Author | C. Dale Brittain |
---|---|
Cover artist | Tom Kidd |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | Royal Wizard of Yurt |
Genre | Fantasy novel |
Published | 1991 (Baen Books) |
Media type | Print (paperback) |
Pages | 314 (first edition, paperback) |
ISBN | 978-0-671-72075-9 (first edition, paperback) |
OCLC | 24081446 |
Followed by | The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint |
A Bad Spell in Yurt is a fantasy novel by C. Dale Brittain first published in 1991. It takes place in the fictional kingdom of Yurt where Daimbert, a wizard who has just graduated from the wizards' school, takes up his post as the new Royal Wizard.
Daimbert's story is continued in The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint, Mage Quest, The Witch and the Cathedral, Daughter of Magic, and Is This Apocalypse Necessary?
This story takes place in the tiny kingdom of Yurt. It reads like a charming, light-hearted story at first, but darker forces soon reveal themselves.
Amongst themselves, the characters refer to the "three that rule the world", the aristocracy, the church, and wizardry. Though the aristocracy do the actual ruling, organized wizardry generally considers itself to be the superior of the three, in part because they put an end to the "Black Wars," wars between kingdoms so violent and bloody that individual wizards were forced to band together to stop them. Churchmen considers themselves superior to wizards, and they are traditional rivals in this semi-medieval world.
The first-person narrator is Daimbert, who has just barely graduated from the wizards' school. He takes up his first post as Royal Wizard of Yurt. Daimbert barely graduated, owing to all that embarrassment with the frogs, yet he has amazing improvisational skills that manage to get him by.
Daimbert soon befriends Joachim, the castle chaplain, attempts to make magical telephones from scratch, learns old herbal magic from his predecessor, fights a dragon from the northern land of wild magic, searches for the source of an evil spell on the king, and is forced to bargain with a demon.
Here, magic is a wild force of four dimensions that is shaped by a wizard's spells or potions, and (usually) is spoken aloud using the Hidden Language, needed to channel magic for the means of a spell. However, wizards can also choose to sell their soul to a demon in return for supernatural powers. The book reads somewhat like a mystery, where Daimbert follows up on many clues throughout the story, eventually suspecting everyone in the castle. The caster of the evil spell is not revealed until the end of the book.
The drow or dark elves are a dark-skinned and white-haired subrace of elves connected to the subterranean Underdark in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. The drow have traditionally been portrayed as generally evil and connected to the evil spider goddess Lolth. However, later editions of Dungeons & Dragons have moved away from this portrayal and preassigned alignment. More recent publications have explored drow societies unconnected to Lolth.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, illithids are monstrous humanoid aberrations with psionic powers. In a typical Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, they live in the moist caverns and cities of the enormous Underdark. Illithids believe themselves to be the dominant species of the multiverse and use other intelligent creatures as thralls, slaves, and chattel. Illithids are well known for making thralls out of other intelligent creatures, as well as feasting on their brains.
Howl's Moving Castle is a fantasy novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones, first published in 1986 by Greenwillow Books of New York. It was a runner-up for the annual Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and won the Phoenix Award twenty years later. It was adapted into an animated film of the same name in 2004, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Elminster Aumar is a fictional character appearing in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. He is also known as the Sage of Shadowdale, and is depicted as a powerful wizard featured in several novels by Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood. Certain aspects of his appearance and demeanor seem to echo Gandalf, Merlin, or Odin.
Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant is the seventh title in the Wizardry series of role-playing video games by Sir-Tech Software, Inc., preceding Wizardry 8 and succeeding Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge. It is also the second entry in the 'Dark Savant' trilogy. The game was published in 1992 by Sir-Tech, originally developed for DOS. In 1996 it was remade into Wizardry Gold, designed to work on Windows and Macintosh, and distributed by Interplay.
The Astyanax, known in Japan as The Lord of King (ザ・ロード・オブ・キング), is a side-scrolling action game developed by Aicom released for the arcades by Jaleco. A home version for the Nintendo Entertainment System, simply titled Astyanax, was released shortly after the arcade version but the NES version is decidedly different from its arcade predecessor in terms of story.
Dark Wizard, known in Japan as Dark Wizard: Yomigaerishi Yami no Madoushi, is a role-playing video game developed and published by Sega for the Sega CD.
Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! is a fantasy novel by American writer Terry Brooks, the first in his Magic Kingdom of Landover series. Written in 1986, it tells the story of how Ben Holiday, a talented but depressed Chicago trial lawyer, comes to be king of Landover, an otherworldly magical kingdom. The book was re-released as part of a Landover omnibus in 2009.
A magician, also known as an archimage, mage, magus, magic-user, spellcaster, enchanter/enchantress, sorcerer/sorceress, warlock, witch, or wizard, is someone who uses or practices magic derived from supernatural, occult, or arcane sources. Magicians enjoy a rich history in mythology, legends, fiction, and folklore, and are common figures in works of fantasy, such as fantasy literature and role-playing games.
The Novarian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, published between 1968 and 1989. The series contains some of de Camp's most innovative works of fantasy, featuring explorations of various political systems, an inversion of the "rags to royalty" pattern characteristic of much heroic fantasy, a satiric look at the foibles of humanity through the eyes of a demon, and a consistently wry and ironic take on conventions of the genre that plays out by taking them to their logical conclusions. Another singular feature of the series is its frequent use of folk tales integrated into the plot to painlessly convey something of the background and history of the invented world. This device obviates the need for lengthy appendices, as in The Lord of the Rings.
C. Dale Brittain is an American author and professor of medieval history. As well as writing historical works, she is the author of fantasy novels.
Kingsley's Adventure is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Psygnosis exclusively for the PlayStation.
House of Many Ways is a young adult fantasy novel written by Diana Wynne Jones. The story is set in the same world as Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air.
King's Quest III: To Heir is Human is a VGA-style fangame remake/reimagining/retelling of Sierra Entertainment's King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human by Infamous Adventures. It was released on June 19, 2006. A slightly expanded remake offers new material including; new cutscenes, a few new characters, expanded narration or dialogue, additions and changes to some of the plot, full speech, new or modified locations, and Easter eggs. Most of the original puzzles remain intact or item placement changed. The game received the AGS reward for best documentation in 2006.
The Wand of Orcus is a fictional magical weapon described in various Dungeons & Dragons media. Because of the popularity of Orcus as a villain within the Dungeons & Dragons universe, many different authors have written materials describing artifacts created by or associated with the character. The Wand of Orcus is consistently the most important and most described of these artifacts. Screen Rant has noted that "[t]he weapon that Orcus wields in battle is almost as famous as the demon lord himself". Furthermore, the device has at times been employed in books, games, and other media within the franchise as a thing distinct from Orcus himself, such that adventurers may encounter the wand as a freestanding element of the game or story.
The Land of Stories is a series of children's fiction, adventure, and fantasy books written by American author, actor, and singer Chris Colfer. The first book, The Wishing Spell, was released on July 17, 2012, with the sixth and final book published in July 2017. Colfer started plans for a prequel series in 2016, and has since published three books in this series, beginning with A Tale of Magic... in 2019.
The Seven Realms is a series of four novels written by the American author Cinda Williams Chima. The series genre is high fantasy, set in the Queendom of the Fells - a traditional fantasy world of medieval technology, swordplay, castles, and keeps. Han Alister, a thief-turned-wizard, joins forces with Princess Raisa ana'Marianna to defend her right to the Gray Wolf Throne. The action takes place in and around The Seven Realms, which are seven loosely related areas that were once ruled by the Gray Wolf Queens and their wizard consorts, or kings.
Yūsha Yoshihiko to Maō no Shiro is a 2011 Japanese television parody comedy about Yoshihiko, an inept hero who sets out to find the cure to a plague, but ends up fighting a larger evil. Yoshihiko is guided by a comedic Buddha, and accompanied by an incompetent wizard, a woman who wants to kill Yoshihiko because she thinks he killed her father, and a warrior who will kill Yoshihiko as soon as the warrior finishes telling Yoshihiko his stories. Yūsha Yoshihiko is heavily influenced by the RPG game series Dragon Quest, with Yoshihiko's outfit and most of the monsters being directly lifted from the series. It also contains references to other fantasy series and comedies, such as Monty Python.