I have been away for a long time, out in the heathen lands with not a charm nor a cantrip in my possession. Scores of miles from the nearest stone circle, in villages where the locals perform a sort of ersatz “natural” magic with gathered herbs or mechanical devices. It is strange what one comes […]

I arrived this morning before dawn by the Western dock, tumbled ashore by a sudden and violent wave – the first and only such I encountered in my entire journey across the sound. Perhaps I am no longer welcome here. These cliffs and caves and fells are forbidding enough on the best day, and so […]

Once, very long ago, silk barges plied the sunken canals in the Caverns Beneath out of necessity – trade embargoes and restrictions had quite literally pushed the business underground. After a decade or two the city realised that it could make more money on taxes and tariffs than the regular bribes its councilmen had come […]

In the Lost Tales of Kalhar there is a creation cycle myth that tells of a “World Tree”. For many years only known in oblique references, Arc historians hypothesised a connection with Norse mythology across a vast gulf of time and space, but when the text in question was finally found it proved to be […]

The house had a tidy front lawn, neat hedges and footpath and white aluminium mailbox. From there, in the daylight, you could almost imagine you were in suburbia. Back in Phoenix maybe, if not for the absent heat. From the wide rear porch it was a different story. Tidy lawn, still, but that gave way […]