A letter from the man himself: James Lowder
Some time ago, I received an E-mail from none other
than James Lowder, author of the oft-mentioned novel,
Prince of Lies. Then, there was some disagreement
from several people around the country as to details surrounding
several of the characters from Cyric's history. Thus, I thought it
appropriate to ask Mr. Lowder his views on several
points. The following is the response, extracted directly from the
E-mail:
I'm not connected with TSR in any official way, and they own the
copyright to Prince. I doubt they'd give you permission to reprint the
epilogue. In fact, they'd likely squelch the Cyric page if they found out
about it.
As for Mask, TSR and I have different thoughts on that. I wrote an
article for Dragon magazine about the gods post-Prince, but it was killed
before publication.
IMO, Mask was *always* the sword. That's where he hid part of himself/his
power during Avatar. He could sense the Avatar heroes were on to
something, so he made himself available to them--specifically Cyric. He
was planning on pimping over Cyric from the start.
When the sword was broken, Mask became a servitor of Cyric. Because he
was devoted to Cyric, thanks to the Cyrinishad, all of Mask's worshipers
were actually feeding power to Cyric; Cyric was granting their prayers
through Mask.
This isn't official of course. I think that TSR did something else with
Mask's fate in the Ruins of Zhentil Keep boxed set and the Faiths and
Avatars book. I haven't read either, so I couldn't give you more
specifics.
FYI: Richard Awlinson stands for Scott Ciencin, Troy Denning, and myself.
I was editor/developer for the original trilogy; I did a lot of the work
developing Cyric and the Realm of the Dead. He was, even then, a favorite
character of mine.
Troy Denning is supposedly writing a sequel to Prince of Lies, likely for
1997 release. I don't know anything else about it; they didn't ask me to
write the sequel.
In case you're interested, I'm working mostly with White Wolf these days.
I have short stories in three of their anthologies--Truth Until Paradox,
City of Darkness-Unseen, and The Splendour Falls. I'm writing a
creator-owned novel in White Wolf's Borealis line--an Arthurian book
titled To Dream of Kings--due out summer or fall 1997.
Again, cool page. Cyric is also a big fan of Oingo Boingo. Many of the
chapters in Prince are tips of the hat to songs on "Dead Man's Party". It
seemed really appropriate, somehow.
Cheers,
Jim Lowder
Nothing has been removed from Mr. Lowder's
message, with the exception of his E-mail address. I figured that
he would appreciate that.
