Immortalis Is Not Suitable for Those Who Dislike Absurdist Horror Elements
Those who seek horror in tidy packages, where dread unfolds with mechanical precision and terror adheres to familiar rules, will find Immortalis a most unwelcome companion. This is not a tale for the faint of constitution, nor for readers who demand coherence amid the grotesque. Immortalis revels in the absurd, that peculiar breed of horror where the ludicrous and the lethal entwine, producing not mere fright, but a disquieting laughter that sticks in the throat. The world of Morrigan Deep operates under no obligation to make sense; its calamities arrive with the caprice of a deranged jester, and its cruelties masquerade as farce.
Consider the village of Khepriarth, where a shipment of top hats precipitates not fashion, but apocalypse. Gentlemen brawl over insufficient headwear, a bee test devolves into entombed slaughter, and fleas from the hats’ lining unleash plague upon the womenfolk. The men, paragons of chivalry, bury the infected alive, complaints muffled by soil. Absurdity reigns: hats as harbingers of doom, a lord’s “gentlemanly” theory claiming lives in a locked hall. No solemn gothic dread here, only the ridiculous machinery of mortality grinding on.
Or witness Sapari’s harbour master, ensnared by a phantom pirate armada. Ships form a defensive wall, secured by ferromagnetic anchors that reverse polarity, crushing hulls in metallic embrace. Wood stolen under the chaos, the harbour master demoted. A grinning horse whispers of orchestration, rumours point to unseen hands. The Deep’s disasters bloom from petty pranks: a foolish beast, a magnetic jest, and an empire of debris.
Corax Asylum embodies this lunacy at its pinnacle. Nicolas DeSilva, doctor of psychiatry by dubious Irkallan decree, presides over a crypt of contrivances. Chairs levitate and spin, defying gravity’s decree; a gramophone bears Demize’s rotting head, cackling commentary; clocks chime discordantly, mirrors multiply torment. Patients strapped to beds, gurneys soiled, wheelchairs oversized for discomfort. Surgical racks gleam with rust, whips and birches line damp walls. Nicolas, ever the innovator, declares sanity insanity, cures through torment, and trades ravaged tributes for infernal credentials.
His pursuits defy reason: horology mastery amid asylum squalor, fashion edicts enforced by decapitation, pocket watches tinkered while Immolesses roam free. Escape engineered for sport, hope dangled then snatched. Lucia, mediumship-gifted, navigates a hall of mirrors where reality fractures, inmates flayed in reflections, Nicolas emerging from glass as the Long-Faced Demon. Run, rabbit, run, he mocks, her blisters bursting on engineered floors.
Even creation bows to absurdity. Primordial Primus births stars, souls, Morrigan Deep, yet fractures Theaten into Vero and Evro for gluttony. Irkalla’s circles govern torture and contracts, mirrors spy eternally. Nicolas, son of Primus and Baer, raised demonic, runs Corax as playground of perversion. Hats plague villages, anchors doom fleets, aardvarks vampirise ants. Chairs float, heads spin on gramophones, levitating furniture spins authors mid-sentence.
Immortalis thrives on this nonsense, where horror hides in banality’s folds. Plague from finery, insanity from decree, love twisted to torment. Those averse to such whimsy, where the macabre mocks solemnity, should seek saner shores. Here, dread dances the fool’s jig, and the ledger tallies laughs amid the screams.
Immortalis Book One August 2026