Two Sought Adventure

Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar setting, home to the legendary Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, is the first officially licensed setting for the DCC RPG.

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finarvyn
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Two Sought Adventure

Post by finarvyn »

For anyone wanting to pursue the earliest (and best, in my opinion) stories in the series, I own a copy of the 1957 book "Two Sought Adventure", which is a compilation of the early Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories. I've owned several editions of the paperbacks (and the SciFi Book Club edition, and the White Wolf omnibus) over the years and can't recall any having these particular introductory paragraphs, so I thought I would share.

The stories in this book include:
* Induction (More of an intro than an actual story)
* The Jewels in the Forest
* Thieves' House
* The Bleak Shore
* The Howling Tower
* The Sunken Land
* The Seven Black Priests
* Claws From the Night

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Intro to "The Jewels in the Forest"

Little is known of the earliest shared exploits of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, although Sheelba refers to a conquest achieved among the boldest rats and it may have been during this period that they encountered Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. Certainly they were well-tempered companions, wise in each other’s ways, when circumstances led them southward from Lankhmar City across the grasslands in the general direction of the Lakes of Pleea and the mystery-haunted region of Quarmall.

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Intro to "Thieves' House"

Lankhmar is always the loadstone of Fafhrd’s and the Mouser’s wanderings, again and again they are drawn back to it. Most civilied and most corrupt of Nehwon’s cities, Lankhmar has made subtlety a way of life and treachery a tradition, from the intrigues of the black-togaed overlords and the scandalmongering of its skalds to the swindles of its merchants and the double-dealings of its Thieves’ Guild, most hidebound of Lankhmarian organizations.

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Intro to "The Bleak Shore"

The ports of men rim the Inner Sea reassuringly: Ool Hrusp and Kearch Nar of the Eight Cities, Sarheenmar and Ilthmar the white-domed and desert-girded, Rhun near the Smoking Rocks, Lankhmar herself. But to the west lies the uncharted and monster-quickened Outer Sea, where Lankhmar’s black galleys turn back and only the northerners’ longships coast cautiously and there is sometimes rumor of a yellow sail from tropic Klesh.

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Intro to "The Howling Tower"

Five sleeps southward from the Black Cliffs, Fafhrd and the Mouser fought and made friends with a shepherd tribe, camping with them through the winter months and learning their language, which was oddly akin to that spoken in the Ghoulish Hills, half a world away. But hearing rumors of forests and towns and even a seaport to the south, the old nostalgia for Lankhmar returned to them with the spring and they found themselves a guide and pressed on.

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Intro to "The Sunken Land"

The exploits of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on the transmarine continent are in general the most sketchily reported by Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, while Srith of the Scrolls is silent. All we know is that they reached a meager river-port -- the name Darkwater has been mentioned -- whose sailors were even more reluctant and less prepared than the Lankhmarians to venture on the Outer Sea. It was at best a patchwork craft that the two adventurers must trust for the long homeward voyage.

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Intro to "The Seven Black Priests"

North of the Eight Cities and even Illik-Ving, the Trollsteps mount to the freezing plateau-land of the Cold Waste. Northwest the Cold Waste climbs higher yet to the Mountains of the Ice Gnomes and the Bones of the Old Ones. Thence the crags drop precipitously to the northern waters of the Outer Sea, forming a grim icy coast from No-onbrulsk to the Claws. A formidable path for any travelers to attempt, although the Cold Waste was Fafhrd’s home.

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Intro to "Claws From the Night"

Lankhmar is rightly called the Imperishable. Legend has it that its towering black walls have endured sieges of three, thirty-eight, seventy-five, and a hundred and twenty-three years. Ningauble hints that its deepest foundations were dug by the devils who misshaped Earth in the abyss before the gods. Unquestionably Lankhmar has seen the birth and slow death of a thousand cults and divinities, and its deserted temples and ruined fanes were as numerous as its taverns and pleasure gardens in the Time of the Decadence, which was also the time of the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd.
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Marv / Finarvyn
DCC Minister of Propaganda; Deputized 6/8/11 (over 11 years of SPAM bustin'!)
DCC RPG playtester 2011, DCC Lankhmar trivia contest winner 2015; OD&D player since 1975

"The worthy GM never purposely kills players' PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own."
-- Gary Gygax
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!"
-- Dave Arneson
"Misinterpreting the rules is a shared memory for many of us"
-- Joseph Goodman
dustle
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Re: Two Sought Adventure

Post by dustle »

Thanks for this! I have all of these stories in Swords Against Death, but I'd never seen these short intros before.
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finarvyn
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Re: Two Sought Adventure

Post by finarvyn »

You are welcome. I hadn't either, until I bought the original book. Those intros don't seem to have been included anywhere else.
Marv / Finarvyn
DCC Minister of Propaganda; Deputized 6/8/11 (over 11 years of SPAM bustin'!)
DCC RPG playtester 2011, DCC Lankhmar trivia contest winner 2015; OD&D player since 1975

"The worthy GM never purposely kills players' PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own."
-- Gary Gygax
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!"
-- Dave Arneson
"Misinterpreting the rules is a shared memory for many of us"
-- Joseph Goodman
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