Sometime in the late 1970s, my wife and I attended a meeting of the Minnesota Science Fiction Society. This was in the early days of table top role playing games, and in Minneapolis, or at least among those of us in Minn-Stf, these were nearly always homebrew systems—indeed, I confess some of us got a bit snobby when we learned that other people bought their game out of a box. Humph.
At that meeting we were introduced to a woman named Adrienne Thornly (now Robert Charles Morgan) and her (his? I don’t know how to do the pronouns when speaking of the past. On the recommendation of friends, I’ll go with “his” and use his current name) just then being developed world of Piarra, based on elements of D&D (which at the time I think I hadn’t even heard of) with bits of Lovecraft, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and many other things that appealed to his amazing, fertile mind.
My wife and I sat down to play, along with Steven Bond, Richard Tatge, a friend of Robert’s named John Robey, and John Stanley. My wife, Reen, and I were hooked inside of fifteen minutes. The world was raw, empty, undeveloped; but some basic concepts were there, like the Cycle of 17 Houses, and at least hints of what a few of those Houses were about.
The amazing thing was Robert’s ability to create, off the top of his head, fully fleshed out NPCs, with a life history and an agenda. We loved it, and continued obsessively playing for, I don’t even know. Months? A couple of years? Richard dropped away, and we became close friends with John Robey (now deceased, alas). The rest of the group remained fairly constant.
Yes, we were obsessed—but I had no idea then that this game would lead me onto a path that would guide, essentially, the rest of my life. I wrote the first book, Jhereg, in 1980, largely because Robert was gone, and I couldn’t stop obsessing. Because of complications in Robert’s personal life (that are none of my business or yours), I had to change some of the names when I started writing about it, and I added elements of my own TTRPG, Dragaera, that was an offshoot of Piarra, and develop those pieces that remained only vague concepts. And, while characters can translate from an RPG, I find that events generally do not, and so there is little that happened in the game that appears in the stories. But the heart and soul of my world remains the game that we played that one day at a Minn-Stf meeting in the late 70s.
As of today, I have 25 more chapters of Vlad to write–eight more of The Last Contract, and then Chreotha. It has been an amazing, wonderful, fulfilling journey. And I remain humbly grateful to the readers who have stayed with me, to Steve, John, John, Richard, and Reen, and, above all, to Robert Charles Morgan, who set me on the path that would guide my life.
Oh, that rings a loud bell. I was in a D&D group for over 20 years. We had our own house rules, and spent a lot of time world-building, but the people were the core of it. Stopped doing it about 20 years ago, and didn’t write in that world until 10 years ago, but it all resonates deeply.
Wouldn’t have missed it for the world and will be so sad when it ends. A world like yours deserve every bit of love your faithful readers heap upon it. My greatest joy is when someone else follows my recommendation and falls in love with your novels.
Robey: Less than three.
wait, The Last Contract and THEN Chreotha? I thought TLC would be the end, or are you doing an Abbey Road/Let it Be thingy?
The plan…I repeat THE PLAN….is to write The Last Contract, set it aside, write Chreotha, then go back and modify TLC as needed. My plans, like Vlad’s, don’t always work out, but, like him, I always want to have one.
Thanks for the walk down, very similar memory lanes. I too miss my Thursday night crew (we all worked on the weekends, or so it seemed). I also appreciate the update on the remaining books. Three fourths done, huh. Great, looking forward to them.
Well, I’ve been this on trip with you for over 35 years now, since I was a freshman in college and a friend saw me with a copy of Cowboy Feng’s and said I needed to read the Vlad books.
Thank you for the trip. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Wow. I never realized that it wasn’t 100% out of your head.
The group I played with, off and on due to moving around and life in general, started off with that “box of rules” you looked down on. Bill was just down the hall from me my first year in college, and was my roommate for what passed (or not) for my sophomore year.
By the end of that school year, Bill was fed up with D&D’s gaps (even with some additions of his own), and he decided to switch to Chivalry and Sorcery. We played that for one year, but, by trying to include everything, C&S turned out to be less than the sum of its parts, and Bill decided to bail on the published systems and created his own. And we played “Monsters and Mayhem”, off and on, as people moved around and getting together was harder at times. But we didn’t let that stop us, even when two of us were in
Dallas and Bill in grad school in Nashville with a new group of players in the same campaign (they ‘grew up’ hearing stories from things we’d done years before).
We even managed cross-overs, from my roommate at the time and I “dropping in” to play one weekend in Nashville after we’d attended another player’s wedding in Western Kentucky. (He was seriously tempted to join us, but their honeymoon won out.) to a gathering in “what’s a reasonably sized city halfway between Nashville and Dallas”, Little Rock, and a final cross over session when they all made the trip to Dallas and crashed in our apartment there.
And yes, we wrote stories based on our experiences. Well, at least I know that my roommate and co-player Jim wrote some, though I never got to read them, and the story I submitted to the Jesse Stuart Writer’s Workshop that Glen Cook taught in 1985. (Glen and the group thought it needed more work, but they also wanted more stories! And a lot of that was the work that Bill put into
creating the world, I think.)
Sadly, Jim died last week, so his Siegric and my Madrak (yes, I went there) won’t get to have an epic exit unless I write one. And, while I’m used to typing “Fuck Cancer” when a friend dies, also Fuck ALS. Jim should have outlived me by 20 years. You lost a fan last week.
Thanks for the back story on the backstory, And the progress report on wrapping the best fantasy series of the last couple of decades. I simultaneously cannot wait for Chreotha and Last Contract and dread the series concluding.
Steven – Long time reader, first time poster. Been on this ride since 1986 when I picked up Jhereg from a BDalton store in Minneapolis. I listen nearly every night to fall asleep with one of my many Vlad audible books. Thank you for this journey.
JRH: That is lovely to hear. Thank you.
Steven – Long time reader, first time poster. Also been on this ride since 1986 when I picked up Jhereg from a Waldon’s store in Goldsboro NC. I really would like to see the last chapter, and then go back and read it all again with the context. I have typically reread every book, just to see, what I missed the first go. Could you please try to close this up for all of us forty year plus fans, We’d really appreciate it.
I was introduced to your books about 10 years ago by a brilliant, now sadly deceased, friend. Thank you for hours of satisfying reading and now listening (easier now following a spinal cord injury). I love your world as well as your blog that I have now just found!
I enjoy these glimpses into the past. Was there a relationship between Morgan’s world and Minneapolis Dungeon? You talked about Minneapolis Dungeon at a Minion a couple of years ago. Really interesting how all those things were happening in that rough timeframe.
I started playing AD&D in 1982 in college. We mostly picked out the rules we liked and that flowed with the games we wanted to play.
Just wanted to say thank you for the years of reading – and rereading pleasure – you have given me. Looking forward to new books to come.
vloubee: Thanks for saying.
The re-reading is my favorite. But the reading? Pretty great.
I’ve posted here ages ago IIRC asking about langos (which is still seen around our country now and then) and literature by a certain pair of bearded gentlemen (which is also still seen around our country now and then, unfortunately more rarely than the aforementioned langos).
I just want to say that I managed to start catching up with a trio of books that got published behind my back, just finished Vallista and enjoyed it immensely – the reason I’m pointing it here is that the book did indeed feel like an old-school adventure/dungeon basically begging to have a party have a go at it.
Vlad’s commentary, quips and observations (okay, some of them I should credit Loiosh for) were excellent as usual, as was the flashback scene where Aliera explains to Vlad that curiosity is due to the easterners’ lack of disciplined thinking, which is probably why they keep losing wars. (Admittedly, that one worked so well as I had a roleplay character in a mirror situation, albeit a drow elf ending up hearing similar “incisive” analytics from friends/allies among the very human supremacist Red Wizards of Thay)
I also have to say I was inordinately proud of figuring out where the food is coming from before Vlad did, and that, admittedly, I was surprised (but in a good way) by the ending as my working theory up to the point had been that (to avoid spoilers) someone’s work had been sabotaged just as she was finishing off (hence scream/disappearance at roughly the same time as she finished) which resulted in that ‘extension’ being malformed thus denying everyone entry/exit. But then, I also thought, much earlier that the reason everyone kept talking about her mother was that she had passed away via temporal paradox, which neatly estabilishes I’m better at coming up with wild-but-coherent theories than deducing what happened.
Either way, I wish you a lot of fun and even more luck in finishing the series…and well, onto Tsalmoth now!
There are always more stories to tell. Thank you for all of yours you have shared with us… so far :).
I must have been 10 or 12 when I first read Jhereg, and I’ve been hooked on Vlad and Dragaera ever since. I’ve grown up with Vlad, and as he has grown and changed (and I can only imagine, you as well, Steven), so have I. If anything the novels have only increased in quality, are consistently artistically playful and delightful, and just stimulating in a variety of ways. I can’t think of any other works or bodies of work quite like this, and I’m so grateful for it, and for what you continue to put into it, Steven. Thank you.
For our first Christmas together I gave a new love The Book of Jhereg. The release of Iorich earlier that year reminded me that I had fallen behind and I may have gushed a bit about how good the books are and how she should read them and did I say how good they are? And so to please her (and to shut me up) I gave her the beginning and planned a re-read in parallel with her first reading. Her birthday comes after Christmas so it was our first real gift-giving occasion together.
Things went exactly according to plan. Mostly, anyway. There were other books along the way and our reading got out of sync from time to time but eventually we got to a point where both of us were up to date and waiting together for the next volume in a home of our own.
That all started nearly 15 years ago. Now there will only be two more times where I will turn to her and say “New Vlad!!!” and we will both say “Yay!” and put aside all other books for a bit. We’re going to miss that.
Thank you.
Mister Dalliard <3
So, I know that people tend to throw shade at ChatGPT these days but one thing led to another recently and I got into a random discussion about Steven/Vlad/Khaavren that got me thinking I should get caught up on the present state of affairs. So, ChatGPT probably will cause me to buy a couple of Vlad novels in the near future. You’re welcome, LOL.
More to the point – Thanks for keeping them going. There were times when the thing I really needed at that point in my life was a bit of escapism with an old friend and that’s what Vlad feels like at this point. Except that now he’s the old college buddy who vanished a few years ago and maybe it’s time to see if he’s got a facebook page or something?
Also, is it likely we’ll get yet another take on the Fenaar Invades Faerie event? I’m not sure what alternate take there could be, honestly, but it’s turned into such an “it all depends on who you are asking” kind of event (ChatGPT called it “Schrödinger’s siege”, which felt pretty apt) that I’ve thought it might be fun to see it one more time before it’s all over. I probably feel that way because _Brokedown Palace_, which I bought at the time without any knowledge that it was at all related to the Dragaera books I had recently been reading, really sparked that notion that “history really depends on who you are asking” that I was aware of but never seriously gave too many brain cycles to before that.
I have more than one trunk novel (at least one of which I absolutely intend to finish) because a campaign wouldn’t leave my head after scheduling made it impossible to continue playing. Currently have one game a few months from entering its twelfth year of play that I have a five-year plan and a ten-year plan for.
And the day may come when I ask you & Ryan if you’d mind me using, or at least riffing on, Lemons & Oiler. I still had so much more in that abandoned city on a cliff to show you.
I read my first Vlad novel in 1996. I think you answered my first email asking about the Cool Stuff Theory of Literature circa 1999? I think it was later in the same year I’d gotten my Eddi & the Fey concert T-shirt.
You, & these people that live in our minds, mean a Hell of a lot to me & have made a big difference in my life, and not only in the way I read & the way I write.
And we offer heart felt thanks for the amazing, wonderful, fulfilling journey you, and Vlad, have taken us on. <3
Thank you, Matt and Jamie. <3
I remember I was either 8 or 9 years old when I bought Athyra, within a year of it coming out. I didn’t understand everything I read, between my age and the fact that I was starting in the middle of the story. I remember being really confused and thinking that the young boy was actually the main character, for most of the story. The one thing I was certain about was that I loved it. I can’t remember what exactly I loved about it, but I remember being enthralled. Something about the way the characters were written, the way they acted, the way the magic worked and how real the world seemed. I read it cover to cover many times that year, before I put it aside and a few years later discovered that it was actually part of an entire series! I devoured every single book I could get my hands on and than as kids do, I forgot about it. Sometime in the early aughts I saw your books mentioned on Penny Arcade. The authors of that comic have had a love affair with your novels for decades, as you likely know. It jogged my memory, and I dug out your books, read them all again, and than discovered there were new books in the series! As I grew older I did a better job of keeping up to date and following your works, especially once I discovered your website/blog.
As an adult, I am still constantly amazed by the world you have created and the books you have published. I could not point out one specific you do better than almost everyone else, rather your books do almost everything perfectly. The world building, the characters, the mysteries, the subplots, the non-linear development. Even the way you often use frames as a story telling device, it just makes me so happy to read, and I hope it makes you proud to have written. I still think about some of the “throw away” lines spoken by the various side characters and wonder what they mean, and if I missed their meaning somewhere. There is one line in particular I think about, when Sethra Lavode states that she used to be a mountain. I can’t remember what book it was, and I’m still not sure if she was simply messing with Vlad.
On second thought, there is one thing you do better than most authors, and that is your older characters, the ones that have been around for Millenia, actually sound like they are Old. Their motivations only make sense within the context of their age. Many very accomplished authors struggle to write characters that age without turning them into “wise old men”, lunatics, or simply immature.
Thank you for bringing us Vlad.
Craig: Wow. Thank you! You’ve made me blush. I hope the stories continue to not disappoint!
@craig
The conversation where Sethra talks about “returning to the rock of Dzur Mountain” happens near the beginning of /Issola/ when she is dropping the information bomb on Vlad regarding the creation of Empire, the Serioli, and the history of the Jenoine and Verra’s revolt against them.
Thanks for all the great stories. I’ve been a fan since grade school in the early/mid 80’s.
~Jean
Any author can drop a tantalizing tidbit. The more difficult thing is to pay them off.
Yes, you may have to wait 30-40 years, but, in my experience, skzb almost always comes through.
Jean: Thank you kindly.
The Dryad character pulling her tree in a pot on wheels. While the tree was filled with flying fish. Those games really stress your imagination.
I cannot wait for the Final Contract. Like some of the others, I grabbed my copy of Jhereg from a mall bookstore the day it was released (my copy never even made it to the shelf because I got it off of the cart). I’m also loving the related stories, and I hope after we see Vlad off, we’ll still hear from Paarfi and learn if there are any connections between these groups, like just to chose a random example Kefaan and Kragar being mentor/protege.
In any case, as long as you have fun filling in backstories, we’ll all love reading them.
Your hints about the world’s origin in someone else’s game always made me want to hear more—very satisfying to finally read more about it!
I picked up the newly published Jhereg as a high-school freshman to bring on a multi-week school camping trip; by the time we made it home, every kid on the bus had read that copy. Probably half us on that bus played D&D, too.
I plan to re-read that same dog-eared copy when TFC is released, because I am going to celebrate the series by re-reading them all in the order of the story’s chronology, having thus far only read them as they came out.
As a bonus for the hardcore fans who have been with you all along, after TFC publishes, maybe you should post some of the old materials from your ttrpg Dragaera!
<3
I was introduced to Jhereg in 1988, in high school, by a friend. We also had a bespoke RPG going at the time; I was introducing elements of Moorcock into it, while he was bringing in the elements of Dragaera that I hadn’t yet discovered. I have never looked back and never wanted to. Your work sir, has had an amazing impact on my imagination. As has your politics, but that’s a different story.
It only enriches this all for me, to know that others helped plant the seeds. Thank you very, very, very much, for these stories.
Chris B: That is lovely to hear. Obviously, Moorcock is one of my influences, which is to say, one of the authors I have shamelessly stolen from.
Very much enjoying the shares here. Also picked up Jhereg in the late eighties, as my older brother (He is my Hungarian half brother) would have handed it to me or left it laying around. I think I was 12. Read the series rapturously, until Vlad’s divorce from Cawti which I found very difficult personally as a youth.
As a middle aged man now of 50 it alltogther makes perfect sense. Digressing values in a marriage is a rare truth to explore in pulp fiction (But that is actually a mask for Literature.) I was delighted to find the Book of Jhereg in a neighbourhood library box, and have just now reread everything. Am up to date with Lyorn, and have grinned and chuckled my way through all of Paarfi’s journals, and was actually stunned and shocked late by the Demon reveal. Wow.
I have to say now more than ever that I am convinced I am reading science fiction and not sword and sorcery. Am I far off to wonder if some ancient Hungarian space ship will be discovered under Dzur mountain? (Please, Paarfi do your research!)
Can you grunt in some cardinal direction for us? Will we know?
RAC: Thanks for the kind words. And, no, I do not expect the Hungarian space ship to be discovered. :)
Because it is buried far too deep beneath Dzur Mountain?
D&D, a dryad pulling her tree through the dungeon in a wheeled pot. The tree full of flying fish. We all turned out so terribly, NASA engineers, computer scientists.
Ah man – what a post to find waiting for me after thinking “Hey, its been a while since I’ve checked in on the Dream Café”. I was a late joiner (and am currently a late poster) to Dragaera, I picked up Jhereg from the library in 2004? 2005? Its hard to remember because I was inhaling the whole scifi section at the time. I specifically remember it was one of the first books I recommended to my dad rather than the other way around. I highlighted some banter between Loiosh and Vlad for him and his response was: “[Vlad] is kind of an asshole isn’t he?”.
This series has been with me for a good chunk of my life. Reading it again at various times has revealed things about the story that I _could not_ have experienced before. Leaving home (white, middle class, raised religious but really rather emphatically not _being_ religious myself), making friends I hope to walk with throughout the rest of my life, having a child… I get to read a new series every time, thanks in some small way to my truly terrible memory but almost completely due to the effort you put into writing the characters.
I genuinely love your stories, I don’t know you but I think that I like the way you think about the world.
Here’s to sticking the landing!
ERC: That’s lovely to hear. Thank you for the kind words.
Many thanks to Robert Morgan and Steve for Dragaera, a world “as intricately constructed as a Swiss watch” (to quote Roger Zelazny).
When recently re-reading Lyorn: upon encountering the word “Morganti”, I wondered if that was allusion or homage to Robert Morgan, or perhaps a self-insert from Piarra? I recall mentions of the term within the early novels, probably including Jhereg, and I haven’t encountered an in-universe etymology (likely borrowed from the Serioli?).
Thanks in advance for any insights! Lyorn is even more fun on the second read.
Derek: Yes, it goes back to Piarra; the term was coined by the late Lee Pelton.
Glad I stopped by to check on when the next book might be coming out. It was great to read the background. I’ve been reading your books since I came across a dog eared copy of jhereg in the late 80’s at the library.
It’s been a rough year – forced into early retirement because of trump and company and wife is fighting cancer. So I’m looking forward to some new escapism in Vlad’s world!