About the Author
Rook Darrow
Writer of dungeons, debts, and the people who owe them.
Rook Darrow has been devouring stacks of sci-fi, fantasy, and LitRPG since before the last one had a name. It started with beat-up paperbacks borrowed from an older cousin and a library card used harder than it was built for. It graduated to Tolkien at twelve, Herbert at fourteen, and an absolute surrender to Discworld somewhere around sixteen. By then he’d also rolled his first character sheet, and a certain kind of damage was already done.
He wrote his first novel in the margins of math homework. It was bad. He wrote several more in the margins of meetings. Some of those were better. The one you’re about to read — Delver’s Lament — is the one he couldn’t keep in the margins any longer.
Delver’s Lament follows Mace Narien — an emotionally scarred dungeon delver and missing-persons investigator whose psychometric gift forces him to feel the emotional residue of the monsters he hunts. It’s LitRPG in its bones, grimdark noir in its voice, and mystery in its pacing: five chapters a week on Royal Road, with Kindle Unlimited on the horizon.
Rook writes under a pen name because one of them has to stay employed. He answers to “Rook” anywhere a keyboard is involved.
Shelf notes
Writers on the shelf
The obvious names and the ones quietly responsible for the specific voice of the series — in no particular order, except that this is the order they came to mind.
For the LitRPG-fluent
Character Sheet
CLASS Scribe (Chronicler subclass)
RACE Human (unconfirmed)
ALIGN Neutral Caffeinated
STR 7 Can lift most books
DEX 9 Mixed die-rolling record
CON 14 Powered by tea
INT 17 Genre-fluent
WIS 12 Knows when to stop editing
CHA 13 (+2 when caffeinated)
LANGUAGES Common, Dwarvish, Markdown
PROFICIENCIES Typing, tabletop, tea, tardiness
QUEST LOG Finish the series before the cat wins
All stats self-reported. None are audited. The cat declined to comment.
Outside the page
A short list of very serious hobbies
Tea brewing, optimized
Three thermoses. Zero regrets. Steep times tracked in a notebook that is more serious than any outline he's ever written.
Chronic re-reader
Has read several series three or more times. Can and will defend each re-read as "research."
Tabletop lifer
Rolls terrible dice under pressure. Owns more rulebooks than hours to read them. GMs a campaign that has survived four apartments and one job change.
Miniatures, unpainted
A growing, dignified stockpile. Each one will be finished "this weekend." Each weekend is, categorically, a different weekend.
Ongoing debate: is the cat a dragon?
The cat believes it is winning. The evidence is circumstantial but, she would argue, compelling.
Coffee (under duress only)
Accepts coffee under protest when the tea runs out. Always writes a slightly angrier chapter that day.
Write the world as if someone lives there. Write the character as if someone is about to lose them. Write the system as if it costs something. Then write the next chapter.
The Bone Ledger
Get word when the next chapter lands.
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