Calthus of Thaal
Following is a brief biography of Calthus, probably my best known sword-and-sorcery character …
Calthus … Slaughter Lord of Thaal …
Bred and trained as a warrior by the Thaal Empire, Calthus knew only sword and shield and horse from an early age. His only family was the Empire he served.
Calthus stood out, and received specialized training not only in hand-to-hand combat but in mental techniques to push himself beyond pain, beyond normal endurance. With such training, he soon came to lead Thaal’s armies in pacification efforts far from the Empire’s center. He conquered the Bleeding Plains, and was hailed as a hero … Calthus, Slaughter Lord of Thaal.
Calthus immersed himself in the hero worship of a grateful empire. Women, gold, lands … all were his. He came to believe that might made right, and he lived that way. He crushed enemies, including political enemies, and won a reputation for great cruelty and ruthlessness. When he decided he wanted a poet’s wife, he concocted a pretext for a one-sided duel. It was nothing short of murder, and with the husband out of the way the woman was his … for a while. He soon grew bored with her, and discarded her. There would always be another.
By age 40 or so, he had decided the world existed solely for him.
It was in the capital Thaalis that Calthus earned his greatest fame. Garris the Usurper, in a power game to make himself supreme amongst Thaal’s cabal of emperors, summoned demonic aid. Calthus led the forces against the Usurper, and eventually chased down the demons. He killed them one at a time, and slew the Usurper himself. A cycle of legends grew around these deeds, so that Calthus was remembered long after his death … but the legends didn’t stop there.
Calthus’ death came at the hands of an assassin, hired by the emperors Calthus had served so well. For those men knew the people of Thaal hailed Calthus as hero, and were starting to speak of him as king. So Calthus was assassinated …
… and banished to Hell.
There, Calthus endured six centuries of burning darkness until a group of monks, scholars well familiar with the tales of his deeds, found themselves in need of a hero. Their sanctuary in peril in a world where gods were fleeing and magic was beginning to die, they pulled Calthus’ soul out of Hell and placed it in the body of a strong, but witless, servant. Resurrected, Calthus slew the winged beast that endangered the monks, then set out alone to adventure in a world that had largely forgotten him, his deeds, his empire.
Now he wanders through a strange world. No longer hailed as conqueror and no longer the focus of intense hero worship, he is learning for the first time the world is not all about him. No longer serving at the whim of gods or emperors, he has to rely on his own thoughts and emotions to guide his actions — and he’s learning that sometimes, right isn’t a matter of having the keenest sword.
He is determined now to be his own master, make his own rules, be a better man … and never return to Hell.
Calthus stories published
- The Redemption of Calthus (which you can read online in Flashing Swords Issue 4, October 2005)
- The Grey Mother (the second tale of Calthus, which you can read online in Flashing Swords Issue 6, April 2006)
- The Gods-Forsaken World, (The first Calthus tale to see print, in GrendelSong, Spring 2007 … and now available free online in Issue 8 of Flashing Swords ezine. You can read it here.)
Hello, and welcome to the blog of a sword-and-sorcery writer. Most of the stuff here is about writing fiction, but you'll also find some stuff about beer and Godzilla, a few bits of Zen, really short film reviews and my now-and-then rants about social injustice.You can find topics by category, using the list further down in this sidebar.
Cool bio. Must check out these stories.
Thanks, Finn … have we met online before? Your new blog looks like we have a lot in common.
– Steve
Love this character and the setting being where he had been earlier.
[…] I spent the wee hours applying spit and polish to Rain of Stones, a new tale of Calthus, my down-and-dirty sword-and-sorcery guy, It’s about 6,000 words of blood-soaked goodness, and so far I’m rather pleased with it. It fits well with the Calthus saga, reveals a bit more of his past and pushes the bloody fellow into new emotional territory to boot. The next step is to have my trusty first readers look it over and share their thoughts, then whip it into final shape. […]
[…] I liked it, and kept it — although I ended up not starting with the “He was called” bit after all. But I had a name for my character. Calthus. […]
[…] Don’t believe me? Then go read some short stories that are action oriented … I’ll suggest maybe a Conan story by Robert E. Howard, or a Calthus story by Steve Goble. Yep, you’ll find lots of action and adventure, heads rolling, bodies falling, stuff like that … but I guarantee by the end of the story the protagonist has learned something either about himself, his world or other characters. That’s where the theme comes in. Again, if a main protagonist learns nothing … absolutely nothing … then you don’t have a story, just stuff happening. […]
[…] Marshall Payne wrote the review, and seems to enjoy a sword-and-sorcerous tale more than the people at Tangent who reviewed previous editions of Flashing Swords. Payne took the time to link to my brief bio of Calthus in his review of The Gods-Forsaken World, which I appreciate, and I thought his comments in praise of TW Williams’ narrative voice in No Man’s Knight were spot-on. […]
[…] Calthus […]
[…] What’s that? You don’t know Calthus? Well then, here’s a brief biography of Calthus, Slaughter Lord of Thaal. […]