The wildman

His name is Balor Gruff. He’s nearly seven feet tall. Where he comes from, originally, is unknown. He was found by an Errantry patrol as a baby, abandoned or lost in the forest, and was brought back to Fable, where he was cared for and raised. He was given the last name of Gruff because this was the only sound he made as a baby. As for his first name, one of the Errantry knights thought that this odd-looking creature resembled a dog he’d had as a child, named Balor.

It wasn’t clear to anyone what race or species Gruff belonged to, so he was just known by the catch-all term “wildman.” He certainly looked wild enough, with his shaggy hair and a face that has been described as a cross between a lion and an ill-tempered pug dog.

Balor embraced the name of wildman. The alternatives were not to his liking, especially the word “ogre,” which he often hears people whispering in fear as he goes by.

Those who know him well don’t bother about what to call him. What matters to them is that Gruff is a knight of the Errantry, a friend who has proven his courage and loyalty on many occasions. There are times when he can be impulsive, and reckless, but his heart is in the right place.

If there are any other wildman living in the Realm, Balor Gruff has never met any of them, though he would like to, so that he would no longer have to alone in the world. And then he would find out for certain just what, or who, he is.

 Image by T Wharton

Ammon Brax

The mountain had been carved in ages past by a forgotten people into the likeness of a great head. A head with eyes staring blindly into the sky and a mouth open in awe or horror or some other emotion that only the long-dead stonecarvers understood.

The young man with jet black hair and a long, sharp-boned face climbed the steep, narrow stair that led to the mouth of the vast head. He carried nothing but a slender walking stick of polished oak.

As he entered the cave of the mouth he opened the wings of his cloak. A pale green light came from the inner lining of the cloak and lit his way through the darkness of the tunnel. Small, skittering creatures fled the light and his footsteps.

He passed several piles of human bones but scarcely gave them a glance. The tunnel branched into many tunnels, and the young man paused for a moment, tilting his head as if listening, before he made his choice and went on.

In a chamber deep inside the mountain he found what he sought. Before him stood a naked giant of a man. Or rather, two halves of a giant man. This was the terrible Zofim, the One Torn in Two.

The two halves of Zofim were busy arguing over the thigh bone of the last treasure-seeker who had dared to enter the giant’s lair. When the young man appeared the two halves dropped the bone and turned their one eye each at the interloper. The two halves of Zofim’s mouth grimaced and slavered. Then both halves of Zofim moved toward the young man.

With one leg apiece you might imagine that Zofim’s halves had to hop awkwardly in order to get anywhere. In fact, over the centuries Zofim’s bony feet had elongated into grotesque handlike extremities, the toes so long and splayed out that they could crawl spiderlike over the stones. The halves of Zofim didn’t hop. They came gliding across the floor, each on one leg, their one foot like a taloned spider upon which they rode.

When they were inches from the young man and towering over him, they stopped and moved closer together. Close enough that their two halves of a face touched and formed one face with a red gash down the middle. This was the only way Zofim’s lips and tongue could form words.

“Did you bring it?” the hideous mouth growled.

The young man nodded. He slipped a small glass vial out of an inner pocket of his glowing cloak. Zofim leaned forward expectantly.

“I hope you remember our bargain,” the young man said. “In exchange for making you whole again, you give me half your treasure.”

Zofim’s bifurcated mouth scowled.

“We remember,” he said.

The young man held out the bottle. Zofim’s two hands grasped for it, pulled out the cork, then poured its thick syrupy contents over his tangled, blood-crusted locks. As the clear fluid ran slowly down the two halves of the giant’s face, neck and chest, it followed the red gash. The fluid traveled the length of his scabbed and filthy frame.

At last it was done. Zofim touched the middle of his face, then his chest tentatively. He strained to pull himself apart, but could not. The red gash still traveled the length of his body, but it was a scar now. The giant was whole. The One Torn in Two was One again.

 “And now,” the giant said, grinning, “you die.”

He reached for the young man, but Zofim’s legs refused to move. He looked down, snarling. His feet were stuck to the stones of the chamber.

“The Honey of Binding is a very tricky substance to use safely,” the young man said. “It will make anything one with anything else. I noticed that some of the honey made it all the way down your legs and to the floor. In a few moments you will be One with the mountain itself. You will be flesh merged with stone.”

The giant’s eyes grew wide with terror. He struggled and roared and foamed at the mouth. The young man stood nearby, watching. A short time later the giant was completely still, his eyes staring blindly upward, his mouth open in what was decidedly horror. And rage. And agony.

“Why settle for half the treasure when one could have it all,” the young man said. His voice was calm but hands were shaking and his brow slick with sweat. It had cost him much to hide his fear from the giant.

The young man was an apprentice mage from the island of Kyning Rore, but he had grand dreams. He was determined to become Archmage of the High Council someday, and he knew it would take as much gold as it would actual spellcraft to raise himself to that eminence. Gold opened doors, and bought allies, and silence. Gold was more important than spellcraft, which he had never been the best at anyhow. Even the teacher he looked up to the most, Nicholas Pendrake, had lost faith in him and refused to teach him all he knew.

Once he had found and gathered up the giant’s gold, Ammon Brax returned to the motionless giant for a final farewell.

“It’s time we went our separate ways,” he said. “Some of us, anyhow.”

Riddle

What is Riddle? A shapechanger, a creature of Story without a story of his own. He (if Riddle is a he) hid for years in the Forest of Eldark, waylaying travelers and forcing them to play his crazy riddle game, in the hope someone could tell him who or what he really is and where he came from. 

  

Those who saw him or were lured by him into his hidden grove in the forest called him the Woodwraith and feared him. Some said he was a bat, others saw him as an owl, and others as a wildcat climbing among the tree branches. As a shapechanger, of course he could be any of these creatures and more.

Riddle can take on the characteristics of whatever creature he shapes himself as. As a cat, Riddle is convincingly catlike, and yet there remains something uncanny and strange about him. 

Can this creature of many shapes be trusted?

The Marrowbone Brothers

There were three of them to begin with: Tuck, Hodge and Flitch. Three little pigs. When they were still quite young their mother drove the brothers out of the muddy wallow that had been their home, and they had to fend for themselves.

They got on well for a while, but then a garm-wolf picked up their trail and began to stalk them.

Tuck was killed by the garm-wolf, and Hodge and Flitch went on without their older and wiser brother. They might have been all right in the end, but something else happened to them on their travels: the two remaining Marrowbone Brothers got too close to an outbreak of werefire, and it changed them. It turned them into creatures of malice and hunger. It changed them from talking pigs into hogmen, vicious trolls with an appetite for human flesh. And it was in that form that Will Lightfoot encountered them in the sewers under the city of Skald.

Add caption

Nicholas Pendrake

The streets of the city were alive with music and colourful banners and cheering crowds. War had been declared against a nearby kingdom and the people of the city were happy. They loved war.  They loved it, that is, as long as the messy, bloody part took place somewhere else.

And now the latest host of young men and women, shining and beautiful in their bright new armour, were riding off to fight for the honour and glory of their city. One of them was a young man named Nicholas Pendrake.

As a boy Nicholas had learned woodcarving from the old man who looked after his family’s garden. Nicholas became very skilled at carving wonderfully detailed figures of animals and birds out of unlikely scraps of wood, but of course such a talent was of no use to one who was being groomed for knighthood.

Like most of his friends Nicholas had caught war fever early in life, and when he was old enough he put away his carving tools and learned to wield a sword.  And now, on his seventeenth birthday, war had been declared and he and his friends were riding at last to glory.

The battle was brief but savage. Hundreds of young men and women were injured. Many lost their lives. The stream that lazily trickled through the valley ran foaming and red. Nicholas took an arrow in the side and lay on the battlefield through the night, thirsty, cold, and in agony. He screamed for someone to help him, screamed until his voice went hoarse, but it was well after dawn before he was found by his comrades and taken home.

The war ended and little changed, except for the rows of fresh mounds in the graveyard on the hill. The people of the city were already dreaming and planning for the next war. Nicholas was young and strong and his body healed quickly, but his former brightness of spirit did not return. He avoided his friends and took to wandering the woods and hills around the city.

One day his father’s mother, whom he had never met, came to see him. All that Nicholas knew about her was that she lived in some small, far-off, unimportant place called Fable, and that his parents seldom spoke about her. On the rare occasions they mentioned Nicholas’s grandmother they seemed afraid of her, and he had never known why.

The old woman was a surprise to Nicholas. She was cheery and quick-witted and laughed a lot. One day she took Nicholas for a walk and asked him what he hoped to do with his life. To his own surprise Nicholas found himself confessing his feelings to this woman he hardly knew.

“I thought I knew what I wanted in life,” he said. “Everyone told me I was meant to be a soldier, a fighter, and I believed it. But it was what they wanted, not what I really wanted. I just didn’t see it.”

“You were told a story,” his grandmother said, “and you believed it was the only one. That happens to a lot of people.”

Then she told him a story of her own. A story about another war, one that had happened so long ago few remembered it. That war, Nicholas’s grandmother told him, was not over some trumped-up grievance between one city and another. It was not an excuse to steal another nation’s wealth. It was not about glory. It was a war to keep the world from losing its stories.

“Why haven’t I heard about this?” Nicholas asked when his grandmother had finished. “How do you know about it?”

“I know because I have tended the weave of stories that is our world, as loremasters have for many ages.”

“Loremasters?” Nicholas asked. “What are they?”

“You are one yourself,” the old woman said cryptically. “Only you don’t know it. There have been loremasters in our family for many generations. Your parents feared that you would follow in the craft, and so they left Fable and hid the truth from you. I cannot blame them, for they did it out of love. The life of a master of lore is a dangerous one, even more dangerous than that of a soldier.”

When it was time for his grandmother to return home, Nicholas asked to go with her.

And so began the apprenticeship  of Nicholas Pendrake the loremaster.  But it was also the apprenticeship of Pendrake the toymaker. Like many a keeper of stories before him, he found that he needed another trade to earn his daily bread. And so he took up carving again, and made wonderful toys for the children of Fable.

When he was older Nicholas returned to his native city and brought his old rusted armour back with him to Fable. He kept it on display in the library of his toyshop, as a reminder of the folly of believing that only one story can be true.

Shade

Shade began life somewhere far to the northwest of the Bourne, as an ordinary wild wolf, before the Great Unweaving changed the Realm. He was the leader of a pack of wolves that hunted in the forests and tundra of the north, and at that time he had no name, nor did he have the ability to speak. He was an utterly wild wolf who had never met a human being nor suspected the existence of such a creature. For the wolves the greatest joy in life was the hunt. Shade and his pack hunted many animals, including the great, caribou-like deer called the tarand.

Then creatures of a kind the wolves had never met before began to appear in their territory. They were Nightbane in the service of Malabron, and they had come to trap wolves. For the first time,  Shade's pack found themselves running and hiding from something that was hunting them. But the Nightbane weren't out to kill wolves for sport or trophies (as some supposedly intelligent humans still do today). They were trapping the wolves in order to twist and mold them into nightmare creatures who would do their bidding, who would hunt and kill other Storyfolk on command (much as the conquistadors used vicious dogs in their battles with the indigenous peoples of the Americas).


Shade's mate was trapped by the Nightbane. She fought so fiercely against captivity that the Nightbane were forced to kill her. Shade caught up to them and killed many of them, but they wounded him very badly and he escaped into the forest to die. How he lived, and became a companion of the Stewards and was given speech and a name, and in time became the friend and protector of Will Lightfoot, is told in The Shadow of Malabron.

The Fair Folk

The Perilous Realm is the world of Story, and so it is no surprise that the Fair Folk are known in many stories throughout the realm by many different names.

The Fae. The Xian. The Sidhe. The Nunnehi. The Tylwyth Teg. The Aziza...

One could say that each storyworld sees and knows the forms and faces of the Shee in its own way. Each is one facet of the truth about these wise and mysterious beings, a truth which is wider and deeper than any one story can contain. The Fair Folk can appear tall and lordly. They are also “the wee folk.” They can be menacing and terrifying to behold. They can look so much like you and me that we would never suspect we had just met one of them. They can become thin and insubstantial enough to hide between the covers of a book. They can be nothing more than a voice telling an old tale by the fire.

In the novels of The Perilous Realm trilogy, the Fair Folk are sometimes referred to as the Tain Shee.

No one knows how long the Tain Shee lived in Eleel and the lands around it before the Great Unweaving. After the capture of their city and the destruction of their homeland, the Tain Shee fled and went into hiding from the Night King, and in time they became known as the Shee n’ashoon, or the Hidden Folk. (The name shee n’ashoon literally means “the shoeless people” and refers to their ability to pass unseen and unheard and leave no tracks).

What is also unclear is whether the Fair Folk are immortal. It seems that they once were, in the timeless time at the beginning of the Realm, but that mortality entered their world along with Story itself. They may live far longer than human beings, but even the Fair Folk must die and return to the Weaving, along with everything else.

The Hidden Folk travel in what is known to some as the Green Court, a moving city of tents and pavilions that is glimpsed at rare times by wanderers in wild, unpeopled lands and on the shores of lonely seas.

In the coming struggle to prevent the Night King from devouring all of Story, the Hidden Folk may be forced to reveal themselves at last to their ancient enemy, and march into his Shadow Realm. But the Stewards are no more and so this time the Shee will have to march alone against the Night King.

 Painting: Riders of the Sidhe by John Duncan.

The Nightwanderer and the Raven

Moth is an archer of the Shee. He is known to some as the Nightwanderer. His companion is the raven Morrigan. She has the ability to speak in a guttural language of croaks, squawks and tongue-clicks that only Moth can understand.

Moth and Morrigan have not always been shadowy wanderers. Long ago, before the Great Unweaving, they lived with their people, the Tain Shee, in the city of Eleel off the coast of the Western Sea. Their names then were Arthan and Seelah.

Their father, Lirr, was a shipbuilder and mariner of the Shee. Their mother was Lysse, a weaver. After his children were born, Lirr gave up his seafaring, but he soon grew restless and tired of home life. Eventually he built a new ship and sailed away in it. Neither he nor his his crew of the Shee’s finest mariners were ever seen again.

Arthan and Seelah grew up with their mother. It was from Lysse that Seelah learned the craft of weaving, though she quickly surpassed her mother in skill. As a boy Arthan was wild and reckless. Like his father he was given to long journeys by himself, though he shunned the sea and always turned his steps inland, to explore other places within the Realm itself. He had many adventures during his travels, but his curiosity and impulsiveness got him into trouble often.

It's said that Arthan found paths that brought him into our world, and even more dangerous places. Once he was trapped by a vain and vindictive sorcerer-queen who bound him with a powerful spell and kept him as a servant. He was forced to do her bidding, stealing treasures and trinkets she fancied, and working mischief and mayhem on those she disliked (it is possible that something of this time in Moth’s life has reached our world in garbled fashion, in the stories of mischievous sprites and elves, as in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) Once Arthan finally escaped the queen’s clutches, he forever after had a loathing for sorcery of any kind, and an even stronger desire to remain free and unbound by anyone or anything, even the laws and customs of his own people.

Lysse was troubled by her son’s long absences, fearing he might leave one day and never return, as her husband had. She persuaded Thur, the Shee’s greatest metalsmith, to take Arthan as an apprentice. The boy chafed against the smith’s stern, demanding authority and master and apprentice quarreled often. But Arthan did learn the metalworking trade. Perhaps from a desire to outdo his master, Arthan applied himself to the craft with such diligence that in time the Shee were asking for his handiwork, not Thur’s.

For her part, Seelah remained at home with their mother, learning and growing in skill as a weaver. She missed her brother when he left on his long solitary wanderings, and wished to go with him, but the craft she was dedicated to demanded almost all of her time. Her woven cloths and tapestries became widely known and praised among the Shee, and once a young prince of the Shee named Lotan came to her house, to request the cloth for a fine traveling cloak. He visited her every day while she worked on the cloak, and by the time it was ready, Seelah and Lotan had fallen in love. Arthan heard of this and made a rare visit to his mother’s house to meet Lotan. The meeting did not go well. Arthan learned that Lotan dabbled in spellcraft, and he took a dislike to the prince that was quickly reciprocated. Seelah was saddened that her beloved and her brother, both so proud and headstrong, could not overcome their mutual dislike for her sake, and their own.

At that time, rumor came to the lands of the Shee that distant lands were falling under a terrible shadow. Entire worlds of the Realm were fading and disappearing. And then the Steward Oreyn came to Eleel.

The Stewards (or the Innathi, as the Shee called them) visited Eleel from time to time and their visits were always times of great joy and celebration, but on this occasion Oreyn brought grave news. The troubling rumors were true. A dark power known as the Night King had risen and was devouring  storylands, turning all he conquered into a bleak and nightmarish shadow version of the Realm. The Stewards were gathering all of their friends and allies to meet and stop this threat.

The Shee joined the alliance, and Lotan rode to battle, promising Seelah he would return in victory and they would be married. Arthan wished to go, too, but his skills as a smith were needed for the forging of armor and weapons, which the Shee had had little use for until this time.

The war was long, and from time to time messengers would return to Eleel with news of the battles and how the alliance fared. There were many tales of heroic deeds and sacrifice from the war, and Seelah began to weave these stories into a great tapestry.

And what happened then, and how Arthan and Seelah became Moth the Nightwanderer and the raven Morrigan, is told in The Shadow of Malabron.

Illustration by T Wharton

Will Lightfoot

Will Lightfoot is a boy from our world. He has dark wavy hair, brown eyes, and stands about five foot four. His birthday is August 6^th and his full name is William Joseph Lightfoot. He is the son of Jack and Rose Lightfoot. Jack is a welder and mechanic. Rose was a gardener and a fine storyteller. Will has a younger sister named Jess (short for Jessica).

Will’s interests (at least before meeting Rowen of Blue Hill) included soccer, video games, and drawing.

When Will was 11 his mother became ill and spent a number of weeks in hospital before passing away. Rose was of Native American ancestry and when Will was younger his mother told him stories based on the tales and legends of her people. Most of these stories involved a boy hero named Light-of-Foot, or Lightfoot, who roamed the prairies and mountains with his pony Great Heart, having all kinds of adventures. After his mother’s death Will lost interest in books and stories.

Three years after Rose’s death, Jack Lightfoot got a job offer in another city in the west. He decided to take the job and move his family because Will and Jess were not coping well with the loss of their mother. Jess has stopped speaking in anything more than a whisper, and Will had become sullen, withdrawn and was almost always angry. Jack hoped new surroundings might help his children.

The family spent several days crossing the country in their rickety camper van. Along the way they stopped at a campsite where Will stole his father’s beloved old motorcycle. He ended up crashing it and found himself in a strange world called the Perilous Realm…

Illustration by T Wharton

Rowen of Blue Hill

Readers have asked for more information about Rowen.

When we first meet her in The Shadow of Malabron, Rowen is nearly fourteen years old. She has pale red hair, dark green eyes, and stands about five feet tall.

Rowen lives in the city of Fable with her grandfather, Nicholas Pendrake the toymaker (and loremaster). The toymaker’s housekeeper, Edweth Little, has also looked after Rowen since she was a small child.

Nicholas Pendrake was married to a weaver and storyteller named Maya Siddarha, from a storyland far to the east of the Bourne called Jataka. They had one child, Gildred.

Gildred Pendrake grew up to become a knight of the Errantry, and was well-known in Fable for her courage, kind heart, and skill as a horsewoman. She married a man named Thomas James Rymer. He was a writer and artist from our world who stumbled into the Perilous Realm and sought Nicholas Pendrake’s help in getting back home (much as Will Lightfoot did many years later). In Fable, Thomas met Gildred and they fell in love, and had a child of their own, Rowen.

Thomas Rymer never returned to his own world. He and his wife and child went to live a quiet life at a farm north of the Bourne called Blue Hill (it was at this spot that Thomas had first entered the Realm). Since Gildred and Thomas were of two different worlds, they decided their child’s family name should be neither her father’s or her mother’s, and so they called her Rowen of Blue Hill, for the place where the two worlds had first met.

Nicholas and Maya Pendrake visited Blue Hill often to see their beloved grandchild. Maya often stayed at the farm for longer periods, after Pendrake’s duties as loremaster called him back to Fable. Maya looked after Rowen during those times when her parents were busy working the fields and tending to the animals on the farm.

When Rowen was two years old, a band of mordog and other Nightbane invaded the Bourne from the north. They burned and ransacked many farms and villages before the Errantry finally drove them from the land.

One of the farms the Nightbane attacked was Blue Hill. A smaller party of mordog came to the farm at dusk. The family dog gave one warning bark before a Nightbane arrow silenced it forever. Gildred was the warrior and so she went to meet the enemy while Thomas ran with Rowen into the woods behind the cottage. Thomas might have escaped with his daughter but he set her down in the concealment of a hollow under a fallen log and ran back to help his wife. They were both killed. Moth and Morrigan of the Tain Shee had been tracking the Nightbane -- they were too late to save Gildred and Thomas, but they found Rowen in the woods and brought her to Pendrake, who arrived not long after them with a contingent of Errantry knights. Pendrake took his granddaughter home with him to the toyshop in Fable.

Both Nicholas and Maya suspected that the attack had not been truly random. They feared that their granddaughter, a child of two worlds, had disturbed the threads of the Realm in such a way that dark powers had become aware of her and wished her harm. And so Maya decided to journey into the Weaving, the mysterious world-within-the- world from which all the threads of Story come. Her goal was to recover the lost, ancient wisdom of the Stewards, knowledge that might protect and help her beloved granddaughter.

Maya never returned from the Weaving, and so Rowen grew up under the care of her grandfather and Edweth the housekeeper. She turned out to be much like her mother in character: feisty, bold, and clever. Rowen loved her grandfather’s stories about her mother, and her greatest wish was to become a famous knight of the Errantry, just like Gildred.

Rowen loved to explore the fields and woods around Fable, and did so often without her grandfather’s permission. He still worried about the dark powers who wished Rowen harm, and so he tried to prevent her from going off alone, but Rowen was very inventive when it came to evading the rules of the house. It was on one of these unauthorized excursions that Rowen encountered a boy in danger, a boy from the strange world her father Thomas had also come from. 

The boy’s name was Will Lightfoot, and he was as startled to meet Rowen as she was to meet him….

“Rowen isn’t just some damsel in distress, like the Empress in The Neverending Story. She doesn’t sit idle while Will comes to her rescue. Rowen is more of a modern heroine, a character who should be a feminist icon in literature for young adults.”

Scott Hayes

St Albert Gazette

Illustration by T Wharton

Mages and Loremasters

 Q. What’s the difference between a mage and a loremaster?

A. In many parts of the Realm, mage is the title given to someone adept in spellcraft and divination who offers his or her service to monarchs, governments, or cities in need of magical assistance. Mages provide protection against supernatural threats. They predict the future (once in a while they actually get it right), they solve riddles and uncover arcane secrets, and they offer sage advice (sometimes it’s actually good).

Many professional mages begin their training at the college of magecraft on the island of Kyning Rore. They then go on to have illustrious -- or infamous -- careers at royal courts. 

Sometimes mages who have different skills will band together as a guild or league and offer their services as a package deal. The people of Skald hired one such guild of mages, but the “deal” turned out to be a bad one for them. It has often been remarked that a kingdom was doing just fine until they hired a mage, and only then did all sorts of frightening and inexplicable things began happening. There are those who have even accused mages of stirring up or faking supernatural trouble and then stepping in to solve the problem, in order to trick the gullible.

A loremaster, in contrast, is someone who collects and tells stories. To some this seems like a far less important calling than that of a mage. But it mustn’t be forgotten that the Realm is a world made of stories. Magic comes in many different shapes and forms in such a world, and in some stories there is no magic at all. So the power of any mage or wizard or sorcerer is limited by the “laws” of the story they are part of. Whereas a loremaster studies and delves into the deep source of all magic and all stories: the fathomless fire.

This is the power to shape Story itself, and mages who do not understand this power use it unwisely, with disastrous results. The hasty and ignorant tend to disregard the work of loremasters in favour of the dazzling spectacles that some mages can put on.

Q. Why doesn’t the city of Fable have a resident mage or mage guild?

A. Some say this is because Fable isn’t important or wealthy enough to afford a true mage as advisor. No mage who wanted to make a name for himself would bother setting up shop in such an out-of-the-way place. There would be no renown (or money) in it.

Others suggest Fable has no mage because they’ve never had need of one. Fable has a resident loremaster, Nicholas Pendrake, a toymaker by trade. He may in fact be the last of the loremasters, although his granddaughter Rowen is said to have inherited much of his gift for Story.

Ice dragons part 2

Due to the popularity of my 2009 post on ice dragons, I thought it would be a good idea to provide some more information on these magnificent and terrifying creatures.

As related in the earlier post, the lands ruled by the ice dragons have dwindled considerably over the ages. And as the rivers of ice have receded with the warming of the world, so have the ice dragons become more rare, and in some cases, smaller and less powerful. Nevertheless, if you’re going to travel in the regions where these creatures dwell, it’s still important to be on your guard. Make sure you’re carrying all the necessary equipment for survival, including rope, crampons for your shoes, a first aid kit, and warm, protective clothing. The dragons are still easily roused to anger when humans or others come clambering all over the glaciers they call home.

In one case I’ve heard of, a climber fell into a crevasse which turned out to be a dragon’s mouth. The climber’s companions struggled to get him out but he was stuck fast, and only escaped when the dragon relented at last and spat the man out through a crevasse lower down on the glacier. This unfortunate (or fortunate) traveler was renowned from then on for being the only known person to survive a trip through the digestive tract of a dragon.

Few people know that Santa's workshop at the North Pole is guarded by a semi-tame ice dragon called the Yulewyrm. This creature is the reason the workshop has not yet been found: the dragon's massive body distorts compass readings and his ability to cloak the area in a thick fog have been keeping explorers from finding the real North Pole.

One of the most well-known ice dragons is Whitewing Stonegrinder, whose ancestral home is the glacier surrounding the abandoned citadel of Aran Tir, as described in The Shadow of Malabron. Some enigmatists say that Whitewing Stonegrinder is the glacier, and that all this talk about dragons is nothing but a myth or just a colourful metaphor for the power and majesty of ice. If you’ve ever hiked or climbed a glacier, you’ll have experienced the feeling that there is something alive under your feet, something powerful and fickle-tempered that has to be respected.

What is known for certain is that Whitewing Stonegrinder played an important role in the struggle against Malabron the Storyeater, as told in the three books of The Perilous Realm trilogy. 

Supposed photograph of an ice dragon on Angel Glacier in the Canadian Rockies, c. 1917.

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Dragons

1. Dragons guard hoards of treasure not out of greed, but because of the healing properties of gold and other precious metals. Dragons lying on hoards have been overheard purring contentedly.

2. That’s right, some dragons purr, like cats. This should not, however, be taken as a sign that the dragon is well-disposed toward you. Deep contented purring often precedes a particularly vicious attack.

3. The average dragon’s pulse is one beat per minute. A dragon’s heartbeat may be audible from a mile away, or felt as a tremor in the ground from an even greater distance. That is why many professional dragonslayers go barefoot, to get as much advance warning of the presence and location of their enemy as possible.

4. Dragon bone is the hardest substance known to be produced by animal bodies. On the Mohs scale of hardness (in which diamond rates at 10), human tooth enamel is rated at 5, and dragon bone comes in at 9, the same hardness as sapphires and rubies, and far harder than quartz, iron and steel.

5. The longest-lived dragon is reputed to be Tau Lung, who was born before the formation of the Earth and inhabits the Sun (he may be responsible for sunspots and solar flares).

The shortest-lived dragons are the “offspring” of Motherworms, immense sack-like black dragons capable of vomiting hundreds of small fiery “drakelets” at their enemies. The drakelets can briefly fly on their own power but in a matter of moments they fall apart into gobbets of flame or burn to ash. Since the drakelets do not last long enough to reach maturity, it is not known how Motherworms actually reproduce.

6. There are seventeen officially recognized classes of dragon, including the well-known Firedrakes, as well as ice dragons, riverdrakes, celestial dragons, bookwyrms, etc. The classification of certain dragon-like creatures is currently in dispute, most notably in the case of the scaly flatwyrm, a parasitic organism that infests the digestive system of dragons and can grow to be over one hundred feet long. The scaly flatwyrm most often infests fire-breathers, and its irritating presence in the dragon’s bowels is said to be the real reason these dragons so often hate and attack humans.

7. Dragonflesh contains no fat. It is the healthiest and most vitamin-rich meat available, if you can get it. One has to be careful cooking dragonmeat, however, since it can spontaneously combust in an explosive burst of liquid fire.

8. The most intelligent dragon ever known, Auggg the Venerable, held a professorship in astronomy at Hypatian University in New Alexandria. She taught there for seventy-nine years before taking a well-earned retirement, though she still continued to give very popular lectures as a Professor Emeritus. Her office was a cavern deep underground said to be lined with the bones of hapless graduate students who never finished their dissertations.

9. The vulnerable spot on a dragon’s hide is not always on its underbelly. Dragons have been known to have what professional dragonslayers call “sweet spots” on other parts of their bodies, including the head, limbs, and tail. There have been legendary dragons whose hides were said to be completely impenetrable, but these creatures apparently all died of boredom after several centuries and thousands of failed attempts on their lives.

10. According to most enigmatists, a dragon is an event, not a thing. A fire-breather, for example, is what happens when heat, oxygen, and combustible material combine with story.

Image by TW

Nightbane

***
Nightbane is the collective word for beings from the shadow side of Story. They have also been called "Banefolk," although some scholars object to the term "folk" as being too nice and neighbourly for creatures known to perpetrate acts of horrific violence.




Nightbane include such familiar entities as goblins, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, some giants (not all) and witches (not all).


Lesser known to people in our world are such creatures as:


mordog: large man-shaped creatures with doglike faces and bloodthirsty appetites. Many mordog look more ursine than canine. The name does not derive from "dog" in fact but from an Eld word meaning "plague," as these creatures were thought of as a plague upon peace-loving folk.


creech: smaller creatures of naked bone and sinew, with sharp beaks and claws


hogmen: as the name suggests, these beings are porcine in appearance, and are notorious for a taste for human flesh. Fortunately, they are not particulary intelligent (although they like to believe they are) and can often be outwitted by stratagems that wouldn't ordinarily fool a five-year-old child.


While any of these creatures should be considered extremely dangerous, they themselves go in fear of some of the darker, truly terrifying beings of the shadow side of Story. Such beings as reavers, dark angels, and deathdancers.


Having long been on the side of wickedness in the realms of Story, Nightbane have been recruited in great numbers by Malabron the Night King. Many of them worship him as a god, who has promised to make them lords of the Realm over all of the "good" folk. In recent years, however, a number of Nightbane (either singly or in bands) have rejected Malabron's authority and joined the alliance of free folk against him, thus disproving the age-old notion that they are purely evil by nature and cannot change.

Image by T Wharton
***