Casca (series)

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Cover sample of Casca #1: "The Eternal Mercenary".
Cover sample of Casca #1: "The Eternal Mercenary".
Quote from Casca:
"Soldier, you are content with what you are. Then that you shall remain until we meet again. As I go now to my Father, you must one day come to me"
–-Jesus Christ to Casca in Casca: The Eternal Mercenary

Casca, also known as Casca Rufio Longinus, is a series of paperback novels (27 so far) created and written by author Barry Sadler in 1979 who would go on to write a few more Casca novels before a series of ghost writers would pen many of the first 22 stories. Later a second author Paul Dengelegi wrote two before the current author Tony Roberts, the Casca website owner, picked up the writing contract in 2006. The series involves the ongoing life of a soldier in the Roman legions who is cursed by Christ on Golgotha for driving a spear into him. Casca was initially just trying to relieve Jesus of his pain and suffering. For his efforts Casca was doomed to wander the Earth aimlessly, always as a soldier. Casca was first introduced in "Casca #1 The Eternal Mercenary". Here Jesus condemns Casca by saying: Soldier, you are content with what you are. Then that you shall remain until we meet again. As I go now to my father, you must one day come to me". Casca did not initially understand what had happened to him until he was condemned to work in labor mines over a 30 year period. There he slowly discovers that he does not age and cannot be killed or seriously wounded. He learns that he is immortal, although he can feel all pain inflicted on his person.

Casca possesses an affinity for spoken languages. He can master most languages that he comes in contact with, including their various dialects, colloquialisms, and sub-tongues. Casca is also superbly skilled in edged weapons. He was first trained as a Roman Legionnaire with the Gladius Iberius sword. He later improved those skills while as a Gladiator in the Arena. Throughout history Casca has mastered the use of most edged weapons in actual combat.

Contents

[edit] AKA

Casca Longinus has also been known by many names throughout his enormous lifespan:

  • Casca Longinus
  • Casey Romain
  • Carl Langer/Carl Langers
  • Carlos Romano
  • Cas-Ca Sho - (Long Life)
  • Kasim (The Spear)
  • Roman
  • Soldier
  • Quetza (Aztec God)
  • Case Lonnergan
  • Cass Long

[edit] History

Casca was about 30 when Jesus cursed him to eternal life. In the years leading up to the fateful moment, little is known except for the odd tantalizing clues in some of the novels. He spent most of his adult life serving the Roman empire in the Legions, and there are some scraps of information about his family. He grew up in the hill country of Etruria, now known as Tuscany, to the north of Rome. The village name was Falerno (ref. Casca 15: The Pirate). When he was a child, he saw the 10th Legion march through his village en route to Gaul. His uncle, Tontine, enlisted into the army under Julius Caesar. His family died of plague and the young Casca burned the family home as a result. He enlisted into the 7th Legion at either Messilia (Casca #2) or Livorno (see Casca #1). His first battle under the eagle of the 7th was on the German border against the Suevii when 15,000 tribesmen attacked them at dawn. Only 300 made it back into the forests of Germania. He joined the 10th Legion and was sent to Jerusalem where he was assigned to the execution detail for three prisoners, amongst whom was Jesus.

Casca knew some of the most famous people throughout history, including:

[edit] The Scar

Casca was easily recognizable by the long facial scar that he possessed. It ran from the side of his eye to his mouth in a crescent shape, giving him a permanent sneer. Casca acquired the scar while trying to shortchange a local prostitute while in the Holy Land, who didn't take kindly to not being paid for services rendered. Over the years many onlookers surmise and whisper that Casca received the wound while in brave battle; to which Casca just chuckles thinking "If they only knew".

[edit] Dr. Julius Goldman

Was a surgeon in United States Army with the rank of Major, stationed at the 8th Field Hospital in Nha Trang during the Vietnam Conflict. He first met Casca when the latter was brought into the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and a large mortar shell fragment lodged in his skull and into his brain, which should have been fatal. Dr. Goldman discovered Casca's unusual healing properties and became his biographer and chronicler after hearing his story. He is often visited by Casca for updates on his life and experiences throughout the ages. Dr. Goldman later leaves the Army and establishes his own practice.

[edit] The Brotherhood of the Lamb

The Brotherhood of the Lamb is a fanatical religious sect and sworn enemy of Casca. It is run by an Elder, who oversees the Sect's hierarchy, the Inner Circle. The circle is composed of an Elder and twelve other specially chosen brothers who run the militant religious organization. They preach force and power over traditional virtues of piety and compassion.

The Brotherhood was founded by Izram, a man who called himself the Thirteenth Disciple, in the wake of Jesus' death at the hands of Casca's spear thrust. He purchased the spear from some of Casca's comrades to be used as a relic and symbol for the events on Golgotha. Known as "The Spear of Longinus", the sect worships the spear which forms the central focus at prayer times.

On the most holy of days in the Brotherhood's calendar, the sect recreates the crucifixion, right down to killing one of their 'blessed' brethren who has been selected to act the part of Jesus. Another, usually the Elder, plays the part of Casca, dressed in Roman uniform, who executes 'Jesus' with their holiest relic, the Spear of Longinus.

Izram went into the wilderness for forty days before a revelation came to him: Jesus said to Casca "Soldier, you are content with what you are, so shall you be until we meet again". Therefore he reasoned that when Jesus returned at the Second Coming he would meet Casca. The Brotherhood would keep Casca in their sights until that day; though they may hate Casca for his actions on Golgotha, they must not prevent him from meeting their Lord. The Brotherhood will never rest in its vigilance in tracking Casca through the ages. It knows Casca Longinus is their path back to Christ and they will stop at nothing in keeping their most hated enemy in their sights for all time. On occasions they inflict severe pain on Casca as punishment for his actions. Once, the Elder Dacort severed Casca's hand for daring to touch the Spear at their monastery in Asia. In Casca #6: The Persian, Rasheed, a minor acolyte, arranged to have Casca burned at the stake, thinking it just punishment for spearing Jesus. In Casca #9: The Sentinel, Elder Gregory murdered Casca's adopted son, Demos, and his woman, Ireina. Casca was also a prisoner of the Brotherhood, in Casca #18: The Cursed and Casca #4: Panzer Soldier.

Known Elders of The Brotherhood of the Lamb

  • Dacort - (Casca #3: The Warlord)
  • Imhept - (Casca #6: The Persian)
  • Gregory - (Casca #9: The Sentinel)
  • Father Mulcahy - (Casca #18: The Cursed)
  • Heinrich Himmler - (Casca #4: Panzer Soldier)

[edit] Book Synopsis

CASCA # 1: THE ETERNAL MERCENARY

When they flew Casey into the hospital at Nha Trang, the medics were sure he'd die. That he didn't was only the first surprise. The second, bigger one, was that Casey had been fighting for two thousand years, ever since that day on Golgotha when he put his lance into the side of the Man on the Cross. "Soldier, you are content with what you are. Then that you shall remain until we meet again." Thus does Casca's journey begin, a man who can't die, does not age, and knows no other skills than those of battle.

CASCA # 2: GOD OF DEATH

A burning phosphorescence--like the kind seen at sea that hovers over the masts of ships--enveloped the sacrificial stone. That jade mask glowed and seemed to throw out ray of emerald light. Tezmec held the still-beating heart in his hand. It was throbbing, moving. The golden knife dropped from Tezmec's grasp when another hand covered his. Casca, his body enveloped in green fire of the sea, stood holding Tezmec's hand stationary over the altar fire. And then Casca took his own beating heart out of the priest's hand. "It takes a god to kill a god, and my time is not yet come. I am Casca. I am the Quetza. I am God!"

CASCA # 3: THE WAR LORD

Casca awoke, the effects of the opiate having worn off. The darkness of the coffin enveloped him. The same desperate fear he had felt as a slave in the mines of Greece returned. To be buried alive, unable to die. How long would the darkness last...one year...five...for eternity? He beat his head against the silken pillows. "Alive, the bitch has buried me alive. How can I find the Jew if I am buried here?" Casca was still, his body unmoving. Once every twenty minutes his pulse beat and every forty minutes his chest would move slowly. His system came to an almost complete halt. Like the great bears of the ice mountains, Casca slept. The years passed...

CASCA # 4: PANZER SOLDIER

Hitler moved with the shuffling steps of an old man, his right arm trembling, eyes vacuous, lips pale. He moved down the corridor followed by the last of the royal retainers, stopping before the entrance to his small rooms. Turning, he looked at the faces of those left out of the millions that had so recently worshipped at his altar of the greater German Reich. Casca stood silently as the Fuhrer shook the hands of the men and patted the cheeks of the women. "This man," he said, touching Casca's sleeve, "does not exist. You have never seen him. He has never been here. He must be left to go his way without delay or hindrance. Do you understand?"

CASCA # 5: THE BARBARIAN

"Welcome and wassail, friend and neighbors...I have invited you here this day for two reasons. One is an occasion of celebration, the other to see justice done." Silence settled over the crowd. "On this day I announce the marriage of my daughter, Linda, to Icenius of Britannia." Linda said nothing; she was stunned. "The other is to see a spy punished. Bring in the dog," he roared. The doors to the Hall opened and Casca was kicked and dragged into the center of the room. Pointing a dirty finger at the Roman, Ragnar proclaimed, "This dog here, who has eaten at my table and claimed the laws of hospitality, is a spy for Rome...I sentence you, spy of Rome, to the tide stakes!"

CASCA # 6: THE PERSIAN

"Yes, and I have the story in my room. Do you want to read it?" Landries gave a short laugh, almost a snort. "That is a dumb question, Goldman. You know that I would travel halfway around the world to read his story. But doesn't exhaust you to be the sounding board for him? How can you stand living through all his pain, his suffering and disappointments?" Goldman shook his head. "I don't know, but I have to finish what we started. It's like being hooked on drugs. I have to complete it, and the worst of it is, I know that I never will. He has outlived the Roman Empire, the Persian and British Empires and I see no indicator that he will not outlive the both of us-that is, unless the Second Coming of Christ arrives sooner than we expect..." In the cab, and in spite of himself, Landries opened the manuscript and peeked at the cover to see the title. Perhaps it would give him a clue as to Casca's location in this particular segment of his history. His eyes fell upon it- Casca, The Persian...

CASCA # 7: THE DAMNED

Washed in the blood of victory and defeat, Casca returns to Rome - and to the savage glory of the arenas. A gladiator beyond compare, he welcomes the clash of steel, the triumph of combat, the smell of death. But a treacherous enemy from the east threatens the Roman Empire, and Casca must face his most fearsome opponent - a warrior known as Attila the Hun. Once more Casca must fight for Rome. And kill and kill again.

CASCA # 8: SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

Phang's fist closed around the cobra's head, keeping the deadly fangs embedded in his palm. In one clean, swift motion, he pulled his long razor-sharp blade from the scabbard on his right side and, in a continuous swing, severed the head of the snake from its body. He swung once more, and felt a cold and then a burning pain as the blade in his right hand cleaved his left hand at the wrist, allowing the fist, still locked tightly on the head of the cobra, to fall to the floor...

CASCA # 9: THE SENTINEL

Awakened from frozen slumber by the touch of a beautiful young woman, the mighty Casca journeys from the northern wasteland to legendary Constantinople and the war-ravaged shores of North Africa. Casca must struggle with the agony of an eternal curse - and triumph over the razor-sharp fanaticism of the bloody Brotherhood.

CASCA #10: THE CONQUISTADOR

Sixteenth-century Mexico...where enemies of the majestic Aztec King Moctezuma are sacrificed to his bloodthirsty gods by the thousands. In the party of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, Casca (alias Carlos Romano) returns to the savage land to seek revenge on the ritual priests who once ripped the very heart from his chest!

CASCA #11: THE LEGIONNAIRE

A thorn vine whipped at Langer's face, blinding him for just a second. That's all it took. In that instant, when he couldn't see, the world around him exploded.. A hammer hit his chest knocking him clear off his feet. He could hear the thud of the bullets ripping into him. Blood filled his mouth running down his ragged tunic. Ever so slowly, he twisted half around, falling face down to the earth, mouth and eyes open.

CASCA #12: THE AFRICAN MERCENARY

At such close rang they could clearly hear the bullets slapping into the man's body. Dzhombe, favored of the gods and inheritor of the Kingdom of Shaka, rolled back up from the floor to his feet. He quivered for a moment, then shook his body, whipping a spray of sweat and blood all over the room. "Fools," he gurgled. The gaping holes in his chest and back seemed not to give him any pain at all. "Fools, you cannot kill me. Only the gods have that right. I am their child, Shaka, born again into the body of Matthew Dzhombe!"

CASCA #13: THE ASSASSIN

A downed bandit, dirty, yelling...came at Casca, the short sword in his hand not unlike a gladius. Casca swung the scimitar. The curved blade, red in the morning sun, sliced down through the bandit's suddenly upthrown left arm, cutting the forearm away and spraying red blood into the morning light. Casca's scimitar glistened as he pulled it back on the follow-through stroke...

CASCA #14: THE PHOENIX

Casey grabbed the enemy agent ...by the face and forced his mouth open. A gout of bright red blood gushed forth spewing across the room and covering Casey's hands. "Goddamn it! The son of a bitch has bitten his tongue off and swallowed it!"

CASCA #15: THE PIRATE

In the dense black smoke from the guns, the two ships came together. The grapnels were thrown, the two lashed. "Boarders!" Casca ordered and, cutlass in hand, leaped for the other deck, Katie beside him, her own cutlass at the ready. "There's something wrong, Scarface," she muttered. "Why didn't he fire on us?" There wasn't time for him to answer. He jumped aboard the ship, Katie Parnell matching him step for step, and for the first time in his life Casca Rufio Longinus felt the odd pleasure of going into battle with a woman he trusted....

CASCA #16: DESERT MERCENARY

Now or later Dominic looked down at Foche. Blood was coming from his stomach and back. He was a goner. Foche knew it too. Blood bubbling between his lips, he choked out, "Well, get on with it. You know what has to be done. You wouldn't leave me alive for them to play with, would you?"

CASCA #17: THE WARRIOR

Warrior God ... "The battle is over," Semele wailed. "We have lost two men. "Looking at the chief, Casca realized that he had indeed already surrendered. He drew his .38, clapped it to the head of the nearest man and blew out his brains. There was one great communal shriek, then silence. Casca pointed his little revolver at the man with the wounded arm and shot him through the heart, then turned the gun on Semele. "This weapon needs no reloading," he lied. "One more word of surrender and I will kill you."

CASCA #18: THE CURSED

Ruler of All That He Sees ... Hundreds of Chinese were falling into the streets. Every fifth bullet was hollow-nosed, and expanded on impact to tear off an arm or a leg, or to blow a hole through a man's gut that would accommodate a football. The upward tilt of the guns sent great chunks of bleeding meat and tripe flying skyward. The streets were spattered with a rain of blood and meat and guts and spent lead. Countless, perhaps more than a thousand, Chinese were dead, and another thousand or so were dying in moaning agony all around the legation bastion.

CASCA #19: THE SAMURAI

Feudal Japan ... A forbidden island, where honor is a warrior's prized possession, and his sword a swift and deadly instrument of pride and vengeance. Casca joins forces with the legendary samurai warrior Muramasa. Together they embark on an odyssey of bloody conquest...a journey that ends in the savage fury of samurai against samurai.

CASCA #20: SOLDIER OF GIDEON

Under attack! The overall speed of the convoy had not changed. Glennon swerved again from the road to skirt a crippled APC, and Casca slammed his fist on the cabin wall. "Stop, stop!" he screamed, and was leaping from the tailgate into the sand before Glennon could halt the truck. He picked himself up and ran to the APC. Half a dozen corpses were sprawled about the tripod-mounted Browning. The .50 caliber machine gun was smeared all over with blood and brains and meat, but it hadn't been damaged. Casca yanked it around to point down the road where the MiG had disappeared. Casca sighted down the barrel of the Browning, pointing ahead of the plane as the pilot flew straight along the line of the road. Casca was aware of the shots all around him as men filled the air with lead. He also heard explosions, gunfire, and screams as the MiG took out truck after truck. He watched the tracers and lowered their path until he was pouring a stream of lead just ahead of the plane's nose. Then he saw the tracers spraying the underside of the plane and knew that some of his rounds had homed. The MiG howled over their heads in its dying rush, its pilot splattered all over his cockpit by the stream of slugs that had plowed upward through his seat....

CASCA #21: THE TRENCH SOLDIER

Casca and Dave charged straight at the bridge. The single soldier left standing fired at them, but his shot went wide, and he was still working the bolt of his rifle when Casca's bayonet opened his gut. "Messy way to kill," he grumbled as he jerked the bayonet free, and the German fell into the puddle of his own blood and intestines.

CASCA #22: THE MONGOL

The first rank of Temujin's warriors stepped to the rear three paces. Each man had been standing in front of one of the hundreds of sharpened stakes that Casca had prepared for them. Their bodies concealed them from the view of the Kereit and Ong Khan. The Kereit were too close to stop their charge, and the second wave behind them was at full gallop. They had to go on--to where those terrible pointed stakes the thickness of a man's arms were waiting to disembowel their horses. The first wave rushed onto the stakes. The horses screamed and tried to shy away but couldn't. They were packed too close. The stakes reached deep into chests and shoulders of the horses, driving the animals insane with pain. Three hundred went down in the first rush, littering earth with kicking, jerking, bleeding bodies.

CASCA 23: THE LIBERATOR

Africa in the 1440s, and Casca is trawled from a watery grave by tribesmen and helps in overthrowing a mad dictator who had taken power in a west African kingdom.

CASCA 24: THE DEFIANT

Casca follows Marco Polo from Venice across Asia to the court of Kubilai Khan in China.

CASCA 25: HALLS OF MONTEZUMA

In the United States circa 1840's, Casca helps an Irish immigrant widow and her children escape from the clutches of a murderous gang that wants to kidnap her girls and force them into prostitution. The "Brotherhood of the Lamb" has also found him again, and this time they plan on keeping him a tortured prisoner until Christ's return. After the immigrants are settled in their new home and after several violent encounters with cult members, Casca joins the U.S. Army. There he feels more comfortable being a soldier than a civilian as he is trying to escape the pursuit of the fanatical cult. War with Mexico quickly ensues and the U.S. thrust into another war. Casca finds himself fighting in Mexico again, although centuries later. During the battle for Mexico City, he encounters a group of U. S. Marines, whom he teams up with to overtake the last stronghold of the Mexican army, Chapultepec Castle. Here Casca is pinned down with other soldiers and Marines while trying to attack and scale the sheer walls of the Castle.

CASCA 26: JOHNNY REB

The American Civil War breaks out across the States and Casca is drawn in, choosing to fight for Virginia and the South. His first task is to train the raw and untrained rookies into an effective fighting force, but he finds the job harder than he imagined as the North invades and he and his men have to fight at Bull Run / Manassas. Its only after the battle that Casca realizes one of his own men is intent on killing him, and he also has to battle against the Brotherhood of the Lamb who, under a new Elder, are pursuing him implacably across the battlefields of the war. From Richmond to the Potomac Casca fights, while all the time the enemy closes in from behind, targeting not only himself, but also the woman he loves.

[edit] Book Covers

Casca Book Covers
Book 1