Who the heck is Jadek Prynn?

Well, he's the protagonist of my new story but the name has been sticking in my head for a long time. Somehow, I finally decided he was a Conan the Barbarian-esque warrior with the title Battle Lord, so basically a mercenary general. As I started writing a description for him, somehow I hit on the idea of this hulking barbarian being challenged by a woman and the rest of the story kind of wrote itself from there.

The one thing I waffled on, and finally rejected for now, was explicitly tying this to another of my fantasy worlds. In some early drafts, the goddess Nethandra, who is the primary deity of the world where Night of the Wind and The Goddess Dances are set, got name-checked but I lost that in a later edit, deciding to keep this standalone and maybe in its own world for now.

That said, I am still thinking of another story that makes that connection but does it less casually, perhaps having one of the characters from Night of the Wind encounter Jadek in a new story. Dev, the protagonist of that story, is a war veteran so could well have crossed paths with the Battle Lord.

For now, I give you Last Challenge of Jadek Prynn.

Oh, and the cover image is done using an AI as tends to be my approach these days. I use a site called Nightcafe that offers multiple models to choose from. It's a bit of a struggle to get exactly what you want at times, but I think this one kind of got it. I did one of Jadek himself, too, but was not totally pleased with it.