Glorantha - durulz

The durulz are a proud and ancient peoples. They have lived in Dragon Pass since long before the arrival of humans. They are devout worshippers of the Storm Tribe, and many durulz are Swords of Humakt, the god of death. Sadly, they are also ducks. Not even anthropomorphic ducks, but more like Carl Banks-style cartoon ducks. It’s not known if the durulz were humans who were cursed to be birds or the other way around. The durulz certainly don’t remember. They have a long and painful history of being mistreated by the Orlanthi, who either do not take them seriously or do not recognise them as fellow worshippers of the Storm Tribe. They live by the Creak-Stream River, which is often dangerous due to its proximity to the undead-haunted Upland Marsh. Prince Sartar did take the ducks seriously and forged a strong alliance with them. He even erected the city of Duck Point to open up trade and communication channels with ducks and other beastmen. As part of an ongoing campaign to weaken resistance in Dragon Pass, the Lunar general Fazzur Wideread instituted the Duck Hunt: any clan that offers up a duck corpse gets a year free of taxes. This has angered the ducks, but they are still loyal to the House of Sartar. It’s an easy mistake to underestimate the ducks, but don’t be fooled. Generations of living near the Upland Marsh have turned many of the durulz into deadly warriors, and the cult of Humakt is a major one in duck culture.

Terry Pratchett interview in The Onion, 1995

 (x)


O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?


Terry: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.


O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.


Terry: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.


O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.


Terry: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus.


Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.


Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.


(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY

https://newedgeswordandsorcery.com/

What is “New Edge Sword and Sorcery”?

New Edge Sword & Sorcery takes the genre’s virtues of its outsider protagonists, thrilling energy, wondrous weirdness, and a large body of classic tales, then alloys inclusivity, mutual creator support, a positive fan community, and enthusiastic promotion of new works into the mix.

It’s also a short fiction magazine…
…dedicated to the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre of Fantasy speculative fiction. Each issue features several original short stories each with their own B&W illustration, as well as non-fiction articles and interviews covering subject matter related to the past, present, and future of Sword & Sorcery.

Glorantha

Glorantha is a fantasy world created by Greg Stafford. It was first introduced in the board game White Bear and Red Moon (1975) by Chaosium, and thereafter in a number of other board, roleplaying and computer games, including RuneQuest and HeroQuest, as well as several works of fiction and the computer strategy game King of Dragon Pass. The Gloranthan world is characterised by its complex use of mythology, heavily influenced by the universalist approaches of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, its Howardian ethos, its long and distinctive history as a setting for role-playing games, its community development and expansion, and (unusual among early American fantasy role-playing games) its relative lack of Tolkienesque influence.

Fire and Blood

Fire and Blood is a planned complete history of House Targaryen by George R. R. Martin.


Thus far, Fire and Blood is known to contain the following texts:
The Sons of the Dragon
Heirs of the Dragon
The Dying of the Dragons
Aftermath — The Boy King and His Regents

Sparhawk

20 years

Open, locks, whoever knocks!