The Traveller on the Road of Legends, a sword-and-sorcery novelette by Robert B. Marks.
You'd have to be more-than-slightly versed in turn-of-the-millennium
Doctor Who Internet culture to be aware that this story is a
Doctor Who spinoff. Beginning in the mid-90s, a number of round-robin novels, the
Doctor Who Internet Adventures starring the eighth Doctor, were published on alt.drwho.creative. In one of the stories,
Timewar, the writers Jennifer Pinyan and Robert B. Marks (the latter who would write the first
Diablo eBook for Pocket Books), introduced a Time Lord known as the Abbot, who dressed as a medieval monk, was part of the Order of Historians, and whose TARDIS disguised itself as a scroll. The Abbot Abacus and his successor Abbot Arafael (two different characters, there was not a regeneration involved) went on to star in three solo stories on alt.drwho.creative: "Messiah" (an historical adventure with Grace and
the Valeyard), "Daemon" (a companion introduction story, sort of
Event Horizon meets "Devil in the Dark"), and "Titanic" (a companion departure story, and self-explanatory). Marks also published a prologue and a chapter of a story to follow on from "Titanic," "The Traveller on the Road of Legends."
A Reddit post I saw last week bubbled all of this back to mind. I found I had the stories archived on a hard drive (even
Timewar, which I did not reread), and I became curious as to whatever happened to all of this. It turns out about fifteen years ago, Marks published
Traveller, shorn of its
Doctor Who connections, with Abbot Arafael renamed Brother Edwin, a genuine human monk and historian of the Order of Bede the Venerable.
Brother Edwin is sought out by Delgar, a
dragon mage, to journey with him on the Road of Legends, a path that runs between the real world and other times and places, some of them historical, some of them more fantastic, to defeat an enemy who is using the Road of Legends to destroy the memory of some of these mythical places and collapse all of reality. Along the way, they travel to the
battle of Maldon, visit Beowulf and the dragon, and pick up more traveling companions before confronting the villain and defeating him against overwhelming odds.
It was adequate. Marks wrote official
Diablo fiction, though in terms of plot and character "Traveller" felt more like that other Blizzard game,
WarCraft. The writing was ploddingly superficial in the way that fanfic often is, with cursory descriptions of character and place because the reader, presumably, is going to already familiar with the world. I felt Marks could have let the story
breathe more, add a few more incidents (the
Sigurd/Fafnir event happens off-page), maybe a reveral or two to heighten the stakes, and moments that better developed the characters of the party. (For example, why did Delgar seek out Brother Edwin in the first place? I can imagine a couple of reasons -- as an historian, Edwin was more familiar than most with the situations historic and fantastical they would be facing -- but it's just left there open.) I didn't
dislike it, I could see the potential in it, but it could have been
more than it was, feeling like a fanfic with the serial numbers filed off.
I see on Amazon that Marks has published two novels in the universe, creating his own media spinoff series in the
Faction Paradox mold, albeit one built on Celtic myths and high fantasy motifs of wizards and dragons. Not sure that I'll check them out, but they're there.
