Death comes to Noviomagus Reginorum

[bunn]

I finally finished and posted my story in which both the main characters of Eagle of the Ninth are dead, and Cottia is extremely old and solves crimes in the Downs like a second-century Miss Marple with the aid of Servius Placidus's great grandson!

Sixty years after the Eagle of the Ninth, Cottia still lives on the farm in the Downs that she, Marcus and Esca set up together. Britain is in confusion after four years of civil war across the Empire. The great house of Placidus backed the wrong imperial claimant, and now young Servius Placidus, the last of a long line, is on the run from the newly-established Emperor Severus's revenge. Then one of Severus's men is found dead....

Read on Ao3 It's 18618 words. Nobody has sex.

Now with some lovely art by emisolde!

ETA actually, none of the featured characters have sex, but there is an ongoing joke about the sexual prowess of one Biccus.  I wonder if that is enough to make it not count as 'gen' ?  I don't really know how these things work tbh.

In a way I wish I'd made this longer, because I had so much potential backstory for Centurion Crispus that didn't make it into the tale. But on the other hand, writing whodunnits turns out to be really hard. You murder someone and then you have to figure out how and why! It's so much easier to read them and have the detective and author do the hard work for you. :-D

Comments

[hhimring]

Bookmarked! I'll probably read it on the Bank Holiday weekend and look forward to it.

[sally_maria]

Thank you - and I'm really looking forward to reading it. :-)

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Looking forward to reading it.

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

There's nothing to stop you writing a prequel with Centurion Crispus ...

I know exactly what you mean about whodunits - finding the dead body is definitely the easy part.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

:D!

Looking forward to it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

True. But I think at the point that I'm writing a detailed backstory for an original character who never met a canon character, I probably have to let go of the illusion that this is still fanfic. :-D

Which is not a reason not to do it, of course. But I think not as whodunnit!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... also I forgot to say 'thank you for beta-ing and helping me turn the ending into a real ending!'

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I enjoyed doing it.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Oh that was so lovely. Have you considered doing something serious with this? There is really not a lot of decent fiction about Roman Britain, Sutcliff and Bradshaw and occasional forays by Lindsay Davies and David Wishart and that's about it.

And Crispus seemed rather nice, how unfortunate that he had to be the one killed.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Yes, I like Crispus, even though torturing slaves is part of his job. I'd sort of begun to work out a backstory of how he ended up in that position and why he's trusted with this rather politically sensitive work for Severus, but ultimately I couldn't think who else to kill off, so he had to go!

I had vaguely played with the idea of writing this as an original novel (although I think it did end up reasonably well connected to the book in the end, thanks to the ghosts), but I'm not very good at writing longer fiction: I'm *very* slow. I think I am slowly getting better at it with practice though, so maybe one day!

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

What a warrior Cottia is, a proper Iceni queen. One rather feels she'd relish worst coming to worst and having to make a last stand in her farmhouse, attacked on all sides and going down fighting and cursing. Even at eighty-five. Or possibly ploughing through the opposition in a chariot, with spear in hand.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

She really has the kind of personality you just have to work around. Or tackle with a large force of spears!