Game Inspiration - Silver Warriors cover

I pulled a couple books off of my shelf - ones I hadn't read in decades, and ones I had never read before. One of the former is "The Silver Warriors" by Michael Moorcock.

I am a big fan of this book cover:



It's by Robert Gould.

At first it seems a bit cluttered, but the more I look at it the more elegant it seems. Sword and goblet on the one side, poem on the other, runes like those on Stormbringer in Robert Gould's covers for the Elric series across the bottom.

The poem down the side fully evokes the whole Eternal Champion books, especially self-aware Erikosë.

The Black Sword is the Champion's Sword,
The Word of the Sword is the Champion's Law,
The Blade of the Sword has the Blood of the Sun,
The Hilt of the Sword and the Hand are One.

Yeah, that sums up the books for the most part. Not that all use black two-handed swords, but some of them sure do.

Actually, interestingly, the Eternal Champion name "Konrad Arflane" comes up. He's the hero of The Ice Schooner, which I read just prior to this. That's one I had for decades but it sat unread, and unnoticed, on my bookshelf until I found it tucked in between two Hawkmoon books. It's a good book, too, if you like post-apocalyptic glacial worlds sailed by ships converted to skim the ice on runners. So yeah, it's a good book for everyone:



Put this down under "stuff that makes me want to play games."