Quag Keep & Return to Quag Keep Omnibus

Quag Keep & Return to Quag Keep Omnibus by Andre Norton. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780739464182.

In 1978, science fictions grand dame Andre Norton was given a wonderful opportunity-to take part in the role-playing game Dungeons & DragonsTM, and to have it run in her own home by none other than the games creator, E. Gary Gygax. The result was Quag Keep. When a Gaming Master meets with his gamers to show off his newly-acquired warrior miniatures, one gamer, Martin, is strongly attracted to a sword-wielding miniature and seizes it as his own. Instantly, he finds himself transported into the D&D realm of Greyhawk-but experiencing that realm through the mind of fighter Milo Jajon. His fellow gamers are also transformed into D&D characters-from berserker to battle-maid to lizardman. Like Martin, they each inexplicably sport an unremovable bracelet containing spinning dice...and each must face an immutable fate: to find his way to Quag Keep-the most fearsome place in all the realm-and destroy a malevolent force determined to snuff out the mundane world. But first they must survive the journey there.... In Return to Quag Keep, Norton teams up with Jean Rabe to revisit her bracelet-geased heroes, still trapped in Greyhawk, and still pursued by the vile darkness, Pobe. Barely escaping mounting assaults by Pobes servant, the were-rat Fisk, they struggle to journey back to the Keep to learn the true history of the dark force they can scarcely outrun. But they must endure the endless onslaught of hardship and treachery obstructing their way...beyond the unimaginable horror at the heart of it all: Quag Keep. Jacket art by J.P. Targete. (435 pp.) 1978-2006.