The Marsh God

The Marsh God is a Sword & Sorcery graphic novel written by Bruce Durham and illustrated by Michael "Mikos" Mikolajczyk.  It's the story of the mercenary, Dalacroy, who's the sole-survivor of an ambush.  In making his way through the marsh, he picks up an escaped slave-girl as a companion, and they soon find themselves facing the sort of dangers that Sword & Sorcery protagonists are called upon to face, including the titular god.

When a friend sent me the link to the graphic novel, I didn't realize untl I began reading the sample that it was an adaption of Durham's short-story I'd read way back in the late, lamented Flashing Swords e-zine, when it was under the editorship of Howard Jones, now of Black Gate Magazine.  "The Marsh God" appeared in issue 2 (one of my humble efforts, "God of the Catacombs," appeared in issue 6--there were a number of "gods" and "marshes" in Flashing Swords).

"The Marsh God" is classic Sword & Sorcery in a Howard-esque vein--no big deviations from the formula, but it does what it does well.  Mikolajczyk's art stumbles at times, but when he's on he's got a nice style more illustratorly than most current comic book artists--somewhat reminiscent of Barry Windsor-Smith in his Conan days.  He obviously put a lot of work into the panels.

If the above sounds good to you, you should check it out.  I recommend it.

Warlord Wednesday: The Secret of Skartaris

Let's enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"The Secret of Skartaris"
Warlord (vol. 1) #5 (February-March 1977)

Written and Illustrated by Mike Grell

Synopsis: Morgan and Tara bid farewell to Machiste, and head out for Shamballah with other homeward bound former freedom-fighters. An encounter with a tyrannosaurus forces Morgan and Tara to climb a cliff in hopes of escape. They manage to dislodge a boulder, which crushes the carnosaur, and in the process, they discover a hidden doorway.


Inside, they find a massive computer which, when accidentally activated, reveals the history of Skartarian civilization. Before the sinking of Atlantis, many fled the impending disaster, and one expedition finding its way through the arctic to the entrance to Skartaris. There the Atlanteans built a new civilization, which in time surpassed their previous one, due to eternal daylight unchaining them from sleep/wake cycles based on the sun.

Unfortunately, the city-states they built went to war. In only minutes, their civilization was in ruins. Generations later, the Skartarians began to climb back to "various stages of barbarism," but there also emerged bestial humanoids that had been mutated by lingering radiation. The computer discovered by Morgan and Tara had remained dormant until Deimos' use of the hologram apparatus had activated it.

Further explorations are cut short by the sudden attack of a pack of hyenadons. The animals are dispatched, and the melee leads to the accidental discovery of another tunnel--this one containing a train or shuttle. Morgan theorizes that it once connected all the Atlantean city-states and wants to investigate, but Tara is afraid. Morgan steps inside the train and the door shuts behind him. Neither he or Tara can open it.

The train pulls away, and Morgan is knocked unconscious. When he awakens, the shuttle has reached his destination. He stumbles out...into moonlight. Travis Morgan has returned to the outer earth!
Things to Notice:

• Machiste makes a sly hint as to his fame in Kiro.  This will be dealt with in future issues.
• The Atlantean computer has apparently been recording history since the fall of the civilization that built it, and making a nice documentary on it--for whom?
• Like a lot of pulp heroes, Morgan is easily knocked out, but never has any lasting neurologic damage.

Where It Comes From:

In a way, this issue marks the end to the first "book" of Travis Morgan's saga. Warlord, at least at first, is an adventure narrative following very much in the footsteps of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The usual plot outline, as established in A Princess of Mars, has a hero from our world meeting a princess from the fantastic world where he now finds himself, losing her, then regaining her after overcoming the villain(s). Just as their about to settle down as a happy couple, circumstances contrive to take the hero back to our world, separating him from his love. Burroughs uses this outline again in the first Pellucidar novel, At the Earth's Core. It's repeated in heavily Burroughs-inspired works like Warriors of Mars and Tarnsman of Gor, too.

The next "book" on the Burroughs map will have the hero returning, probably meeting new companions, and questing to find his lost love again. Which is exactly what happens in Warlord.

Returning to the details of this issue, the design of the Atlantean computer center seems to be inspired by some classic film and TV science fiction. Some of the details in the first panel echo the set design of Star Trek: The Original Series and Forbidden Planet. The computer core on page 8 seems an homage to this scene from Forbidden Planet:

The fall of Atlantean society and the degeneration of some of its descendants in non-human forms, echo themes found in pulp fiction, but also common to the post-apocalyptic genre in films (the Planet of the Apes films, Teenage Cave Man), and comics (Mighty Samson).

The dog-like animals that attack Tara and Morgan are referred to as hyaenadons. Grell is correct in dating them, as animals in the hyenadon family were extant from the late eocene. However, he suggests that they were the ancestors of wolves, which is incorrect. Hyaenadons belong to an extinct order of mammals known as creodonts.

Scum and Villainy

"She had to remind herself that he was not much more evil than most evil men."

- Fritz Leiber, "The Cloud of Hate"

Here's a hand full of villains involved in criminal enterprise from the streets of Terminus, last outpost of the fallen Thystaran empire, in the south of the continent of Arn:

Pnathfrem Lloigor: Vintner and boss of dives on the east of the city, between the River Fflish and Lion Street. He’s immensely fat, and balding, but also a dandy, given to dressing in ostentatious silks and gaudy jewelry. His high-pitched voice leads to rumor that he is a eunuch, but it’s an affectation. He enjoys putting off visitors of both sexes with leering glances, and suggestive quotes from his extensive collection of Zycanthine erotic literature.  Physically weak but shrewd, Lloigor might have long ago been displaced, except that he has a cousin in the Thaumaturgists Guild who has been known to come to his aid.

Sodmos Jasp: Bald, jaundiced, and skeletally-thin but for a pot-belly, he suffers from a metabolic malady no doubt caused by alchemical experimentation. He owns fourteen brothels and six pleasure dens on the west side, south of the river and north of Courtesan Street. His hated enemy to the east is Pnathfrem Lloigor. He made his start as a back-alley alchemist, and still carries on a side business selling cheap poisons, noxious contraceptives, and dubious aphrodisiacs. He is protected from enemies real and imagined by his dear, deadly, Saatha.

Saatha: An Amazonian woman in a silken veil and little else. The greenish tint to her skin and the vertical slits of her pupils in her jade eyes suggest otherwise. She wields twin, ornate scimitars which look like they're made of bronze, but are not. Their swift and deadly in her hands. It has been said that she is from a distance world--the Place of the Blood Red Sun, and that she has been bound to the service of Jasp. That's what rumors say. Saatha never speaks.

Tyrus Vaanth: Prominent slaver, and sophisticate. He's well-dressed, cruelly handsome--and just cruel. But never should it be said that he's impolite--unless one's at the end of his rapier. He's called "Whitehands" after the pristine white gloves he habitually wears. He fears contagion and sickness of all kinds. In times of stress he holds a perfumed cloth over his mouth to ward off miasmas. He seldom goes anywhere without his personal physicker, Doctor Panggiss.

Elrood Panggiss: Serves Tyrus Vaanth as both physicker and torturer. He's accent is foreign, but vague. He's rumored to be exiled from the court of some foreign potentate for unspecified crimes. His usually rigid and controlled demeanor hides a heart of sadist. He's addicted to analeptic zauphur which he carries in a silver snuff-box. His use of the stimulant feeds his growing paranoia, and fuels his cold depravity.  He's as proficient with a dagger (always envemoned with an exotic and efficient poison) as he is with scalpel, but considers it beneath him to use it except in direst need.

Handsome Sclaug: Half-ogre enforcer whose scarred visage is the opposite of his nickname.  He made a name for himself as a pit-fighter, but gave that up for for a more lucrative career working for various crime bosses.  He disdains weapons, preferring to use his ham-sized fists, augmented by (perhaps ensorcelled) cesti.  He does talk much, but is said to a pleasant singing voice.

The Gnoll Truth, or, Yeenoghu Looks Like a Lady

Maybe OD&D gnolls were a cross between trolls and gnomes, but the gnolls that have entered the collective gaming unconscious are the anthropomorphic hyenas from AD&D.

It's not a big leap to think that hyena-like qualities should therefore inform gnolls' characteristics. It's been done to varying degrees before, starting back in Roger Moore's article in Dragon #63. I've never seen anyone work through all the implications of this, though. Certainly, it doesn't seem that's anyone's ever given much consideration to the folklore and historic beliefs regarding hyenas.

There are four species of hyena, but gnoll art tends to most commonly make them resemble the spotted hyena. Maybe there are more than one gnoll species, too? Perhaps there's a rare, gentle and insectivorous humanoid aardwolf. Or maybe they're not so gentle and they dine on formians?

Anyway, spotted hyenas are hunters and scavengers. They have powerful jaws and specialized dentition to crush bone--they are reported to outclass brown bears in this regard. They bring down game in packs, but they also follow other predators and steal their kills. They've also been known to dig up recently buried bodies from graves. Hyenas possess the ability to digest all the organic material in a carcass, including bone.

Male spotted hyenas are slightly larger than females, but otherwise there's very little to distinguish the sexes. Interestingly, even the external genitalia is similar due to the female's clitoromegaly (How's that for a conversational factoid?). Hyena clans, in fact, are matriarchal--led by an alpha female with high levels of androgens (male sex hormones).

Hyenas compete from birth. Particularly in same sex litters, neonatal fratricide (siblicide?) is common. Clans are hierarchical, with the pups of dominant females outranking the adult females subordinate to their mother--unless she dies.

Study of the spotted hyena gives us gnolls in matriarchal clans, who are fairly indistinguishable in terms of sex. There are probably some unusual--uh, physical characteristics of female gnolls--I'll leave it to individual GMs to work out the implications of those and how much game time they gets. On firmer ground for a game about killing things and taking stuff, gnolls probably eat their slain foes--bones and all. Also, competition is fierce within the clan, and only the strongest make it to adulthood.

So that's the current state of hyena knowledge, but there are some interesting things to be gleaned from outmoded/folkloric ideas. Take a look at this quote from T.H. White's translation of a twelfth century Latin bestiary, The Book of Beasts:

"[the hyena] is accustomed to live in the sepulchres of the dead and to devour their bodies. Its nature is that one moment is that it is masculine and at another moment feminine, and hence it is a dirty brute...it frequents the sheepfolds of shepherds and walks around the houses of a night and studies the tone of voice of those inside with a careful ear for it is able to do imitations of the human voice."

Again there's the link between hyenas and the dead; between gnolls and ghouls, both under the demon-lord Yeenoghu's purview. But how do we make sense of the rest of it?

Well, maybe all gnolls are skilled vocal mimics. Perhaps their shaman's are gifted by their god to imitate the voices of others?

And the sex switch? Given the unclear separation of sexes among his people--and their matriarchal nature--I suspect Yeenoghu is a hermaphrodite, or perhaps genderless, but probably referred to by gnolls with a feminine pronoun (if their language has such a thing). Yeenoghu is a consummate trickster then, not even willing to stick to one gender. Possibly, gnoll shamans follow their god's/godess' lead and go by the pronoun of the other sex, symbolically becoming like their deity. Maybe hermaphrodites are especially holy?

There you have it: gnolls informed by hyenas in fact and folklore. Who'd of thought hyena-men could so easily out weird troll/gnome hybrids?

Wizards Three and the Apportioning of Loot

Amid the works constantly updated in the Library-University of Tharkad-Keln is an encyclopedia of famous, or infamous, mages. In its pages, one may find the likes of Kulu, Urthona, and of course, Yzorddathrexes.

Among the lesser--but no less interesting--arcane practitioners are the three wizards from the tavern tale "The Apportioning of the Loot." While we'll not concern ourselves with a recitation of that tale here, the strange events in the life of its principles are worthy of consideration, if for no other reason than they underscore the dangers of the thaumaturgical arts.

Kodos Nharn: Youngest of the three wizards, Nharn was a voluptuary, or (self-proclaimed) aesthete of worldly pleasures. He and Elberond Turms had quarrelled over a wand of exquisite workmanship and obvious sorcerous potency, and might have come to violence over it, had not Yrrol Othus interceded with a compromise. Turms got the wand, and Nharn two other items--a scroll and a jeweled bracelet. The bracelet he sold to pay off the debts accrued from his extravagant lifestyle. The scroll he kept, as he found it to be an item unchronicled in any catalog of arcane antiquities he consulted.

It was only seen once by anyone other than Nharn, as far as is known. A servant reported it to be a painting of an audience room of a sort, well-appointed, wherein a voluptuous, darkhaired woman in diaphonous green robes reclined on a great couch upon a dais. She was attended by beautiful youths of both sexes, also attired in diaphonous tunics. There was a sorcerous aspect to the painting in that, the servant averred, it looked like a scene from life somehow frozen in time rather than an artifact of brush and paint.

Nharn took the painting to his private chamber and it was never seen again. Nharn seldom emerged from his chamber thereafter, except to call from something from his servants. It was said that sounds of feasting and merriment, and strange music could be heard coming from the room, and sometimes unmistakably, more--primal--sounds of pleausure emerged. Yet no one but Nharn was ever admitted to the room.

This went on for a year. Then, on the night of midsummer, in the small hours, a beautiful, darkhaired woman emerged from the room. In a strange accent, but unmistakable tone of command, she released the servants from their duties. Then, she disappeared into the night. Nharn's creditor's took the house and all his belongings, including a weirdly realistic painting of a thin and dissipated Nharn, lolling drunkenly on a great couch, surrounded by sunken-eyed youths. This last item was purchased at auction by an anonymous collector, and has never been seen again.

Elberond Turms: A wizard of middling talent, but of some renown for his highly developed sense of fashion. Thanks to his wit and style, Turms was frequent a guest of the nobility. Turms was given a wand of exceedingly fine make from the haul. This wand increased his abilities several fold, and with its powers, combined with the patronage of his social connections, Turms established himself in Zycanthlarion. Turms was quit successful for many years, and the wand was seldom out of his hands. He was seen to talk to it at times, perhaps even argue with it. This eccentricity did little to harm him socially, but not so an ill-considered comment made publicly.

Perhaps under the influence of too much Trosian wine, Turms compared himself favorably with Yzorddathrexes. Though the archmage had not been seen for centuries, his Eidolon Tower still appeared above the city, and at intervals its base appeared in its streets. The tower and its master evoked a good deal of superstitious dread. Fearing sorcerous retribution for the insult, high society began to shun Turms, who soon turned to mind-numbing drugs to ease his own anxieties. First ostracized, then reclusive, Turms had vanished from Zycanthlarion altogether within months of the comment. A ragged street mountebank meeting Turms description (if one allows for the ravages of self-abuse) drowned (or was perhaps fatally bitten by a river-shark, accounts differ) in the town of Eelsport, after a lengthy argument with the fancy scepter he gripped tightly, even into death. Zycanthlarion society is still divided on whether the great Yzorddathrexes ever redressed the insult or not. The wand presumably lies in an unmarked grave still held in a moldering hand.

Yrrol Othus: Oldest and wisest of the three, it is said, Othus was not given to weaknesses of carnality, vanity, or over-ambition. To Othus, the supreme pleasure of the arcane arts was in acquiring knowledge. He chose from the treasures a potion--transparent in color, but given to producing prismatic eddies and oil-slick iridescence when shaken or swirled. The substance in the vial is now know by alchemical sages to have been phantasmagoric ahlzo. Uncharacteristically rash ingestion of the liquid led Othus to be able to perceive the noumenal planes and their denizens intersecting our own world unseen. Leading to even greater disorientation, he began to perceive the seething, chaotic maelstrom which arcane philosophers hold forms the multiverse's substratum. Alternately driven to horror and ecstasy by these visions, Othus eventually sought out the Harlequin Mage, and with that insane dwarf as a guide is said to have descended into a green-lit subterranean realm where the roiling, gelatinous dream-fragment of a dead, chaos god-thing was to be found.

No one knows, of course, what became of him, but two schools of thought predominate. One holds that he was there subsumed into the insane godhead and exists now only as a ephemeral fancy in that unfathomable mind. The other theorizes that he retains his form and individually and stays as the deity's sole worshipper, receiving its whispered, incoherent pronouncements for eternity.

Of Weird and Wonder

Media of the fantastic, it seems to me, has two primary modes for evoking encounter with the numinous. I've been thinking of these, of late, as "weird" and "wonder."

Okay, in one sentence that's probably more lit-theory words than a guy with a biology degree should be allowed to use in a day (even on the internet) but indulge me, dear reader...

"Weird" we sometimes think of as a genre, as in "weird fiction" or "the weird tale" (or Weird Tales). HP Lovecraft adopted the term from Sheridan le Fanu, and defines it in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature":

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

As ST Joshi points out--and as a review of weird fiction reveals--weird can pervade several different traditional genres: horror (of a couple of different stripes), fantasy, ghost stories, and science fiction. A related form is the French literary genre of fantastique which is about supernatural incursion into realist narrative.

I think this gets at the key to weird. It's about things which are unnatural (or perhaps suggest a radically different interpretation of nature). The occurrence of these events is often transgressive or surreal. They can be used to evoke horror, or unreality, or decadence --maybe all three--depending on the context. I think this is perhaps succinctly analogized by one of the character's in Machen's "The White People": "...how awful it is. If the roses and the lilies suddenly sang on this coming morning..."

Weird is the Garden of Adompha, the city of Xuthal, the Horla, and The King in Yellow. It's also the Gray Caps, fungoid overlords of Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris, and the red-curtained room with the oddly speaking dwarf in Twin Peaks.

"Wonder" encompasses what, in the discussion of science fiction, is called "sense of wonder," and in comic books is called "mad ideas." It's about the rush of understanding--or often just confronting--a novel concept, or an old concept in a radically new context. It's a response to encountering the sublime--at its purest its the sense of awe. It's an experience of the supernatural in a context of reverence, in the literal sense of greater than nature. As Damon Knight wrote, it's "the widening of the mind's horizons, in no matter what direction."

Wonder hasn't been identified as cleanly in the literature as weird. It really comes into its own in film where visual effects (special and otherwise) combine with calculated musical selection to push us in its direction.

Wonder is Lothlórien, Shai-Hulud, and "My God--its full of stars!" It's Jack Kirby's New Gods, Avatar's flying mountains, and Gaiman's Dream confronting Lucifer Morningstar in Hell.

While weird evokes the paranormal and "negative" qualities, wonder evokes the transcendent and "positive" qualities.

An interesting question, I think, is can these sensations be evoked in gaming?

Certainly, I feel like weird can. I think since the earliest days of the hobby, adventure writers and creature designers have groped for it. The blogosphere is full of efforts to bring it to bear, many successfully. I think its more than a matter of aping nineteenth century gothic lit, or 1930s pulp fiction, though. Some of those elements are too familiar. Borrowing of ideas from newer sources like fiction of the New Weird, the films of David Lynch, or some foreign horror films (euro- or j-) will probably do the trick. Kenneth Hite's works on gamemastering horror would also probably prove instructive.

Wonder is a bit tougher. Without visuals, it hinges on appropriate description--which is tough to do off the cuff and without knowing where the audiences' heads are going to be at the moment the description is delivered. The comic book approach of "mad ideas" where there's less focus on the centerpiece scene, and more on a flood of the "impossible" (or at least the kind of trippy) to create a similar effect. If you can't describe the city in overview in such a way that your player's are in awe, you can whittle them down with a lot of "smaller" amazing things as they're coming into town. The risk, of course, is in overdoing it, and making the interesting things too common-place.

Forgotten Fantasy: Along Came A Spider...

Today, Jim of the Flashback Universe, a friend of mine and player of Brother Gannon in my current game, steps up to offer a defense of a book from an era in fantasy literature I usually dismiss...

Back in February, when Trey posted his nice Forgotten Heroes of Sword and Sorcery, I somehow reimagined the singular article as a new series of posts and quickly promised to contribute something the series.

Trey was quick to bring to my attention that the article was not a new series, but was simply a standalone post. Still, that didn't keep him from accepting my offer to contribute to this site. So, I present today a sequel to a post that didn't really need one: an examination of another Forgotten Hero of Sword and Sorcery – Dar elLan Martak, the champion of Robert E. Vardeman's Cenotaph Road series.

March 2010 marks the 27th anniversary of Robert E. Vardeman’s Cenotaph Road – not necessarily the type of anniversary one makes note of typically. You can either call me early to the 30th anniversary or late to the 25th, but be that as it may, the first book in the series was originally published in March 1983, so there you go.

Prior to the Cenotaph Road, Vardeman’s main claim to fame was that he was co-author on the War of Powers series with Victor Milan. While I can’t really tell you how will War of Powers series sold,  it seems it’s modest success during what many consider a lean time in the Fantasy genre, coupled with a resurgence of interest in the genre was a enough to convince publisher Ace to green light a series of books on which Vardeman would be the sole author.  In total the Cenotaph Road series runs over five novel , and Vardeman used the series to revisit two characters he had first presented in a short story called "The Mating Web" in the Offutt-edited Swords Against Darkness III back in 1978. These characters were the previously mentioned Dar, a sort of reckless ranger type of character and a huge 12-foot spider named Krek.

While this pairing of adventurer and giant spider had been seen before in the pages of Piers Anthony’s Castle Roogna, Vardeman’s original short story presenting the idea predates Castle Roogna by a good five years. Interestingly enough, the hero in Castle Roogna is named Dor. Make of that what you will.

"The Mating Web" was not the only story Vardeman reused in the making of the first Cenotaph Road novel, as chapters one and two were appropriated from a short story called "The Road to Living Death" that appeared in Shadows Of in 1982. As one might suspect, the weaving together of old short stories into the larger framework of a novel was not entirely successful, with the first two chapters introducing characters and information that seem unnecessary at best and incongruous at worst.

At its best, the book had the light breezy feel of an author exploring concepts he had long thought about over years of crafting short stories. Once one gets past the haphazard first two chapters wherein the hero's paramour and sister are raped and killed in different circumstances, the story slowly starts to find its true tone, which is a sort of cross between the Robert Asprin Myth Adventures series and the Dragon Knight novels of Gordon Dickson, with maybe a little of the driving pace one might see in the works of Jack L. Chalker. The primary plot of the first books is a bit simplistic, but it belies a more intricate and insidious subplot that will unfold over the course of the series.


Why has this series never been republished?  I don't think we have to look any further than the inscrutable character of Dar. While the story is told from his point of view, I’ll be damned if you ever really get to know the character. Mostly that’s because he seems to sort of just act as a plot device to move you from one scene to another rather than be a fully fleshed out character.

Early on we are told he is good natured and the local sheriff views Dar like his own son. Yet in the same chapter, it is suggested Dar is not only no stranger to violence but that he has no trouble killing his opponents. I guess the sheriff could come from a really bloodthirsty family, but the two descriptions still seem a little at odds to me.

We are also told Dar possesses unparalleled woodsman skills honed from years of experience in the woods, but within the same chapter we are told Dar was able to decipher ancient runes on crypt which have escaped interpretation by scholars for ages.  Again, this seems like an unlikely pairing of character traits.

Possibly his worst sin is that Dar is just sort of boring. Despite him being the hero of the novel, you hardly care when at the end of chapter one he has been framed for murder.

I’ll be honest, if it weren’t for the promise of a giant spider that appeared on the cover, I doubt my 20 year-old self would have ever finished the series.

Fortunately, if you hang tough for another chapter, you will be rewarded when Dar resigns himself to a life traveling to distant worlds via the dimensional gateways that mystically appear at unmarked gravesites, from which series takes its name. For it is on the Cenotaph Road that Dar meets the real star of the series, Krek, the giant spider from the Egrii Mountains.

The character of Krek is just flat out awesome. Too chicken to stay and provide a meal for his mate, the monsterously huge Klawn, Krek has fled his beloved mountain home in search of adventure but throughout the series, he suffers from a bouts of guilt for having betrayed his arachnidian nature. Of all the characters in the first book, Krek feels like the best fleshed out. He is a nice combination of whiny Doctor Zachary Smith from Lost in Space and appalled Spock from Star Trek. His constant indignation at the fraility of humans and their inability to comprehend spider cultural bugaboo are the best thing in the book. He also makes for an interesting action character as all of the best battle scenes center around Krek.

On the flip side, there are times when seems like Vardeman doesn’t quite understand the enormity of Krek as a character, and because of this, some of the humor bits fall a bit flat. In one scene where in Dar is lamenting his inability to penetrate a huge fortress, he fumes when Krek finally reminds him that as a spider, he can easily scale the castle walls. Ha ha! Of course! How could he forget!

Taken as a stand alone story, the first book ends well enough, with some nice plot twists and character moments. If Vardeman’s weakness was cardboard characterizations, his strength was his well thought out plot, sense of humor and innovative ideas. As the series progresses, with the exception of some rather awkward sexual situations in the third book, it builds nicely on the character of Dar and his relationship with Krek. That the series has never been republished in some collected edition is a crime.

For while I can’t really blame you for never having heard of Dar elLan Martak, that you have never enjoyed the witticisms of Krek is a shame.

Turns out Vardeman's second Cenotaph Road novel was titled The Sorcerer's Skull!  Small world.