Fan novel: A Shade of Gray (completed)

[A-Red]

A Shade of Gray

A Shade of Gray is a novel set in the Myth universe. It begins during the final days of the war with Soulblighter, but revolves primarily around events that take place afterward.

It was loosely inspired by an unfinished campaign of the same name by Max Bernstein, Scott Sandford, and Jason Dworkin. The novel and campaign have the same starting place and both center on Phelot, but that's about as far as the similarity goes. Still, I owe them for the inspiration.

Excerpt:

For a time none of them say anything, because there is nothing to say. Wind sweeps across the basin, throwing up dust around them. The dust is already beginning to settle over what happened.

Behind them lies a trail of the dead, marking the path they took through the desert. Great piles heap up where the fighting was worst. Ahead, in the encampment, there are discs of scorched earth, arrayed in formation, and the scattering of ashen remains. A crater, wide as the height of two men and deep as three, smokes languidly. Inside of it, the sand is fused into glass. The dust seems to dampen the stench of sun-beaten decay, but the razor-sharp smell of seared flesh hangs in the air despite the sweep of the wind.

Five men stand at the edge of the basin, saying nothing. They are survivors. They let him handle it, and now he is dead. Four of them admit to themselves that it is better that way. The fifth, grim and impenetrable, would have preferred that he still lived, though only because of the knowledge he had held.

Oderic is the first to speak. “So...what do we do now?”

“Those walls to the north are ancient and crumbling,” says Four Flint Motion Sun. “We will doubtless find nothing there.”

“The most obvious course,” says Ten Soaring White Eagle, “Is to return to the place where we split from the Legion, and follow their tracks.”

“Or cut straight for Tharsis,” Four Flint says.

“What, across the desert?” Andvari says. The dwarf spits into the sand. “I’m exhausted.”

“The cavern, there,” Seanchaidh says. “I sense power. I can taste it.”

The other four eye him. Four Flint becomes very still. “We should return to the Emperor,” Ten Soaring says.

“There is a World Knot as well,” says Seanchaidh.

“Aye?” says Oderic. “You can taste that too?”

The Warlock’s only response is to stride west, around the edge of the encampment toward the cavern mouth. Andvari follows, then Four Flint, then Ten Soaring. Oderic stands for a moment longer, looking at the wreckage marking the deaths of two of the most powerful sorcerors ever to walk the earth. Smoke and dust drift over him.

“What a mess we’ve made,” he says quietly.

[Isolder]

Sweet. But. PDF?

[William Wallet]

You have my admiration for sticking at it! Cid and meself never finished our opus. Great job, man.

[A-Red]

Sweet. But. PDF?

I don't currently have anything that makes pdf. If anyone wants to convert it, please feel free to upload and/or host it, but please also include the short readme txt.

[vinylrake]

here is a zip file containing your original A Shade of Gray folder with all your original files, plus a PDF version of the story.

You should be able to download it and upload it to the tain in place of the zip you currently have there.

I didn't do any editing, I just opened it an app that reads docs/rtfs and saves them as PDFs so I opened it and skimmed through to make sure it converted, but you might want to check it out and make sure everything looks ok to you.

[Isolder]

Thanks vinyl.

A-Red,

PDFCreator is a decent tool for creating PDFs. You install it and then it looks like a printer to your software. So you just print to PDFCreator and a lovely pdf is created.

[Pyro]

I didn't do any editing...

VR lies, he totally changed the ending!

[Jon God]

Thanks vinyl.

A-Red,

PDFCreator is a decent tool for creating PDFs. You install it and then it looks like a printer to your software. So you just print to PDFCreator and a lovely pdf is created.

I use preview.

That's right, I don't make many PDFs.

[juliocpaes]

Hey all,

A-Red congratulated.
the novel is a excellent job.

Vinyl, the translation to PDF is a great help. Good man !

[Industry]

So, where does it become canon that Shades cannot cross water? I know this but cannot remember from where. And am concerned that I might be mixing Myth with some other mythology.

[Pyro]

Apparently from the TFL Manual and TFL itself. Quoted here.

The reanimated corpses of long-dead sorcerers, Shades take great pains to avoid running water (since they can only cross it by using a bridge) and act as a conduit for the evil magic of the Fallen Lords.

And from TFL's Seven Gates level:

Trapped by the rising water somewhere in the pass is Scaripant, one of The Deceiver's shades. Find and destroy him.

[juliocpaes]

So, where does it become canon that Shades cannot cross water? I know this but cannot remember from where. And am concerned that I might be mixing Myth with some other mythology.

Industry,

I knew, that is canonical, the Shades does not cross water, is a limitation of this malefactor, is a way around it and kill this unit darkness.

[Industry]

Thanks again for jogging my memory Pyro.

And great story A-Red. A question: Was Keep Carchaen supposed to re-use the Baron map from the solo SB story?

[Graydon]

There was an old plugin floating around called Shade of Grey, and it had a keep level. Carchaen is that keep.

[A-Red]

Technically, the keep level from the old campaign (which was on a huge and gorgeous winter mesh) made it into the novel as Fool's Claim, which appears later. Carchaen isn't a map from Shade of Gray.