Prince Maesa (along with Shattercap the spite) first appeared in Guy Haley’s 2017 Age of Sigmar audio drama The Autumn Prince, which was followed by several short stories and a further audio, all of which have been combined, updated and expanded to form Prince Maesa, a full-length novel exploring the aelven Wanderer’s quest to return his beloved Ellamar to life. From their visit to ill-fated Shadespire, through Shyish and out across the Mortal Realms, Maesa and Shattercap travel far and wide as they search for the knowledge and the magic that will reunite Maesa with his long-dead human love. Eternally grief-stricken, Maesa finds solace along the way in companionship and in his attempts to teach Shattercap to be good, but his journey is filled with deadly enemies to face, and the prospect of Nagash’s wrath should he succeed in his quest.
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A Guide to Guy Haley’s Prince Maesa Stories
Over the last couple of years, one of my personal highlights in Black Library’s Age of Sigmar range has been Guy Haley’s slowly-growing series of stories featuring Prince Maesa and Shattercap. Haley has written a lot of 40k and Horus Heresy stories but relatively little for Age of Sigmar, however this ongoing saga of an aelven Wanderer in search of a way to bring his lost love back to life – told across multiple stories and different mediums – is well worth checking out. As it’s not a novel, however, I sometimes wonder if it falls under the radar for a lot of readers, especially as BL hasn’t provided any guidance on how everything links together or in what order to read the different stories.
QUICK REVIEW: The Hounds of Nagash – Guy Haley (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Five)
Guy Haley’s five-part Age of Sigmar serial At the Sign of the Brazen Claw comes to an end with The Hounds of Nagash, in which the tavern and those sheltering within it are assailed by implacable spectres. In the wake of Pludu Quasque’s revelation that his foolishness has incurred the wrath of Nagash, spectral glaivewraiths search for a way through the tavern’s magical defences. With the storm howling all around and a desperate fight for survival breaking out, the very structure of the tavern itself begins to come apart as the giant demigod upon which it’s built begins to wake.
Continue readingQUICK REVIEW: The Sorcerer’s Tale – Guy Haley (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Four)
Guy Haley’s multi-part Age of Sigmar story At the Sign of the Brazen Claw reaches its fourth and penultimate instalment with The Sorcerer’s Tale, in which Hyshian sorcerer Pludu Quasque tells a story of arrogance, envy and dread. He tells how, as a young man, he ignored his father’s advice, neglected his studies and let bitterness cloud his judgement until a final rash act saw him oath-bound to retrieve a long-lost jewel from the depths of the skaven underworld. As Prince Maesa, Shattercap and the other travellers listen to Quasque’s dour tale, the storm shaking the inn steadily grows in intensity.
QUICK REVIEW: The Prince’s Tale (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Three) – Guy Haley
This story is currently only available within Inferno! Volume 3.
The third instalment of At the Sign of the Brazen Claw, Guy Haley’s serialised story of a group of strangers swapping stories while waiting out a storm, The Prince’s Tale sees aelven Prince Maesa tell the tale of how he met Shattercap. As the storm rages, Maesa relives a time of heartache and loneliness as he wandered the Mortal Realms aimlessly, haunted by the loss of his beloved Ellamar. Only when he finally encountered a match for his own grief did the exiled prince find himself drawn back into the lives of mortals, and set against the pitiless sylvaneth.
QUICK REVIEW: Hungerfiend – Guy Haley
One of a growing number of Age of Sigmar stories featuring Prince Maesa (and the second in audio), Guy Haley’s Hungerfiend sees the aelven prince and his companion Shattercap in Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, hunting a malevolent spirit. Accompanied by the duardin Idenkor Stonbrak (see this story) they travel high into the mountains in search of the monster that’s been haunting the high passes and terrorising the locals, believing it to be a Mourngul. If their suspicions are true they face a powerful enemy indeed, one which will require more than simply brute force to defeat.
QUICK REVIEW: The Merchant’s Story (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Two) – Guy Haley
This is the first story featured in Inferno! Volume 2.
In The Merchant’s Story, the second instalment of Guy Haley’s five-part Age of Sigmar serial At the Sign of the Brazen Claw, it’s the turn of duardin Idenkor Stonbrak to regale his impromptu companions with a story from his past. Stonbrak hails from Ulgu, the Realm of Shadows, and his is a tale of duardin business and aelven trickery, of miraculous craft and debts not paid on time. It is a sad story of misty Barak Gorn where once a duardin craftsman was commissioned by a grey aelf to craft a necklace fit for a princess, with tragic consequences.
QUICK REVIEW: At the Sign of the Brazen Claw – Guy Haley
The first instalment in a five part serial, At the Sign of the Brazen Claw sees Guy Haley continue the saga of Prince Maesa and Shattercap with a story within a story. Atop a lonely mountain in Shyish there lies an inn called the Brazen Claw, where Maesa and Shattercap shelter from a storm and wait for a Kharadron airship, alongside the innkeeper, his family and other guests. To fill the time the innkeeper suggests the telling of tales, and proceeds to regale his guests with the story of how he came to build the inn of the Brazen Claw.
The Darkness in the Glass – David Annandale, David Guymer & Guy Haley
A collection of three Shadespire-set Age of Sigmar audio dramas, each released initially as part of the 2017 Advent Calendar, The Darkness in the Glass consists of Doombound by David Annandale, A Place of Reflection by David Guymer and The Autumn Prince by Guy Haley. With a collected running time of around 70 minutes, each of the audios is only short, but they tell three standalone, unconnected stories featuring a range of different characters – Stormcast, Bloodbound, and an aelven prince among others. Set within the confines of Shadespire, they each show a different aspect of the Mirrored City.
QUICK REVIEW: The Sands of Grief – Guy Haley
Guy Haley’s short story The Sands of Grief returns to the characters of Prince Maesa and Shattercap from the excellent Shadespire audio drama The Autumn Prince. This time they set out from the city of Glymmsforge in the Realm of Shyish and travel deep into the eponymous Sands of Grief as Maesa continues his quest to find a way of returning his beloved Ellamar to life. Beyond the borders of Glymmsforge and the protection of Sigmar they encounter nothing living, but as they head further from the core of Shyish they increasingly see the dark hand of Nagash at work.