THE TREASURE OF TRANICOS "(A.K.A. "THE BLACK STRANGER")

There are few events in the life of Conan the Cimmerian that are completely, inexorably fixed in time. There are two events, though, on opposite ends of his life that are immovable in Conan's story. The first is the siege of the Aquilonian outpost of Venarium, when Conan has "not yet seen fifteen snows," mentioned in countless Conan stories. It's like the starting place for Conan's adulthood and the prologue to the entire saga. Is the novel Conan of Venarium the only story that takes place at that siege? I've never read any.

The other event is Conan's kingship of Aquilonia, happening later in his life, usually about 40. It has been alluded to in at least half a dozen stories as something that "perhaps" he would even do one day. We're finally approaching that event as we round out this Pictish trilogy of "Beyond the Black River," "Moon of Blood," and now "The Treasure of Tranicos."

"Tranicos" began life under the title "The Black Stranger," and underwent quite a few edits between initial drafting and today. While it was written by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s along with all the other original Conan manuscripts, it wasn't published during his lifetime.

This story was edited by L. Sprague de Camp to fit more perfectly into that timeline than perhaps Robert E. Howard even intended. According to Conan the Usurper, where I read this story, de Camp found the manuscript of "The Black Stranger" amongst some other unpublished works.

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"In preparing this manuscript for publication, I edited and rewrote it somewhat drastically, condensing it by more than fifteen per cent and adding a number of interpolations to tie the story in with King Numedides, Thoth-Amon, and the subsequent revolution in Aquilonia, to fit the story snugly into the saga."

Unlike many Conan works which we can point to a two- or three-week period in which Robert E. Howard penned it, we have nothing that exact for "The Black Stranger." Most Howard scholars agree that he wrote it after Weird Tales accepted The Hour of the Dragon for publication, perhaps in the last months of 1934 or the early parts of 1935.

​We know at least that Howard had written to HP Lovecraft about the possibility of a follow-up to "Beyond the Black River," saying:

"Some day I’m going to try my hand at a longer yarn of the same style, a serial of four or five parts."

de Camp made some edits to bring "The Black Stranger" close the form we know today. The story was then further altered by editors at Fantasy Magazine and was published under its original title, "The Black Stranger." When the story was republished in the volume King Conan, de Camp changed the name to "The Treasure of Tranicos" because of the abundance of Conan titles with the word "black" in them. He's right, and it keeps getting worse. Right now, in late 2024, we've got:

• Queen of the Black Coast
• Black Colossus
• Black Tears
• The People of the Black Circle
• The Pool of the Black One
• The Treasure of the Red Black Shadows in the Dark Tower of the God Skulls
• Beyond the Black River
• The Black Stranger
• Black Sphinx of Nebthu
• Conan, Lord of the Black River
• Battle of the Black Stone

I only made up one of those, but I defy you to tell me which one. What I'm trying to say is that Conan story titles follow a pattern.

Apparently, prior to Conan the Usurper's publication, de Camp un-did most of his changes, saying that he edited it only lightly and tried to only make changes that he deemed "urgently necessary." He did keep the timeline stuff that keeps it anchored to this period in Conan's life.

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I was glad to see that this story quickly answers a question I had last time. I was confused as to why Conan would be back up in the northwest after supposedly being whisked away to Aquilonia after "Moon of Blood," and it turns out that he somehow pissed off King Numedides, rousing his suspicions and sending Conan packing. Sometimes there's really good-sounding stuff that happens between stories entirely, and I wish we got to see it on the page. That's the kind of shit that de Camp and Lin Carter usually wrote about when they penned their own, original Conan stories, like adding "The Star of Khorala" to tie up a hanging thread that sounded cool from "Shadows in Zamboula."

Conan is now about 40 years old, which means that by my count, we will see him gain the kingship of Aquilonia within a year. Conan definitely seems like he is at the point where he could become a ruler. When I started this chronology, he was a provincial barbarian, suspicious of and scared of anything he deemed unnatural. He was illiterate and unworldly. Now, he's clever, ruthless, shrewd, and dare I say even a little bit sophisticated in this story, without having lost his wolfish grin or his bear-like strength. The scene in which Conan details how he snuck into the castle and infiltrated a secret meeting, totally commanding the room once he enters, is gold. 

Unlike a lot of Conan fare where essentially the plot is "Conan wants the McGuffin. Will he get the treasure?" this story is as densely plotted as a Game of Thrones episode. 

We have a bunch of competing interests. There's Count Valenso of Korzetta, a disgraced noble who's exiled himself on the coast. There's the brutal Barachan pirate Strombanni who's after the treasure of Tranicos. There's the more suave pirate, Black Zarano, who's also after the treasure. Thoth-Amon, the Stygian sorcerer, is there to complicate matters and torment Count Valenso. The Picts are a constant threat from the wilderness, especially since Thoth-Amon is fucking with Valenso by baiting the Picts. There's Count Valenso's daughter Belesa who is terrified of being sold as property in a deal to the pirates.

I love the stories Howard writes where he forces characters into unlikely and tenuous partnerships and that's exactly what we get here. They all want the treasure of Tranicos, but Valenso is the only one with a crew of men. Strombanni is the only one with a ship, and Zarono is the only one with a map.

Then of course there is Conan, who burns the map, making him the only one who knows the location of the treasure. It makes for a great adventure.

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Now, if you had asked me before I read all of these stories in order who Conan's arch-nemesis was, I would have said Thoth-Amon. There are tons of comics where he's the villain, he's got a great look, he represents everything Conan fears most. But truly, this story made me realize that he's not actually in that many of these stories. I understand that L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter make Thoth the villain of the last four short stories in Conan's life, four consecutive sequels that take place after The Hour of the Dragon, but he's only popped his head up here and there so far, never really interacting much with Conan. 

​He was merely mentioned in "The God in the Bowl," he floats around in "Treasure of Tranicos," but doesn't really do much to Conan, and he'll have to deal with only being mentioned in The Hour of the Dragon, too. He's also in some Conan novels.

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Conan ends this story by being enlisted into a command position during the Aquilonian revolt, so he's ready to depose Numedides. It's all been leading up to this!

For some reason, when I read Roy Thomas's adaption of this story in Savage Sword 47-48, I didn't much care for it. The Howard / de Camp version totally rocks, though. I've consistently wanted to be conservative about my ratings of Conan stories- far too many bloggers in my opinion act like everything Howard ever wrote was gold, but I do find myself adding ever-more stories to the 5-star pile. When I think "What more could I ever ask for in an adventure story?" I figure I have to give it five stars. So far, I've got "The Tower of the Elephant," "Black Colossus," "Beyond the Black River," "Red Nails," "Queen of the Black Coast," "Rogues in the House," "The People of the Black Circle," and now "The Treasure of Tranicos."

Despite this story being an absolute fucking ripper, it ping-ponged through publisher purgatories for decades without seeing the light of day.

Conan scholar Patrice Louinet assumes that "The Black Stranger" failed to sell to Weird Tales, but there are no surviving records. That would be a little odd seeing as Conan stories were huge headliners for Farnsworth Wright at the time, and were routinely gracing the cover. 

The way Louinet tells it, Howard would go about trying a new route and rewrote the story with an Irishman named Terence Vulmea at the center of it, filing the Hyborian Age serial numbers off, and sending it to his agent in May 1935. For what is, by my count, a second time that I've written this, the story was accepted but the magazine went bankrupt before the story could go public ("The Road of the Eagles" was the first and The Hour of the Dragon will be the last). 

Apart from the names of the protagonists this story is almost identical with the Vulmea story "Swords of the Red Brotherhood". The manuscripts of both stories were found in Robert E. Howard's papers after his death. The order in which he wrote them is disputed. In his essay "The Trail Of Tranicos" (1967) L. Sprague de Camp wrote: "There is reason to believe that the pirate version came before the Conan one." On the other hand, Karl Edward Wagner, in his introduction to "The Black Stranger" in Echoes of Valour, claimed: "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'm not sure who to believe. It seems odd that Howard would have turned in a Conan story that Farnsworth Wright was such a dud when he was on a streak of serious winners (and this one's a serious winner too!), but if a photocopy exits that shows Howard making Conanly edits to the pirate version, it's hard to argue with that.

​The pirate version of the story, titled "Swords of the Red Brotherhood," would eventually see publication in 1976. The Conanized version wouldn't make it public until 1987, which is an incredibly long gap of fifty-two years between writing and publication. That also makes it technically Howard's final bow on Conan.

​I'm glad we have it.

★★★★★