The exercise of their power

A while back I ran a few excerpts from The Mage of Dust and Bone, a fantasy novel set in the Fabled Lands world (well, sort of). I wrote the opening chapters for Jamie to continue with, the same process we used for The Wrong Side of the Galaxy, but in this case the thing refused to get up off the slab. Should've used AC instead of DC, I guess.

The lead character was Forge Burntholm, a young wizard, and the first part of the story had some flashbacks to his apprenticeship at Dweomer, which in the novel was not a university town but a crumbling fortress where a single Archmage taught a handful of students. The Fabled Lands literary agent wasn't happy that in those flashbacks I made Forge quite a bully. "He's too unlikeable," he complained. On that subject, I agree with this piece by Celia Walden:

“One of the tricks of the books,” says Anthony Horowitz, “is to make [James Bond] likeable.” I couldn’t agree less. As a philandering, cold-blooded killer, with – as Horowitz accepts – “unfortunate attitudes towards women, gays, Jews and foreigners” – Bond can and should never be made likeable.

My thinking with Mage ran something like this. Wizardry is all about power and force of will, so not addressing the abuse of power would have seemed like a cop-out. JK Rowling has already done the nice version of wizard school so I wanted to show Forge behaving badly in his mid-teens, more out of boredom and the urge to flex his magical muscle than out of malice. Then he is abruptly forced to face the consequences of his behaviour when some magic goes wrong in a very horrible way. The older Forge is already shaken by that experience. He's chastened. He's trying to be a better person - but people don't change overnight, so as the story unfolds he's still struggling with that change rather than suddenly turning into Ron Weasley.

When it comes to fiction, likeability is over-rated. I prefer the interesting characters myself, especially the outrageous ones. We all find Han more compelling than Luke, don't we? Check out this chapter from the novel and then have your say...

SCHOOL DAYS

‘Well? Can you see?’

‘Shush.’

Forge balanced on the thick slab of ice over the top of the rainwater barrel and peered through the tavern’s bottle-paned window. The glass was steamed up, but he could see a mop of carroty hair among the youths pressed shoulder-to-shoulder by the fireside.

He grinned down at Bartholomew. ‘He’s there.’

Kim was standing a little way off, half pretending she wasn’t with them. ‘Let’s go back. It’s cold out here.’

‘Go back, go back,’ mocked Bartholomew in a sing-song voice. ‘Try wearing thicker drawers next time.’

Forge jumped down with a muffled crump. The snow was deep-piled, powdery dry and greenish-white in the light from the window. He blew out a big cloud of steam. ‘What’s it going to be this time?’

‘Hanging around here is stupid,’ complained Kim. ‘I’ve got three chapters and a rune diagram to get through for tomorrow.’

‘That’s theory. Nothing beats practice,’ sneered Bartholomew.

There was a drunken bellow from inside, a half-hearted attempt to get a song going that soon petered out. They heard jeers of laughter.

‘Was that Ruggins’s tuneless warbling?’ said Bartholomew, cocking a hand to his ear. ‘Or was it the howl of a weasel giving birth to a warthog? Either way, I think it calls for…’

‘For punishment,’ said Forge.

‘My very thought. Corrective punishment. Severe and memorable punishment.’

‘A lesson never to be forgotten.’

Kim shuffled her feet. ‘Just leave him alone. Why have you got to torment him?’

‘For the same reason that you are standing here with us, Monksilver,’ said Bartholomew, ‘and not scribbling away at your prep. Boredom. The need for amusement amid the scholastic tedium. And the natural desire to administer justice to a red-headed yokel with a face like a fishwife’s backside.’

After first arriving at Dweomer, the apprentices had not taken long to learn what the local youths thought of them. The ringleader, Galt Ruggins, a farmer’s lad a little older than they were, had forced Forge and Bartholomew into the ditch as he brought his pigs to market one day. ‘Bookworms,’ he said with a guffaw, kicking mud at them. The smirk on his face, milky pale under thick red shock of hair, was full of spite.

For a while they put up with his bullying, and found ways to avoid going into the village. Forge had been the first to grasp the practical applications of the magic they were learning. They bent over their books and workbench with even keener interest. After a while they tried out a spell that caused seagulls to gather over Galt Ruggins’s head whenever he went out, swooping and shrieking. It went on for a week. Forge and Bartholomew found him sitting on a bench outside the village, his clothes fouled with the birds’ droppings. The gulls had settled all around to stare at him with their wide blank eyes.

‘It must be your ridiculous hair, Ruggins,’ said Bartholomew. ‘If I were a bird, I’m sure I’d want to void my bowels on you.’

‘Go,’ Forge had added, and the gulls took off at once.

Galt had sat stunned, the way an animal kept in a cage won’t always bolt as soon as the door is opened. Until that moment when he saw the birds fly away he had no notion that the apprentices were the cause of his misery.

Forge leaned in close. ‘I said go.’

Galt jumped up and hurried away up the high street, and Forge and Bartholomew looked at each other in mutual delight of their power.

After that, Galt Ruggins became a convenient test subject for any new magic they learned. A diabolic voice spoke from the tavern hearth one night and described his secret wishes and fantasies, to the great amusement of the other drinkers. There was a period when milk would spoil in any house where he slept, forcing his parents to put his bed out in the barn. He suffered two weeks of uncontrollable flatulence, a curse that was only lifted when he agreed to run through the village naked on market day.

The apprentices revelled in the exercise of their power and would swagger through the village, smiling like young wolves at the sight of older boys scurrying out of their way. As for Galt, he grew morose and bitter. He took out his feelings of impotence on his friends, acquiring a reputation for sullen and unpredictable violence.

Once he snapped. Insulted by Forge as he came into the village on his family’s best mare, he tried to ride him down. By now the apprentices didn’t need to cook up curses in a laboratory. They had spells ready at their fingertips. Forge stepped contemptuously aside and ensorcelled the horse with a gesture and a word. Eyes rolling, spraying spittle, with Galt clinging terrified to its back, it thundered up to the cliffs and galloped along the very edge as if pursued by hounds from hell. On it went until Galt lost sight of the village. On one side was the wind-flattened grass, on the other a sheer drop to the pounding foam of the waves hundreds of feet below.

After screams for help, Galt tried threats. He felt sure the apprentices were watching him from affair. He grew angry, then pleading, then too frightened to make any sound at all. Finally he could take it no longer. He threw himself clear, breaking his wrist in the process, and the horse went straight over the cliff.

‘You didn’t need to kill it.’ Forge remembered Kim’s accusing glare. What had his answer been? He remembered it now with terrible clarity, with a stab of shock that physically hurt. He’d laughed.

‘I think,’ Bartholomew was saying, ‘boils this time.’

‘Interesting choice,’ said Forge, as if picking a dish from a menu. Kim tut-tutted.

‘I’ve noticed Ruggins has had his doltish bovine eye on that blonde milkmaid at Undertree Farm,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘No doubt his intentions are squalid. Once his face comes out in a great mass of angry red boils, his hopes of a stolen kiss decrease dramatically.’

‘I like it. Preserving the girl’s honour and giving Ruggins a suitable rebuke for his gross animal lusts at the same time.’

‘Quite. Anything we can do to prevent the Ruggins bloodline from propagating itself is a worthy exercise of our talents.’

‘You’re both disgusting,’ said Kim. ‘Do you think this is what the Arch Mage teaches us magic for? To persecute ordinary folk for our amusement?’

Bartholomew was suddenly serious. ‘You’ve learned nothing, Monksilver, if you think he cares a jot what we do to the common herd. He’d raise his finger and wipe out a kingdom, and then get a sound night’s sleep.’

‘That’s not true. Magic is about having a feeling for everything around you. You can only become a true wizard when you know you’re part of everything.’

‘So?’ spat back Bartholomew, relishing an argument, ‘My toenails are part of me, and I don’t mind cutting them.’

There was a scuffing noise from the roof. Bartholomew and Kim, who had been circling each other as they argued, stepped out further into the street. That saved them. Forge stayed where he was under the eaves and looked up in time to see a heavy ledge of snow come crashing down on his head.

He was on his back. He couldn’t breathe and he felt a stinging, suffocating lump in his throat. He coughed out snow and struggled up, shaking off Kim’s hand.

In the door of the tavern stood half a dozen of the local youths. They hung back nervously but their eyes bright with excitement. One of them was carrying a jacket stuffed with straw and topped off with a bundle of red hair.

‘That’s what you do with bookworms,’ came a laugh from above. ‘Bury ‘em in the snow.’

‘Ruggins.’ Forge narrowed his eyes. ‘What a costly prank this is going to be.’

He raised his arm, already swirling with a web of shadows that he intended to implant forever inside Galt’s eyes. But Kim surprised him by stepping in the way. Galt gave a sudden bark of nervous laughter, apparently surprised not to have been blasted off the roof already, and dropped out of sight on the other side.

The youth with the straw dummy flung it away as it burst into flames. ‘Back inside, you!’ snarled Bartholomew, slamming the tavern door on them with another spell.

‘Leave it,’ said Kim.

‘Get out of the way,’ said Forge, walking past her and swiftly down the alleyway to the other side of the tavern. Just visible in the bar of lamplight from an outlying cottage, Galt was already fifty yards away and running for home.

‘You could just let him go.’ But she said it wearily, more to herself than to Forge, seeing from the light in his eyes that it was futile.

Bartholomew also wanted nothing to do with it now, but for different reasons. ‘We can catch up with him another time. Let him stew for a bit, Forge. Then, in a week or two, he’ll wake up with a face full of boils.’

‘Boils?’ Forge looked at him with a feral grin. ‘We’re way beyond that. I’m going to do something permanent. Something that’ll remind him of this evening for the rest of his life.’

He brushed the remaining snow off his sleeves. Ruggins was out of sight in the darkness but Forge wasn’t in any particular hurry now. He set off at a measured tread across the white-blanketed field and Kim and Bartholomew watched him go in uneasy silence.

The Serpent's Venom

White Dwarf was getting a circulation boost or something, so Jamie (who was the real editor of the mag, whatever the punters thought) asked me to knock off a beginners’ scenario for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Ah, dungeons – I’m sure you know by now how I feel about those. But I did my hack duty, and it went out under the pseudonym Liz Fletcher because I already had The Castle of Lost Souls and my RuneRites column appearing in the same issue – which was number 52, April 1984, if you’re interested.

It was later modified slightly by James Wallis to appear in the platinum-rare Dragon Warriors supplement In From The Cold. I’ve taken the stats from that, but reverted it to a more generic world background. Looking at it now, I’m not sure what the ‘awkward situation’ was that Galadria had ostensibly approached the player characters to help out with, and they may well ask so you’d better have her invent something plausible. As Galadria will have researched the characters' background before approaching them, she might be able to come up with a story that relates to their recent adventures, in which case it could be quite an effective sting.

The Serpent’s Venom

An adventure for 1st to 3rd-rank characters

Players’ introduction

Finding themselves somewhat impoverished, the player characters enter the town of Overdale one cold evening, and are forced to make do with only a meager supper of bread and cheese at the Black Rose inn. Naturally they are quick to accept when a tall, slender blonde woman in robes of green and grey approaches and invites them to dine with her.

‘I am Galadria the Gifted,’ she says. ‘I know what it is to be down on one’s luck, so I extend this charitable hand to a group of fellow adventurers.’  

The charitable hand in question glitters with a number of heavy gold rings. She sweeps gracefully between the benches where the common patrons of the inn sit drinking, leading the characters to one of the partitioned tables off to one side of the room. She orders stew and mulled wine for them, all before explaining that she is  looking for a party of suitable adventuring companions to help her deal with an awkward situation.

As the food is brought, there is a brief lull in the conversation, and the characters cannot help overhearing something of what is being said by the group at the next table. ‘Treasure’ is mentioned several times. Discreetly listening at the thin wooden partition, they hear snatches of discussion—the other group are also adventurers, planning to explore and loot an abandoned temple a day’s ride to the north. The temple appears to be located in an underground complex hidden beside a lake surrounded by weeping willows. Galadria whispers that she knows the lake, having recently passed that way—it is called Willow Lake.

Suddenly one of the men at the next table rises to leave. Galadria and the player characters immediately pretend to be chatting to one another. The man who has risen says goodbye to his friends. At the door, he turns and calls back, ‘I’ll get some horses and see you back here in two days, then,’ before walking into the night.

Galadria leans forward and speaks in hushed tones, glancing from time to time at the next table as if to reassure herself that the eavesdropping has not been detected. ‘Luck has delivered us an excellent opportunity. If that group aren’t planning to depart for another two days, we can steal a march on them. I hope that none of you consider this dishonorable—they do look rather disreputable types themselves, and honor must go by the board when one’s pocket is almost empty of gold.’

Referee’s Background

This has actually been a con, an elaborate charade enacted to dupe the player characters. Galadria is the accomplice of the men at the next table. She and they are worshippers of an evil god. (In From The Cold interpreted this as a cult sacrificing to the pagan deity Balor; see Prince of Darkness. The original scenario had the god down as Set, who in the can't-be-arsed but vaguely Old Testament mythology of Dungeons and Dragons is a snake god - which explains the scenario's title, at least.) The abandoned temple was their own, but it was attacked over a year ago by a knightly order. Galadria and the others were the only ones to escape. They would like to retrieve the idol of their god and the coffers from the temple, but have been unable to do so because several of the skeleton guards of the temple were not destroyed by the knights and now patrol parts of the complex following their original orders: to attack anyone not accompanied by a full priest of the god (of at least 5th level).

For some time, Galadria and the others have been luring adventuring parties to the temple in order to whittle down the number of undead guards without risking themselves. Then events were complicated by a group of orcs moving into the abandoned temple. Their leader, a human sorcerer, instructed the orcs to board the skeletons into one section of the complex. Although many died in the attempt, this was achieved, and the skeletons do not have the orders or the intellect to dismantle the barricade.

The remaining worshippers of the god know about the orcs. They have evolved new tactics. Galadria will take the player characters into the temple and make a drive straight for the main shrine in order to get the sacred idol. On the way out, Vargus and the others plan to mount an ambush—whereupon Galadria will reveal her true colors and (they intend) the player characters will be slain.

The Journey to the Temple

The ride north takes the characters through rolling green countryside, through vales and gentle hill, past small hamlets and farms where peasants till the fields. The terrain gradually becomes more craggy and less populous. At one point they espy a somber black chapel or monastery across the valley. Even at a distance it is easy to see that it is deserted and overgrown.

This chapel was the home of the knightly order that raided the temple. So many were slain in the endeavor that the wounded who returned decided to deconsecrate their chapel and move south. As a consequence it is deserted.

Finally their objective is in sight. As the characters ride towards the lake, however, they are suddenly attacked by a party of five orcs who are out foraging.

These orcs will not attempt to reach the temple (if they try to escape, it will be into the wilderness) because they know that the look-out there will have seen the characters approaching and will have given the alarm, so the way in will be barricaded (see below). Galadria will try not to use her spells unless absolutely necessary. She does need at least three of the player-characters to carry the idol out of the temple, however, so she will bear this in mind

The entrance to the temple is a cave mouth on the lake shore. This is concealed behind the trunk of a weeping willow but Galadria will soon ‘stumble across’ the entrance if the characters don’t spot it. Once inside the temple, her aim will be to lead them directly to the major shrine and the temple treasury. This will involve Galadria ‘noticing’ several secret doors and although she will try to pretend that she is just doing this by luck, her eagerness to complete the mission may make her find the secret doors suspiciously quickly.

The Temple Complex

1. Entrance Passage

Crudely hewn steps lead up about six feet behind the willow tree. The passage then levels out and carries on for another five feet or so—just more than the range of torchlight.

2. Entrance Hall

Barricades to the left and right block the exit passages from this room. Sturdy ropes lead across from behind the left barricade and are secured to the other. As the characters enter, they can see several orcs peering out from the left-hand barricade.

Suddenly the ropes go taut and the right-hand barricade is pulled down. There is a noxious tittering from the orcs as four skeletons advance through the collapsed barricade and attack the characters. There is a total of nine skeletons in the temple complex, previously trapped in the passage to rooms 12, 13 and 14. They will issue forth to attack the characters at the rate of 1-3 a round until all have been killed. They will also attack Galadria, even though she is a worshipper of their deity, because she is not accompanied by a priest of the god.

The barricades are made of logs and branches. The left-hand one must be broken down for the characters to reach the orcs. This will take 4-6 combat rounds, with the orcs sniping at the adventurers all the time. Galadria will prefer to take the party this way even if all the skeletons haven’t been destroyed, because she knows about the skullghast guarding the armory and regards it as the safer of the two routes.

The orcs and their leader occupy the section of the complex covering rooms 3, 4, 5 and 6. Their leader is Althalos, a sorcerer. He regards the temple complex predominantly as a convenient base from which to raid and perhaps eventually take over the local district. Though he reveres no specific deity, he does also think there’s a possibility he may be able to tap into whatever dark sources of magical power were once associated with this place. 

3. Storeroom

This was originally the temple storeroom. Some game hangs from hooks in the ceiling for a banquet the orcs were planning. The smaller chamber off to the end is where the food is prepared.

4. Refectory

There are plain wooden benches and a table.

5. Dormitory

This is where the lower-ranking worshippers slept (Galadria, Vargus and the others). It is now the orcs’ dormitory, of course. One orc lies in bed here. He has Swamp Fever (see Dragon Warriors, p. 126), and could not join his fellows in defending their lair. Anyone who touches him has a 5% chance of contracting the disease.

6. Outer Shrine

There is a black bas-relief of a muscular red-eyed demon on the opposite wall. Originally the room was hung with tapestries and was a place for solo rituals devoted to the god. It is now Althalos’s private chamber, and he uses the tapestries for his bedding.

7. Robing Room

Several black robes with a stylized eye design in white over the abdomen hang on hooks around the room. A wooden cupboard contains six black iron crowns, with tines in the form of rough, icicle-like spikes. There are five moldering corpses in the room, two of which wear rusting armour. (Roll a d20; on a 1, the player-character with the highest perception will notice that Galadria is unusually disturbed by the sight of these corpses. The three unarmoured ones were priests of the temple; the other two were knights slain in the attacks.)

8. Major Shrine

This is a large chamber of black marble veined with quartz. On the altar stone there is a solid onyx idol to the god, with eyes of red gold and a leering forked tongue, this is the idol Galadria wants. (Note: as a worshipper of the god, Galadria should perform a genuflection as she crosses the threshold of this chamber. She won’t actually do this because it would be an obvious giveaway, but from that point she will be at –1 to ATTACK, DEFENCE, MAGICAL ATTACK, MAGICAL DEFENCE, STEALTH, PERCEPTION, and EVASION, until ritually absolved by a priest of the god.)

There are two traps on the idol that even Galadria doesn’t know about. Firstly, if touched anywhere except behind the head, it will shoot out its forked tongue (speed 19, damage 3, normal poison) to strike any character standing directly in front of the altar stone unless they have taken specific precautions against this. Armour will not help, unless the player has specified that the character is wearing a full-face helmet, or has his visor down, in which case the tongue will have no effect.

Secondly, a 5’ × 5’ trapdoor will open directly in front of the altar, dropping anyone standing there down a sloping chute to room 17 unless they can evade its Speed of 16. The idol is worth 450 florins and radiates a palpable aura of evil.

9. Priests’ Dormitory

There are five beds with decaying linen. There are two corpses here. It seems that an armored knight slew one of the sleeping priests but was then struck down from behind.

10. High Priests’ Room

Two decomposing bodies lie together on the floor. The armored knight thrust his sword through the High Priest, but the latter locked his hands around the knight’s throat and choked him even in death. The knight’s sword has not rusted, unlike his armour. A black pentangle amulet hangs on the far wall. The high priest was trying to reach his Amulet of Sovereignty over Violence when the master of the knightly order caught up with him. The knight’s sword is +1.

When the characters have been in this room for two combat rounds, a shadowy form will rise from the high priest’s corpse. It will attack anyone except a worshipper of the god. It is the high priest’s spirit, now a wraith. The strength of the god’s spirit in this place, and the high priest’s fanaticism, are such that the he was able to become a wraith in far less time than usual.

If this wraith is struck with the paladin’s sword it will be destroyed immediately because some of the paladin’s goodness has remained in this weapon which was the cause of the priest’s death.

11. Library

Shelves around the room are stocked with numerous books, all of which deal with the revolting and terrible rituals of the priesthood of this deity. Any character of the True Faith who reads one of these books through completely will be subject to a magical attack of 16, permanently losing a point of Intelligence if affected.

12. Barracks

A bare room. This is where the skeletons remained when ‘off duty’.

13. Tomb Chamber

Two sarcophagi contain the mortal remains of earlier high priests of this temple.

14. Cells

Manacles hang from the walls. There is a decayed corpse chained here. This is where victims were kept awaiting sacrifice to the deity.

15. Armoury

A skullghast (see Bestiary, p. 66) guards the special weapons of the temple. The skullghast will attack anyone except the High Priest, so Galadria knows better than to enter the room. The skullghast will not leave this room, even to pursue intruders, as its orders were to stay and guard.

The special weapons and armour are a +1 morningstar; a +1 mail hauberk; two +1 shields.

16. Treasury

The temple coffers contain 328 florins, guarded by two zombies.

17. A Dank Chamber

Contains the temple’s special guardian, which will attack any who fall down the chute into its lair. It is a nargut (see Bestiary, p. 42). It usually subsists on small creatures such as rats and moles which burrow into its lair (the priests used to feed it regularly). A human should provide quite a feast! 

Leaving the Temple

As the characters leave the complex, they are ambushed by Vargus and the other worshippers of the god. The player-characters will recognize them from the overheard conversation in the inn; this may allow them to work out what has happened, if not immediately then later on. Galadria will turn on the party now, if she hasn’t been killed in the temple.

Since the sacking of their temple by the knights, these remaining worshippers have devoted their efforts to recovering the idol and the temple coffers. Losogon, although but an acolyte, is their spiritual leader now but he is not a leader of men, so it is Vargus, as an officer of the temple guard, who gives the orders. Galadria, by virtue of her intelligence and personal power, wields much influence, but the others do not see her as leader because, in the religion to which they belong, women are seen as inferior. 

A fresh start for the Year of Wonders

I resisted Facebook for the longest time. It’s not that I don’t like tech, I just don’t care for people that much. (Only kidding. I like people just fine. It’s the pet photos and soccer chat I wanted to avoid.)

Finally I’ve had to succumb, and the reason is that Leo Hartas and I needed to set up a Facebook page for our comics saga Mirabilis: Year of Wonders (If you need a this-meets-that, try Tintin hunts Fantastic Beasts with a soundtrack by Danny Elfman).

This is part of our big push to get the Mirabilis project moving again. The story was originally serialized in weekly British anthology comic The DFC, published by Random House. When The DFC folded, our story was left unfinished but our rights were tied up in a complicated contractual tangle. It took me months of increasingly desperate negotiation to find a way out of that limbo, made all the more fraught by the fact that none of the people involved in the mess would even return my calls. Luckily I knew Philippa Dickinson, the original publisher of Dragon Warriors and one of the truly nicest people you could hope to work with, who by now had risen to be the head of RH’s children’s publishing division. She pulled strings with the powers that be and got me and Leo our rights back.

Thus unfettered I could stop chewing my nails, but it was still far from plain sailing. We secured a publisher for Mirabilis, but though they did a beautiful job of the production they failed to get copies into any shops. I had to lug a couple of bags stuffed with copies to the Gosh! Comics store in London – if you bought one of those, hang onto it like a Penny Black with Queen Vic in a hipster beard, because they were almost the only copies that ever saw the light of day. The rest, I hear, went astray between the printer (in Bosnia) and the distribution warehouse (in Lancashire) and may now be propping up wobbly café tables somewhere in Germany.

So, back to the drawing board. A comics publisher reached out, but the deal they offered was like a handshake from Don Corleone. We were expected to sign over all rights in perpetuity to them, even though there was no obligation for them to keep the book in print. After the epic struggle with Random House there’s no way Leo and I could accept terms like that. As a creator, all you have is your work. You can't let other people lock you out of it.

What about Random House themselves? Well, Philippa had retired by this point, and the mildest way to put it is that having escaped the clutches of the contract we didn’t really have a lot of friends there. We were in our gulag and, at any other time in history, there we might have stayed. But this is the 21st century, right - with social media and crowdfunding and shit. So Leo and I have spent the last few weeks getting ready for a full and concerted relaunch of this mighty fantasy saga. Our plans include:

• a Patreon page where aficionados can come and pledge as little as $1 a month to help fund new instalments. Pages of the comic go up there Mondays and Fridays with higher-level backers getting access to backstage blog pieces and other goodies.
• a new website where everyone can read the comic absolutely free – just a little way behind the paid-up supporters on Patreon, who also get higher-res versions of the art.
• the aforementioned Facebook page where you can get updates on Mirabilis and any other books, comics, movies or games that we thing might interest you.
• a Twitter account with daily instalments of the comic.

And we’re toying with the idea of a Kickstarter to fund a Mirabilis gamebook. Or app. Maybe a boardgame. Possibly all three and - I dunno, a roleplaying game too? The Patreon backers may get a say in that. The exciting thing is that it's a community where everyone gets a voice.

Here’s the thing. We could really use your support – which is, after all, the whole point and rationale of what we’re trying to do now. We’re bypassing the publishers and distributors and going straight to the people whose opinion and backing count most. That’s you, we hope. The readers. Already we've got backing from Jason Arnopp, the 21st century's Stephen King, from the Jedi Master of gamebooks Stuart Lloyd, and from musician, artist & game designer Frazer Payne, among others. Good company to be in, and an absolutely priceless vote of confidence when we're starting a new venture like this. Thanks, guys.

If you can spring for a few dollars to actually fund the work, then you’re our BFFs till the sun dies – but even if not, a like on Facebook costs nothing and can really help boost interest. You never know, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

So you want to be a game designer?

I spent more than ten years working as a designer in the games industry and, although I've also been an author, comic book creator, scriptwriter and TV producer, it's game design that I get asked about most often. In particular people want advice about courses and ways into the business. Well, everybody's story is different, so anything I say probably won't be usable as a route map. Even so, if it's a career that appeals, maybe some of the following will be of interest.

I think of game designers as being "interested in everything" and in particular in straddling the arts/science boundary that tends to divide the majority of people. My college degree was in Physics but I'd always been interested in English too. After college I started writing role-playing game articles, and then choose-your-own style gamebooks, and that got me into writing novels and comics. And then I got a job as a game designer at Eidos (working on Warrior Kings, pictured below) and that seemed like the job I'd been training for without knowing it.

But there are other experiences. My senior assistant designer at Elixir Studios, Sandy Spangler, came into it from a quite different direction. She studied Fine Arts, went from there into character design and animation for TV, and then into art direction at a game developer, and from there into design.

As the game designer is really the "show runner", you need to be able to communicate your creative vision to the artists, coders, writers, voice and mo-cap actors and so on. Design is almost by definition the thing that unifies those disciplines into a new coherent opus. Of course, you have to be able to nudge people to do their best work without coming across as a supercilious know-it-all. Charm, humour, passion and a collegiate manner - what I used to describe as a "bridge of the Enterprise" attitude - will all help.

I'd always been a movie and comics buff right from earliest childhood, so over the years inevitably I picked up some visual skills by osmosis. Two weeks into my time at Eidos, I was showing one of the artists how giving his Tyrannosaurus rex a low, forward-leaning stance with its body parallel with the ground made it look a lot more threatening than an upright Godzilla-style posture. A decade on, working on Dreams (pictured above) at Elixir, I was drawing on rules from cinema to create a game with the focus on character interaction. If I could rewind now, I'd probably add a cinematography or photography course somewhere in my school years.

A designer doesn't need to be able to code but it won't hurt. Coders can be pretty superior types until you earn their respect by proving that you at least understand the architecture of the system. My degree-level maths, rusty as it is, counts as mad skilz in the games industry. Likewise, while you'll probably be hiring writers rather than doing most of the game dialogue in person, you should know enough about storytelling and drama to manage that part of the process. If you like acting or role-playing, that'll help both with narrative structure and performance.

So the skills needed are:
Creative writing
Planning
Visual sense (cinematography/narrative art)
Some maths
Some code
Some drama and storytelling
Communication and leadership skills

- and I guess the angle you come at that from (whether science/maths first like me, or art first like Sandy) really depends on what you find most inspiring. Then fill in the other skills as and when you get the opportunity.

Lord Tenebron has risen from the grave

My first ever gamebook was Crypt of the Vampire, illustrated by Leo Hartas, and recently Leo was asked to do five new illustrations for a special colour edition of the book published by Megara Entertainment. It's not just window dressing. Megara also commissioned Way of the Tiger scribe David Walters to write a bunch of new sections for the book, expanding the adventure by about 30%.

David has done a fang-tastic job of matching the style and mood of the original book, while also making it more cohesive by building up the sense of the vampire as a threat throughout. So it's no longer just a dungeon bash. Now it really feels like you might find Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing around the next corner. (Possibly with Jack MacGowran and Alfie Bass not all that far away.)

You can get the new edition exclusively from Megara, while the original version is available from Fabled Lands Publishing on Amazon. Take your pick.

The Way of the Tiger - video review

Marco Arnaudo did a great review of the Critical IF books a while back, so it was a nice surprise to come across this review of The Way of the Tiger series. If you've only recently thawed out of a glacier since the early '80s, the series is based on Mark Smith's Dungeons and Dragons campaign and its unique blend of high fantasy, ninjutsu and Cthulhu mythos makes for a memorable setting coupled with a clever tactical combat system and richly immersive descriptive text.

Ooh, while you're here, in other news I've been working on a fully responsive rebuild of the Mirabilis website. This is a precursor to me and Leo Hartas launching a Patreon page, and quite probably a Kickstarter for an all-new gamebook.

Yes, I know my comments about the viability of using Kickstarter to create a book are on record. It would work a lot better if it was a gamebook app rather than a printed book, as that way all the funds raised could go towards the actual content rather than being eaten up by print and shipping costs. But I have a feeling that most gamebook fans prefer to own a physical copy, so that's something Leo and I will have to think hard about. More about that project and the Patreon page in due course.

Things within the shape of things

To round off our excerpt from The Mage of Dust and Bone, here's where Forge first sets off to study at Dweomer. I liked the idea of magic being about power, and power of course corrupts, which is where I was going with it. But the Fabled Lands agent (probably correctly) deemed that young readers want likeable characters. I find likeability is over-rated - and in any case Fabled Lands LLP hasn't got the resources to pay for this to get written - but just in case it should ever get completed and published, I've stuck to this flashback because it contains no real spoilers.

THE MAGE OF DUST AND BONE

(excerpt)

In the kitchen, after a silent breakfast, it had suddenly hit him. Going away! Not to sleep in his own bed or ever again have porridge the way his mother made it. He saw all his future as a stone rolling to crush his happiness, blotting out the timeless days of playing in the sunshine outside their little cottage. He ran to his mother.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he cried. ‘I’ll never see you again.’

‘It’s a week’s journey at most,’ said his mother. ‘You’ll see us so often you’ll be sick of it.’

She stroked his hair, but he knew the calm manner was just her way of dealing with distress.

Through his tears he saw the Arch Mage looking at him. ‘I don’t blame the lad. But, Forge, you’re a magician born. That’s not a hook you can ever get out.’

His sobs became quieter. He was old enough to feel both the terrible wrenching heartache and also the humiliation of being thought a overwrought child. The older Forge, revisiting this sweetly painful memory, was glad he’d had that tantrum. He often felt guilty that he’d been too eager to leave his parents, but that scene in the kitchen must have made it clear he did love them. Now, in the present, with Lord Grazen’s threat hanging over them, that was more important than anything else.

‘It is the last time you will see him as the child he is now,’ the Arch Mage had told his parents. He was never one to coat the truth, however much it hurt. ‘The next time you may see him is in a year and a day, and by then he will have begun his journey on a new path.’

The way to the crossroads lay across Hetch Greyson’s fallow field. ‘There’s no coach due,’ his mother told the Arch Mage. Not for days, Forge knew. But he also knew it wouldn’t matter. They set off right after breakfast, through the gate (ninety-two swings now) and across the stile that was still darkly wet and slippery from a rainfall in the night. Forge was over and running, letting the long wet grass slap his legs, the Arch Mage following with Forge’s father carrying his pack. After his outburst at breakfast he felt free. He was ready.

He drank it in, not knowing when he’d be back. The way the sun’s rays awoke a million pinpricks of light in the dew. The thick shadows, liquid black under the hedgerows, and the dazzling blaze of coming day that haloed the trees. The rich reek of dung in the fields, the fragrance of honeysuckle, the drifting scent of wood smoke and cooking from surrounding farmsteads. He watched the Arch Mage’s robes swish through the long grass, the dampness on his silver-buckled boots.

‘The shimmer,’ said the Arch Mage, answering his unspoken thoughts. ‘Things within the shape of things, that’s what you’ll learn to see.’

His manner was more aloof now. He swept on across the field, not looking at Forge as he spoke. In the years to come, Forge was often to seek his approval, and sometimes earned it. But they would never again have that near-fellowship they had briefly shared in the early hour before the dawn.

The older Forge, watching it all in memory, was conscious of this as the last morning of his childhood. All the things he took for granted, that swept out behind him as he ran. Sensations that tumbled past, disorderly as dreamtime, never noticed but always there. These things were coming to an end. He was on the brink of a world where all phenomena were recorded, catalogued, studied and manipulated. The age of his innocence ended now, and the age of power began.

The Arch Mage had left his other cases to find their own way home. ‘They’re too impatient for a leisurely trip,’ he’d said. He carried only one small wooden box. As they reached the crossroads, he slid back the lid and took out a black-lacquered toy coach.

‘Travel a long road, you might as well travel in style, eh?’ He set the toy coach carefully down in the middle of the road, where the finger-post pointed to the coast. Crouched over it, he whispered some strange lilting words to it, the disquieting lullaby you might sing to a changeling. Straightening, he took Forge’s arm and turned him round. ‘Look over there a while. A thing like this is like pots boiling. It never happens if you watch.’

Forge’s mother hadn’t come. His father’s stolid calm was better suited to goodbyes. He put Forge’s pack down by the roadside and scratched his head. ‘A year goes faster than you’d think,’ he said. ‘And we can write.’

‘I could stay,’ said Forge, a little daunted as he felt a tingle of magic in the air. ‘I could be a blacksmith like you, Poppa.’

His father laughed. ‘Reminds me.’ He pulled a book out of his pocket. ‘Left this in the forge, you did, while “helping” me.’ He pretended to clout Forge on the head with it, then stuffed it into the pack.

‘Poppa – ’

‘It’s right for you, son. Some people are too big for the village. Not me, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me. But your mother nearly is, all five foot three of her. She just about squeezed herself into this way of life, but you couldn’t. Right from when you were a toddler I knew that, even before the Arch Mage came to tell us.’

The scrape of a hoof on the stones. Turning, they saw an elegant coach. The team of four horses stood silent but with an air of pent-up ferocity, as if ready for a race. The driver, hooded and unspeaking, gestured impatiently for them to get aboard.

‘Come.’

The Arch Mage already had Forge’s arm and was leading him towards the coach. The pack was in his other hand. Forge cast a look back at his father. Suddenly there wasn’t enough time. The future was happening like plunging over a cliff.

The older Forge seemed to see this all from a view already inside the coach. His younger self could have broken away. The Arch Mage wasn’t holding him tightly, just hurrying him along. He could have run back and given his father a last hug. But, overwhelmed by the moment, he didn’t.

If only he could rewind time now. Yet that is what he was doing, only to watch it again as a helpless observer. His father stood, big and awkward, and the younger Forge was already eagerly climbing up onto the black leather seats, entranced by the drapes that had been thimble sized a moment earlier. The Arch Mage closed the door to shut them in.

A jolt. Forge wasn’t braced, and was thrown back in his seat as a glimpse of meadows and woodland went flying by. From outside came a shout of alarm, but by the time he’d dragged himself to the window there was just a tiny figure far behind.

He thrust his head right out. It was a hurricane! The countryside swept past like green and golden clouds. The road was a blur beneath the sparks struck from the horses’ hooves. An inn loomed and then fell away behind. He glimpsed a gawping group of pilgrims, forced to scatter as the coach came through.

The fields and trees gave way to scrubby heath. Salt tang and seagulls’ shrieks. No cottages here. No more inns or wayfarers. And then, his first glimpse of the grey immensity of the sea.

Dweomer came in sight then, with its crashing waves and ramparts of rock. He knew it as home at that first glimpse. He waited tense in the seat, teeth bared in the rush of wind as the carriage hurtled on, eager to jump down and rush in under the great rune-carved lintel.

It was only the older Forge, watching the scene in his memory, who realized he’d never waved his father goodbye.