So I’m writing a long term Conan campaign, but I want a big nasty monster that poses a long term threat the characters have to journey in order to get the skills or equipment needed to battle the threat.
I keep thinking dragons, but that just feels off cannon, so I’m giving myself time to imagine something else that feels more in sync with the original short stories.
Having said that, who knows if Howard would have eventually put fire breathing dragons in Conan had he lived longer.
Anyone else been tempted to bring a classic elements of traditional fantasy to their Conan games, like dragons?
I also think you should “Lovecraft” these things. I would imagine the classical monsters as those cultures’ best presentations of the Outer Weird.
I recently read the Savage Sword of Conan version of Carter and de Camp’s Conan the Liberator. The “satyrs” in that novel are disappointingly represented; they are diminutive forest Pucks with cute talk helplessly sacrificed to a sorcerer’s spell. They should be an animal and terrifying Presence that has resided in primordial forests since before Man slipped out of slimy waves. They should drive Men to madness with their flutes of Azathoth. That sort of thing.
Sad about those satyrs considering what they represented in Greek myth… I wouldn’t let a satyr within sight distance of a house… let alone a hamlet, village, town, or city
As far as beasties go I’m reading through Creatures of Rokugan and Bestiary of The Hyborean Age for d20 to convert some of them critters to Conan… mainly the demons. There’s also a piccy of each one
Anything can be anything anyone wants, of course, and one person’s Conan isn’t another’s.
But my Conan can’t contain “conventional” dragons. They have to be giant snakes or lizards.
And if they’re not that, if they’re the Big Bad… Well, then, merely beholding them should mean driving one mad. They can’t be pierced? They must have come from the Outer Dark, immune to the vacuum of space. They must be indifferent to the behaviors of men—or, at the most, enjoy toying with them, getting into their minds and tormenting them with bizarre riddles until they slay themselves.
I quite agree. I think if I avoid the quick and easy path, of throwing in fire breathing dragons, I’ll miss the opportunity to create something new and potentially better.
Its a dragon in a sense like Glaurung was. Or a Komodo dragon is.
I featured Yag Kosha’s kin (a falcon-headed humanoid) as entities in one memorable adventure. These beings are accomplished magical praeternatural entities. And whos to say theyre all benevolent?
I wouldn’t let a satyr within sight distance of a house… let alone a hamlet, village, town, or city 