Stories

Tales of thieves...
(Anchorfall, ca. 624—627 AR)

These stories will chart the deeds of the Shadowhawks, a group of honourable thieves in the great city of Anchorfall. Most often, they focus on two of them: Faira Ativel, a former Privateer, and Lex Egrain, a... well, a thief, for the lack of better descriptor.

• 2006-07-30: Bidding for a Good Day (in deviantART) — Two thieves accidentally acquire a curious painting by painfully legitimate means. Discovering its origins is twice as painful. Or is it "paintful?"
  Hooray, finally a story I myself may even read afterwards, even when I kind of suffered from the aimlessness in the end! =) First published story set in the era before the Revolution, featuring Faira and Lex, and quite a few of weird auction-related mishaps and shady shenanigans. Regrettably, this adventure can't be described as "action-packed", or even "auction-packed" – but it's hopefully interesting! (Disclaimer: No horrible puns were tortured when writing this story. They do not even appear in the story. This blurb might be a lot more funny than the actual story.)

The Worrying Exploits of The Company
(Anchorfall, ca. 630 AR)

After the Great Revolution of Varmhjelm and the successive massive war against the invaders, three of the heroes – Faira Ativel, Facyr Tann and Gnedrnygr Adithebadoggr, a Rogue, Mercenary and Mage respectively – had absolutely nothing better to do, so they started adventuring. And, of course, they also enjoyed occasional breaks from the monotony of thrilling adventures and met interesting new people...

• 2005-08-07: Hidden horrors of Megyntia (in deviantART) — Three adventures enter a long-abandoned fortress and make some curious discoveries.
  This work has the dubious honour of being the first full-blown Avarthrel story. Dubious, because in retrospect, a lot of things went wrong while making this story (it was practically an experiment gone horribly weird, if not even wrong), but I certainly had a lot of fun writing it. It's Good Old Timey Heroic Fantasy with an annoying schtick, specifically, dialogue covers the lack of description of the action. =) Certainly not the best story ever written, but I think it's almost decent. This story might actually be in my list of "stuff that should be rewritten when I have time".
• 2005-09-20: Pirates in the morning mist (in deviantART) — Pirates come! Something completely not what anyone had in mind happens! I can't remember how this story went! Please don't remind me!
  If the first story went "horribly weird", the second story went "horribly awful". I have it on this web page because I made the mistake of actually putting it out there. So why is it awful? I kind of started a journey and... well, I didn't quite have any idea where I'd end up to. However, the story introduces a few characters properly; while I most emphatically don't refer to this story when working on backstories, there may be some surprises in store...
• 2006-05-31: Shadows Over Nothross (in The Internet Archive) — The three adventures head to the harsh far northern reaches of the elven country, and single-handedly annihilate some bad nasties. And do they ever talk a lot, or what.
  This would actually go more in the "novella" mould - see that 50-page PDF there? My first story that actually had some actual depth, aside of just being a quite straightforward story of hey-let's-kill-some-orcs-now.
• 2007-08-08: Friends in the Rain (in deviantART) — Two separated warriors meet, and end up pondering the nature of love.
  I really loved writing this story; I poured in it a lot of feelings that I had experienced, evisioned and thought about that summer. These stories are starting to look like something.
  Shame it's not really a fantasy story, at least not in the dragons-and-swords-and-magic kind of sense. =)
• 2008-09-07: The Sweet Side of Death (in deviantART) — Faira writes to her sister: The life is good, she has been incredibly lucky lately... and, oh, she unleashed a rather nasty goddess upon the world.
  Basically, this story is a random recap of various things that have happened to Faira and the Company in the recent history. Yet, the primary motivation to write this story was quite simple: rampant thinking on random topics. Sorry. But I think it's pretty interesting.
• 2009-11-08: Once It's Rolling... (in deviantART) — The City Guard does its best to make sure that people know about a dangerous criminal, but it seems that the operation is going out of hand in an unexpected manner...
  The first story that I managed to write after my rampant back-and-forth mess-around with the odd processes and ancient laptop technology. So yeah. It took a long time to get this out. Hopefully it won't happen again.

Meanwhile elsewhere...

These stories are set elsewhere in Avarthrel.

• 2007-02-14: The Carnival Wolves (in deviantART) — Far in the north, two elves wander into a valley where they make a truly wondrous discovery.
  They say that James Cameron came up with The Terminator when he was in high fever. I, on the other hand, came up with this stuff while actually feeling pretty normal. I was compelled to record some Weirdness here. I'm not expecting anyone to understand it, but...
• 2008-07-07: When Compassion Calls (in deviantART) — One wizard's fight ends when she suddenly pauses to consider the situation.
  A strangely inspired story that I was somehow able to complete in just two days... but it is shorter than most of the stories I've written, too.

Flash Fiction Weeks

Get some pretty short adventures, or even non-adventures, right here!

• 2007-06-18: Flash-Fiction-a-Day week 1 — Very short stories of very varying sorts. I'm not saying they are any good, but... well, they have some ideas in them.

Not so good stuff...

• 2005-07-29: Faira's history (in deviantART) — The very first Avarthrel text that got actually published. More of a stylistic exercise, and not really anything very serious; this isn't really a short story as such, just a short peek at one of the major characters.