This guide for the Harker Academy series is a helpful resource before you read Book 2 Cursed City! This guide includes spoilers, so please read AFTER you’ve finished Half City.
Includes info from Half City, so this guide is spoiler in nature.
This guide is SAFE to read before Cursed City.
This guide is in collaboration with Ana Victoria (@anavickigamesandreads)
World Overview
Astera
Astera, known as the Half City, is the country’s center of culture, business, and politics, located along the eastern seaboard. Despite being home to a hidden supernatural population, most mortals have no idea that deviants live among them and hunt humans for their souls, blood, and flesh.
The city is divided by the Chasm, with the northern side associated with wealth and the southern side largely occupied by the lower class. Astera is built along a gradual incline, rising from the slums toward the hills bordering the Hesperides.
The Windsor sits at the city’s northernmost point, at a high elevation where the morning sun reaches it early while fog still covers the lower parts of Astera. This elevation gives the area a distinctive atmosphere, with the museum’s glass-filled interior glowing in the early morning light.
The Windsor
Astera’s largest and most well-funded museum, gallery, and research institute. Viv’s place of work and gateway to Harker Academy.
Hesperides
The upscale neighborhood in NTC (North of the Chasm) that Viv’s mother moved to when she became Astera’s district attorney.
The Chasm
The Chasm is a massive crevasse that divides Astera into its northern and southern halves, giving the city its nickname, the Half City.
It also serves as a social boundary: North of the Chasm (NTC) is the wealthy part of the city, home to politicians, wealthy professionals, the Windsor, and upscale neighborhoods and parks.
While South of the Chasm (STC) is more working-class and associated with artists, nightlife, drugs, and poorer communities, with deeper areas containing slums and criminal activity.
Despite what mortals are told, the Chasm is not simply a natural geological formation. It was originally torn open thousands of years ago by the High Thane of the Brood, who used powerful dark magic to release deviants from the Underworld.
It became the largest and oldest known gateway to Hell, attracting an enormous population of deviants to Astera.
Although powerful Lymantrians eventually sealed the Chasm, many of the released deviants remained in the city, and their descendants and the vampires and werewolves they later created continued to grow the supernatural population.
As a result, Astera has become the largest center of deviant activity in the world.
Fever Dream Nightclub
Fever Dream is an infamous and exclusive nightclub located deep beneath the Chasm in South of the Chasm (STC).
Despite its seedy and debauched atmosphere, it is considered one of the most elite clubs in the world and is notoriously difficult to enter unless someone is young, attractive, or extremely wealthy.
The club is owned by Deacon Graveheart, who operates under the alias the White Stag and maintains a deliberately low profile. He is deeply connected to Astera’s most powerful figures, including the mayor and influential business leaders, who help protect his identity and allow his criminal operations to continue.
The White Stag is also believed to be one of Astera’s major poppy dealers and is involved in various shady dealings conducted through the club.
Despite his criminal activities, the Elders have explicitly chosen not to have him eliminated, making Fever Dream a particularly influential and dangerous location within Astera’s supernatural underworld.
Babylon
The STC neighborhood where Viv and her best friend Penny live.
Lethe
The STC neighborhood where Viv and her family grew up before her father was killed by brood demons.
Harker Academy
Harker Academy for Deviant Defense is an exclusive, prestigious, and highly demanding four-year college dedicated entirely to training hunters.
Students receive extensive education in deviant history, abilities, and vulnerabilities alongside rigorous physical and combat training designed to prepare them to protect themselves, other hunters, and mortals.
The academy’s Old Campus in Astera has been protected by powerful magical wards maintained by warlocks for roughly seventy-five years, although the surrounding grounds are not completely safe.
First-year students cannot leave Old Campus after nightfall, students are forbidden from entering the dangerous Fickle Thicket, and hunting in Astera while enrolled requires faculty supervision. Students must complete all four years of academics and combat training before passing final written and physical examinations, after which they can be stationed at deviant hotspots around the world or compete for positions at the Citadel.
Harker has gateways connected to major cities, though the Old Campus gateway leads directly into the Windsor.
Because Astera contains the Chasm and is the world’s largest center of deviant activity, much of the students’ practical hunting experience takes place there. Graduates may be stationed in Astera, but hunters cannot permanently live there because their souls are particularly desirable to demons and the Brood operates from the city.
Field Training is highly selective, especially for first-years, with most students expected to establish a foundation of knowledge and skills before being sent into active situations.
Key Players of the Book
- FMC Vivienne “Viv” Abbot (21)
- Aeon
- Demon Hunter since she was a young girl due to being trained by her aeon dad
- Reid Graveheart
- Head combat instructor at Harker Academy
- Former Brood Demon
- A couple hundred years old
- Viv’s current love interest
- Sophia Valentine
- Viv’s roommate and friend at Harker Academy
- Childhood best friends with Elliot
- Peter Roydon
- Harker academy friend and classmate to Viv
- Kitty’s cousin
- Elliot
- Harker academy friend and classmate to Viv
- Childhood best friends with Sophia
- Kitty Briggs
- Harker academy friend and classmate to Viv
- Goes missing in the middle of the school year
- Suspected aeon by Viv
- Revealed to have been killed by Edgar Driscoll
- Fiona / Professor Gemeline Lisette
- Viv’s boss at the Windsor
- Windsor’s Head Curator
- Married to Nora
- Revealed to be Professor Lisette, chair of Harker’s Underworld Studies Department and resident historian
- She’s a dichotomous shifter hunter
- Edgar Driscoll
- Dean of Harker Academy
- Very powerful warlock
- Revealed to be a turned warlock and working for the High Thane
- David Cadell
- Viv’s aeon dad
- Died when Viv was 10
- Murdered by brood demons
- Beatrice Abbot
- Viv’s mom
- Former city councilwoman for Leth
- Astera’s District Attorney
- Running for Astera’s mayor financially backed by Caspar Harlock
- Caspar Harlock
- Multimedia Billionaire
- Harlock’s group CEO
- Is funding Viv’s mom mayoral campaign
- Nora Abbot (26)
- Older sister of Viv
- Married to Fiona
- a high-ranking executive at one of the most successful nonprofits in the country, the Astera City Foundation Against Crime, or ACFAC.
- Penelope “Penny” Pine (22)
- Viv’s childhood best friend
- Comes from a rich influential family
- Sister to James
- Elementary school art teacher
- James Pine
- Viv’s boyfriend (or now ex boyfriend)
- Works in Public Relations
- Penny’s older brother
- Deacon Graveheart
- Demon known as the White Stag
- Reid’s older brother
- Owner of the STC night club Fever Dream
- Finn
- The current High Thane’s son
- Viv deduces that he is a disappointment in his father’s eyes
Magic in this World
In the earliest history of the world, deviants lived exclusively in the Underworld, while humans inhabited the mortal plane and Lymantrians lived in their own astral realm. This balance was disrupted when the High Thane used powerful dark magic to tear open the Chasm, allowing deviants to enter the mortal world.
The Lymantrians descended from their astral home to defend humanity and seal the Chasm, resulting in a devastating war. During the conflict, the deviants destroyed the Lymantrian homeland, forcing the surviving Lymantrians to relocate to the mortal plane and hide among humans.
With deviants now loose in the mortal world, hunters became essential to protecting humanity. The nearly extinct Aeons were temporarily brought back to help fight, but their uncontrollable hunger for deviant blood eventually made them a threat to the mortals they were supposed to protect, leading to their elimination.
Lymantrians
Lymantrians are supernatural beings who possess souls but have nonhuman abilities, traits, or appearances and live alongside ordinary mortals. They serve as a broader supernatural population distinct from the Underworld-born deviants.
LYMANTRIAN ORDER
The Elders
Hunters, Pixies, Witches & Warlocks, Nymphs, Mermaids, Shifters, Fairies, Elves, and Gnomes
Hunters
Hunters are the primary defenders of mortals and the first and last line of defense against deviants. Most hunters develop their abilities at age twenty-one and possess enhanced strength, accelerated healing, and an unusually high tolerance for blood loss and injury. Unlike Aeons, regular hunters typically identify deviants through their physical characteristics rather than an innate supernatural sense.
Hunter Daggers
Hunter Daggers are ancient weapons traditionally associated with hunters. Historically, hunters were believed to carry two daggers, the Demon’s Dagger representing the deviants they fought and the Lymantrian’s Dagger, symbolizing the mortals and goodness they vowed to protect.
Aeons were rumored to carry a third dagger, The Aeon’s Dagger, hidden as a backup weapon, representing a combination of both light and darkness. Viv’s daggers may be the last complete set in existence, and they are connected through ancient magic, meaning damage or destruction to one can affect the others.
The Aeon dagger is particularly significant because its remaining alloy can be used in dark rituals and spells if the blade is smelted. Viv is in possession of a Demon’s dagger and Lymantrian’s dagger that was passed down by his father and his mother before that.
Harker was in possession of the matching Aeon’s dagger to her set but it was stolen and smelted to brew the Syrabraxa. Viv eventually names her daggers Angel and Hellion.
Aeon
Aeons are a rare and nearly extinct type of hunter possessing a powerful second sight that allows them to instinctively sense the presence of deviants. Being near a deviant produces a physical sensation and triggers an intense bloodlust and desire to kill.
Aeons begin hunting before the traditional age of twenty-one and are known for their mood swings and dangerous thirst for deviant blood.
Historically, their inability to control this hunger allegedly led some to hunt mortals as well, causing other Lymantrians to nearly eradicate them. Because of their reputation and history, surviving Aeons are expected to keep their identity secret.
Warlocks/Witches
Witches and Warlocks are Lymantrians capable of using spells and hexes. Witches in particular are viewed with suspicion because they can be turned by deviants or voluntarily pledge themselves to the High Thane.
Through dark magic, a witch can transform into a deviant and gain immortality without requiring the physical process associated with other forms of turning.
This ability makes witches particularly distrusted within Lymantrian society. Spells and Hexes are cast by warlock and witches.
Pixies
Possess healing abilities
Shifters
Shifters have significantly longer lifespans than ordinary hunters. A dichotomous shifter has two distinct forms that they can transform between.
Elders
The Elders are the oldest surviving Lymantrians and serve as the governing authority over the Lymantrian community. They are responsible for maintaining order, resolving conflicts between Lymantrians, administering inter-Lymantrian justice, and regulating the activities of hunters.
Their headquarters, the Citadel, is a massive palace located beyond the Fickle Thicket surrounding Harker’s campus and functions as the political center of Lymantrian society.
Citadel Hunters work directly for the Elders and are permitted to hunt in Astera, making positions within the Citadel highly prestigious and sought after. Because the Elders are difficult to contact directly, communication often goes through Citadel Hunters, who act as their representatives and carry out their orders.
Deviants
Deviants are supernatural beings born from the Underworld and are organized into a strict caste system based largely on how closely they resemble mortals. Despite their claims of superiority, the hierarchy is built around appearance, with demons at the top because they can blend almost perfectly into human society.
Only a naturally born demon can become High Thane and rule from the Throne of Bael, which grants its occupant immense strength, unique abilities, and immortality regardless of whether they continue consuming mortal souls.
Since the first High Thane opened the Chasm, he and his Brood have lived among lymantrians and mortals, concealing their identities within human society.
Lower-ranking deviants, such as beasts and the undead, are assigned the harshest roles in the Underworld, while higher-ranking species often serve as enforcers and torturers.
Half-borns, beasts, and undead creatures are generally invisible or unrecognizable to mortals, appearing as ordinary animals or unexplained phenomena, while turned deviants and demons can choose to reveal their true forms.
Deviants and lymantrians cannot reproduce with one another, and although some deviants possess the ability to sense hunters, this is extremely uncommon.
Deviants also cannot distinguish hunters from ordinary mortals, but there is one rare instance where a demon consumed so many hunters lives that he was able to sense nearby hunters.
STRATIFICATION OF DEVIANTS
High Thane
Demons
Born Deviants
Turned Deviants
Half-Borns Beasts
The Undead
Demons
Demons are among the rarest and most difficult deviants for hunters to identify because they can appear almost completely human. Their most recognizable feature is a distinctive red ring surrounding each iris, although this can be difficult to notice. Their true forms are characterized by claws and wings, but demons rarely reveal them.
Demons occupy the highest level of the deviant food chain. They are exceptionally difficult to kill and can only be killed by driving pure silver into the heart or brain, or through the claws of another demon.
Unlike their existence in the Underworld, where they are immortal, demons require human souls to survive while living in the mortal world. Consuming souls provides them with both sustenance and power.
Human souls are particularly valuable to them, and a hunter’s soul, blood, and flesh are even more potent, providing demons with significantly greater strength and pleasure than those of an ordinary mortal. A hunter’s soul can reportedly extend a demon’s lifespan to nearly three times that of a mortal.
Demons are uncommon on Earth because turning a mortal into a demon does not result in the newly created demon awakening in the mortal world. Instead, they awaken in Hell. This prevents demons from reproducing among humans at the same rate as other deviants, such as vampires and werewolves.
Demons are also unique among deviants in that they can return to Hell, but they can only do so while carrying the physical body of the soul they have consumed. In the old world, this was tied to their original purpose: demons consumed the souls of sinful mortals and guided those souls toward their eventual fate.
That system changed after the Elders sealed the Chasm. The Underworld can no longer be freely entered and exited, meaning even the High Thane and his Brood could become trapped there if they accompanied a soul into Hell. Because of this danger, demons generally have no reason to risk returning simply to revisit the Underworld.
The Gauntlet
The Gauntlet is believed to be the only remaining route out of the Underworld following the Elders’ sealing of the Chasm.
Very little is known about it because virtually none of the deviants who have attempted it are believed to have survived. Some research suggests that the Gauntlet may be connected to the seven deadly sins.
However, the idea that demons or other deviants must undergo some form of moral judgment is considered an ancient concept dating back to the old world. According to the information available, moral judgment has not been relevant for thousands of years.
If a person’s soul is consumed by a demon, that person dies and awakens in the Underworld as a demon. They would effectively be trapped there unless they managed to survive the Gauntlet and find a way out.
The Gauntlet is considered so deadly that the vast majority of deviants who attempt it do not survive.
Feeding and Power
Souls are essential to a demon’s survival. If a demon stops consuming souls, its remaining lifespan becomes significantly shorter.
Soul consumption also directly affects a demon’s strength: the more souls it consumes, the more powerful it becomes. Human souls are especially potent sources of power.
As a result, a demon that deliberately stops feeding on souls would not only shorten its own lifespan but would also become considerably weaker.
Glamouring
Some demons possess the rare ability to use glamouring. However, this is not a universal demon ability, and only certain demons are capable of it.
Glamouring also has a limitation: demons cannot use this ability to glamour hunters.
The Brood
The Brood is an elite and ruthless group of demons and lesser deviants who serve the High Thane, the supreme ruler of all deviants.
Members are chosen for their intelligence and violence and are rewarded with status, power, belonging, and opportunities to indulge in both cruelty and pleasure. Because of their secrecy and strength, the Brood is extremely difficult to locate or defeat.
New members are permanently marked with a seven-pointed, horned star when they officially join.
The High Thane is the king of all deviants and one of the most elusive figures in the hunter world who rules from the Throne of Bael. The position traditionally passes from father to son, much like a hereditary monarchy, while the identity of the current ruler is kept as one of Astera’s greatest secrets.
Although hunters have occasionally succeeded in killing a High Thane throughout history, a new one eventually takes the throne and the mystery begins again, ensuring that the hunters’ fight against the Brood and the deviant world never truly ends. The last change of thanes happened two centuries ago.
Turned Deviants
Werewolves and Vampires
Vampires
Vampires are turned rather than naturally reproducing, meaning they create new vampires by transforming others. They can be killed by driving a wooden stake through the heart or by using holy water.
Werewolves
Werewolves, also known as lycanthropes, are another type of turned deviant. In their human form, they are extremely difficult to identify and can appear completely ordinary, even more so than demons.
They can be killed with silver to the heart or head, but unlike demons, they are also vulnerable to natural causes and ordinary accidents while in human form.
When transformed, werewolves become large, humanoid creatures with long, sinewy legs, extended arms, glowing yellow eyes, and thick hair covering their faces and bodies.
Humans become werewolves through a werewolf bite, and turned werewolves return to their human form approximately twelve hours after nightfall.
Half-Borns
Half-borns are deviants that fall between the more human-looking species, such as vampires, werewolves, and demons, and the more animalistic beasts. This category includes species such as selkies, succubi, sirens, giants, djinn, harpies, and trolls.
Most half-born species cannot reproduce with other deviant species, and breeding between different deviants generally produces no offspring. Harpies are the exception because they are exclusively female and can become pregnant by members of other species.
However, regardless of the father’s species, a harpy can only give birth to female harpies, which is why harpies are classified as “half-born.”
The Undead
The Undead are a category of deviants that includes ghosts, wraiths, and ghouls.
- Ghosts have no physical bodies but can still interact with and manipulate objects in the physical world. They are created or summoned through spellcraft and can be destroyed by locating and destroying the object connected to their origin.
- Wraiths possess physical forms but are not conscious or sentient beings, and they can be killed using salt.
- Ghouls are intelligent, sentient creatures that survive by feeding on both living beings and the dead. They can be killed with sage.
Undead creatures are generally considered lower-ranking within the deviant hierarchy and are among the types of deviants that are not visible to ordinary mortals.
Magic Creatures/Beasts
Basilisks (killed by pixie dust), dragons, wyverns, banshees, strzyga (killed by fire), ogres, and hydra (killed with mermaid tears), hellhound (killed by fire).
Dark Magic
Syrabraxa
Syrabraxa is the most powerful form of dark magic, capable of breaking the barriers between planes of existence, and it can only be created by a turned witch using an extremely rare combination of ingredients: the Liquified Blade of the Third, celestial bloom (asphodel), the Eye of the Conjuring Witch, and aeon’s blood.
The ingredients are brewed into a potion and magically implanted into a host, after which whoever kills the host inherits the spell’s immense power. The power is overwhelming to any being and ultimately causes severe, uncontrollable madness.
A syrabraxa can only be removed by the witch who originally cast it, with one ancient example suggesting that removing it from an aeon also stripped them of their supernatural abilities.
The first High Thane used a syrabraxa to open the Chasm, and the current High Thane hopes to recreate the spell to reopen it, allowing deviants to enter the mortal plane and take control.
A ritual censer may also play a role in protecting against magical effects or helping preserve the sanity of someone affected by the spell.
Where We Leave Off
- Dean Edgar the powerful warlock is revealed to be working for the High Thane and the one who was collecting all the ingredients to brew the syrabraxa.
- Edgar holds Penny hostage and lays a trap for Viv where he reveals that she is the final ingredient, that an aeon needs to be the host of the syrabraxa.and embeds the spell on her back
- Reid rescues Viv before she’s used for the syrabraza spell and tells her to run while he fights off the High Thane’s demon son Finn.
- Before Viv runs away with Penny she kills Dean Edgar and the only chance she had at getting the spell removed
- Viv ushers Penny to safety while promising to tell her later the truth of who she is before they part ways
- Not knowing if she can trust anyone at Harker Academy, the Elders, and not wanting to put her family and friends in danger, Viv goes back to Fever Dream to ask Reid’s brother Deacon for help
