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Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

4.8K followers 680 following 4K posts

He/Him. Novel THE SWORD TRIUMPHANT out May '25. Currently writing: Black Iron 4, Unannounced Novel, Merryshire Detective Club, Terraforming Mars rpg, Across the Abyss other stuff.

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Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Convincing you to read my novel by the first sentence.

(The Dungeon Book, out August 2026.)

To begin at your beginning:
in the nightless dark, at a time beyond knowing, in the place called the under halls of Yrn Kyos by scholars, the City of Wonders by the dead, and the Dungeon by everyone else -
it was then and there I noticed a crack in the plastered wall of my tomb.

November 11, 2025 at 1:56 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

The preorder for my next ONE RING rpg supplement, HANDS OF THE WHITE WIZARD, is up!

freeleaguepublishing.com/shop/the-one...

Welcome to Isengard. It's lovely - to begin with.

A Dunlending fortress (well, technically a fortress of Gondor that's long since gone to seed).

The campaign covers events from 2965-3000, so we get a LOT more canonical locations and events

November 6, 2025 at 2:16 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

I'm told THE SWORD DEFIANT is on discount in the US and Canada, in the you feel like starting a new trilogy with magic talking swords, aged heroes, and bringing down kings...

www.amazon.com/Sword-Defian...

Three novels showing a fellow with a magic sword. And a nice castle in the background.

November 3, 2025 at 3:46 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

@thegrognardfiles.bsky.social Apple Podcast’s automated transcript has some gems.

November 3, 2025 at 2:03 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

November 1, 2025 at 10:47 AM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Half way through this and enjoying it. (It’s structured against/for/against/for so enjoymentment is not endorsement)

November 1, 2025 at 10:41 AM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Some Dragon of Shandon shots

October 31, 2025 at 8:43 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

GILL-G-GAN'S JUNGLE
Just sit right back and you'll hear the tale
The tale of an easy mission
About this standard ATV
powered by nuclear fission

The mission leader was from CPU
his team was confident
Six troubleshooters left that day
To learn what Outdoors meant
To learn what Outdoors meant

The terrain was getting very wet
The ATV near drowned
When the monitor broke on the dashboard
Their way home could not be found
Their way home could not be found

Stranded now in the great Outdoors
Their mission was a bungle
With Gill-I-GAN, and Skip-R too,
The High Programmers, and his bot
The vid starlette
The R&D Tech and Mar-Y-ANN
Here on Gill-I-GAN's Jungle

October 25, 2025 at 8:27 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Letters #77

I wonder how you are getting on with your flying since you first went solo – the last news we had of this. I especially noted your observations on the skimming martins. That touches to the heart of things, doesn't it? There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike an which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Giant Bomber. It is not an advance in wisdom! This terrible truth, glimpsed long ago by Sam Butler, sticks out so plainly and is so horrifyingly exhibited in our time, with its even worse menace for the future, that it seems almost a world wide mental disease that only a tiny minority perceive it. Even if people have ever heard the legends (which is getting rarer) they have no inkling of their portent. How could a maker of motorbikes name his product Ixion cycles! Ixion, who was bound for ever in hell on a perpetually revolving wheel! Well, I have got over 2 thousand words onto this little flimsy airletter; and I will forgive the Mordor-gadgets some of their sins, if they will bring it quickly to you. ....

October 16, 2025 at 9:15 AM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

It’s tempting. It’s very tempting.

October 11, 2025 at 8:31 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Ha!

Like jelly, it sometimes seems as though the shape of an election campaign will never set. Unlike jelly, even when it does seem to be settling down, it can all be reshaped by last minute events, TV moments or just undecided voters not being enthused enough to turn out.
Actually, none of that is like jelly at all. Forget I mentioned jelly

October 5, 2025 at 9:36 AM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Some random shots from comicon Malaga

September 28, 2025 at 7:09 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Look, it’s me being a dignified GM (running MERRYSHIRE DETECTIVE SOCIETY)

September 26, 2025 at 5:54 PM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Obviously, this is the stuff that ended up in Isengard. I always assumed that it was just “enough for Saruman and his immediate underlings, plus looting”, but you could also read it as “the Shire being looted to support Isengard’s war effort”. Nurn-on-Bywater.

‘Of course he started with a lot of property in the Southfarthing which he had from his dad; and it seems he’d been selling a lot o’ the best leaf, and sending it away quietly for a year or two. But at the end o’ last year he began sending away loads of stuff, not only leaf. Things began to get short, and winter coming on, too. Folk got angry, but he had his answer. A lot of Men, ruffians mostly, came with great waggons, some to carry off the goods south-away, and others to stay. And more came. And before we knew where we were they were planted here and there all over the Shire, and were felling trees and digging and building themselves sheds and houses just as they liked.

September 22, 2025 at 6:33 AM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

A year apart.

The hundred and twenty-ninth birthday of Bilbo.
Saruman comes to the Shire.

September 22, 2025 at 6:22 AM

Gareth Hanrahan

@mytholder.bsky.social

Rivendell’s an odd place. When Tolkien was writing the Hobbit, he didn’t give much thought to the wider world; I suspect he just transplanted Tavrobel, the House of a Hundred Chimneys, and changed the name a bit.