Complete Chronicles of Conan (1). The Hyborian Age.

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars ... Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet." -- The Nemedian Chronicles

Thus begins the Chronicles of Conan the Barbarian. Robert E. Howard had wrote a series of short fictions, including Kull, King of Valusia and Turlogh O'Bren, a Celtic Warrior. But Robert E. Howard needed something more. A big character that has to be form in the shape of legends.

To achieve that, he wrote a setting, explaining a pre-historic Earth, many year before the first known civilizations. Howard would love to write a historical setting, but he seems not to have the time for that, so he recreated that ancient age with epic-fantasy elements.

The essay was serialized in an amateur magazined named The Phantagraph and published in 1936. It was not complete and in 1938, two years after Howards' pass away.

It tells the history of that imaginary time  from the Cataclysm to the rise of the Hyborian and the final destruction of that civilisation by the Picts. Conan story comes close to the end of that time.

It is an essay explaining this story in an style agile, interesting and fast. It takes only 20 pages long and it spawns through the complete Conan adventures. 

While Howard was writing this essay, he released a Conan the reaver in an short story called "People of the Dark" for Strange Stories Magazine. It was not the same character, but his author was ready to release the adventures of our favourite Barbarian.

Be ready to read the first of his adventures next week, here in Tonnerre de Brest... the Phoenix on the Sword.

More about The Hyborian Age:

• Read it online at the PGA
• Wikipedia and the Essay.
• Maps of the Hyborian Age.
• A great map of the Thurian Continent
• Amra the Lion
• History of the Hyborian Age. A very insightful resume of Howard's Essay.
• Sources for Conan at the Barbarian Keep.