What is True North?

True North is a series of fiction stories written by Joe Pollhein. It takes place on the shattered continent of Aleger, which fell to monsters called nightmares during a ruinous event decades prior. The surviving nations are approaching industrial revolution, and normal people are discovering sanguis, the building blocks of actuality, and the means to manifest one’s own will through castings. The story follows nobility, soldiers, farmers, couriers, nightmare hunters and casters as they move the world towards a new age.

True North consists of many stories and a handful of protagonists who are human living in a world that is no longer entirely theirs. The story is deliberately wide in tone, themes, and genres. For this reason, I’ve broken it up into several novels, short stories and histories which can be read sequentially or on their own. I don’t want to end up writing someone’s favorite story which they’re barred from because they haven’t read several other stories for context.

I have a world in my mind I’ve been thinking about since 2007, and hammering out onto a keyboard since 2015. I spent a lot of time in the world of True North, and I got lost in it for a while. This has allowed for a detailed setting which I am trying not to overshare about in the work itself. It’s a story set in a fragmented western world with technologies that range from the primitive to the early industrial. It has magic that comes at a cost pitted against not only other humans, but nightmares from out of humanity’s earliest days.

I will update this post periodically as more of the story becomes publicly available.