Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - Close Out Extravaganza

Typically, we close out the month with recommendations for further reading.  That's easier than usual this month, what with the rest of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser available from Amazon. 

But now that you've seen the iconic duo in action, don't be surprised if you start to see them more and more in works not written by Fritz Lieber.  Earlier in the month, we mentioned that Discworld's Cohen the Barbarian often found himself paired with Rincewind. 

Just this month, while preparing for an upcoming miniature wargame, I encountered them in a very unlikely place.  Osprey Publishing released a Three Musketeers themed set of rules called, En Garde!  The back pages of that historical ruleset include a brief supplement of rules suitable for fantasy games.  Craig Woodfield, the author, knows where to find the good stuff, as evidenced by the inclusion of a stat line for a "Witch-hunter" that cannot be mistake for anything but Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane.  But he also had the good taste to include stat lines for "The Barbarian" and "The Thief". 

Thanks for reading along this month, we'll see you next time when we will be discussing Misha Burnett's excellent Catskinner's Book.  (Spoiler alert: it's not a how-to book.)

The Price of Pain-ease

Dusk deepened. After a much longer bit, the Mouser said in a low, broken voice, “O Sheelba, great magician, grant me a boon or else I shall go mad. Give me back my beloved Ivrian, give me her entire, or else rid me of her altogether, as if she had never been. Do either of those and I will pay any price you set.”  

In a grating voice like the clank of small boulders moved by a sullen surf, Sheelba said from his doorway, “Will you faithfully serve me as long as you live? Do my every lawful command? On my part, I promise not to call on you more than once a year, or at most twice, nor demand more than three moons out of thirteen of your time. You must swear to me by Fafhrd’s bones and your own that, one, you will use any stratagem, no matter how shameful and degrading, to get me the Mask of Death from the Shadowland, and that, two, you will slay any being who seeks to thwart you, whether it be your unknown mother or the Great God himself.”

I've been dragging my feet on this story for a while. Like "The Circle Curse," this is more connective tissue than a story, filling in continuity gaps required to explain the events of the next story. In this case, it explains the relationship between Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the wizards Ninguable and Sheelba. It also finally frees Fafhrd and the Mouser from their mourning over their murdered first loves. There's more story to "The Price of Pain-ease" than "The Circle Curse," as Fafhrd and the Mouser are haunted by the actual ghosts of their lost loves. In an attempt to free them, the adventurers make deals with Ninguable and Sheelba; they would retrieve the Mask of Death from the Shadowlands in exchange for their girls' lives. But, as usual for their adventures, Fafhrd and the Mouser get the thorns, and not the roses.

"Thereafter Sheelba and Ningauble, showing no gratitude whatever, or remorse for their childish revenges, insisted on exacting from the Mouser and Fafhrd the utmost service established by the bargain they had set with the two heroes."

***

There is an interesting point of contrasts to Excalibur, Anduril, and all the other named weapons in fantasy:

"For a fourth, they habitually stole all their possessions, even their swords and daggers, which they always named Graywand and Heartseeker and Scalpel and Cat’s Claw, no matter how often they lost them and pilfered replacements."

Rather than carrying special named swords, any sword and dagger wielded by Fafhrd or the Gray Mouser becomes Graywand and Heartseeker or Scalpel and Cat’s Claw. It is a rare take on the idea of named weapons that might be unique to Leiber's works. Where other heroes might mourn the loss of their named weapon, Fafhrd and the Mouser will just steal another Graywand or Scalpel.

***

Edit: Apparently there was a mistake in the version of the ebook I was reading that listed the "Price of Pain-ease" as the "Prince of Pain-ease." I have updated the article to match the proper title.

Bazaar of the Bizarre

In Bazaar of the Bizarre Fritz Lieber demonstrates that message-fiction can be fun…provided it’s presented as fiction-message.  That order is important.  Lieber might be a dirty red socialist, but he is a solid enough author that even his blatantly anti-capitalist screeds are entertaining reads. 

The Devourers are “the most accomplished merchants in all the many universes,” Sheelba warns.  “They sell trash and take good money,” he continues.  Worse, “they want all their customers reduced to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale.”  One can imagine Lieber sitting down at a table near the entrance of a Wal-Mart, watching the parade of humanity march past, shaking his head as his fingers merely describe what he sees.  With subtext elevated to super-text like this, its easy to see why Moorcock counts this among his favorite Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories.

It’s blatant to the point of parody, but it works.  The menace in this story is capitalism.  And yet, it’s delivered with enough panache that even a crusty old John Bircher like myself can chuckle, set aside all reason and logic, and accept the premise of the story for the purposes of the story.  It is a fantasy after all, and the men(?) pronouncing this judgement – Ningauble and Sheelba – are hardly the most reliable (or even sane) characters in Nehwon.

It helps that Fafhrd’s responses to this warning amount to a very dry and sarcastic, “Monstrous!”  At least, this reader took them as sarcastic, and perhaps his responses are enigmatic by design.  Perhaps this story serves as a Rorshach test of sorts – you can see whatever message in it your heart chooses.

Either way, this time it is the Grey Mouser’s turn to get into trouble, and Fafhrd’s turn to wade into the horrors of the house of low cost consumer goods to pull the Mouse’s bacon from the fire.

But wait!  Did the Mouser get himself into trouble?  Recall that he was sent, as was Fafhrd, but without the warning to wait until a specific time.  The Creepy Eyed duo set that up, didn’t they?  They knew Fafhrd was too practical to get sucked in to such a silly adventure, and that the Grey Mouser was too curious not to.  They used Grey as bait to get Fafhrd into the shop.

They may be crazy, but they certainly are clever.

In keeping with my vow to finish off the month of February without referencing Dungeons and Dragons, I’m instead going to point to GURPS.  Specifically, the best Actual Play blog around, Peter dell’Orto’s excellent Dungeon Fantastic.  Skyrockets went off in my back brain when Ningauble asked the parenthetical question, “Is that coincidentally a city, do think, Fafhrd? Cashamash?”  That name rang a distant bell in my memory, and it took me some time to recall that the base city for his GURPs campaign contains a here-today-gone-today wizard for hire named Black Jans who is from…Cashamash:

Of course, it might also say that the wizards of Cashamash aren't worried about peasant rebellions or hostile townsmen rioting so much as being able to get into any perhaps out of their towers quickly. Cashamash is a weird place.

Ningauble was right, and his legendary knowledge of the universe demonstrates that he knows about Stericksburg and Felltower. Of course, this observation is no gotchya! It’s actually a solid attaboy! You’re supposed to put this sort of thing in your RPGs.  It’s literally as old as RPGs themselves.  Fellow fans of Pete’s blog should laugh and rejoice that Dryst and Vryce share a multi-verse with Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser.

Four more stories

THE BLEAK SHORE

A short story that, nonetheless, conveys a lot in its meager ten pages. The adage about how what matters is the travel but not the destination applies here, at least from the point of view of the reader. 

Under a powerful geas, the two rogues set off to the distant and mysterious Bleak Shore across the vast ocean. Most of the story -and its better parts- is narrated by the only surviving Mingol sailor that managed to return from the deadly trip. And the fact that he only knows about the initial trip but not what Fafhrd and the Mouser did when they got there only makes it better.

The narrator shift highlights and magnifies the sense of unreality and madness as he explains the foolish, inhuman,  and almost suicidal behavior of their (as he suspects) charmed masters. The distance between his knowledge as a uniformed participant and what we actually know or suspect amplifies the dread and eeriness that could have been lost with a more detached or omniscient narrator. Like the scraps and fragments of a diary narrating the unexplained horrors of a failed expedition, sometimes not knowing creates a stronger effect than knowing.

THE HOWLING TOWER

Another story with a ghostly theme, this one gave me a strong Edgar Allan Poe feeling, probably for the whole familicide and "vengeance from beyond the grave" themes. I enjoyed it, but your mileage may vary. I won't say more since I think it's better just to read this one.

THE SUNKEN LAND

A story with a clear Lovecraftian vibe. This is also one of the best stories in this collection, and since they are all self-sufficient (although it is implied they are all connected and arranged in chronological order,) you can jump straight to this one if you want.

Many stories that try to convey the Lovecraftian sense of horror fail for the simple reason that they go too far into the neurotic/psychological horror territory, going overboard by telling how shaken the protagonists are by the incomprehensible events they are witnessing, but we have little reason to believe it or care about things that are TOO incomprehensible. This is not the case here since the whole story depends on an -in isolation- plausible list of coincidences, which we later realize were the design of vast and malevolent intelligence. 

It is also clear that there is little that Fafhrd could have done to stop the chain of events, and his actions don't depend on any charm or supernatural influence either. He is just a human pawn who survives thanks to a fleeting gut feeling which tells him to run, to get out of the sunken city of Simorgya (akin to R'lyeh.)

When reading the final scene, it occurred to me that the cloak-like creatures that are mentioned are somewhat similar to the D&D monster the Cloaker. Reading about it, Wikipedia mentions that a variant of the cloaker appeared in the Lankhmar – City of Adventure booklet (1985) for D&D. And the name of the beast? Sea cloaker.

And if you search that term, you will find this article that explains the ecology of the cloaker and its background, and here's what it has to say about the subspecies of the sea cloaker:

"An aquatic aberration native to, and mainly inhabiting, the sunken city of Simorgya, which means minimal study has been done, but the numerous similarities between them and cloakers has led many ecologists to speculate on a relationship. "

There you go. I'm getting better at sniffing obscure D&D references.

THE SEVEN BLACK PRIESTS

"I think they're unreasonably angry," Fafhrd asserted, scrambling to his feet.
"Priests always are," the Mouser said philosophically,

I like to imagine Leiber watching the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and thinking to himself, Yeah, this is nice and all, but wouldn't it be better if the dwarfs were meaner, crazy, black, and worshiped a mind-controlling volcano god? Also, you know what? Screw Snow White and everything else, just keep the mad midgets.

[Obviously, this is a completely made-up and apocryphal explanation, but I encourage you to cite it anyway as if it were true.]

This must be one of the best sword & sorcery stories I have read (to be fair, I haven't read as many as others.) It has that bigger-than-life threat hanging over the protagonists, but the story in itself is quite lighthearted, focusing on the action and exploration, the fights (including one while skating on ice,) the comedic traps the priests set up, and the excellent banter between the two rogues. Nothing out-of-this-world, perhaps, but effective nonetheless.

You can also read Jon and Nathan's more useful analyses.

The Bleak Shore

"Now I have heard tell that death sometimes calls to a man in a voice only he can hear. Then he must rise and leave his friends and go to whatever place death shall bid him, and there meet his doom. Has death ever called to you in such a fashion?” 

Fafhrd might have laughed, but did not. The Mouser had a witty rejoinder on the tip of his tongue, but instead he heard himself saying: “In what words might death call?” 

“That would depend,” said the small man. “He might look at two such as you and say the Bleak Shore. Nothing more than that. The Bleak Shore. And when he said it three times you would have to go.”

"The Bleak Shore." With a third mention of this strange land, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser leave Lankhmar on a red-sailed sloop, braving wave and storm to arrive at the cursed land. As the months grow long, the city believes the two men to be dead, but the last of Fafhrd's Mingol crew turns up in the city, spreading tales of their journey.

At the far end of the Bleak Shore's bonefield, a voice greets Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. "For warriors, a warrior's doom." Then armored beasts rise from the sands...

*****

One of the shortest stories in Swords Against Death, "The Bleak Shore" is one of the most memorable, hooking me instantly with Death's call to action. While the plot is a stripped down version of what we've seen before, where Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are hypnotized into some strange adventure and escape due to the Mouser's keen eye, the mood utterly captivates. Starting with Death's eerie introduction and summons, to the slave sailor's spooky sea tale, and, finally, the battle on the beach, each scene builds up the dread that  Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser might not return. While the Mingol sailor's sea story might violate the well-worn adage, "show, don't tell," the extra distance it places between the readers and Fafhrd and the Mouser only heightens the aloofness inflicted by whatever spell compels them. Not only that, but the contrast between the safe passage through the storms on the way to the Bleak Shore compared to the crew deaths as the sailors tried escape reinforces that someone wanted Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to arrive. It is good to know the rules of storytelling, but it is better to when to break them for effect.

After five stories full of mesmerized characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser need to do something about their willpower saves...

The Seven Black Priests

If you’ve ever wondered who would win in a fight between Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, this story answers your question.

Presumably, this tale takes place after the pair escaped death on the sunken island of Simorgia.  Their ship having washed ashore somewhere in the White Wastes, the two set out on foot.  Presumably heading south, they are forced to fight their way through a gauntlet of seven black priests.  As usual, they invite much of the following trouble by happening upon a sacred object in the shape of a large clear gemstone.  The gemstone, the eye of a god, is naturally cursed, and the longer Faf and Grey hang onto the thing, the more it affects them, until finally the Mouser is forced to fight Fafhrd in order to save him from the mystic clutches of the artifact.  The fight is largely a draw, and only ends when the Grey Mouser defeats the powerful monster by using that tried and true old method of poking out its eye.  Thus freed from the spell, Fafhrd laughs off the event and the two resume their long trek towards Lankhmar.

This is a clear post-pulp story.  It does feature the fast action and light atmosphere of pulp-era fantasy –the prolonged fight set on a tilted sea of frozen green ice would fit right at home in the pulps (or a Michael Bay movie) – but the two protagonists lack the sense of heroism and virtue that most pulp heroes possess.  They are but two wandering adventurers plundering temples, fighting priests, and walking away relatively unscathed but no richer for their troubles.  They do murder a fetal-god intent on wiping out humanity, but that arises not out of a desire to protect humanity, but out of a desire to protect their own skins.  By stealing the eye of the god, they also fall into the god’s trap, and in this manner the impending birth of the fetal-god is at least partially their own fault.

This is not necessarily a complaint. This is merely an observation. 

After all, not every story needs a moral element, and sometimes it’s fun to read a story about two wandering adventurers. Most of the action oriented TV shows of the 1980s used this narrative framing device to good effect, after all.  Provided the bad guys get their comeuppance in the end, and in Swords Against Death, that comeuppance has occurred like clockwork, then the reader can at least be assured that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser’s love of adventure has a happy ending for Nehwon, even if it does not for the dynamic duo themselves.

Claws from the Night

Valuables disappeared in broad daylight, even from chambers locked and carefully guarded, or from sheer walled roof-gardens. A lady secure in her home chanced to lay a bracelet on an inaccessible windowledge; it vanished while she chatted with a friend. A lord’s daughter, walking in a private garden, felt someone reach down from a thickly-leafed tree and snatch a diamond pin from her hair; the tree was immediately climbed by nimble servitors, but nothing was found. 

Then a hysterical maid ran to her mistress with the information that she had just seen a large bird, black in color, making off through a window with an emerald ring clutched securely in its talons.  

This story at first met with angry disbelief. It was concluded that the girl herself must have stolen the ring. She was whipped almost to death amid general approval. 

The next day a large black bird swooped down on the niece of the Overlord and ripped a jewel from her ear.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser use the terror from a rash of black bird thieves to cover their own heist. To gain the jewel a merchant has bought to appease his shrew of a wife, Atya, the adventurers have brought their own preparations: a fishing rod, to snare the jewel, and an eagle, in case the birds strike first. But when the black birds prove to be the quicker thieves, Fafhrd and the Mouser follow the flock to the hidden temple of Winged Tyaa and her angry priestess.

"Claws from the Night" is another standard Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, plotted to the same structure as the previous tales but lighter in tone than even "Seven Black Priests." Yet it's still a fun little rollick, as Fafhrd and the Mouser try to use the chaos of the bird thieves for their own ends before getting swept up in a serious mystery. Like a soloist in jazz, Leiber uses the established pattern as a guide to creativity, and not as an instruction set, with no two stories told in the exact same way.

I've noticed a pattern as of late. When a dynamic duo goes on an adventure, be it Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser; Doc Savage and the Shadow; or Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame, the problem-solving responsibilities tend to be split in a regular pattern. If you want something to stop, send the Fafhrd analogue. If you want to find out why something is happening, send the thieving wizard. And whenever the Fafhrd of the team gets bogged down, the Mouser clears the jam with a shout, a spell, a sword, or gunfire. I will need to think on this a bit more to properly formulate it.

*****

For a different take on the story elements presented in "Claws from the Night", check out Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. Clad in Chinese clothes, it recounts the adventures of Number Ten Ox and the sage Master Li as they try to save the children of their village from poison by stealing a treasure from the local lord. Nobler analogues of Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser, bird deities, and treasure-mad shrewish wives can be found in its pages.