I'd say that this fits with the overall ethos of Hârn perfectly. Danger, harm and death are ever-present possibilities, but they're seldom the whole point of the exercise. Killing other beings outright is hard, but getting badly hurt in the process is easy, so you're really better off fixing on another specific objective and treating the danger and potential violence as an incidental risk. Sadly, this doesn't lend itself easily to the traditional "adventure module" format, but for short stories and novels I have often thought of Hârn as an excellent setting. Ditto for collaborative storytelling or structured improv.

Ta! I'm reading the first, now, and just one thing puzzles me slightly - the clan name "Llysgaled". I'm assuming (possibly wrongly) that the double-L is meant to be pronounced in the Welsh (rather than, say, Spanish) way, but Kethiran languages don't have such a sound symbol, generally. Is there a story intention for it?

Interesting - thanks for the answer. The Arian thing is a bit different; words, or at least homonyms, can appear independently with very different meanings. One example is "deryn", as found in 'Melderyn', that appears both in Welsh and in Katherine Kurtz' Deryni books - in each case with a different meaning and, as far as I know, with no conscious link on the part of the creators.

OK, I have read the three posted stories, now, and found them an entertaining read. Just a few (hopefully constructive) bits of feedback:

- On p.2 of the second tale you describe "the sound of the oars being deployed in the gunwales". You can' really deploy oars "in gunwales", since they would slip off. Maybe 'rowlocks' or (if rowlocks are too sophisticated a technology) 'thole pins' (which can be either one thole pin and a hole in the oar shaft to fit over the pin, or two thole pins with the oar between them). The word 'gunwale' might also jar, since guns are generally unknown on Kethira; before they were gun-walles they were bulwarks, top rails or top-wales (wale was middle english for 'plank').

- I was slightly surprised at the White Hand being mentioned casually in the presence of Kvikir of recent acquaintance. No biggie, being a p-Harn thing, but it is supposed to be a "secret society".

- I struggled a bit with consistency at a few points. Firstly the weather, or more precisely the ground conditions in Coranan (the third story) seemed to leap from dusty to a sea of mud to dusty again; I found it hard to work out the intended timescale and how it fitted to these descriptions. Timescale was also odd seeming in the progress of the investigation; without clear indications of time passing I found it difficult to assess what was really going on. Gaps of time in stories are fine, but I find I need to have some measure of how big they are in order to relate to what might (or might not) have happened in them). Finally, the Shek-Pvar/White hand thing itself produced a bit of a consistency jar; on the one hand Mohan didn't know the natures of the convocations, although seemed to be unusually well informed in being able to name them, and yet the convocations and even the Gentle White Hand were talked about openly in Coranan. Harn society is, of course local, but the Shek-Pvar are old and any freely available knowledge about them would, I think, have spread.

OK, I think I'm not saying what I mean clearly enough. It's not that the facts are 'wrong' - you are the author, you can make up any facts you like! It's just that subjectively, reading what you wrote, I wasn't clear what you meant. Was I supposed to suspect that magic was involved? Was I supposed to wonder what the timing was of these events relative to each other? The magic would be Odivshe, assumably - odd. And the White Hand - Oshynn might have known of it already, but why would Theron know or assume that? And what about Asel and Isata? As I say, it can't be "wrong" because you're the author; I'm just telling you that, from the perspective of a Hârniac reader, these are things that left me a little mystified and distracted from the story. Maybe that's the intent, but maybe it's not?