Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Like, I think the way I would describe Dudanak's sort of writing, both here and in Black Crag and some of his other stuff, is that it's sort of like one-third... sort of very capital-C classic old-school fantasy.

You know, Fritz Lieber and Robert Howard, you know, Conan, Fafford, and Grey Mouser.

Like, you're going to play muscly guys with swords going into tombs.

So I think it's one-third that, and then I think it's one-third sort of, like, fairy tale, The Hobbit, sort of whimsical, slightly otherworldly, sort of folksy fantasy.

like you want to have something kind of a little bit more real and something that, uh, I was digging in, digging into a little bit while I was writing.

This was the, uh, the Fafner and the gray Mouser stories by Fritz Lieber, which are fantasy stories that are very much, Oh, we'll go to the, we'll go to the city of the eyeless ones.

And we have to steal the gem of, you know, that kind of stuff.

And like, Oh, you know, we're, we're two adventurers freebooting around the, the lands of, uh, of, of, uh, What's it called? Nehuan, I think.

That is incredibly accurate.

You have Fafhrd, a giant northern barbarian with a surprising poet streak and romantic heart, paired with the Gray Mouser, a small, razor-sharp thief, swordsman, and former magician's apprentice.

What a pair.

Leiber effectively civilized the genre without actually taming it.

He brings an Elizabethan theatrical vigor to a world populated by rat gods and street level magic.

He isn't afraid to let high comedy and devastating horror share the exact same room.

Which is incredibly hard to pull off, but Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser ground it perfectly.

They are highly competent, but they're absolutely not invincible.

The author of the Fawford and the

Gray Mouser stories.

Loving them.

I was just...

I thought a little intro to the genre, quickly put together, was worthwhile.

Fritz Leiber of Lenkmaar and Phaffert and the Grey Mouser proposed the term sword and sorcery for the sort of fiction that Howard was writing when he was writing Conan and similar stories.

And to me, the sword and sorcery genre is defined by those Conan stories and similar pop adventure stories inspired by Conan.

To me, that means...

I just want to say, Joe mentioned Fritz Leiber.

And, you know, a lot of times people talk about Sword and Sorcery characters, like the top ones or kind of the classic ones.

A lot of times it's Conan, Elric, and Fafnir and the Grey Mouser.

And I always loved Elric.