YAMARA'S RELATIVES COME TO SHADIS

From 1997. Reedited July, 1999.  

I, Barbara, often feel that the course of my life is guided by some outside force, over and above my guardian angel and any sundry lares and penates that may be present. I am sometimes sure that my life is a vast script, penned by some master of greater or lesser worth. For a long time, I was quite certain that Norman Lear had command of my destiny. There was a brief period in October when Barbara Cartland seemed to be in charge. At the moment, Dashiell Hammett has credit for the script, although I suspect some other writer may be ghostwriting for him, and he's working under W. Shakespeare as line producer.

However, earlier this year, there was a prolonged period where Danielle Steele and Oscar Wilde were collaborating on my destiny. Through their masterful counterpoint of intrigue and banter, they arranged a sequence of events that inevitably led to our being offered a strip in Shadis Magazine. I fought it, hard. I even tried to transfer control of my life over to Tennessee Williams again, though God knows he cocked it up the last time he had it. (People, you don't want Tennessee writing your life for you-- avoid it at all costs.) But the deal was ironclad, Danielle and Oscar could do what they liked.

Thus it was that WARCHIEF was born. Yamara's saga is going to be running on the Web (unless Will cans Dashiell and gets one of those heartwarming writers in). The WARCHIEF comic, one page per issue unless you clamor to the Shadis boys for more, chronicles the wanderings of the Clan of Six Teeth, people of HALEK BITH RE KORATHI; or, as you may remember him from our book, Ogrek's great-grandpa.

We sincerely hope that WARCHIEF will be more easy to explain to your non-gaming friends than Yamara was. However, we insisted that it retain as much weirdness as we could possibly cram into it. Use caution in showing it to your parents if they are already concerned about your lifestyle choices. Comments about WARCHIEF can be sent to us at yamara@earthlink.net, because hey, they're family.