![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/New-SSM-logo-300x77.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Swords & Sorcery Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m pleased to report that Rab Foster, the nom de plume<\/em> by which I write fantasy fiction, has just had a new story published in issue 177 of Swords & Sorcery Magazine<\/em>.\u00a0 Entitled The Illuminators<\/em>, it features a recurring character of mine, the swordswoman Cranna the Crimson, who\u2019s basically a big gobby redhead who takes no shit from anybody, least of all from male chauvinists.\u00a0 In The Illuminators<\/em>, Cranna is hired to escort a group of pilgrims across a city, at night, to a graveyard.\u00a0 Ostensibly, the pilgrims\u2019 purpose is to say prayers in memory of some fellow-believers who are buried in the graveyard \u2013 but inevitably, this being a sword-and-sorcery story, their real purpose proves to be a darker one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Illuminators<\/em> owes a lot to a wonderful essay called On Thud and Blunder<\/em> (1978) by the late science fiction and fantasy author Poul Anderson<\/a>, which you can read here<\/a>.\u00a0 First, Anderson addresses the tendency of writers of sword-and-sorcery and heroic-fantasy fiction, up until the late 1970s at least, to base the imaginary settings of their stories on pre-industrial European societies that\u2019d existed in history: \u2018often as a mishmash of Roman Empire, Dark Ages, and high Middle Ages\u2019, though \u2018with a bit of Pharaonic Egypt, Asian nomadism, and so forth on the fringes.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He then castigates many of those writers for not creating a setting \u2018which, however thaumaturgical, makes sense,\u2019 and describes how the realities of pre-industrial European life \u2013 political structures, labour, religion, literacy, travel by land and sea, disease, warfare, weaponry, horses, hand-to-hand combat \u2013 were very different from what\u2019s usually depicted in fantasy writing.\u00a0 To take just one example: \u201cNobody in his right mind would grab a sword two-handed, raise it over his head, and chop straight down, exposing his belly all that while.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Something that struck me especially was Anderson\u2019s observation about pre-industrial cities after dark: \u201cPeople who have experienced blackouts will tell you that a nighted city without the modern invention of lights is black<\/em>. \u00a0With walls shutting off most of the sky \u2014 especially along narrow medieval streets \u2014 it is far gloomier that any open field. \u00a0You\u2019d grope your way, unless you had a torch or lantern (and then you\u2019d better have an armed guard).\u201d \u00a0That gave me the idea of having Cranna work for a business, in a medieval-style city, that provides escorts for travelers in the city\u2019s streets after dark.\u00a0 The escorts carry torches and are armed, thus providing both illumination and security.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I also took on board Anderson\u2019s comments about the cleanliness, or lack of it, of pre-industrial streets.\u00a0 \u201cFurthermore, those lanes were open sewers; in many places, stepping stones went down the middle because of that. \u00a0Despite sanitary measures, metropolitan streets as late as about 1900 were often uncrossable simply because of horse droppings. \u00a0Graveyards stank too: one reason why incense was used in church services.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In fact, the city that appears in The Illuminators<\/em> is inspired by one I\u2019m very familiar with, Edinburgh.\u00a0 The Scottish capital earned itself the nickname of \u2018Auld Reekie<\/a>\u2019, first of all because of the smoke it produced and then, as the meaning of \u2018reek\u2019 changed from \u2018smoky\u2019 to \u2018stinky\u2019, because of its malodorousness.\u00a0 My imaginary city even has a lake below its slopes, which one character describes as a \u2018cesspit\u2019 because of all the sewage and filth that\u2019s oozed down those slopes into it.\u00a0 That corresponds to the Nor Loch<\/a>, the body of badly-polluted water that used to exist at the bottom of the northern slopes of Edinburgh\u2019s Auld Toon \u2013 the site of the Nor Loch is now occupied by Waverley Station and Princes Street Gardens.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the month of November, you can read The Illuminators<\/em> here<\/a>, while the main page of Swords & Sorcery Magazine <\/em>can be accessed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/NL-in-Edinb-300x251.jpg\")
<\/p>\n