by Demetri Kissel (directed by Heinz Insu Fenkl)
Strongheart: Honor Among Thieves is a story of adventure and political intrigue in a new medieval high fantasy setting.
Westpond is a small town on the world of Ouroboros, at the center of a spiraling plot of scandal and murder. Elijah Silver is a half-elf and endearing Robin Hood with more heart than he gives himself credit for. Westpond is Elijah’s home, but if the powerful rich mage, Gregor Strongheart, becomes mayor as planned, he won’t stop until he’s hunted down Elijah and the other thieves. Strongheart has power in Ouroboros, with money enough to make the law follow him. Now his enemies are starting to disappear. Elijah wants to keep his head down, but he can’t ignore Strongheart’s machinations for long when the poor and vulnerable of the town are suffering.
A strange man appears to warn Elijah that this small-town election will have big world consequences. He gives Elijah a quest as a test of strength, and on this quest, Elijah meets three new and dynamic friends: Dara Shira, an elf, Mannu, a child made of fire, and Riley Doe, a mercenary. The four quickly become an unshakable alliance and prepare to take down Strongheart — A challenge that will require all their skill, courage, and wit.
As Elijah struggles to defend his found family, he discovers what drives a person to be good and what it means to give power back to the powerless.
Excerpt
Dip’s Bar and Inn was the center of the town of Westpond. The town was settled four hundred years ago by elves fleeing war across the sea— people who had nothing when they arrived, people who could only take the damp clay around them and mold a new community together. The foundation that became the bar was already there when they arrived. They said the bar had to have been built first, though it might not have always been one, because it was near enough to the water’s edge for the rest of the town to rise up around it. As Westpond grew, the old homes nearest the pond became known as the Eastside. The houses were crammed together, the oldest right along the lip of the water, often rebuilt or patched haphazardly after crumbling from poor and hasty construction. The worst of them were rough-looking and made of clay, like mounds molded by giants’ hands. The best often housed three or four families to a room, and the entire Eastside, right up to Dip’s door, smelled, tasted, felt: damp—like the swampy pond.
As humans moved in, the town built away from the old center and moved west, to dryer land. There were a line of shops leading out of the Eastside, past the bar, to town square. The shops and town square made a new circle in the west—out of reach of the moist air. Then came the estates and manors which cast a towering shadow over the Eastside, and made another circle past town square. These additions made Dip’s bar sit slightly left of center on the map of Westpond, though Dip’s continued to be the primary landmark for merchants coming and going through town. The main road through town went from the edge of the pond to town square, then out of the town walls. Dip’s sat right in the middle of the cobbled path, forcing the road to divide and circle around it. No one knew if the road was as old as the foundation, or if the elves had put it in after.
The building itself wasn’t anything extraordinary. There were two floors and a cellar. It was well broken in with scratches and dents in nearly every surface, and stains that would never wash out of the floor. The wall behind the bar was decorated with notes, letters, sketches, and no less than three warrants for Dip’s arrest in far off towns. Another wall had a bulletin board for odd jobs. There weren’t many paid postings, and the papers still pinned there had yellowed with age. The bar, like the rest of the Eastside, smelled damp, first. While the straw on the floor trapped the musk, Dip always had something cooking, so the appealing scents of the region’s common ciders and greasy dough would lure people in when the door swung open and let the drunken friendly laughter out. Crabapples trees surrounded the town and much of the region, and Dip made good use of them for his limited menu. He often experimented with mixed drinks, though few, even among the regulars, took him up on the offer. At the far end of the bar counter was usually a short glass of pure black liquid. It was an awful bitter drink called The Sheol, named after the darkest place in the world: an underground realm filled with monsters, an unending maze of tunnels, and all manner of peoples twisted by the darkness they inhabit. Only one of Dip’s patrons ever wanted the drink, so for that patron Dip kept a glass ready on the counter. Rooms on the top floor were available for rent, but most of the Eastside couldn’t pay. Dip never collected.
Dip was the oddest thing about the bar, and perhaps the town. He was bartender and proprietor, and the only ant elf anyone in Westpond had ever met. Ant elves, more politely known as subterranean elves, were the descendants of the elves banished to Sheol during the Beginning of Time. These descendants were often seen as omens of filth and treachery; not many ventured to the surface, where they stood out and were ill-suited for survival. Dip had been surviving in Westpond for more years than any regular remembered, despite looking like the quintessential ant elf. Like other ant elves, Dip had ashen, pale, gray skin that was hard to the touch along his forearms and shoulders. Unlike surface elves, these elves could develop additional appendages, and Dip had a pair of smaller, thinner arms under his primary arms. Like all elves, Dip had a pair of long antennae extended from his forehead. Ant elf hair color ranged from snow-white to dusty gray; Dip’s stark white hair grew long, as traditional among all elves, and he kept it tied in a high ponytail while cooking. His primary eyes had red irises and black sclera. His other eyes were smaller and pure black, and rested just below his brow, though they were usually covered by a black domino mask. Though secondary eyes weren’t uncommon among surface elves, subterranean elves typically possessed much more of them.
There were some from the West who dared not step foot in the bar because of Dip’s lineage, but everyone from the Eastside knew they were welcome there. Strangers who walked in would demand to know why an ant elf was there on the surface, and what was hidden behind the mask? Dip always laughed. Those that belonged there quickly warmed up to him, and those that didn’t, didn’t belong there, the regulars would say. Dip never barred anyone. For 300 years, he offered a place to call home to anyone in need of one.