Sworded Tales

A message had been delivered to Gerard by one of the more nimble forest folk in the area.  He often smiled as Chitter Tick bounded erratically from side to side, waiting for him to finish the brief note and offer a response.  On more than one occasion, the small chigger had scolded the Ranger for dallying over a missive that was clearly marked as urgent, perhaps even life threatening.  Nothing that was issued by the Forest Warden’s Guild was ever that critical, and if it were, there was a great certainty that it would be sent along its journey by some means of aviation, not the bounding skittering of a Chitter Tick.  Still, Gerard took his work seriously, and upon receiving the message to rendezvous at a logging station a half day’s travel to the southwest, he sent his affirmation along with the Tick and began gathering his supplies in preparation for the journey. Continue reading

Empires rise and fall.  Histories are recorded and forgotten.  Even the gods themselves wax and wane with the passing of the Ages.  What does one do when faced with the realization that the time of their species has come and gone?  That they are in fact only seeking footholds upon the slippery slope of extinction which looms all too near?  One simple precept had been engrained into a rather nondescript young Dragonborn hatchling which would unwittingly serve to mold the entire path of his destiny.

All living things perish.  What matters most is how. Continue reading

Cyric was sure that his arm was only moments away from popping out of the swollen socket of his shoulder.  The muscles had long been numb from the constant strain of so much weight pulling on the tissue.  The tendons and ligaments had stretched to unnatural limits, and he wasn’t sure whether any of the damage being done was going to be permanent.

Not that it mattered.

He looked up at his blood encrusted wrist, flexing the hand and fingers against the manacle that was firmly shackled there.  No pain reached his brain, but the sensation of mangled flesh pulling and scraping along the metal bands was enough to ignite the anger within him anew.  The chain which stretched upward away from his hand was thickly constructed and continually mocked him with those tiny squeaks of laughter. Continue reading

Gerard leapt over the fallen log with a nimble plant of one gloved hand, his lean form arcing through the moist morning fog.  His bare feet absorbed a great deal of the impact as they pattered to the mossy earth in rapid succession.  The mists consumed the remainder of his passage, clamping down on the noises with a choking undulation.  Even Gerard’s labored breathing was lost amidst the gray waste that floated around him.  The thrumming in his ears was paramount.  That rhythmic hammering of his nectarine sized heart, rapid firing in his chest.

The sweat soaked Halfling wasn’t sure how long he had been running.  The first day was clear enough at the time, but the ceaseless pursuit over the overgrown barrens was dissolving his sense of time and place.  The perpetual silver hue and the lack of any disturbance in the stagnant weather made travel in the darklands difficult under the best of circumstances.  That is, after all, the task for which he was trained.  This mindless fleeing, a thin shadow blurring through the bland backdrop, was an altogether different matter.  Many seasoned travelers had navigated the dead zone perimeter and had wandered into their final nightmare.

Gerard wasn’t about to join them.

Continue reading

The condominium felt empty to Calico despite the presence of the seed mimic somewhere close by.  Long hours had passed since the man who he had come to see had made the quiet leap from the world of the living to the realm of the eternally stiff.  The haunted blackness of night was just beginning to show signs of the bleak gray of first dawn, little more than a bleeding of sour light around the fringes of the horizon.  The futile illumination was enough to make the difference though. Continue reading

DMG Original Cover (1979)

I will always return to sword & sorcery.

Ever since cracking that first edition of D&D and rolling up some hack-and-slash monstrosity, I was consumed.  Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t realize that my fate had been sealed just yet.  This was only the first wave of the fantasy assault which would shape me.

So, I wax colored polyhedral dice and dabbled with power gaming for a brief time.  Beholders feared me.  Illithid feared me.  Even Demogorgon himself was no match for my pre-teen omnipotence.  Then, I set this novel new game aside for a time and followed the fickle fancy of youth elsewhere.  A decade would pass before I would find my way back to the allure of tabletop roleplaying.

My older brother had just finished reading The Sword of Shannara (1977) by Terry Brooks.  His recommendation and my own budding interest in fiction beyond comic books were enough encouragement to try tackling this tome.  With over 700 pages!  An abridged Webster’s seemed less daunting.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of journeying with Shea, Menion, Allanon and the bunch, I envy you the opportunity to do so.  Brooks has an enchanting ability to weave multiple story lines together with nail biting chapter closures.  The pages fly by.  So much so, that he is a go to author for me to this day.  Some of the blame is his, but not all.

Lord of the Rings (1978)

The animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978) certainly played its role.  I can see so many  of those vintage images with poignant clarity,  Boromir’s death scene, the battle with the Balrog and the haunting Ringwraiths.  I still sing this little ditty more often than I care to admit.

Are you singing it now too?  You’re welcome.

The final formative element to this love affair was the computer game Wizardry (1981).  I was fortunate enough to have access to potent technology of the era, and I of course chose to spend countless hours dungeon crawling and mapping.  Oh my god the mapping!  Those of you who have crawled this path with me will remember the graph paper with a shadowy fondness.  I still dream of it from time to time.  Curse you Sir-Tech.

There are other elements to my gamer inside, comics and horror and sci-fi and holocaust and growing up in the arcade generation.  Many of which I will explore here with fervor.  Know this though, whether I dabble in a zombie apocalypse or digress into a Magic the Gathering montage, my wanderings will always find their way back to the beginning, to sword & sorcery.

That’s the magic of first love.  That’s the heart of Sworded Tales.

Amethyst stood on the reedy bank of Lake Ire looking across the stagnant waters.  Her revenant orange eyes were cast to the far shores, gleaning the minute details from the harsh terrain all around her.  Her glum countenance was lost in the recent past, swimming along the lines of memory which lead her to this place.  Her final destination. Continue reading