Swords Against Death - Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser- need to read authors

Reading it. More sword and sorcery than most other Leiber books, Goodman says.  

Published dates per short story (seems halfway correct from Amazon, puke):

• The Circle Curse (1970) - Oh, they go back to Lankhmar in the end. Circle, OK.  
• The Jewels in the Forest (1970, isn't it really from 193x?) - weird one. Pretty fun. 
• Thieves' House (1943) - Black skeletons. Skulls with jewels for eyes. 
• The Bleak Shore (1940) - “The Bleak Shore, The Bleak Shore, The Bleak Shore”. Freaky and potentially deadly so far. Let's see what happens. Ships. Read. 
• The Howling Tower (1941) - wolves or hounds or people? 
• The Sunken Land (1942) - 
• The Seven Black Priests (1953) - my favorite short story so far. 
• Claws from the Night (1951) - birds. 
• The Price of Pain-Ease (1970) - Sheelba is in it. OK, here he becomes the patron of Mouser. Ningauble, in his mazy cave, talkative, also becomes patron of Fafhrd.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre (1963) - ppl say its good. Sheelba is here. Ningauble, too. Yes this is a fun one, some humor!

Comments on stories

• The Seven Black Priests is my favorite so far. The poison dart, conical hat, ~3 foot tall, covered in grease black priests were cool.  The introduction with the first one was just right… he was painted by the author as a man, but then you saw what happened/his response if there were intruders. Dangerous. Fanatical. Unrelenting. I loved how they kept popping up from nowhere. And their evil idol was menacing. Their background in the jungles of Klesh, but then their relocation in an opposite cold world was surprising yet effective. 

Trivia -

• Hot blooded and furred snakes of the north, Fafhrd let’s us know.  Any chance this is related to dnd’s burning hot insectoid worm giant monster -> Remorhaz? Nah, I think the snakes are just warm blooded snakes, as they mention them more later. 
• MISTAKE The bubble of Nehwon thing is different here compared to "The Swords of Lankhmar"… mentioned on pg. 16 as a mere made up spur of the moment thing. I don't know which story was first; it's just a minor inconsistency. 
• MISTAKE The wizard warlock Sheelba … is seen for the first time in his walking hut. But in Swords of Lankhmar, Mouser is surprised when it walks. And Fafhrd I believe near the end indicates he never saw the hut before (right?). I don't know which story was first; it's just a minor inconsistency. 
• Pg. 16, fireflies exist here… other short stories/book (The Swords of Lankhmar) had fire beetles.
• Pg. 208, says they steal to replace lost  weapons and rename them the same thing every time. Graywand, Heartseeker, Cat’s claw and Scalpel.
•  Pg. 214, once again Sheelba is described as maybe having tentacles instead of legs based on his uncomfortable squatting posture. So is that color picture of … oh yeah that picture was Ningauble, not Sheelba, that showed monstrous legs and claws. I bet they both are never revealed. 
• Pg. 217, the Shadowlands have a Really good description. Almost night with clouds, but only a mist at most. An open Black cedar forest. Black antelope and reindeer nibble grass. No people. Boulders of black.  Many faraway lights of every hue but blue… only when approached they’d be gone.  No trace of ashes from a fire. Ghosts???
• Pg. 221, Sheelba and Ningauble are said to be the two most powerful wizards…and were able to do powerful magic in a temper moody “revenge” (made very lighthearted in the story).  Ning  “magicked” all stolen belongings from a house to be gone. And Sheel did burn a whole house down magically. Seemingly both from afar, but unspecified actually. 
• Sheelba and Ning are in the last story. 
• Archimage is a real word, pronounced ark-uh-maje. Maybe like archetype(???). 
• Archbishop is pronounced arCHbishop. 
• Archangel is pronounced (ark anjul)
• Pg. 230 lists… devils, sword armed demons, cults, lamias, succubi, bacchantes, and hamadryads. 
• Pg. 235, Fafhrd suggests the two good mages come to help fight as sorcerous “archery and artillery” while he be the assault battalion. 
• Leiber did fencing they say… so better fight scenes (think Salvatore). 
• Leiber pronounced (lye ber) as expected. Fafhrd is (Faf  hrd) not (Fawf hrd) or a short o sound. Also Leiber like mouser pronounced mouZer, but that’s optional says the dictionary. 

More words n phrases to use/ideas

• Time in “when the first stars show”
• Hearing it whippoorwill might be a bad omen.. Anaugry of a bad omen. An augury of ill omen.
• And the day of the toad a bad day to enter a deserted home. Bad luck.
• Building… outjutting cornices and friezes
• Mayhap
• Feather you with arrows 
• Make yourself scarce
• Almost got home an attack
• Sibilant (hiss like sound)
• A faint, high, listless voice came from the dark….
• …gleamed the Sapphire eyes of a brazen dragonhead that was the pommel of his longsword. 

D&d and one OSE origins

• Pg 34has a list of d&d dungeoneering gear. Rope, mallet and pry-bar. Wedges. Candles. Flint. Chisels.A pick. etc
• Pg. 43 his “good luck” amulets, talismans, … prayers and cantrips. 
• Pg. 49, fear… a spell? Described well. 
• Pg. 66, mentions leather, with studs of brass.  The maybe not real studded leather of dnd?
• Pg. 68, good room descr. “It was a large room full of alcoves, and like the rest of the building, of dark smooth stone walls and floor. On a heavy cypress table four earthenware lamps paced randomly lit the place. “ That’s paraphrasing. 
• Pg.72  and 98 and earlier… a skull and a hand (pair of hands?) … bejeweled… able to kill by strangulation if menaced(?). Vecna inspiration? Later were many jewel eyed skeletons all related to this short story. Think demi-lich art in ad&d (CORRECTION - Monster Manual 2 of 1st edition doesn't have jewels in the eyes... jewels don't show up that I can see until 3.0e's Monster Manuals, so nevermind). 
• Pg. 98 has black skeleton, and a few OSE modules inspired by these black skeletons, eh? 
• Pg 158, stealing a jewel3 eye from a giant evil idol. Like the old 1e book cover. 
• Pg 167, a sleepspell
• Pg 167, a cursed object… taking over your mind
• Pg. 236, the Cloak of Invisibility - master sorcerers can prepare and see thru it. Blood will not be hidden. 
• Pg. 236, The Blindfold of True Seeing, (dnd spell True Seeing) it shows all things as they truly are. Origin of the 1980s movie, They Live, with Roddy Piper and the sunglasses… especially since “The Devourers” are evil greedy merchants from another universe with plans to trick people into (being like slaves and) buying their trash and not worried about people running out of cash/things… they’d just move on to a new universe. Actual trash and worse… worn out loincloths, broken bits of glass, roaches, maggots, etc.
• Pg. 237ish… Sheelba once again pulled something from his face hole (if I understood).  Does Orco of the He-man cartoon do the same? He is also a mage without human legs or face… blue hands, eh? 
• Pg. 240, the tall black iron statue… with a sword… is alive.  AKA, an iron golem in D&D. Though in the book, a being… a Devourer.  
• *** reading that Cervantes (of Don Quixote fame) invented the “thieves guild”, though dnd uses the one from Leiber in these Fafhrd Mouser stories.  

Need to read

• The Tale of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith. It is very D&D, also. Says commenter on Grognardia about Jewels In the Forest and Swords Against Death… https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2021/04/pulp-fantasy-library-jewels-in-forest.html
• Andre Alice Norton’s stuff (also Alice Andre Norton). She did The Beastmaster, but it was scifi not fantasy like the movie. She won awards… had a bunch of books.  
• Kane stories by Karl Edward… he fuses Kane into an immortal evil Elric plus Conan they say. But he is a villain sort of (hero sometimes) so maybe I won’t like it. Start with “Darkness Weaves” probably. Others say start w “Bloodstone” then “black crusade” then “darkness weaves”. 
• Who is Robert Bloch Blake? Another pulp guy?
• Poul Anderson.
• Jack Vance, more. 
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• past masters like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, E. R. Eddison, C. L. Moore, and Lord Dunsany, you come very quickly to Fritz Leiber.
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