TenKeep

For an old school player, Patricia McKillip’s The Riddle-Master of Hed is a good hit of a very personal sort of 1970's high fantasy art - fantastic creatures, sage-magicians, and the feeling of magic itself. *** Reading McKillip, the action's so warm and close, you feel it. [Morgon, the titular riddle-master] saw the private world of Osterland...a white owl's nest in the hollow of a high tree, a herd of starving deer in the sparse, cold backlands, a farmer's simple house, the plain walls gleaming with tools, his children rolling like puppies in front of the fire.  *** Likewise, Morgon's encounter with the deer-like "vesta" is a first-hand experience. ...he saw eyes watching him…The eyes blinked. There was a gathering, a soft stirring; then a vesta walked into the firelight. In the novel, the vesta were ... huge, broad as a farmhorse, with a deer’s delicate, triangular face. Its pelt was blazing white, its hooves and crescents of horn were the co...

That Dixieland jazz loving, Jack Vance’s story – Liane the Wayfarer – carries the torch for many an old school game. Only nine-pages long, the wayfaring is just a start.   *** There’s Liane. He’s no good – killed a merchant this morning then fussed about blood on his shoes this afternoon. Got good advice from a wanderer, then killed him: ...dropped a block of granite large as his head. A thud, a croak, a gasp – and Liane went his way. No good and yet he's human. Confronting unknown, arcane power, Liane panics. Enraptured by a golden witch, he swoons. Preening with newfound power, he oversteps. *** Liane the Wayfarer ’s a tale of (un)courtly love. Liane’s no Lancelot, not Sir Gawain. In Vance’s tale, Lith (as in lithesome) is Liane’s lady – and he must serve. ‘I am Lith,’ said she, ‘I am what you say I am. I ferment, I burn, I seethe. Yet I may have no lover but him who served me. He must be brave, swift, cunning.’ He serves her with a quest, or, for Liane, “wayfaring” ...