My Five Favorite Howard Yarns

On Robert E. Howard’s birthday yesterday, I was thinking about my favorite stories by him. It can be tough to choose--there are a lot of good ones to consider. Here, in no particular order, are what I think are my top five:

"Worms of the Earth": Bran Mak Morn, King of the Picts is (almost literally) willing to make a deal with the devil to get revenge on the hated Roman conquers. This is a tour de force by Howard with some great elements--the clash of cultures Howard loved in his historical fiction, a brooding hero, and weird horror.

"Xuthal of the Dusk": Also called "The Slithering Shadow." This may not rank among the best of the Conan stories for most folks, but I love the setting of a lost city full of drug-addled inhabitants awaiting an inevitable--but unpredictable--death from a weird menace. The original title is suitably enigmatic, too.

"Blades of the Brotherhood": Apparently, Howard’s original title was “The Blue Flame of Vengeance,” but I first encountered it under this title in the Marvel 1986 comics adaptation, with great art by Bret Blevins. Solomon Kane takes on a gang of pirates he’s been dogging, as he’s wont to do. Kane gets some great, badass lines, and deeds to match.

"The Shadow of the Vulture": My favorite of Howard’s historical actioners, its got an epic plot that would make a great film. It's got German Ritter Gottfried von Kalmbach with Howard’s real Red Sonya (no “j” or chainmail bikini) against the Turkish Empire, culminating in the siege of Vienna, 1529.

"Queen of the Black Coast": While there are plots, and settings I like better in other Conan tales, there are spots in this story where Howard’s writing really soars, and Conan’s musing on philosophy are great.

Close to these are “Pigeons from Hell,” “Red Nails,” and “People of the Back Circle.” I fact, ask me in a week and one of those will have bumped one the ones above out of a top spot. In fact, in most of Howard’s fantasy stories I find some elements I like even when the whole thing may not work for me.

Happy belated birthday, Bob!

Strange Trails--Free Download

Need a Weird Adventures appetizer?  Well, how about a download to tide you over?

Strange Trails features:

• Eight articles from this blog, some expanded, and all of them annotated and illustrated--including artwork by our man in Manila, Reno Maniquis, and that ostensible cat, Johnathan Bingham.
• An “Appendix N” for the City and its world.
• A shot of flavor fiction to set the mood.

And all for the low, low price of...free.  Get it here.

Release the Hounds

Chronos hounds, or temporal hounds, are extradimensional beings who sometimes hunt the Prime Material Plane. Some ancient tomes hold that these creatures are benevolent, and defend causality and stability against horrors form outside spacetime. Observed behavior of chronos hounds is ambiguous at best, and those who may encounter them are urged to caution.

From a distance, a chronos hound has the silhouette of a large, lean dog. A closer look reveals that the body of the creature is actual more like a human's, perhaps specifically an androgynous youth's, twist and stretched to conform to a canine’s basic arrangement. It's front paws, for example, are slender, human-like hands. The heads of the hound is always blurred and indistinct, as if in constant motion, but there is the suggestion of toothy, canine jaws, and glowing eyes. Hounds appear to be able to speak by telepathy, but also make a garbled sound like the cough and growls of a pack of dogs, as if heard at the other end of long and empty hallway. Their skin is hairless, and the faintly luminescent blue-white of moonlight.

Only in the past decade, has metaphysics developed the proper theoretical framework to understand the chronos hounds--and even now those theories remain controversial. The most brilliant minds in the City hold the hounds to be a wave function which only observation causes to collapse into the form of the creatures described above. Thaumaturgic investigation suggests they serve an eikone called Father Time, or are perhaps extensions of his will. They act to prune "streams" of time and possibility--making reality from probability--toward some inscrutable purpose.

# Enc.: 1d6 (1d6)
Movement: 120’ (40’)
Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 4
Attacks: 1 (bite),
Damage: 1d6
Save: F4
Chronos hounds are only visible if they choose to be, prior to acting. Only some rare circumstance keeps a first attack from being by surprise. Their actions in this plane have a stuttering appearance, as if they are teleporting short distances rather than moving normally. Chronos hounds reduced to 0 hit points disappear entirely. Chronos hounds are able to pass through (or around) any physical barrier--or indeed temporal barrier. A combat with them may begin one day, only to have them break off the attack, and re-appear months or even years later.  A first encounter with a chronos hound, maybe not be the true first encounter, from the perspective of the creature's timeline. Whatever subjective amount of time appears to pass in combat with them, 1d100 minutes have based for the world external to the combatants.

The greatest enemies of the chronos hounds are the achronal hyperbeasts, which they will fight to the death when they encounter them. Thankfully, these higher order dimensional monstrosities are seldom encountered on this plane.

Warlord Wednesday: Wizard World

This week, let's journey to the distant past of the lost world of DC Comic's Warlord, and check up on Machiste, Mariah, and Mungo Ironhand in the "Wizard World" back-up feature...

"The Book of the Dead" Parts 1 & 2

Warlord (vol. 1) #40 (December 1980) and #41 (January 1981)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: Dwarf wizard Mungo Ironhand searches for something in the library of the recently deceased Wralf the Wretched while Mariah and Machiste look on. Mungo stops his search briefly to have a martini, and leaning against a wall, manages to accidentally open a secret door. In the small room behind it, he serendipitously finds what he’s looking for--The Book of the Dead, a tome of the dark arts.

Mariah is skeptical, but is concerned that even if it's real, it’s a thing of evil. Mungo assures her that power is neither good nor evil--it depends on how its used. He thinks he can use the book to send them back to their own time.

At that moment, a wizard appears in a burst of fire and brimstone, and snatches up the book. Machiste throws a dagger, but it’s too late. The wizard is gone as quickly as he came.

Mungo tells the other two that that was Zarrgon Fire-Eye. He lives inside a volcano called Great Fire Mountain. They have to get the book back from Zarrgon, or they’ll see what happens when the book falls into the wrong hands!

Astride giant, flightless birds the trio head for Great Fire Mountain. At the volcano’s base, they abandon their mounts, and climb. They find Zarrgon’s fortress in the volcano’s smoldering crater.

Our heroes descend into the crater only to be attack by diminutive brutes riding small pteranodons. Their tiny spears are little more than an annoyance, but one of the flying reptiles grabs Mariah by the hair--and begins to raise her into the sky. Machiste grabs her hand, and pulls her back to safety. Mungo suggests they take shelter in a cave up ahead.

Zarrgon, watching the trio escape his minions uses a blast of energy to cause an avalanche. Our heroes are buried!

Or so it appears. Actually, Mungo uses his magic to shield them. They manage to get into the cave before Mungo’s strength gives out, but the cave’s entrance is now blocked. The three are plunged into darkness.

Mungo fumbles for a moment, but manages to produce a magic flame from his finger. In the light he casts, the three are surprised to see a crouching humanoid:

The thing, which calls itself Craetur, bounds off promising that Zarrgon will make them pretty trophies, too. Mariah wonders what he’s talking about, but not for long. Mungo points her to a wall of skulls.

Determined not to wind up on that wall. the trio makes their way deeper into the volcano until they discover a stairway leading upward to a door. They soon find themselves in Zarrgon’s fortress, and after a short and stealthy search, locate the wizard, lost in study of the book.

Mungo has a plan. They waylay two guards and get disguises for Mungo and Machiste. They enter the wizards chamber, and move closer to attack. Before they can, Zarrgon glimpses Machiste’s mace hand.

Quickly, Machiste throws a dagger. Zarrgon laughs when it strikes the Necronomicon, not him. He blasts away at the two with magic energy. Mungo fires a blast of his own, but hits the dagger embedded in the book. Again Zarrgon mocks them.

He doesn’t see the dagger pommel begin to grow and change into the shape of a woman. He has no idea he’s been tricked until Mariah grabs him by the shoulder, then spins him around and punches him off the platform.

The three grab the book and try to make their escape before Zarrgon recovers. Before they can climb out of the crater, a recovered Zarrgon blasts them. The path crumbling beneath his feet, Mungo almost falls into the volcano, but Mariah saves him.

The Necronomicon, however, falls into the roiling smoke below. Mungo’s lost his chance to be sorcerer supreme, but consoles himself with the knowledge that the book can no longer fall into the wrong hands.

In the volcano below, Craetur picks up the book from the rubble, and pronounces it “pretty.”

Things to Notice:

• Wizardly knowledge is vast. Mungo Ironhand knows a lot of 20th century popular culture.
• Mariah has heard of the Necronomicon.
• Zarrgon's name is mispelled throughout Part 2.

Where It Comes From:
The evil sorcerer Zarrgon maybe be named for the comic book character Sargon the Sorcerer, or more likely, they both take their names from Sargon the Great of Akkad.

The Necronomicon, of course, comes from the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Craetur's appearance and behavior is modelled on that of Gollum in the works of J.R.R.Tolkien.

Real Dungeon Hazards: Snotties and Slime

Ooozes and slimes aren’t just the the subject of Gygaxian dungeoneering fancy. Interestingly, it appears they have some basis in subterranean fact. Ready for an introduction to the world of snotties, red goo, and green slime?

"Snotties" look like small stalactites, but have the texture of mucus and drip battery acid. They’re actually colonies extremophile archaebacteria that thrive in intense levels of atmospheric hydrogen sulfide produced by volcanism. They’ve only been found in a few places including Cueva de Villa Luz, southern Mexico, and Sulphur Cave in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Other unusual things have been uncovered in Cueva de Villa Luz by the self-styled SLIME (Subsurface Life In Mineral Environments) team. “Red goo” is an acidic (pH 3.9-2.5) breakdown product of clay, which also makes a home for bacteria. “Green slime” which may be decaying algal elements.

Sulphur Cave also sports the red worms which live off sulfur--the only such higher organism ever discovered residing on land.

The Dead Travel Fast

In the deserts north of Heliotrope, weird monsters of the outer dark and thrill-crazy youths race hopped-up roadsters across dead sea bottoms.

In Hesperia, a “car culture” has emerged. Like the Southron bootleggers, some young Hesperian men have taken to modifying jalopies for the purpose of drag-racing. Most of the modifications are strictly mechanical, but would-be racers save up for more expensive thaumaturgical or alchemical modifications.

While some racing occurs along highways, the real action is out in the desert. There, on the vast and empty beds left by ancient seas, law enforcement doesn’t intrude, and higher speeds can be reached. The speeds, and the often haphazard modification of the cars, sometimes make these races deadly--but these mundane dangers aren't the only things to fear.

Maybe it was just the psychic energy boiling off youth hopped-up on alchemical drugs, speed, and the proximity of death; or maybe the death of the ancient seas left the skin of reality thin, inviting irruption. Whatever the cause, broken and burned-out husked of roadsters--and sometimes the charred and mangled remains of their drivers--have been reanimated by outer monstrosities in forms as colorful and grotesque as something from a drug delirium nightmare.

Appearances by these creatures are things of fear and wonder for the human racers. The unholy growl of giant engines and the overpowering smell of burning rubber presage their arrival--almost always between the stroke of midnight and first light of dawn. They're practically worshipped as secret and strange god-things. Rituals are performed; crude talismans of twisted steel and burnt chrome are fashioned. The bravest (or craziest) of the young drivers sometimes join in their monster races, and those few that survive with life and limb, and sanity, intact are often dragged along in the creatures' slipstreams as they roar back into the void, and are never seen again

Descent in the (Real) Depths

Adventurers traveling to a remote jungles to enter a gigantic cave, inhabited by things like poisonous centipedes isn't just the stuff of table top fantasy.  The February issue of National Geographic has an profusely illustrated article about an epedition to Son Doong Cave in Vietnam.  The cave's at least 2.8 miles long and is some places as tall as 460 feet.  Check out all the pictures and an interactive map here.

Not enough for a jaded delver like yourself?  Well, marvel at the the crystal formations in Mexico's appropriately named Cave of Crystals.  If that's not an adventurous environment (minus, you know, the extreme heat of 136 F and 90-100% humidity) I don't know what is:

Note the size of the people in relation to the crystals!