careful planning they are able to light many of the regulators on fire and set Raek’s coat ablaze. Ard questions the king and eventually learns many wild facts. The “homeland”, the goal for all Wayfarist’s, is actually the future, but a perfect future where people are happy. And visitant grit does not work by accident. It acts like illusion grit, if someone used it in the past and you use it in the same spot you will be sent back in time to the same place, but because time can’t be messed with anyone who sees this future person will burn and die, but since you changed the past it destroys your current timeline and resets the world from the moment the original visitant grit was detonated. The king tried to destroy all the visitant grit in order to stop anyone from ever changing the timeline and erasing him and his reign.

As they try to flee the king stabs Raek, who forces Ard to leave without him as he is about to die. Ard is still injured in the escape and is in bad condition when he meets up with Quarrah and Lyndel. While he recovers he makes a plan, and tells Quarrah he needs a bull dragon egg. Quarrah trusts Ard so she goes on a risky journey to Pekal, and with Tanalin’s help makes it back to Beripent with the egg.

Ard tricks Quarrah into leaving to try to keep her out of danger, then he and Lyndel take the egg and meet up with many of her Trothian followers in the char, the old section of the city burned by Grotenisk 250 years ago. Ard plans to travel through time without letting anyone see him in hopes of not changing the timeline, since he also still wants to exist. He uses shadow grit to make a dark cloud and hides in it as he uses the visitant grit, travelling back to Captain Oriar’s “failed” detonation so many years ago. He successfully gets Grotenisk to breathe flames on the bull dragon egg, the necessary process to fertilize it, then returns to his own time, where things are unchanged due to his successful ruse.

Quarrah has realized his deception and returned, and begs him to be careful and not risk his life since she loves him. But he learns from Elbrig that Raek is alive and being kept in the palace dungeons and still wants revenge on the king, so he lets Quarrah run and begins the last part of his plan. He lets the regulators take the egg to the palace, and sneaks in after them. A mother sow dragon can sense when an egg is fertilized so soon they see her flying towards the palace from the direction of Pekal. Ard frees Raek then goes to meet the king. They fight and Pethredote takes what he thinks is an oil to repel dragons from Ard, but is actually a scent dragons love. When the dragon arrives there is a crowd of people who have heard rumors that the king poisoned the dragons. When the dragon eats the king, takes her fertilized egg and flies off, they assume justice has been dealt.

Ard and Raek ride off, Ard wanting to find Quarrah and fix things. THE END.