Made to measure

Starting tomorrow and running for the better part of a month, we're going to be bringing you a wealth of development material from Abraxas, our MMOG that never got off the ground at Eidos Interactive but might yet appear in some other form - whether gamebooks or novels or comics we cannot yet say.

Abraxas is the kind of science fantasy world of "ivory, apes and peacocks" more familiar to readers of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E Howard than the muddier medieval milieu of Middle Earth, Warcraft, Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Siege, Torchlight, Guild Wars, The Witcher... Or indeed of Dragon Warriors, come to that, though DW fans will not need me to tell them that it's not quite in the same orcs-n-elves vein as those others.

As for Abraxas: imagine a Cecil B DeMille epic with prehistoric animals, psionics, androids and rayguns, scripted by Leigh Brackett, concepted by Jack Kirby and directed by Zack Snyder. Yes, drugs may indeed help. Here's a look at Russ's costume designs to whet your appetite, and the line-up of articles over the next month is as follows:

March 22: Overview of the continent of Abraxas
March 24-April 2: Cities of Abraxas (5 parts)
April 4: Origins of Abraxas
April 6: Nonhuman races
April 8: Curiosities and artifacts
April 10: Fauna
April 18: Travel by Vadem Causeway
April 22: Ancient ruins
April 24: The Cabiri Archipelago

Blue skies

Following a request by Mike Mielke, we dug out some of our notes for books 7-12, among them some of the codewords that hint at subsequent quests:

Hurl: skin dyed blue, you will be mistaken for a pureblood Uttakin.
Hill: you learnt to dance a spectral minuet from ghosts in Tarshesh.
Hatch: you killed or blinded the giant in his lair in Gigantus Mountains.
Herbal: you are on the mission to rescue Princess Zobeida from the djinn, by order of the Caliph of Pethumar.
Hemlock: you have rescued Zobeida and returned her to the Caliph; you are now on his second quest.
Honour: on a mission for the Lord High Astrologer of the City of Stargazers to get a Kafiya bean.
Hounds: you got a desert orchid for the sultan and were rewarded with an ability bonus.
Hothouse: you got a Kafiya bean and gained a level.

Iota: you committed some crime of which the kirin disapproves.
Ink: you touched the saint on Thunder Peak (you can do it repeatedly).

Judas: you slew a guest at your villa, thereby attracting the ire of the Kindly Ones.

Kink: you did something wrong of which the kirin disapproves.

One of the good things about reworking the books for e-readers is that we can have many more codewords, because the app will handle them instead of you having to. This should allow for a much richer experience with more factors affecting each quest outcome.

The other useful thing to come out of searching out these codewords is that we've come across pretty extensive notes we made all those years ago covering the whole series. So if the e-gamebook versions take off, and build enough of a market to make the remaining six books viable, we have a lot of material now to work with.

Abraxas starts on Sunday. Be here.

Faith and begorrah

A special offer for St Paddy's Day: we're giving away the PDF version of Jamie's first FL novel The Lost Prince for free. Or you can buy the print copy if you don't have enough dead trees already. Both right here.

Marching as to war

Another pic from the Fabled Lands books that shows how much Russ can pull off with just a few, apparently sketchy, pen-strokes. He can work in many different media, but it seems to me that the black-and-white line drawing is his métier.

If we do get to continue the FL series in print, it would be essential to enlist Russ, of course. Starting in just one week's time, we'll be running a series of posts about our Abraxas project and you'll get to see some of Russ's most breathtaking drawings. This is concept art that has never been seen before anywhere and it really takes you on a journey. As I've been sorting through it all, it's like seeing the design work spread out for a blockbuster movie. Six days to go - just be patient...

Art of ice

A brilliant illustration by Russ for one of my Virtual Reality gamebooks, Necklace of Skulls. He had to Tipp-Ex out the little girl's face in the background and redraw it because the art director said the original looked "too oriental". I had just returned from honeymoon in Mexico and Guatemala, where I had seen a lot of Mayan kids, and Russ's original drawing was in fact spot-on.

The same art director on the same series made Russ redraw the Gargan sisters in Heart of Ice. He had them in army-style muscle t-shirts and she wanted them wearing something big and baggy. Which made no sense at all; they were hardbody soldiers and proud of it, not the sort to favor dungarees that gave them the outline of an old floor cushion. If we turn Heart of Ice into an e-gamebook, that'll be the first thing I fix.

Coming up in the next eight weeks or so: the floodgates are open and you'll be seeing masses of Abraxas concept art and world background, followed by more of the Invaders & Ancients books including a never-before-published role-playing scenario. Plus lots more of Russ's amazing art on those and another couple of projects that we've got bubbling away at the back of the Fabled Lands Studio. Less than a week to go now before that all kicks off.

The Heart of Harkun radio serial

UK radio listeners may have fond memories of a fantasy adventure serial of the 1990s. Did it really feature a young wizard from Dweomer questing across the lands of Sokara and Golnir, you may wonder? Well yes, it did indeed, for that serial was penned by Jamie and told the legend of the creation - and near destruction - of the Fabled Lands.

In case you missed it on the radio, we've got the first instalment as an MP3 right here. Be warned, though - it's a 40 Meg download.

Slaves of Sardonyx

Here's some more unearthed material from the Invaders & Ancients campaign setting that was to have formed later books in the Dragon Warriors series. The picture above (by Russ, of course) shows the wharf at Tamary, a depot town halfway up the huge River Ophis where intrepid merchants of the two coldly warring civilizations come to trade.

The nonhuman there is a habdigar. These creatures are slaves of the Ancients, who without them would have been overrun by the Invader race long ago. The habdigars, unlike the Ancients and the Invaders, are of a completely nonhuman evolutionary branch. They are short but thickly set, with powerful muscles running in bands across their back that give them a hunched appearance. They walk upon two long hind legs, using their shorter forelimbs for carrying objects. They have a snout with upcurving tusks and a vestigial horn. The eyes are forward-looking with multiple nictating membranes which filter light in a range of illumination levels. When these membranes are drawn across they make the habdigar's eyes seem to glitter like pearls. The habdigar's auditory organs are set in bony chambers which form a kind of segmented crest running laterally across the top of its head.

The first of the pictures below is by Iain McCaig and depicts a group of adventurers of the Invader race who have been invited to dine in one of the great houses of Sardonyx, the Ancients' capital. You can see a more polished version of this drawing, and some more of Iain's artwork illustrating the Invaders & Ancients world, in his book Shadowline. Hmm, I only just noticed how appropriate that title is, seeing as how so much of the DW2 material was inspired by the works of Joseph Conrad. Iain's way ahead of me as usual.
To close off, an excerpt from The Land Below The Sunset, a novel Oliver and I started writing that was set in the Ophis campaign world. Here are our heroes encountering one of these strange critters for the first time over in the Old City, the ruins across the river from Deliverance that are nowadays used as the Invaders' necropolis. It has been the scene of many a harrowing moment in our games, I can tell you:

The four of them ran along a ruined colonnade and out into dazzling sunshine. They were on a terrace overlooking a vast square. Some way to the right, a dark hunched figure was scurrying down a flight of steps. Every so often it would pause to pick its way slowly past a clump of weeds, and then take a long grasshopper jump that carried it half a dozen steps at a time.

"It's not human!" said Nephithia.

The creature stopped as it reached the square to look back at them. The broken flagstones blazed like polished metal in the sun, making its heavy black features difficult to see. They got an impression of tusks, a bony crest, eyes like black opals. The body was squat, with long backward-flexing legs and small forelimbs.

"A habdigar," said Chendu, out of breath as he caught them up. "The Ancients use them as servants."

From standing poised like a statue, the creature came back to life and bounded along the side of the square. Its path would take it right below where they were standing. Taltivin bent and put his arms around a block of shattered masonry, raising it above his head with a grunt of effort. He stood with muscles bunched. The veins standing out on his neck made it look like the stump of a strong tree. He sucked in a lungful of air, pulled back, and with a great roar flung the rock into space.

The habdigar stopped short at once as it heard the sound, freezing stock still and swiveling its head around. That reflex, which for its ancestors might have been a survival trait, was its undoing. The block of masonry smashed into its shoulders with a muffled crack, pinning it to the ground like a crushed bug. Nephithia grimaced in disgust to see the hideous flurry of its limbs as it jerked over onto its back. The long legs pounded futilely at the air.

Its muscles locked rigid as it gave vent to a long agonized howl that ripped through the silence of the Old City. The howl went on and on and then suddenly stopped, like a trumpet blown until it breaks. The habdigar's body lapsed into spasmodic twitching.

"Shall I get the body, sir?" asked Taltivin without enthusiasm.

His words were all but drowned out. A chorus of howling welled up from every empty window and doorway throughout the derelict buildings across the square. The sound grew, a deafening wave of noise in answer to the dying call of the habdigar that lay squashed on the stones below them. It was not so much terrifying because of any suggestion of danger as for the quality of utter alienness. That strange ululation might not have been a threat, might not even have been a lament for a slain comrade. It came from nonhuman throats, resounded from bony cavities no human skull possessed, had its origin in thoughts and feelings no human could even guess at.