He wanted to be somebody. He should have been more specific.
Dante Raises The Dead
Dante wanted to be somebody. He should have been more specific. Now he owns the worst bar in Asura, employs a workforce that does not strictly qualify as living, and owes a debt that cannot be settled in money.
The Spit Bucket Company Ledger
A bar, an infernal contract, and several staffing irregularities.
Dante came to Asura to become somebody. A few catastrophic negotiations later, he owns the worst bar in the city, manages employees who are not strictly alive, and owes a debt that no sensible person would have agreed to.
“They have a plan. They always have a plan.”
A sentence that has never reassured anyone
Character stories
The living, the dead, and management
The enterprise works because everyone brings a vital skill. Dante's is confidence. Nobody has established why that counts.
Necromancer · Owner · Self-Described Negotiator
Dante
Twenty-two, professionally unemployed, and permanently mid-shrug. Dante wears a stolen trench coat that is too large, carries a bow he is terrible with, and possesses absolute confidence unsupported by evidence. His greatest talent may be treating every escalating disaster as proof the original plan is working.
Friends · Strategists · Former Tabletop Cult
The Gang
Kyle supplies competence and thrown shoes. Gary keeps the books and occasionally the conscience. Serj takes destiny personally. Kenny and Evan provide twin concentrations of chaos. Jane survives long enough to become the operation's future accountant. Together, they have never met a plan they could not make structurally unsound.
Bar Staff · Security · Legally Complicated
The Workforce
Irving is management material, Terrifying Terry is excellent security, Cletus simply resumed grave-digging, and the Bucket Skeleton completed one instruction with legendary precision. The staff are tireless, loyal, and the subject of several municipal questions Dante prefers not to answer.
Worst Bar in Asura · Growing Concern
The Spit Bucket
Doris actually runs the place. Smiley never smiles. Leroy supplies soup-based commentary. The drinks are questionable, the roof may not be structurally committed, and somehow this condemned building becomes the first place Dante's collection of disasters resembles a family.
Inside the world
Current business concerns
Contract · Unread
Infernal debt management
The signature is genuine. The terms are terrible. Dante's position is that this creates room to negotiate.
Staffing · Nontraditional
Normalize light necromancy
The dead do not complain about shifts, but they do introduce difficult questions about wages, permits, and decomposition.
Strategy · Alleged
Committee meeting with a body count
Every terrible decision begins with a map, several drinks, and someone insisting the odds are basically favorable.
Description
Dante is twenty-two, professionally unemployed, and objectively less interesting than his village’s town drunk—who is also, somehow, the mayor. So Dante leaves for the big city to finally make something of himself.
He makes several things of himself. Most of them are crimes.
Within weeks he owns the worst bar in Asura, employs a workforce that does not strictly qualify as living, and has picked up a debt that cannot be settled in money. Assisting him: five friends whose entire strategic experience comes from a tabletop game, and who have never won an argument with a merchant, a bandit, or each other.
They have a plan. They always have a plan. The last one ended with a condemned building and a body count.
Between the crime boss demanding a cut, the sworn rival he cannot remember making, the noblewoman who has decided they are dating, and her father—who owns half the city and would like Dante dead somewhere in it—things are escalating faster than anyone budgeted for.
Dante remains extremely confident. It is the most dangerous thing about him.
Inside the disaster
- Found family with catastrophically flexible ethics
- Sword-and-sorcery filtered through deadpan committee meetings
- A bar, a debt, and the normalization of light necromancy
- Heroes whose consequences arrive right on schedule
Book one of the Dante Raises the Dead series.