Vacant Frame

Vacant Frame Mordain was once Interrex of Dry Harbor, bearer of Pallad — the Frame that carried the city’s measure wherever it stood. Then Pallad rose without him. With its reliquary open and empty, the war machine crossed Dry Harbor’s boundary and walked west. Mordain could not explain why. He could not recall it. Before Pallad returned, his victories had been reassigned to the machine, his office declared vacant, and Mordain himself sent into exile. Years later, Pallad turns west again. This time, Mordain is inside. Across the old basins, other Frames are moving with it. Some resist their bearers. Some abandon the places built around them. Others answer the same unexplained direction in ways no surviving doctrine can account for. Their courses point toward Vacant Arra, a royal city whose old records still contain the name of Calentyr — the Frame Mordain defeated at the False Shore, in a battle whose final hours were never satisfactorily recorded. Mordain follows. What waits in the west is tied to the event that ended his life in Dry Harbor, to the strange history of the Frames, and to a distinction humanity has trusted for generations: The bearer commands, and the Frame obeys. What to Expect Big mechs, a tightly focused story The world of Vacant Frame is old and crowded with history. There are plenty of people, places, and machines within it. The story just won’t introduce forty factions at once and expect you to memorize a glossary. Mordain and Pallad are at the center, but names like Calentyr will matter too. The wider world opens as they move through it. Fast, strange mech fights Frames are enormous, but they are not slow. Some fly. Some barely resemble conventional humanoid machines. Some were built for purposes that make fighting them a very bad idea. The goal is for battles to feel like encounters with different machines — not the same duel with a new coat of paint. A world that doesn’t wait to be explained There are things Mordain knows that the reader doesn’t. There are things the reader may notice before Mordain does. There are pieces of history that will not make sense the first time they appear. That is intentional. You won’t need to understand everything immediately to understand what is happening. Main chapters and interludes The main story follows Mordain and Pallad west. Interludes look elsewhere — and sometimes backward — at events that initially seem more distant than they really are. The two strands draw closer as the story continues. Illustrated chapter moments Vacant Frame includes artwork throughout the story, drawing from late-’90s and early-’00s anime cel shading, distressed comic panels, and the red-black-bone visual language of the cover. The images will not replace the prose or document every movement. They appear at selected moments to establish a Frame, hold a reaction, or allow a chapter to end on an image the story has earned.