Barbarians
novella 2013 The Runelords
Record
| First published | 2013 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novella |
| Canon status |
Synopsis
This short story serves as a prequel set generations before the main Runelords saga begins, introducing a young Inkarran named Dval long before the age of the Runelords ruled over the land of Mystarria. When Dval finds that his own king refuses to give him the respect and honor he believes he has earned, he resolves to take the fate of the world into his own hands. His path pits him against his own people, a mad foreign king, and the emergence of terrifying new creatures called the Toth, whose arrival threatens to endanger all of mankind. As the opening piece in a new prequel saga within the Runelords universe, the story lays the groundwork for Dval's rise and the larger conflicts that follow him in later installments, establishing him as a central figure of this earlier era of the world.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Runelords
- Series: The Runelords: Prequels ; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: David Farland
Notes
- Publication year corroborated 2026-09-16 (fantasticfiction, an independent series-list page, and an independent author-bibliography page all agree 2013). No anthology of first appearance found; standalone e-novella. No day/month source found for a precise first-edition date, so only the year is recorded.
- From the series record (The Runelords: Prequels): Four short prequels, explicitly numbered and marketed as prequels by the author's own site, exploring earlier history in the Runelords setting outside the main numbered sequence. Exact individual publication years were not confidently pinned down in this admission's research and are left unrecorded rather than guessed.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Runelords: Prequels: position 1 of 4: next Ashes and Starlight: A Runelords Story (2014)
Sources
- https://davidfarland.com/product/woven-of-shadow/
- https://davidfarland.com/product/ashes-and-starlight-a-runelords-story/
- https://davidfarland.com/product/the-kings-dispatcher/
- https://davidfarland.com/product/barbarians-audiobook-runelords-prequel-1/
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.