INTRODUCION

The Mad Lands rise like a rock leviathan from the dark and turbulent sea. The coastline reaches out into the cold water with thousands of crooked fingers; these are fjords and inlets carved millennia ago when glaciers scraped across the land's surface, doing battle with its hard igneous rock. Yet there are signs of life. Nestled in the jagged arms of the fjords are settle ments. Long wooden buildings rest whatever flat planes the rock grudgingly provides. Smoke rises from a rudimentary smithy. Women tend small terraced gardens. Men sita meager slivers of beach where the land meets the sea, repair ing surprisingly large and sturdy-looking boats. Children race sure-footedly along the sharp and slippery rock faces, laughing and screaming with delight. Anywhere people can live, they will live. And the Mad Lands do support human life. But it is a tough life rife with dangers. Not only is the land distant and isolated, with a punishing climate and cruel terrain; it is haunted as well. And the things that haunt it are no mere ghosts and monsters - though the Mad Lands have at least their share of these - but gods. This place is too close to the gods, too close to the wrong sort of gods. They are bizarre in aspect, and capricious downright predatory in action. Some of them are monstrous versions of familiar animals; others are hideous mixtures of features only a madman would combine. People do not worship the gods here - they fear them, avoiding them if possible and being destroyed by them if not. Those destroyed by merely blasted into oblivion - often, they are robbed of their humanity. They gods may be become monsters, threatening the lives former friends and loved ones. The constant attacks by the supernatural have shaped