Song of the Sorcelator

ATTENTION: Although Epic Legends of the Hierarchs and Song of the Sorcelator are separate series, due to the complicated issues surrounding alleged plagiarism and the interactions of their fandoms, they will be featured on one page.

Epic Legends Of The Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga
""Tell me more of Elemenstoring, Dogus," cooed the soggy bar-maid. "Tell me more of the furniture and the glory.""

- Book 6: Nightstand's Peril

A series of High Fantasy novels by Tycho Brahe originally released as tie-ins to the Elemenstor Battles Collectible Card Game. Although the card game is long out of print, the cycle is currently at 13 novels with a 14th rumored to be coming out any day now, plus a four book prequel series titled The Harbinger Cycle, and an Anime series, among others.

The first two books chronicle the adventures of Horatio the Tribbit, Son of Julio and Arch-Son of Hermes The Obtuse as he discovers his true destiny as a mighty Elemenstor. Further books record the exploits of other Elemenstors and heroes of the world of Battal, such as Gavment Rayling's quest to find the legendary magic sword of the Magic Sword Kings.

An extensive wiki and list of books and related works is available here.

The Song Of The Sorcelator
"Steadying himself atop the speeding Lamborghini, the Sorcelator drew his twin wands - Hurt and Burn. He was going to make damn sure the Pirate Assassins and their Metal Friends rued this day, and rued it hard."

- The Song of the Sorcelator, page 192.

A four volume (fifth recently announced) series authored by L. H. Franzibald, recounting the adventures of the Sorcelator Grimm Shado, a nomadic Spellbiker on the post-apocalyptic world of Fehtahn, and his battles against such foes as the Witchaloks and the Immortal Space Bitches. Two Direct to Video movie adapatations have been released so far, and a forthcoming animated series is anticipated shortly.

Go here for the wiki and list of works.

Due to their close release dates and certain stylistic similarities between the two series, there have been conflicting accusations of plagiarism, both from the authors and their fandoms. Heated debate on the matter continues, with no resolution likely in the near future.

WARNING: Below this point are serious unmarked spoilers for both series...

...and this is also the point where we stop telling Blatant Lies. So what's going on here? Dueling Atlanta Nights, that's what.

To elaborate, Tycho of Penny Arcade suffered near-fatal brain damage from attempting to read the tie-in novels for Magic: The Gathering, and the experience gave him an idea: To pretend he had written an atrocious fantasy series for a make-believe Collectible Card Game. Thus was Hierarchs born. Making a few comics to illustrate how he would write bad fantasy novels, he set up a wiki and invited readers of Penny Arcade to flesh it out with all the glorious Stylistic Suck they could invent. They rose right to the challenge.

Taking things further, he conceived Sorcelator, a competing series authored by a paper-thin Expy of Tim Buckley, with its own wiki and (Kayfabe) rabid Fan Dumb, complete with hilarious role-played flame wars between the two wiki groups. Sorcelator has ended up being more visible, with several mini-series comics, since Gabe and Tycho ended up having more fun with its particular brand of Stylistic Suck.

Tropes taken to the extreme:

 * Creator Breakdown: Tycho is (Kayfabe) very bitter about Franzibald's books massively outselling his.
 * Creator Worship: Invoked by those on the Sorcelator wiki, which is incredibly fawning toward the series' "author."
 * Fetish: Apparently the mobile furniture in Hierarchs has fans that call themselves "furnies." Ahem.
 * Meaningless Meaningful Words: A Hierarchs trademark.
 * Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Sorcelator has all four, and then some.
 * Purple Prose: Dueling Purple Prose.
 * Revenue Enhancing Devices: The working title of the first Hierarchs book was "A New Franchise."
 * Small Name, Big Ego: Franzibald has a slight sense of entitlement.
 * Stylistic Suck: The whole point.
 * Take That: Against the Magic: The Gathering novels and Tim Buckley.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz: Sorcelator is full of this.