ISSUE 1 - OCTOBER 2026

Happy October, Sword Brethren!

October 1^st in Texas showed up in its autumn outfit. Cool and rainy. It was 99 degrees yesterday. We are now somewhere between False Fall, Second Summer, and Haha Welcome to Texas Have a Big Helping of 100° in November! Now Go Back to California! I’m not certain all of those are official seasons.

It’s been a great inaugural year for Swords Against! Magazine. 600 magazines delivered to backers, latecomers, and follow-on customers. I just ordered another short print run for some upcoming local events. We really appreciate your support

Our first newsletter features an essay by Moira McMahon (author of Baby Mama and a serious storyteller wizard), a flash fiction story by C.H. Scott (author of The Silent Army), an informal poll of sword & sorcery rock & roll, and a bunch of sword & sorcery news.

I’d really like to hear your feedback on our first issue. Shoot me a note at [email protected].

by C.H. Scott

Maraugh shoved Jalhon’s gored body off her chest. She staggered to her feet, breath heaving, fumbling for her bow. The creature before her snorted: Bull-like with long, obsidian horns, vermilion hide, and stained tusks that protruded from its lower jaw. Behind it the cavern stood the shrine of Santua Ahtur, the “saint” that drove her people’s sect into the desert. She knew she shouldn’t have come. What might resurface. But Jalhon swore the shrine was unguarded and full of riches. An easy job. Liar. Dead liar, now.

With a dark forehoof, the bull-thing etched a perfect circle into the ground, and a human-like shape coalesced from the eddying grass and soil. Maraugh drew and released an arrow. The bull knocked it away with a flick of its head. The summoned being collapsed. She drew her sword and vaulted on the beast’s back. She stabbed the creature’s spine, its body searing her inner thighs like a sputter coal ember. All solidity dissolved beneath her. She fell to her hands and knees, breath heavy and legs burning.

A man in crimson robes faced her. He loosely bounced an ebony handled scythe between his hands. “I am Oaxtle,” he said, voice like an echo from a well. “I claim this shrine as my own, believer.”

Believer. The word brought a flash of visions. A line of her people on Ahtur’s March, skeletal and parched. How their gods, Rahmus and Sharvaugh, didn’t save them. How her heart burned as she renounced them both and left the settlement for a life of plunder. “I worship neither Ahtur nor you,” she said. “But I’m taking what’s in the shrine.”

Oaxtle charged, scythe flashing. Maraugh tumbled and dodged a slash to the gut. A swoop of the blunt end caught her behind the ear. She collapsed on her back, panting. The demon dangled the scythe above her neck, toying with her. It’s hot breath redolent with the tang of lightning on steel.

Maraugh grabbed the scythe’s ebony handle. Her palms burned under her gloves, as if holding a sword newly from the forge. She yanked the scythe from Oaxtle’s control, screaming as she spun and buried it into the demon’s side. Oaxtle threw back his head and bayed. Horns sprouted from his head, body thickened, and skin turned to vermilion fur. She sprang to her feet and swung at Oaxtle’s engorged neck. Head and body fell to the ground, crumbling into dirt and rock. The scythe dissolved in her fingers like wet sand.

Maraugh limped her way into the shrine. A simple, ceramic box rested on a mineral-encrusted rock. With the tip of her sword, she flipped open the lid. Inside lay the naked, desiccated finger of Santua Ahtur. No riches after all. She picked up the finger of the man who had taken her previous life from her. Perhaps he did her a favor. She shrugged and shoved the finger into her satchel. It might fetch a few coins from a believer.

C.H. Scott wrote the Silent Army for Swords Against #1. He’s been published in Analecta, and Remembering Tomorrow, a speculative fiction anthology.

by Moira McMahon

Just because your paintbrush includes gods, demons, swords, and damsels, in the end, you’re just telling the truth about humans.

Most of the authors in this magazine have a long history with sword and sorcery, both as fans and creators. They arrive at this endeavor with armor seasoned by facing creatures that hide in dark places. Their protagonists are wrapped in the ancestral inheritance of afflictions bursting through their tales.

And I’ve…ah….written on a few TV shows? A movie? One of the TV shows was Teen Wolf, so that sort of counts. But have I gone to a D&D convention? Have I read the every Michael Moorcock story?

Not yet.

So, what is a wayward screenwriter doing here?

The same thing as all storytellers: Tell the truth about humans.

But this time, with the paintbrush of monsters, gods, passions spoken and unspoken, and a sword that divides a family for eternity.

Some truths are better told with a touch of the supernatural. Some relationships can only be translated through winding dark paths that afford secrecy, magic revealed in the night, forms both recognizable as beasts and unrecognizable as hidden entities hiding in plain sight. Sometimes, you need a sword to cut it all down to the bone.

But you already know that. Because sword and sorcery readers like the truth with a little dust, a little chainmail, a cloak well-worn, and a mission that only becomes clear at the very end.

So what am I doing here?

Between scripts, short stories and running after two children who love to play Magic: The Gathering with their dad, I spend most of my time helping other storytellers bring forth their own shadows, demons, delights, and dreams. Together, we transform the magic that starts in the world unseen and move it to the world of form through screenplays and novels. And this is what I have learned from bringing forth hundreds of stories: a genre is a burning lantern in a wide-open field, bringing in the creatures that are attracted to its frequency. And all around the field are these lanterns: horror, fantasy, thriller, mysteries, memoirs, the next Pulitzer Prize – and as the light expands, one lantern’s light intermingles with the next, making its own shadows, playing in its own waves, creating a new frequency. This is where Swords Against! forms itself - where the light of sword and sorcery meets all the other edges of the lanterns’ glow in this wide field of story. This is bringing more voices to sing in a forest that will never tire of our conjuring, our curses long-lasting, and the sudden turn of a story that reveals its truth.

So throw your cloak on. Grab that hefty blade, feel the weight of its power in your hand, and let’s get going, for soon, it will be dark.

Moira McMahon can be found at linktr.ee/TheScriptWhisperer.

Did we miss something? Hit reply and let us know.

On Manila Road, Ironsword and others:

We asked Reddit for the top 10 sword & sorcery influenced artists. We got 161 responses and 1,100 upvotes…

Through a highly scientific and mathematical process, we got your top 10 here.

Honorable Mentions: Bal Sagoth, Castle Rat, Héroes del Silencio

Here’s the top 5 songs using a completely different scientific and very mathematical procedure…

Come hang with Moira McMahon and R. Paul Wolfe at Geeky Teas in Burbank, CA on Sunday, November 8th. We’ll have Amanda Deibert, famed comic writer, there to facilitate a discussion about storytelling across mediums. And we’ll have stacks of Swords Against! magazine!

Flash Fiction Submissions are currently open for Swords Against! 2027. Check our Submissions Guidelines.