Hasdrubal's Tale

Introduction

When I started writing Schooled in Magic, I only had a vague idea of the backstories of some of the more major characters. I knew Void would turn out to be a well-intentioned extremist, and I had a good idea he would be Grandmaster Hasdrubal’s brother, but much of the detail of their early lives existed only as vague notes, if that. The only thing I knew beyond the bare fact they were brothers was that they’d done something stupid, as young men, and both of them had been scarred by it. The exact details didn’t come to my mind until I needed to devise an explanation for the lack of magical twins, at which point I decided there had been four half-brothers, the result of magical experimentation, and the incident that had scarred the two survivors also killed two others. Bit by bit, the rest of the details emerged into the light.

There are some discrepancies between Grandmaster Hasdrubal’s recounting and Void’s vague explanation from earlier in the books, but neither of them really want to admit to their flaws…

Chronologically speaking, Hasdrubal’s Tale takes place before Void’s Tale, just over a century before Schooled in Magic itself.