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Chronologically Speaking, Part Eighteen: "The God in the Bowl"

5/18/2026

Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.

If you've been following this series, you know that we're now past the end of stories which Robert E. Howard saw published in his lifetime. Like the Nestor synopsis, better known under the title "The Hall of the Dead," given to it by L. Sprague de Camp, was not released in its original REH form for decades. Likewise, "The God in the Bowl" was out for decades, with heavy de Camp edits, for over two decades before the original was published.

The de Camp version made the page in the magazine Space Science Fiction (a fitting place to publish it, since it is definitely a science fiction story set in space) in September 1952, though it had been written as just the third Conan story, all the way back in 1932. The version that appeared in Space Science Fiction was heavily edited by L. Sprague de Camp, and the original Howard version wouldn't see print until 1975 in the Donald Grant "The Tower of the Elephant" publication. As a reminder, I'm not only using the Howard version for this column.

This story is quite a bit shorter than most of Howard's Conan stories, but is really interesting, chronologically speaking. There's quite a bit of debate about the earliest Conan stories ("The Frost-Giant's Daughter" and this one in particular are rather controversial) and which order the thief stories occur in.

The traditional wisdom is that the thief stories take place in an east-to-west direction: that is, we go from Zamora to Corinthia to Nemedia ("The Tower of the Elephant," "The Hall of the Dead," "Rogues in the House," then "The God in the Bowl"). That's the way I thought it should go, and it's the way I followed when I did my first chronology. But I think a close reading of the stories supports the idea that it should go from west-to-east, starting with Numalia in Nemedia before going to the unnamed Corinthian city-state, and finishing in Zamora the Accursed, AKA the City of Thieves. I also think that the pendulum is shifting in this direction, as it appears to be the chronology that Heroic Signatures and Titan Comics are following as well.

Here are our chronological hints:

We are told right away that Conan is a youth: "Arus saw a tall powerfully built youth, naked but for a loincloth, and sandals strapped high about his ankles. His skin was burned brown as by the suns of the wastelands, and Arus glanced nervously at the broad shoulders, massive chest and heavy arms. A single look at the moody, broad-browed features told the watchman that the man was no Nemedian. From under a mop of unruly black hair smoldered a pair of dangerous blue eyes. A long sword hung in a leather scabbard at his girdle."
Conan's characterization throughout paints him as someone who is very new to civilization. He's a bit of a rube at times: "The stranger started. 'Why did you do that?' he asked. 'It will fetch the watchman.' 'I am the watchman, knave,' answered Arus." Conan later says, "It was dark when I saw the watchman outside the Temple. When I saw him here I thought he was a thief too. It was not until he jerked the watch-bell rope and lifted his bow that I knew he was the watchman."
- The thing that is a little tough to square is that Conan speaks Nemedian "with a barbaric accent." So Conan has been here long enough to learn some Nemedian, but not long enough to figure out how guard shifts work. This is probably just what Howard needed to do in order to make sure characters understood one another, but is admittedly a little bit of a blind spot.
Conan's a pretty sub-par thief so far: "'I came to steal,' sullenly answered the other. 'To steal what?' rapped the Inquisitor. 'Food,' the reply came after an instant's hesitation." His natural Cimmerian climbing skills are serving him, but he is definitely a novice. He hadn't even planned an alibi!
This might be one of Conan's first encounters with sorcery and seems struck a little dumb by the titular god in the titular bowl: "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." That last bit strikes me as the most important: he's encountering forces that he has never known and could not understand.
The story ends with Conan fleeing Numalia: "Then the full horror of it all rushed over the Cimmerian, and he fled, nor did he slacken his headlong flight until the spires of Numalia faded into the dawn behind him."

I think the traditional wisdom stated up top makes a little more sense if you're also including the L. Sprague de Camp material in your chronology- "Legions of the Dead" and "The Thing in the Crypt" send Conan more eastward across Hyperborea, but the fact that Conan seems so naïve (I love the line in which Arus indignantly tells him "I am the watchman, knave!" That shit is hilarious) and poor at thieving puts this story more to the front. If you'll notice, this moves "Rogues in the House" up several placement as well.

Additionally, I think there's a not-insignificant desire to put "The Tower of the Elephant" as the first thief story (if not the first Conan story altogether) because it's such a good one and works as a fantastic introduction to the character and the world, but if we're applying a formalist approach to the chronology, we have to ignore that.

I have to place it as the first of the thief stories.

That brings our chronology to this:

1. The God in the Bowl
2. Rogues in the House
3. The Tower of the Elephant
4. The Nestor synopsis ("The Hall of the Dead")
5. Queen of the Black Coast
6. Xuthal of the Dusk
7. Iron Shadows in the Moon
8. The Devil in Iron
9. The People of the Black Circle
10. A Witch Shall Be Born
11. The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
12. Black Colossus
13. The Pool of the Black One
14. The Servants of Bit-Yakin
15. Red Nails
16. Beyond the Black River
17. The Phoenix on the Sword
18. The Scarlet Citadel
19. The Hour of the Dragon

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The Many Possible Sequels to "A WITCH SHALL BE BORN"

5/11/2026

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Is there a Conan story that Robert E. Howard wrote with more possible sequels than his 1934 yarn "A Witch Shall Be Born?" I've gone on record several times to note that the story is far from my favorite: its momentum halts a little too hard when the epistolary section from Astreas the Nemedian kicks in. But there's something that's very compelling about the story. Conan is at his most un-killable. The supporting cast of Salome, Taramis, and Olgerd Vladislav are some of the best in the canon. And, notably, its vengeful ending is one for the ages.

But the story ends with Conan simply riding away.

"Conan lifted his reins and rode toward the river that shone like silver in the morning sun. Behind him the white-clad riders struck into a trot; the gaze of each, as he passed a certain spot, turned impersonally and with the desert man's lack of compassion, toward the cross and the gaunt figure that hung there, black against the sunrise. Their horses' hoofs beat out a knell in the dust. Lower and lower swept the wings of the hungry vultures."

Where does he go? I've argued that he spends time as chief of the Zuagirs before ending his desert raider tenure in "Shadows in Zamboula." But I'm far from the only person who's tried to explore what happens next. The space left open by the narrative's ending has been compelling for a great number of Conan pastiche writers, from 1955 until today. With a brand-new possible sequel to the story, I thought it was time to examine the many possible sequels.

The Flame Knife by Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp (1955)

The earliest sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born" did not begin its life that way. The Flame Knife is one of the four Howard stories that de Camp edited to insert Conan, and all of those are pretty good, probably because there's still so much Howard in them. De Camp makes the wise choice of bringing back "A Witch Shall Be Born's" Olgerd Vladislav as the enemy for this, even though it's otherwise unconnected to "Witch." Apparently, Olgerd is still pretty bitter about getting deposed in his original story.

There are some good fantasy elements and there's a very tense standoff in a lost mountain city (great setting!), so I actually really like this one even though I know de Camp's work isn't everyone's cup of tea.

The Flame Knife was then adapted into Savage Sword #31 in 1978.

"Black Tears" by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (1968)

The next sequel came from the earliest Conan pastiche writers: the duo of L. Sprague de Camp yet again, along with Lin Carter. "Black Tears" first appeared in Conan the Wanderer in 1968 and is set about a year after its predacessor. Gary Romeo over at his blog brings up that this one might be better served to have its byline listed with Carter's name first rather than the traditional de Camp / Carter; it looks like this was primarily a Carter yarn with just a few edits and suggestions provided by Sprague.

"Black Tears" is a breezy, if rather forgettable sequel to "Witch" that has some solid prose in it but ultimately is ripped off from a Thongor story a little too hard, and sees Conan dispatch his final enemy a little bit too easily. It almost reminds me of a version of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," but set in the desert rather than the snows.

"Black Tears" was adapted into comic form in Savage Sword #35.

"The Sleeper Beneath the Sands" in Marvel's Savage Sword #6 (1975)

After "A Witch Shall Be Born" was adapted by Roy Thomas and John Buscema in Savage Sword #5, the next two issues would each feature possible sequels to it. The first is "The Sleeper Beneath the Sands," written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Sonny Trinidad, who isn't a big name in the Conan world but did contribute to a few issues here and there.

"Sleeper" tends to repeat some of the ideas from its predecessor, with Conan getting strung up out in the desert once again, and it brings back Olgerd Vladislav who Conan doesn't kill, but decides not to save. I feel like this one would've done a little bit better if it was the backup story behind a more complete feature, but it never really develops its own identity.

"Citadel at the Center of Time" in Marvel's Savage Sword #7 (1975)

We have arrived. This story, which is actually the earliest issue of Savage Sword I own, absolutely fucking rules. Conan has moved the Zuagirs west toward Akbitana following "Witch." Pulling on some of Robert E. Howard's common themes of rapid human evolution and devolution, Conan gets a tour through time in the basement of the Citadel at the Center of Time. He sees dinosaurs, cultures from his future (our past), and Buscema's pencils embellished by Alcala's inks do the whole thing beautifully.

This is one of my favorite Zuagir raider-set Savage Sword stories.

"Mirror of the Manticore" in Marvel's Savage Sword #58 (1980)

This short backup story which appeared after the end of Roy Thomas's three-issue adaptation of Conan and the Sorcerer is 100% focused on Olgerd Vladislav and how he might have survived the events of "The Sleeper Beneath the Sands." It's short and simple, but I'll never say no to more of ol' Olgerd.

Through some magic trickery, he's able to heal his deathly wounds sustained in Savage Sword #6 and regain power with the Zuagirs. I do think it's a little odd to present a short epilogue to a story... fifty-two issues after that first story appeared.

"Dwellers of the Oasis" in Titan's Savage Sword #14 (2026)

While Jim Zub is the lead writer of the current Conan the Barbarian title from Titan, he's done only a few pieces for Savage Sword, though he's done a variety of things from full features to prose to wordless backup stories. Issue #14 featured maybe my favorite of his SSOC projects so far: "Dwellers of the Oasis." With Conan still reeling from his crucifixion, he's in the desert with his hands wrapped tight. After falling into a lost underground (undersand?) city, he encounters some very nice people with no ulterior motives whatsover.

The splash page that artist Ivan Gil does to introduce both Conan and us to this underground civilization is fantastic and the environment is sufficiently creepy thanks to the work of both Jim and Ivan. One of Jim's writing hallmarks is his embedding of subtle themes into his raucous adventures, and this one seems to be dealing with the concept of moving forward and healing in spite of intense pain, adding some layers to an already-fantastic comic book. I hope we see more from the team-up of Jim Zub and Ivan Gil soon.

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Chronologically Speaking, Part Seventeen: The Nestor Synopsis ("The Hall of the Dead")

5/4/2026

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With "Red Nails," which I covered last time in this column, I reached the end of the Conan of Cimmeria stories that were published in Weird Tales during Robert E. Howard's lifetime. For a time, most of the rest of Howard's Conan stories were hidden away in a trunk. Years went by without a new story to be published, except for some items like the "Hyborian Age" essay in 1938. Sixteen years passed before a new narrative would come out.

I've been re-reading the Conan stories in publication order for this series, and now that I'm to the posthumous publications, I've got to make a decision: do I read them in the order that any version of them came out in, or by order of when we saw the original, unadulterated text penned by Howard? So many of these stories were heavily edited by L. Sprague de Camp or others and then sometimes had decades between the edited version becoming public and Howard's original story debuting later. Picking one or the other doesn't really matter for this exercise, but since I'm focusing so heavily on Howard's original intent, I'll be picking the order in which the Howard original was published.

Literary agent Glenn Lord acquired the Howard trunk full of thousands of unpublished pages and L. Sprague de Camp had the original synopsis for this story by 1966. L. Sprague de Camp's version, entitled "The Hall of the Dead" was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as early as 1967 and then was reprinted in the Lancer paperback Conan that same year.

The following decade, Howard's original synopsis, referred to by Conan scholars as "The Nestor synopsis" since Howard's version is untitled, was printed in the fanzine Fantasy Crossroads #1 by the Graceland College Club. Due to its unfinished nature, it has largely been overshadowed by the L. Sprague de Camp edit.

My copy of The Complete Chronicles of Conan came with the original Howard version as one of the last stories inside, but it puts de Camps's "Hall of the Dead" title at the top. Let's take a look at any chronological clues in this short piece:

Conan is acting as a thief in Zamora. A section of the city is referred to as "The Maul," which likely refers to the same Maul from "The Tower of the Elephant." Since the city is unnamed, it is possible that it's not Zamora the City of Thieves and that there are multiple Zamorian cities that have a slum section called "The Maul," the same way many cities have a generically-named "Red Light District" or "Chinatown" or "downtown." I think it's most likely that this city is the same as the one in "The Tower of the Elephant."
- de Camp moves this to Shadizar the Wicked, but there's no reason to believe Howard had this in mind at all.
- Additionally, one common hypothesis about Zamora is that the City of Thieves has no name (it's not officially "Zamora, Zamora" like "New York, New York" in this hypothesis), and this city matching many other aspects of the one in "The Tower of the Elephant" lends some credence to that idea.
Conan is apparently a more skilled thief than we've seen before, as he has stolen from noblemen and merchants in the nearby Zamorian city, enraging the upper class.
Conan opts to allow Nestor to take all the coins and gold in the treasure room while only taking a jade serpent and set of green gems for himself. This strikes me as rather naïve, or perhaps informed by what Conan had seen of the Heart of the Elephant in Yara's tower.
Conan escapes the unnamed city with a young woman, but not with Nestor, so I find it unlikely that the Gunderman mentioned in the beginning of "Rogues in the House" is necessarily the same one as Nestor. That Gunderman was specifically stated to be a deserter, but Nestor is not acting in the service of the military in Gunderland. He's a mercenary, not a conscripted solider. It doesn't really change the placement of "Rogues in the House" or anything right now, but I have a feeling I'll be moving it soon...

With the above (which isn't much!) it seems like the only real placement we have that makes sense is that this story immediately follows "The Tower of the Elephant," with an implied time of several months elapsing between them so that Conan can become a much more skilled thief.

Next time, we'll be looking at yet another thief story in "The God in the Bowl."

Here's the updated chronology:

1. The Tower of the Elephant
2. The Nestor synopsis
3. Rogues in the House
4. Queen of the Black Coast
5. Xuthal of the Dusk
6. Iron Shadows in the Moon
7. The Devil in Iron
8. The People of the Black Circle
9. A Witch Shall Be Born
10. The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
11. Black Colossus
12. The Pool of the Black One
13. The Servants of Bit-Yakin
14. Red Nails
15. Beyond the Black River
16. The Phoenix on the Sword
17. The Scarlet Citadel
18. The Hour of the Dragon

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Jirel of Joiry: "Black God's Shadow"

5/1/2026

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I'm going to get sentimental today. So if that's not for you, I understand.

I knew this guy in college named Matt Stevenson. My wife actually knew him a lot better than I did. Matt was Jewish and everyone knew that about him, partially because he wore a kippah daily. There were a lot of Matts at her college, so people would refer to him as "You know, Matt" and cup their hand on the back of the crown of their head.

This is relevant because it became clear during their college years that one of their acquaintances, a guy they'd had classes with and hung with occasionally, was a Nazi. I'm not using that just as a pejorative; his name was Derek Black and he was the son of Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, which was (and maybe still is) the largest white supremacist website in the world. His godfather was David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

When the news on their college forum broke, Derek got ostracized pretty much immediately. This was a very liberal south Florida college, so his social circle shrank to effectively nothing overnight. A car the same make and model as Derek's (but not actually Derek's) was vandalized, my wife remembers flipping him off from across the quad.

Matt was a unique thinker, though. He found it odd how Derek had made friends at their school, even without disclosing his beliefs, which he had gone from tacitly not-bringing-up to completely concealing during his time at school. He'd noticed that Derek had become close with international students, queer students, and, you know, a Jewish guy like him. He had an idea.

Matt hosted Shabbat dinners in his dorm frequently. He'd invite friends over, they would eat, play some board games, and have the kind of heady philosophy discussions you only want to have when you're in college. So one week, he invited Derek over. He wasn't sure he'd come, but Matt explicitly instructed everyone to not bring it up if he did, and just see how things went. Much to his surprise, Derek came, bearing a bottle of wine to share.

To everyone's surprise, Derek came back the next week, and then the next. They weren't so sure what to think at first: was Derek cultivating a group of multicultural friends to use as a shield when people called him a racist? Was he trying to get dirt on them to use later? Surprisingly, no. After a while, Matt started bringing up Derek's beliefs to him and discussing. Over time, Derek not only softened his beliefs, but began to outright reject his upbringing. He told his dad he didn't want to call into his propaganda radio show anymore. He deleted his accounts on the white nationalist boards he was on.

Matt became one of his closest friends and Derek has gone on to become an anti-racist speaker and activist. He changed his name and a whole lot else, too.

I teach a quarter-long Holocaust literature unit every school year to 8th graders, and one time we interviewed Matt as a part of it. Why did he take the time to show kindness and patience to Derek, who deserved it least of all? Matt told me that as part of his faith, he believes that everyone has a spark of pure goodness at their core, put there by there creator. This has stuck with me ever since, and I find a lot of truth in it even as an atheist who was raised Lutheran. I try to remember what Matt told me, and to keep that spark of pure goodness in mind when I talk to people.

I think C.L. Moore understood this concept and baked it into Jirel of Joiry, most specifically in her second story "Black God's Shadow," published in the December 1934 Weird Tales, just a few months after "The Black God's Kiss."

"Black God's Shadow" is a straight sequel to "The Black God's Kiss" and picks up in the immediate aftermath of the first story. Something within Jirel rumbles with something like regret for how she quite literally damned Guilluame's soul with the magic of the black god's kiss (I mean, Guilluame damned himself plenty, but it was Jirel who kind of cut the brakes on his one-way ride into to Hell).

Jirel returns to the underground dreamworld, which has morphed to maintain its creepy, off-putting nature. Even though we've been there once before, it doesn't feel like we can ever anticipate the next thing Jirel will encounter.

That brings me to where I started this blog post. When Jirel finds Guilluame, we get this passage:

"And what subtle torment the black god's kiss had wrought upon him! To dwell in the full, frightful realization of his own sins, chained to the actual manifestation, suffering eternally in the obscene shape that was so undeniably himself—worst and lowest self. It was just, in a way. He had been a harsh and cruel man in life. But the very fact that such punishment was agony to him proved a higher self within his complex soul—something noble and fine which writhed away from the unspeakable thing—himself. So the very fineness of him was weapon to torture his soul, turned against him even as his sins were turned."

Guilluame deserves his punishment: the text says that what he's writing in is nothing but his own sins. But Jirel fights this ugliness with all of her positive emotions and is clearly at times protected in the story by her very human dignity. She looks into evil periodically and knows intuitively that it cannot touch her because of her goodness.

Now, Jirel's not perfect (that's what makes her interesting!) but she has lots of goodness within her. I was talking to current Jirel author Molly Tanzer recently and she brought up that some people dismiss Jirel as being just a "girl who fell in love with her rapist." I think that's far too simplistic of a reading. In this story, Jirel is seeing the humanity of someone who didn't deserve it. She does this not because Guilluame isn't bad, but because she is good. I have a hard time imagining any other pulp hero doing that. I also find it hard to believe that with morally-moving stories like this (Is it just me? Could be.) that people can dismiss all of pulp as a format or S&S as a genre out of hand. Philosophically, this reminds me of David Foster Wallace, Superman, or certain scripture.

"Black God's Shadow" reads as a story about finding peace within yourself by moving on and forgiving those who've hurt you in the past, completely disconnected from whether or not that person deserves it, since it's not about them at all. If you're just referring to the plot events of the story, "Black God's Shadow" is has the least going on out of any Jirel story, but the character work within it and many of the lines (the black god was "coldly inimical to all things human") more than make up for any sort of lack of sword & sorcery romping.

Please don't get me wrong or take me too literally here; I'm not saying that the way to defeat the Nazis is to befriend them. I'm not saying that if someone traumatizes you that you need to forgive them. Far from it, in fact. But I am pointing out that there is a higher ideal towards which we can strive. It's probably unrealistic in most situations in life, but it does cause me to get a little worked up and feel connected to a 92 year-old pulp story, which speaks to C.L. Moore's skill as a writer. She puts a lot of heart into Jirel, which still beats nearly a century later.

Cora Buhlert, the writer whose work introduced me to C.L. Moore, has a tremendous piece about this story that is far more eloquent than mine. Read it here.

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Chronologically Speaking, Part Eighteen: "The God in the Bowl"

The Many Possible Sequels to "A WITCH SHALL BE BORN"

The Flame Knife by Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp (1955)

"Black Tears" by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (1968)

"The Sleeper Beneath the Sands" in Marvel's Savage Sword #6 (1975)

"Citadel at the Center of Time" in Marvel's Savage Sword #7 (1975)

"Mirror of the Manticore" in Marvel's Savage Sword #58 (1980)

"Dwellers of the Oasis" in Titan's Savage Sword #14 (2026)

Chronologically Speaking, Part Seventeen: The Nestor Synopsis ("The Hall of the Dead")

Jirel of Joiry: "Black God's Shadow"

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