Welgar the Cursed - cover reveal

Cover artwork by Rizky Nugraha

It is with great pleasure I can reveal the front cover for my collection of Welgar stories: Welgar the Cursed, which will be published later this year.

As an appetiser I am including below the Introduction I have written for it. 

The book will be published in the States by Tule Fog Press. 

INTRODUCTION

 The six stories in this collection chronicle the gradual descent into darkness of the northern barbarian mercenary hero Welgar.

“Ossani the Healer and the Beautiful Homunculus" was the first story I wrote involving Welgar, though he is very much a secondary character in this tale after the rather bizarre sorcerer-cum-apothecary Ossani the Healer. In this novelette Welgar is a young mercenary, already distrustful of sorcery, who becomes embroiled against his will in thwarting an attempt to take over the city he has been employed to protect as a member of the city watch. By sheer chance he and Ossani meet in a prison where they and others have been incarcerated by a puritanical religious movement that is threatening to tear the city apart. Though disliking anything that even hints of sorcery he is gradually persuaded to see Ossani in a better light than others of his ilk and together they collaborate to save the city from the sinister plot to bring it down.

"The Dark Priestdom" (published in Savage Realms Monthly) sees an older, more mature Welgar who has moved northwards to the “wealthy but licentious” city of Oriaska in a bid to improve his fortunes. There he pitches in to help Nadrain the Storyteller, who he notices is being set up to take the blame for the abduction of the king of Oriaska's daughter, though there is an element of self interest in this, as Welgar sees it as an opportunity to gain the king's gratitude for helping save the princess. In pursuit of her abductors Welgar and Nadrain sail southwards to the benighted city of Agrypt where Welgar is tricked into being possessed by the spirit of a dark, Agryptian demon god. Although this demon god endows him with increased strength, speed and stamina it is at the expense of his appearance, which is transformed into a wizened, bleached, deathlike travesty, looking more like a corpse than a living being.

"Welgar the Cursed" (published in Swords & Heroes) sees Welgar realising how truly cursed he is, not only in becoming the image of an unwrapped mummy, but in the extreme bouts of insane violence the demon god that has possessed him makes him perform. Insatiable in its appetite for slaughter, there is little Welgar can do to prevent it.

An incident in "Mask of a Mad God" reveals to Welgar even more vividly how evil this curse truly is. The horrific events in this story are what lead Welgar to undertake the hazardous trek to the far north to "The Forbidden City of Cyramon" (published in Swords & Heroes). In the arctic wastes beyond the Jagged Mountains in which this demon-haunted city is situated he hopes either to be killed or to free himself from his curse, though what he encounters there is far from what he expects.  

The final story, "Emerging from Their Twilit Realms", reveals the full extent of Agrypt's insane ambitions to create a dark empire, which will cause ruin, mayhem and death around the Azure Sea. Despite his desire to lead a normal life once more, Welgar is forced to oppose the Agryptian forces that head north in a way that only he can manage, reuniting him once more with Ossani the Healer in an apocalyptic tale of terror, death and destruction.

All of these stories chronologically detail Welgar's transformation from a carefree mercenary more interested in the quality of the local beer to an obsessed and cursed pawn in the kinds of sorcerous machinations he hates, distrusts and quite rightfully fears.

David A. Riley, Oswaldtwistle, UK, 2024