The Ballad of Asgrimm Thunderbeard

You had me at "rules for dinosaur racing."

I had my first experience of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons on Thursday whilst visiting my wee cousin in Dundee. A bit anxious since I hadn't played a game since 3rd edition, but I figured it couldn't be that different, and since it utilised the new stuff from Tomb of Annihilation, how could I not?

The King's Mitramas Message

 Art by Gigi.

After his Accession on the Day of the Lion in the Year of the Elk, The King issued his first Mitramas Message from his balcony at Tamar. In his message, he paid tribute to his supporters, and asked people to remember him at the time of his official Coronation the following year.

Each Yuluk, at this time, the King of Aquilonia spoke to his people from this grand balcony. Today, by your will and consent, I am doing this to you, who are now my people.

I was born in Cimmeria, the son of a blacksmith with no royal blood. In many ways, I was no different to the rude savages who founded the ruling dynasties of this kingdom so many thousands of years ago, they who founded this land on iron and sinew. My predecessor and his kin could trace their lineage for a thousand years, but they showed precious little kingly aptitude in government. By Crom, I may have no royal blood, but it is as red as anyone's from the painted nobles of Pellia to the lowliest beggar of Shamar, and none have spilt their blood as freely for this nation as I!

Just in time for Valentine's Day!

CONAN THE BARBARIAN #16
Brian Wood (W), Davide Gianfelice (A), Dave Stewart (C), and Massimo Carnevale (Cover)
On sale May 15
FC, 32 pages
$3.50
Ongoing
After a series of trials that nearly tore them apart, Conan and Bêlit use a brief respite to embark on a vision quest. But with violence, pain, and death their constant companions, the vision quickly becomes a nightmare!
• New story arc from Northlanders team Brian Wood and Davide Gianfelice!
 - Solititation from Newsarama

Presented entirely without comment. Happy Valentine's!

The Expedition: Epilogue

(The following constitutes the legible sections of a moleskin journal recovered at Site R-4 by HMLGEM.  The first page is erratic and scribbled, apparently written following the rest of the journal, and likely the final document written by the deceased, whose remains have been sent to Greenwich for aether-analysis)

Why write a diary that no-one would ever read? The thought occurred to me as I shiver in this bloody, guts-strewn hole in the ice, the heat given off by the discarded entrails of fresh kills providing little respite. I expect I shall have no more than a few hours. I hope they don't find me until then. I can only hope that should His Majesty's League for the Governance of Extraordinary Matters order a second mission, or deign us valuable enough for a rescue. Crozier's gone, our League retinue are gone. I pray that they discover this journal, and discover that this is the Joulutonttu's land. I only pray that they do not remember that their realm once spread farther...

I can hear them now. Must stop.  Must.... sleigh bells... laughing... bells... bells...

(The rest of the page is unreadable. Beside the remains was a map of King William Island, with the following written in blood over the landmass)

The Blog That Time Forgot, Bite-Sized: SFX Fantasy - The Ultimate Celebration, Fantasy Author Favourites, and Martin vs Tolkien

(I have a post regarding the comic launch in the works, but until then, here's a quick post)

On a whim, I decided to pick this up back in March:

I guess with John Carter and fantasy/science fiction adaptations being on my mind of late, I wondered what they would have to say about the film before the John Carter Is The Biggest Flop Of All Time meme really went into overdrive. Turns out... not a lot.  And frankly, there's not a lot of many great fantasy authors for a supposed Ultimate Celebration.

On the plus side...

Well, just as I thought I was out, they drag me back in.  Actually, no, I have no-one to blame but myself for going back to the Conan Movie Blog: after all, this whole thing is my fault.

I'm officially not allowed to complain about The Legend of Conan any more.

Truly a Phyrric Victory

To be frank, I don't know why I decided to enter this particular Topless Robot contest, but something pressed me onward. Some ghostly hand was pushing on my shoulder, and I treated Disqus as a sort of electronic confessional booth. It turns out I got a T-shirt for my troubles!

This may be more of a confessional than an entry, but...

Since July 2010, I've been the site runner for the Conan Movie Blog. I'm also a very devoted Robert E. Howard fan. In November 2009, I read the character sheet and script for the film, and dismissed it as worthless garbage. Why, then, did I take over the site? Because this film was going to be the biggest widespread exposure of Conan in a long time, the first new film in almost 30 years, and already the vast majority of the internet seemed content to believe this was a remake of the 1982 film, blissfully unaware of the franchise's literary pedigree. I felt somebody had to make sure there was a voice in the wilderness spreading the word of Robert E. Howard.

So over the course of 2010 and 2011, I wrote an obscene amount of material on the upcoming film and it's, at times, completely nonexistent relationship with the source material. Every screen cap, every behind-the-scenes photo, every magazine cutting went over with a fine-toothed comb. All for a film that would end up one of the biggest critical and commercial flops of 2011 - and I knew it would be since 2009. It all culminated in a 20,000 word critique of the film written shortly after my initial viewing, though I dread to make a word count of my hundreds of other posts.

The Phyrric victory? I knew that no matter how terrible the film ended up, no matter how poorly received it was, I know that I did my best to promote Robert E. Howard on a wide platform, to educate the masses who thought this was just another '80s remake, and to provide the most information possible. Many news sites linked to my posts, journalists and crew members involved in the film contacted me to clarify reports, I got a press pass to the London premiere, and I made new friends. All for a film I predicted would fail in 2009.

Rob's comment:

Wow. Devoting four years of your life to running a mostly negative website based on film that no one else ever cared about, or will ever care about, and in fact most people have probably already forgotten? That's quite an accomplishment -- and certainly a victory in the sense that you were doing as right as possible for your favorite nerd franchise -- but one that accomplished absolutely nothing. Your hard, meaningless work shall no longer go unrewarded, sir, although I don't believe winning this t-shirt will upgrade your act from "Pyrrhic victory" to "regular victory."

That damned film. Or, rather, that damned me. I was going through all my unfinished posts, of Almuric, gazetteers, filmgoer's guide, barbarians, reviews and whatnot. I wondered how I let everything get so out of hand. Tens of thousands of words on ephemera like Bob Sapp's costume and the CGI matte paintings, yet I still haven't finished the series I started on The Cimmerian. I must've been absolutely mad. So I started working again. I'd been working hard getting Aquiromian Holiday done, as well as working on a few other posts. Then blogger ate a very long post I had started last year* and I quit in a fit of rage. Then I hit a rut with the Encyclopedia. Then I got another cold.

And then (that's enough of "then") I remembered the Don Herron kerfuffle, and a phrase I used in one post is starting to bother me: "this isn't a serious scholarship blog."  I don't know how that can be so, considering I take great pride in the scholarly material I've done on the blog, and that the Robert E. Howard Foundation saw fit to grant me a second-place Cimmerian Award. I started to think that saying this wasn't a serious scholarship blog was disrespectful to everyone who voted for me, and disrespectful to myself by proxy.  I'm glad I've talked things over with Don, and I really hope nobody was offended by that particular phrase.

Aquiromian Holiday has expanded to five parts now, and I think I might just release certain posts in my Almuric and gazetteer series out of sequence rather than let them fester away in Blogger. I was saving "The Lion Passes" for December, but I realised I didn't have anything appropriate for REH's birthday, so bumped it ahead of schedule - I have something else for Conan's birthday. I really don't want to lose my momentum.

*Why does hitting backspace randomly delete everything?  Why does it choose to save the draft RIGHT before I can undo it? And why, oh why, does Blogger not have a draft history function like Wordpress?

Another classic ruined by Al

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,

And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap —

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a steel battlesleigh, and eight giant reindeer,

Whose great grizzled driver stretched his neck with a crick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:

"Now! Thrasher, now! Crasher, now! Cancer and Hakon,

"On! Plummet, on! Cesspit, on! Thunder and Blacken;

"To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!

"Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of death — and St. Nicholas too:

And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The thunder and rumbling of each monstrous hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:

He was dress'd all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnish'd with ashes and soot;

A bundle of blades was flung on his back,

Axes and crossbows and swords in his sack:

His eyes burned with balefire, his teeth gleamed like ice,

His thews wrought of iron, his bones hewn from gneiss;

His great savage grin was taut, tight as a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a grim face, and a great barrel chest

That shook when he laugh'd at some grim pagan jest:

He was massive and strong, a vision from Hell,

And I scream'd when I saw him in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had reason to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And fill'd all the stockings; then turn'd with a jerk,

And clutching me by the crook of the throat,

He leapt up the chimney like a great mountain goat.

He sprung to his sleigh, and shot into the sky,

And dropped me to earth, to scream ere I die:

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

(With profuse apologies to Clement Clark Moore.  I was compelled to put something up for Christmas, so here's another classic ruined by shameless editing. As ever, I wish all my readers and Howard fans a marvellous Mitramas, a super Set Sacrificial Festival, a solemn, cheerless Cromhain, and of course, a merry Christmas!)

"It's your scholarship, Bobbie! Something's got to be done about your scholarship!"

With The Evolutionary Heroes of Robert E. Howard still on the horizon and more and more academically-minded folks recognizing Howard's scholarly virtues, it's with great enthusiasm that I announce the latest of the Shieldwall's assaults against the ivory towers of Academia who yet deny the Man from Cross Plains' merits as a Real Author of Real Literature - Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian. The press release is excellent, as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, cheerful explanation of Howard's Conan being more than just a dimwitted brute:

Conan Meets the Academy
Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian

Edited by Jonas Prida


Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6152-3
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8989-3
5 maps, 2 photos, tables, notes, bibliography, index
softcover (6 x 9) 2012

Buy Now!

Price: $35.00

Not Yet Published, Available Spring/Summer 2012 About the Book
In 1932, Robert E. Howard penned a series of fantasy stories featuring Conan, a hulking Cimmerian warrior who roamed the mythical Hyborian Age landscape engaging in heroic adventures. More than the quirky manifestation of Depression-era magazines, Conan the Barbarian has endured as a cultural mainstay for over 70 years. This multidisciplinary collection offers the first scholarly investigation of Conan, from Howard’s early stories, through mid-century novels and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic films, to the 2011 cinematic remake of Conan the Barbarian. Drawing on disciplines such as stylometry, archeology, cultural studies, folklore studies, and literary history, the essays examine statistical analyses of Conan texts, the literary genesis of Conan, later-day parodies, Conan video games, and much more. By displaying the wide range of academic interest in Conan, this volume reveals the hidden scholarly depth of this seemingly unsophisticated fictional character.
About the Author
Jonas Prida is an assistant professor of English and head of the English Department at the College of St. Joseph, in Rutland, Vermont.

Looks great!  Can't wait for its release, and to find out more about its contents. But there's something bothering me that I can't quite put my finger on... Wait...

This multidisciplinary collection offers the first scholarly investigation of Conan

What the...

"Aly!  You've got to come back with me - back to the future!

Whoa there, Doc, you want 8-year-old Aly, I'll just get him:

...

"Doc, I got my older self's Robert E. Howard Foundation award here, I was just going to try out my new victory pose!"

"Well, bring it along, it concerns it too!"

"What do you mean?  What happens?  Does something happen to Robert E. Howard?  Does he get erased from existence?"

"No, you and Robert E. Howard turn out fine: it's the scholarship, Aly!  Something's gotta be done about the scholarship!"

"According to my theory, someone interfered with Glenn Lord's discovery of Howard's work. If Glenn doesn't read it, he won't read any more Howard, he won't start The Howard Collector and he won't open the gates to Robert E. Howard scholarship - no Dark Barbarian, no Blood & Thunder, no Echos de Cimmerie, no Evolutionary Heroes, not even The Robert E. Howard Reader! That's why your copy of The Barbaric Triumph's disappearing from that photograph. The fanzines will follow, and unless you repair the damage, your Foundation Award'll be next!"

"Sounds pretty heavy, Doc!"

"Weight has nothing to do with it."

"You're right, I don't know why I used a popular idiom to illustrate my feelings to an absent-minded professor. To the Delorean!"

*I should point out that just after I posted this, Agent Theagenes posted this on the REH Forums:

I brought up that problematic sentence with Jonas this morning after I saw it and there is some discussion underway right now about changing it. His intent was not to diss all of the previous REH scholarship, but to point out that this is the first study of Conan as an over-all pop culture figure---not just Howard's Conan. But the sentence is poorly worded---hopefully it won't be much of a problem to get it changed.

So that's cleared up, but dammit, I just watched Back to the Future with my cousin and infant second-cousin for the first time (theirs, not mine) and I'm still buzzing from the fun of it.

** I should also point out that this was also partially inspired by my recognition of Glenn Lord's impending 80th birthday.  I truly hope to meet him someday, though due to his health and age and my wet-behind-the-ears level of experience in Texas, time is running out.  Unfortunately, I don't have a Delorean.

*** Damon Sasser alerted me to another rupture in the space-time continuum, as Doc and 8-year-old Aly inadvertently created a universe where Glenn Lord's journal was called The Howard Reader rather than The Howard Collecter. Luckily the original timeline has been restored, or my name isn't Al Rudiger Cunningham.

Conan vs Khal Drogo and other such silliness

It's interesting that following the little kerfuffle which emerged when we found out which fictional barbarian Jason Momoa has his money on, many seemed to think the dispute was about how REH fans are incensed that Jason picked the wrong choice.  However, I don't think that's the case.  For one thing, there isn't actually a debate, since we can't really know who would win out of Drogo or Conan for the simple reason that we barely know anything about the former, most specifically his combat prowess.

In A Game of Thrones, all we have to go on is hearsay.  Tales of how impressive the Khal was in battle, the fact that he has a massively long ponytail suggests he was never defeated in battle, the fact that everyone fears and respects him.  But we never see first hand evidence of his skills, strength and endurance.  He has a fantastic mystique and aura of death about him, but it's all just that: mystique and aura.  This was somewhat remedied by the TV show, but I maintain what I thought originally: that wasn't a fight, that was an execution.  Drogo was barely scratched by the "challenger," and he punished the would-be usurper with contemptuous ease.  Aside from that, we have practically no information to go on.

Conan, of course, is a different story.  We have plenty of first-hand accounts of the Cimmerian's battle against scores of different opponents. Duels, brawls, skirmishes, assaults, battles, sieges, with odds both against him and in his favour.  So we have a good idea of how Conan would fare against, say, Thomas Covenant, Imaro or Elric.* But against Drogo, all we can do is speculate.  All the more reason to be annoyed at Martin killing off one of the best characters in A Game of Thrones.

Conan, being a rather famous example of the badass barbarian warrior, is a regular combatant in such contests. However, given how vastly different Howard's Conan is from film-Conan, who is different from Marvel Conan, who is different from animated Conan... So you can have matchups go all over the place. And, of course, all are decided by vote.

Sometimes he's really punching above his weight:

Loss

Optimus Prime

17

to

85

Loss	Witch-King of Angmar	56	to	62
Loss	Wolverine	12	to	75

Others, he's come out on top when circumstances really point against it:

Win

He-Man

41

to

36

Win

The Balrog

13

to

12

Win

Alien King

24

to

8

And, predictably, there are other battles he really should've won:

Loss

Bruce Lee

60

to

62

Loss

Chewbacca

47

to

48

Loss

King Leonidas

58

to

76

That said, when it comes to fictional characters, the only person who would really win is who you want to win: all the attempted empirical deduction and analysis is, unfortunately for such pedantic folks as myself, subject entirely to the whim of circumstance, bias and story.

*Effortlessly, Decently and Poorly respectively.

Star Trek just isn't as expansive as Star Wars, according to Robot Chicken

I kind of like Robot Chicken.  It seems incredibly self-indulgent, a bunch of nerds making a bunch of nerdy sketches that only other nerds would get, but it has its moments every so often.  Plus the use of action figures adds a certain charm to it.

I think, however, that their Star Wars specials take things too far.  The whole episode felt less like an attempt at sketch humour, and more like a bunch of pals snarking and commenting on their favourite movies.  Family Guy did the same thing, and I can't fathom how these things are getting releases. However, Family Guy attempted to do the same thing with Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, but Paramount shot that down. Apparently, Robot Chicken aren't even interested in doing something on not just TWoK, but Trek in general. Their explanation is somewhat bizarre.

Phase II Settles NuTrek's Hash

Just so you know I haven't forgotten about my post on Abrams' Trek, I came across this delightfully playful little video.  Acme solves everything!

The Art of the Troll Quote

From Know Your Meme:

Troll quotes are image macros that consist of an image, a quote, and a recognized speaker, though none of the three match up to each other. The concept, as the meme name suggests, is to use such images to troll fandom boards for any of the three elements to get reactions to them.

And from its official website (for every meme worth its salt has its own domain):

1) Get a picture of someone people idolize. Obi Wan Kenobi, Barack Obama, Captain Kirk — any beloved public figure will do.

2) Slap on a famous quotation from a similar character from a different book or movie. Pick something close enough that a non-fan might legitimately confuse them. If you’re using Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, for example, you’ll probably want to grab a quote from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica.

3) Attribute the quotation to a third character, from yet a third universe. This way, nothing about your image is correct, and you’re trolling fans of all three characters at once.

This amuses me far more than it should.  These images range from the spectacular:

To the political:

To the ones that just seem truly right:

So, I decided to come up with one of my own:

Too subtle?

Best April Fool's News Ever.

At least, I think this is an April Fool's joke.

Bret McKenzie could be going from being Figwit in the Lord of the Rings to a big-screen presence in The Hobbit.

The Dominion Post can reveal that Sir Peter Jackson is trying to tempt the Flight of the Conchords co-star to take a role in the 3-D Hobbit films now being shot in Wellington.

It would spell a remarkable turnaround for McKenzie, who had a three-second spot as a pouting elf in the first Rings film.

A fan saw him on screen, as Frodo was frantically trying to deliver the ring to Mordor, and thought. "Frodo is great ... who is that?" And from that, the acronym Figwit was born.

It spawned the tongue-in-cheek figwitlives.net website in honour of the spunky elf – McKenzie was listed as one of Who magazine's 100 sexiest people in 2008 – and an hour-long documentary called Frodo is Great ... Who is That?!!

The final Rings instalment The Return of the King also saw the return of McKenzie, as an elf escort to Liv Tyler. He got one line.

He and fellow Conchords star Jemaine Clement later recorded the parody song Frodo, Don't Wear the Ring, which featured on their hit TV series and included the lines, "Frodo, don't wear the ring/ The magical bling bling/ You'll never be the lord of the rings".

McKenzie was at Wednesday night's opening of Miramar's new Roxy theatre along with Jackson and Hobbit cast members Martin Freeman, Sir Ian McKellen, James Nesbitt and Adam Brown.

Hobbit spokeswoman Melissa Booth did not reply to questions about McKenzie and his role in the film.

Figwit is to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings what the Pederast Priest is to Conan the Barbarian: a background character who does next to nothing, but manages to be one of those characters everyone remembers.

I'm more of a Harad Leader 2 guy, the LotR equivalent of Mahmud, but I digress.

So to have Figwit actually return for The Hobbit encapsulates everything I love and loath about the Jackson films: a bishie elf beloved by fangirls everywhere who gets more screen-time than Beregond, Bergil, Radagast, Glorfindel, Ghân-buri-Ghân, Imrahil, Beechbone, Elladan, Elrohir, Erkenbrand, Gildor, Ioreth, and other Tolkien characters who got shunted for Fralippa's fan-fiction.  Gah.

I really need to find out who Mahmud is.  Perhaps the Conan Completist crowd will know...

"Dammit, they stole my idea!": Hyperborean Mice

 Curse you, David Petersen!

This happens occassionally.  Sometimes I think up some cool little idea that I think nobody else could've come up with.  It might be whimsical, horrific, bizarre or just plain weird, but I feel like I just might have thought of something new.  (Shut up, Ecclesiastes.)  And then someone comes out with an idea pretty much just like what I was thinking.  Dammit, they stole my idea.  Or, in South Park speak, DEY TUK MAH DEER!

Such were my sentiments reading about Hyperborean Mice over at the Black Gate blog, by way of Scott Oden.

A Belated Happy Birthday to Ray Bradbury

Wow, 90 years old.  I was alerted by Morgan Holmes, but unfortunately I never got around to it until just now.

New Conan Action Figure... in Disguise!

I saw this over at the Robert E. Howard Forums, and had to mention it here.

Cromdamn Conan's Witnesses at the door again...

The symbol of the Conan's Witnesses, a Miliusnarian Revisionist Cromian denomination

Hilarious.  The jist of it: imagine if Conan the Barbarian fans decided to make a religion out of Crom worship, and made an unholy mishmash based mostly on the film while treating Howard as, essentially, supplementary material.  All that's missing are the irate Howardists coming around, denouncing the witnesses as blasphemers of the most profane heresy, infuriated at the mixing of the true, original texts of the great prophet Howard with the heretical teachings of the Miliusians.  Then you could get the Decampistas, the Lancer Orthodox, the Star Metal Adventists...

And Now, Some Nonsense: Conan in Cage Match 2010

Yay, Comic Book Battles!

It seems to be a particular thing for guys to make things compete. Who would win in a gunfight, George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt? Who would win in a race, a snail or a slug? Who would win in a bare-knuckle boxing match, Stephen Fry or Ronnie Corbet? Guys are weird, aren't we?

Being a very rough-and-tumble sort of guy, Conan turns up in these a lot. Here's one that caught me attention.

I Found Garrick!

Best of all, my patriotic ego leapt in joy at the sight of fellow Scots Rory McCann and Stewart Moore, who sports a mighty beard that mine wants to be when it grows up.
--Yours truly, in my Solomon Kane review

I'm thrilled to find Stewart Kenneth Moore has a fine blog (two in fact), not least because he was one of my favourite parts of the film. He, along with Rory McCann, brought a much appreciated Scottish flavour to the film. Sadly, the majority of his expansive brush has been shorn to a more manageable size, but I will pay tribute to his glorious bristles here.

To Stewart Kenneth Moore's Beard! May it find its way across Beardfrost Bridge to Vandykehalla.