Shaman Fiction

Daniel Mahan, the legendary Shaman of the Barliona game world, has served his sentence in virtual reality. Eleven months of adventures and battles in exchange for eight years in prison isn't a bad trade-off. And yet Barliona refuses to relinquish its grip on the Shaman so easily, erasing the boundary between his two realities. It turns out that it's not so simple to leave the capsule - the Way must be completed....

Dr. Robert Judson Cole travels from his ravaged Scotland homeland, through the operating rooms of Boston, to the cabins of frontier Illinois. In the wilderness he befriends the starving remnants of the Sauk tribe, who have fled their reservation. In the process, he absorbs their culture and learns native remedies that enrich the classical medical education he received at Edinburgh University. He marries a remarkable settler woman he had saved from illness.

Young Nevare Burvelle is the second son of a second son. Traditionally in Gernia, the firstborn son is heir to the family fortunes, the second son bears a sword and the third son is consecrated to the priesthood. Nevare will follow his father – newly made a lord by the King – into the cavalry; to the frontier and thence to an advantageous marriage, to carry on the Burvelle name. It is a golden future, and Nevare looks forward to it with relish.

The Last Shaman is a captivating ride through the jungles of war-torn Africa. Mark Vale, who represents any of us struggling to take consistent ownership of our personal power, takes an unwanted journey to find the last shaman who is responsible for ending the war and saving thousands of lives. All throughout, Mark learns from a colourful array of characters - including a doctor of philosophy exiled in the swamps, a shape-shifting sorceress, and the widow of a tribal scout - who teach him to commit completely to the desires of his soul.

Barliona: a virtual world jam-packed with monsters, battles - and, predictably, players. Millions of them come to Barliona, looking forward to the things they can't get in real life: elves and magic, dragons and princesses, and unforgettable combat. The game has become so popular that players now choose to spend months online without returning home. In Barliona, anything goes: You can assault fellow players, level up, become a mythical hero, a wizard, or a legendary thief.

In this novella set in the World of the Five Gods and four years after the events in Penric's Demon, Penric is a divine of the Bastard's Order as well as a sorcerer and scholar, living in the palace where the Princess-Archdivine holds court. His scholarly work is interrupted when the Archdivine agrees to send Penric, in his role as sorcerer, to accompany a "Locator" of the Father's Order, assigned to capture Inglis, a runaway shaman charged with the murder of his best friend.

Mahan's ready for new adventures - just as the gaming world of Barliona thought it was about to reenter its old comfortable rut. The winds of the Dark Forest have finally died down; Altameda has recognized its new owner while Geranika is nursing new schemes of global destruction. Would Mahan be happy with this predictable old life? We think not!

Located deep in the Canadian wilderness, Snowfields Academy is the premiere school for equestrians from around the globe. With only a handful of students admitted every year, only riders who have the potential to win world-class tournaments are invited to attend. Shaman, a stallion new to Snowfields, has proven to be too much for the school. He’s too wild, too dangerous, and too unpredictable for even the most experienced riders on campus. Unexpectedly, the one person who can calm him is the girl least likely to become a student at Snowfields.

What can a game clan accomplish without a castle? The answer is obvious: nothing. Therefore, the main objective of any leader in a game world is to acquire a base of operations. Finding himself in exactly this position, High Shaman Mahan, leader of the Legends of Barliona, accepts an offer from the Emperor and the Dark Lord to vanquish the army of Phantoms that has inhabited Altameda, the phantom castle.

The focus of my life as an urban druid is to stand as a guardian of nature. The focus of my life as Fiona Cumhaill to stand as a guardian of my family. Seriously. Don't screw with my family. It's a no-brainer, drop everything, and take up the fight topic for me—If you need me, I will come. So, when darkness conspires to overtake the light and people I love are sucked into the wake of evil, the Toronto crew grabs the go-bags and answers the call.

The virtual world of Barliona is a place of rest and entertainment - but not for everyone. It has become a survival arena for Daniel Mahan after he was sentenced to eight years in its virtual jail. Mahan has been through it all: the back-breaking work in the mines, betrayal by other prisoners, and finally, the retrial which has released him into Barliona's common world. What more could one want? Mahan could have kept a low profile and enjoyed relative freedom while serving the rest of his time.

After a bait and switch, Frank ends up transformed into an HI. That's a hybrid intelligence: part AI, part organic. He finds himself at the mercy of the system fulfilling the role of an ogre shaman meant to create fun opportunities for the purely organic players. Except not everything is what it seems to be. The very system may not be what he thinks it is. Breaches into the game world prove there are other forces at work. This game may be more of an isekai.

A product of the latest technologies, Barliona is a virtual world brimming with fun and entertainment. The government has become the guarantor for the in-game currency, allowing its free circulation. As a result the population floods Barliona in pursuit of easy money. It doesn't take long for the game developers to discover a source of free labor: real-world prison convicts. While their bodies are locked in special auto-maintenance virtual capsules, the prisoners' minds are released into Barliona's virtual mines.

Dan Stone, a contract assassin for the CIA, a man alone with few friends, is sent out on what may be a suicide mission. Dan is dropped into the Chihuahuan desert to assassinate the head of the Sinaloa cartel. His mission suddenly becomes more complex and dangerous. When his extraction is botched, he flees into the desert, where he gets lost and death by dehydration threatens. There, he meets a shaman who shows him the spiritual dimension to life and how Dan is part of a larger story going on - a battle between good and evil, light and darkness.

Even for a techno-shaman, a kachina in the bedroom isn't exactly part of the drill. When Olivia Lawson wakes to find one towering over her, she panics. A Hopi god visiting the real world isn't just wrong - it's impossible. Or is it? Soon Olivia learns that the kachina is the least of her worries. As she struggles to save her clients, clashes with other shamans, and fends off the attacks of real-world vigilantes, Olivia finds herself in the destructive path of a malevolent ancient force intent on leaving the spiritual realm to conquer this one.

When Otto Krugg's daughter follows in his footsteps, he's faced with the task of changing a century-long rule that will force her to make decisions no one should have to make. When Jimmy Pirano gets tasked with enforcing that rule - no matter what - he goes down the rabbit hole to try to find out who established the rule...and why they can't let it go.

In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers - the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe...and kill those judged corrupt. But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, Ehiru must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering innocent dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams.

Lucas Blackfox doesn’t just see dead people; he watches, through the killer’s eyes, as they are being tortured and murdered. He’s tried drowning the visions in copious amounts of alcohol, but nothing will keep them at bay. Now, the visions have grown stronger and he doesn’t just see it; Lucas feels every emotion and sensation the maniac, with whom he has the psychic connection, feels. Not even the whiskey can drown them, and putting a bullet in his own brain seems like his only option. Until he reunites with Emma Reese, a childhood friend.

The stories in this collection were first published in Analog, a science fiction magazine, between 1990 and 2011. They feature the adventures of eccentric kilt-wearing anthropologist, archaeologist, and xenologist Rhys Llewellyn and his able assistants, Yoshi Umeki and Roderick Halfax. Given my fascination with archaeology, first contact…and all things Scottish, I suppose these stories were inevitable.

After he was killed and unceremoniously dumped into what he thought was a digital world, life has thrown Frank one curve after another. Now, he is starting to have questions about what is real and what isn't. He will have to walk his way between the worlds of adventurers and monsters, both of whom want things from him. His feelings run amok as he tries to figure out what hybrid intelligences dream about. Hopefully, along the way he can figure out what is happening, and learn to resist integration into the system by a mysterious AI (...which may not even be an AI at all).