Hi,
I’ve been trying to track down a collection of stories that I remember reading in the early to mid 1980s. I can’t remember many details but I thought I’d ask the Dope as see if anyone remembers.
I believe it was associated with Dragon Magazine in some way. It wasn’t a special issue of the magazine but perhaps came from the same publisher? Not really clear.
It was a paperback but larger than normal, maybe 8.5 by 11
About 10 stories by different authors.
One story - woman thief is betrayed by boyfriend, meets up with teenage boy thief, they rob a magician’s who only sleeps one night a month, recruit barbarian fighter who betrays them but in the end is killed by magical creature sent by wizard after they all think they escaped. The ex-boyfriend is used to drug wolves (who are trained by wizard only to eat live humans) at beginning of the robbery.
Second story - Barbarian warrior who is married to a goddess is digging in his basement and releases some ancient evil spirit imprisoned by the gods. The gods give him special potion to coat his sword and swallow. Evil spirit destroyed by potion when it tries to possess warrior. I remember reading a second story about this warrior (from a different) source so maybe it was a series.
There was a story about liches (lichii?) - whatever - badass undead dudes…can’t remember more details.
Anyone have any ideas or possible authors/titles?
I looked through the index of Dragon Magazine but didn’t see any titles that seemed right.
Do you know about the Internet Speculative Fiction Database? The volume you’re looking for is almost certainly listed there. Unfortunately I can’t suggest an easy way to look for it there. You could, for instance, enter the word “thief” into first blank in the search form (given below in the link) and “Fiction Titles” in the blank below that, and it would give you all the stories whose titles contain the word “thief”. But the fact that one story that you’re asking about is about a thief doesn’t mean that the word “thief” is in the title, alas:
And we have a winner!! Dragontales it was…I recognized the cover immediately. Thanks, now I have to see if any of these are online so I can relive my misspent youth…
I could have sworn this was going to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieve%27s_World
edit: Speaking of Dragon Magazine, I’ve only been able to find a couple of Monty Haul adventures online. I’ve never found the one where they call down strikes from their fleet of Constitution-class starships in orbit.