Richard Sparrow

The Legend of Griff Richard Sparrow

The fiendishly witty first installment of a comedic fantasy saga, "The Legend of Griff" combines several narratives across the restless Kingdom of Lohr, a land grappling with tensions between its human colonialists and the goblin natives. The first is that of the titular Griff, a foul-mouthed yet artful adolescent goblin. Exiled by his tribe for cowardice during the great war between goblin and man, Griff has spent the last several years surviving in the forest on little more than his wits and the company of his pet warg, Bodolf. Griff has no interest in being a hero, and when he's not narrowly evading capture by the kingswatch or scrounging for what little food can be foraged in the woods, the young goblin dreams of one day escaping the kingdom of Lohr once and for all and seeking his fortune in a more enlightened land as a minstrel. Elsewhere, in a remote Lohrwegian human village, seventeen year old Arn Propp enjoys a simple life as the nephew of a pig farmer. Unlike Griff, Arn is loyal, brave, honorable, and, most important of all, conventionally handsome and orphaned. Hence the ideal hero narratively speaking. After he discovers an ancient magic sword in the forest one morning, he is predictably forced to abandon his family and home lest he be tried for witchcraft and promptly embarks upon a quest to learn more about the scared blade in the city of Baalhaven. It is there in the capital where Astrid Pendor, former princess of the realm turned vagabond, lives in secrecy while scheming her vengeance against her usurper uncle, the tyrannical King Herrick. Though courageous and determined, her allies and resources are few, and in her desperation to reclaim her murdered father's throne, she begins to look to the city's network of criminals for support. Through a chain events unforeseen by the gods themselves, these very different stories violently collide, with Griff suddenly finding himself at the center of a 700 year old prophecy to restore Astrid's throne and save the Kingdom of Lohr from an encroaching evil that threatens mankind itself, despite the fact that the goblin has every reason to hate mankind.