Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are a duo of adventurers and mercenaries from the epynomous series of short stories and novellas by writer Fritz Lieber.

Fafhrd is a very tall (seven feet) and strong northern barbarian, skilled at both swordsmanship and singing; the Mouser is a small (not much more than five feet) mercurial thief, gifted and deadly at swordsmanship (often using a sword in one hand and a long dagger in the other), and a former wizard's apprentice who retains some skill at magic. Fafhrd talks like a romantic, but his strong practicality usually wins through, while the cynical-sounding Mouser is prone to showing strains of sentiment at unexpected times. Both are rogues, existing within a decadent world where to be so is a requirement of survival. They spend a lot of time drinking, feasting, wenching, brawling, stealing, and gambling, and are seldom fussy about who hires their swords. But they are humane and—most of all—relish true adventure.

The characters were loosely modeled upon Leiber himself and his friend Harry Otto Fischer. Fischer initially created them in a letter to Leiber in September 1934, naming at the same time their home city of Lankhmar. In 1936, Leiber finished the first Fafhrd and Gray Mouser novella, Adept's Gambit, and began work on a second, The Tale of the Grain Ships. At the same time, Fischer was writing the beginning of The Lords of Quarmall. Adept's Gambit would not see publication until 1947, while The Lords of Quarmall would be finished by Leiber and published in 1964 and The Tale of the Grain Ships would become the prototype for "Scylla's Daughter" (1961) and, later, the novel The Swords of Lankhmar (1968).