Annals of the Nameless Dwarf

Here begins the epic saga of the Nameless Dwarf™The dwarves of the Ravine City have hidden away from the world above for centuries, but their self-imposed exile is about to end.Ravine Guard Carnac Thayn has always felt there was more to life than humdrum patrols and drinking in the local taverns. His pa says the blood of heroes flows through his veins, but it must have been diluted by beer.When Carn is called to a murder scene and pursues the assassin, he is flooded with vitality and power. For the first time, he feels fully alive and one step closer to the dwarf he is destined to be.The murder is no isolated incident. A volume of the city's chronicles is stolen, mysterious rumblings come from the deep mines, and a troublesome philosopher arrives in a last-ditch attempt to avert the coming catastrophe.As events spiral out of control, Carn is all that stands between the dwarves and their doom. If it were a matter of prowess with an axe, he might even prevail, but the enemy is more subtle than that, and his weapons are delusion and despair.Blood will flow in rivers through the ravine.A name will be forgotten.A hero will rise.Or a destroyer."Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes."Mitchell Hogan, author of A Crucible of Souls"A masterpiece of sword and sorcery storytelling. A visceral yet thoughtful epic."Bookwraiths Reviews"One thing that impressed me right from the beginning were the fight scenes."Black Gate Magazine"Gripping, violent, and brilliantly choreographed." Smash Dragons "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

The Nameless Dwarf awakens from a year-long slumber, tortured by memories of slaughter. He has become an outcast, a butcher, the most reviled of dwarven kind.Meanwhile, forces of unimaginable destruction coalesce around the mountain fortress of a mad sorcerer, and the philosopher Aristodeus assembles a team of four unlikely heroes for a last desperate attempt to avert the destruction of all things:A pious knight with a wavering faith;An assassin with no idea who or what he really is;A woman with an enchanted blade that evokes the memory of the Black Axe;And a dwarf with no name who will either carve out his own redemption or condemn the world to a night that will never end. "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

The Nameless Dwarf is condemned to always wear a great helm forged from ocras, the mythical ore of the underworld. Without it, he would fall prey to the power of the Black Axe and once more become the Ravine Butcher.After a year of fighting in other people's wars, Nameless receives a visit from a faen, one of the underworld tricksters, who tells him the day he has long waited for has arrived. The philosopher Aristodeus has devised a plan to destroy the Black Axe and free Nameless from the ocras helm.With the aid of new companions and an old friend, the assassin Shadrak the Unseen, Nameless must retrieve three artifacts that, combined, will bring an end to his suffering:The gauntlets of the fire giant, Sartis, whose lair lies in the roots of a volcano;The invulnerable armor of the Lich Lord of Verusia-an undead tyrant with a penchant for impaling and the drinking of souls;And the Shield of Warding, beneath which cowers a paranoid god on the fringe of the Abyss.But things are never that simple. Each of the companions has their own reasons for joining the quests, even Shadrak, who has been bound by an irrevocable contract-To kill the Nameless Dwarf. "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

The Nameless Dwarf hires the rogue Nils Fargin to track the survivors of Arx Gravis, so he can tell the dwarves the curse of the Black Axe has been lifted and they are safe to return home.The trail leads to the brigand town of Malfen, the gateway to Cerreth, the Land of Nightmare.Nameless and Nils join forces with a shapeshifting assassin and a sorcerer under the sway of a dubious magical grimoire for the hazardous journey ahead.Time is running out for the dwarves as ancient horror pursues them through the ever-changing dreamscape of Cerreth, and Nameless despairs of reaching them.But a new hope awaits him in a city beneath the waves-if he can first survive the unstoppable evil that destroyed the dwarf lords of old. "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

The Nameless Dwarf is sentenced to death by the survivors of Arx Gravis. It is a fate he willingly accepts.The assassin Ilesa has abandoned him, and so it falls to the rogue Nils and the wizard Silas to stage a rescue.But with the Lich Lord's grimoire obsessing him more and more, Silas may no longer be in control of his destiny. Sick and close to death, he is haunted by visions of an ebon staff in a forest of tar.As a chilling doom closes in on the companions, the last of the dwarves are threatened with extinction at the hands of ravenous beasts that live only to feed.And in the background, orchestrating it all, lurks an implacable horror Nameless had thought destroyed:A skull with crimson eyes that feast on living souls.All that remains of Otto Blightey, the Lich Lord of Verusia. "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

The Nameless Dwarf begins a new chapter of his life in the up-and-coming town of Brink, now that he has worked out his penance and resettled his people in Arnoch, their ancestral citadel.He has everything a dwarf could possibly wish for-a gym, a beer hall, and a bawdy house across the road. But then a blood-stained dwarf staggers into town with a message of doom:Arnoch has sunk beneath the waves, its last line of defense against the attack of a five-headed dragon.The one slender hope remaining to the dwarves lies in their distant past: the dwarf lords, who had been created for perils such as this. But for centuries, they have been in exile on Thanatos, a world in which every life form has one purpose-to kill.With time running out for Arnoch, Nameless must find the dwarf lords and persuade them to come home.But before that, he first has to survive them. "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

"One of the best fantasy novels I have read so far this year."Rebecca Ross (Reedsy Discovery)When a bloodthirsty horde storms out of the north, refugees flee for their lives, among them the skald Nyra Sahtis and Sister Caelin, a priestess who was once a trainer of armies.But with the capital, Jeridium, under siege from a second incursion, there is nowhere left to run.As rival armies converge on Jeridium, the Senate are reduced to clutching at straws. In a desperate last gambit, they send the assassin Shadrak the Unseen past enemy lines and into the mountains, where he must find a grief-stricken warrior and his mythical axe."Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes."Mitchell Hogan, author of A Crucible of Souls "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

When the dwarven civil war ended, the Nameless Dwarf lay cold upon the battlefield, his broken axe beside him.But death is not the end in a cosmos ruled by the Supernals, beings of pure sorcery with the power to create worlds.Nameless finds himself aboard a ship bound for the Feasting Hall of Witandos, but disappointment, rather than beer, awaits him, along with a mountain of unpaid penance.For the deeds performed in life have their consequences in the world to come, and an evil has taken root at the heart of the afterlife.An evil that seeks to turn the Supernal Realm into a second Abyss. "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)

The dwarven civil war might have ended, but the powers behind it still fester....Snuv Scavage is about as lowborn as a dwarf can get. With no parents and no home, she tends Arnoch's battle-goats and sleeps in their pen. But there is something special about this dwarf. Something written in her blood.When disturbing reports come in from the city of Jeridium, Snuv is sent to kill the heavily pregnant Skald, Nyra Sahtis, before she can give birth to her unnatural child. But Nyra is watched over by the Church of the Way, whose priests have changed beyond all recognition. And she enjoys the protection of Caelin the Cleaver, the most deadly warrior of her generation.Meanwhile, the wizard Venton Nap has returned to life on Aosia with only one thing on his mind: to bring back his deceased family from the Supernal Realm. Employing a guide from the backwater town of Malfen, Venton picks up on the ill-fated quest that once ended his life, determined to find the fabled lily cats of Rhylion and wrest from them the secret of life.As the ages old war between the Lich Lord of Verusia and the Witch Queen of Tho-Agoth at last comes to a head, plunging Medryn-Tha into a new age of darkness, Snuv is confronted by a dwarf with a plain-looking axe, which he claims is the legendary Paxa Boraga.A dwarf who has done his fair share of fighting, and who knows Snuv better than she knows herself."A masterpiece of sword and sorcery storytelling. A visceral yet thoughtful epic." (Bookwraiths Reviews)"Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes."Mitchell Hogan, author of A Crucible of Souls "Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes." Mitchell Hogan"Like Bernard Cornwell on 'shrooms!" Dinorah WilsonInternationally bestselling and award winning author Derek Prior excels in fast-paced, high stakes epic fantasy adventure stories in which good ultimately triumphs, but always at a cost.Taking familiar fantasy tropes as a point of departure, Prior expands upon them to explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty and heroism in worlds where evil is an ever-present reality, magic is both a curse and a blessing, and characters are tempered in battle.Winner of best fantasy novel 2012 (The Nameless Dwarf: The Complete Chronicles)Fantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018 (Ravine of Blood and Shadow) The age of glory is on the horizon and Carnac Thayn must make a difficult choice - one that will either save his people or condemn them. Who can be trusted in a land of magic and deceit?"Prior weaves a fully realized world in this rich fantasy." (Kirkus Reviews)"A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" (Mitchell Hogan)