Tuesday, November 13, 2012

King Kull

I've started rereading Howard's Kull stories, and I must say that I am really enjoying them.  What I love most about these tales is that the world in which they are staged is alien, cthonic, and mysterious.  Howard's scant, but nonetheless evocative, descriptions impart a sense age.  In point of fact, Valusia, the imperial city from which Kull rules, is succinctly described as being one of cyclopean stone and shadow.  It is an alien palace fashioned by unknown architects eons before man was upright or conscious of itself.   This sense of age and mystery is reinforced by Howard's economic habit of limiting his descriptions to the essential and the immediate.  We, the reader, discover what lurks beneath the royal palace, or over the next hill at the same time as Howard.

He is, dare I say, even less civilized than his Cimmerian cousin, and just as melancholy and irascible.  In short, I love these tales of the axe-wielding king, and I plan to glean what I can and use it in my campaign.  

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