One Party, Three Journeys: An Ensemble Fantasy Novel

While The Lost Disciple establishes Faro's found family and sends them on an adventure together, The Orb and the Oracle separates them into three primary groups.

Faro travels with Tobi.

Lena travels with Thora.

Mathias remains with Veronica.

Each group is pursuing its own objective, but all three journeys remain pieces of the same growing conflict threatening Evania.

That structure turns The Orb and the Oracle into an ensemble fantasy novel rather than a story in which every character simply follows its central protagonist. The separated journeys allow each member of Faro's party to carry part of the story, creating three very different kinds of fantasy adventure unfolding alongside one another.

Faro and Tobi bring adventure and ancient mystery.

Lena and Thora bring sacrifice, survival, and horror.

Mathias and Veronica bring politics, conspiracy, and distrust.

The characters may be separated, but their stories aren't. What happens in one corner of Evania can have consequences somewhere else, even when the people experiencing those consequences have no idea what the others are doing.

The reader, however, gets to see it all.

Faro and Tobi: Adventure Into the Unknown

Faro's journey has always contained a mystery at its center.

He doesn't know who he was.

His memories are incomplete, his past is filled with questions, and the farther he travels across Evania, the more difficult it becomes to believe that what happened to him was insignificant.

In The Orb and the Oracle, that search continues as Faro and Tobi embark on a journey filled with many of the elements most associated with traditional fantasy adventure: strange places, dangerous creatures, ancient mysteries, dungeons, and discoveries whose importance may not be immediately obvious.

For Faro, however, every discovery carries the possibility of becoming something more.

He isn't only searching for something that might help Evania. He is still searching for himself.

Readers wanting to dig deeper into that mystery can explore Faro's Missing Past: The Mystery at the Heart of Dungeon Lords.

Tobi: Keeping Faro's Feet on the Ground

Faro may be chasing enormous questions about identity, history, and his place in Evania, but fortunately for him, Tobi is considerably more practical.

The dwarf has never been particularly enthusiastic about becoming a hero.

He complains. He's gruff. He gets angry. He frequently acts like he'd rather be somewhere else.

And then he goes anyway.

That contradiction is an important part of Tobi. Underneath the irritation and occasional comic relief is someone who understands that not everything worth doing is something you want to do.

Sometimes there is a problem in front of you.

Sometimes someone you care about needs help.

Sometimes you pick up the axe.

Where Faro's story can increasingly drift toward ancient mysteries and questions much larger than himself, Tobi keeps their journey grounded in something simpler: friendship, loyalty, family, and the reality of surviving whatever happens next.

The Orb and the Oracle also begins putting considerably more pressure on some of the qualities that previously made Tobi entertaining.

Anger can be funny.

Until it isn't.

Lena and Thora: When the Past Refuses to Stay Buried

If Faro and Tobi occupy the adventure side of The Orb and the Oracle, Lena and Thora travel down a considerably darker road.

Lena has lived for thousands of years.

That means she has something most of Faro's party doesn't: an enormous amount of history.

She has loved people.

Lost people.

Made enemies.

Watched kingdoms and rulers change.

Made decisions whose consequences didn't disappear simply because centuries passed.

Her journey in The Orb and the Oracle forces some of that history back into the present.

For readers of Tahlari: A Dungeon Lords Tale, parts of Lena's journey may feel particularly familiar. Characters, relationships, and pieces of history established before The Orb and the Oracle can take on new significance as Lena encounters the consequences of her own past.

Tahlari is not required reading for the main Fate of Evania series, but readers who have experienced Lena's earlier story may recognize connections others will discover for the first time.

The past in Evania has a habit of refusing to stay buried.

And Lena has considerably more past than most.

Lena: The Price of Power

Lena is one of the most magically powerful members of Faro's party, but power and invulnerability are not the same thing.

Magic can be restricted.

It can be manipulated.

It can fail.

And when someone has spent centuries understanding herself partly through her connection to magic, losing control over that part of herself becomes more than a tactical problem.

It becomes personal.

Lena's journey asks what remains when power isn't enough.

How much is someone willing to sacrifice to regain control over their own life?

What happens when survival itself carries a cost?

And at what point does defeating an enemy require giving up something that can never be recovered?

Those questions push Lena and Thora's journey into some of the darkest territory in The Orb and the Oracle.

Thora: Loyalty When It Hurts

Thora has always been fiercely loyal to the people she considers family.

She's direct, physical, stubborn, and considerably more comfortable acting than standing around discussing whether something needs to be done.

That makes her an important companion for Lena.

But loyalty is easy when all it requires is standing beside someone in a fight.

It's considerably harder when helping someone you love means doing something painful.

Throughout The Orb and the Oracle, Thora's relationships with Lena, Tobi, and the rest of their found family place that loyalty under increasing pressure.

Some of her greatest challenges aren't about whether she's strong enough to fight.

They're about what she's willing to do for the people she loves.

Rork, Found Family, and Fantasy Party Dynamics

Not every member of the expanding group fits neatly into the original relationships established in The Lost Disciple.

Rork is one of them.

His place alongside Lena and Thora adds another perspective to a party already composed of characters from very different backgrounds, races, and histories.

That's increasingly important as the world around them becomes divided.

The larger conflict in Evania encourages people to decide who belongs on which side based on race, kingdom, history, or allegiance.

Faro's found family has never fit particularly neatly into those categories.

Rork doesn't either.

His developing relationships with Lena and Thora offer another reminder that the people standing beside you can become something far more important than whatever label the rest of the world has placed upon them.

Those relationships are part of what makes fantasy with party dynamics different from stories centered almost entirely on a single hero. A party isn't interesting simply because several characters travel together. It becomes interesting when every new member changes the relationships already surrounding them.

Faro's party includes different races, kingdoms, personalities, abilities, histories, and ideas about what should happen next. Friendship doesn't erase those differences. Neither does found family.

Instead, those differences determine who trusts whom, who argues, who takes charge, who provides support, and what happens when the person someone normally relies upon isn't there.

Rork's presence changes Lena and Thora's journey simply because he is Rork. Put him beside a different combination of characters, and the dynamic changes again.

Mathias and Veronica: A Battle Fought With Trust

Mathias and Veronica's journey is different from either of the others.

There are no simple lines between the battlefield and safety when the danger may already be standing beside you.

Their story places them inside a kingdom facing growing political tension while the larger threat to Evania continues building beyond its borders. Questions of loyalty, leadership, family, and trust become increasingly difficult to separate.

Someone may be telling the truth.

Someone may be lying.

Someone may not even understand the role they're playing.

For Mathias, that's a particularly difficult kind of problem.

He's a healer.

He's accustomed to finding what is broken and fixing it.

A wound makes sense.

A broken bone can be repaired.

Magic can mend damage that would otherwise kill someone.

But you can't cast a healing spell on distrust.

Don't Split the Party: Breaking a Party-Based Fantasy Apart

All of this brings us back to that old tabletop rule.

Don't split the party.

Beyond allowing The Orb and the Oracle to explore more of Evania, separating the characters removes the balance they had while traveling together.

Each smaller group remains capable.

None of them contains everything the party once had.

Faro and Tobi possess tremendous physical strength, but they've lost access to much of the magical knowledge, history, and healing ability represented elsewhere in the group.

Lena and Thora are both formidable, but their journey becomes deeply personal without the rest of their companions there to help shoulder the consequences.

Mathias and Veronica find themselves without much of the physical strength they might normally rely upon when a situation turns dangerous.

Everyone has lost something simply by being separated.

That's what makes splitting a fantasy party dangerous in the first place, especially in a party-based fantasy adventure where characters have learned to depend upon one another.

A good adventuring party isn't a collection of individually powerful people.

It's a collection of weaknesses being compensated for by someone else's strengths.

Break that structure apart, and those weaknesses become exposed.

For readers familiar with tabletop RPGs, the decision at the end of The Lost Disciple therefore carries an extra bit of dread.

The characters have their reasons.

The decision makes sense.

But somewhere, every experienced Dungeon Master is smiling.

Character-Driven Fantasy Across Three Different Stories

Splitting the party doesn't only change where the story takes place. It allows each storyline to develop a personality shaped by the characters experiencing it. That's an important part of the character-driven fantasy structure of The Orb and the Oracle: the personality, history, abilities, and relationships of each group help determine what kind of story their journey becomes.

Faro brings mythic adventure.

His missing past, growing importance, and encounters with Evania's forgotten history naturally pull his story toward ancient mysteries and discovery.

Lena brings emotional sacrifice and horror.

Her enormous history and relationship with magic make her journey intensely personal when the past begins intruding on the present.

Mathias brings conspiracy, survival, and politics.

His desire to understand and repair problems places him in a story where neither the damage nor the person responsible for it is immediately obvious, nor can it be healed with simple spells or herbs.

The other characters change those stories further.

Tobi grounds Faro.

Thora gives Lena someone whose loyalty can demand action when Lena cannot act alone.

Veronica introduces innocence and unpredictability into Mathias's increasingly complicated world.

The result isn't three unrelated stories happening inside the same book.

It's three different ways of experiencing the same deteriorating world.

Together, those different experiences turn the larger war into a character-driven epic fantasy told through people encountering the same crisis from radically different positions.

Multiple POV Fantasy Without Losing the Party

Multiple point-of-view fantasy allows the reader to possess something none of the characters have:

The larger picture.

Faro doesn't know what Lena is experiencing.

Lena doesn't know what's happening to Mathias.

Mathias doesn't know what Faro has discovered.

The reader moves between them.

That means information gathered in one storyline can change the way readers understand something happening elsewhere, even when the characters themselves haven't made that connection.

It also gives each member of the party room to exist outside Faro's shadow.

Faro may be the central protagonist of the Fate of Evania series, but Evania isn't populated by supporting characters waiting for him to enter the room.

Lena has thousands of years of history.

Tobi has a family.

Thora has loyalties independent of Faro.

Mathias has his own morality and responsibilities.

Veronica is discovering abilities and relationships she doesn't fully understand.

Rork has his own place in a conflict much larger than any individual character.

Separating them gives those identities room to breathe.

That's also what makes an ensemble-led fantasy work. Characters don't stop having lives, motivations, histories, or relationships simply because the central protagonist isn't standing beside them.

Eventually, the question becomes not simply what each character can accomplish alone, but what being apart teaches them about why they needed one another in the first place.

That multi POV fantasy structure means information gathered in one storyline can change the way readers understand something happening elsewhere, even when the characters themselves haven't made that connection.

Three Journeys, One War

On the surface, the three primary journeys of The Orb and the Oracle look remarkably different.

Faro and Tobi chase answers through dangerous adventures and ancient mysteries.

Lena and Thora confront history, magic, and increasingly terrible choices.

Mathias and Veronica navigate a kingdom where the greatest threat may not be the enemy everyone can see approaching.

But all three stories are pieces of the same conflict.

War doesn't only happen when two armies meet on a battlefield.

It happens in governments.

It happens inside families.

It changes friendships.

It exposes old wounds.

It forces people to choose between terrible options.

And sometimes it reaches people who thought they were nowhere near the fighting.

No single member of Faro's party could show every side of what's happening to Evania.

So they split up.

Maybe they shouldn't have.

Which Journey Would You Follow?

If you had to choose one path through The Orb and the Oracle, which would it be?

Ancient mysteries, dangerous dungeons, strange creatures, and the search for a forgotten past?

You'd probably follow Faro and Tobi.

Dark magic, buried history, survival, and choices carrying terrible consequences?

Follow Lena and Thora.

Political intrigue, conspiracy, and trying to determine who can still be trusted?

Mathias and Veronica might be waiting for you.

Fortunately, you don't have to choose.

The party may have split.

The reader gets to follow all three.

Continue the Journey in The Orb and the Oracle

Dungeon Lords: The Orb and the Oracle is Book 2 of the Fate of Evania epic fantasy series by J.B. Coleman. It's an ensemble epic fantasy told through multiple points of view, with a party-based fantasy structure inspired in part by the relationships, adventures, and terrible decisions that make tabletop RPG parties memorable.

Faro's party has separated in search of allies and answers while the struggle for Evania continues to grow. Across three journeys, they'll encounter ancient mysteries, political conspiracies, old enemies, dangerous magic, and consequences none of them could have anticipated when they decided to go their separate ways.

They split the party. Now they have to survive it.

Dungeon Lords: The Orb and the Oracle releases October 22, 2026.