Dark Age by Pierce Brown: Darrow & Lysander’s Summary

Sagas & Sass began covering the Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown in September 2022; this is our summary of Darrow and Lysander’s chapters in book 5 – Dark Age – as they were written to introduce the Sagas & Sass episodes 66, 67, 70, 71, and 75 .

AHOY! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Remember how in Iron Gold, Darrow wasted all of that time chasing down and killing the Ash Lord while Atalantia made her own moves? Welp, the Republic ships that once surrounded Mercury are in pieces –  a graveyard in space above that planet – and to top it all off, Orion – fleet commander and one of Darrow’s closest friends – has been captured. Thankfully as Dark Age opens, we learn that Darrow and co. received intel on when she was being moved from Tyche to the Gold fleet, and apparently the ship graveyard is good for something – hiding him and the Howlers as they attempt a rescue!

They’re able to blast their way into the shuttle carrying Orion, but while Darrow takes down the Death Knight, unfortunately the Storm Knight (Ajax, who is, by the way, Aja’s son) is nowhere to be seen at first…and when he does appear, his first act is to cut Tongueless into four pieces.

And thus, with flick of a wrist, all of those fan theories about Tongueless die.

Aaaanyway. While they lose Tongueless, they gain Orion back…sans fingers and with a good portion of her face looking like it has been, err, eaten off. OOF.

Darrow arrives on Mercury and pays a visit to his remaining legionnaires, even running into an old acquaintance – Dago, the Gamma HellDiver from Lykos who was so rude to him what seems like eons ago. He’s gravely injured, but still able to tease Darrow a bit… *but* he also gives Darrow some of his Martian soil, a nice gesture that unfortunately leaves Darrow spoiling for a fight.

He does have a new plan, of course, and he wants Orion to help him put it into action. Problem is…her time being tortured by the Fear Knight has changed her, made her harder even than she was before, to the point where she now believes that all the people they freed are like the rats that the Fear Knight, Atlas au Raa, used to torture her.

Still, Darrow believes Orion when she tells him that she can be ready to do what he needs her to do…which, by the way, is to run the Storm Gods that they’re going to use to create, shall we say, reaaalllyyy crazy weather patterns that will hopefully take out some of Atalantia’s legions.

(Because oh yeah, of COURSE the Lunes left the machines that were used to terraform Mercury buried under its surface as an insurance policy.)

This plan also involves Darrow having to place at least some trust in Master Maker Glirastes, who many of the people in Darrow’s army feel is a “Gold pet” – ArchImperator Harnassus included. Granted, Darrow has his own beef with Harnassus, because that’s who sent the bulk of the fleet back to Luna and left Mercury vulnerable in the first place.

Buuuut Darrow and Harnassus’s beef has to be set aside for a bit, because Alexandar calls in to let them know that Atlas didn’t go along with their first mini plot inside their plan. Darrow heads out to the desert, where he meets with an Alexandar who has clearly been altered by what he’s seen while chasing down the Fear Knight…and wherever Atlas is heading, it can’t be good.

Apparently that means it’s time to boot up the Storm Gods and let ‘em rip! Sadly, this can’t be done in time to stop Atlas and/or Atalantia entirely…or really much at all, it seems. After ignoring Darrow’s probably-way-too-obvious bait, Atlas headed to Angelia, where he impaled a whole buttload of people.

(Har. Har. Har? Yeah, yeah, terrible joke.)

Oh, and in addition to ::gestures:: allllll of that, Darrow and co. also find a group of collaborator civilians who were supposed to be ‘out of harm’s way’, but have instead been murdered by some sort of pathogen that turned the people into pseudo-zombies. COOL cool cool cool cool cool cool.

Basically, it turns out that the Society Golds have drawn Darrow’s forces into one hell of a trap, made worse by the fact that Darrow’s people missed some old hardlines, allowing their enemies to send signals to old mine reactors…whiiiich are now about to go thermal! Fun times, y’all!

Okay seriously though, not so much. Darrow decides that retreat isn’t an option, meaning they have to ‘take the punch” – and so sends Thraxa and five of her Golds one way while he orders Colloway to get him to his army. But hey, after announcing that the main part of his plan for the Storm Gods is live, he has time to give a [mini] Big Darrow Speech just before the nuclear blasts start going off…

And then it’s a race to their destination, dubbed “Red Reach”, where the Second Army waits for them. They outrun RipWings and missiles – though just barely – and Darrow, his remaining Howlers, and the Fifteenth Legion Helldivers are still in the midst of being loaded into starShells and Drachenjägers when the enemy – and their nukes – arrive, and in one fell swoop turn a million men, tanks, and arms to ash.

There’s no choice now but for Darrow to make his way to Tyche, and now that there’s no more Second Army for backup, he has to send Colloway out to collect Thraxa and bring her there as well. As they rush toward their next meeting place – a trip which, by the way, involves Darrow literally riding along on the shoulders of his niece Rhonna’s mech – they take out enemy infantry transports and the patriarch of the Mercurian House Votum.

But sadly, this isn’t an all’s-well-that-ends-well situation. While the hypercane caused by the Storm Gods helped them, it’s clear that things have gotten out of hand, and Darrow finally realizes that Orion never had any intention of stopping. He reminds her that she wasn’t supposed to pass primary, but her response is to tell him that reaching fourth horizon – a.k.a. terraforming level – will teach the ‘rats’ the lesson she believes they deserve. Ummm…eep?

At this point Darrow has no choice but to enact his insurance plan – a killswitch that, yes, cuts off the machines, but also ends Orion’s life, as she was still synced with them. Oh, and it’s not as if the storms are just going to stop immediately, either – so basically Darrow has caused yet another big dang mess.

The only bright spot in all this is that Darrow does regain an old friend – Screwface, one of the original Institute Howlers, who was carved to look like one of Octavia’s own and has been spying for the Republic. Problem is, he brings more bad news, because Heliopolis is also under attack. This means that Darrow has to once again change Thraxa’s destination, and he announces that he will meet her in Heliopolis.

But one Howler who won’t be going with them is Alexandar. He had requested to take some of his Arcosian knights to save the people of Tyche from the storm – or to at least save as many of them as he can – and while Darrow originally denied this request, now he agrees to it, bestowing his own wolf cloak on Alexandar and forbidding him to die even as he and his kin depart, two hundred and three of them against an army and a sea, looking like “the last lords and ladies of a doomed age”. (Obviously this is going to all work out for Alexandar, right? RIGHT?!)

Darrow loses a third of his people to sandstorms and skirmishes as they cross the desert, and just as he begins to feel relief over them actually reaching the city, the Fear Knight and his Gorgons appear and cut down Darrow’s decimated forces. But as the baddies waste time making some pretty disgusting threats regarding what they’re going to do to Darrow, it’s Colloway xe Char and the Morning Star to the rescue! The Fear Knight makes an immediate exit, and when Ajax – who had previously refused to yield – sees that Darrow has arrived, he flees as well. Byyyeeeee bitch!

Granted, Darrow is just about done himself, considering he seems to be having a heart attack and needs to be escorted to somewhere private where he can be treated before he, ya know, dies…but thankfully he’s not one man standing alone, and some time later Harnassus, Colloway, and Thraxa pay him a visit and announce that they’ve won the battle.

But…at what cost, hmm? 

Anyway, while Darrow has been fighting for his life (and the lives of his legions AND the Mercurian civilians), Lysander has been making his own moves! We might have left him in the Rim, but no worries! He’s already made his way to Mercury with Rim Ambassador Diomedes – and, for some reason, Seraphina – by his side! Because even though it SHOULD have taken them three months to make the trip, it, umm, didn’t…not that Diomedes wants Atalantia to know that.

In fact, it seems the only reason that Diomedes and Seraphina tagged along at all is because they believe – or at least WANT to believe – that Lysander truly does want to “make Gold whole”…and that he DOESN’T want to seize the throne.

Now Lysander just has to hope that Atalantia believes that, too…especially considering he is the legal heir of House Lune, meaning that much of what she now owns is, well, technically his.

Upon boarding Atalantia’s ship the Annihilo, Lysander and the Raas are greeted by Ash Guard decked out in field armor, rather than the ceremonial armor that they should be wearing to receive dignitaries.

Oh, and the Core Golds totally don’t believe that Lysander is who he says he is – but when the DNA test comes back showing he is 100% that bitch – oh, sorry, 100% Lysander au Lune – the Love Knight, Kalindora, softens to him, and Ajax even embraces him and calls him brother.

Buuuuut the mood quickly sours when the Core Golds mock Cassius, his death, and even Diomedes as he stands right in front of them. To make matters worse, Ajax gets all whiney about how HE is the Storm Knight and demands that Diomedes remove his cloak…which Diomedes does, only to have Ajax rip it from his hands and pee on it.

Bruh, you made one person look bad there, and it…wasn’t Diomedes. Oof.

(Listen, if we REALLY wanted to get into it, we could talk about how Ajax then mocked how Lilath et al. stomped in Diomedes’ and Seraphina’s older sister’s head at Darrow’s Triumph in Golden Son, but let’s just say we probably don’t need to try very hard to make Ajax look any worse…)

Now, Ajax is one thing, but Atalantia is, well…something ELSE. Bitch goes around wearing a super poisonous snake as jewelry and paints out the faces of her dead family members in their family mural. She also kinda drags Lysander right into a meeting with her so-called allies, who immediately start questioning whether he is an agent for the Rising, and don’t seem too happy that he was Cassius’s ward of all things.

To shake shit up a bit more, the Raas get dragged into the meeting as well, and for good measure they get mocked some more! Seriously, it reeaaallyyy doesn’t seem like a good idea for these Core Golds to be treating Diomedes (especially!) like this…but at this point Lysander kind of finally sticks up for his Moonie friends by taking the Core Golds down a peg, because there’s clearly some nonsense going on that they don’t want to own up to.

Finally they agree to a sort of tentative temporary alliance that involves Seraphina agreeing to fall in their Iron Rain, but the moment the Raas are ushered from the room Ajax rounds on Lysander and cracks him right across the jaw over the whole being-Cassius’s-ward thing.

This. Guy. Y’all.

But between Ajax and Atalantia, Lysander allows himself to be goaded into offering himself up to fall in the Rain as well. I mean, he’s gotta earn that Peerless scar, right? ::insert eyeroll here::

So Lysander joins the ranks, hears the benedictions, and then finds out that Atalantia is sending Ajax to take Heliopolis…and apparently plans to keep it, despite her promises to her Votum allies. Between this and Lysander’s disgust for Seraphina’s hunger for war, he goes to his starShell feeling, well, not so great about things.

Ohhhh and it only gets worse for him! The sims he trained in didn’t quite train him for how touchy the actual machinery is…not to mention, ya know, the whole messiness of an actual battle. While he lands on Mercury unscathed, when his targeting data picks up a pocket of civilians in a nearby basement an orbital strike is used to take them out…and sympathizers or not, there were quite a few children among them, so he is NOT happy with this end result.

I mean really, Lysander, what did you THINK would happen?

Then, when nearly a thousand Praetorians arrive to help, they kneel for Lysander…which is no thanks to Kalindora, who told them who he was. And we say ‘no thanks to’ because this whole situation is NOT gonna help Lysander prove his loyalty to Atalantia. Oopsies!

But their little reunion – as well as Ajax’s plans for Heliopolis – are interrupted by the arrival of Darrow’s hypercane, and Lysander’s intel on the Storm Gods doesn’t do him any favors, either (I mean, his grammy did hide these weapons of mass destruction, after all).

Seriously, these Golds, man…

However, Lysander does think this might give him another chance to prove himself to Ajax and Atalantia. So with Kalindora, Seraphina, and his Praetorians in tow, he’s off to see a Storm God!

They slowly but surely push through the storm and are eventually joined by Cicero (the heir of House Votum) and some of his troops. By the time they reach the machine they mean to destroy, their energy cores are nearly depleted, and before they can even begin their assault, a rail gun flashes from the Storm God and OPE! Seraphina is torn in half. Too bad, not sad.

Really though, no time to mourn even IF we wanted to. While the battle isn’t quite fought on page, it’s hard-won, with Lysander having apparently forging ahead alone to shoot his final missile into the Storm God’s gravity engines. Except now the time for Ajax to pick them up has come and gone, and just as Lysander is facing the fact that they’ve probably been abandoned thanks to Ajax being, well, a HUGE DICK, they hear Drachenjägers approaching…

And it’s not just Drachenjägers they hear…because THESE particular mechs come with their own theme song!

Or maybe, rather, theme HOWL.

Needless to say, it’s a slaughter, at the center of which swirls a god of death – Darrow himself, of course! Lysander plunges forward shouting “Kill the Reaper!”, but it’s he who is cut down and then pinned beneath a starShell as another downed shell near him catches fire. And as the wolf howls fade into the distance, Lysander begins to burn…

Speaking of Darrow, though, in the wake of Orion’s storms, he hosts a mass funeral for the 100,000 bodies that remain…of the FOUR FREAKIN’ MILLION WHO DIED.

I mean hey, at least he admits that the Battle of Ladon wasn’t actually a victory for the Republic?

Meanwhile, it sounds like Atalantia lost twice as many people as the Republic did, but she also has the ability to pull raw recruits from elsewhere, soooo it seems like despite this supposed “victory”, they’re kinda…ya know…fucked?

Oh, and Colloway has been away trying to find Orion’s body, which he does, but when he returns he’s obviously a total mess…and it’s then that Darrow realizes that when Colloway counts his kills, he’s not counting up, but down – as in, how many can he kill before he goes?

So listen, it’s not good. None of this is good. Especially when they have to collapse the tunnels that Alexandar would have used to return to them. He might have saved over 80,000 people, but his friends have to relegate themselves to the fact that he’s most likely dead.

Bad. Shit. All. Around.

Seriously – things are fucked, and there’s no way around it. Darrow and his forces don’t have the ships they need to escape, and a good portion of the local populace is against them. Sure, as far as they know Mustang is still fighting to send them reinforcements – but then Darrow gets a call from Atalantia herself that sadly disabuses them of this notion…

Okay admittedly, it doesn’t start off all that bad, because she hilariously tries to school him about the story of Pyrrhus, which Darrow already knows because hey, he didn’t waste their tax dollars on a bad education! He even gets in some digs about how the Ash Lord – aka Atalantia’s father – didn’t really like her…before she claps her hands and plays a recording of the Day of the Red Doves (don’t worry, we’ll detail THAT absolute wreck of a situation in our Virginia summary).

“Virginia is not coming,” she tells him. “Sevro is not coming. No one is coming.” And yet even as Darrow considers mourning for his wife, it seems he doesn’t really believe she’s dead. And he also knows that if he doesn’t leave Heliopolis, and Atalantia tries to nuke it, she will be deposed.

She needs him to surrender. But…lol this is Darrow. Bad bet, Atalantia. Granted, he does take her 24-hour offer to his officers, but before they can answer, Screwface wakes him at the break of dawn to “show him something” – which turns out to be his remaining Martians, sick with radiation, getting baptized in the ocean.

Listen. Darrow. Does. Not. Like. And he kinda goes off on Screwface about it – which, rude! Dude was just trying to help! But hey! In the midst of this, something like three dozen obelisks bust through the shields and land in the ocean! Darrow and Screw race out to open one, having some fun in the process (which let’s be honest, good for them!) and it turns out that the obelisks are filled with supplies – food, anti-radiation meds, and above all, a message of hope from Mustang.

Atalantia attempts to retaliate, but the shields are back up before she can, and by the time Darrow returns to home base, Harnassus and the others have decided that they trust Darrow to deliver them from Mercury.

So at this point Darrow summons Glirastes…to…apparently make a giant EMP? Because LOL. OF. COURSE. IT’S. ALWAYS. AN. EMP. Y’ALL. 

Problem is, Glirastes won’t finish his work without sardines, because he requires sardines for breakfast every Tuesday, and he’s fresh out! I mean first of all, gross. Second of all…at this point the only place they can possibly get sardines is from Sevro’s quarters, which are booby-trapped to the extreme.

Seriously, NO ONE wants to try to enter Sevro’s quarters, so it’s Darrow who has to take the hit. And it’s a literal hit, at least until Sevro’s booby traps determine that it’s Darrow who’s trying to enter…at which point he presumably gets enough clearance to fetch the sardines, considering Glirastes does in fact continue working.

Oh, and while all of THAT is going on, it turns out that Lysander is still alive! Granted, he’s badly injured and trudging through the desert…and for some reason reminiscing about Octavia abusing him as a child in her attempts to teach him the Mind’s Eye. But hey! Maybe thinking about that IS better than thinking about how Rhone and the Praetorians were captured by the Rising soldiers, how Ajax lost at Heliopolis, about his oozing burn wound or Kalindora’s cauterized but rancid arm stump, or about how they’re DEFINITELY gonna run out of water long before they can escape the desert.

In fact, Cicero goes so far as to suggest that they dump the Grays who are with them to give themselves a better chance at survival. Of course Lysander refuses to go along with this, and so they keep trudging on…at least until a sandstorm blows in.

There’s a crashed bomber nearby, and they run for it, but Lysander is dragging them down and knows Kalindora won’t make it as long as she’s helping him. He urges her to go on without him and then dives into a nearby hydra burrow – a gamble that pays off in the end, because not only does he survive the storm, he ALSO doesn’t get eaten by the hydra whose burrow he’s sharing, AND when the storm blows over and Kalindora and the others are picked up by Rising soldiers who are passing by, he doesn’t share their fate.

Really, everything’s coming up Lysander!

Okay well maybe not QUITE everything. He’d been thinking for a while that it felt like they were being followed, and guess what? He was right! And WHO has been following them? Why, it’s Apollonius au Valli-Rath, aka Apple, hiding under a Ghost Cloak! Oh, and he reveals himself – vocally, anyway – just in time to warn Lysander that there are some men on their way to kill him.

Not more Rising soldiers – oh no, no, no. It’s Seneca, Ajax’s Dux – aka his right hand man – along with seven peerless scarred Golds. Eight to one, but Lysander uses a weapon from the downed bomber to blind his opponents – well, and to blind himself as well, but it’s all good y’all, because he has the MIND’S EYE, remember?

Needless to say, Lysander wins that fight and survives another day, though Apple isn’t too happy with him for refusing to trade knowledge of the Mind’s Eye for his help in getting out of the desert….whiiich means that he leaves Lysander behind, and even takes Seneca’s gravBoots – but hey, lots of people have tried to kill Lysander and yet here he [still, unfortunately] is, so this is just one more thing for him to survive!

And survive he does, though when he reaches his destination – the city of Erebos – he finds it drowned, its dam having failed because of the storm. And as if that’s not enough, the road into the city is lined with impaled Martians – the Fear Knight’s work, of course. Lysander approaches one of the soldiers, planning to grant the man’s death request, but ha! Silly Lysander! Helping others is for Pixies!

Meaning, obviously the area is mined – though with traps instead of bombs – so he ends up wrapped in a tacNet, gathered up by Atlas’s Gorgons, and deposited in their nearby villain lair…where he immediately meets Alexandar and his Knights of Elysium! Or…is it Arcosian Knights?

Either way, Lysander tells them he’s a Mercurian named Cato, reveals that Darrow did in fact win at Heliopolis, and therefore earns their trust – or at least Alexandar’s trust. Oh, and for a hot minute he is tortured like the rest of them have been, which does help his whole bullshit story.

Eventually, though, Atlas returns. Lysander is brought to meet with him and first things first tries to use the Mind’s Eye…whiiich Atlas immediately puts the kibosh on, because ummm apparently he could do it back?!

Okay okay okay, let’s set that aside for a moment, because the conversation between Lysander and the Fear Knight is elucidating to say the LEAST. Atlas reveals that Ajax has been Atalantia’s sex toy for longer than he should have been, age-wise, and oh! Also that Atalantia is planning on releasing some crazy bioweapon to kill whoever she needs to in order to take back Mercury. For herself, of course, because hey, fuck the Votums and whoever else she promised to help, right?

To his credit (much as we hate to give him any) Lysander is against the latter, and offers a DIFFERENT option: that being to continue using his secret identity as Cato and to QUOTE take Atlas captive UNQUOTE and lead the Howlers who are imprisoned in an escape with Atlas as their QUOTE captive UNQUOTE…

And holy shit y’all! This! Plan! Actually! Works! Granted, the Knights of Elysium or Arcosian Knights or whatever they want to call themselves keep dying throughout this escape attempt, but they’re able to make their way through the cave system, even braving a cavern of milkbats (extremely awful carved carnivorous bats) on their way to a garage that conveniently houses the gravBikes that they need to flee in the direction of Rising HQ.

In the end, only Alexander, Cato-we-mean-Lysander, and Atlas survive their journey, and of course Cato-we-mean-Lysander comes under extreme scrutiny because how could his Pixie-ass self survive that situation when the Knights of Elysium-we-mean-Arcosian Knights didn’t?

So hey! Alexandar is back with Darrow, along with this supposed Pixie named Cato aaaaand Atlas au Raa as prisoner! Which all seems a bit odd to Darrow and co., but hey, this rando Cato passes all of their tests so clearly there’s nothing to see here and everything is totally fine, right? RIGHT?!

(The Real Truth is, that good ol’ plot convenience Mind’s Eye came to Lysander’s rescue again, because it’s what allowed him to pass all of their tests, even as he was half shitting himself every time he had to come face-to-face with Darrow. Heh.)

Really the most important thing is that despite the condition Alexandar arrives in, the medics are able to fix him up, and despite everything that he went through, he remains the perfect cinnamon roll he always was. SNAPS FOR ALEXANDAR!

But then a new problem arises – Cato’s arrival throws a new wrench in the whole Glirastes situation, because apparently the two of them go way back and the Master Maker is not happy that Darrow is keeping his old friend locked up. So this time he demands that Cato be sent to his home, or – you guessed it! – he’ll stop working for Darrow.

Good for Lysander for having frieeeendsss in HIGH places (sing it, we know you want to), we guess? He’s transported to Glirastes’s home, and even though he knows he’s under surveillance, Lysander feels like he finally has a chance to put an end to Atalantia’s devious bioweapon plan…

That said, Darrow might have given in to letting Cato-we-mean-Lysander go with Glirastes, but Screwface DID put a monitor spike in the kid before sending him off, so they assume they’ll at least be able to find out if the Master Maker is their Master Maker…and uhhh considering whatever he’s doing for them is probably the key to them getting out from under Atalantia’s thumb, let’s just say we’re allll hoping Glirastes is in fact still on their side…

Now, that whole surveillance thing is actually a problem for Lysander and Glirastes…uuuuntil Glirastes takes Lysander down into his wine cellar, because apparently the monitoring spike they installed won’t work down there. Yay more plot convenience! (Particularly as it allows them to have a whole conversation about their history and what Atalantia is up to and how they can stop it and get rid of Darrow and all these ::insert appropriate whiny voice here:: awful Rising soldiers.)

While Lysander is chillin’, Glirastes informs him that Darrow’s departure from Mercury is imminent – as is, apparently, Atalantia’s attack. Meanwhile, Lysander has been using Glirastes’s servant Exeter as a proxy to communicate with wary loyalists, and while he doesn’t like having to do so, he knows that soon he’ll be rid of his little monitoring spike and can then apparently do whatever he wawnts!

Soon after, some loyalist Greens create a clone program for the spike and are able to freeze it, and that’s when things get REALLY real…or something. Because then the servants come ‘round to pledge their loyalty, and Lysander responds by promising he will help the Mercurians take back their home from the “Martian marauders” (his words, not ours).

Cool story bro, still a space racist…

Oh, and Glirastes also delivered The Horn of Helios to Lysander – a priceless relic that has begun every chariot race in the Hippodrome since it was built. Buuuut as Lysander is preparing himself for the next step in his plan, a servant arrives to tell him he has visitors.

And it’s not just ANY visitors – it’s Alexandar au Arcos “and his maidservant”, which is apparently how these assholes think of Rhonna, and don’t even get us started on THAT.

Of course Lysander wants them to tell Alexandar that he is indisposed, but the servant reminds him that he is on house arrest and that it appears as if he’s in the library, so ya know, OOPSIES!

This means Lysander has to rush to the library and pretend that’s where he’s actually been all this time, but when it comes to Alexandar and Rhonna paying this visit, there’s OBVIOUSLY nothing untoward on their part – they’re just thankful for “Cato’s” help in helping Alexandar escape…and wanting to show their appreciation.

Which…makes everything that happens next So. Much. Worse.

Because while Darrow is distracted with trying to crack Atlas – who apparently has some never-before-seen type of neurological conditioning and can sense people through walls or some shit – he also can’t shake a nagging feeling about this “Cato” kid. So when he’s not worrying about the Fear Knight, he’s, uhh…well, watching Cato…sleep?

Listen, we’re with Thraxa, that’s a little creepy…but in the end the creepiness is worthwhile, because Cato murmurs something in his sleep that tips Darrow off. And hey, turns out that one of those items on Sevro’s trophy wall gets to come back into play, because Darrow has Cato’s DNA run against the DNA on Octavia’s bloody robes and BINGO! The test results show Cato is NOT the fath – oops, NOT who he says he is.

Darrow leaps into action, ordering that Glirastes be found and the EMP he’s been building destroyed, and then calling up Alexandar and Rhonna via their implants to reveal that Cato is in fact Lysander au Lune! Dun dun DUUNNNNNNN!

Meanwhile, Lysander was getting increasingly annoyed with Alexandar and Rhonna, as time ticked ever closer to when he needed to leave Glirastes’ house. He was having whiny space racist thoughts about Rhonna, and though he avoided voicing these – or his constant disagreements with whatever came out of Alexandar’s mouth – eventually he noticed tiny changes in their behavior.

Changes that are very obviously in response to the message they received from Darrow.

Lysander almost immediately moves to attack, smashing Rhonna into unconsciousness and then holding a gun to her head…before turning the gun on Alexandar instead, because despite his cousin’s offer of a duel, Lysander is an honorless, racist little punk who shoots Alexandar in cold blood.

Honestly FUUUUUUUCK Lysander, y’all. Especially because Darrow has to arrive to find his beloved lancer mutilated by Lysander’s headshot and his niece unrecognizable thanks to Lysander’s attack…and then has to watch Rhonna’s visceral and heart-wrenching reaction to finding Alexandar dead.

But Darrow himself doesn’t have time to truly mourn, because they need to rev up their gravBoots and chase after Lysander – a chase that is cut short when Lysander’s face appears not just on every screen throughout the city, but in the dang SKYLINE as well…and then a dark spot appears at the center of the Morning Star, and a tide of darkness rolls out from that spot.

Guess what it is? Just guess, but you only get one guess!

Drumroll please…

IT’S AN EMP, Y’ALL! Because it’s seriously, like, ALWAYS an EMP. Heh.

And that’s when Darrow and his friends plummet from the sky…

…oh, and Lysander does too, of course, because in his last unknown-to-him act, Alexandar ruined the timing of ::waves hands:: this whole thing and that means Lysander doesn’t get to land in the Hippodrome as planned.

Don’t worry though (ugh), he makes it there eventually! (Double ugh) He’s buckled in to some old Lunese armor, mounts Cicero au Votum’s prize Sunblood, and is soon joined by Kalindora, Rhone, and the other remaining Praetorians…at which point he blows the Horn of Helios, calling forth mounts for these equestrian soldiers before handing Kalindora a razor so that they can reclaim the so-called glory of the Society.

Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool.

Meanwhile for Darrow, bedlam reigns – the hazardous kind, mind you! (ha)

Trapped in his dead armor, he’s being attacked by a mob of loyalists, high- and lowColor alike, but thankfully a combination of his own brute strength and the help of a small group of Reds allows him to break free. After laying waste to his attackers, he rushes off to find his men, his slingBlade-shaped razor scaring off all who see it.

He finds Thraxa and they meet up with Screwface, the other remaining Howlers, and several thousand infantry. Even though they know the city is lost, it appears that the EMP hit the ships in orbit as well, which means it will be a long while before Lysander receives reinforcements from Atalantia.

Of course, Darrow knows that Lysander wouldn’t be waiting for them, anyway – no, he’s going for glory, and Darrow outlines a plan: he and Thraxa will hold the Via Triumphia against Lysander while his people hold the rest of the line for as long as they can and retreat through the tunnels to the Mound, where they will make their final stand.

Members of the scattered Republic legions join Darrow as he and Thraxa work to make the Via Triumphia into a chokepoint, but their forces are a thin line of resistance against Lysander’s masses. Darrow sends snipers up into the buildings with gas rifles in hopes of picking off Lysander, but unfortunately that plot fails and soon the Sunbloods are bearing down on the center of Darrow’s line and it’s an utter MASSACRE. 

Seriously, people are dying, giant horses are dying, no one has proper armor or technology because of the EMP, but Darrow’s biggest problem is that only a fraction of his people are Gold and Obsidian, and he watches as the rest are butchered by the score.

And then – and THEN – he catches sight of Lysander, and as Darrow has zero empathy for him (rightfully so!) he knows that Lysander has to die…and he dives into the fray.

Only Darrow isn’t the only thing Lysander has to worry about – Reds are literally flinging themselves off rooftops to land amongst Lysander’s forces, and while he’s distracted by their, err, arrival, who also arrives but Thraxa! Au! TELEMANUS!

She knocks Lysander from his horse and throws him into an apartment building, then proceeds to chase him through said building, busting through walls and other obstacles like the dang Kool-Aid man. Lysander is barely able to fight her off, and just as she’s being pulled to safety by some Reds, Rhone and some Praetorians surround Lysander in an attempt to protect him from…DARROW!

That’s right, Darrow has finally fought his way close enough to exchange blows with Kalindora, who then tries to convince Lysander to let Darrow go, insisting that Lysander is not his equal…except Lysander makes a stand anyway and somehow actually wins the day?! What the WHAT?!

Seriously, he basically jousts with Darrow – who has pulled himself up onto a horse of his own – but unfortunately Lysander is a rich little bitch who knows more about horsemanship and is able to throw a razor into Darrow’s chest and then meet Darrow’s slingBlade with a second razor, actually SHATTERING the one Darrow is wielding!

Obviously Darrow has no choice but to retreat, and the only way he’s able to reach the safety of the Mound is due to the chaos that reigns in the city. Thraxa is already there and soon Screwface is brought in, though he’s in bad condition, and after he’s carried off by the medics Thraxa insists that it’s over – here on Mercury and “back home”.

Darrow snaps at her that it’s NOT over and begins gathering those who can still fight, only to have Harnassus put a stop to it. Still Darrow refuses to give up completely, claiming he hears a ship – only when he climbs the Mound’s tower, there’s nothing there. Harnassus has followed him and brings Darrow some comfort before heading back down, and once his friend is gone again, Darrow – who has finally relegated himself to the fact that this is the end – pulls out the canister of Lykos soil given to him by Dago…

…only to feel a gust of air behind him and turn to see…

…wait for it…

CASSIUS, OF ALL PEOPLE!!!

And while Lysander had been momentarily distracted by Ajax’s arrival and the fact that Atalantia’s legions are obviously trying to snatch his glory out from under him by moving on the Mound, of course the ship that emerges from it catches his eye. He sees Darrow in the open garage bay and knows then that Diomedes lied and Cassius is still alive…and that Cassius is now his enemy.

After the battle, Lysander remains at Glirastes’ home in Heliopolis to brood on this and plan his Triumph. He’s wary – and rightfully so – of Atalantia, and sees possible treachery around every corner. When he’s by Atalantia’s side he immediately tells her he knows that she has assassination plans, but then he pulls a fast one on her by getting down on one knee and proposing a different kind of alliance….MAWWIAGE!

This keeps her from assassinating him QUITE yet, and he even gets a good lay out of it, but meanwhile we’re all grossed out about this whole thing considering she was his aunt in every way but blood when he was growing up, is close to 3 decades older than him, and because of, ya know, ALLLL of her other proclivities (which we discussed in our podcast episodes and do NOT want to detail again, ew).

Not only that, it turns out there’s even MORE awful things to learn about Atalantia! Lysander visits a dying Kalindora – who’s been poisoned, and SO obviously not by Darrow as Lysander assumes – and the Love Knight has quite a litany of deathbed confessions!

…Chief among them being that Lysander’s parents were reformers, that she and Atalantia planted the bomb that killed them, and that they both sat back while Octavia used the Pandemonium Chair to divest Lysander of his memories of his parents. So like, when Lysander next goes to bed with Atalantia, he does so knowing it’s with a degenerate who helped murder his parents.

Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool\

And speaking of degenerates, Lysander’s last act in Dark Age is to lay out a feast in the desert to draw in none other than…APPLE! Because Lysander needs trustworthy allies and why WOULDN’T Apple be at the top of his list to fill that role?

(Why yes, that was DEFINITELY sarcastic.)

So yup, in exchange for Apple’s blade and cunning mind, Lysander promises him the chance to take down his enemies – who happen to be the same as Lysander’s – oh, and Lysander is supposedly going to teach him the Mind’s Eye, as well!

And thus, with an agreement that Apple and Lysander will stand together against the worlds, this particular summary of Darrow and Lysander’s Dark Age stories ends…