Book outline v0.2

BEGINNING
A few snippets from Ken's life up until his early 20s. Being given to Trenis's cult at an early age; making friends with a few other boys and girls, primarily the half-elf Ian (visibly full-elf, father was a lizardman); being trained in strategy, weaponry, firearms, etc. in between proper schooling and visits to his mother; playing around with psionic abilities and then getting ribbed about his dad being a gross-looking fishpsychic. Ken's always been rather strong for a human and took to a claymore sword; Ian preferred katanas, and they feel their styles of swordsmanship compliment eachother, occasionally trading swords to practice eachother's schools. Ian's forced to target weak points while Ken can bash away with his log of steel.

"Now": Ken, age 20, is engaged to a mousey albino girl by the name of Charlotte Lema, and as is customary of the cult's practices he and Ian are turned loose upon the world to finalize their training on their own by fighting as mercenaries, monster-hunters, or wandering warriors. Ken and Ian team and live together for a year or two after Ken promises to both keep in touch with Charlotte and marry her the very second he's able to, taking jobs together as soldiers, bodyguards, other bits of miscellaneous wet-work, and monster-hunting when other work is slow. (Ken threatens violence against anybody he catches treating Ian differently for being an elf.)  Ken has a drunken tryst with a demidragon woman by the name of Ivana around this time, and nearly begs Ivana to keep it under wraps due to guilt the morning after.

Months pass after Ken and Ian take to wandering, and reports of the undead cropping up eventually reach the two's ears- they're hired as bodyguards for an aristocrat to watch over his home while he sleeps due to being deathly afraid of the rumors of undead. And son of a bitch, apparently the skeleton war is in full-swing: decent-sized squad of undead sweep towards the aristocrat's home, and ONLY his home. Ken and Ian are forced to fight a regenerating undead horde throughout the night which only lets up at dawn, even though the sun itself doesn't seem to have any negative affect upon the undead. Come morning the two warriors are exhausted, terrified, demanding payment from their client, and banging on the door of the nearest college to learn exorcising spells, or hire somebody who knows them already.

Ken in particular is the most shaken by the undead and picks up smoking as a stress-reliever, and Ian begins to see him with a cigar clamped in his jaw muttering about that which should not be after fights with skellies or zombies. The two are given an exorcising ritual by a sympathetic divine-magic instructor at the college they interrogate (Ken writes it on the back of his hand so he won't lose the directions) and keep their eyes open for more undead-related jobs; a job guarding a graveyard pops up which the two apply for immediately, and they're found most qualified after they mention knowing a spell related to it. Zombies claw their way up after a certain point of the night, but don't attack; the two hide when they hear footsteps, and a figure approaches that appears to talk to the undead, telling them that it's not time yet and to "return to the earth". The zombies crawl back into their respective graves and the figure seals them back up again with some utterances and magical shifting of dirt around, leaving a couple of very confused mercs.

They don't get a very good look at the mysterious man; all the two can note is he looks pretty sickly, and he makes an effort to hide his form. Either way, they seek out a temple for Shamara, primordial goddess of life, death and undeath; those officiated in the matters of death and undeath would likely know better what to make of the situation than somebody whose dominion lies with the non-zombie gods.

Reports of undead demidragons begin to crop up around this time- the king of Fafniravya AKA "King of Dragons", Boris Fafniryevich, and captain of Fafnir's Guard, Dick Barrelchest, leave as their own adventuring party to investigate. Naturally a horde of demidraco liches are something to be worried about, nevermind that necromancy is very strictly regulated in Fafniravya; with the country's martial law, whoever breaks Boris's law is liable to find his foot up their ass, far enough his toe reaches their throat.  Boris's wife, Queen Ilsa Ramansa Fafniryevich, assumes the king's throne until his return. Boris wears a hooded cloak and casual clothes so he looks like any other red demidragon (though he's not very good at correcting his straight posture to a normal demidragon's tail-balancing hunch and his fire-enchanted spear is a dead giveaway), and Dick's everything already throws off anybody who would approach.



END
Valama is foolish enough to make his base of operations the same cave he's been spending the past few hundred years in, and somebody (George the lich?) tips Ken off as to its location and that Valama's undead body is his phylactery, making defeating him in one go a viable solution. Ken stomps over to investigate; Valama is roughly half-way to godhood now.
Inside he finds an absolute ARMY of undead of various shapes, sizes, types, etc. Ken nearly wets himself but goes further in when he sees they're busy with worshipping crude effegies of Valama; there's places of the cave that're clearly unnatural so clearly Valama's been doing some home improvement.

Valama panics when he finds the one who's been fending off his undead raids in his home, but recovers himself and casts off his cloak to fight. Ken's terrified of his much more clearly undead appearance (along with confused at the flickering gold flame in Valama's torso) but charges forward, and Valama's fairly good at a variety of quickly-cast magics.

Valama's defeated handily, though, and using the power he's accrued from hundreds of thousands of semi-brainless undead worshipping him begins absorbing dead matter from the area around him to assemble into some undead giant, Gravelord Nito style. Ken sees his chance and rushes in, knocking off a huge amount of the absorbed matter with a swing of his arm. Valama panicks again as there's a divinity to the man's soul he hadn't noticed until now, Ken swings his sword, Valama is neatly severed at the chest. The gold flame in his torso withers to blue as his semi-godhood is stripped from him by his death, then fades away; all the undead cease activity.

Ken goes home and gives Ian's sword back to him, but Ian refuses it and tells him he doesn't have any use for it with only one arm. Ken shrugs and goes to lay down everything he's done to Charlotte with some serious groveling as to all his infidelity and coming back home with a demidragon egg, but she's enough of a doormat that she takes him back. (He really is sorry.)


Characters -

Ken Konig: 20 years old at first outset, 24 or so by book's end. A half-ra'tung and half-human man whose father is one of the ra'tung queen's most trusted nobles and was cheating on his wife with a human, Ken has awesome psychic abilities descended from his father's top-class psionics. Additionally, he looks human save for a gray, sickly tint to his skin. Ken was given into Trenis's warrior-cult by his mother and raised to fight for His amusement, though he didn't show very much aptitude with any weapons that weren't a spear, two-handed swords, or his own fists. Terrified of the undead, vampires, etc., and very nearly ran from them during his first few encounters with them (merely resisting the impulse to do so afterwards); his willingness to face his fears result in his being chosen as Kraren's favored mortal, gaining the full strength and endurance of the god of courage.

Average height, straight black hair down to about the base of his neck, gray-blue eyes, grayish Caucasian skintone, face and neck coated in beard-stubble, thin but muscular like a swimmer. Gravelly voice, a bit deeper than average, think Final Fantasy X's Jecht. Rash and impulsive, swears without thinking about it, quite promiscuous with the opposite sex and isn't very picky about his partner's race, going by the motto of "If It Can Say Yes"; cleans his act up considerably if there's a person he respects in the room or he recognizes it would be a bad time to flirt.

Ian: 20 years old at first outset, 24 or so by book's end. Half-elf and half-lizardman, but visibly full-elf. Ian hails from one of the backwards, inbred elf caravans that travel along the continent's grassy plains; his lizardman father was a kidnapped "breeder" meant to diversify the genepool a bit when even the elves see they're getting a bit cousin-fucky. He considers being raised by Trenis's warrior-cult the best thing to ever happen to him, seeing as he got an education and a means to defend himself. He only knows a few spells that most everybody would know (simple fire spell for lighting cigarettes, etc) and doesn't have any natural abilities, but compared to Ken's crude method of fighting Ian's a master with his katana and is a fair hand with most any other weapon he gets his hands on. He loses an arm to the undead later in the story but opts to not get a replacement; it's an excuse for him to settle down and find a wife, which he does in the form of a female elf likewise sick of their home culture.

6'2", blonde hair kept close to his skull, Caucasian skintone, clean-shaven, similar physique to Ken. Deeper voice than Ken, and usually doesn't say more than he has to. Definitely the brains of the two, though he share's Ken's appreciation for a roll in the hay with a girl. Keeps his stump hidden after losing his arm.

Charlotte Lema: Ken's 19-year-old to 23-year-old fiancee, who he met at a library by complete chance before the story's events and promptly fell for. Tatsanian native and has a thick German accent as a result, and probably a bit inbred if her albinism is any indication. She stays at home while Ken finishes up his training for Trenis's warrior-cult and waits for his return, and she's enough of a doormat to take the demidragon egg he fathered in stride, after some serious groveling and genuinely apologizing on his part, and considers raising a demidragon from an egg as a science experiment more than anything.

Short, straight white hair down to between her shoulderblades, violet eyes (one is permanently severely crossed), nearly white skintone, rather thin. Voice is a tad bit nasally but not enough to be grating, a bit higher pitched than average. Charlotte isn't at all a combat threat for anything that requires quick reflexes she does have an astounding knowledge of magic, dangerous flora, fauna and monsters, a very fair knowledge of alchemic potion-brewing, and all other manner of useless factoids from being a shut-in bookworm her entire life. Eventual mother to Niklas and Mary, stepmother to Ivan and adoptive mother to Karen.

"Ivan": Ken's demidragon son and a complete fluke, born of his affair with Ivana. Ivana was as surprised as Ken was that she laid an egg two months after sleeping with him, and some instinct told her who the father was; not knowing what the fuck to do with the thing and feeling no maternal connection for it, Ivana gave the egg to him. Ken doesn't work up the courage to get attached to the egg until he's had it for several months, and after being chosen by Kraren finally decides to name him after his mother.

Ivan hatches about two months after the book's end, emerging as a toddler with black hair, orange lizard's eyes, sand-colored draconic features and a burning curiosity about the world around him. Clings to Charlotte a lot.

Valama - Hundred-years-old lich. Formerly an elf who stumbled his way into lichdom. Valama's been cooped up in his cave studying and practicing his magics for the past several hundred years, and once he tired of being an undead basement-dweller he found a very different world on the outside, as well as a new race of demidragons. Aware of the "belief" system that empowers the gods, he designs to gain godhood through mass-worship of himself by the teeming undead. He's not a very bright lich or aware that he'll need a lot more undead than he thinks he will to achieve godhood, but his ambition overcomes his stupidity.

Short black hair, eyes are dead in their sockets and hidden with dark glasses in public, death-ashy skintone, skeletal, ears have wasted away from his skull completely. Wears a monk's habit; the flesh is rent on his right arm from the forearm down, and Ken learns he's undead through this. Voice is deep but probably magically synthesized one way or another. Valama's reflexes are faster than his undead body would suggest and he's a very good magician besides; not the best of all liches, but better than a great deal of them.