Volume I February 2024
Announcing the launch of the Descendant Saga community Discord Server! “The Drop Pod”!
Below is a link to the community Discord we have built for The Descendant Saga. Where we can hang out, share memes, talk about sci-fi or other nerd stuff, and play Deep Rock Galactic together. Don’t forget to slap the dice for good luck when you climb aboard the Drop Pod.
Link to community Discord server: https://discord.gg/CeqagKdxhd
Now let me talk about why we’re here, The Descendant Saga. The Descendant Saga is a big, universe, with lore and backstory, written in a hard-ish, sci-fi, military, action, thriller, horror style. The main series of books follows the adult life of my main character ZostaMax. Who’s humble beginnings beguile the role he will play in the galaxy.
In one form or another, I have been kicking around ideas for, developing characters and lore for, writing about, or doing something for this story for almost 20 years. I have a lot of content that fits inside this universe. An indie press published the first book The Descendant from April 2019 to April 2022. That journey is a whole other story for another place and time, that has led me to decide to to self-publish the whole series. Beginning with a second edition, rerelease of The Descendant. The second edition is almost twenty percent longer, with not just the addition of the antagonist’s point of view, but significant rewrites for stylistic improvement. I wrote the first draft of that manuscript in 14 days ( Over seven consecutive weekends in August/September of 2017) Since that original 60,000 word manuscript I have written almost a half million more words. I feel my writing has improved greatly since then, I think the most recently complete manuscript is far better, my best so far, the rewrite to The Descendant has improved it greatly, and changed much, which is why I have changed the tittle for the second edition to Altar of Scales. Below is a list of books I have written, am currently working on, (WIP) or will write, to finish the story and expand on it into the ‘extended universe’.
Prequel to Book I: TBD
Book I: Altar of Scales
Book II: Cave in the Sky
Book III: Knowledge of Gods
Book IV Under the Canopy
Book V: Shadow in the Mist
Book VI: Anvil of Souls
Book VII: TBD/WIP
Book VIII:TBD
Book IX: TBD
Book X: TBD
Spin-off Horror: The Feasting/WIP
The Descendant Saga Prequel trilogy: titles TBD
Fantasy book: Loch of Glass
Loch of Glass Fantasy Prequel: TBD
All the books listed above, with titles, are complete manuscripts and will be published in the near future. I will be publishing them as fast as I possibly can. I have to secure cover art, get them edited with the help of some freelancers, so they’re cleaned up well enough to satisfy me, and then format and publish them with Amazon’s Kindle and print-on-demand services. I will also be doing limited runs of deluxe hardcover books for direct sales with our partner Etsy shop https://nerdsmithconsol.etsy.com.
The other listed books with TBD or “To Be Determined” labels are all plotted out, they have outlines, in some cases, they already have scenes written in them and I will complete them in order, as soon as possible. Once a new manuscript is complete, it will get the same editing, cover art, and prompt publishing treatment as the existing manuscripts books.
The main driving factor behind this is that I want all the cover art painted by the same person, my grandfather. I love his art, he is the closest artist I know, to a living Frank Frazetta, and while I don’t know about anyone else, that era of sci-fi and fantasy books with Frank Frazetta’s art on them, is what I think of first, and look for most when I am digging through the stacks for more paperbacks to add to my library. Unfortunately, my grandfather is not getting any younger and I want to get all these books done and out, while he is still willing and able to share his art with me. Below is some of his original hand-painted watercolor used as the cover of the 1st edition of The Descendant.
I won’t get too deep into the lore around The Descendant saga here, I don’t want to let a spoiler slip out. Please, if you haven’t already subscribed to this newsletter with the simple email form on the home page of either https://thedescendantsaga.com/ or https://chacerandolph.com/ so you can get all the updates about the releases of these books. Because once they start coming, they’ll keep coming, and I don’t want anyone interested to miss out on any of the books in the series. While I don’t have a specific release date yet, I will let you know as soon as I receive feedback from my editor, before I move on to formatting and release of the book. I’m sorry I can’t tell you a specific date like April 20th or something, for now, it is “simply as soon as possible”.
Below is some quick and dirty AI-generated concept art of our main character ZostaMax from early in his journey, sometime during the events of the first book Altar of Scales. I am not a fan of AI anything, it has made some big waves in the publishing industry both for traditional and self-publishing, but the cat can’t be put back in the bag, and everyone else will be using it too, I grudgingly will as well, in some limited form, just to keep competitive. Quick and easy visual art like this is helpful because posts with more pictures and less words always get more engagement. What do you think about the topic of AI?
Chace Randolph 
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