DargonZine is the publication vehicle of The Dargon Project, Inc., a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the project. Please address all correspondence to <dargon@dargonzine.org> or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at ftp://ftp.dargonzine.org/. Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup rec.mag.dargon.

DargonZine 21-1, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright March 22, 2008 by The Dargon Project, Inc.

Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb <ornoth@rcn.com>, Assistant Editor: Liam Donahue <bdonahue@fuse.net>.

DargonZine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License. This license allows you to make and distribute unaltered copies of DargonZine, complete with the original attributions of authorship, so long as it is not used for commercial purposes. Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden. To view a detailed copy of this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford CA, 94305 USA.

Editorial

by Liam Donahue

Welcome to the first issue of Dargonzine for 2008. This issue brings you three Dargon stories: Great Houses War part 9, The Game part 1, and Walking the Venilek. But first, there is big news in the Dargon Project! One of our writers, Mark Murray, has published his first book, Warders of the Gate. The book was published by Arctic Wolf Publishing, and is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You can read more about Mark's book at www.rhillai.com.

Our first story in this issue, Great Houses War 9, is the conclusion of Nick Wansbutter's epic history that takes place over 100 years prior to the "current" time in Dargonzine's shared world. For this series Nick brought to life characters and events that had previously only existed as brief references in other Dargon stories, or as notes kept by former authors. I am sad to see the series coming to the end, but also quite pleased to be able to share it with you.

The other two stories in this month's issue represent beginnings rather than endings. Mark Murray, a former Dargonzine writer who rejoined the group a while back, picked up a work-in-progress that Pam Atchley had left behind when she left the group, and completed it, bringing his own style to the tale. The story, called The Game, will be presented in four parts over the next several issues.

The final story, Walking the Venilek, was written by longtime contributor Dafydd Cyhoeddwr as part of an exercise that we started at last year's Dargonzine summit, held in Las Vegas. It is fitting that Daf's story is the first story from that exercise to be published, since he was the one to challenge us to write something to bring to the summit. The challenge was to write a simple story set within the confines of Dargon. Daf even gave each of us assignments to write about different areas of the city. At the summit, we added a twist and agreed to interweave the stories a bit. So, as you read these stories over the next several issues, look for characters and events from one story to appear in another.

So, you can look forward to future installments of the game, along with more interwoven stories from our Las Vegas summit, as well as a few other things that we have brewing. For now, though, I hope you enjoy this month's issue.