Universe: The Hundred-Eleven
A grim journal-narrated mercenary saga set in the fractured vassal kingdom of Veleh, where a company of exactly 111 soldiers is bound body and soul to a parasitic human-skin grimoire.
The Hundred-Eleven is a grim military dark-fantasy universe and one of the Loom's frontier stitches — a mercenary saga told through the journal of one bound soldier. It has magic but no cultivation ladder, and it holds one of the multiverse's two confirmed cross-universe anchors. (See the mystery of #45.)
The world
Veleh is a fractured vassal kingdom squeezed between three empires: Mechil to the northeast, Bloria to the northwest, and Ustrus to the southeast, which has ruled Veleh by proxy for fifty years. The setting is medieval-equivalent, and its politics follow real history closely — the source folder keeps the chronology of Michael the Brave (1594–1600) as a structural template: a three-way squeeze, a claimant prince, tax-farming despots, shifting alliances, and betrayal.
Key locations
- Tullanon — a floating clam-town on rotting pillars over swamp water; the narrator's birthplace.
- Ocristan — the walled capital.
- The Rift — a siege fortress of seven kimberstone towers, and the site of the saga's hinge.
- Beit Haifud — the southern imperial capital of Ustrus, target of a gold-heist embassy.
- Trantar — the late-book battle city, where a disastrous retreat begins.
Power system
The company's power is the Grimoire — a parasitic, human-skin-bound book. A recruit swears an oath on it, takes the "111" brand, and is bound body and soul into the company. It grants strength, endurance, magic-resistance, and clean healing, and it compels killing to feed itself. Its pages hold thousands of names though the company is only ever 111 strong; rank is a number, from #1 the Centurion down to #111, and as soldiers die the survivors are renumbered downward. Trained combat is called the Pattern.
Key characters
- Alden — born Sadim, #82 falling to #39; the narrator, an eighteen-year-old orphan of Tullanon who joined for food and cannot leave.
- Elric, the Centurion (#1) — ancient, cold, from a wild land across the Eastern Sea; he has outlived many companies and is loyal to the contract, not to people.
- Baron Mihail — the employer and a candidate for Veleh's throne; rumoured a revenant — waxy-pale, wolf-gold eyes, never ageing — and quietly backed by Bloria.
- Blaze — soldier #45. (A confirmed cross-universe anchor; see the Thread.)
- Mira — a baker's daughter Alden loves at the Rift, murdered by one of his own; her death is the hinge of his character.
Key events
The oath at Tullanon; the siege and sack of the Rift, and Mira's murder; the gold-heist embassy to Beit Haifud; an assassination-and-bribery campaign that buys Veleh's council; an incited peasant revolt in the west; the disastrous battle and retreat at Trantar; and the long bleed home as the roster falls from 82 to 39.
Open hooks
The true nature and origin of the Grimoire and its thousands of names; how long Elric has really served, and how; the Day-61 myth of the oak sapling that grows into a city, takes too much, and chooses to die so something cleaner can grow — which Alden says "reads like the soul-oath in my own brand."