The Complete Griselda

9 THE COMPLETE GRISELDA By Oliver Dickinson Foreword “Oliver and Me” by Greg Stafford “Interfering Uncles Have Their Uses” by Michael O’Brien Excerpt from A Promise of Thunder by Robin D. Laws Cover illustration by Heather Bruton Cover design by Melanie Haage Pavis map by Mike Blum, annotated by Wesley Quadros Big Rubble map by Wesley Quadros Acquisitions and Copy Editing by Rick Meints Layout, Supplemental Editing by Stephen Martin Runes by Issaries, Inc. Issaries Publication ISS 4502. ISBN #1-929052-11-1 Published by Issaries, Inc. Sample900 Murmansk St, Suite 5 file Oakland, CA 94607 Griselda herself protects this book. And you don’t want to mess with her! 1 9 T HE C OMPLETE G RISELDA 9 This book made possible by the Glorantha Trading Association Issaries salutes the volunteers of the Glorantha Trading Association whose contributions made this book possible. Are you interested in learning about the GTA? Check out the web site at: http://www.HeroWars.com/inc/gta.html THE COMPLETE GRISELDA Cover text, Oliver and Me, preview of A Promise of Thunder, advertisement on page 224, and maps are copyright ' 2001 by Issaries, Inc. Redfox is copyright by Fox, and appears by permission. Interfering Uncles Have Their Uses is copyright ' 2001 by Michael O Brien. All other text is copyright ' 1993, 2001 by Oliver Dickinson. All rights reserved. Any similarities between characters in Glor- antha and any persons living or dead are strictly coincidental. Cover illustration is copyright ' 2001 by Heather Bruton. Portions of this book originally appeared as part of The Collected Griselda, ISBN 1-898190-00-3, published by the Reaching Moon Megacorp. The reproduction of material from this book for the purposes of personal or private profit, by photographic, electronic, or other means of storage or retrieval is strictly prohibited. First Printing August 2001. Address questions about this publication to Issaries, Inc. SampleVisit www.HeroWars.com to learn more about Glorantha!file Dedication This book is dedicated to Philip Kemp, a most valued source of ideas and constructive criticism for many of the later stories, and also to all who have shown appreciation for the Griselda stories, especially to those who at successive Convulsions have taken the trouble to tell me that they liked them. No author could ask for more. 2 9 T HE C OMPLETE G RISELDA 9 Table of Contents Oliver and Me, by Greg Stafford . 4 Introduction . 6 Map of the city of New Pavis . 10 Points of View . 12 Lucky Eddi . 17 Griselda Gets Her Men . 21 Shamus Gets a Case . 26 A Tasty Morsel. 32 All In The Family . 37 The Great Chart Caper. 44 Hanufa’s Little Sister . 50 Down Among The Dead Men. 54 Good Advice . 59 Wolfhead’s Story . 61 Carving Up Carver . 64 Devil’s Play . 72 Bad Example. 80 Holding the Baby . 84 This Love Business . 89 Serious Money. 95 Worlds Apart. 106 Red Hot . 113 Happy Anniversary . 124 First Class Protection . 130 The Hero Bit . 138 The Matchmaker . 144 Griselda the Hero??. 154 The Trouble With Nephews . 155 Map of the Big Rubble . 165 Interfering Uncles Have Their Uses, by Michael O’Brien . 170 DifferentSample Shades of Red . file. 172 Respect . 184 The Cradlesnatchers . 195 Griselda: A Brief Biography . 214 A Griselda Songbook . 215 Griselda: A Brief Bibliography . 219 Oliver Dickinson: A Brief Biography. 220 3 9 T HE C OMPLETE G RISELDA 9 OLIVER AND ME (edited a little and annotated by Oliver Dickinson) One of the best parts of being in roleplaying is the people I meet. Often someone who was, at first, just another player turns out to be a fasci- nating person, and perhaps (if we are lucky) even a friend. Oliver Dick- inson is one of those people. Oliver and I have never sat down and played a game together. Our friendship has been more slow and refined, in a genteel sort of way, at first. Over a long distance, the game began when Oliver somehow got a copy of RuneQuest and was intrigued enough to generate some characters. After reading about Pavis and the Big Rubble he liked the setting enough that he began to play the characters, albeit in solo play. Sometime about then he began writing about the characters’ adventures which he had created. Well, I have seen lots of game write-ups which have never had another eye cast upon them since then. This one had two things more: entertainment and luck. There is a great difference between writing prose fiction and narrating game adventures. A whole lot of bad “game fiction” is out there pol- luting the market because it is not well written fiction. Oliver did not fall into that trap, and instead adopted a narrative form which is, in case you did not recognize it, a Damon Runyon pastiche. It is well written and entertaining to read. And he was lucky. I cannot list the places where Oliver’s material was published, but who can ever truly describe the circumstances which allowed White Dwarf magazine to publish RuneQuest fiction? Oliver began by correctly writing to me to ask about using Glorantha as the setting for his fiction. He also said something about mythology. I made some flippant remarks about Mycenaean mythology. Oliver replied with some statement of fact or other, and I quarreled my position for some time 1. Eventually, I discovered that Oliver really was a scholar who actually knew what he was talking about. But I didn’t hold it againstSample him. file Oliver’s day job is, in fact, Reader in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham. He is a senior staff member, and has chaired his department. His magnum opus is a book on the Aegean Bronze Age (that is, “mainland, islands, and Crete”), published in 1994 2. Its title is entirely and appropriately academic: The Aegean Bronze Age. He once mentioned that he might have preferred “Sex and 4 9 O LIVER A ND M E 9 Violence in the Bronze Age,” or even “Matriarchy and Militarism”, perhaps to attract the New Age market. Or maybe the gamers. I always liked the way that Oliver picked up on small clues and used them in his stories. That was how I got the chance to manipulate Griselda, and use long-distance gamemastering. For instance, from an early issue of Wyrm’s Footnotes he picked out that Pikat Yaraboom had a weakness for red-headed women. Griselda then got a reputation for being the big brute’s friend, as published in “Gris- elda Gets her Men.” I was pleased, and entertained. And prompted to tweak a player character, in a gamemaster way. I was working on Troll- pak, and entered the same information about Pikat Yaraboom as had appeared in Wyrm’s Footnotes, but added that he liked red-headed women “to eat.” I never said anything to Oliver, and wondered if he would even see the note. The response was “A Tasty Morsel,” in which this touchy problem is politely addressed. It made me laugh. I think that one of the appeals of these Griselda stories is that we all recognize our own RuneQuest characters in Griselda and Wolfhead, and their colorful opponents, and ourselves in Olaf Dickin’s-son, the narrator. After all, where would you and I really be in that dingy cor- ner of glorious Glorantha? I have enjoyed the Griselda stories, and endorse them as presenting a legitimate view of Glorantha. I am glad to honor the author in this publication. Greg Stafford November 6, 1992 Sample file 1. Actually, Greg hasn’t got the sequence of events quite right; no doubt he would say that this is the way it should have happened. For a closer approximation to the reality, see his comments in Gloran- than Visions, pg. 4. 2. Corrected reprints 1997, 1999. 5 9 T HE C OMPLETE G RISELDA 9 INTRODUCTION It is something of a shock to realize that I have been writing Griselda stories for nearly twenty years (the first was published in 1982). Every time I think that I have run out of ideas, something, maybe just a potential title, gives me inspiration. They are harder to write than they used to be, but I still get a bang out of it, so as long as people will listen to and read them I suspect I will keep producing them. As many readers will realize, they are in the style of Damon Runyon’s marvellous Broadway stories, which I had always wanted to try my hand at imitating. One day I got the idea of using the style for a tale set in Pavis, which from what I knew of it in 1981 could provide the kind of rough, semi-criminal background suitable for Runyon-style stories. As they say, the rest is history, and I am proud to have con- tributed some notable characters and locales to Pavis. Though a major aim has been to entertain, I have also aimed to show how I thought things could work in Pavis at this level, and how adventurers might behave, and to point a moral here and there. I have used as much of the Runyon language as is appropriate to the setting, but have incorporated American expressions from other sources that I liked, and sometimes tried my hand at other styles; I drew on George V. Higgins’ early novels to produce the monologue “Good Ad- vice,” while “Griselda the Hero??” and “Devil’s Play” are more ‘old West’ style. The Irishisms of “Shamus Gets a Case” got in because I was enjoying very much The Best of Myles, by Myles na Gopaleen (Flann O’Brien), when I wrote it.

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