Creativity Hacker

Karsten and Babette are an unlikely pair. One is a violent man at the end of a violent career, the other is the llama who carries his gear. With reflexes slowing and his appetite for brutality fading, Karsten has begun to think about a quiet retirement and maybe a woman to keep him warm. But when a simple wager over a bottle of beer goes disastrously wrong, those dreams are ensnared in the tendrils of a curse and the pair must swear service to the distant Dowager Empress

Or forfeit a year of their lives for every day they resist.

With a killing sun overhead, an ancient evil on their tail, and no idea how to use the powers they’ve been given, Karsten and Babette take shelter in the desert city of Pryloon, hoping to discover the hand guiding the evil that hunts them. Before it discovers them.

In this stand-alone episode, Karsten and Babette are on the run with magebreakers closing in, but their luck appears to change when they encounter a mysterious crossroads and an unexpected choice: In one direction, the meandering old road. Safe, familiar, and slow. Take it and they'll keep their lead but gain no ground. In the other, the new road. Unproven, unmarked, but with the tantalizing possibility of escape. The only catch? It leads straight into the blighted wasteland known as the Widow's Wrinkles.

Guess which way they go.

Seeking shelter at the edge of the world, in a place only madmen tread, Karsten and Babette must set their plans aside to rescue a fellow traveler from his own stupidity. But no good deed shall remain unpunished, and soon the pair is caught up in an escalating standoff between a pompous bureaucrat and a tribe of blood-thirsty savages.

So what are they fighting about? A flock of sheep, of course. In the middle of a poxing desert.