Discover a whole new realm of adventure! When a wandering swordmage, trained by the elves of Myth Drannor, returns to his boyhood home on the windswept shores of the Moonsea, he finds that corruption has taken hold, leaving his friends and family open to a devastating evil. Swordmage was the first novel to fully embrace the exciting new elements from the next edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. This paperback resize releases fresh on the heels of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, and showcases a major revision to the Forgotten Realms world that has fans buzzing.

Fantasy-roman.

As far as bad luck goes, Tiadaria's has been the stuff of legend. After being sold into slavery by her father and accused of a murder she didn't commit, she finds herself facing the executioner. The only thing standing between her neck and the sharp edge of the axe is the village Constable. After thirty years of loyal service to the Imperium, Royce has retired to King's Reach as the village's Constable. He thought that the frontier town would be the perfect place to rest, relax, and die in peace. He was wrong. With a crooked Magistrate on one hand and a conniving slaver on the other, things are anything but peaceful. To complicate his life even further, the slave with her neck on the block seems to possess the same magic Royce has hidden all his life. Paying off Tiadaria's bond, Royce takes possession of a slave in a land where slavery is verboten. Now he must teach her to trust him, teach her to fight, and teach her about her unique abilities before they both run out of time. An ancient menace is coming. The Xarundi have returned. They are the most dangerous enemy humanity has ever faced, and they have a thousand years of bloodthirsty vengeance to exact.

Cross swords with pirates in New York Times best-selling author Richard Baker’s latest adventure! When pirates threaten his home, Geran is elected by the city council to track the blood-thirsty pirates to their hidden base, infiltrate them, and find a way to stop them before it’s too late. But the pirates are motivated by more than greed. Kin to his enemies, they seek a deeper revenge, one Geran only begins to glimpse when they kidnap the woman he loves.

A magical artifact has resurfaced, and now the dead walk the lands. Led by a powerful undead sword-mage, an undead army has razed entire cities and devastated the lands. An unlikely group of heroes that include the offspring of the undead sword-mage struggles to recover the artifact so that they can save the lands and put their father to rest.

When an agent from the Imperium Intelligence Service shows up on Tiadaria's doorstep, he leaves her with unwelcome news. Recovering from their brutal defeat at Dragonfell, the Xarundi are seeking out an ancient and incredibly powerful relic buried in the snow and ice of the Frozen Frontier. Tiadaria travels to the city of Ethergate to seek out an apprentice skilled in magical research. Even with his reluctant help, unearthing information on the relic proves to be almost impossible until a savage turn of events puts them on the right path. Now it's a race against time through some of the most unforgiving territory on Solendrea to beat the Xarundi to the relic and stop them from unleashing its devastating power on the unsuspecting masses.

In this final volume in the epic adventures of the Blades of the Moonsea, Geran Hulmaster seeks revenge against the mage who hurt his family and his people Rhovann Disarnnyl was once an arrogant elf lord who exploited the life of luxury his ancestral home in Myth Drannor afforded him. But that was before the upstart human Geran Hulmaster maimed him in a duel—and before Rhovann was exiled from Myth Drannor for practicing shadow magic. In a cruel act of vengeance, Rhovann drives Geran’s family from their ancestral lands, fills Hulburg with nightmarish goelms to enforce his will, and crushes the natives with the aggressive enforcement of unfair laws. But Geran Hulmaster will not stand idly by as Rhovann continues his tyrannical rule. Intent on making Rhovann’s life miserable, he violates his exile to stalk the streets of his former home, hunting down the wretched moon elf mage and rallying the oppressed people of Hulburg. But Geran’s enemies are as numerous as the laws he breaks in the name of revenge—and each and every one of them is determined to see him dead.

Sun’s Reach is in dire peril. The last war between ancient enemies, Sun’s Reach, and Moonwatch was one hundred years ago. With the Eclipse blocking the two kingdoms from each other, it truly should have been the last. But fate has its own plans. Amaru Sunbrand, daughter of the primary goddess, and Emery Redwyn, princess of Sun’s Reach, are about to learn this. Amaru is swept into a trek across the Scorched Waste when her tribe is attacked, pushing the Fyroxi ever closer to extinction. As war looms, Emery is plagued by thoughts of her beloved knight, missing in action, her fool of a father, and the societal duty to marry, all of which may change the rest of her young life.

A hero rises from the ranks of slaves! The genasi control almost all of Calimshan for their djinn overlords—all but a few outposts like the floating Island of the Free, where escaped slaves from Calimport’s coliseum run their own brutal games. There, Cephas, a genasi with no memories of his past has spent his entire life fighting But one day a circus of misfits, lead by the crowlike Corvus Nightfeather appear and free Cephas—and for the first time Cephas can harness his inborn powers and control the stones and dirt beneath his feet. The newest Forgotten Realms® author brings his talents to an area that has changed dramatically with the fresh take of Dungeons & Dragons® 4th Edition. The powerful elemental race of the genasi and the xenophobic and ruthless cultures of Calimshan are revealed through the rise of the Forgotten Realms' newest hero.

Tracing the evolution of fantasy gaming from its origins in tabletop war and collectible card games to contemporary web-based live action and massive multi-player games, this book examines the archetypes and concepts within the fantasy gaming genre alongside the roles and functions of the game players themselves. Other topics include: how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings helped shape fantasy gaming through Tolkien's obsessive attention to detail and virtual world building; the community-based fellowship embraced by players of both play-by-post and persistent browser-based games, despite the fact that these games are fundamentally solo experiences; the origins of gamebooks and interactive fiction; and the evolution of online gaming in terms of technological capabilities, media richness, narrative structure, coding authority, and participant roles.