You Can't Play As Conan, But...

...you can play as one of his companions.

Conan has plot armor. He can't die. He won't die. Ever. Unless Howard willed it, in which case, it could only happen once. The same goes for Elric, Aragorn, and any other famous heroes whose worlds people like to game in. In order to showcase this, publishers often gave these protagonists bloated stats (just look at Elric in some of Chaosium's books) when all they really had to do was put an asterisk after their name that signified -- plot armor.

Role-Playing in these worlds never really worked for me. Much of the fun in D&D is creating your own world anyway. But gaming in Hyboria, not the same without Conan, because without Conan, who cares. Hyboria is his playground. Without Conan, Stygia simply becomes Egypt. Aquilonia becomes France.

Dragonlance was the closest we came to gaming in the world of novels. And yes, we had many of the modules, but never played them, we just liked referencing the stats. What eventually happened was we took ideas, like the Towers of High Sorcery and the tree town of Solace and came up with our versions for our worlds.

It's why I never got into the Star Wars RPG by West End Games, though I bought the book, I quickly traded it to my brother for his D&D books. (Star Wars is the one thing I loved as a kid that I now legit feel is the stupidest thing around.)

Anyway...

You see, you will never measure up to the iconic characters. You will always feel like wannabes, like supporting crew.

So play as them.

The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, Issue 133, Feb, 1987. Features the story, Winter of the Wolf. This was the first issue of Savage Sword I ever bought and I was hooked... for awhile at least. It was this magazine that eventually lead me to dive into Howard's original stories, which until then, I knew very little about. By 1987, Savage Sword wasn't so savage -- still pretty violent, but the nudity was gone. At the time, I had no idea how cool the earlier issues were (70s/early 80s) and I should have been exploring the Warren horror mags, but, I wasn't.

Winter of the Wolf  -- I was cautious about revisiting this story; it has a mystique in my mind and I didn't want that ruined. It held up, the mystique stays, but I did notice some errors that aren't relevant here.

Summary: Conan and some Gundermen are part of a royal hunting expedition in the winter months. It goes poorly, the nobles are killed. Conan and the others decide not to return to Aquilonia proper, as they would be blamed for the deaths, so they head on and soon they are hunted by a pack of wolves which are actually, sort of, werewolves. They seek refuge in a fort manned mostly by farmers, led by a chieftain with a wicked daughter. Stuff happens. Eventually, when everyone is drunk, the fort is overrun by wolves and of course Conan is the last man standing.

Because, he has plot armor.

D&D characters don't have plot armor. They're not supposed to anyway. (Modern story-gamers probably beg to differ. Why do they even roll dice?)

But, what if you were one of the Gundermen?

Conan will survive the Winter of the Wolf... but will you?

You wanna play in Hyboria? You're a part of Conan's saga, not yours. Take any adventure, any D&D group, insert Conan (NPC). He cannot die, but you can. If Conan's hit points reach zero, he is knocked unconscious and left for dead or captured. Maybe he escapes. Maybe you rescue him -- maybe you die trying -- such is often the case. Your goal -- to see how long you survive as a companion to the mighty Cimmerian. You could build a whole campaign centered around Conan and his many companions, but HE is the main character, not you. In the end, most of your characters will have died and Conan will have ridden off, perhaps with a bag full of jewels, alone or with a half-naked woman.

Such as it should be.

By Crom!

The Shadow Kingdom

Brule the Spear-slayer!

I don't read fiction much anymore, other than gaming material, my mind simply wanders too much, but, I found myself thinking of Howard, and every now and then, I need a little fix. So I grabbed volume II, KULL, of the BAEN, Robert E. Howard series, and re-read (it's been years) the story, The Shadow Kingdom.

Wherein, King Kull learns that his court has been infiltrated by shape-changing lizard men from ages long past. Now, this concept -- that reptilian men ruled the world long ago, with the remnants of which, striving to regain control or actively pulling strings from the shadows -- is a common Sword & Sorcery trope. Where did it come from? Howard? Elsewhere?

This hangs on my living room wall. Signed by Ken Kelly, 37/200. Arguably my favorite picture (if there is such a thing.) This painting is an amalgamation of the stories, The Shadow Kingdom and By This Axe I Rule! 

By This Axe I Rule! would be re-written by Howard several years later as the Conan story The Phoenix On the Sword.

Valka and Hotath! Now these are book covers!

The story begins with King Kull astride a horse watching a military parade. Kull is an Atlantean usurper of the Valusian throne. An outsider, a true barbarian. In so many ways, the proto-Conan. But, where Conan concerns himself with women, wine, and plunder, Kull only concerns himself with kingship (though he too, had an adventurous past.)

Kull then takes an audience from a proud Pict (Picts and Atlanteans are ancient enemies) and agrees to come alone to dine with an elder, Pictish ambassador. The ambassador toys with Kull, almost speaking in riddles, playing age against youth (though Kull isn't exactly a youth) and vaguely warns him. He says to be on the look out for a Pict who wears a dragon armlet and to heed his message.

As Kull rides back to his palace in the dead of night, with a lone Pictish escort, there are several paragraphs focusing on this ancient city and how its towers mock him:

    "How many kings have we watched ride down these streets before Kull of Atlantis was even a dream in the mind of Ka, bird of creation? Ride on, Kull of Atlantis; greater shall follow you; greater came before you. They are dust; they are forgotten; we stand; we know; we are. Ride, ride on, Kull of Atlantis; Kull the king, Kull the fool!"

Kull is truly a man out of place, in Valusia, as well as with his own Atlantean customs.

And so, Brule, sneaks into the palace, straight to Kull and proceeds to unravel the illusion of security. Enter the reptilian shape-changers... I won't spoil much more than that, but it's not a long story, in fact, the end comes surprisingly quick.

Near the bottom of this page, as Kull stares off in a trance, deep into the past, we get a clear vision of Howard's grim view of man:

    "Against a gray, ever-shifting background moved strange nightmare forms, fantasies of lunacy and fear; and man, the jest of the gods, the blind, wisdomless striver from dust to dust, following the long bloody trail of his destiny, knowing not why, bestial, blundering, like a great murderous child, yet feeling somewhere a spark of divine fire..."

The jest of the gods.

And another use of the word dust.

As Brule (the Pictish, Spear-slayer!) guides Kull through secret passages in Kull's own palace, they discuss ages past. This entire page, and some on the next, is Brule speaking while standing over the body of a reptilian imposter. The beginning few sentences struck me the most:

    "They are gone," said Brule, as if scanning his secret mind; "the bird-women, the harpies, the bat-men, the flying fiends, the wolf-people, the demons, the goblins-- all save such as this being that lies at our feet, and a few of the wolf-men. Long and terrible was the war, lasting through the bloody centuries, since first the first men, risen from the mire of apedom, turned upon those who then ruled the world. And at last mankind conquered, so long ago that naught but dim legends come to us through the ages."

There is something incredible about Howard speaking of harpies and demons and goblins, all at war with man. Imagine if Howard had written about that age! 

These words tease awesomeness; a hint of primeval violence, even darker times, and a stronger dose of fantasy. These words ignite one's imagination!  It leaves you wanting more, but ultimately, it is up to you to fill in the blanks. Too often these days, things are over-explained and all loose ends are tied. That is boring nonsense.

No matter what you create, let there be mystery and unexplored depth.

This is especially true for D&D.

The Shadow Kingdom, excellence in fiction.

20 Minute Friday Night Ink Sketch And Conan.

Quick post.  I'm becoming addicted to drawing in ink only.  Dangerous.  Risky.  And sometimes better looking than something I took great care on.  Never know what it's going to be before, just make it up as I go.  Maybe save it for a project and add a story to it later.  This one just gets posted here.  It took me 20 minutes while I listened to a couple of techno songs by Suntree and Lyctum.

Reminds of Conan, which I've been reading lately.

I've been a Conan fan forever, yet I've still only read about half of Howard's stories.  Which is kinda cool because I still get to experience new original tales.  I used to absolutely love The Savage Sword of Conan magazine and I've read a few of the Tor books as well as some other Howard stuff.  I Just read Red Nails and The Vale of Lost Women.  As much as I love Howard, he can lose me sometimes because I don't find any other characters in a Conan story interesting.  I hate the scenes where villains are up to stuff.

The Vale of Lost Women is mercifully short.  Told from the perspective of some scientist brat enslaved in a savage land who just watched her brother get utterly mutilated (just seeing the word scientist in a Conan story almost breaks immersion.)  Conan's hardly in it.  I hate this character but powered through the tale by force of will.  My reading patience has all but disappeared.  If you don't get me in chapter one, I won't keep reading.  I find role-playing books easier to read than fiction these days.  Vale is definitely an odd little tale.

Red Nails was good and I can see why some call it the most D&D-like of the Conan tales.  But once again, I don't care about anyone else here except Conan.  Even Valeria wasn't as cool as I was hoping.  One scene though, was awesome:

"From wall to wall, from door to door rolled the waves of combat, spilling over into adjoining chambers.  And presently only Tecuhltli and their white-skinned allies stood upright in the great throneroom.  The survivors stared bleakly and blankly at each other, like survivors after Judgement Day or the destruction of the world.  On legs wide-braced, hands gripping notched and dripping swords, blood trickling down their arms, they stared at one another across the mangled corpses of friends and foes.  They had no breath left to shout, but a bestial mad howling rose from their lips.  It was not a human cry of triumph.  It was the howling of a rabid wolf-pack stalking among the bodies of its victims."

--Red Nails.

Every now and then Howard wrote a moment for the ages.