The Black Priestess of Thakar Vun

About the Book

Contemplate it: what does the term “Underworld” mean to you? What images does this invoke? To some it means Hell, the Realm of Demons, the Land of the Dead. This was what it meant to the people of Mesopotamia, who saw the World Below as a bleak, gloomy world inhabited by spirits who dwell aimlessly in gloom and misery, having been severed from the Physical World. It is true as well of the Greeks, who saw the Underworld as the Realm of Hades, a grey, bleak, colorless world of gloom and dread. A similar picture is entertained by most monotheistic bodies of belief. But, fortunately, this image, while fairly widespread, is far from universal. There are those who see the Underworld very differently, and I am one of them. I’m happy to say that there are cultures that view the Underworld very differently. The Celts, my own people, perhaps more so than any other single Surface World culture that has ever been, had an intimate understanding of the Sith, or Sidhe, to use the Irish spelling, or Vanir, as the Norse called them, or Fay or Faeries or whatever one may want to call them. They felt that these folk had their own subterranean world which was, in many ways, a mirror reflection of the Surface World: they had their own castles, villages and dwellings among the stalagmites and Mushroom forests and subterranean rivers and lakes of the World Below. The people of the Middle Ages as well felt sure that the Faeries had their own Kingdoms below ground, complete with their own enchanted forests, castles and Knights mounted upon Unicorns. And they felt sure that many portals between the Worlds Above and Below could be located by those who had the proper knowledge and skill. And there is another, more contemporary, view of the subterranean world. Spelunkers and cave-explorers know the World Below to be a place full of incredible geoformations, places fun and challenging to explore. Geologists as well, for obvious reasons, find this very fascinating. Many biologists and ecologists as well have their special interest in the subterranean world, as they are much intrigued by the creatures that have evolved here. Eyeless Fish and Salamanders and Shrimp, Crickets and Centipedes and a myriad of other Arthropods that have lost all coloration. Obviously, eyes and color are worthless in a world of absolute darkness, and so eons of Natural selection have done away with them. And, within the realm of pulp fiction and B-movies, the subterranean world is often the perfect place for a “Lost World” setting, a place where Dinosaurs, Neanderthals and Saber-tooth Tigers survived their Surface World demise and continue to live and thrive just as in the Pleistocene. All of which leads us to the obvious question: what, exactly, is my subterranean world like? Which template does it follow? And the answer can, naturally, only be all of the above! My Thakar Vun is all of these things, plus a great deal more. There are Dinosaurs, there are Elves and Faeries, there are Dwarves, Mushroom forests, sacred rivers and lakes, mighty citadels, breathtaking geoformations and crystals and gems, and, oh yeah, there are Demons!

About the Author

OK, so I’ve got to sum up my life in not more than 50 words. Well… I live to write heroic fantasy, I have since I was a child. My writings are dedicated to preserving the power and the wisdom of the Ancients.