BD: He was one of the original 50 people Stone knighted. Stone liked him for dependability and promoted him to Knight-Sergeant, and after he died, Heath took over and Heath prized seniority over ability. We’re taking about the same man who commissioned a life-size portrait of Stone and had it framed in gold…

DA: And if Stone was alive, he would’ve brained Heath with it.

BD: And I would’ve paid good money to see that. Greg Feldman, the Knight-Diviner who served as Kate’s guardian, is murdered. Myonohan isn’t investigating it.

DA: Why the hell not?

BD: Feldman had issues with him. Daniels shows up, and Moynohan hires Daniels as an agent of the Order to solve the murder.

DA: What the actual fuck?

BD: Your guess is as good as mine. This thing is actually a lot more complicated, but you asked for highlights. She works for us for a bit. Meanwhile, her daddy wakes up his sister. Her name is Erra and she is the human equivalent of a nuke. In ancient times, she was his warlord. She’s got a list of titles a mile long, things like Plaguebringer and City Eater, and she is even less sane than her brother. For some reason, Roland sends her to Atlanta, and she runs into her niece. Shit hits the fan. A plague almost wipes out the city, crazy crap happens, but eventually Daniels kills her. In the process, it becomes clear that she and Lennart are an item and Moynohan thinks shapeshifters aren’t people and should be put down. So our girl quits and goes off to be the Beastlady.

DA: …

BD: You okay?

DA: Just think about it. If only we’d managed to reel her in. We could’ve had our own nuke.

BD [sigh]: Yep. This is what happens when you promote people beyond their intelligence. Anyhow, some years pass and Roland and Daniels keep coming into conflict with each other remotely. Meanwhile, Heath is leading us into a political nightmare ass first. The Order’s reputation plummets. Moynohan, who is gone full lunatic by now, becomes convinced that the only way the Order can survive is to have a holy war against an evil enemy.

DA: And we know this how?

BD: He wrote a memo to Heath about it.

DA: … Continue.

BD: Moynohan looks around for some enemy to fight and settles on Roland. Roland decides it’s time to meet his daughter in person, so he sends his warlord to get her.

DA: Hugh d’Ambray, another massive pain in the ass.

BD: He was a pain until Roland threw him away.

DA: That man is a butcher. Right now, he sits safely in Kentucky playing house with his new wife, and the moment he steps foot outside of that state, I’ll be on him like white on rice.

BD: Okay. Moving on. Moynohan makes sure that d’Ambray slaughters the entire Atlanta Chapter and burns a deep-cover agent embedded with d’Ambray. That agent is…

DA: Are you going to tell us?

BD: It’s a dramatic pause, Damian. That agent is Knight-Crusader Nikolas Feldman, Greg Feldman’s son. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

DA: How does this woman keep doing this? How is it every time her trajectory intersects with the Order, we have a major disaster on our hands and she sees us in the worst possible light?

BD: Luck? Coincidence? Fate? Anyway, Heath refuses to go to war with Roland and for some reason decides to promote Feldman to Knight-Protector and set him up in charge of the Atlanta Chapter. Mariana de Leon calls for Heath to step down and your name is brought up as the possible replacement. You know what happened next. While we were busy sorting all that out and fighting our civil war, Roland and Daniels come into open conflict. This family has an inborn ability to claim land.

DA: Define claim.

BD: They become bound to the land and all living creatures within it. If a significant magic power enters their domain, they know and can track it. It’s something that had been deliberately bred into them to make them better rulers. Apparently, there is a big price tag attached to all this, but we won’t go into that. Short version: Roland tries to claim Atlanta and Daniels blocks him and claims it instead. They make a deal. Lennart gives up the Pack, and Daddy dearest will mind his manners for the next hundred years. Basically, Lennart and Daniels bought some time.

DA: Didn’t last.

BD: No. He keeps poking her with a stick. She and Lennart get married and she gives birth to a baby boy, and that just makes her father’s meddling worse. While he’s harassing her, an ancient dragon decides it would be a great idea to invade the world. He opens a secret dimension where he’s been hiding with his slave army and starts capturing people and boiling them alive. The entire city comes together to fight him and somehow Daniels convinces Roland to help her. They kill the dragon, and the moment he croaks, Roland turns on his daughter. When the dust settles, Roland is gone, jettisoned out of our world.

DA: Where?

BD: Nobody knows. Feldman has written a report in which he claims that Roland is imprisoned in the realm outside of our existence and can never escape. I pressed him for an explanation, but he hasn’t given one yet. He doesn’t have the highest opinion of us. Like Moynohan, he’s been writing memos for years explaining that Roland is going to invade and Daniels is a danger to democracy.

DA: I’ve read them. His points were valid, but we had more urgent things on our plate. What happened to Daniels?

BD: She unclaimed the land and went back to living in the suburbs with her ex-Beastlord husband.

DA: Just like that?

BD: Just like that. Here’s the kicker. You remember the aunt she killed? Erra, the Plaguebringer? The one with all the titles?

DA: Yes.

BD: She got resurrected on the battlefield.

DA: Bruce, death is forever. In all the decades since the Shift nobody has ever come back to life.

BD: Well, she did. Rumors said she wasn’t fully dead, and she and Daniels have some sort of arrangement. Shortly after the dust settles, she leaves. And here is another tidbit for you. Years ago, Daniels rescued a street kid, a little girl named Julia Olsen. Lennart and Daniels formally adopted her. Julia, they call her Julie, was a sensate and had some weird powers. Word is, she and Erra left together. Their whereabouts are officially unknown.