Overview

This is the First Bit

1375 – 1378

Magic is real and it merges seamlessly with people and technology. Two types of people use magic: regular weirdos and coloured folks, who have skin tones in bright rainbow hues and can even call gods into their bodies for help. Our story takes place in Strawberryfield, the nicer slum area of San Rosille, which is the capital of a small but very aggressive country which just lost a war to a larger, more conservative country. Tensions are high. Infrastructure is low.

Hyacinth’s boarding house is a known refuge for outcasts and castoffs of all kinds.

Apart from the green kid with brain damage and a metal eye, she’s got a red guy who plays violin and cooks, an assembly-line enchanter who never speaks but turns into a completely different person when he puts on a dress, a retired general who turns into an enormous bird (and her daughter who turns into a smaller bird), an ex-augur with vision problems, and sometimes a sailor with gold tattoos and no eyebrows. In Year Two, she adds an unwed mother who keeps cranking out weird art, and a baby with a spider mecha. Something also lives in Room 101, but even Hyacinth doesn’t know what the hell it is. Hyacinth herself is a metalworker and ex-medic who practices her trade on a pay-what-you-can basis for the denizens of the slum and surrounding areas.

Seriously, though, keep an eye on that green kid. He reads minds, or something even worse, and he’ll play you novelty music on the violin if you’re not careful.

Read from Tin Soldier #1?