alt title(s): Lankhmar
"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one — and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
One of the most seminal pieces of
Sword And Sorcery was Fritz Leiber's
Fafhrd And The Gray Mouser series of short stories and novellas. Set in the world of Nehwon (except for one story set on Earth), often in the city of Lankhmar, it starred
Fafhrd, a seven-foot tall
barbarian from the North, and
the Mouser, a trickster
thief and former wizard's apprentice, who find and befriend each other one day. A
deconstruction of the
Conan The Barbarian stories that Leiber had grown tired of,
Fafhrd And The Gray Mouser showed two heroes closer to actual human beings. To quote
The Other Wiki: "They spend a lot of time drinking, feasting, wenching, brawling, stealing, and gambling, and are seldom fussy about to whom they hire their swords. But they are humane and - most of all - relish true adventure."
There are seven books containing all the stories:
Swords and Deviltry,
Swords Against Death,
Swords in the Mist,
Swords Against Wizardry,
The Swords of Lankhmar,
Swords and Ice Magic, and
The Knight and Knave of Swords.
This series provides examples of:
- Barbarian Hero (Fafhrd)
- Bash Brothers
- Bazaar Of The Bizarre (the Trope Namer)
- Brains And Brawn (Massively averted. Fafhrd is mentally complacent but far from stupid; and the Mouser, while conspicuously intelligent, is inclined to let his ego lead him into foolhardy actions. To make it more plain, it's usually the Mouser who does the most damage and fights the toughest fights.)
- Fafhrd is a dreamer, the Mouser is street-wise. They're both smart, but the Mouser depends on it far more.
- Broke Episode.
- Cartwright Curse Girl Of The Week: They almost always have love interests, they never seem to last from one story to the next.
- City Of Adventure (Lankhmar)
- Deadpan Snarker (the Mouser)
- Death By Origin Story (When they first meet in Ill Met in Lankhmar, both Fafhrd and the Mouser have serious girlfriends. Neither survives the end of the story.)
- Extra Eyes (Ningauble of the Seven Eyes)
- Eyeless Face (Sheelba of the Eyeless Face)
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture
- Girl Of The Week
- Gods Need Prayer Badly (in several different stories)
- Here There Were Dragons
- Heterosexual Life Partners
- I Call It Vera (Fafhrd has a broadsword named Graywand and a poignard named Heartseeker. The Mouser has a rapier named Scalpel and a dirk named Cat's Claw.)
- Not as much though. They lose their weapons all the time and just rename the new weapons they get.
- In Harms Way
- Intercontinuity Crossover (In the 1970s, they appeared in a Wonder Woman comic. Don't believe me?
◊)
- Interspecies Romance: Fafhrd hooked up with a ghoul (see below) and Mouser with a girl who was descended from rats (in Swords of Lankhmar).
- Loveable Rogue (the Gray Mouser)
- Low Fantasy
- Medium Awareness (In the origin story Ill Met in Lankhmar, the Mouser's response when Fafhrd introduces himself is to ask how "Fafhrd" is pronounced.)
- Mr Exposition (Parodied with Ningauble of the Seven Eyes — in one scene, as he tries to exposit, the Mouser keeps interrupting him again and again just for fun.)
- Odd Job Gods (many of the gods in Lankhmar)
- Religion Of Evil
- Sdrawkcab Name (Nehwon is backwards for Nowhen)
- Shout Out: Nehwon is named after the pattern of "Erewhon", a fantasy land created by Samuel Butler.
- There are also a lot of shout outs to our heroes, in works that have drawn inspiration from Leiber. For instance:
- The very first Discworld novel features a cameo by "Bravd and the Weasel". Not to mention the city of Ankh-Morpork, in its original form similar in both name and description to Lankhmar. In later books it developed its own unique character.
- Conan The Barbarian #6, written by Roy Thomas and published by Marvel, was set in the sinful city of Shadizar, which as written by Thomas owed a lot to Lankhmar, and featured a cameo by "Fafnir and Blackrat". (Shadizar came first — it's a Zamoran city from Howard's original stories — but Howard never developed it much, though it was definitely a Wretched Hive.)
- Fables, starting from issue #77, features obvious expies of the two called Freddy and Mouse.
- Snowball Fight
- Soul Jar (one of the Big Bads put his in an egg)
- Squick (One of Fafhrd's more useful girlfriends is Kreeshka. She's a Ghoul who he captured in battle. Ghouls in Nehwon are basically nudist humans with normal bones but transparent skin, organs, et cetera, so except for some cool lighting effects they look exactly like animated skeletons (And yes, Fafhrd does ask "how do you see?". He even gets an answer.) Some people seem to be disturbed by thinking of the visual aspects of their sexual relationship. For some reason the description of seeing her chew, swallow, and digest a piece of raw meat that remains visible the entire time doesn't seem to faze anyone.)
- Also mentioned is that female Ghouls at least, wear make-up so you can see the parts you can't see normally. Pretty weird when you're 14.
- Thieves Guild
- Trickster Mentor (Ningauble and Sheelba may fall into this, as they send Fafhrd and the Mouster off on some wacky adventures - stealing the mask of Death or the highest star from the sky, for instance)
- Weird Al Effect (On both ends — it itself was intended to mock earlier conventions of a more staid fantasy genre; as the genre became more and more free-wheeling and the Conan-style fantasy novels it was lampooning faded from view, it ended up getting many humorous references from elsewhere itself.)
- Weird Trade Union (The Assassins' Guild and Thieves' Guild in Lankhmar, though they've become such common tropes themselves that it's likely many modern readers wouldn't realize that Leiber meant them as a joke.)
- What You Are In The Dark
- Witch Doctor (two of 'em: Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, mentors to Fafhrd and the Mouster respectively)
- Wretched Hive (Lankhmar)
