Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Twenty: Andrew J Offutt
Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Twenty: Andrew J Offutt
This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.
Andrew J Offutt
This is a bit of a weird entry to the bibliography, since Offutt’s suggested work is as an editor of Swords Against Darkness III, the third (obviously) in a series of anthologies. The first seems to be entirely stories featuring Conan by people who aren’t Robert E Howard, volume three is a collection of thirteen short stories, a poem, and an essay, written by other authors. Two of whom appear in this series – Poul Anderson and Manly Wade Wellman. Two others I’ve heard of, but don’t appear in Appendix N – Tanith Lee and Robert Vardeman. The rest I don’t know. Offutt merely provides the foreward, and presumably he was fundamental in selecting the stories.
And it leaves me wondering – is Gygax recommending Offutt as an author, or is he specifically recommending the thirteen stories in Swords Against Darkness III?
I did manage to find something specifically written by Offutt, the War of the Gods on Earth trilogy. It comes slightly after the publication of the original Dungeon Masters Guide and so wouldn’t have had time to inform Gygax’s sensibilities, but is probably worth a read to get the measure of Offutt as an author in his own right.
There isn’t a lot of biographical detail about Offutt, except that he seems to have lived a pretty happy life without all of the illness, poverty, and tragedy that seems to have struck many of the authors on this list – several children who he termed the “offutt-spring” who all grew up to have successful careers, born in a log cabin in Kentucky in 1934, died 2013. And I noticed that I’ve been putting cause of death down a lot for the authors, which unless it’s something sudden and tragic like with Robert E Howard I don’t think I’ll do any more since it’s not really anyone’s business. Not that Offutt has one given anyway, so here’s a good place to start.
His bibliography is huge, mostly from the late 70s onwards and the majority of it in erotica with such amusingly cliche titles as Bondage Babes, Diana’s Dirty Doings, High School Swingers, and Her Pleasure Potion. Oo-er Blimey.
A lot of his fantasy work is using Conan, also the Cormac mac Art series and a contributor to Robert L Asprin’s Thieves World anthologies, most of which were published after the DMG.
Swords Against Darkness III
Volumes IV and V were published after the DMG, but I do wonder why III and not I and II, especially as from the editorial notes written by Offutt, many of the authors in III appeared in the first two using the same characters. Possibly because volume III was the most recently published, I don’t know. As I said, it’s kind of an odd entry in the bibliography.
The stories are all quite short, as short stories go, and a mixed bag in terms of quality. I must admit that I often found that the BBC 500 Words stories that I’ve reviewed elsewhere, written by children between 6-13 years old, were better short stories, but there we go.
Offutt provides introductory notes before each story that paint a world of fanzines and semi-prozines where the names are assumed to be well known to fans of the genre. He uses the term “hf” in contrast to “sf”, but doesn’t explain it. Not until Poul Anderson’s essay, the last entry in the book, do we learn that it stands for “heroic fantasy”. That’s the extent, really of, of Offutt’s written contribution to this work, but he comes across as amusing, affable, and somebody well embedded in the hf world.
And without further ado, on to the stories themselves.
Pit of Wings by Ramsay Campbell.
In a bit of classic swords and sorcery, the swordsman Ryre clashes with some slavers and ends up getting offered up as a sacrifice to a flock of undead winged mouth-creatures that drain blood. It’s little more than an action sequence, but maybe the inspiration for the stirges of D&D. In fact you could use stirge stats but describe them as the horrific blood-sucking monsters here, and it’s good for an encounter idea, especially the horrible pit filled with the dead and dying mouth things. Maybe Albie Fiore used some of the concept in his White Dwarf adventure The Halls of Tizun Thane, only using berbalangs. Oh, Ryre manages to escape the mouths, by the way, and we leave the story with him returning to town to have a few choice words with the slavers.
The Sword of Spartacus by Richard L Tierney.
A Samarian sorcerer plots vengeance on Rome on behalf of Spartacus by using the protagonist Simon of Gitta in a ritualised gladiatorial game, complete with Lovecraftian visitations. A fun, if abrupt, mix of Roman history and supernatural elements. According to Offutt, volumes I and II also feature some Simon of Gitta stories.
Servitude by Wayne Hooks.
A somewhat lurid and grim tale wherein the swordsman Harkol is in thrall to an armlet that he wears, that desires souls much like Stormbringer, and also causes him to kill the woman he loves, much like Stormbringer. There are shades of Evil Dead 2 as well, with Harkol’s own hand turning against him.
So far, all of the stories have a swordsman hero facing off against tyranny and institutional cruelty – the swords against the darkness as of the title, I guess.
Descales’ Skull by David C Smith.
So much for patterns, this story isn’t about a swordsman defeating tyranny, but about three men who resurrect the skull of the dead sorcerer Descales in the hope of being granted the promised wishes for doing so. And, true to fairy tales since forever, the wishes don’t go how they expect (the death of one of the conspirators may remind the reader of Visaerys Targaryan’s demise, but here the effect is on a grander scale). A gruesome morality/revenge tale, with an uncomfortable cultural artifact of referring to one of the characters as “the black”.
In the Balance by Tanith Lee.
Although the name Tanith Lee is a familiar one to me, I’ve not read anything by her and neither, when I looked up her bibliography, were any titles familiar. I’ve got a vague recollection that perhaps I saw her name prominently in the book reviews of White Dwarf (or perhaps Imagine) magazine, and absorbed it from there. Her story here is a simple one, a very short piece (almost worthy of the BBC 500 Words competition) about two initiates taking the final test for the Magicians’ Guild. One, our point-of-view character Cermarl, has led a life following the Code of the Guild, the other, Paitese, has used his powers thus far for selfish gains but in doing so has apparently advanced far beyond Cermarl. Only one of them will survive the test, which of course is more about morality than ability. Bonus marks for using the word “cicatrice”.
Tower of Darkness by David Madison.
Very much like a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story, if Fafhrd were a woman, and married to Mouser. The two protagonists in this case are Diana, tall swordswoman, and her partner Marcus, smaller man with a propensity for cosmetics. Lots of playing with gender expectations in this one, which is fun and unexpected for the time it was written (although, I dunno. This would have been the time of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period and Glam Rock, so...). Anyway, Diana and Marcus seek lodging in the city of Nysa, but the inhabitants, worshippers of the sun, live in fear of the night, and the only activity is in the Tower of the Dying Sun where a priest must ring the hour every hour until dawn. And then it turns into a vampire story, with an exciting attempt to escape a crawling horde of bloodsuckers within a pyramid temple. Fun stuff, with an enjoyable duo, and easily turned into a scenario akin to Tarantino’s From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. What’s quote refreshing here is that Diana and Marcus genuinely feel fear and panic, unlike the stoic and grim-jawed barbarians we commonly see.
The Mantichore by David Drake.
Another one set in the “real” world, in the Roman Empire – this one feels like a later, Constantine, Rome with its mentions of the “crucified God”. The merchant Dama is hired by Theophanes the necromancer as a caravan leader and, as these things tend to pan out, he and his men find themselves in the remains of an oasis inn long overtaken with sand and home only to a long-mummified corpse. But the place is haunted by the mantichore – not the man/lion/scorpion hybrid monster, but in its more direct sense of “man eater”, more like a dybbuk, a creature capable of taking over corpses and animating them to kill. Pretty good, feels a little unfinished, but the setting is wonderfully atmospheric.
The Revenant by Kathleen Resch.
A short poem about a vampire (seems like Offutt orders his stories by themes). I don’t have much to say about this one, I’m not much of a poet nor a poetry critic.
Rite of Kings by Jon DeCles.
DeCles is the brother of Marion Zimmer Bradley, according to Offutt’s introduction. I guess she’s the more famous one, because I’ve heard of her but not him.
The story tells of how King Crosnya came by his sword Vartamund, and the various trials that he undertakes, and although he succeeds in getting the sword pretty much loses everything else. By turns lyrical, hallucinatory, and laden with symbolism, it’s a pleasantly different beast to the other offerings so far, almost Dunsanian in nature.
The Mating Web by Robert E Vardeman.
I read Vardeman’s Keys to Paradise a very long time ago, and enjoyed it, always meant to get hold of his War of Powers series (mainly because I like the cover!). Another wandering swordsman, Lan (but not the Lan from Wheel of Time), fleeing from some hunters for a crime he (probably) didn’t commit, meets Krek, an amusingly depressed and fatalistic giant spider, also hunted for accidentally killing the local ruler’s son in a web. Lan helps Krek return home to his web and his mate, making one of the stranger pairings so far in this book, and, really, it’s the entertainingly over-the-top pessimism of the spider that make this one stand out. Vardeman’s writing is very clean and readable as well. Would make a fun variant for an “escort quest”.
The Guest of Dzinganji by Manly Wade Wellman.
Wellman is, I think, the only author in this anthology who also has his own reference in Appendix N, so here’s a little sneak preview. Offutt is very fulsome in his praise of Wellman in his introduction. (Only one to provide a story, since Poul Anderson crops up later but his submission to this volume is an essay).
More vampires, and a slightly different take on them again. This time, we get Yet Another Swordsman, Kardios, last survivor of Atlantis, entering the remote mountain realm of Flaal, seeking to pass through. Flaal is ruled by the mysterious Dzinganji, a genius with machines, his kingdom guarded by automata. And, as it swiftly transpires, Dzinganji is a vampire, keeping those who enter his realm as thralls to sate his blood thirst. Again, slightly Dunsanian in feel and although somewhat derisive, good fun nonetheless and another interesting concept for a scenario – vampires and robots!
The Hag by Darrell Schweitzer.
Set in an Age of Chivalry, with overtones of Mallory and the Song of Roland, as well as older Mabinogi, and later Grimm tales. Sir Julian goes out on a hunt with the Duke Orlando and his men, pursuing a mighty boar into the depths of the forest. Eventually, only Sir Julian remains, lost in the woods as night falls. He chances upon an old lodge in the woods where he takes shelter, only to be visited by swarms of snakes, rats, wolves and eventually the boar itself, who then turns into the eponymous hag, labouring under a curse from her deal with the Devil when she was young.
Rife with magical trials, and once again touching lightly on vampire mythology, this one has the feel of a fairy tale beefed up and written for modern audiences, and is pretty good. The atmospheric hunting scene at the start reminded me of Uccello’s painting The Hunt in the Forest, worth visiting the Ashmolean in Oxford to see for real.
A Kingdom Won by Geo W Proctor.
Prince Nalcon of Paldrid is plucked from death by Yelana, Queen of Gyrvan, to help here against her sorcerous brother Xylon. Yes, lots of Fantasy Names (tm). This one has a theme of sorcery against technology/science. It’s a fairly Conan-esque story with Nalcon helping the Queen to defeat her brother and unleash the magical power needed to transform her people into a form capable of living in the sea, since her land is shortly to sink beneath the waves, Atlantis style, thanks to her brother messing about with evil magic. It’s carried a bit above most Conan-type tales, apart from the rare gems, in that it has a modicum of pathos and introspection. Of all of the stories so far, this one feels the most connected to D&D because it mentions “high-level magic”, and there’s a boar-bear-man-demon (super cereal) that seems like a Nalfeshnee.
Swordslinger by MA Washil.
Galt, the one-eyed grizzled veteran waits in an inn in an un-named city. There’s some business with a seller of talismans, a bit of a bar-room brawl and some mild flirting, but Galt’s real mission is with a man called Cymir, an old fighting comrade become king. Whom, for some reason, Galt wants to kill, possibly because as he points out, loads of other men have taken an arrow or a sword meant for Cymir.
Not such a good one, this, the plot, such as it is, is a bit meandering and the reader isn’t really given much motivation for Galt’s vendetta, plus it’s written in cod “olde-speake” with even the narratorial voice using phrase like “’Twas” and “Ne’er”. For my money the weakest in the book.
On Thud and Blunder by Poul Anderson.
Yes, Dear Reader, it is the second author in this compilation to have his own entry in Appendix N, the one where we started, Poul Anderson, writing an essay on bad fantasy. He probably could have saved time and said “Just read the story before this”, but anyway.
This is a great little essay on adding verisimilitude to hf – which, young fool, only now at the end do I understand to mean “heroic fantasy”. If you read nothing else in this volume, I’d say this was invaluable advice for any DM, with Anderson drawing upon his experience with the Society for Creative Anachronism to discuss just how long you can swing a sword for without tiring, how hard you can drive a horse, how effective armour actually is, and a host of other little tidbits. Really good, and Anderson writes in an amiable discursive style without getting overly didactic – worth the price of admission.
Overall impressions of Swords Against Darkness III – it's a fun little collection of short stories, although by the nature of the anthology it does get a little samey as yet another swordsman enters yet another seedy city to face yet another ancient evil. However, as inspiration for adventures, each one is a little nugget easily transformed into a scenario, and so well worth a look for that, especially if you wove the various blood-sucker stories into a vampire-based mini campaign. And I can’t emphasise enough how useful Anderson’s essay is. I would go for Tower of Darkness, The Mantichore, and The Hag as the stand-outs in terms of writing, with Pit of Wings, The Mating Web, and The Guest of Dzinganji also providing the best grist for scenarios, but the beauty of an anthology like this is that there is variety in style.
Meanwhile, onto Offutt as an author and not an editor.
The Iron Lords is the first in the trilogy. I was going to stop with just this one, but got drawn in.
It begins with the boy Orrikson Jarrik and his sister Torsy, only survivors of a violent assault on their coastal village by viking-esque raiders, the Lokustans. Jarik sets off on a quest for vengeance, only to be picked up at sea by some more peacable Lokustans and learning that he himself has Lokustan heritage. As he grows up among his adoptive family, it takes on the form of a bildungsroman, and even though this is somewhat by-the-book Joseph Campbell, it occurs to me that the only coming-of-age story in this entire bibliography so far has been Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow. All of the others, even those with an origin story in them, have tended to start with the hero fully grown. Huh.
Jarrik grows up, and grows big and strong, always vowing to kill the man named Kirrensark who led the raid on his adopted home. But he never fits in, exiled from one place to another with his sister following. And meanwhile, Jarrik sometimes become the bellicose healer Oak in times of pressure. Jarrik the warrior, Oak, the healer, bouncing from one place to the next and making mistake after mistake along the way.
Eventually the Gods on Earth show up, and things become even more morally grey. Gifted his black sword by the Iron Lords, he is sent by them to kill the Lady Snowmist, who they claim inspired the attack on his village by Kirrensark. Jarrik accidentally saves Kirrensark, but even though he abuses the man’s hospitality and eventually tells him that he came to kill him, he finds Kirrensark a pitiful and broken figure of a man, with a wife and one surviving child. Not only that, but once he meets the Lady Snowmist, it becomes less clear who is telling him the truth, if anybody.
Both sets of Gods are masked figures who live within mountain domains and wiled great powers, but it feels a little like perhaps they are going to be simply technologically powerful humans, something like the Lords of PJ Farmer’s World of Tiers series. The male Iron Lords, clad in black with ominous names like Lord of Death and Lord of Destruction, are presented as benevolent to Jarrik, but everything about their iconography in contrast to the lone female Lady of Snowmist clad all in white suggest the opposite. But both are dangerous, and the first book ends with Jarrik caught as a pawn in a game between the two sets of Gods.
Offutt’s writing is unlike many of the more plot-driven entries in this series; he really digs deep into Jarrik’s state of mind. The second chapter alone is something of an ongoing fever dream where the young Jarrik rows until his hands bleed and rows some more in a kind of fugue state of revenge and grief, deeply compelling. From time to time his ventures into erotica show through. Although not explicit, it’s more earthy than again some entries here, and he writes violence in such a fashion as to make combat horrific rather than glorious. There’s something of a toned down George RR Martin to him, but it does give the world a much grittier feel. And like Martin, the world feels more immediately familiar, in a setting of Viking-like people with the more fantastic elements gradually drip-fed.
Ownership of a black sword hasn’t worked out too well so far for characters in other Appendix N (and there is something reminiscent of Anderson’s The Broken Sword again, with its kin-slayings and incest). Maybe Jarrik/Oak will buck the trend?
Part Two is called Shadows Out of Hell, although there’s nothing in the story that really justifies such a lurid and dramatic title. It is used to refer to Jarrik, Kirrensark, and other men of Kirrensarks-wark (the in-universe naming convention for both a settlement and a ship) as they set forth on a mission for Lady Snowmist – to retrieve the staff of the dead god Osyr. What they find is something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs – an island of naked warrior women who kidnap men as mates before killing them, keeping only the girl children. The dead god Osyr has a strange temple and may actually be the mysterious Guide figure that haunts Jarrik’s dreams. By the end of it he is joined by the warrior-woman Jilain, and the whole interlude seems a little bit redundant. A few of Offutt’s predilictions show up here though. One is his love of the word “horripilation”. Another is that his work in erotica becomes even more visible here (well, an island of naked women, it’s going to, isn’t it)? The last is his fondness in this series for playing with accents and changing words. Whether it is whether Jarrik is Jarrik, Yarrik, or Jarish, of if Kirrensark is Kirrensark or Kiddensohk, or the way that the Osyrians voice a “gh” sound in words to say “nikht”, or “foukht”.
Part Three is The Lady of the Snowmist, where Jarrik, Jilain, and the rest return home to be shown that there are two sets of “gods” (who are again strongly hinted merely to be technologically superior humans from another world), one lot that wants to destroy or subjugate humans, the other who wants to help them. As events transpire, it becomes much more clear that the Iron Lords are not on the side of the humans, although the motives of Lady Snowmist are still somewhat opaque. There’s philosophical musing, there’s a big fight. And it really feels like there ought to be at least two more books to continue the struggle and reveal more secrets. In Book Two Jarrik is visited by The Guide (who is probably the dead god Osyr) who offers him two narratives for the creation of the world – one scientific, the other mythological. Jarrik is confused by the science and picks the mythological one, and The Guide is disappointed. That’s an interesting concept that could have been played with – a god that finds religion dismal. More fuel to the notion that the “gods” are simply more advanced humans.
I really liked Offutt’s writing style, and although he could be repetitive (the first two chapters of Book Two are retellings of Book One from first Jarrik’s viewpoint and then Oak’s viewpoint), actually what he tends to do when he runs over previous events is to just tilt the lens slightly so that previous events are viewed just that little bit differently, and it works here because Jarrik’s quest for meaning is a major part of the series. None of the individual elements are enormously original - I note that the viking raider figures, the “hawkers” are usually accompanied by strange non-flapping metal birds much like the Kolder in Andre Norton’s Witch World series, for example. For this series it’s the journey into Jarrik’s head that is more interesting.
There are definitely setting details you could nick – the hawkers, the temple of Osyr, the “gods” and their abilities, and even build upon the nuggets of the other gods and their captive societies, but since this isn’t in Appendix N, it’s no surprise that there are no obviously direct inspirations into the game itself.
Andrew J Offutt
This is a bit of a weird entry to the bibliography, since Offutt’s suggested work is as an editor of Swords Against Darkness III, the third (obviously) in a series of anthologies. The first seems to be entirely stories featuring Conan by people who aren’t Robert E Howard, volume three is a collection of thirteen short stories, a poem, and an essay, written by other authors. Two of whom appear in this series – Poul Anderson and Manly Wade Wellman. Two others I’ve heard of, but don’t appear in Appendix N – Tanith Lee and Robert Vardeman. The rest I don’t know. Offutt merely provides the foreward, and presumably he was fundamental in selecting the stories.
And it leaves me wondering – is Gygax recommending Offutt as an author, or is he specifically recommending the thirteen stories in Swords Against Darkness III?
I did manage to find something specifically written by Offutt, the War of the Gods on Earth trilogy. It comes slightly after the publication of the original Dungeon Masters Guide and so wouldn’t have had time to inform Gygax’s sensibilities, but is probably worth a read to get the measure of Offutt as an author in his own right.
There isn’t a lot of biographical detail about Offutt, except that he seems to have lived a pretty happy life without all of the illness, poverty, and tragedy that seems to have struck many of the authors on this list – several children who he termed the “offutt-spring” who all grew up to have successful careers, born in a log cabin in Kentucky in 1934, died 2013. And I noticed that I’ve been putting cause of death down a lot for the authors, which unless it’s something sudden and tragic like with Robert E Howard I don’t think I’ll do any more since it’s not really anyone’s business. Not that Offutt has one given anyway, so here’s a good place to start.
His bibliography is huge, mostly from the late 70s onwards and the majority of it in erotica with such amusingly cliche titles as Bondage Babes, Diana’s Dirty Doings, High School Swingers, and Her Pleasure Potion. Oo-er Blimey.
A lot of his fantasy work is using Conan, also the Cormac mac Art series and a contributor to Robert L Asprin’s Thieves World anthologies, most of which were published after the DMG.
Swords Against Darkness III
Volumes IV and V were published after the DMG, but I do wonder why III and not I and II, especially as from the editorial notes written by Offutt, many of the authors in III appeared in the first two using the same characters. Possibly because volume III was the most recently published, I don’t know. As I said, it’s kind of an odd entry in the bibliography.
The stories are all quite short, as short stories go, and a mixed bag in terms of quality. I must admit that I often found that the BBC 500 Words stories that I’ve reviewed elsewhere, written by children between 6-13 years old, were better short stories, but there we go.
Offutt provides introductory notes before each story that paint a world of fanzines and semi-prozines where the names are assumed to be well known to fans of the genre. He uses the term “hf” in contrast to “sf”, but doesn’t explain it. Not until Poul Anderson’s essay, the last entry in the book, do we learn that it stands for “heroic fantasy”. That’s the extent, really of, of Offutt’s written contribution to this work, but he comes across as amusing, affable, and somebody well embedded in the hf world.
And without further ado, on to the stories themselves.
Pit of Wings by Ramsay Campbell.
In a bit of classic swords and sorcery, the swordsman Ryre clashes with some slavers and ends up getting offered up as a sacrifice to a flock of undead winged mouth-creatures that drain blood. It’s little more than an action sequence, but maybe the inspiration for the stirges of D&D. In fact you could use stirge stats but describe them as the horrific blood-sucking monsters here, and it’s good for an encounter idea, especially the horrible pit filled with the dead and dying mouth things. Maybe Albie Fiore used some of the concept in his White Dwarf adventure The Halls of Tizun Thane, only using berbalangs. Oh, Ryre manages to escape the mouths, by the way, and we leave the story with him returning to town to have a few choice words with the slavers.
The Sword of Spartacus by Richard L Tierney.
A Samarian sorcerer plots vengeance on Rome on behalf of Spartacus by using the protagonist Simon of Gitta in a ritualised gladiatorial game, complete with Lovecraftian visitations. A fun, if abrupt, mix of Roman history and supernatural elements. According to Offutt, volumes I and II also feature some Simon of Gitta stories.
Servitude by Wayne Hooks.
A somewhat lurid and grim tale wherein the swordsman Harkol is in thrall to an armlet that he wears, that desires souls much like Stormbringer, and also causes him to kill the woman he loves, much like Stormbringer. There are shades of Evil Dead 2 as well, with Harkol’s own hand turning against him.
So far, all of the stories have a swordsman hero facing off against tyranny and institutional cruelty – the swords against the darkness as of the title, I guess.
Descales’ Skull by David C Smith.
So much for patterns, this story isn’t about a swordsman defeating tyranny, but about three men who resurrect the skull of the dead sorcerer Descales in the hope of being granted the promised wishes for doing so. And, true to fairy tales since forever, the wishes don’t go how they expect (the death of one of the conspirators may remind the reader of Visaerys Targaryan’s demise, but here the effect is on a grander scale). A gruesome morality/revenge tale, with an uncomfortable cultural artifact of referring to one of the characters as “the black”.
In the Balance by Tanith Lee.
Although the name Tanith Lee is a familiar one to me, I’ve not read anything by her and neither, when I looked up her bibliography, were any titles familiar. I’ve got a vague recollection that perhaps I saw her name prominently in the book reviews of White Dwarf (or perhaps Imagine) magazine, and absorbed it from there. Her story here is a simple one, a very short piece (almost worthy of the BBC 500 Words competition) about two initiates taking the final test for the Magicians’ Guild. One, our point-of-view character Cermarl, has led a life following the Code of the Guild, the other, Paitese, has used his powers thus far for selfish gains but in doing so has apparently advanced far beyond Cermarl. Only one of them will survive the test, which of course is more about morality than ability. Bonus marks for using the word “cicatrice”.
Tower of Darkness by David Madison.
Very much like a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story, if Fafhrd were a woman, and married to Mouser. The two protagonists in this case are Diana, tall swordswoman, and her partner Marcus, smaller man with a propensity for cosmetics. Lots of playing with gender expectations in this one, which is fun and unexpected for the time it was written (although, I dunno. This would have been the time of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period and Glam Rock, so...). Anyway, Diana and Marcus seek lodging in the city of Nysa, but the inhabitants, worshippers of the sun, live in fear of the night, and the only activity is in the Tower of the Dying Sun where a priest must ring the hour every hour until dawn. And then it turns into a vampire story, with an exciting attempt to escape a crawling horde of bloodsuckers within a pyramid temple. Fun stuff, with an enjoyable duo, and easily turned into a scenario akin to Tarantino’s From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. What’s quote refreshing here is that Diana and Marcus genuinely feel fear and panic, unlike the stoic and grim-jawed barbarians we commonly see.
The Mantichore by David Drake.
Another one set in the “real” world, in the Roman Empire – this one feels like a later, Constantine, Rome with its mentions of the “crucified God”. The merchant Dama is hired by Theophanes the necromancer as a caravan leader and, as these things tend to pan out, he and his men find themselves in the remains of an oasis inn long overtaken with sand and home only to a long-mummified corpse. But the place is haunted by the mantichore – not the man/lion/scorpion hybrid monster, but in its more direct sense of “man eater”, more like a dybbuk, a creature capable of taking over corpses and animating them to kill. Pretty good, feels a little unfinished, but the setting is wonderfully atmospheric.
The Revenant by Kathleen Resch.
A short poem about a vampire (seems like Offutt orders his stories by themes). I don’t have much to say about this one, I’m not much of a poet nor a poetry critic.
Rite of Kings by Jon DeCles.
DeCles is the brother of Marion Zimmer Bradley, according to Offutt’s introduction. I guess she’s the more famous one, because I’ve heard of her but not him.
The story tells of how King Crosnya came by his sword Vartamund, and the various trials that he undertakes, and although he succeeds in getting the sword pretty much loses everything else. By turns lyrical, hallucinatory, and laden with symbolism, it’s a pleasantly different beast to the other offerings so far, almost Dunsanian in nature.
The Mating Web by Robert E Vardeman.
I read Vardeman’s Keys to Paradise a very long time ago, and enjoyed it, always meant to get hold of his War of Powers series (mainly because I like the cover!). Another wandering swordsman, Lan (but not the Lan from Wheel of Time), fleeing from some hunters for a crime he (probably) didn’t commit, meets Krek, an amusingly depressed and fatalistic giant spider, also hunted for accidentally killing the local ruler’s son in a web. Lan helps Krek return home to his web and his mate, making one of the stranger pairings so far in this book, and, really, it’s the entertainingly over-the-top pessimism of the spider that make this one stand out. Vardeman’s writing is very clean and readable as well. Would make a fun variant for an “escort quest”.
The Guest of Dzinganji by Manly Wade Wellman.
Wellman is, I think, the only author in this anthology who also has his own reference in Appendix N, so here’s a little sneak preview. Offutt is very fulsome in his praise of Wellman in his introduction. (Only one to provide a story, since Poul Anderson crops up later but his submission to this volume is an essay).
More vampires, and a slightly different take on them again. This time, we get Yet Another Swordsman, Kardios, last survivor of Atlantis, entering the remote mountain realm of Flaal, seeking to pass through. Flaal is ruled by the mysterious Dzinganji, a genius with machines, his kingdom guarded by automata. And, as it swiftly transpires, Dzinganji is a vampire, keeping those who enter his realm as thralls to sate his blood thirst. Again, slightly Dunsanian in feel and although somewhat derisive, good fun nonetheless and another interesting concept for a scenario – vampires and robots!
The Hag by Darrell Schweitzer.
Set in an Age of Chivalry, with overtones of Mallory and the Song of Roland, as well as older Mabinogi, and later Grimm tales. Sir Julian goes out on a hunt with the Duke Orlando and his men, pursuing a mighty boar into the depths of the forest. Eventually, only Sir Julian remains, lost in the woods as night falls. He chances upon an old lodge in the woods where he takes shelter, only to be visited by swarms of snakes, rats, wolves and eventually the boar itself, who then turns into the eponymous hag, labouring under a curse from her deal with the Devil when she was young.
Rife with magical trials, and once again touching lightly on vampire mythology, this one has the feel of a fairy tale beefed up and written for modern audiences, and is pretty good. The atmospheric hunting scene at the start reminded me of Uccello’s painting The Hunt in the Forest, worth visiting the Ashmolean in Oxford to see for real.
A Kingdom Won by Geo W Proctor.
Prince Nalcon of Paldrid is plucked from death by Yelana, Queen of Gyrvan, to help here against her sorcerous brother Xylon. Yes, lots of Fantasy Names (tm). This one has a theme of sorcery against technology/science. It’s a fairly Conan-esque story with Nalcon helping the Queen to defeat her brother and unleash the magical power needed to transform her people into a form capable of living in the sea, since her land is shortly to sink beneath the waves, Atlantis style, thanks to her brother messing about with evil magic. It’s carried a bit above most Conan-type tales, apart from the rare gems, in that it has a modicum of pathos and introspection. Of all of the stories so far, this one feels the most connected to D&D because it mentions “high-level magic”, and there’s a boar-bear-man-demon (super cereal) that seems like a Nalfeshnee.
Swordslinger by MA Washil.
Galt, the one-eyed grizzled veteran waits in an inn in an un-named city. There’s some business with a seller of talismans, a bit of a bar-room brawl and some mild flirting, but Galt’s real mission is with a man called Cymir, an old fighting comrade become king. Whom, for some reason, Galt wants to kill, possibly because as he points out, loads of other men have taken an arrow or a sword meant for Cymir.
Not such a good one, this, the plot, such as it is, is a bit meandering and the reader isn’t really given much motivation for Galt’s vendetta, plus it’s written in cod “olde-speake” with even the narratorial voice using phrase like “’Twas” and “Ne’er”. For my money the weakest in the book.
On Thud and Blunder by Poul Anderson.
Yes, Dear Reader, it is the second author in this compilation to have his own entry in Appendix N, the one where we started, Poul Anderson, writing an essay on bad fantasy. He probably could have saved time and said “Just read the story before this”, but anyway.
This is a great little essay on adding verisimilitude to hf – which, young fool, only now at the end do I understand to mean “heroic fantasy”. If you read nothing else in this volume, I’d say this was invaluable advice for any DM, with Anderson drawing upon his experience with the Society for Creative Anachronism to discuss just how long you can swing a sword for without tiring, how hard you can drive a horse, how effective armour actually is, and a host of other little tidbits. Really good, and Anderson writes in an amiable discursive style without getting overly didactic – worth the price of admission.
Overall impressions of Swords Against Darkness III – it's a fun little collection of short stories, although by the nature of the anthology it does get a little samey as yet another swordsman enters yet another seedy city to face yet another ancient evil. However, as inspiration for adventures, each one is a little nugget easily transformed into a scenario, and so well worth a look for that, especially if you wove the various blood-sucker stories into a vampire-based mini campaign. And I can’t emphasise enough how useful Anderson’s essay is. I would go for Tower of Darkness, The Mantichore, and The Hag as the stand-outs in terms of writing, with Pit of Wings, The Mating Web, and The Guest of Dzinganji also providing the best grist for scenarios, but the beauty of an anthology like this is that there is variety in style.
Meanwhile, onto Offutt as an author and not an editor.
The Iron Lords is the first in the trilogy. I was going to stop with just this one, but got drawn in.
It begins with the boy Orrikson Jarrik and his sister Torsy, only survivors of a violent assault on their coastal village by viking-esque raiders, the Lokustans. Jarik sets off on a quest for vengeance, only to be picked up at sea by some more peacable Lokustans and learning that he himself has Lokustan heritage. As he grows up among his adoptive family, it takes on the form of a bildungsroman, and even though this is somewhat by-the-book Joseph Campbell, it occurs to me that the only coming-of-age story in this entire bibliography so far has been Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow. All of the others, even those with an origin story in them, have tended to start with the hero fully grown. Huh.
Jarrik grows up, and grows big and strong, always vowing to kill the man named Kirrensark who led the raid on his adopted home. But he never fits in, exiled from one place to another with his sister following. And meanwhile, Jarrik sometimes become the bellicose healer Oak in times of pressure. Jarrik the warrior, Oak, the healer, bouncing from one place to the next and making mistake after mistake along the way.
Eventually the Gods on Earth show up, and things become even more morally grey. Gifted his black sword by the Iron Lords, he is sent by them to kill the Lady Snowmist, who they claim inspired the attack on his village by Kirrensark. Jarrik accidentally saves Kirrensark, but even though he abuses the man’s hospitality and eventually tells him that he came to kill him, he finds Kirrensark a pitiful and broken figure of a man, with a wife and one surviving child. Not only that, but once he meets the Lady Snowmist, it becomes less clear who is telling him the truth, if anybody.
Both sets of Gods are masked figures who live within mountain domains and wiled great powers, but it feels a little like perhaps they are going to be simply technologically powerful humans, something like the Lords of PJ Farmer’s World of Tiers series. The male Iron Lords, clad in black with ominous names like Lord of Death and Lord of Destruction, are presented as benevolent to Jarrik, but everything about their iconography in contrast to the lone female Lady of Snowmist clad all in white suggest the opposite. But both are dangerous, and the first book ends with Jarrik caught as a pawn in a game between the two sets of Gods.
Offutt’s writing is unlike many of the more plot-driven entries in this series; he really digs deep into Jarrik’s state of mind. The second chapter alone is something of an ongoing fever dream where the young Jarrik rows until his hands bleed and rows some more in a kind of fugue state of revenge and grief, deeply compelling. From time to time his ventures into erotica show through. Although not explicit, it’s more earthy than again some entries here, and he writes violence in such a fashion as to make combat horrific rather than glorious. There’s something of a toned down George RR Martin to him, but it does give the world a much grittier feel. And like Martin, the world feels more immediately familiar, in a setting of Viking-like people with the more fantastic elements gradually drip-fed.
Ownership of a black sword hasn’t worked out too well so far for characters in other Appendix N (and there is something reminiscent of Anderson’s The Broken Sword again, with its kin-slayings and incest). Maybe Jarrik/Oak will buck the trend?
Part Two is called Shadows Out of Hell, although there’s nothing in the story that really justifies such a lurid and dramatic title. It is used to refer to Jarrik, Kirrensark, and other men of Kirrensarks-wark (the in-universe naming convention for both a settlement and a ship) as they set forth on a mission for Lady Snowmist – to retrieve the staff of the dead god Osyr. What they find is something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs – an island of naked warrior women who kidnap men as mates before killing them, keeping only the girl children. The dead god Osyr has a strange temple and may actually be the mysterious Guide figure that haunts Jarrik’s dreams. By the end of it he is joined by the warrior-woman Jilain, and the whole interlude seems a little bit redundant. A few of Offutt’s predilictions show up here though. One is his love of the word “horripilation”. Another is that his work in erotica becomes even more visible here (well, an island of naked women, it’s going to, isn’t it)? The last is his fondness in this series for playing with accents and changing words. Whether it is whether Jarrik is Jarrik, Yarrik, or Jarish, of if Kirrensark is Kirrensark or Kiddensohk, or the way that the Osyrians voice a “gh” sound in words to say “nikht”, or “foukht”.
Part Three is The Lady of the Snowmist, where Jarrik, Jilain, and the rest return home to be shown that there are two sets of “gods” (who are again strongly hinted merely to be technologically superior humans from another world), one lot that wants to destroy or subjugate humans, the other who wants to help them. As events transpire, it becomes much more clear that the Iron Lords are not on the side of the humans, although the motives of Lady Snowmist are still somewhat opaque. There’s philosophical musing, there’s a big fight. And it really feels like there ought to be at least two more books to continue the struggle and reveal more secrets. In Book Two Jarrik is visited by The Guide (who is probably the dead god Osyr) who offers him two narratives for the creation of the world – one scientific, the other mythological. Jarrik is confused by the science and picks the mythological one, and The Guide is disappointed. That’s an interesting concept that could have been played with – a god that finds religion dismal. More fuel to the notion that the “gods” are simply more advanced humans.
I really liked Offutt’s writing style, and although he could be repetitive (the first two chapters of Book Two are retellings of Book One from first Jarrik’s viewpoint and then Oak’s viewpoint), actually what he tends to do when he runs over previous events is to just tilt the lens slightly so that previous events are viewed just that little bit differently, and it works here because Jarrik’s quest for meaning is a major part of the series. None of the individual elements are enormously original - I note that the viking raider figures, the “hawkers” are usually accompanied by strange non-flapping metal birds much like the Kolder in Andre Norton’s Witch World series, for example. For this series it’s the journey into Jarrik’s head that is more interesting.
There are definitely setting details you could nick – the hawkers, the temple of Osyr, the “gods” and their abilities, and even build upon the nuggets of the other gods and their captive societies, but since this isn’t in Appendix N, it’s no surprise that there are no obviously direct inspirations into the game itself.
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