Editing Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (section)

== Setting ==
[[File:Nehwon.gif|thumb|300px|right|Map drawn by Jim Cawthorn to illustrate the stories by [[Fritz Leiber]]]]

The majority of the stories are set in the fictional world of Nehwon ("nehw on", or "Nowhen" backwards: contrasted to [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]]'s 1872 ''[[Erewhon]]''). Many of them take place in and around its greatest city, [[Lankhmar]]. It is described as "a world like and unlike our own". Theorists in Nehwon believe that their world may be shaped like a bubble, floating in the waters of eternity.

<blockquote>Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries. Nehwon's known realms crowd about the Inner Sea: northward the green-forested fierce Land of the Eight Cities, eastward the steppe-dwelling Mingol horsemen and the desert where caravans creep from the rich Eastern Lands and the River Tilth. But southward, linked to the desert only by the Sinking Land and further warded by the Great Dike and the Mountains of Hunger, are the rich grain fields and walled cities of Lankhmar, eldest and chiefest of Nehwon's lands. Dominating the Land of Lankhmar and crouching at the silty mouth of the River Hlal in a secure corner between the grain fields, the Great Salt Marsh, and the Inner Sea is the massive-walled and mazy-alleyed metropolis of Lankhmar, thick with thieves and shaven priests, lean-framed magicians and fat-bellied merchants—Lankhmar the Imperishable, the City of the Black Toga.

:—From "Induction" by Fritz Leiber</blockquote>

In ''[[The Swords of Lankhmar]]'', it is revealed that Nehwon is just one of many worlds in a [[Parallel universes in fiction#Fantasy multiverses|multiverse]] when Fafhrd and the Mouser join forces with a German explorer named Karl Treuherz who is looking for his spacecraft, which he uses to cross the boundaries between parallel dimensions in his hunt for new animals to feature at a zoo.

Technology in Nehwon varies between the Iron Age and medieval. Leiber wrote of Lankhmarts: "They may be likened to the Romans or be thought of as, if I may use such a term, southern medievals." On the topic of his Eastern Lands, he wrote: "think of Saracens, Arabs, Parthians, Assyrians even. They ride the camel and elephant, and use the bow extensively."<ref>Leiber, Fritz, "Fafhrd and the Mouser Say Their Say", ''The Dragon'' #1, 1976.</ref>

The series includes many bizarre and outlandish characters. The two who most influence—and, some would say, cause the most trouble—for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are their sorcerous advisers, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face (see [[Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser#Ningauble and Sheelba|Ningauble and Sheelba]], below). These two lead the heroes into some of their most interesting and dangerous adventures.