For over two years now, I've been running this blog. On and off, I've written about the chronology of the Conan of Cimmeria stories (perhaps less often than you might expect from a blog with "chronology" in the title). My first attempt at a chronology was far from scientific and was really done for fun. I'd like to take this opportunity to kind of disown it now. It was my first read on all the stories and was doomed from the start because I (a) read in the order of an existing chronology, which clearly influenced my placements and (b) included the stories somewhat at whim (all the de Camp, Carter, and Nyberg pastiche, odds and ends belonging to others). It was fun to make, but it certainly wasn't my best attempt.

Starting in August of 2025, I began a new project. I decided to read and take notes through the stories once again, but to take a much more specific approach. 
​

1. I read only the Robert E. Howard stories. I included all Howard stories, both published and unpublished, both finished and unfinished. Everything else was ignored.
2. I read in publication order. Each story was read in the order that the specific REH original was made available to the public (not a modified version like a de Camp edit), with some small variations that I don't think affected the chronology in any way.
3. This is the most important one: I took a formalist approach to the stories. That means that I sought out chronological clues within the text of the stories, completely ignoring previous chronologies, or any other writing that doesn't exist within a Conan story. That means that I intentionally ignored things like Howard's letter to P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark. If it wasn't written in a Conan narrative, it might as well not exist.
4. I did not give any heed to the enjoyability of the reading experience. Some chronologies have placed "The Tower of the Elephant" first, for example, because it's a good introduction to the Conan canon. Conversely, others have avoided placing "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" first because of perceived salacious content. I paid no mind to that. If the absolute worst Conan story had evidence of being first, I would've placed it first. 

I blogged my way back through the stories in a periodic column I called "Chronologically Speaking." In every blog post, I made explicit chronological notes, with quotes, about the clues as to where the stories should be placed. Some I feel strongly about, and others I don't. It took me about a year to read back through the stories once again and make notes, and then I've been writing and re-writing this post for about a month and a half.

There are quite a few elements you can look for to help you place the stories.

• Conan's characterization. How does Conan act? Does he seem old or young?
• Dialogue clues. Do characters refer to parts of Conan's adventures that he's already had?
• Conan's clothing and equipment. Is Conan seemingly a penniless barbarian? Or is he a well-equipped fighting man?
• Where Conan is on the Hyborian Age map. A key issue within chronologizing is sometimes called the "mad dash" problem, where you try to balance Conan's movement without making an illogical "mad dash" all over the world where he's constantly going from one side of the map to the other.
• Anything else that might point to a chronological placement.

Many Conan chronologies attempt to explain Conan's movements between stories, but few seem to attempt to explain their internal logic. I'm trying to set mine apart by doing that. 

Click on an image to go to a story's full post with full commentary on its chronological placement.

Many people place "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as the first story, and I'm keeping it there. Conan seems young and inexperienced with magic or monsters, as well as foolishly headstrong when fighting the frost giants. It makes sense to me that Conan's first adventure away from Cimmeria would be near to Cimmeria.

Additionally, lines from "The Phoenix on the Sword" imply that Conan spent some of his youth in or around Asgard and Vanaheim, though it could be a separate sojourn from this story.

I think a lot of this story's chronology depends on strong you read Atali's spell to be. Once Conan is ensorcelled (when he goes down to his knees at the beginning of the story), Conan acts somewhat out of character. Perhaps the spell is so strong that he just doesn't respond normally to the monsters and magic he sees.

The trickiest aspect of this story's chronology is Conan's line "Far have I wandered, but a woman like you I have never seen." How far has Conan actually wandered? To a young man, he may feel he's wandered very far despite a relatively short journey. Additionally, Conan is not ever described as young, but rather just as a "man." It's not a water-tight placement, but I do feel that it doesn't fit anywhere better. It could be moved to later on the timeline. If it were moved to another placement, I think the place that works best is prior to "Queen of the Black Coast." One line in that story indicates that Conan has been to the "snowy plains and vaulted halls" of the north. However, Conan is still described as "young in years" in "Queen of the Black Coast," so it doesn't solve the problem of if Conan is young in it or not.

Thus begin the thief stories.

Many older chronologies place the thief stories in a directly east-to-west route (beginning in Zamora and ending in Numalia), but I think they fit much better in a west-to-east configuration. Conan begins in Numalia and works his way through Corinthia, and then Zamora.

"The God in the Bowl" is much easier to place than "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," as Conan is clearly very inexperienced at thieving and with cities and civilization in general. He makes bone-headed decisions and fails to read situations throughout the story. Conan is described as a youth who is clad simply, in just a loincloth, sandals, belt, and sword. It's clear to me that Conan is a more experienced thief in the other stories, placing this one firmly first.

Additionally, the way Conan's reaction to the serpent god at the end implies that he has not seen this type of magic before: "​Conan stared in wonder at the cold classic beauty of that countenance, whose like he had never seen among the sons of men. Neither weakness nor mercy nor cruelty nor kindness, nor any other human emotion was in those features. They might have been the marble mask of a god, carved by a master hand, except for the unmistakable life in them—life cold and strange, such as the Cimmerian had never known and could not understand." This seems to suggest a very early placement as Conan is unfamiliar with sorcery.

After "The God in the Bowl," Conan now moves east to an unnamed city-state in Corinthia.

"Rogues in the House" is another tricky placement. Conan is still thieving, but at some point is caught alongside a Gunderman mercenary. His garb is exactly the same as all the other thief stories, and he continues some of his "ignorant barbarian" characterizations like when he doesn't understand Thak's mirror system. 

I do think that it would be fair to move this story after "The Tower of the Elephant," the Nestor synopsis, and the Yaralet fragment as Conan makes his way back toward the Western Ocean for "Queen of the Black Coast," but I don't think it needs to go there.

It's clear to me that "The Tower of the Elephant" has been placed first by several chronologies not because it is the first chronological story but because it's a total banger and is a great introduction for the Hyborian Age. Conan's characterization and equipment are similar to his likeness in the other thief stories, but he's also becoming a more successful thief. It's the first thief story where he isn't caught!

Conan is still fairly new to civilization. He misses social cues in the tavern, for example, and is mocked by others. But he's clearly a skilled and daring thief at this point, going for a huge score that's very difficult to get to.

This is the final thief entry. As a synopsis, it's short and doesn't provide a ton of contextual clues. Conan has apparently gained some notoriety by completely enraging the upper classes in this Zamorian city and I would argue that his actions in the crypt seem informed by his experiences in the Elephant Tower in the previous story. 

Many people have hypothesized that the Gunderman mentioned in this story and the one in "Rogues in the House" are the same person, linking them to one another, but I don't think that's the case. They're too different in their characterization.

Frankly, when placing the Yaralet fragment, you're going to be operating on vibes somewhat. Conan is dressed in the same costume he wore in all the thief stories: sandals and a loincloth, and seems to have gone somewhat overboard on a field of battle. While others looted the corpses of their enemies, Conan was still fighting, suggesting that he is new to the whole mercenary business, missing out on all the spoils. 

Conan's section of this story places him in a plain, near a city, but it's never actually confirmed that the city he is in proximity to is Yaralet, to which the perspective of the narrative shifts after we leave Conan behind. It's possible that this city is set further east than Zamora, as "Queen of the Black Coast" implies that Conan has been to Hyrkania. Though no country or region is ever named in the Yaralet fragment, I think it makes the most sense that Conan is in or near Hyrkania, or more likely Turan (Turanians seem to be ethnically Hyrkanians).

While a mercenary period for the empire of Turan is a commonly-accepted era of Conan's life, this is really all that Howard gave us of that period.

It seems that Conan has spent some time working as a mercenary, as he is now clad in a hodgepodge of different cultures' clothes. Some chronologists have used Conan's costume here as an indicator that he has been to the many places represented by his outfit, but I think it could just as easily be that he's picked these items off the dead in battle, as seen in the Yaralet fragment. Conan's dialogue suggests that he's been working as a mercenary but is now "between wars," if you will.

One line places this story firmly after his thief days. Much time appears to have passed since the Yaralet fragment. Conan claims to have spent "considerable time" among civilized people and has learned archery from Hyrkanians (it doesn't say with certainty, but Conan's phrasing makes it sound like he's been to Hyrkania, not just met some). Since Conan has only had one mercenary episode so far, it seems that he probably learned archery some time after the Yaralet fragment with Hyrkanians, then likely went west and served in militias in Corinthia. 

​Conan is still explicitly said to be "young in years" at this point, but it's the last time Conan is referred to as young.

This story features perhaps the fewest chronological clues of any, but it's not devoid of them. Conan is south on the map, in Kush. He states that he came there to seek his fortune and was "formerly a corsair," implying a piratical stint right before this. Does it take place after he is a Black Coast pirate or a Barachan? Because of the characterization and the name-drop of "Amra," I think it's most likely to be placed right after "Queen of the Black Coast."

A very tough placement.

Conan is still near Kush, and is dressed like the local tribesmen. His characterization is the most vexing factor here. This is the least patient, most aloof Conan that we see. Some people have hypothesized that it's an older Conan, jaded by age. But I think it's more likely that Conan is still grieving his pirate queen Bêlit, slowly working his way back north. Conan does not exactly always treat women with the utmost respect, but his disdain for Livia seems out of place otherwise.

He finishes the story headed in the direction of the Stygian border.

A good chunk of time once again seems to have elapsed between stories as Conan appears to have had a sojourn with a Kothian army in and around Stygia. Conan's learned the Stygian language, too.

Importantly, Conan has joined the Kothian military under a deposed prince and has fought alongside this army around the middle-meadowlands of the Hyborian Age map. He doesn't appear to be in any especially-favored position within the Kothian military. One tricky bit of chronological puzzling involves this experience. Other stories will refer back to Conan's time with the Kothian military, seemingly describing the same events, while also more clearly terming his band the Free Companions or the kozaks. 

We get more black lotus references in this story, but, frustratingly, when Conan is asked if he recognizes the substance, he's cut off before he can answer. His answer seems like it would be a clear 'yes.'

If I'm being honest, the Gazal fragment probably shouldn't be considered canon. Its DNA is far too similar to "Xuthal of the Dusk," so it seems like an abandoned attempt at just cannibalizing that story. But if it is canon, it absolutely must take place after "Queen of the Black Coast." Conan is recognized as Amra, a name he gained on the Black Coast (though a name that is never actually said in that story; instead it comes from "The Scarlet Citadel"). Conan also seems to have spent some time around Stygia, which we've seen in recent stories, placing this one near to "Xuthal," and "Vale" geographically.

Placing these stories together is somewhat of a departure from other chronologies. This story usually appears three to six stories after "Xuthal" in other chronology nerds' placements.

So begins Conan's eastern journeys that I think work best when fitted together. Our Cimmerian is considerably further east since we last saw him.

Our Cimmerian is still acting as a mercenary. Conan appears to have been with the Free Companions for some time at this point. Though he doesn't have a ton of experience with Turanians yet, he has definitely been to sea before in "Queen of the Black Coast." This seems to be one of the last stories before Conan gains serious leadership experience.

A key question here was whether the "Free Companions," the Red Brotherhood pirates, and the "kozaki" are more or less the same group, and I'm inclined to believe they are, or at least that people move between them fairly freely. My reading of the terms is that self-governing mercenaries seem to call themselves the Free Companions, while "kozak" is more of a derogatory term used for them, as it apparently means "wastrel" and Conan seems to chafe at its usage.

Conan is now a chief to the kozaks, harrying the well-off citizens of the area. In this chronology, that's really Conan's first sort of command post in his mercenary period. Up until this point, his commissions seem to have been low-ranked, unless you count his first mate role on The Tigress.

Conan refers to the black lotus once again, which places this story after "Xuthal of the Dusk."

Strangely, Conan also appears to have learned the Nemedian language, which is not something we've seen mentioned before. He's nowhere near Nemedia and hasn't been for some time, so did he pick up Nemedian way back around "Rogues in the House?" It's hard to say.

Once again, one thing that vexes a chronology is whether or not the borders between the groups the Free Companions / kozaks and the Red Brotherhood of pirates are permeable. Based on a few lines from this story, I argue that they are.

"The People of the Black Circle" comes a little earlier in my chronology than many others, with a lot of previous readers considering it a more final step toward command and kingship. Conan does seem fairly controlled and confident, especially compared to the provincial Conan of the earliest stories. He's become a leader of men.

This story must come after Conan's days with the Free Companions, as he makes reference to being their hetman before riding south the Vendhya.

This is also one of those stories where Conan verbally describes several things that he's done, such as be a mercenary, a pirate, and plundered for treasure. This story feels to me like the natural conclusion of his eastern adventure with "Iron Shadows in the Moon," "The Devil in Iron," and now he's a full chieftain in "Black Circle." He then heads back west.

"A Witch Shall Be Born" largely makes Conan a secondary character, but what he does in that role shows me a man growing in his command abilities. Interestingly, this is one of the only stories that tells us its specific scope, taking place explicitly over the course of about seven months, which is a little long for most sword and sorcery.

Conan is now a captain of the guard in the city of Khauran and is recognized as a hetman of the kozaks along the Zaporoskan River, which is where he was in the three previous eastern-set stories. 

Conan is displaying a tactician mindset similar to that of "The People of the Black Circle" and "Black Colossus" much more so than stories set a little earlier. Notably, Conan ends the story by deciding to stay with the Zuagirs now, as their chief. 

"A Witch Shall Be Born" ended with Conan deciding to stay with the Zuagir raiders as their chief and now seems to have left them behind, placing this story after "Witch." He seems to have been with the Zuagirs for quite some time- explicitly "many moons"- and he knows their culture well. In this story, he spends a week in Zamboula before leaving westward.

"Black Colossus" comes far later in my timeline than in most. The Miller / Clark chronology has it in fourth. Joe Marek puts it at seventh. Dale Rippke set it eighth. Here I am with it in the seventeenth placement. This might be the biggest departure in my thinking in comparison to the traditional wisdom. There are a few reasons why.

The story quite obviously takes place after Conan's thieving days by making reference to an old thief comrade in Zamora. It also previews Conan's kingship by speaking of how regally he wears his harness, and a prophecy "crosses his mind."

Conan is now a captain of mercenaries, and is clothed in a way that instantly betrays that to Yasmela. He's in a leadership position. Conan now grasps not just social conventions, but displays an understanding of regional politics as well as he scoffs at reform politicians. Because Conan's characterization shows a more sophisticated Conan in a fairly high-ranked position in a well-funded military, I think it makes the most sense to come later, after he's practiced command for the kozaks, the Khauranian guard, and the Zuagirs.

One thing that I find interesting about this story is the fact that Conan speaks of having served as a mercenary in Corinthia, an episode of his life never shown in the Howard originals. It's been depicted in some comics, but this time period was left up to the reader's imagination. Is this supposed to refer to "Rogues in the House" when Conan was in Corinthia with a deserter?

Conan is now back to being a pirate, but a very different one than we saw aboard the Tigress. From the start of the story, the Cimmerian is a great swimmer, skilled sailor, and experienced pirate. Building on his new maturity we saw in "Black Colossus," Conan is once again very comfortable with social conventions and the codes of the pirates. Due to his skill there, we get to see him display more of that "gigantic mirth" we're always hearing about in the Nemedian Chronicles. It is once again his characterization that is the deciding factor.

In other notes, Conan once again mentions Zamora and the black lotus powder, placing the story at least after "Xuthal of the Dusk."

What actually counts as a Barachan pirate story seems to me to be a key question of chronology. "The Pool of the Black One" ends with Conan taking control of the Wastrel, becoming a captain more or less. The stories that follow here all make verbal account of Conan's Barachan period, but I don't think those days are over yet.

"The Servants of Bit-Yakin" his quite a bit to inform us of its chronological placement. I place it as a middle chapter in his Barachan period.

Conan describes having been a pirate from both the Black Coast and Barachan Isles, placing it at least after "Pool of the Black One." Conan's got some notoriety as a "leader of men," which places it fairly late. Conan's thieving abilities are compared to master thieves. And Conan's language abilities are thoroughly impressive here, and he seems much more like the measured Conan of the late stories.

There's some very interesting stuff in this story's chronology. Conan notes his extensive time in sea ports and how familiar he's gotten with the borders of Stygia and Kush, which we've seen him explore in previous narratives. Conan also makes mention of the fact that he was a kozak and a Zuagir before this, placing it after his eastern and desert adventures. He also refers to the time he was a hetman to the Afghulis in Vendhya. He does say he's never been a king, though.

I place this story after "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" because Conan makes a verbal reference to Punt, over toward the events of that story. "Bit-Yakin" and "Red Nails" make an interesting pair because they seem to be stories set in Conan's Barachan pirate period where he's actually quite a bit inland at the moment, which "The Black Stranger" may explain. He finishes the story headed back toward the western coast, and, possibly, north.

This is one of the stories that I think has long had its chronological placement influenced by L. Sprague de Camp. In "The Treasure of Tranicos," the re-written version from de Camp, Conan is still a pirate, but ends the story headed toward the Aquilonian capitol and essentially previews Conan's campaign for the kingship of the country. That's all completely absent in the Howard original, though, which wasn't published in that form until 1987, nearly thirty-five years after de Camp's version.

​The Conan we see in "The Black Stranger" is a master tactician who is always in control of a situation. That alone sets it pretty late in the timeline. 

But this story says quite a bit about Conan's Barachan pirate period. Apparently, Conan's ship was wrecked three years ago, implying that Conan has been a pirate for some time longer than that. I think what makes the most sense is that "The Pool of the Black One" sees Conan's earliest Barachan adventures, after which he gains more credibility and command, even his own ship (likely the Wastrel). He's shipwrecked some time three years ago and then heads inland, where he has his adventures in "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" and "Red Nails" before ending up in the Pictish Wilderness in this story.

Importantly, Conan ends the story with a desire to return to pirating and get back on the Main," rather than looking for a kingship. For that reason, I place this story as the final Barachan pirate story, prior to his Aquilonian scouting days.

There's not much question as to when "Beyond the Black River" takes place; it's usually fairly adjacent to "Red Nails," either before or after it, but very much a later story. And it's not hard to figure out why.

Conan describes his earliest days at the siege of Venarium to Balthus. But he says far more than that! Conan spends quite a bit of time explaining his previous adventures, like those as a Barachan pirate, a mercenary captain, a kozak, a thief, and a general.

With his physical prowess, wisdom, command experience, and physical traits, Conan begins his time in Aquilonia at the bottom of the ladder (although not entirely, as Conan seems to have chosen to have the freedom to operate outside of the gates of Fort Tuscelan and is given a wide berth to do so) and will move up the ranks quickly.

Since its obvious that "Wolves Beyond the Border" takes place as the story immediately preceding Conan's kingship (literally everyone has placed it in the exact same spot), the main chronological question is how much time has passed between "Beyond the Black River" and this story? Our main character, Gault, lays out the events of "Beyond the Black River" as having taken place when he was ten, but Gault seems to be a young man whose age is not commented on by others, so he could be perhaps somewhere between his late teens and mid-twenties. That places around a decade between the two stories.

Additionally, the story says that Conan had been a military general in Aquilonia, evidently rising in the ranks fairly quickly and gaining the trust of Aquilonian soldiers. This is confirmed in "The Scarlet Citadel" where it is said that Conan first rode into Aquilonia in service of her armies.

Like "Wolves Beyond the Border," there isn't really a question as to when "The Phoenix on the Sword" takes place, but there is some question as to its exact placement in years. It's obviously the first King Conan story (it's also the first Conan story of any kind, but still), but Conan has been king long enough to lose his new-car smell to his subjects.

Conan speaks of how public opinion on him has changed: he was met as a liberator when he overthrew Numedides, but the people have had enough time to get nostalgic and build a statue of Numedides in the Temple of Mitra. Perhaps a year or two has passed since Conan took the crown.

Conan appears to have now been king for some time. His life, according to this story, is the subject of "a whole cycle of hero-tales." I've wondered if the poet Rinaldo, mentioned in "The Phoenix on the Sword," had a hand in that. Conan also seems to have had some king adventures under his belt, referred to obliquely as, "In swift-moving scenes the pageant of his life passed fleetingly before his mental eye...  a king on a golden throne with the lion banner flowing above, and throngs of gay-hued courtiers and ladies on their knees."

It's hard to tell when "The Scarlet Citadel" takes place in relation to "Phoenix," but my guess would be between one and five years later.

The Hour of the Dragon is Howard's greatest-hits compilation that understandably comes last. It makes numerous references to nearly every episode of Conan's life, including the other king stories like Thoth-Amon and the Black Ring of Stygia. Several bits of narration make it clear that Conan has been king for quite a few years. The fact that no other king Conan stories mention Zenobia, who will become his queen, also seems to place it last.

In this chart, regular REH stories appear in blue. Stories that went unpublished in their original form during REH's lifetime are in yellow cells, and unfinished stories appear in red. I'm only comparing to chronologies that stick to REH material. The Miller/Clark chronology was written prior to the publication of the posthumous stories or fragments, so it omits those.

When comparing my order of stories to other chronologizers, I think my placement of "Black Colossus" is the biggest deviation, but there are a few others. I feel strongly about "The Black Stranger" coming before "Beyond the Black River," not after it. Additionally, I place "Xuthal of the Dusk" somewhat earlier than it has traditionally been placed, and I'm the only one to group "Iron Shadows in the Moon," "The Devil in Iron," and "The People of the Black Circle" all together.

There's a tendency amongst chronology nerds to give Conan's life periods different name groupings, and if I were to do that, here's how I would break them up. Some don't fit super cleanly into overarching periods, like the Yaralet fragment.

According to all of the above, here's a more narrative version of Conan's life.

Conan is born on a battlefield.

At the age of fourteen, Conan helps siege the Aquilonian outpost of Fort Venarium, which is referred to in "Beyond the Black River."

As a young man, Conan leaves Cimmeria to wander. He ends up north in Vanaheim, where we see the events of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." Conan encounters magic and monsters for the first time.

Conan wanders south to civilization for the first time. He takes up thievery to survive in Numalia, where we see the events of "The God in the Bowl."

Conan heads east to Corinthia where he befriends a Gunderman deserter and continues to work as a thief. We see the events of "Rogues in the House."

Conan continues to wander east, ending up in the Zamorian city of thieves. He attempts his most daring score yet in "The Tower of the Elephant" and stays in Zamora for some time where we also see the events of the Nestor synopsis.

Conan quits thieving and decides to try his hand at mercenary work. Early on in this endeavor, we see the events of the Yaralet fragment. In Hyrkania, Conan learns archery.

"Black Colossus" mentions a period in Conan's life in which he was a mercenary for the city-states of Corinthia. I think this is the most likely position for that period to take place. On his way west from Yaralet, Conan grows in his mercenary skills for Corinthia.

​Conan travels west to Argos looking for work where he joins the pirate crew of The Tigress. Conan spends as many as a few years aboard the ship and we see the events of "Queen of the Black Coast."

Mourning and without a ship farther south than he's ever been, Conan takes up mercenary work in the jungles of Kush. We see the events of the Shumballa fragment.

Conan joins the Bamula tribe for a while as a warrior where the events of "The Vale of Lost Women" take place. Livia in tow, Conan heads toward the more temperate parts of the map, starting with Stygia.

The Cimmerian ends up in Koth where he enlists in Prince Almuric's army as a member of the Free Companions for the first time. Conan fights with this force for some time and harries the lands of several countries including Koth, Turan, and a return to Zamora. It is likely that Conan visits the spider city of Yezud. Conan spends at least several months fighting with the Free Companions before becoming temporarily separated from the other Free Companions and ending up in Xuthal. "Xuthal of the Dusk" and the Gazal fragment take place here.

Still with the Free Companions, Conan heads significantly more east than he's ever been. On the Vilayet Sea, the events of "Iron Shadows in the Moon" and "The Devil in Iron" take place. Conan begins to take a leadership role in his mercenary groups.

Before traveling south to Vendhya, Conan becomes the hetman of a tribe of Afghuli hillmen in a region called Ghor. He then kidnaps the Devi Yasmina and we see the events of "The People of the Black Circle."

Growing in his leadership and tactical skills, Conan heads to more familiar western climes and becomes a guard for the city of Khauran. "A Witch Shall Be Born" takes place over the course of seven months he spends in the city. He ends the story as a chief of the Zuagir raiders.

Having spent at least several months with the Zuagirs, Conan parts with the group. He spends a week in the desert city of Zamboula and the events of "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula" take place. 

Conan continues to work as a mercenary when he becomes enlisted in the army of Khoraja, acting as a general for the first time. This is shown in "Black Colossus."

Conan eventually heads back to the western ocean to once again become a pirate. While aboard the ship The Wastrel, he travels to a mysterious isle and becomes captain of the ship in "The Pool of the Black One." At some time after the conclusion of the story, Conan becomes shipwrecked.

After losing his ship, Conan spends three years inland where his whereabouts are hard to track. He goes to Punt where we see the events of "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" and then to the borders of Stygia where "Red Nails" takes place. He ends up heading north after that. 

Far to the north in the Pictish Wilderness, Conan returns to pirating with the Barachans in "The Black Stranger."

Leaving the pirate life behind, Conan becomes a scout in the border regions of Aquilonia. He unsuccessfully defends Fort Tuscelan against Pictish forces in "Beyond the Black River." Conan gradually rises in the ranks of the Aquilonian military afterword.

Around ten years after the conclusion of "Beyond the Black River," Conan, now a general for the Aquilonian military, wages a campaign against King Numedides of Aquilonia in "Wolves Beyond the Border." He takes the throne as he strangles Numedides with his own hands.

Around a year later, Conan deals with a coup attempt in "The Phoenix on the Sword."

Between one and five years after that, Conan is kidnapped and then fights a war in "The Scarlet Citadel."

A few years after that, Conan leads his kingdom against Xaltotun's invasion in The Hour of the Dragon. At the end of it, he takes the servant girl Zenobia for his queen. 

Last year, as part of a short story unit that focused on conflict in narrative, I used "The Tower of the Elephant" with my 7th graders. This year, I'm doing the same thing. I'm also doing the unit in September as opposed to January. I have an awesome new bunch of 7th grade students this year, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how they may like the story. I've got about two groups per class reading this one. 

I noted a few things that students needed last year, like some vocab help and a few pointers with the conflict, so I've built those into the narrative this time. 

I've built an internal glossary into the story this time, defining words that I think my 7th graders will trip over. Each of those words appears in a different font and color so as to distinguish themselves from Howard's text. 

I've also added a few internal notes to help students process some of the conflict elements. I wrote last year about how students were confused about Conan shedding his tunic following the fight in the tavern, but understood after some discussion. This time, I'm anticipating that discussion.

Additionally, I've embedded an audiobook so that students can read along with a narrator. 

​I may have to report back about how it goes!

Robert E. Howard wrote "The Vale of Lost Women" around February of 1933, the twelfth Conan story he'd written in fairly quick succession, and sent it to Weird Tales. Though there are no records remaining of the rejection, it appears to have been rejected by Farnsworth Wright, and rightfully so. But that rejection was a blow to Howard that caused him to move on from his Cimmerian barbarian for nearly a year, as he turned his prospects to other characters and genres and wouldn't return to writing the character until the end of 1933.

"Vale" was apparently inspired by some autobiographical elements- stories he'd seen occurring to women in his life- but was completely overrun by Howard's virile racial discomfort and disgust. It becomes slightly stronger when the narrative moves to its second half in the titular valley for lost women, but it's ultimately a pretty unsuccessful story.

​It's also a little hard to place. Let's see what chronological markers we have.

These chronological markers aren't extremely strong, and they don't tie the story to one, single time in Conan's life. Much hay has been made over the decades about the fact that the Conan we see here seems more stern and short with Livia than many other depictions of the character. Some have considered this to be due to Conan grieving Bêlit following "Queen of the Black Coast." Some have assumed this is an older, more jaded Conan. I think the first possibility seems the more likely of the two. This story could take place when Conan returns to some of the more southern reaches of the map later in his wanderings, like in stories like "Red Nails" and "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," but I think it's more likely that it is set with the other stories after "Black Coast" when Conan appears to hang around the south. 

It seems most likely to me that Conan sets The Tigress aflame at the end of "Queen of the Black Coast," then continues through the jungles of Kush on foot. Conan then becomes a mercenary in the jungles of the south for a time, seen in the Shumballa fragment ("The Snout in the Dark") and "The Vale of Lost Women," before heading back toward the more northern civilizations at Livia's behest. Then, he reaches the edges of Stygia in "Xuthal of the Dusk" and joins up with slightly more-northern armies in the Gazal fragment ("Drums of Tombalku").

Not to get too dark too quick, but I am absolutely terrified of death. It's my number one most paralyzing fear. It's been that way ever since I read Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in one of my college English classes. That book fucked me up for weeks as I walked around in a funk. To this day, if I think about death for too long, I get this horrible knot in the pit of my stomach and it feels like walls are closing in. 

It's not necessarily the process of dying itself, but the prospect of oblivion on the other side, of nothing but nothingness. For that reason, I'm always kind of interested in the different ways that an afterlife is portrayed in media. I remember being intrigued at Yu Yu Hakusho's remarkably boring, bureaucratic afterlife populated by office-dwelling ogres. The Black Mirror episode "San Junipero" is a little more melancholy, with something about the eternal time-stuck computerization of a consciousness registering as sad to me. The Good Place's confined, mundane atmosphere makes my brain itch even more; it seems so isolated and limited. This is all to say that Molly Tanzer's version of Tartarus, the underworld of "Jirel Meets Death," was very intriguing. I guess I'm looking for some kind of reassurance when I seek out new visions of the afterlife, and according to this tale, "all find what they seek in the land of the dead."

"Jirel Meets Death," Molly Tanzer's second full Jirel of Joiry pastiche published in 2025, sends Jirel, as you may have guessed, into the afterlife. Its title is a little riff on the third Jirel story, "Jirel Meets Magic," published in Weird Tales in July of '35.

After a classic Jirel opening in which there are poor decisions, double-crosses, and some bloodshed, Jirel finds herself just a little bit dead. Her body is occupied in her absence.

This was surprising to read, especially since Jirel of Joiry is unambiguously Catholic, which the story reminds you of in the opening as Jirel has recently returned from a christening. 

Death itself here is portrayed as a character, not as a process or anything that Jirel would recognize from her limited perspective. I won't spoil anything, but it's not what or how I thought it would be either.

Death's entourage is a funny bunch, referring to themselves as each other's colleagues rather than being angels or devils that Jirel might rather have expected. It's remarkably like a PTA meeting; there's a little petty bureaucracy in Tartarus, contrasted against some truly horrifying god-monsters that also dwell there. I asked Molly about her version of the afterlife and she compared its genesis to something like the ancient Greek idea of the underworld: not a Hell or a Heaven, but an Island of Misfit Toys at the end of the chute with all kinds of cast-offs populating it.

It's interesting to compare it to the dreamworld of the first two Jirel stories, which are a terrifying underworld in Jirel's basement, or the Dark Land of Pav, all these strange pocket universes seemingly co-existing. Tartarus is just one of many magical places within this universe, and Molly and I agree that it's a good thing for sword & sorcery fiction that we don't have to wind ourselves in knots to figure out the exact logic behind that.

Jirel's characterization in this story is once again spot-on to Moore's original Jirel, with the lady of Joiry making bad decisions about men and loathing her time spent amongst highfalutin people. After having read Molly's novels Creatures of Will & Temper and Creatures of Want & Ruin since "Jirel Meets Death," this makes Jirel's distain for fops and high society even more entertaining.

As our redheaded and yellow-eyed swordmaiden embarks on a quest through Tartarus, it's an oddly comforting sword & sorcery adventure with a lot of heart.

All find what they seek in the land of the dead. Now I seek both "Jirel and the Forest of Night" in New Edge Sword & Sorcery soon, and the upcoming novella Blue Fire. I simply can't say enough good things about what is going on with Jirel these days. I'm so thankful to Oliver Brackenbury for publishing this stuff, Molly's work is fantastic, Saša Đurđević's art is sick as hell. Even outside of New Edge, there's cool stuff coming, as Clade Mirya posts Jirel art on Bluesky all the time, and there's even a new collection of C.L. Moore's originals out soon. 

Let's hope Jirel stays with us away from Tartarus for a time.

"Wolves Beyond the Border" is not a particularly good Howard story, even when attempting to ignore its unfinished nature, but it is a particularly interesting story in what it represents for Robert E. Howard when he was writing it. 

As Patrice Louinet illustrates in his "Hyborian Genesis" essay, "Wolves Beyond the Border" appears to us as an abandoned psuedo-sequel to "Beyond the Black River," but actually represents a large stepping stone toward Howard's Hyborian Age western. Like a pumped-up version of "A Witch Shall Be Born," in which Conan is mostly a secondary character, this story pushes him all the way to the periphery. He's responsible for the political and civil war mire in which the story is set, but really none of the action itself.

REH was perhaps growing a little tired of the Cimmerian, saying to Novalyne Price toward the end of 1934 that he'd prefer to write stories of America now. This combination of growing distant from Conan and desiring to set his stories in America yielded "Wolves Beyond the Border," an unmistakably western story in which Conan is only mentioned, far away from the narrative's action, fighting against King Namedides for control of Aquilonia. Concepts introduced in this story like the people of Westermarck and Fort Tuscelan in Conajohara, would be carried over into "Beyond the Black River" where they would become classic Conan elements of one of the greatest REH creations.

Though it was written in 1934, the story wasn't published in its unadulterated Howard draft form until 2001. By then, the de Camp version had been floating around in Conan the Usurper for over 30 years.

Because of a few straightforward lines in this story, it's pretty easy to place "Wolves Beyond the Border" in the timeline:

• Our point-of-view character, Gault, who appears to be a young man, lays out the events of "Beyond the Black River" as having happened when he was ten: "I was born in the province of Conajohara. But when I was ten years of age, the Picts broke over Black River and stormed Fort Tuscelan and slew all within save one man, and drove all the settlers of the province east of Thunder River." It's never explicitly stated how old Gault is, but he's taken seriously by seasoned scouts and is a capable frontiersman, so he may be as young as perhaps 17, or as old as 25.
• Conan is leading forces against King Namedides of Aquilonia: "But at last events in Aquilonia did touch upon us in the wilderness. Word came of civil war, and a fighting man risen to wrest the throne from the ancient dynasty." This is clearly Conan's campaign which we know will be successful, seeing as we've already read "The Phoenix on the Sword."
• Between the events of Conan's scouting career in "Beyond the Black River" and his civil war, Conan was evidently a mercenary general in the army of Aquilonia: "And I wondered why, if Schohira were for Conan, they did not fly the banner he had chosen - the golden lion on a black field, the standard the regiment he commanded as a mercenary general of Aquilonia."

It's very clear that "Wolves" takes place after "Black River" and immediately preceding Conan's kingship.

I generally try not to guess at specific spans of time between stories, but I think it's fairly easy here. "Beyond the Black River" probably occurred about ten years ago. "The Phoenix on the Sword," assuming Conan takes the throne without an extended war, will probably occur in the next five to ten, seeing as the populace will have had time to grow nostalgic for their old leader, but quickly enough that Conan seems annoyed by this turn of events.

 will note that this is an even smoother transition than the chronology proposed by L. Sprague de Camp, where Conan ends up back at sea for a little while after "Black River" in his "Treasure of Tranicos" version of events.

I recently completed my collection of the Dark Horse reprints of The Savage Sword of Conan. I've always loved these things: they're where I started my Conan journey and they have always looked great on a shelf. Due to the insane price gouging (they're out of print), it took a long time to complete my collection. I'd only allow myself to buy one every few months. But now I have them all! And I dove into what they're like in the video above. I hope you enjoy.

We have before us quite the head-scratcher.

​The Yaralet fragment, also known by the monikers "Unititled draft (The battle stretched silent...)" and "The Hand of Nergal," is an extremely small blip in the Conan mythos. Even the Lin Carter edit (which I argue is the only thing people should be calling "The Hand of Nergal," seeing as Howard's short fragment doesn't mention Nergal at all) seems to be nobody's favorite. They're almost too different to really be considered related. All the "Nergal" version carries over is the image of Conan on a battlefield and an oppressive city named Yaralet.

According to Patrice Louinet in his Hyborian Genesis essay, this fragment was probably written in early 1933, though Louinet also says he has a hard time placing it.

The Carter version appeared in 1968, with the Howard fragment not being made public until it appeared in the "Miscellanea" section of 1976's The Last Celt, where it appears with some other drafts and materials. And because it's so short, there's also not a ton to take from it chronologically.

Those are the only clues given as to when this story might take place; that's not a whole lot to go on.

Conan is dressed nearly identically to his appearances in other early mercenary stories, like "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "Iron Shadows in the Moon." "Xuthal" is one of his first mercenary stories within the chronology I've laid out here, and seeing as Conan appears here as a savage, somewhat inexperienced mercenary here, I think it stands to reason that the two may be close in time to one another. I don't want to give the clothes too much weight, because Conan appears to be a somewhat experienced mercenary at the start of "Queen of the Black Coast," when he's wearing much more ornate armor.

I wondered for quite some time how much to make of the fact that the unnamed woman we see briefly is white (she has "white limbs"), seeing as Howard's attitudes toward race usually caused him to note people's skin colors. "Xuthal" takes place near to Stygia and does it make more sense for this story to take place further north if the woman were white? Or would Howard make her darker-skinned by terming her "dusky" or black? Ultimately, I decided not to make too much of this. Conan comes across people who are non-native to regions all the time. 

Interestingly enough, this story is usually placed as Conan's Turanian mercenary episode, but it does not mention Turan at all, nor is the city of Yaralet ever placed in any country on the map (on many maps, people place Yaralet in the northern part of Turan, close to the Vilayet Sea). If it does not take place in Turan, then Conan's Turanian mercenary period is essentially confined in the entire canon to just a line or two in which he says that he learned archery from the Hyrkanians. 

I've left these wonderings in above so that you can see my thought process and check me if you think I'm incorrect. This story doesn't honestly have a very good placement anywhere in the timeline. What I've decided to go with is the idea that it's probably the first first mercenary story. I think it makes somewhat thematic sense to have Conan be struggling to loot in one story and then have become much better at it for the beginning of "Queen of the Black Coast," when his outfit seems to be entirely looted, before losing it all aboard the Tigress down south. This isn't exactly a revolutionary placement, but I think I've put it here for different reasons than most chronologizers.

​I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also, thank you to Bobby Derie from Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein for some help with this one.  

If you ask people about the comic book history of Conan the Cimmerian, it seems like there are three major eras folks think of. There's the original 70s glory days, with the first volumes of Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan ending in 1993 and 1995, respectively (and to a slightly lesser extent, Conan the King). There's the second peak with Dark Horse's mid-2000s Conan series led by Kurt Busiek, Cary Nord, and Tim Truman. Then there's the current Titan line which shares the same titles as the original Marvel series.

That means that there are two somewhat neglected little periods in there that don't get much attention. One of them is Marvel's second volume of Conan the Barbarian in the 90s, which Tennessee Fats recently did a good video on. The other is this little three-year stint right before Titan picked up the license where Conan was back at Marvel. For how much talent was in the creative pool, it almost makes it weird that this tenure isn't talked about more.

From 2019 to 2021, Marvel gave the reigns to Jason Aaron who took over the eponymous title for a dozen issues before handing it to future barbarian stalwart Jim Zub, where it ended on legacy issue #300. Ron Garney, Patch Zircher, Mike Deodato Jr., Esad Ribic, and Greg Smallwood were all handling art at some point, so it's not exactly a slouchy team!

The curiosity for me is the Savage Sword title itself. Conan the Barbarian by Jason Aaron makes sense to me. Savage Avengers is new, and extremely cool. But Savage Sword is kind of the odd duck. The original Savage Sword was born out of necessity- skirting the Comics Code Authority to tell more brutal, bloody stories than a monthly comic book could. It was instantly, obviously different: oversized magazine format, double or triple the length of a monthly issue, painted covers, black and white newsprint pages, backup stories or essays or prose. 2019's Savage Sword of Conan by Gerry Duggan is (almost) none of those things, which just makes it odd they gave it that title. It's a standard comic format and it's not any bloodier than the Jason Aaron title, seeing as the Comics Code is long-dead. The most obvious thing it does have in common with the original is painted covers, this time done by GOAT Alex Ross. Marvel did apparently issue a black-and-white version of the story in trade paperback, but I've only ever come across the color version. Additionally, they print part of Scott Oden's story "The Shadow of Vengeance" in the back of the issues, which is cool.

Luckily enough for us, all of the hand-wringing I'm doing about inconsistencies above is extremely secondary. Duggan and artist Ron Garney do a great job with a fun, Stygia-set adventure.

Conan has been captured at sea by a pirate crew and is gradually nursed back to health by a fellow prisoner named Suty, who he doesn't realize has asked for his freedom in exchange for keeping Conan alive. Conan, of course, needs no help escaping, but because Suty is shackled to him, Suty ends up going with him. The Cimmerian accidentally catches a magical glance of a map belonging to Koga Thun, Stygian sorcerer of some ill repute. Conan and Suty also cross paths with a librarian who teams up with them and they venture into a labyrinth beneath the city for more hijinks to ensure.

Duggan nods to REH's serpent men for some pleasant surprises that help you feel like he's done his homework on the history of Conan, and there are some really good lines sprinkled throughout.

The thing that feels most notable about their five-issue arc is that it is a perfect case study for how comic book storytelling has changed from Conan's comic heyday in the 70s. The scope of this story isn't too expansive; I can't help but feel that this five-issue story would've occupied a single issue of the original Savage Sword of Conan. A sixty-page adventure broken into a prologue and three or four parts doesn't seem out of place, rather than a 100-plus page treatment it got. I don't necessarily think that would've yielded a better or worse result, but it serves to show how much comic book storytelling has changed in the last fifty years.

A bloody story with hand impalements, head lopping, and lots of venom stings doesn't feel as visceral as it might have when that sort of thing was now. If slotted into Marvel's original SSOC volume, it would be somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The incredible Alex Ross covers seem to heighten this comparison. Explicit send-ups to the classic Marvel era abound in Ross's gorgeous photorealistic paintings. In one, Conan fights alongside the Black Corsairs and clearly the Marvel Comics version of Bêlit (the furry britches give it away). In another, Ross riffs on Barry Windsor-Smith's iconic cover for Marvel Treasure Edition #4. In another, he literally has Conan stand in front of a slew of old SSOC covers.

It's very much different from the thing it's throwing back to. It's a little odd having this low-level pulse when it doesn't really evoke what it's gesturing at. But Duggan and Garney's Savage Sword of Conan is still worth your time.

When "Hellsgarde" was published in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales, the C.L. Moore that weird fiction readers knew was almost gone. Bobby Derie points out that "Weird Tales had been sold and the offices moved to New York City; the editor Farnsworth Wright would soon be fired and, in 1940, would die. Moore’s connections to the magazine were fraying." Her final contribution to the Jirel mythos would also be her final contribution to the magazine. 

She married author Henry Kuttner in 1940 and collaborated with her new husband, mostly under his name, until his death in 1958 at the age of just 42. She had only a few years of fiction writing left, as she turned her prospects to teaching creative writing at the university level in southern California and then quit writing entirely in 1963.
​
Moore stuck around the scene for a while, receiving the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 1980 and the title of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master. She passed away in 1987 while battling Alzheimer's. And while her shelf was not completely devoid of hardware and she even has the honor of being one of the first women to be nominated for a Hugo Award, I can't help but feel like there's a dearth of C.L. Moore in the world. 

There are no comprehensive biographies, no documentary films, no C.L. Moore House & Museum historical site in Indiana. She's certainly a big name to the insular sword & sorcery community and to retro science fiction lovers, but ever since I discovered her, I've felt like it's an injustice that she's limited to that.

Her stuff in Weird Tales was generational. She produced incredible work in a very short amount of time.

And then, for more than 80 years, Jirel sat quietly.

A few years back, publisher Oliver Brackenbury came knocking on the door of the C.L. Moore estate for his excellent New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine. There are a lot of interesting new, independent S&S mags popping up, by New Edge is the clear leader of the pack for me. Jirel's had a consistent presence in its pages; as early as the 2022 Issue #0 featured a piece from German Jirel banner-carrier Cora Buhlert entitled "C.L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry: The First Lady of Sword & Sorcery." That was actually my introduction to the character, causing me to track down and devour all of the original stories.

But the more exciting thing was that issue #3 would feature a new Jirel story, written by speculative fiction author Molly Tanzer. The Moore estate apparently gave no guidelines and had no demands about how new Jirel material needed to be written. By all accounts, they were easy to work with and just seemed excited that there was new interest in the material. The first result of these talks was "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth," which debuted in 2024.

Fret not about how difficult it might be to shake the dust of a character after so long; "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth" fully lives up to Moore's legacy. The action is exciting, Jirel's characterization is consistent, and the supernatural elements keep it grounded in the Weird Tales ballpark.

When writing her new story, the first in over eight decades, Molly realized that Jirel had always left her world and gone to another one in her original stories: an underworld, a magic painting, Pav's Dark Land, Hellsgarde, and then came back, so she wanted to reintroduce her by having her begin in this other world and then return to her own. Our lady of Joiry begins the narrative as the Lady of Coquaigne, seemingly a queen, in love with her consort Etizenne. The name Joiry means nothing to her. 

Tanzer adds the character of Thevin, Jirel's booze-loving stewardess, and I don't really think it's a spoiler to tell you that Etizenne is yet another dashing but diabolical man in the lady of Joiry's Tinder DMs. Thevin especially adds a lot to the story. It's really the first time Jirel's had another female as a confidant.

When I first spoke to Molly about her new Jirel stories, I asked if she was trying to imitate Moore's style or just remain consistent with Moore's vision, and she said the latter. She doesn't try to ape C.L. Moore's writing style, but the change isn't jarring the way jumping from a Robert E. Howard to Robert Jordan Conan story might be. She still writes Jirel as a hothead with good intuition.

And when it comes to style, Molly says she likes sword & sorcery because you can get florid in your prose and nobody tries to fight you. We're here for it.

If you've read anything by Molly Tanzer, you know she's an extremely philosophical author. Her most recent novella, And Side By Side They Wander, is basically a sci-fi art heist that masks a really heady discussion of copies, art, reproduction, and AI. So imagine my surprise when I asked if she was trying to cook deep themes into her Jirel work and she said no, that she's just swinging blades around for fun. 

Actually, I'm not that surprised. One time I told John C. Hocking I spent his whole Conan and the Emerald Lotus novel thinking it was Conan Says No to Crack and he said no, too. So I've been way off before.

Intentionally or not, Moore's work with Jirel is terribly interesting when it came to its themes, grappling with regret, bodily autonomy, revenge, and women's relationships to powerful men. I read a lot of those original stories as kind of obliquely feminist, but I'm not sure how much of that was purposefully done by C.L. Moore. It seems to me that "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth" picks up those threads. Because of the way the characters are released from a spell one by one and are originally broken from that spell through a conversation no one else can see or hear, I immediately thought that this was a depiction of whisper networks used by women to keep themselves safe from abusive men (you may know of  those "Are we dating the same guy?" Facebook groups and the like). Sharing their experiences one at a time to clue people in breaks the spell a manipulator may have on a group. I bought this up to Molly at a brewery and she furrowed her brow, and stared past her beer for a moment before saying that wasn't what she'd had in mind, but that she didn't mind the interpretation.

I've also asked her about the ending of the story, in which (actual spoilers ahead now) Jirel is shown by the strange Mirror of Truth an image of herself covered in glistening, silvery scars. The scars do not mar her image, but add to it, each one seemingly a beautiful stitch on her. I thought that this might be tied to one discovering a more true self-image, having broken free from one where you're seen as lesser. Perhaps you can finally appreciate yourself, scars and all. But nope, that seems to be my read on the story alone.

Even when she says she's just doing it for fun, writing her take on the slightly meatheaded jock with terrible taste in men that is our lady Joiry, I think she can't help but produce really interesting stuff between the lines. 

If you haven't checked out New Edge, the digital editions are pretty reasonable in price, and the new Jirel novella, Blue Fire, has been recently fully-funded, so that should be out soon enough.

We've got a live one today.

​In January of 1935, Robert E. Howard was basking in the acceptance of his story "Beyond the Black River" for Weird Tales, which editor Farnsworth Wright called "his best Conan story so far." Howard seemed jazzed about the direction of the story, telling HP Lovecraft in a letter that he would like to try his hand at a longer yarn, "of the same style, a serial of four or five parts."

"The Black Stranger" was probably written soon after, as Patrice Louinet notes in his essay "Hyborian Genesis" that there are partial drafts of other stories found on the backs of the pages of "The Black Stranger" that seem to be from the end of 1934 or very beginning of 1935. This leads Louinet to believe that it was probably written in January or February of 1935. Another thing that I love about what Louinet has to say of the story is that it is a criminally-overlooked story:

Patrice is right. For a long time, "Black Stranger" was swallowed up by the L. Sprague de Camp version, known as "The Treasure of Tranicos" as well as two other versions of the story, neither of which feature Conan. In L. Sprague de Camp's interesting but somewhat self-important essay "The Trail of Tranicos," de Camp notes that Glenn Lord thinks the story is a little older than Louinet does, perhaps written in 1933 or 34, but doesn't list any reasons why. 

The other rewritten versions of this story include "Black Vulmea's Vengeance," published in Golden Fleece and the variant "Swords of the Red Brotherhood."

de Camp's "Treasure of Tranicos" version itself had several different versions, edited by Lester Del Rey seemingly without de Camp's permission (how do you like it, Sprague?). "Treasure of Tranicos" was specifically tied more intentionally to the rest of the Conan mythos by de Camp, inserting Thoth-Amon, King Numedides, and the Aquilonian revolution that seats Conan on the throne.

Howard's original cut would not see publication in full until 1987, when it was included by Karl Edward Wagner in his first Echoes of Valor collection, a series well worth the money if you find it available. de Camp and Wagner continue to disagree about the real-life chronology of the manuscript, with de Camp saying, "There is reason to believe that the pirate version came before the Conan one" and Wagner countering, "I have the photocopy of Howard's original manuscript of 'The Black Stranger', which clearly shows Howard's efforts to change the story from the Conan to the Black Vulmea version."

I agree with Louinet that it's unfortunate that this story seems so maligned by the other versions of it that came after it (well, technically before it). It has the story threads knotted up and difficult to untangle. 

Because of de Camp's meddling, I think the story's chronology has historically been misplaced. Every single other notable chronology places this story after "Beyond the Black River," and before "Wolves Beyond the Border." But I think they're all wrong. I was wrong too. When I first blogged about this story in October of 2024, I set it as part of a "Pictish trilogy" with "Black River" and "Moon of Blood."

​But I now think that was totally incorrect. Let's look at our chronological markers.

• In the opening, Conan is described as massive and muscular, but still moving with the speed of a panther, suggesting a slightly older Conan: "Then he stalked across the glade, placing his feet with care. For all his massive, muscular build he moved with the supple certitude of a panther." The muscles become more pronounced in description past his younger days.
• Conan begins the story approaching the coast of the Western Ocean from the east, crossing the Pictish Wilderness. He's exhausted after having been chased for dozens of miles: "They were the men of the Eagle, whose villages lay far to the east, adjoining the country of the Wolf-Picts. It was the Wolves who had captured him, in a foray against the Aquilonian settlements along Thunder River, and they had given him to the Eagles in return for a captured Wolf chief. The Eaglemen had a red score against the giant Cimmerian, and now it was redder still, for his escape had cost the life of a noted war- chief. That was why they had followed him so relentlessly, over broad rivers and hills and through the long leagues of gloomy forest, the hunting grounds of hostile tribes."
• Conan is very familiar with this wilderness area, suggesting he's been there some time: "The Cimmerian knew that for a thousand miles this western coast ran bare and uninhabited except by the villages of the ferocious sea-land tribes."
  • I think it's more likely that Conan has been up and down a thousand miles of this coast by ship, rather than on foot. That will become more important in a moment.
• When Conan appears to the rest of the characters, clad in pirate garb he's clearly stolen from the treasure cave, Black Zarono notes that Conan's ship was wrecked three years ago: "'I thought you were dead,' said Zarono slowly. 'Three years ago the shattered hull of your ship was sighted off a reefy coast, and you were heard of on the Main no more.'"
  • This means that Conan has been a Barachan pirate for probably four years or more. Sancha and Zaporavo in "Pool of the Black One" do not recognize Conan, suggesting that this story takes place after that one, after which Conan has made a name for himself amongst the Barachan pirates.
  • Conan has been missing since that time, as another line notes that he was already a notorious pirate captain: "Who of all the sea-folk had not heard the wild, bloody tales told of Conan, the wild rover who had once been a captain of the Barachan pirates, and one of the greatest scourges of the sea?"
• Conan is extremely familiar with civilization by this time. He is cool, collected, and maybe even suave. He's definitely able to turn on the "civilization" lever when he wants: "The Cimmerian grinned. It was evident that he was deliberately fanning the fires of hate between the two men." This alone places it as a pretty late story. How Conan acts in this narrative is consistent with how he was portrayed in "The Pool of the Black One," where he had grown adept at adapting to pirate social cues, and he seems to be even more skilled at it now.

These last two chronological clues are what I think are the most important.

• Conan expresses a desire to get back into the pirating world: " I've been wanting to get back on the Main for months, and this was a good opportunity!'"
• At the end of the story, Conan goes back to being a Barachan pirate: "'But what of you?' Conan grinned and indicated the Red Hand drawing swiftly inshore. 'A ship and a crew are all I want. As soon as I set foot on that deck, I'll have a ship, and as soon as I can raise the Barachans I'll have a crew. The lads of the Red Brotherhood are eager to ship with me, because I always lead them to rare loot. And as soon as I've set you and the girl ashore on the Zingaran coast, I'll show the dogs some looting! Nay, nay, no thanks! What are a handful of gems to me, when all the loot of the southern seas will be mine for the grasping?'

Most of these chronological clues above point to this story being a later one, but the last two limit how late it can be. Because Conan goes back to being a Barachan pirate at the end of it, that leads me to believe that "The Black Stranger" is the last Barachan pirate story, not the last story prior to Conan's kingship. The fact that this story takes place so close to "Beyond the Black River," geographically speaking, I think has been historically overrated. The "Tranicos" version does explicitly tie it more directly to Conan's kingship, so it makes sense to put it later if that's the version you're using, but that's not the Howard original. The traditional wisdom has been that this story acts as a bridge between Conan's scouting days and his kingship, but I argue that it would more correctly be seen as a bridge between Conan's final pirate period and his Aquilonian scouting.

I think it's likely that in the three years between Conan's ship going down in the ocean and him rearing his head again in "Black Stranger," Conan may have disappeared inland, to see the events of "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" and "Red Nails" take place, both of which mention Conan's recent Barachan pirate period. Though, if we want to assume Conan's Barachan period is longer, it could take place after "The Pool of the Black One" and prior to "The Servants of Bit-Yakin."

"The Black Stranger" is a very interesting Conan story. It feels like a cross between Howard's Pictish wilderness story "Beyond the Black River" and the Barachan pirate story "The Pool of the Black One." It's very good, and its chronology was far more interesting to mull over than I thought it would be. 

It's funny how movies change in your estimation depending on the time if your life and the state of the media landscape. For example, The Mask of Zorro came out when I was seven. When I was a kid, I thought it was pretty decent. Not incredible, just a fun distraction. Let me tell you that I know now- I was wrong.

That movie fucking rips. 

I promise we'll get to Red Sonja in a moment. 

It's kind of funny, both Sonja and Zorro technically came from the pulps (Sonya, with a "y," from Magic Carpet, and Zorro from All-Story) and these two films are continuations of those legacies. 

The Mask of Zorro really goes for it in ways that we don't see today, even from the very beginning. Zorro, silhouetted by light and fog, carves and flaming Z into the air followed by a wildcat roar and flame explosion into the title. That's tight as shit. Modern films seem pretty afraid to do anything that's pure iconography like that (remember when Batman films ended with Batman running directly toward the camera with the batsignal behind him?). The movie was originally set to be directed by Robert Rodriguez before it passed to Martin Campbell, director of Goldeneye and eventually Casino Royale, and Campbell's clearly doing a successful Rodriguez pastiche. He's not usually the most stylish filmmaker, more of a work-for-hire type of guy, but this movie is positively greased with style.

The action is classic adventure material. Sword fights, acrobatics, and western pistols are clanging and thundering throughout, pacing the film fantastically. One dude gets shot while flying through the air not once, but twice.

One of the only complaints about millennials that I agree with is that a lot of "millennial writing" in films comes across as jokey, but not actually funny. It's that "He's right behind me, isn't he?" type of writing. And once again, I promise I'll get to to Red Sonja. The humor in this film is a little cartoonish, as Zorro stabs a solider in his ass or tries to jump onto his horse only to have it move out of the way at the last second. But it all works, eliciting smiles all the way through. Antonio Banderas should be more rightfully remembered for his solid comedic timing and not just for his dashing good looks. 

The most integral piece to the whole thing might be the heart of the film. Zorro fights corruption in the upper class, for the people, and this particular incarnation of Zorro is one of the common people. It's righteous and a total blast to see the rich pricks getting what's coming to them at the end of it. It makes sense when you learn that Steven Spielberg was an executive producer whole played a heavy hand in it. 

Shot in and around Mexico City, the whole film feels tactile and real, which doesn't sound like much of a compliment, but really is when many films shot today look like they were filmed in front of a green screen in a high school gym in Atlanta. It's beautifully atmospheric when lit torches lick the walls of haciendas and caves, and it's even delightfully grimy and dusty at times. It's something I never noticed before every blockbuster movie started feeling sterile.

Seriously, for the longest time, I thought of The Mask of Zorro as just a fine movie. A seven out of ten, and I think that's similar to how most people have viewed it. But it's sharply risen in the last several years, and I now see it as a wildly entertaining movie. 

Anyway, everything I spoke about positively above does not apply to Red Sonja. I decided to watch it after Molly Tanzer told me it was horrendous. She was right. Stiff, uncompelling, and completely derivative, this thing is a slog. The script is dead on arrival, the performances don't do anything to save the material, and everything looks like it was rendered on a PlayStation 3. And why's there an orc in the Hyborian Age?

Zorro's cool, though. 

In the modern day, a mother hawks her son's old comic books and some tapes, which are apparently interviews about some old pulp author named C.K. Cole.

Some decades ago, a young biographer tapes interviews with an old woman named Lilith about her experiences in the 1930s, playing governess to an unruly girl. Her charge is the daughter of C.K. Cole.

In midst of the Depression, we see the the memories of Lilith and her frustrations at taking care of the drunken hot mess that is Helen Cole.

And briefly, but never for too long, we see Helen's experiences in another world: a sword & sorcery landscape replete with head-loppings and aloof gods.

Helen of Wyndhorn is a 2024/25 miniseries written for Dark Horse by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, the same team responsible for the unforgettable Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. While I think it's fantastic in its own right, it feels especially so for Robert E. Howard fans. While writing pastiche of REH's writing is a dime a dozen, writing pastiche of the man himself is something I haven't seen before.

As the mythology goes, Robert E. Howard wrote his sword & sorcery, western, and horror pulp narratives throughout the Depression in the middle of nowhere in Cross Plains, Texas. He said, hyperbolically as he was prone to, that it was almost as if he wasn't writing his Conan of Cimmeria stories, but just recording them as they were narrated to him by the barbarian himself. A lot of his work plays with this theme of remembrance, filtered through time, most notably the James Allison story "The Valley of the Worm."

Helen of Wyndhorn takes this premise and literalizes it. What if Robert E. Howard's stories actually were records of things that had actually happened? In Wyndhorn's version, the REH analogue, C.K. Cole, spends the 30s recording the adventures of his father, Barnabas Cole, known both in literature and his other world as Othan, a great warrior. C.K. leaves behind a daughter, Helen, when he commits suicide, once again mirroring Howard (though Howard had no children), who is then brought to the family estate where she will live with her grandfather. 

As Helen lives at the Wyndhorn mansion, she gradually learns the true nature of her father's writing and her grandfather's life, which we see unfold slowly. Each character in this story is so well-drawn, terribly flawed and chafing against one another, yet they're all extremely lovable. When the usually-imperious governess Lilith describes Helen as "my Helen," it becomes clear that this story is as much the story of being able to love completely lost people as it is about sword & sorcery action. 

You might be surprised at how much is withheld in this story, far more than is shown. I mean that in the best possible way, as it all deepens the appeal. In the final issue, a peculiar panel kicks off what may be the most important conversation in the story. During a poetry lesson, one of Lilith's word balloons is obscured behind a support column. I love when comics use the medium to create something that could not exist in film or novels.

Helen goes on to ask Lilith if she is "real," saying, "Everything that's happened since father died- none of it makes any sense. This world, the Other World, I'm in one of his stories. There's something wrong with me. I'm not like everyone else, I'm being told." Helen is, of course, not real to us, but she is real in the fiction of her story. 

I think this is the most compelling thing the book has to say. Helen is equally real as the stories her father so deftly recorded. Perhaps Conan and the Hyborian Age are no less real than Robert E. Howard and his Underwood No. 5 typewriter. The stories still have all the magic and power you could ever want them to. 

This brings me back to the frame narrative I mentioned up top. The comic sort of moves forward and backward in time at the same moment. It opens in the 70s with a biographer named Thomas Rogers interviewing Lilith about her time at Wyndhorn, but then follows Lilith's story back to the 30s and the tapes themselves forward, as they get put up for auction, sold cheaply at a fan convention, and finally seem to be unearthed one last time in a garage. Everything is layered like a palimpsest: obscuring the past each time.

The book ends with Rogers saying to his husband, "You peel back layers looking for the center of a thing, and then you lose the thing itself. Maybe the nanny was right. Maybe it's better to make it all up."

Maybe we're all made up, no less real than Helen, Othan, Conan, Solomon Kane, Niord... But I don't want to peel back the layers too far.

Our stories are just as vulnerable to the rot of time that the pages of an ill-kept paperback are. Each time Cole's stories or Rogers's tapes pass into new hands, there's a new opportunity for someone to discover their magic, but there's also the risk that those tapes, seemingly the only copy, will be lost forever. Having gotten to know the pulp community over the past years, this struck me. People like Rusty Burke and Bill Cavalier have done four decades of work to continue the legacy of Howard. Oliver Brackenbury was the first person in 85 years to ask the C.L. Moore estate about the rights to her stories, to keep their flame lit. Without people like these, the stories become forgotten. It takes real stewardship to bring them to the next generation.

If you're a sword & sorcery fan, you simply must read Helen of Wyndhorn. I know Tom King has a certain reputation for having personally cradled Dick Cheney's balls while constructing the Iraq War, but his work with Bilquis Evely is one of a kind. The art is gorgeous and the story is deeply moving and refreshing, reminding me what I love so much about this genre. I hope you pick it up.

"Drums of Tombalku" is a title given to an untitled synopsis and fragment left behind by Robert E. Howard, first published in 1986 as the fragment and then in 1988 as its synopsis. The untitled work, set near and in an ancient city named Gazal, was given its "Drums of Tombalku" title by L. Sprague de Camp when he heavily edited the work and prepared it for publishing in 1966's Conan the Adventurer.

Patrice Louinet notes in "Hyborian Genesis" that Howard's 29-page draft originated as his attempt at a novel, probably written in mid-March 1934 after he wrote "The People of the Black Circle." While the novel ultimately didn't come to fruition in this form, Louinet notes that one line  about an invasion of Aquilonia from Nemedia would become the framing device for Howard's successful novel attempt: The Hour of the Dragon. 

The Gazal fragment is a little peculiar in that Conan is really only a supporting character who shows up toward the end of the fragment. I will defend this fragmentary narrative insofar that it has one near-great horror sequence within the red tower of Gazal.

And I wonder how many copies of The Complete Chronicles of Conan have the same typo mine has: Amalric is referred to as "Almaric" on page 827. Was that Howard's typo, or just the book's?

​Let's see what sort of chronological markers this thing has:

Due to Howard's penchant for making subtle changes to things like names (in all likelihood, just forgetting what he had done the first time), I believe all the above accounts are of the same time in Conan's life. It seems like after Conan left the Black Corsairs at the end of "Queen of the Black Coast," on his way north he became part of the Free Companions who were working in service of Koth's army. Or perhaps the Free Companions tenure grew out of his time with Koth, continuing on with some of the other veterans following the dissolution of the Kothian army.

Since the story must follow "Queen of the Black Coast" and is in conversation with "Xuthal" and "Iron Shadows," it seems to be the eighth or ninth story in our chronology right now. Actually though, I think this story is so close in premise and structure that I would probably consider it non-canonical. It rhymes far too much with "Xuthal of the Dusk" to ignore - "Xuthal" is clearly the completed version of this fragment. But if it goes anywhere on the chronology, it goes adjacent to it. 

These stories are not traditionally grouped very close together. The chronologies from Miller/Clark/de Camp, Robert Jordan, Dale Rippke, and William Galen Gray all have them fairly spread out. Only the Joe Marek chronology really groups them very closely.

We can argue about what the genre "sword & sorcery" is until the events of Jack Vance's Dying Earth actually come true if we want to. It's elusive, and like something being "punk" or "campy," people's definitions differ. Sure, a story populated with orcs, elves, and dragons seems to immediately move it into the "high fantasy" realm. But how much magic is too much magic? Can it be set in a fictional world, not just in an extremely young or old Earth?

I'd argue it's probably more of a feeling than anything else. But I have a pretty solid marker of what separates sword & sorcery from other types of fantasy: S&S needs some kind of element of horror. 

Cozy worlds inhabit a lot of fantasy works, especially 2020s fantasy output. I don't know if I could tell you exhaustively what is and isn't S&S, but I know that a world where magic rings are sold in the market, where you want to live in Rivendell, where well-lit taverns are populated by friendly orcs... that's not it. Sword & sorcery needs seedy settlements, terrifying tombs, and un-behold-able black-eyed god creatures. As much as I love the Hyborian Age, I do not want to live there. I'd be dead in twenty minutes.

"Hellsgarde" debuted in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales. It had been a year and a half since the previous Jirel story, a Jirel-Northwest Smith collaboration between Moore and her future husband Henry Kuttner, and more than three years since the previous "pure" Jirel story, "The Dark Land." The first four stories had appeared over a timespan of just a year and two months, so I wonder if C.L. Moore why the long gap, and if she was having to dig deeper within herself to find ideas or gumption to finish this one. 

​Additionally, she would marry Kuttner in less than a year and sadly disappear into his byline for most of the rest of her career.

But "Hellsgarde" was a perfect Jirel story to leave us with. Not only is it by far the most horror-forward adventure of Moore's red-haired lady of Joiry, but it's also the best.

Jirel is pressured into finding Hellsgarde, a castle in a marsh that can seemingly only be approached at dusk. It is yet another controlling douchebag that Jirel- or at least the text of the story- is somewhat smitten with who sends her in that direction. In Hellsgarde is a mysterious treasure that Jirel must recover.

The story is overflowing with atmosphere and spooks, starting from Jirel's approach to the castle. It appears as though there is a line of soldiers guarding the gate, but upon closer inspection, they're corpses propped up on the lances through which their entrails have been run.

The inhabitants of the castle are no better. Alaric of Hellsgarde and his alleged family are creeps throughout. They're expecting the lady of Joiry when she arrives. This family unit is perhaps Moore's greatest Jirel antagonist because it works so well with her writing style. Every Jirel story features thoughts just entering Jirel's mind which we are privy to. There is much "Did I see...? Could it have been...? Surely not" throughout her adventures, and Moore uses that same convention to ratchet up the horror of Hellsgarde's hosts.

In particular, I love the two young boys who terrorize Jirel with their very existence.

I've always loved how unsure of herself Jirel is. She's hotheaded and brash and frequently very confused, second-guessing herself, and that characterization is never used better than in "Hellsgarde." 

If you read all the stories in order, I can see that Moore's habit of resolving each conflict through a somewhat abstract battle of wills might have run a little bit thin by this time (Moore was always light on the "sword" in "sword & sorcery"), but the twists in this story about the true nature of the castle's residents more than makes up for it. 

"Hellsgarde" is Moore's crowning Jirel achievement. Bobby Derie, author of the best blog in the universe, Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, agrees that this one's a banger. I suspect it will always be overshadowed by "The Black God's Kiss" as the first tale, but it's her most bone-chilling story by far. It's the perfect encapsulation of the world created in her mind, a thing more sensed than seen.

​And for the next 85 years, Jirel was gone. More on that soon.

When I go on a trip, sometimes I like to bring a disposable camera. They take forever to develop now- gone are the days of one-hour photo. More like three-week photo.

Anyway, here are my grainy, washed-out film photos from Howard Days this year!