Light of the Kai rekindled

I'm accustomed to describing Vulcanverse or Blood Sword as "epic". Vulcanverse is as long as fifteen or sixteen Fighting Fantasy books. Blood Sword is equivalent to six or seven. But if you want a true gamebook epic, what about the thirty-two (and counting) volumes in the Lone Wolf saga?

Joe Dever left copious notes detailing how he planned to conclude the saga, and now his son, Ben Devere, and gamebook author Vincent Lazzari have teamed up to write that story. Light of the Kai is the first part of the Lone Wolf finale, the culmination of more than forty years of adventuring in the world of Magnamund.

Ben says: 

"We spent over two years piecing together Dad’s ideas, updating the mechanics, and staying true to his vision. It’s a real labour of love - and a way to say thanks to all the fans who’ve stuck with us. Expect familiar terrains, fresh challenges, and the same epic feel that made Lone Wolf so special."

Players can take a new character or play the part of Lone Wolf himself. (Or herself? I'm not sure if Lone Wolf's sex is ever given in the books...) The action takes the player into the forsaken north, where old foes stir and long-buried secrets await.

There will be a collector's edition, a standard hardback, and a limited number of signed copies. You can also order art prints by Gary Chalk. Yes, you read that right. Mr Chalk, the original and definitive illustrator of the Lone Wolf series, is returning to bring these final chapters of the story to life.

Find out all the details on the Magnamund site.

Some day my prints will come

We're big fans of Gary Chalk around here, not just for his astonishing artistic talent but because he's a true gentleman and a huge personality loved by all who know him. So it's a pleasure to spread the word about his new online shop where you can buy giclée prints of some of his best-known pictures. While stocks last, as they say, so don't delay.

Lost in the wildwood

Last year Gary Chalk called me up to talk about collaborating on a graphic novel. How that came about was that Gary, who lives in France, had been at the supermarket a few days before and he ran into an elderly woman he knew who said, “Why aren’t you at Saint-Malo, Monsieur Chalk? I thought every artist went? Even my grandson took his portfolio.”

Saint-Malo is the venue for one of France’s biggest comics conventions – bande dessinée, I should say –and Gary’s immediate reaction was to rush home, dump his groceries on the kitchen table, grab a few art samples, and drive to Saint-Malo that afternoon.

“Quite a few publishers said they’d take a look at anything I have to show them,” he told me. “So how about it? Do you want to write something and I’ll draw it?”

Did I? You’d have to hold me back with an electric prod. Gary is a fun guy to bounce ideas around with, his artwork is uniquely captivating and gloriously inventive, and I enjoy writing for comics more than just about any other medium.

After some brainstorming over Skype, I went back to Gary with a proposal for Jewelspider – a series of bande dessinée books set in Legend, the Dragon Warriors universe, some five hundred years after DW. Think Down Among the Dead Men’s Tudor world of magic and faerie and you’re not far off. I figured that the combination of flintlocks, faerie woods, rude mechanicals, half-timbered cottages and horror would suit Gary’s style to a T. Here's the overview:

A country a little like Elizabethan England. OK, a lot like. Only there is real magic and there are faerie folk. The heartless sort of faerie folk whose whims make a cat seem compassionate.

Twenty-five years ago at the village of Crossgate, a peasant woman called Mary Barley finds a child lying in the snow near the edge of Jewelspider Forest.

At the same time, the stillborn baby of Sir Roger and Lady Olivia Keppel, whose body was lying in Crossgate Church, is found to have been taken. The locals suspect the “ladies and gentlemen” of the woods, but the priest doesn’t want to hear that. When Mary shows up carrying a baby, he claims that it’s the Keppels’ child, who was only mistaken for dead. “A fox must have dragged him off, and the shock brought him round,” he says. “A miracle! Praise be!”

So the baby is raised as Lady Olivia’s second son, Pelagius. But the rumours of faerie origin persist and the child is undeniably strange. Soon Lady Olivia wants him gone from the manor. He’s given to Mary, who discards the name Pelagius and raises him as plain John Barley.

The years pass. “Gentleman” John Barley is an up-and-coming playwright with the Publican’s Players. As New Year approaches, the Players set out to perform a special play for the Earl of Netherford which they hope will earn them patronage. “We’ll soon be the Earl’s Players,” reckons the company’s manager, Francis Barnsbury.

On the way to Netherford, Francis has seen the opportunity to put on a Christmas play in Crossgate, not realizing that it’s John’s home village. John is not keen to go back. They arrive to find the village troubled by the disappearance of John’s one-time stepbrother Peregrine Keppel.

Before long, and very much against his will, John is investigating what happened to Peregrine and uncovering a macabre tale involving “Mad Dan” Duluth, the squire of the manor a hundred years before. Mad Dan and his henchmen, known as his three knaves, so terrorized the county that they are used to this day as bugbears to scare children. But John begins to suspect that, though dead and buried, Mad Dan and his knaves don’t rest as quietly as they should.

Before the curse can be lifted and the ghosts laid to rest, John will have visited the court of Faerie where he finally learns who his real parents were.

No doubt you will have spotted that the plot borrows from the scenario “Silent Night” which I ran on this blog one Christmas and which I later intended to use as the basis for an interactive story app. Only, this being fiction rather than a game or gamebook, that wasn’t what the story was really about. What interested me most was the Shakespearean career of John Barley, and how being a changeling gave him a special relationship with the world of the imaginary. Some deconstruction of the storytelling process itself seemed likely to feature.

Just as Will Shakespeare liked to mix comedy and high drama – the Joss Whedon of his day – I set out to create a similar blend. Horror on its own bores me; it’s too one-note. Humour helps to add the human dimension that makes the horrific elements more disturbing. And in regard to storytelling I always use disturbing in a good sense, of course.

That’s where Gary and I didn’t see eye to eye. So don’t get excited, because (as I maybe should have said at the start) this collaboration is never going to come to pass. Gary hates that whole Joss Whedon vibe, you see, and he felt the comedy elements I’d included, particularly with my Will Kemp like character Pip Cabbage, destroyed the suspension of disbelief.

Well, not every project comes off and that’s a hard truth you just have to get used to as a writer. Because the writing happens before everything else, you end up with an awful lot of abandoned fragments of development work. Jamie and I have got whole TV scripts and samples of novels that fell on stony ground and now languish in the attic or the far unvisited corners of our hard drives. I briefly toyed with finding another artist to work with, but it’s already a struggle finding the funds to pay Leo and Nikos to work on Mirabilis. I don’t really need another comic book to finance!

So here is that unfinished script. Too jokey? Or a fine blend of the humorous and the macabre? I leave it to you to decide…

Jewelspider Wood book one

PAGE 1

PANEL 1a:

A big panel, this, maybe top two-thirds of the page. Nice establishing shot.

Caption:  Then.

A snow-covered landscape, late afternoon. In the left foreground we see thickly clustered trees – the edge of Jewelspider Wood. From there the land slopes down to a valley where the village of Crossgate stands in the middle distance beside a river: cottages, church and manor house. Smoke rising from the chimneys. Beyond, the hills sweep up again into the distance.

A peasant woman, MARY, is trudging up the hill in the foreground carrying a basket. Mary is in early middle age, which for the times and given her social class might mean her mid-30s. It’s bitterly cold – see her breath steam out on the wind.

Behind her, further down the slope, three peasant lads are chucking snowballs at each other.

PANEL 1b:

Reverse previous shot, so we’re looking up the slope with the three lads in the foreground. Mary is a tiny figure approaching the edge of the forest.

Lad #1: Bet a farthing you won’t go twenty paces into Jewelspider.

Lad #2: Nearly suppertime. I would else.

PANEL 1c:

Mary looking down sadly at her basket, which contains just a few twigs. She needs more firewood.

PANEL 1d:

View from behind Mary as she faces the immense, dark and forbidding wall of trees that marks the edge of the woods. We can sense that she feels daunted by it.

PAGE 2

PANEL 2a:

Mary has ventured a little way into the wood. Here under the trees there’s less snow – just what the wind has blown in, edging the dead leaves.

She’s stooping to pick up a bit of firewood, but looking all around nervously as she does so.

PANEL 2b:

CU on Mary, startled as she turns towards the sound.

Sound effect: SNAP!

PANEL 2c:

Mary looks down to see some broken twigs laid on the ground in the shape of a pointing arrow. It points back out of the woods.

PANEL 2d:

Mary reacting to the sound of a baby crying out-of-shot (sound effect cutting off at edge of frame?) in the direction the arrow points to. Her hand to her mouth. Fear forgotten now – she’s only concerned for that lost baby.

Sound effect: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Right behind her in the dark undergrowth – she’s not aware of them - are dozens of cat-like eyes and grinning fanged mouths. The faerie folk.

PANEL 2e:

A faerie POV shot – we’re looking out from between the trees as Mary runs down the slope away from Jewelspider Wood.

Sound effect: WAAAAAAA

PANEL 2f:

In a hollow in the snow, Mary comes across a baby (in right f.g.) lying on a blanket. She drops her basket in shock.

Mary: Oh, Heaven and all the saints!

Baby: Waaaaaaaa!

PAGE 3

PANEL 3a:

New scene -- Outside the small village church in Crossgate. FATHER GULES (Patrick Magee; about 30 yrs old in this flashback) is berating the SEXTON. By the way this is the equivalent of roughly 1565 AD.

The church door is open and there’s an infant’s coffin lying on the path between them, on its side, lid off.

A small group of less than a dozen peasants has gathered to see what all the fuss is about.

Father Gules (gesturing at the door): Obviously you left it open. A wild animal --

Sexton (deferential but aggrieved): Wild animal? In Crossgate, Father? And I double-bolted it, I swear to that.

PANEL 3b:

At the back of the crowd of onlookers, ROD arrives. He’s a 12-year-old with a shock of unruly red hair (which we will recognize immediately when we return here in 25 years’ time). He tugs the sleeve of a woman, who looks round.

Rod: What is it, Ma?

Rod’s Mum: The lady’s stillborn infant. Laid out in the church, poor mite, and something stole the body.

PANEL 3c:

Back to the argument by the church door. Now Father Gules and the sexton have both rounded on OLD ABE, the gravedigger.

Sexton: The child should’ve been buried by now, anyway.

Old Abe: You take a pickaxe to this ground if you want. Like iron it is.

PANEL 3d:

Father Gules turns to the small crowd of onlookers, one of whom is pointing up towards the woods.

Peasant: You know what’s took it. No wolf.

Father Gules: Enough of that talk! And none of you breathe a word of this up at the hall. If the lady –

Father Gules pauses in surprise at the sound of a baby crying from the back of the crowd.

Sound effect: Waaaa

PANEL 3e:

The crowd parts to reveal Mary standing at the back. In her basket she’s cradling the child she found.

Baby: Waaaaa!

Father Gules: Mary Barley. Where did you get that child?

Mary: Found him, Father. Up by Jewelspider Wood.

PANEL 3f:

Father Gules lifts the blanket to look at the baby.

Father Gules: It is a miracle. You have found Lady Olivia’s baby son – and he lives! Give thanks to God.

PANEL 3g:

On Mary’s horrified expression as the basket with the baby is taken from her.

Mary: No. He’s not hers. Hers was dead. I found him!

(new bubble): No! NO!

PAGE 4

PANEL 4a:

Close-up on the exasperated face of “GENTLEMAN” JOHN BARLEY, mid-20s.

John: No no no no NO!

(new bubble): Feeling! Give it some FEELING!

PANEL 4b:

A large function room over a pub, where the Publican’s Players are rehearsing. This is the equivalent of ~1590 AD. John and Francis have copies of the script.

It’s not a dress rehearsal – they’re in regular clothes, though DOUGAL GRATE (late-50s, old thesp, wild-haired Michael Gambon type), who is playing King Solomon, wears a crown and carries a sword. He ought to wear spectacles but he’s too vain, so he makes do with a squint.

FRANCIS BARNSBURY (late-30s, George Sanders type) is the company’s manager and pitches in playing bit parts as needed.

RICHIE BIGG (late-20s, Randy Quaid type) is a lumbering, easy-going hulk of a man who ought to be a bouncer rather than playing one of the women whose case has been brought to King Solomon. He’s the object of John’s ire.

PIP CABBAGE (mid-20s, a young Jeremy Piven) is playing the other woman. He’s the company’s clown, one of those guys who can’t go one minute without turning everything into a joke.

Caption: Now.

Richie: Sorry, John.

Francis (looking at the script): Can’t we simplify it a bit, love? All this “my son” and “thy son”... You’re going to lose the groundlings.

PANEL 4c:

Pip pours himself a flagon of ale.

Pip: “Whoreson”, now that’d get a laugh.

John is impatient – he wants to get on with rehearsal. It’s not a play he’s especially keen to do, either, so Pip’s insouciance is doubly annoying.

John: Not everything has to be about getting a frigging laugh, Pip!

PANEL 4d:

John grabs the tatty rag doll that they’re using as a prop and holds it up to Richie. He points to Pip, who is playing the other mother.

John: Look, Richie, the King – he’s going to cut the little perisher in half. Pip says it’s his kid. But it’s really YOURS.

Richie: I’m the father?

John: You’re the mother!

PANEL 4e:

Pip: Ha ha!

Richie (looking at Pip): I can do feminine, thank you! I’m very in touch with my lady side. I just need direction.

PAGE 5

PANEL 5a:

Richie leans close to John for a confidential chat, but Dougal is right behind them.

Richie: John, the thing is... I’ll fling myself in there, mate. Take one for the nipper, God love ‘im. But couldn’t we get Dougal a wooden sword?

Dougal: I heard that!

PANEL 5b:

Dougal draws his (real) sword and strikes a majestic pose. We see a glimpse of the sizzling brilliant actor he was ten or twenty years ago.

Dougal: What need have I of props? Gewgaws and fakery! Fifteen years I’ve trod these boards.

PANEL 5c:

Dougal swings his sword in a wild sweeping arc. He’s very short-sighted. John and Richie duck just in time to avoid having their heads cut off.

Sound fx: SWOOSH

Dougal: Precision! Focus! Control! And you propose I brandish a whittled stick? Have you no appreciation of the thespic arts?

John: What about a pair of glasses?

PANEL 5d:

Francis leads John aside, gesturing towards TIM and TAM, in the foreground, the company’s two midgets..

Francis: Glasses? John, love, next you’ll want a real gold crown.

(new bubble): If I showed you the accounts book it’d give you a bigger scare than the Welsh Play. We can’t even afford wires for the fairies to fly in on.

PANEL 5e:

Seeing themselves talked about Tim and Tam come over with their copies of the script.

Tim: It’s not like we don’t appreciate the lines, John, but we don’t always have to play elves and goblins and that. 

Tam: Yeah. We could be – you know, just little people.

PANEL 5f:

John is always considerate of everyone’s feelings:

John: Well, I –-

But Francis dives in with a frothy pep talk aimed at giving Tim and Tam the brush-off.

Francis: And you are. You are DEAR little people. But audiences today demand a faerie touch, a whiff of otherworldliness. It’s bums on benches, loves.

PAGE 6

PANEL 6a:

John looks back over his shoulder as he and Francis go out of the door.

John: Haven’t the heart to tell them they’re going to be playing cherubs.

Francis: Cherubs? In this weather? Brrr.

(new bubble): John, I’m sorry, I know the Old Testament isn’t really your thing. No scope in it for all your usual laughs and mayhem. But it’s what the Earl of Netherford expects.

PANEL 6b:

Outside. They’re going down the steps into the pub garden. It’s a cold day in early December. Not snowing. The pub is in a town but it’s morning, and whatever clientele there is hasn’t spilled out to the garden yet.

Francis is warming to his theme, arms waving. John catches the eye of a SERVING WENCH who’s putting out trestle tables.

Francis: And if we get the Earl’s patronage, the sky’s the limit.

(new bubble): Terribly nice touch getting a baby into the story, by the way. Should go down well. The Earl’s wife is broody, so I’m told.

PANEL 6c:

John helps the serving wench with a table. She smiles saucily at him. Francis doesn’t even notice as he goes to sit at another table.

John: Just as long as it wasn’t Moses being found among the rushes. That would’ve been too close to home for me.

Francis: Ah, yes. Your mysterious orphan past. I know better than to pry.

(new bubble): Not too scary with that Solomon scene, though, eh? Don’t want the ladies fainting, do we. Unless it’s for love.

PANEL 6e:

Francis, still not noticing the flirting going on, is pouring a beer from the pitcher on the table.

Winking, John leans over the table to steal a kiss. The serving wench looks like she’s going to respond. No doubt John is thinking of her as he says:

John: Wait till you see the Queen of Sheba’s dance. Should be a real show-stopper.

(new bubble): Mind you, it’ll be Richie in a dress, so that’ll take the edge off.

Francis: Oh, I meant to say, you will get a chance to stage one of your gutsier plays after all. I’ve booked us a performance on the way to Netherford. Just a manor house gig to earn a few crowns.

PANEL 6f:

John jerks his head round to look at Francis, who is holding out a flagon for him. The serving wench is left kissing empty air, lips still puckered but eyes wide in surprise.

John (pensive): Netherford..?

Wench: !

Francis: Yes. Rural folk, you know. They’ll appreciate the Gentleman John Barley touch. I thought “The Death of Pompey”. We’ll use the wax head from “King Herod”.

PANEL 6g:

Extreme close up on John’s expression of shock and dismay.

Francis (out of shot): Crossgate Manor, it’s called.

(new bubble): Ever heard of it?

The dice men cometh

I promised we’d get the skinny on what Jamie has been getting up to. He was reluctant to emerge from his lair and tell me, so I sent Dirk Lloyd round to prod him. Hard.

DIRK: So, you vile tentacled freak, what's this new book project you're working on with Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson?

JAMIE: I've been tapped by my old bosses, Ian Livingstone (or my 'Dark Master' as I call him) and Steve Jackson, to write up the history of one of our country's most iconic games companies, Games Workshop. Well, at any rate, its history up to 1985 or so, when Ian and Steve sold it for a lot of gold pieces. We've launched the book on Unbound.

DIRK: As usual, I'm not really getting what you're talking about. What's Unbound? Is it like Kickstarter?

JAMIE: It's pretty much a Kickstarter for books, but only books and nothing else. Unbound are more involved in the whole end-to-end process than Kickstarter, though. They're more like a crowdfunded publisher than just a commercial process for crowdfunding, if you see what I mean. So, if a given book project gets funded they will also do the printing and distributing of the book, and then sell it afterwards, usually in conjunction with a mainstream publisher. A bit like what we do with our Fabled Lands stuff, though we haven't got the reach or the contacts that Unbound has. Maybe one day!

DIRK: You're so old and decrepit now, like some kind of shambling, Alzheimery troll thing, I'd forgotten you ever actually held down a job. How did you first get involved with Games Workshop?

JAMIE: Hah, now that's a story. Way back when I left university, around 1980, I was flailing about pretty cluelessly trying to work out what to do with my life. I spent most of my time playing a game I'd got recently, in a little white box with three little ochre-coloured booklets inside...

Which I'd bought from GW, as it happens. Along with my White Dwarf mags. Instead of job hunting, I was painting figurines. My mum pointed out an ad for a job as a features editor on that selfsame magazine. I thought to myself I'd have no hope whatsoever of ever getting that job. It would be like a miracle, a dream job, working with people I admired from afar. So I gave up on the idea pretty quick. But my mum had other ideas. She had to get her nerdy, 21-year-old, paint-stained son out of the damn house, as soon as. So she rang Ian Livingstone.

And they chatted, and Ian said sure, send him up for an interview. And I went up there, had the interview, got the job! And that's how I ended up as assistant editor on White Dwarf in the early ‘80s. All thanks to my mum.

DIRK: Watching you dribble your food down the front of your shirt for the umpteenth time, I'm surprised you can remember any of that, let alone the rest of it. But anyway. What sort of stories will be in the book? Can you give us a teaser? And photos, presumably? Fresh young faces with flares and big afro 'dos?

JAMIE: Well, it won't just be how the company developed and grew and so on – the business narrative. There will be a lot of that obviously, but also there'll be stuff like the anecdote about how I got the job, for instance, but not just me. There'll be the experiences of the people that worked there. Sure, mostly Ian and Steve, but there were a whole bunch of other folk back in the day, people I'm still in contact with. Like Gary Chalk, Russ Nicholson, and Joe Dever too, though he's sadly left us now, but I've still got a story or two to put in about him. And a bunch of other folk working for or associated with GW. Including Dave Morris, White Dwarf contributor extra-ordinaire!

Here's a pic from the heyday, 1983. Gary Chalk, me, Steve and Ian front row, middle, with dear old Joe Dever standing behind Gary.

Mind you, most of the book will be the early days, about the start of it all. Like this photo of the first ever customer in the first ever Games Workshop. Apparently that bearded fellow had been queuing all night...

Not to mention all the ins and outs of the directors and the day to day running of the company...

Games Workshop Board Meeting

And we won't be shying away from those controversial moments too…

That's the Mail for you, mind. Hasn't really changed much, has it?

DIRK: Assuming you're actually still capable of writing a book, when will this be out?

JAMIE: That kind of depends on when the funding goals are reached, but probably summer/autumn of next year. To be part of this exciting new venture, and to help me pay my grocery bills for another few months, shoot over to the official Unbound site where you can pledge for a copy of The Dice Men.

DIRK: Never mind your pointless little hobbies. People should spend their money on my darkly glorious works. Or else.

The gods of the earth

I've been recording an episode of Fictoplasm with Tim Harford and host Ralph Lovegrove. If you've never caught one of these podcasts, Ralph and his guests take a story and consider both its literary qualities and how it could be used in a roleplaying game. I recommend them all (my own favourites are the Gene Wolfe and Mike Moorcock episodes) and if you want to hear ours, in which we talk about the Lyonesse novels by Jack Vance, it's right here.

One of the aspects of Lyonesse that we talked about was Vance's use of faerie creatures. They are, in a nutshell, droll, capricious and dangerous, just like fairies in Legend. And that in turn reminded me (there's an end point to this segue, believe me) of John Hagan's comment recently about W B Yeats's take on fairies as angels not good enough to be saved, nor yet bad enough to be damned. So I thought let's get a guest post from Yeats, him being dead and hence entirely biddable. So here it is:

 The Trooping Fairies

 The Irish word for fairy is sheehogue [sidheog], a diminuitive of "shee" in banshee. Fairies are deenee shee [daoine sidhe] (Fairy People).
     Who are they? "Fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved nor bad enough to be lost," say the peasantry. "The gods of the earth," says The Book of Armagh. " The gods of pagan Ireland," say the antiquarians, "the Tuatha De Danan, who, when no longer worshipped and fed with offerings, dwindled away in the popular imagination, and now are only a few spans high."
     And they will tell you, in proof, that the names of the fairy chiefs are the names of the old Danan heroes, and the places where they especially gather together, Danan burying places, and that the Tuatha de Danan used also to be called the slooa-shee [sheagh sidhe] (the fairy host), or Marcra shee (the fairy cavalcade).
     On the other hand, there is much evidence to prove them fallen angels. Witness the nature of the creatures, their caprice, their way of being good to the good and evil to the evil, having every charm but conscience-consistency. Beings so quickly offended that you must not speak much about them at all, and never call them anything but the "gentry", or else daoine maithe, which in English means good people, yet so easily pleased that they will do their best to keep misfortune away from you, if you leave a little milk for them on the window-sill over night. On the whole, the popular belief tells us most about them, telling us how they fell, and yet were not lost, because their evil was wholly without malice.
     Are they "the gods of the earth?" Perhaps! Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of the earth, who have no inherent form but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them. You cannot lift your hand without influencing and being influenced by hoards. The visible world is merely their skin. In dreams we go among them, and play with them, and combat with them. They are, perhaps, human souls in the crucible—these creatures of whim.
     Do not think the faeries are always little. Everything is capricious about them, even their size. They seem to take what size or shape pleases them. Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love, and playing the most beautiful music. They have only one industrious person among them, the lepra-caun --the shoemaker. Perhaps they wear their shoes out with dancing. Near the village of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived among them seven years. When she came home she had no toes; she had danced them off.
     They have three great festivals in the year--May Eve, Midsummer Eve, November Eve. On May Eve, every seventh year, they fight all round, but mostly on the "Plain-A-Bawn" (wherever that is), for the  harvest, for the best ears of grain belong to them. An old man told me he saw them fight once; they tore the thatch off a house in the midst of it all. Had anyone else been near they would merely have seen a great wind whirling everything into the air as it passed. When the wind makes the straws and leaves whirl as it passes, that is the fairies, and the peasantry take their hats off and say, "God bless them".
     On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires are lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the faeries are at their gayest, and sometimes steal away beautiful mortals to be their brides.
     On November Eve they are at their gloomiest, for according to the old Gaelic reckoning, this is the first night of winter. This night they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells, and girls set a table with food in the name of the devil, that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome, for the pooka has spoiled them.
     When they are angry they paralyse men and cattle with their fairy darts.
     When they are gay they sing. Many a poor girl has heard them, and pined away and died, for love of that singing. Plenty of the old beautiful tunes of Ireland are only their music, caught up by eavesdroppers. No wise peasant would hum "The Pretty Girl milking the Cow" near a fairy rath, for they are jealous, and do not like to hear their songs on clumsy mortal lips. Carolan, the last of the Irish bards, slept on a rath, and ever after the fairy tunes ran in his head, and made him the great man he was.
     Do they die? Blake saw a fairy's funeral; but in Ireland we say they are immortal.

Last year (Dave here again now, not W.B.) I started writing a comic set in and around the faerie-haunted Jewelspider Wood. It was to be illustrated by Gary Chalk, but he didn't like the story so that collaboration never came off. Kind of a shame, as it had changelings, undead, faerie curses, forest monsters, and murder, all mixed up with the misadventures of a travelling theatre troupe. If I can find an artist maybe I should get back to it - though really I need to find a way to finish my Mirabilis epic first.

Joe Dever (1956-2016)

Joe Dever died this week. I'm not greatly familiar with his work, but if you're a fan of gamebooks then you will already know much more than I could say anyway. He wrote what must be the most epic gamebook saga ever, and he was probably the first to use an original and fully detailed campaign setting and an ongoing character across multiple gamebooks. A true pioneer of the medium.

We didn't know each other very well. He wasn't part of the roleplaying social circle that included me, Jamie, Oliver Johnson, Mark Smith, Paul Mason and Steve Williams. Joe and I chatted a couple of times back in the '80s about gamebook ideas, but our paths had never crossed before that at Games Workshop, where he and Gary Chalk were working when they came up with Lone Wolf.

Gamebooks were big business then and every publisher was desperate to have their own series or three. I admired the solid design that Joe and Gary put into the underlying mechanics - the clear rules for where inventory was listed on the character sheet, things like that.

There's a tribute to Joe Dever over on Stuart Lloyd's blog and Paul Gresty has written this fan's-eye view of Joe Dever's work, a heartfelt paean to the priceless gift of fantasy that a good author can bestow.

You wait years for a Lone Wolf crowdfunding campaign...

No, not that Lone Wolf project, this one. This one has Gary Chalk art. Oh, but so did the other one. I'll tell you the first thing that sprang to mind:

"Nigel gave me a drawing that said eighteen inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told."

"But you're not as confused as him, are you. I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel."

Actually it's really simple. The other crowdfunder was for a new series of gamebooks set in Magnamund but not starring Lone Wolf. This, on the other hand, is a boardgame and it does star Lone Wolf, along with other famous characters from the books such as Giak Kootak and Rotzon the Cener. (I think that's him below with the big old book and the curtain rod.)

Confused? Maybe you should read Richard S Hetley's guest post about the Lone Wolf Boardgame on Lloyd of Gamebooks. That will explain everything. Go ahead, I'll wait.

What makes this special enough to be worth your hard-earned shards? Well, even if you're not a fan of the Lone Wolf gamebooks, any boardgame designed and illustrated by Gary Chalk is a must. Here's the guy who created the look and feel of Magnamund, who shaped the imagination of a generation of tabeletop gamers with his Games Workshop artwork & game design, and who has illustrated scores of beautiful books. On top of that he's a genuine gaming enthusiast himself with that rare combination: passion and talent, both turned up to 11.

For this Kickstarter campaign, Gary has teamed up with Megara Entertainment, who we might have mentioned before, and Greywood Publishing, the publishers of the very short-lived Fabled Lands RPG. The campaign has just one week left to run, and with your help it can still reach its target. Find out all the details here.

A marvellous night for a moondance

Some news for Lone Wolf fans. Autumn Snow, the new gamebook series set in the LW universe, has raised enough money to go ahead, and now has this appropriately autumnal cover by Gary Chalk. Speaking of which, as the season has come round again, here are my takes on the early, crisp fall and the darker, smoky time after Halloween. More on that tomorrow.

Chalk giant

Any excuse for a classic Gary Chalk cover from the Golden Age of White Dwarf. But it's a good excuse. Gary has got together with the guys at Megara Entertainment to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Autumn Snow: The Pit of Darkness, a new gamebook set in the Lone Wolf universe.

For once it's not Kickstarter but Megara's own home-grown crowdfunding platform. In effect you're pre-subscribing to buy a copy of the book when it's ready, and for 29 euros you'll get a PDF and a black-and-white hardback with two dozen all-new Gary Chalk pics, plus fillers.

The new book is by Martin Charbonneau and features the adventures of a female Kai monk. I mean nun. She begins her adventures by picking a thoroughbred from the monastery stables, so a bit of a risk taker, then - which is just as well, as it looks like this mission will take her to the Darklands and beyond.

Money raised will go towards the purchase of dipthongs, digraphs and apostrophes... but more importantly, to pay for those lovely illustrations, meticulous editing by Richard S Hetley, and the deluxe printing we've come to associate with Megara. Oh, and the whole shebang is being overseen by Joe Dever, who will check every detail to ensure this fits in as an official part of the Lone Wolf canon.

I'll finish with Gary's own words, as he knows this world better than almost anyone:

"It’s great to have the chance to go back to Magnamund again, although this time my drawings will be featuring a new character: Autumn Snow. The servants of the Darklords and the warriors of Sommerlund are some of my favourite subjects, so I’d better start sharpening my pencils." 

Read more about The Pit of Darkness here and you can place your order for a copy here.

Sokara so good

Greywood Publishing have just released the first of twelve supplements for the Fabled Lands role-playing game and, if this one is anything to go by, the series is set to be one of the greatest RPG experiences ever.

The book focuses on Sokara, with city maps, new rules, monsters, characters, items and scenarios. Amazing cartography by the legendary Gillian Pearce, drool-worthy art by a host of luminaries, editing by Andrew Wright and gorgeous layouts by author, typographer, graphic designer, publisher and full-on Renaissance Man, Jamie Wallis.

Naturally I'm going to say I like it, but take a look at the reviews this series is garnering. If you want a quick, comprehensive RPG system that lets the adventure come first, Fabled Lands is the one to pick. And P W Gresty, no stranger to these parts, has serendipitously just posted a Fabled Lands scenario, "Many Happy Returns", on his blog, giving new characters a great jumping-off point for their quests.

Golnir next. And wait till you see the beautiful cover artwork for that by a certain (and even more legendary) Mr Gary Chalk!

Brymstone

Brymstone is a coastal town in north-east Ellesland, close to Thuland's border with Albion. Created originally by Robert Dale as the base for an ongoing campaign, it was suitable for a medium-sized party of characters around 5th rank and was intended to appear in DW Book 7 - except, of course, there was no Book 7. (What is it about those pesky half-dozens?)

A partial version of Brymstone ran in a short-lived fantasy gaming magazine that called itself Red Giant in order to show how it really wasn't overawed by White Dwarf at all. Red Giant appeared in 1990 but lasted only two issues. The RG publishers (one of whom was Gary Chalk, the illustrator of the Lone Wolf books) had no products to sell, unlike their rivals Games Workshop, and of course such a magazine on its own was not going to be self-sustaining. A pity, as it ran some fine articles before gravitational collapse reduced it to neutron dust.

RG's demise left the Brymstone campaign incomplete. And so the material, like the Ophis campaign pack, remains limbo-locked. It was nine-tenths ready for publication, but that last 10% leaves it largely unusable, even in blog form. All the same, I'll try and find some of the material that can work as a standalone. And for a much better (full-colour) map, pop over to Lee Barklam's site The Cobwebbed Forest.