Ethshar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ethshar is a constructed world first developed by American fantasy author Lawrence Watt-Evans for use in role-playing games, in which he later set a number of novels and short stories. He loosely modeled the political and economic aspects of the world on the Roman Empire of about the second century A.D.
Ethshar is actually the common name of three large cities in the major civilization of this world: Ethshar of the Spices, Ethshar of the Sands, and Ethshar of the Rocks, making up a political entity called the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars. To the southeast of the Hegemony is the former Ethshar, broken up into more than two hundred statelets collectively called the Small Kingdoms. The inhabitants don't have a name for their world, simply calling it the World.
Notable features of Ethshar, in contrast to some other fantasy worlds, include:
- Besides humans there are few other intelligent races, including dragons.
- There are many different varieties of magic in Ethshar, each with its own laws. Some, like the telekinesis exhibited by Ethshar's warlocks, seem to owe more influence to science fictional than fantasy influences.
- Ethshar, as a world, does not seem to be on a planet- the known world is the end-cap of a cylinder surrounded by what seems to be a noxious yellow gas.
- Magic, in particular wizardry, is powerful enough to create other universes.
Notable features of the Ethshar series, in contrast to some other invented-world fantasy series, include:
- The novels and stories stand alone reasonably well, and don't need to be read in a particular order (with some exceptions mentioned by Watt-Evans on the Ethshar site).
- The scope of the stories tends to be personal rather than cosmic.
The first six Ethshar novels were published by Ballantine's Del Rey imprint, all of them being accepted and nominally edited by Lester Del Rey. The seventh and eighth were published by Tor Books, but disappointing sales led Tor to ask Lawrence Watt-Evans to concentrate on his non-Ethshar material, which generated much better sales. After writing several non-Ethshar fantasy novels for Tor, Watt-Evans began experimentally serializing the ninth Ethshar novel, The Spriggan Mirror, on his website under a modified form of the Street Performer Protocol. As of September 2006, the novel is scheduled to be published soon in trade paperback, and Watt-Evans is serializing the next, The Vondish Ambassador.
The Ethshar short stories were first published in various anthologies; later six of them were included as bonus material in Wildside Press's reprints of the Del Rey Ethshar novels, and the seventh and last is included with The Spriggan Mirror.
