Thieves' World!

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #115 (May, 2006).

"You're in the wrong place, sucker."
-Robert Asprin's caption for the cover,
according to Andrew Offut,
"Afterword", The Dead of Winter (1985)

"...whenever one set out to write heroic fantasy, it was first necessary to re -invent the universe from scratch regardless of what had gone before. Despite the carefully crafted Hyborean world of Howard or even the delightfully complex town of Lankhmar which Leiber created, every author was expected to beat his head against the writing table and devise a world of his own. Imagine, I proposed, if our favourite sword-and -sorcery characters shared the same settings and time -frames. Imagine the story potentials. Imagine the tie-ins. 

What if...

What if Fafhrd and Mouser had just finished a successful heist. With an angry crowd on their heels, they pull one of their notorious doubleback escapes and elude the pursuing throng. Now suppose this angry, torch-waving pack runs headlong into Conan, hot and tired from the trail, his dead horse a day's walk behind him. All he wants is a jug of wine and a wench. Instead, he's confronted with a lynch mob. What if his saddlebags are full of loot from one of his own ventures, yet undiscovered?

Or what if Kane and Elric took jobs marshalling opposite armies in the same war?"
(from "The Making of Thieves' World", Thieves' World (1979))

               Thieves’ World began in 1979 as an authorial experiment.  While Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey, and Gordon Dickson were having dinner at Boskone ’78 they discussed one of the central difficulties of fantasy writing: world building.  Creating a world was a difficult and time-consuming task, and once finished the world only existed as a playground for its creator.  But if authors could share a world, if they could develop it together and set stories within it, the possibilities were staggering.  Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey turned the idea into a reality, and the gritty, realistic town of Sanctuary was born.  
               In its first incarnation it would eventually include 12 short story anthologies, 5 'official' novels, 7 graphic novels, a classic role-playing boxed set produced by Chaosium, and 6 roleplaying books published by Chaosium and FASA. there was even a board game, Sanctuary: Thieves World (Mayfair Games, 1982)  Over two-dozen authors would send their characters scurrying through Sanctuary’s slum, including well-known writers such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, C.J. Cherryh, Phillip Jośe Farmer, and Andrew Offutt.

               With so much material, trying to describe all of Thieves’ World would be an impossible task.  The short story anthologies form the heart of the franchise, each with eight to ten stories by half a dozen or so authors.  Despite the diversity of talent, Thieves’ World remained remarkably consistent in tone and style.  It was gritty, robust, occasionally depressing, realistic fiction set within a fantastic world of magic, gods, and demons.   

The heroic motifs of traditional sword and sorcery were well represented, Sanctuary boasted powerful swordsmen, skilled thieves, and amoral witches and wizards.  Gods stalked the streets on occasion, and the dead rarely stayed put.  But what set Thieves’ World apart were the other characters, the mid-wives, physicians, fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, and limners who lived routine, day to day lives in the city, yet occasionally had odd, exhilarating adventures.  We saw how the Prince lived in his palace, but we also visited with the down trodden of the Downwind slum and the working class folk of the Maze.  It was a wonderful model of a living, breathing fantasy city.  

Thieves’ World was especially interesting in its handling of mature themes and subjects.  Various stories explored difficult topics such as prostitution, rape, sodomy, slavery, sado-masochism, and drug use in a thoughtful, careful manner.  The imagery was neither salacious nor overly graphic; it was enough to indicate an act had occurred with out romanticizing it with descriptive prose.  Stories like John Brunner’s “Sentences of Death” (TW#1), David Drake’s “Goddess” (TW#2), and Robin Wayne Bailey’s “The Promise of Heaven” (TW#11) delivered hefty emotional impact as a result.

               Some of those involved have described the Thieves’ World experience as ‘role-playing for writers’ because the nature of the shared universe forced them to negotiate plots and outcomes with each other and the editors.  This framework makes the series particularly useful for role-players looking for inspiration and source material: “Shadowspawn”(TW#1) by Andrew Offutt provides the best character study in modern fantasy fiction, and an excellent example for role-players seeking to construct a believable, memorable character.  Phillip Jośe Farmers’ “Spiders of the Purple Mage” (TW#2) and David Drake’s “Goddess” (TW#2) both feature intricate dungeon crawls.  Andrew Offutt’s “Rebels Aren’t Born in Palaces” (TW#6) is a textbook description of a difficult burglary, while Diane Duane’s “The Hand that Feeds You” (TW#6) illustrates the process and danger of ritual, priestly magic.

               A consistent strength of Thieves’ World was the town’s politics.  Sanctuary suffered under an excess of powers: god-pledged Sacred Band mercenaries struggled against wizard-ruled Nisibisi terrorists, native Ilsig revolutionaries, and the criminal Hawkmasks of Jubal the Slaver.  They were ineffectually policed in their rampages by the town guard, the Imperial ‘Hell-hounds’, and a young, idealistic prince.  The town suffered invasion from the sea, and an epidemic of undead while much of it was flooding.  Any single volume of Thieves’ World should provide enough inspiration for a year of city-based adventures.

               Any short story collection is bound to have the occasional story a reader doesn’t enjoy and Thieves’ World was not an exception, though such stories were remarkably few.  As the series progressed it began to bow beneath the weight of its own plotlines, requiring an extra volume, Soul of the City (TW#8), in 1986 in which three of the authors, Lynn Abbey, Janet Morris, and C.J. Cherryh, wrote all of the stories in order to bring the series back into balance.  That volume read like novel rather than an anthology, and pushed the series back to its anthology roots. 
               The Thieves' World Complete Sanctuary Adventure Pack (1981), the Chaosium boxed set was exceedingly well received, it won the Origins Award for "Best Roleplaying Adventure of 1981." Even 32 years later, John O'Neill of Blackgate Magazine was singing the boxed set's praises. 

               The original Thieves’ World series ended in 1989 with Stealer’s Sky, the twelfth anthology.  The end came somewhat abruptly, leaving fans with several unfinished storylines.  
               Lynn Abbey revived the series in 2002 with the publication of the novel Sanctuary by Tor; set decades after the first series it brought old storylines to a close and introduced new horrors and pathos into the city’s history. She followed that excellent novel with two new anthologies, Turning Points (2002) and Enemies of Fortune (2004) that easily live up to the standards of Thieves’ World.  The new series brought back favorite authors like Robin Wayne Bailey, Andrew Offut, and Diana Paxson, most of whom brought in new characters tied to their past protagonists in some way, but there were also new authors like Jeff Grubb and Dennis L. McKiernan who brought new ideas and characters to the setting. 
               Green Ronin also worked closely with Lynn Abbey to create a Thieves’ World d20 game, detailing both the Sanctuary of both the original series and the new.  They produced the Thieves' World Player's Manual (2005), Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary (2005), Thieves' World Gazetteer (2005), and two excellent adventure modules, Murder at the Vulgar Unicorn (2005) and Black Snake Dawn (2007).
                Some of the Thieves' World  authors took the characters out of the town and into their own worlds, producing works that were not part of the 'official' Thieves' World universe but were still connected to it. Poul Anderson had actually first introduced Cappen Varra in "The Valor of Cappen Varra" in 1957 in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, decades before the series was created.  Marion Zimmer Bradley only contributed to the first anthology, but she later released an anthology with Vonda McIntyre, Lythande (1986) combing their Thieves' World stories with other tales of the Blue Star sorceress. Aside from the 3 'official' Thieves World novels she wrote, Janet Morris and Chris Morris continued the saga of the immortal Tempus and his Stepsons in 8 additional novels (I review these in a later post). One of those novels, The Sacred Band (2010) is set in Sanctuary itself in the decades between the original and the revived anthology series.
                For over 40 years Thieves' World as been a vibrant, fascinating fantasy setting. I can't recommend it enough to new readers. It was a dark and gritty setting long before the current wave of 'dark' fantasy fare took over the media landscape - it paved the way for works like Babylon 5 and Game of Thrones. It was often inspired by actual history but never enslaved to it. So grab a seat at the Vulgar Unicorn, grab a pint, and toss Hakiem a silver to hear a tale...

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.