The Black Dog of Nighthaven

A Short Story Set in the World of Nighthaven

Hello Boneheads. This is something new I wanted to try. Around this time last year, I was at a loss as to what I should do with this idea called Nighthaven that I had in my head. I knew that I wanted to do some RPG material with it, but I also had ideas for fiction set in Nighthaven. I’ve always wanted to publish fiction, but I had never completed a novel, novella or even a short story at the time. I would go on to meet Wonkee at North Texas and form Guts N’ Glory but I also decided to start work on a short story to possibly submit for publication in one of the independent fantasy publications that have popped up recently. To make a long story short, I decided to sit on the finished story because I didn’t particularly care for many of the publications I saw out there to submit to and I had committed to bringing Nighthaven to the tabletop. Recently though, I decided to dust off the story and send it over to Stephen Clements, our editor for Guts N’ Glory and he graciously cleaned it up for me so that I could put it out there. That’s what I’m doing today. I plan to write more stories like this and publish them as premium content here on Substack. Once I get a few under my belt, there’s a possibility of producing collected editions. I hope you all will enjoy The Black Dog of Nighthaven. Now, on with the story:

The Black Dog of Nighthaven

Dietrich scanned the common room of The Shady Inn nervously, as if the reaper himself was mingling with the evening crowd. The Shady Inn was the kind of tavern where fistfights were as common as drinking songs, and tonight it overflowed with cutthroats, whores, ore miners, thieves, and all the usual kinds who called the Maw their home. It was a rough-and-tumble place for hard men, a microcosm of the Maw itself. Both the Maw and The Shady Inn drew their names from the same source, the large overhang of rock that stretched out from the mountains over a large swath of the city of Nighthaven. Upon first entering Nighthaven, one would get the impression that the mountains to the east were some kind of giant beast holding the city over the western sea in its jaws. The rock formation cast this section of the city in near constant darkness, making it an undesirable location for all Nighthavians, save for the dwarves who preferred the dark, the working poor and wretched who could not afford to live anywhere else, and the predators who made their lairs in the shadows.

Dietrich was one such predator. A career criminal, the black cowl hanging around his neck marked him as a lieutenant of a gang called “The Headless.” He was a hardened man of thirty-five, having killed his first man as an adolescent and many more since. He stood at an imposing height of six and a half feet with arms of iron muscle accentuated by his sleeveless jerkin. His lantern jaw and shaved head festooned with tattoos of demon horns that stretched from his temples to the back of his head completed the image of a man not to be trifled with. Normally he would be as comfortable in a place like this as a courtier at a grand ball. Tonight was different though, and the throngs of carousers only heightened his paranoia.  

A younger man wearing a similar cowl sat on the bench to his right. “Wut is it, Dietrich?”

Deitrich snapped, “Don’t say another word, Shad. He’s after us. I’m sure of it this time.”

Shad let out a short laugh. “I still don’ understand what yeer so ‘fraid ah. One geezer? I’ve seen ye fight four men at a time. ‘Sides, I’m ‘ere too. I can ‘old me own and watch yer back, big as it is.”

Dietrich let out a ragged breath and drained the whiskey glass in front of him. He called for another round and then locked on Shad with a somber, borderline fearful expression. “He just disappeared from The Boneyard. There were eight of us there! Eight! Three killed, the loot from an evening’s collections taken, and the only thing he lost was his bloody hat!”