Characters

the stranger

Known facts

woke-with-amnesiaCame to in a charred circle in a medieval English grain field, sweat-soaked and ready to fight, with no memory of his name or background beyond a vague dislike of swimming.STD:FWH:Ch 1
arrived-by-handbook-packageReconstructed from singed pages of his handbook that he had purchased a travel package whose arrival process can leave the mind muddied — and that he had, at some point and for some reason, chosen to be here.STD:FWH:Ch 1
has-medical-nanitesCarries an installed augment of medical nanites: enough to neutralize river-water bacteria on reflex and to have once put him back on his feet within an hour of being shot, at the cost of leaving the nanites themselves knocked out for two days afterward.STD:FWH:Ch 2
reaches-for-absent-sidearmRepeatedly drops his right hand toward a sidearm that is not on his hip, a reflex that worries him as much as the amnesia does — combined with practiced silent movement, it suggests a past life that was not that of a law-abiding citizen.STD:FWH:Ch 2
owns-this-dimensionPieces together from a recovered handbook page that he is a paying customer of a dimensional-travel package, and that the medieval-English world around him is the personal dimension he bought.STD:FWH:Ch 2
has-arm-and-leg-platingsHas armoured plating augments along his forearms — and, he begins to suspect, more of him — strong enough that a hard knife-blow to the forearm raises no nick on the skin, though the impact still registers.STD:FWH:Ch 3
buried-memory-of-fall-and-shameWhen his combat reflexes kick in for the first time, fragments surface of his pre-amnesia life — shouts, flashes of light, deep shame, a vine-tight pressure on his lungs — strong enough to choke off his fight response and leave him unable to block a second swing.STD:FWH:Ch 3
full-body-platings-but-head-and-chest-disabledAugment inventory comes up on a visual overlay he can call instinctively: platings cover the arms from fingertips to shoulders and across the back, and the legs from thigh to foot. Head and chest plating are listed as installed but nonfunctional — explaining why a plank to the face still concussed him.STD:FWH:Ch 4
augments-not-paid-for-out-of-pocketHas the impression that he worked for a living and could not have paid for augments of this calibre himself; someone else covered the bill and apparently stopped short of finishing the head and chest installations.STD:FWH:Ch 4
gut-rejects-the-grifter-identityFaced with Sefawynn's accusation that he is a thief and grifter, his stomach turns at the role even as he plays into it — a piece of him insists, against the available evidence, that whoever he was before, that was not him.STD:FWH:Ch 5
remembers-jen-is-deadRecovers, in two stages, the name Jen — first as a complaint about pocketless dresses, then as the cold fact that she is dead.STD:FWH:Ch 5
jen-was-the-dimensional-dreamerThe dimension he is standing in was Jen's dream — a future-affordable joint plan to walk through a working past — and grief for her now sits inside him as a raw, audible scream he can feel without being able to picture her face.STD:FWH:Ch 6
knows-cartel-inside-outRecognising Ulric forces him to admit how much he already knows about the Fabian Augments cartel's recruiting, debt-trap contracts, and enforcement playbook — knowledge specific enough that he reads it as proof he is at best a thief and probably a mobster, perhaps from a rival outfit.STD:FWH:Ch 7
medical-nanites-protect-hearingWhen Ulric's unsuppressed pistol goes off in the entryway, his medical nanites silently clamp down on his hearing to protect him from further damage — an automatic protection he registers as a faint rushing sound.STD:FWH:Ch 7
was-a-copOn a recovered handbook page in his own blue-ink handwriting, the answer to 'What was your profession before you became an Interdimensional Wizard™?' reads, half-burned, *Cop* — a specialist detective in the Seattle Police Department: Anti-Cartel and Illegal Augments Division.STD:FWH:Ch 8
nanite-control-blink-protocolReaches his augment menus by blinking three times to summon a nanite control protocol; the overlay tells him he has been awake forty-eight hours, that being knocked out does not count as sleep, and that he can safely push another twenty-four with an override available beyond that.STD:FWH:Ch 8
relief-at-being-a-copThe cop identity slots into everything that did not fit the grifter — the sneaking, the cartel knowledge, the augments through department channels, Ulric's grudge — and the relief he feels at not having been a criminal is itself, he decides, all the proof he needs that this is the right answer.STD:FWH:Ch 9
plan-shadow-ulric-for-a-way-homeResolves to follow Ulric quietly, gather intel, and find a route back to his own dimension so he can return with backup — partly because Ulric and his people surely know one, and partly because hiding in this hall while a hostage is dragged off is not what he can live with after this evening.STD:FWH:Ch 9
department-protocol-no-local-storageHe carries no on-body data because department protocol keeps everything remote — a habit that is sound security in Seattle and useless in a dimension with no wireless coverage; he has nothing locally stored, no offline databases.STD:FWH:Ch 9
grew-up-in-tacomaAs his memory continues to reassemble on the ride out of Stenford, John recovers childhood in Tacoma and a piece of his mid-twenties — enrolment at the police academy, relatively late — though the years between are still blank to him.STD:FWH:Ch 11
learned-of-jens-death-by-textJohn remembers that Jen died on a trip to Europe and that her family — who had never warmed to him — informed him by text. There was no funeral. He carries the grief partly into this dimension as a debt to her, a place she had wanted to see and never would.STD:FWH:Ch 11
can-draw-with-modern-techniqueDoodling in the margin of the handbook to pass the ride, John discovers his education has left him able to render a recognisable portrait with perspective, crosshatched shading, and an underlying sense of musculature — skills entirely unknown to his companions, and the first asset of his modern education to actually translate in this dimension.STD:FWH:Ch 11
art-school-washoutAs Ealstan watches him sketch, another piece of John's missing past falls into place — he spent his late teens and early twenties in art school, quit three years in convinced he would never match the other students, and has carried *imposter* as the verdict on that part of his life ever since. Some version of his art carried over into his work at the academy, though he can't yet remember how.STD:FWH:Ch 12
freezes-under-direct-violenceWhen the Hordaman captain finally swings an axe at his head, John's body does not parry — it cringes. Shame floods him; he hears shouted voices and the snap of distant explosions in his memory, and he raises his hands not as a warrior but as a frightened art student. Whatever his combat training was, his body remembers retreat first.STD:FWH:Ch 14
cornered-paints-a-rune-and-thunder-answersCornered on the longship, John smears one of the Stenford runes — the F-shape — onto the deck in red ink as a last bluff. The Hordamen recoil as if from a real threat. When he commands them off the land, thunder cracks from a clear sky and the ink ignites where he drew the rune. He is left staring at a flame that should not be a flame, with his ability to disbelieve in this dimension crumbling under his feet.STD:FWH:Ch 14
receives-a-burning-message-in-englishAs the party readies to leave the fire and ride for the Preserve, letters appear scorched into the ground in front of John — in English, his language. *Nice work. You might be worth the trouble.* Ealstan calls it Logna's Fire. Sefawynn hisses at John to scuff it out, and he does — but the line that something in this dimension is watching him, intervening, and writing to him in his own tongue is now drawn.STD:FWH:Ch 15
dropped-out-of-art-schoolReturning details from his past: John dropped out of art school before the academy — a long, exhausting attempt to chase a passion he didn't actually have, given up in favour of something his parents would call useful.STD:FWH:Ch 16
trained-as-forensic-artist-in-academyAfter dropping out of art school, John joined the police academy at the urging of a friend; his art background fed into training as a forensic sketch artist. He recovers the skill on the spot when Thokk feeds him details of the stranger she saw on the road.STD:FWH:Ch 17
never-finished-the-police-academyConfronted by Quinn in Wealdsig's hall, John remembers the truth he had been editing out: he was never a cop. He washed out of the academy six months in, disgraced, the same pattern as his art-school washout — and the cop identity he had assembled from fragments of memory had been a comforting story laid over a much shabbier life.STD:FWH:Ch 21
joined-ulrics-cartel-ten-years-agoTen years before the events of this book, after stretches of petty theft and grifting that ended with him sleeping in a literal gutter, John was recruited into Ulric's organisation. The years since had run through the Enhanced Fighting League and into a humiliating second life as Ulric's door guard.STD:FWH:Ch 21
stole-a-dimension-code-from-ulricAfter Jen's death, John ran — and stole one of Ulric's hoard of stashed dimension codes on the way out, hoping to slip into a hideaway pocket of the multiverse the boss would never miss. The dimension he picked was the medieval-England one his old crew had set up as a trap for Ryan.STD:FWH:Ch 21
was-ulrics-door-guardAfter his fall from the Enhanced Fighting League, John was put on the door at one of Ulric's establishments as a glorified bouncer — a running joke in the organisation, where any underling who needed cheering up could go poke Johnny for a laugh.STD:FWH:Ch 21
thrown-fight-platings-sabotageStanding over a downed soldier in Wealdsig's courtyard, John remembers the last missing chunk of his life: the title bout against Quinn was a dive — and Ulric had quietly ordered his chest and skull platings compromised first, so the cameras would see a real beating. He has spent the years since trying to bring those platings back online behind a password Ulric set and laughs at him about.STD:FWH:Ch 22
six-years-in-the-enhanced-fighting-leagueThe training that takes over once John stops freezing comes from six years in the EFL — the bladed-weapons variant — and it is enough on its own, even without the platings he can't unlock, to put three Weswaran soldiers on the ground with broken bones and clear the rest of the courtyard.STD:FWH:Ch 22
the-voice-prods-him-during-the-fightSlumped on the dirt and ready to surrender, John hears the same voice he heard burning across the Hordaman sail — "is this the best you can do? I thought you were worth the trouble" — and the prod is what pushes him to look at Ealstan's wounds and decide that while he himself may be useless, his medical nanites are not.STD:FWH:Ch 22
resolves-to-stop-ulricAt Yazad's preserve, with his memory whole and the option of running for the continent in his pocket, John talks himself out of running. Smart men do not bet against Ulric; he would never rest as a king-in-hiding in Ulric's dimension; and a life he can do better than the one he had outside this place. He commits aloud to riding for Maelport to stop the boss — the first thing he has chosen to do for non-cowardly reasons in years.STD:FWH:Ch 23
never-took-stabilizer-pillJohn never knew about the dimensional stabilizer pill travellers are meant to take before a jump; without it, he arrived in this world stripped of his identity and rebuilt himself out of fragments over his first days.STD:FWH:Ch 27
kicked-out-of-academyJohn did not quit the police academy — he was washed out for *attitude*, told he had a failing mindset, after trying to follow Ryan's path through it. Signing on with Ulric's crew came after, out of desperation, not before by choice.STD:FWH:Ch 29
rating-things-is-who-he-isJohn's habit of rating everything he encounters out of five stars began as a desperate inventory during his academy slide — a list of likes and dislikes built to back-derive an identity. The notebook didn't lead him to who he was; the *doing* of it did. He keeps it because it is genuinely his.STD:FWH:Ch 29
prefers-john-not-johnnyJohn has always introduced himself as *John*, never *Johnny*. Ryan never noticed in their entire shared childhood; Sefawynn and Ealstan — using his chosen *Runian* without fuss — are the first people in his life to call him what he asked for.STD:FWH:Ch 30
thrown-only-one-fightAcross his career in the fighting league, John threw only a single match — the last one, on Ulric's direct order, after Ulric had stripped many of his augments to make the loss look brutal and inevitable. The face-augments were among those removed; it is why his arms can shed an axe but a good blow to the head can still drop him.STD:FWH:Ch 30
first-kill-of-someone-he-knewJohn has been in firefights before, but Janice Vault in the Maelport courtyard is the first person he has killed that he knew personally. He does not feel specifically bad about it — he knows enough of what she had done for Ulric — but the speed of it unnerves him.STD:FWH:Ch 32
spared-quinn-at-maelportStanding over Quinn in a Maelport alley with the P-330 on him and the man who broke his ribs at the EFL title fight at his mercy, John chose not to shoot him — partly because Quinn had let him go once before, partly out of professional kinship between boxers, partly because of Tacy and the kids.STD:FWH:Ch 32
promised-logna-to-stop-ulricIn the Maelport square, with Logna explaining she could not get near Ulric without falling apart, John promised her he would do it himself.STD:FWH:Ch 35
defeated-quinn-in-rematchJohn beats Quinn in their long-awaited rematch in the saferoom, fighting with broken ribs and no chest plating against a fully augmented opponent. He wins by faking a successful platings unlock at the password screen — counting on Quinn to believe it — then throwing him through the portal toward the Seattle PD station.STD:FWH:Ch 36
chose-to-stay-in-weswara-with-sefawynnFaced with the choice of trying to wreck the portal and the beacon beyond his ability to fix them, John elected to stay in Weswara with Sefawynn rather than try to return home — once Logna convinced him that his presence would not poison the land if he kept moving from town to town, and would in fact protect Sefawynn from Woden's retaliation. His first attempt at a noble drowning ended in knee-deep water off the Maelport pier.STD:FWH:Ch 37
together-with-sefawynn-after-maelportBy the end of the Maelport crisis, John and Sefawynn are openly together — sitting against each other on the docks, exchanging unselfconscious kisses in front of Logna, and accepted as a couple by the people around them. She asks him to teach her every kind of writing he knows.STD:FWH:Ch 37

Events

STD:FWH:Ch 9 Settles into the cop identity in Ealstan's larder, resolves to follow Ulric for a way home, and unlocks the hidden stealth-augments suite at the founder's wēoh.
STD:FWH:Ch 10 Talks his way onto Sefawynn's rescue ride with a stealth-augment skin-colour trick, adopts the travel-name Runian, performs an aelv farewell for Ealstan, and learns the basics of staying on a horse.
STD:FWH:Ch 11 Riding for Wellbury, John reads stretches of the handbook to triangulate what era he is actually in, fishes for any modern knowledge he can show off, and discovers that he can still draw.
STD:FWH:Ch 12 Sketches Sefawynn and Ealstan in the roadside hollow, recovers his own art-school past, fields Ealstan's questions about the limits of cartel weapons, and is the first to hear distant Hordamen horns on the coast.
STD:FWH:Ch 13 Spots the Hordamen, listens to Sefawynn's tale of Friag and Fenris, and decides — against his own steady terror — to draw the three Viking captains in madder-root ink for a bluff he is making up on the spot.
STD:FWH:Ch 14 Marches up the beach to bluff the Hordamen with drawings as "captured souls", climbs a longship he should hate to set foot on, fails to fight back when the captain swings, and ends the scene having scrawled a glowing rune onto the deck of a Viking ship and run for the water.
STD:FWH:Ch 15 Sputters back to shore with the rescued Yazad in tow, watches the abandoned longship still burning on the water, fields a Zoroastrian sales pitch, and gets a message in English burned into the grass at his feet.
STD:FWH:Ch 16 Spends a sleepless night by the firepit at the Preserve, gnaws charcoal to top up his nanites, watches the wight stack rocks beside him, and finally tells the nanites to put him to sleep.
STD:FWH:Ch 17 Wakes at seven on the dot to a HUD congratulation, picks hay out of his clothes, and sketches a stranger's face from Thokk's description — only to realise mid-drawing that it is his old partner Ryan.
STD:FWH:Ch 18 Plans the Wellbury approach with Ealstan and Sefawynn, hits another locked door on his platings with a system message that calls him Johnny by name, and finds Sefawynn on a stump by the dark forest to hear her confession that the skops' boasts have stopped working.
STD:FWH:Ch 19 Walks into Wellbury at dusk with a basket of apples on his back, dressed in a borrowed Preserve robe, and accepts an apple-wood staff from Yazad as he prepares to play wizard for the reeve.
STD:FWH:Ch 20 Sneaks to the manor's back door, asks his wight to open the lock with a berry on a white cloth, and bursts in to play wizard for Wealdsig with thunder, mind-reading via amped hearing, and flame on the skin — until Quinn walks in behind him and calls him Johnny.
STD:FWH:Ch 21 Stalls Quinn in Wealdsig's hall while his memory clicks back into place — washed-out academy dropout, ten-year cartel underling, door guard, thrown-fight punchline — palms a berry next to Quinn's phone and asks his wight politely until the phone falls apart in Quinn's hand, then watches Quinn ride off for Maelport and turns to lie to Wealdsig about freeing the changeling prisoner.
STD:FWH:Ch 22 Watches Ealstan take three arrows in the courtyard, tackles a soldier, hesitates — remembers the dive — and gets up swinging with full augments; clears the immediate threat, heals Ealstan with an emergency person-to-person nanite transfer, heals Wealdsig's hand as a demonstration of the one power Weswarans actually want, and walks out under Wealdsig's blessing with a punch to the reeve's face as cover.
STD:FWH:Ch 23 Hangs back from Ealstan's miraculous-survival story by the fire, picks at a bowl of stewed apples, takes Yazad's "you're from the future" speech without correcting him, exchanges words with the voice that knows his name, and commits — out loud, in front of Sefawynn and Ealstan — to riding for Maelport to stop Ulric.
STD:FWH:Ch 24 Bathes in a cold river, mounts up, and rides toward Maelport — failing to coax Sefawynn out of formal address, learning about her Night Marks, prodding Ealstan on the genealogy of Weswaran gods, and spotting Thokk lurking behind a rock to make her grand re-entry before the next set of bandits closes in.
STD:FWH:Ch 25 Climbs off his locked-up horse staff in hand, lets Thokk talk him into shutting up while the lord-bandit collects his toll, makes one futile attempt to guess his platings password again, recognises the shakedown as the same model he used to work for, and then takes something hard to the back of the head and blacks out.

Previously known as: the-stranger

Backreferences

summarySTD:FWH:Ch 1
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 2
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 3
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 4
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 5
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 8
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 9
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summarySTD:FWH:Ch 21
factQuinn Jericho · broke-john-in-a-thrown-title-bout
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 22
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 23
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 24
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 25
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 26
factBlackout Grenade · description
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 27
factJohn West · never-took-stabilizer-pill
factRyan Chu · sabotaged-ulrics-beacon
factRyan Chu · longtime-friend-and-rival
factRyan Chu · description
factDimensional Stabilizer · description
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 28
factlandswights · earth-presence-is-poison
factRyan Chu · wights-avoid-him
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 29
factJohn West · kicked-out-of-academy
factJohn West · rating-things-is-who-he-is
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 30
factJohn West · prefers-john-not-johnny
factJohn West · thrown-only-one-fight
factRyan Chu · signature-locked-weapons
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 31
factP-330 · description
factantiplating rounds · description
factJanice Vault · description
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 32
factJohn West · first-kill-of-someone-he-knew
factJohn West · spared-quinn-at-maelport
factdisintegration flare · description
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 33
factEalstan · offered-himself-as-blood-sacrifice-to-woden
factJen · description
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 34
factJen · cheated-on-john-with-ryan-from-second-week
factJen · faked-her-death-for-deep-cover
factRyan Chu · recruited-jen-for-deep-cover
factRyan Chu · abandoned-john-after-extraction
factRembrandt · on-ulrics-payroll-for-years
factRembrandt · description
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 35
factLogna · thins-near-outsider-tech
factLogna · description
factWoden · motivated-by-fear-of-outsiders
factlandswights · unmade-hordamen-arms-at-maelport
factJohn West · promised-logna-to-stop-ulric
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 36
factUlric Stromfin · never-saved-platings-password
factUlric Stromfin · broke-john-as-power-display
factUlric Stromfin · killed-by-ealstan-in-maelport
factUlric Stromfin · description
factQuinn Jericho · feared-losing-the-fixed-bout
factJohn West · defeated-quinn-in-rematch
summarySTD:FWH:Ch 37
factEalstan · candidate-for-earl-after-godric
factLogna · description
factWoden · pained-and-driven-off-by-outsiders
factWeswara · outsider-poison-takes-a-month-to-take-hold
factJohn West · chose-to-stay-in-weswara-with-sefawynn
factJohn West · together-with-sefawynn-after-maelport
summarySTD:FWH:Epilogue
factCecil G. Bagsworth III · description
factFrugal Wizard Press · description