Tales from Stolki's Hall: A Thrones & Bones Anthology

Kobold Chats: A New Lou Interview
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Jun 02, 2023 at 11:01:05 AM

Earlier this week, I was interviewed by Erik Frankhouse on Kobold Press’ Twitch Channel for a Kobold Chats. It was a fun interview which covered not only my involvement with their Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter, and of course Tales from Stolki's Hall, but my history in journalism in Hollywood, my time as an editor of science fiction and fantasy, the transition into children’s books, and how the pandemic lead to my creating the Thrones & Bones roleplaying game setting and adventure books. It was a great conversation with a lot of laughter that surprised me by how well it tied the various hats I’ve worn together and showed how A lead to B lead to C. Erik is a great host, and I think we had a great chat. We also took a deep dive into Thrones & Bones, not only in overview of what’s come before, but in teasing what’s coming up. I talked a bit about Banner of the Bull, my stand-alone adventure for Tales of the Valiant, and also how Banner of the Bull ties into Crisis in Castlebriar, the new adventure path coming in 2024. If you are so inclined, you can check out the interview on YouTube now here or at the link!

Preview: Lure of the Landkraken
almost 3 years ago – Thu, Jun 01, 2023 at 06:01:17 AM

Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms. Before there was Dungeons & Dragons, he was already working out the world so many of us would roll so many dice in. Even if you don’t partake in roleplaying games, if you saw Honor Among Thieves, you saw Ed’s creation brought life to the silver screen. Ed has also created the settings of Stormtalons and Mornmist, sold over 40 million copies of his books worldwide in over 40 languages, and won multiple ENNIES. He’s also still spinning out Realms lore, and always happy to answer questions about it too. I’m grateful to know him, and grateful this master world builder has dipped his pen in my own world of Qualth, and my land of Norrøngard. For today’s preview, we look at the opening of his tale, “Lure of the Landkraken,” (though Ed and I have debated whether landkrakens truly exist.)

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The fog was heavy, a ghostly cloak that glowed in the night.

A cloak they were getting all too used to. In the days when spring warmed into summer, sea-fogs beset the lower streets of Sindholm after dark, on nights when the winds howled not.

This was just one more such night, the fog a wet and clinging cloak with tentacles that came creeping in under the warmest wool and furs. Shivering weather, when folk who had no need to stir from hearth bided indoors, leaving the dark streets and alleys to scuttling rats and those driven by their needs.

Which at this moment very much included the huldra shield maiden Halla Skogsdóttir and her steadfast companion Luta Ragnarsdóttir, for their needs included eating.

Often and well, if possible.

Yet good food—and drink, the drink was not to be forgotten!—and for that matter warm, snug accommodations required hacksilver, and it had a habit of running low. It was running low right now. So Halla and Luta were getting bone-cold and wet, out here in the night. Luta had found work, which was why they hadn’t yet resorted to prying the more decorative gable horns off roof-ends and selling them elsewhere on behalf of a fictitious sick aunt demolishing her smokehouse. Yet.

Luta was the arch-tongued beauty, so Luta found most of the work. And it was retriever work suited to Luta’s most often used skill: she was an expert climber very much at home on walls and rooftops not her own.

Which was why Halla was sitting on the slick-damp wooden planks of the street in this thickening fog pretending to fix her boot heel. A pretext to loiter.

Somewhere in the eddying coils of fog above her, her beloved—her exasperating beloved—was on the roof of the house she was keeping her back firmly to. The abode of one Brandr Fire-Eyes, reputed to be a wizard and definitely the man who’d swindled Luta’s current client, Jora Ulfsdóttir, out of an amber pendant, a keepsake of her dead grandmother she very much wanted back.

Halla snorted. Humans. We could both die for an amber pendant.

Oh, well, it was a living.

* * *

Oh, well, it was a living. Of sorts.

Luta closed her eyes. They were doing her no good in this fog anyway, and the blindness might help her listen more intently at the smoke hole she was pressed against.

That voice had to be Brandr. Aye.

“Arnorr’s magic was powerful. His corpse door is not unguarded.”

Luta was up on this cold, slippery roof trying to learn the routine of the house, how many dwelt within, and when a retriever desiring to search for an amber pendant and bear it away back to a grateful Jora Ulfsdóttir could best enter the place without being seen.

“A wizard’s rune,” said a deeper, rougher voice, like a boot stirring gravel. It was not a question.

“A rune,” Brandr agreed. “Likely the most powerful in the whole Barrow. It sucks the life out of whoever disturbs its chalk in the slightest. Or so the old men say.”

Luta had never heard of Arnorr before, but it was clear enough: he was a long-dead—must be, or it wouldn’t be “old men”—wizard. And now in the Bjarg Barrow, the labyrinth of tunnels under most of Sindholm where the dead were housed, and folk just a little more desperate for hacksilver than Luta and Halla sometimes went hunting tomb treasures.

“And your way past it? A spell?” A new voice, a weasel voice, higher and younger.

“A hand not ours to wipe right across the mark, and break its power—and pay the price.”

“Whose?”

“Who’s been most persistent in demanding his hacksilver back from me?”

“The older Snari. Snari Grimsson.”

“Indeed. A hint that he’ll get his loan back should bring him within reach like an eager valravn. Then we beat him senseless—I thought you’d like the sound of that—drag him down the Barrow and use his hand to wipe the chalk. That crutch you kept from the beggar we fed to the eels should serve to move his arm and keep the curse on him and not us.”

“And then what? We get inside, and then?”

“Then you leave matters to me.”

“What I mean is: why did they call him Arnorr Eyehands? Is ‘eyehands’ some sort of spell? That might be on his body, waiting for us?”

“You listen to too many skalds when you go drinking,” Brandr replied severely, and then added something else that Luta couldn’t hear, for all the men she was listening to were on the move now, striding away, wooden furniture groaning across a floor as it was shoved aside. She listened a little longer, but only to silence. They were gone.

And might well be going out, where it wouldn’t do for them to stumble over a woman on their very doorstep with a bootheel that wasn’t broken after all—let alone a second woman up on their roof, uninvited. Wherefore Luta moved. Spiderlike, patient. Stealth over swiftness, on the damp slickness.

Well, now. Why disturb a long-dead wizard, but for treasure? Powerful magic, according to this Brandr-thief who was also a wizard. Treasure. Moreover, men down the Barrow were men not at home when Luta came calling, at this smoke hole or another one…

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For the rest of the story, you'll have to wait to read it in Tales from Stolki's Hall.

Preview: Daughter of the Draugr
almost 3 years ago – Wed, May 31, 2023 at 07:48:17 AM

Today I’m going to share an excerpt from Tales from Stolki’s Hall, currently 46% funded and, I’m pleased to say, selected by Kickstarter as a #ProjectsWeLove.

When I was an editor in SF&F publishing, I was fortunate enough to work with Joel Shepherd on ten titles. His absolutely brilliant Cassandra Kresnov series is one of my favorite science fiction series I’ve ever read. He’s also the author of the equally brilliant series, “A Trail of Blood and Steel” and “The Spiral Wars.” For Tales from Stolki’s Hall, he has pride of place as the first story with “Daughter of the Draugr.”

And here is its gripping opening:

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Sten rides, across green fern and thick moss. The last of spring snow lies in crystal patches upon the ground, and the sun is still low at mid-morning. On the saddle’s rear clutches his sister, cheek to his back as they raise to a gallop along a straight stretch of path.

“Frida?” Sten shouts above the hooves and wind. “Frida, you have to hold on tighter! You’ll fall!”

He clasps her wrist, trying to pull her arms more tightly about him. Ahead, the forest resumes, as scrub, fern and rock end at a wall of trees. Beyond, Dragon’s Bay glitters gold in the low sun, beneath a scatter of pink-edged cloud. The air is chill, and Sten pulls the scarf that Aunt Olga gave him more firmly about his neck, tucking the longer end into his tunic.

He feels Frida slipping, and realizes he won’t make the trees. He reins the horse to a stop, and catches her just as she falls, near falling himself in his hurry to get his weight beneath her, an awkward dismount and collapse.

“Frida!” He’s come down in some snow, the icy wetness through his pants is unpleasant. “Frida, wake up!” He holds her upright, and slaps her cheek lightly.

Frida’s eyes open. Light blue, within deathly pale skin. Her eyes were bluer than that, when she’d been alive. Now she stares past him, at the broken cloud, pink and yellow in the low light. “So cold,” she murmurs. “So dark.”

“It’s not that cold!” says Sten, attempting cheerfulness. It blackens his heart to look at her. His sister, older by two years. She’s always been the one to cheer him. Now this. He props her, holding the reins of the horse so that it does not wander. Sitting in ferns beside the trail, she can see Dragon’s Bay, and the Seal Islands, dark rock upon the glittering blue sea. “You see, Frida? You see the bay? We’re nearly home!”

“It’s so dark,” Frida murmurs, gazing at the scene in bleak distress. “How can you stand it?”

Sten gazes at her in dismay. “Stand it? Frida, it’s Skagilund! It’s home! You love it here!”

You stole her, whispers a voice on the wind. Sten stares about, upslope, where the ragged cliff of the Harðrtönnbjarg glows bright against the sun. Bring her back to me.

A boiling river of swords, axes and other weapons. Jangling and clanging as they swirl and tumble, a sound terrible like a thousand blacksmith’s anvils. Sten blinks hard, and shakes his head to clear the vision. Had he been there? Had he truly? He must have, because Frida is here now. But it seems like a blur.

His eyes drop to the silver pendant on Frida’s tunic. It’s shaped as a silver stag, hanging upon a necklace of twine. Another of Aunt Olga’s gifts. She must wear it at all times, Olga insisted. If she doesn’t, she’ll turn.

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For the rest of the story, you'll have to wait to read it in Tales from Stolki's Hall. 

Off to a great start!
almost 3 years ago – Tue, May 30, 2023 at 12:52:50 PM

Thank you all so much. We are a third of the way there. I appreciate all the support. I'm working on the Deluxe Gamer Edition now (and stretch goals will only make it better.) And the trade hardcover is done! How done? Here it is on the chair beside me:

Meanwhile, I thought I would share the introduction to the anthology here, just to give everyone a little more context:

Like a dragon devouring its own tail, this book is a journey come full circle. Tales from Stolki’s Hall is a book based on a game based on a book!

The land of Norrøngard where the stories herein are set first appeared in my novel Frostborn in 2014. Norrøngard is a snowbound country that draws heavily upon Norse mythology and Scandinavian culture. It tells the story of a girl named Thianna who is half-human and half-frost giant. She meets a human boy named Karn who is very, very good at a popular game called Thrones & Bones (which is also the series title), and the two of them go on the run together through the snowy wilderness, facing off against trolls and linnorms (northern dragons) and draugar (undead northerners). Three subsequent novels deepen the lore and extend the stories beyond the borders of Norrøngard.

However, a lot more goes into world-building than what appears on the printed page. Before I can create heroes to populate my stories, I must know everything about the places they inhabit. Before constructing a word of plot, I work out detailed histories, naming conventions, pantheons of gods, cultural traditions, and more. My intention from the start was to craft a playground bigger than any one book or series, with an eye toward reaching beyond children’s books, across categories and media. With the wealth of world lore, roleplaying games were always on the table (pun intended). But the idea of doing a game manual was backburnered until the pandemic began. That’s when Thrones & Bones: Norrøngardwas born. This was a complete campaign setting, with pages of never-before-seen world lore. It was followed by two adventure books, Sagas of Norrøngard and Vengeance of the Valravn. As of today, there is also a musical soundtrack from a Grammy-nominated artist, numerous digital map packs, 3D printable terrain, and other accessories. Several more projects are in the works as I write this.

Now, roughly a decade after Frostborn’s debut, my fantasy creation enters on a new phase. Tales from Stolki’s Hall marks the first time that other prose writers have been invited into Norrøngard. Before I became an author and game designer, I worked as an editor in adult science fiction and fantasy publishing. For this anthology, I’ve dusted off my editor hat and asked some old writer friends (and a few new ones) to pen tales of the frozen north. The results are spectacular—a range of stories set across the land that both showcase the world-building and extend and deepen it in exciting new directions.

It should be pointed out that while Frostborn is a children’s book, the roleplaying game is all-ages, and the stories here are very squarely adult. After all, some of those children who began reading me in 2014 are adults now! Norrøngard is a big land. It can hold a lot of tales targeting different audiences. Here are some truly great ones—epics to make any snowbound warrior proud. Whether you’re a returning reader or are taking your first steps into my frozen north, enjoy this latest foray into Norrøngard!

As the Norrønir say:

Be healthy. And never leave home ahead of your axe and sword!

—Lou Anders