Sergeant In Motion: Schlock Mercenary Book 20, will be the last book in the Schlock Mercenary “mega-arc,” the unbroken¹ string of 7,300-ish² days of daily comics airing here at schlockmercenary.com. At that point the continuity of the Schlock Mercenary universe will include those twenty books, assorted bonus stories (which appear in the volumes in print), the Seventy Maxims book, and the Planet Mercenary RPG materials.

Many of you may be asking (and indeed, many of you have already asked) “what comes next?”

Good question.

The answer requires a bit of cold, calculated business stuff. See, it’s much easier to sell a collection of stories in print when you can tell a potential buyer that the collection is complete. So no matter what comes next, it won’t make the twenty-book story feel incomplete. I’ll be leaving lots of room for readers (and RPG players) to tell their own stories about what comes next for such characters as survive the events of this final book.

That sounded a bit more ominous than I meant it to. But only a bit.

Also, all I’ve done is answer the question “what DOESN’T come next?” and that’s not what anybody is asking.

In the face of a crassly commercial decision about what NOT to make (and let’s be blunt here—between the words “schlock” and “mercenary” there is a broadly telegraphed justification for me to be crassly commercial) I need to give people a reason to keep showing up. So here is a bulleted list of things that will definitely be here after Book 20 wraps.

• Sense of wonder
• Witty dialog
• Punchlines
• High stakes adventures
• Interesting characters
• Schlock
  • and Schlock will still be a mercenary

It’s far too soon to go into much detail about any of this. I have a book to finish, and it would not be overstating things to say that I’m feeling a bit of pressure to brilliantly stick the landing after spending twenty years tumbling through the air pretending I know what I’m doing.

 ¹ Past results are no indication of future performance. I plan to not miss any daily updates during book 20, but blah blah mice men etc. 
² June 12th of 2020 would be day 7,306 of Schlock Mercenary, and that date falls in about the right place for me to be ending a book. Dates aren’t important though. The story says when it’s over, not the calendar.

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries is now available.

At this time, the book is only available from the Planet Mercenary backerkit page. The Planet Mercenary RPG is not yet shipping, so if you want your Seventy Maxims book to ship immediately, make sure it’s the only thing you put in your cart.

There are two editions, which we’re calling “Pristine” and “Defaced.” They are both in-universe artifacts: the pristine version is one of the thousands of copies of the Seventy Maxims book that the average connoisseur of 31st century printed collectibles might find themselves fortunate enough to acquire; the defaced version is the copy that CDS Sergeant Edwards¹ handed to Private Karl Tagon on March 1st, 3035.

Karl’s book has some mileage on it. He made notes on the pages, and on January 28th, 3093, handed it off to his son, Captain Kaff Tagon, who had it for six years, making his own notes. He gifted it to Captain Alexia Murtaugh in 3099, and she added her notes. When Murtaugh was injured in early 3100 Sergeant Schlock went through her stuff, and borrowed the book. He found a felt-tip pen, too, and treated the existing notes as permission to deploy it.

The pages of the two books look quite a bit different.

Both books have scholarly² commentary at the bottom of each maxim’s page, and and the scholars do not always agree with the sentiment of the source material.

This book took a lot more work than we thought it would, but based on the response from people who’ve already gotten their copies, all that work was worth it.

¹ Sergeant Edwards, later Banneret Commodore Edwards of the Continuance Fleet, does not appear in the comic strip anywhere. Maybe someday I’ll tell his full story. 

² The scholars in question are all me. I had far too much fun critically pontificating on my own writing.