Swords in the Mist, Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser - I now read

 Starting Swords in the Mist now.  

Wikiped says Contents

"The Cloud of Hate" (1963)
"Lean Times in Lankhmar" (1959)
"Their Mistress, the Sea" (1968)
"When the Sea-King's Away" (1960)
"The Wrong Branch" (1968)
"Adept's Gambit" (1947)

Origins

• Could the 1980s movie “the fog” by Carpenter be influenced by this first story of an evil sentient fog with an evil red light in it… disguised as normal fog. Pg. 17 has four killers walking nearly invisible through the fog… with weapons attacking folks and feeding the fog. 
• Dnd - eldrich things (magic from wizards at least in part) mentioned - lightning from clouds, black coalescing shadows that suffocate men in a forest, sea serpents, smoke from a wizard’s fire that snakes out to strangle. 
• Pg. 27 Issek of the jug vs. Jugged Issek, who was confined in an earthenware jar for 17 years. Could it be the idea for the weird goofy living Jug/pot people of Elden Ring???
• Mingol glue, pg.59…. Mayne lead to dnd super glue… i forget the name. 
• Pg 89, zombies it looks like. Tho watery sailors turned zombies of some calmer sort.
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Trivia

• Mouser is revealed as perhaps slightly evil, more so than Fafhrd for sure, on pg. 18. The fog was easily resisted by Fafhrd, not so easily by Mouser. 
• Sheelba is described as demonic and Ningauble as alien and multi-serpentine… through others’ views… in “Lean times in Lankhmar”. 
• Fafhrd is pronounced close to “fafherd” so it says in “Lean times…” pg. 24.

Analysis

• Story 1. Solid. Freaky cultists, magic fog monsters, fighting. 
• Story 2. Overly descriptive (of boring or silly religious dudes) in the first half of story 2. I mean it is kinda entertaining, but it’s too much for me. Need action. Need weird and fantastical. Update - the whole thing was a comedy, no fantasy. This was the "change up the heroes... make them look different... one gains weight, etc." thing. 
• Story 3,super short… probably written to tie stories together.  Nothing happens really... they ride in their boat and become "normal" again.   
• Story 4 is starting kinda slow. They’re “jumping” into a magical air tunnel through the ocean to find sea women. A shark has been the only action for about 2 seconds. It has mostly been about Fafhrd not being worried and Mouser being very worried they’d die when the magic tunnel of air breaks. Like pages and pages of this. OK, then they had like 1 paragraph of watery zombie-type undead and something else they killed. Then they got with the sea ladies with blue or green or something skin. End of story basically.
• Story 5 was confusing at the beginning, I thought it said it was going to be on Earth around the Roman empire days due to Ning's caverns that lead to other times and universes... I skimmed through 5 or 10 pages of stuff, then I started seeing Ilthmar references and very very VERY briefly references of 1 and 2 and 3 headed sea dragons. So I don't know if this is supposed to be Earth or not. LATER… ok they do get transported to Earth and all thst. Weird. 

D&D ideas to use; Names: 

• Names: Gnarlag, Skel, Kreshmar. Sory 2- Pulg. 
• Cultists create the evil fog near a river. This fog turned into a squidlike fog monster w ten tentacles… grew a single red eye as big as a face. Had infected evil types to become truly murderous, and when it sucked up enough life force from whomever, that’s when it started to look like a giant monster with an eye. Can grab weapons. A single pinkish silvery thread connected it to the larger evil fog. Cut that, and you beat that one part. Dying, weapons drop, fog disperses, and a stink.
• X

Mistakes in continuity

• Pg.27, says the twain heroes split up… Fafhrd joined up as an acolyte with Bwadres worshipping Issek of the jug, a religious type “godlet”. But in another story I thought it said Mouser and Fafhrd met for the first time after that.