Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (sometimes rendered as Grey Mouser) are a pair of characters created by the author Fritz Leiber. Their adventures are collected in a series of books varying in number depending on edition and publication.

They are a pair of hard-drinking, hard-fighting, woman-obsessed thieves, both with a finely-wrought sense of personal aesthetics and a complete inability to hold onto any of their plundered wealth. They are expert swordsmen, climbers, sailors, riders and practically any other skill that may come in handy for a plot device.

They live in an invented world called Nehwon, its name itself a homage to Erewhon. Much of the action takes place in the principal city Lankhmar.

The canonical series is:

Fafhrd

Fafhrd is on the surface the stereotypical "northern barbarian". He is considerably taller than average; he usually has long, wild, red hair and beard (although see Lean Times in Lankhmar); he wears furs crudely cut and cured, and wields a hefty sword which he calls Graywand. He has a predilection for older women, usually tall and rangy like himself, although he has been shown not to be particularly fussy in this regard.

His singling voice is better than average, pitched rather higher than would perhaps be expected for one so large; this is as a result of his training in early years to be a Skald.

His character is based on the conventional Nordic folk tradition, enhanced and carved for literary effect.

His parentage, upbringing and early life are depicted in the story The Snow Women.

The Gray Mouser

Only otherwise known by his childhood nickname "Mouse", the Gray Mouser appears never to have had a conventional name. Aspects of his early life, and how he turned out the way he did, are portrayed in the story The Unholy Grail.

He is a smallish, handsome, sly-looking and foppish man with an extreme streak of narcissism and egotism. He usually wears gray garments of fine cut, usually of ratskin and silk, manufactured and repaired by an erstwhile colleague in Lankhmar, Nattick Nimblefingers (who never actually appears in the Nehwon canon - his purpose in the plot is merely to provide a pretext for the Gray Mouser to appear his usual dapper self after an episode of considerable exertion and privation). He sports a long, thin blade which he calls Scalpel, and also a smaller dagger-like blade for his other hand, which he calls Cat's Claw.

His own sexual predilection is towards women rather younger than himself, to an extreme that in conventional Western terrestrial society would perhaps border on illegality.

Nehwon

The world in which all the action takes place (except for one story, Adept's Gambit, which oddly takes place in approximately the pre-Roman Middle East of our homeworld Earth itself, although not one which can bre reliably historically placed). Nehwon is a world which roughly corresponds to the Iron Age period of Earth, in which technology is primitive, energy is generated by muscle-power and wood-burning, and transport is by horse and ship (propelled either by sails or by oars).

Magic works, when germane to the plot. Strange invented beasts populate it, like giant hot-blooded white-furred snakes, multi-headed plesiousaur-like sea-monsters and intelligent rats who walk upright and wear clothes.

Lankhmar

Lankhmar is the main city in Nehwon, in which much of the action takes place. It is noisy, smelly, anarchic, scruffy and crime-riddled, in other words, a perfect setting for tales of unbridled spooky swashbuckling. Significantly to the calling of both Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the Thieves' Guild is a powerful presence here, as is the Beggar's Guild. Early stories in the canon feature conflicts between the pair and the Thieves' Guild.

The Gods in Lankhmar (not to be confused with the Gods of Lankhmar) are multitudinous, and their relative power is determined by their position on Street of the Gods almost in the manner of a pop chart.

The Stories

Induction

A brief introduction to the world of Lankhmar and our main protagonists.

The Snow Women

In which Fafhrd is introduced. He is eighteen, and lives in a tent with his mother Mor, the acknowledged chief of the Snow Clan, a hidebound matriarchy dwelling in Cold Corner in the snowbound Cold Waste. He is tall, fit, intelligent, philosophical and skilful with the various tools of his environment. He is also a skilled singer and story-teller. His father, it turns out, has perished some years earlier while mountain-climbing.

The story opens with the arrival of a troupe of travelling players whose presence is barely tolerated by the womenfolk, but (in general) welcomed by the men of the clan, as it offers them the opportunity to escape for a while from the tyranny of the rule of the women. Fafhrd is forbidden to watch the show, not only by his youth but by his mother.

He has already fathered an as yet unborn child on his sweetheart Mara, and he is philosophically resigned to the fact that he is about to transfer his slavery from his mother to Mara. As the story opens, he is contented for this to happen, as he still enjoys his love-life with Mara.

However, an encounter with the intriguing Vlana, whom he rescues, is about to change all this. She is a good decade older than he, a performer in the troupe, and a victim (it will turn out) of certain political skullduggery between the Snow Clan and the management of the troupe.

Fafhrd and Vlana's relationship is illicit on many levels, mainly because in different ways both are in a kind of slavery. Both wish to escape this slavery, and see in each other a means by which to do so. They plan to flee south, go to Lanhkmar (probably), and live the free and happy life of vagabond performers, or something equally romatically alluring or whatever. However, what Fafhrd does not know is that he is but one of the possible means of Vlana's escape, and that he has several more-or-less deadly rivals for her affections. It transpires that she seems not to be particularly concerned exactly which of these rivals she ends up with.

Considerable entertaining mayhem later, Fafhrd sees Vlana flee on a stolen sleigh, with one of those rivals at her side. He follows on skis. This exciting pursuit requires his utmost skill and strength, as you would expect. He is just in time to thwart an ambush by other parties concerned in Vlana's future, which he does by exploiting his considerable reserves of cunning and skill. As you'd expect, the tale ends with Fafhrd and Vlana fleeing in the stolen sleigh, destination Lankhmar.

WORK IN PROGRESS.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Contents