Character Chat: Ottonius of Riga

 Welcome Adventures, to Character chat. In this new article I’ll be talking with characters from newly released and soon to be released books. Today’s guest is Ottonius of Riga from “No Moon To Pray To”

Welcome, so tell my adventurers about your world.

I should tell you first that Ottonius of Riga is merely the name of a human guise that I wore, centuries ago, when I pretended to serve the human king Charlemagne. My kind did not communicate through sound, let alone identify ourselves with spoken ‘names’.

As for my world… it is long gone, left in ruin by our former human slaves. We were a proud race, few in number but attuned to and adept with the natural magic that once emanated from this planet. We dwelt in what you now call the south of Egypt, a green paradise that has since turned to sand. Since my kind’s demise, I have wandered the Earth alone, watching it be slowly overrun with human vermin.

What are some of the places you’d recommend my adventurers see in your world?

The magical wonders of my home would have been beyond the crude perception of most of your species. But if you visit the Egyptian pyramids, the stone henge of Britannia, or the Mountain of God in the Great Rift Valley, a few of your kind will be able to sense remnants of the natural magic of those places. The true tomb of Jesus exudes some kind of power that I cannot understand but that I find awesomely beautiful. Apart from magical spots, I am only partial to the cold and remote places where I can be away from your kind.

Tell my adventurers about some of the technology in your world.

Are you being insolent? There is only one knowledge, one power: the natural magic of the earth. Alchemy and witchcraft are unnatural distortions of magic. And I care little for the non-magical contrivances that you humans define your ages by. Smelting red earth into shining, clanging metal? Translating your language into visuals symbols you scratch in ink onto paper? You are ridiculous beasts, and I live for the day I can finally exterminate you.

How would you describe your fellow characters?

I still grieve for Jesus of Nazareth. He was… Well, I confess I don’t know exactly what he was. He was something immensely powerful—more power than me, to be truthful. His bloody self-sacrifice transformed this world and unleashed a power that to this day I do not fully understand. I begged him to walk away from the hill of Golgotha. He could have at any time, you know. He could have killed everyone there with a thought, willed himself to Rome, and forced the Emperor to bow to him. Instead he let vicious animals torture him to death because he thought it would benefit your kind somehow. What a fool.

Apart from him, few humans interest me. I care only about those who have strong enough natural magic to be useful in my plans to remake the world again. The first Merlin of Britannia had potential, but he was stooped with age and obsessed with building his stone henge when I met him. Klaus the vampire was a great disappointment to me, an alchemist so adept in dead technical magic that I could not delve his true power without testing him severely—and he failed. This young priest Michael of Galen, on the other hand… oh, he’s a devious one, but what power he wields!

But then… this knight, Enik of Marse. The power that Jesus left in this world is never far from people like Enik. It moves strongly around him, even though he is not aware of it. For all the guilt he subjects himself to, I suspect he is being guided by some power beyond my ken. I will step lightly around Enik of Marse.

Thank you for coming to talk with us, and can’t wait to read all about you.

Never in your life will you receive a greater honor than this brief notice I have granted you, human.


you can find No Moon to Pray to by Jerry Guern here on Amazon