The meeting with the Prophetic Sage goes something like this:
- Our heroes stumble into the Lair, Hut, or Great Ruddy Castle on a Hill, usually in a rainstorm.
- An Ominous Shadow blots out the sun. Our heroes cower in terror.
- The voice of James Earl Jones booms out: WHO DARE DISTURB MY REVERIE!?
- Our heroes answer that is in fact, them.
- James Earl Jones informs them that he's going to kill them or turn them into slave minions or something.
- The Brave Pipsqueak pipes up and James is so impressed with his bravery that he backs off and shrinks down into a Charming Gentleman.
- After a bit of preliminary chit-chat, we get down to the whole business of the meeting, which is to make a Grave Prophecy.
The prophecies often go something like this:
When the winds of Wimble-Wamble
Beat upon the coasts of Yore,
Then the Moored may tremble-tramble,
Pound upon that dreadful door.
Instead of wondering what makes James Earl Jones such an authority on the winds of Wimble-Wamble, our heroes will thank him profusely and venture off into the sun, profoundly pondering what such an arcane saying could mean.
Just as Steve and Aaron are beginning to relax and enjoy themselves, an unexpected troop of goblins or orcs or malicious K'nids or giant cockroaches happens upon the sleeping adventurers, and before they know what's happened, they are taken captive. Little does anyone know that the Rugged Sidekick OR the Sturdy Stalwart was not captured. He follows the Evil Minions deep into the Shadow Realm, fending off demons at every turn, until finally he can spring his pals.
After a bit more sprinting around, here comes Strongarm Bluntaxe and his legions of Righteous Warriors, ready to clear the way for Steve to bean Lord Grunt-grunt-argh on the head with the Ashtray of Great Significance.
Everyone's worn out, they weep and hug, they all pick up chicks except the real scrawny one, and then everyone skips and dances with glee. Glee glee glee. Oh, yes, and they remember about the prophecy and then notice that the winds were indeed blowing in from Wimble-Wamble when they beaned Lord Grunt-grunt-argh with the Ashtray.
Glee.
THE END
Article comments
1 - NancyGail
Sounds like Knights of the Holy Grail
2 - Dave Nalle
The sub-category of fantasy, or more properly swords and sorcery novels, which rely on the mechanism of real-world humans transported into a fantasy world is very small and quite outdated. It had a brief resurgence in the D&D era when people started writing up their campaign worlds, but it's still not typical.
There ARE some great novels in that genre, of course - Warlords of Mars, The Compleat Enchanter, Glory Road, Chronicles of Narnia - but they are really the exception rather than the rule. The best heroic fantasy or swords and sorcery starts with a coherent, self-contained world which doesn't require reference to the mundane world or the involvement of a real world main character - that's really a sort of cheap trick for poor writers.
Imagine if Lord of the Rings had been told from the perspective of a 16 year old D&D player who appeared in Middle Earth and discovered he had magical powers just like gandalf. Sort of takes the wind right out of the sails.
Dave
3 - Steve S
Book 2: Since it was Steve who beaned the evil grunt-grunt on the head and saved the day, he now gets to be King of all the Land.
A just ruler, he harbored no ill will about the fact that since he began his quest to defeat the evil Lord, nobody believed in him, nobody even believed in the evil Lord, they called Steve nuts for believing in his quest, but he presevered. Proved all those beyotches wrong. What a King.
4 - Leoniceno
Dave: the part about them being from the real world isn't really necessary to the rest of it. I'm not really criticizing Lord of the Rings, I'm criticizing all those knock-offs of Lord of the Rings.
5 - parker
LOL. Yes, you summed it up nicely. How do you feel about speculative fiction works? I guess they are fantasy without the quest format.
6 - bhw
Great post!
My husband just finished reading The Hobbit to our daughter. Every once in a while, I hear her say something about Thorin Oakenshield, and now I'm going to have a hard time not thinking about old Strongarm Bluntaxe when she does!
7 - Temple Stark
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