Well,
the Sanderson novella went up soon after my earlier post. I've been reading it, but it's about 170 pages and I'm at work. It is divided into parts and I just finished the first one, so I'll summarize that.
CHILDREN OF THE NAMELESS
* The novella is set on Innistrad, after the Emrakul invasion, though that doesn't come up as far as I've read.
* Tacenda is a girl cursed by The Bog to be blind during the day. She fears this darkness far more than the natural darkness of the night. Her twin sister, Willis, has the opposite curse, blind during the night.
* However, she has been blessed with a magical song that repels demons and brings light, while her sister is skilled in combat.
* As the story starts, her sister and parents are dead, killed days ago by strange whispering ghouls that ignore her song.
* During the day, the ghouls strike again, killing everyone in her village, despite her desperate singing, and leaving her alone.
* The village makes sacrifices to The Bog, referring to a specific swampy area in the woods, so during the night, Tacenda makes her way to it to sacrifice herself.
* She is stopped by a priest who had stationed himself in the area to convert the villagers away from worshipping The Bog. After learning what happened at the village, he leaves to alert the Church, taking his weapons with him.
* Tacenda recalls that the Man in the Manor, their new lord, was seen murdering her parents, wearing his mask and cloak, and everyone believes he is behind the ghouls. She finds a rusty ice pick and charges toward his manor.
* She finds that the back entrance has some devils scrounging in the garbage. She uses her song to drive them away then goes inside.
* She hides inside a bathroom, avoiding some demons roaming the hallway. The lord of the manor enters, conversing with a demon, and she stabs him in the heart.
* The man, Davriel, uses a spell to freeze her in place, and talks to his attendant, a demon named Miss Highwater, complaining about the damage to his clothes and how these assassins keep bothering him.
* Though she expected to die, Tacenda is shocked by how little Davriel cares about what happened.
* Davriel is pretty similar in personality to Kelsier from Mistborn, with his snark, but much lazier. This is apparently a common archetype for Sanderson.
* Davriel has something in him, The Entity, that heals his wounds. He would prefer not to use it.
* Davriel calls for another demon, Crunchgnar, to tie her up and torture her to find out who sent a teen peasant girl to kill him. Usually it's monster hunters.
* Tacenda attempts to sing, but only gets out a hum. Still, this bothers the demons enough that Davriel decides to do something different.
* He brings out the head of a monster hunter who came recently to see if he knows anything about all this, reanimating it in front of Tacenda. He objects to being called a necromancer by Tacenda, getting far more upset about that than the stabbing. He is a diabolist, a demon scientist.
* Through the head and Tacenda, he learns about the attacks at the village. He is upset his main source of tea and clothing is gone. Tacenda is confused by him pretending not to know about the attacks.
* Davriel figures that someone must be framing him.
* Davriel is a planeswalker, who came to a backwater part of Innistrad specifically to avoid trouble. Here, people don't bat an eye if you use demons. He has the ability to steal spells from people, for a single use. Basically, his card would definitely have the "exile a card from your opponent's library, you may cast it" effect. He stole some spell that people are chasing him across planes for.
* He puts the head away and decides to let Tacenda go. She shatters the container to free the hunter's soul, but that was a bad idea, because it becomes a vengeful geist that attacks them.
* Davriel burns it, complaining that he wasted a spell he got from a powerful pyromancer.
* Tacenda describes the state the bodies in her village are in. Davriel concludes that they were struck by a reversible soul stealing spell.
* Tacenda asks for more information, but starts to get escorted out. She sings, which frightens the demons, but Davriel proves to be human after all and is immune.
* She demands he help them. If he doesn't, she'll tell every monster hunter out there about him and he'll never have a moment's rest. Even if he kills her she'll do this as a vengeful geist.
* He relents, and goes out himself to deal with the imposter and save the villagers.