Sword and sorcery pdf

With some work can be applied to DnD. You disconnect racial feature from race , and name it as a cultural trait. Nagol Unimportant. Since the mods yanked the OP picture without leaving the link, can we get a new text download link please?

CapnZapp said:. Ath-kethin said:. Nagol said:. I didn't post any pictures, just a link to the book. I'm always surprised by the fact that monsters, blood and violence seems to be OK in movies, comics and games; but some nipples must be censored like the plague.

S'mon said:. What are you, French?! Clearly not American anyway. Are you using the Pathfinder or 5E version of Primeval Thule? BlivetWidget Explorer. JPL said:. I place Xoth as a continent to the east of the main landmass in my Primeval Thule campaign. I've used material from all four of the published adventures and they work great. Post reply. Insert quotes…. Similar Threads. Release [Xoth. Replies 0 Views He came off the floor and began to dress, Wrapping his midsection with a cut of leather which was held to him by a wide leather girdle and leather belts.

His long sword and dagger were strapped in, lacing his feet into his high buskins. Who is living false in my presences? He tightened the leather belt strap that held his long sword close his midsection. He fastened his sword to its pivot on his hip. The door opens to a finger press, and he was out in the long hallway, moving with long strides. A woman came out of the shadows to meet him before he had much distance between himself and the room…. It was one of the slave girls assigned to them for comfort and entertainment, while the negotiations went on.

She was still in the gown she wore to his bed last night. It was very tight to the curves of her body. Like many warriors in the distant lands, the Barbarians had a fondness for the slave girls of other lands. Unfamiliar and new to their touch and senses, they were a must-have when abroad. She was a good dancer on the tables of the drinking hall and was good for keeping his bed warm on the cold nights, far from home.

Her dark eyes were frightened things. All of you. No more Ophirns in Senorech! Get out of Sennorech and stay out! The Barbarian drew a deep breath, and a vein swelled and throbbed in his hard face. The slave girl shook against him. You must be on your ship and away from Sennorech before the Red Dragons descend upon you and your men!

THERE was nothing he could do now, nothing except swallow the bitter truth that he was running from a fight, that he was leaving his dead on these distant shores. Gard, the old mystic, one of his men, who had scratched names on graves from Akka Jungles to the Ice Steps of Makron, who had been born to the service of the golden eagle, and now lay with no man to whisper a prayer over his dead body.

The Barbarian shook himself like a cat stretching after a sleep. The anger boiled within him, locked inside his guts by his tight lips. Her hands tightened until the red nails cut into his flesh. They roused the other Ophirn Barbarians, thirty men in all, the most allowed in Sennorech by the High Mor. Men tumbled from their bunks with sleep glazing their eyes, but they wakened fast enough, with the slave girl and their Barbarian King to whip them into action.

Go now! Get aboard the ship. Sobering men in fur and leather were filing out of the barracks by twos and threes, with spear, ax, sword, and shields slung over shoulders. They moved across the city in a body, their hands gripping at the weapon of choice to defend them from any Red Dragons that would attack openly.

It was easy, down here among the sewer run-off and the rats that ran along it, to stand and wait until the boot falls faded. The slave girl came once to the ramp and called, but her voice echoed hollowly in the cellar unanswered. By the time they got through the city and down to the ship, the Barbarian was sliding through the shadows cast by the monolithic buildings, and moving along the broad avenue flanking the Jaddarak canal.

Ahead of him were the white bulks of the palace keep of the High Mor of Sennorech. Somewhere in those towering windowless edifices, the old mystic lay dead. He reached the high stone wall of the garden and was hoisting himself over the stone wall top when a dark-faced Sennorech caught sight of his barbaric garb and screeched an alert.

The Barbarian cursed in his throat and dropped to the ground inside the garden, his sandals printing their soles deep in the loam of a bed of Thallan sunflowers. He made for the arched doorway at the near end of the gardens. At a run, he came into the darkness of the groined arches. He knew his way through these labyrinthine tunnels. The hoarse, brazen pitch of the bry-horns were startling in the Sennorech morning. Cutting at every shadow, he thought.

Sooner or later one of the shadows will give him up! As an Ophirn it would be expected. Expected and guarded against.

But Sennorech was not Ophir, and in Sennorech things were rarely done for spiritual reasons. There, he will find Gard the old mystic he had ordered to play King in place of himself. If Red Dragons or Sfarran assassins were expecting him, he was ready. Curiously, all of the rooms at the top floor of the castle were empty, save for the crumpled man who lay on his back, next to a smoldering pile of black Sfarran assassin cloaks.

The Barbarian went to his knees, and his lips moved. It was a simple thing, that oath. Many men had spoken it until it had become a part of the creed of those who roamed the world. He grimaced, and then reason came into his head. His advisor was recently dead, not a rotting corpse.

He sat on his ankles and forgot that a mile away the Eclipse was about to set sail. But this was no time to solve puzzles.

With a snap of his fingers, he slipped the slender green jewel into the binding that was tight about an ankle. He went to the window and stared down at the splashing fountains and the sunflower gardens half a mile below him. They all moved here and there in the shrubbery, slashing at ferns and jungle vines with their swords and spears. They would be expecting him to hide. They would be expecting him to keep retreating ahead of them until they trapped him high above, in this room or on the rooftop.

A guard and soldier would act like that. They would do the smart and sensible thing. He wandered the rooms of the top floor of the palace until he found the garderobe. The place where all must come to let go of what they had eaten the day before. It was simply a vertical shaft with a stone seat at the top. Garderobes emptied into moats, he thought. With the edge of his dagger, he worked at the stone seat until it came loose from the wall. He crawled into the shaft and replaced the stone as best he could.

Then, sliding and levering himself downwards. It stank bad enough, but he finally came to the end of the shaft and crawled his way up through a street grille, and headed for the docks. He was moving up the central avenue of Sennorech. His mind was torn cleanly with a thin hard grief, for he was remembering the old mystic, Gard, and the way of his smiling and his gentle voice. It was a good companionship, that of Gard and himself, born of their mutual effort to rule Ophir.

And now it was over. No more would he see that smile or listen to that voice or wonder how the old man had come to know so much more than he about so many things—. All guards are hereby warned. The Barbarian must not leave Sennorech. He is to be slain on sight, under penalty of the Red Dragons! It sank in after a while. But how? How did they find out that he is the real King of the Ophirns? Crom shook his head and looked down at himself, wrapped in fur and leather as a true Barbarian kept himself.

They would be searching the docks just about now, moments before sendoff. They would dismantle the ship to find him. And there would be others, swords in their hands, stretched all around the city. They would slay on sight or they would suffer the fate of the Red Dragon and no one in his right mind cared even to think about punishment, that took a man a month of agony to die.

The Barbarian stripped naked in the shadows and bundled his wild dressings into a ball and weighed it with his sword; Skull-Biter. He made a compact bundle and threw it up, through the lengthening shadows, onto a low, sloping roof. Let them find that when they could! Then he turned and ran on the sun-warmed bricks, away from the dock, toward the dirty alleyways that were the Akkalan slums.

The Barbarian thought of Hammeron Black-eyed, a dwarf raider with a colossal thirst for pale yellow fire that was Sennorech ale. His lips twitched as his memory ran on to the lowland taverns, sampling every liquid that the skills and arts of men could brew.

Hammeron Black-eyed was a raider. A soldier for hire. But traded in tycat furs, and spent his profits faster on drink, than the fierce little desert tycats could breed and run to his traps. The city of the Sennorech had been built eons ago when their primate ancestors first modeled clay from mud and water.

As the years piled knowledge on their shoulders, their buildings grew and expanded, but they still showed the heterogeneous planning the first Sennorech had put into them. Under the creaking signs and iron grille balconies, in the dark street shadows, even a naked man could run free and unmolested. He came to a square of light and an open door under a carven tycat. Carefully he crept closer listening to the song a hundred throats were bellowing through the smoke and the wine and ale fumes.

He came inside on soundless feet and stood sheltered by a solid oak railing. She leaned on the wooden tabletop, and her almond-shaped eyes were clear, and her crimson hair a flame caught in the blaze of a wall torch. The Barbarian let his eyes linger on her loveliness, but it was the dwarf raider he needed. With the scar across his face and a full foaming tankard at his mouth, that he had come to see.

Hammeron Black-eyed felt the sting of the rock on his forehead. He lowered his mug and swore by a dozen gods at the ill manners of men who would toss rocks in the middle of such a song. She pressed the key to her dressing room into his hand, and when he had slipped through the men and women toward the door, she stood so others could see her.

On tiny golden feet, she climbed from chair to tabletop, and her bare arms wore amber serpents writhing in the crimson half-light. The Barbarian caught the fire of her throaty singing just as Hammeron whipped the cloak off his shoulders and flung it about his chest.

This way, across the sill and through the alley to her doorway! And as the words came through his teeth, the raw fury that twisted him showed in his eyes. Talk as you want — it helps ease the pain under your navel. It blinds a man. The dwarf raider turned the key in the lock and the stout wooden door opened inward to a tiny room where an oil lamp cast a dim yellow glare on a dressing table and stool. Womanly garments hung from a peg-rack on the wall above a tycat-skin bed. The Barbarian sat on the bed, and with elbows on knees he looked at the floor and began to swear.

If only Hobgob himself were alive, and here to fly away over Cureeng with his mean little soul!! Hammeron chuckled, and Barbarian bit down on his tongue and glared hard at him. The little man moved to the dressing table and lifted a golden carafe.

He went to pour the fiery liquid it held, then turned to glance at the Barbarian. He shook his head and went across the room and gave him the carafe. Take it all. Crom tilted the carafe and let the smokey quistl slide into his mouth.

After a long while, he tossed the carafe aside and drew air into his lungs. He came to his feet and walked up and down. Some sort of disguise. I can talk their language well enough. The High Mor! A god and a priest to these heathen Sennorech!

The dwarf shook his head. But forget this vengeance for a long time. Maybe forever. Crom put out his hand and lifted the dwarf off the floor and shuck him. Cut him down as he slept! No way to strike back! No chance to fight for the life he loved! He put the little man down and patted his arm. Hammeron rubbed his chest where his jerkin had pinched his flesh. But not strong enough to buck the High Mor on Sennorech!

The door came open and Flaith slid in, away from the reek of winey air and the sound of roaring voices. She closed and locked the door and set her back to it.

She was a woman to stir the pulse of a man, in her bronze gown with its slits and deep neck, and the tight fit of its cloth to the swell of her haunches. Her almond eyes with the long curving lashes, the red fullness of a moist mouth and the smooth forehead low under the flaming hair had made her the darling of the quarter. She looked at Crom with her anger bright in her green eyes, and her lips thinned to a tense line.

A woman can be a fool! I was one just now, with the thoughts I had of you. Flaith whirled and went to her dressing table. She fumbled at a jar, lifting the lid and dipping her fingers into jet cream. Wipe away its hardness and its pain. And somewhere here in all these clothes will be something to fit you. Hammeron, look among them! For an hour the Barbarian sat while they worked on him, and when the hour was done, he stared at himself in the mirror and swore by the eye of Balor himself that no man on all Sennorech would know him.

A man who sings to a woman a song to coax music from her thighs and runs with the dawn! Crom laughed. I remember a night I sang of my hunger for a woman on a balcony over these canals of Jaddarak before I put that song to the test and coaxed music from her flesh. Flaith shrugged her shoulders. And when Crom would have argued, she put her fingers across his lips and shoved him toward the door. Do you think I want those fingers coaxing music from anyone other than me?

The old road from Akkalan to the cities of the Inland deserts is long and broken. The desert spins their sandy webs across the shards of its ancient cobblestones. Gaunt black ruins of forgotten cities can be glimpsed dimly in the fading sunset, at the foot of the Samarinthine Hills, or standing atop the stone slabs that mark the caravan routes from Pint to Kanadar.

Few used the old stone road, and the few who did travel it were so wrapped in their own cares—for this was a road much frequented by criminals and their like—they had no thought for the man or woman who sat by the edge of a running stream, twenty feet from the crumbled side of the highway.

And then the sound was softening, deepening. The Barbarian opened his eyes at that and held her so as to admire all of her curves. Flaith wriggled her naked toes to the lilting rhythms he drew from his touch. The girl rolled on her back in the grass, and the worn cloth of her blouse grew taut across her breasts. Make up your own words while I play to your ears and the sunlight, and the joy of being alive!

I ought to be thinking of finding the High Mor and choking the life from his throat with these hands!! Flaith put her long fingers to her red hair and shook it free to the breeze. Crom had watched, sick and twisted. He went mad for a little while, and Flaith clung to him with sharp nails digging into his arm and back, screaming in his ear. Only when she buried her teeth in his neck and tasted blood did he come back to sanity. Now, remembering all that, and knowing how the death of his men and the destruction of the Eclipse ate in his middle with a sort of sharp, acid bitterness, Flaith watched the Barbarian lift his fist to the cloudless sky.

Crom wondered. The Barbarian brooded less and less in the days that followed, and as they moved along the road that bent in a wider arc about Drekkora and beyond the snow-topped hills of Sharn, he slipped back into the Crom the Barbarian she had known in the taverns. Laughter came back to his lips, and he turned more and more to her, coaxing magic from her curves, that seemed to soothe his spirit. As they played, Flaith hummed with him, and words came to her lips, words that matched the wild, clear music that they made together to the ancient melodies.

The stalls that lined the Square of the Clonn Fell were hung with priceless tapestries from the looms of Beinoll and the Drithdraga and were bright with the potteries of Lamanneen. Men and the women of city house and desert tent brushed through the stalls, fingering the wares, haggling over prices, dipping into leather purses for stored prices. No man would have known the Barbarian in this brown stranger with the naked chest gleaming through the rents of his worn, dusty jerkin, with his loose cloth trousers fastened at naked ankles with silk cording.

And no man would have known Flaith in the dark-skinned gypsy wanton, with her midriff bare above her flapping skirt of transparent teal and below the worn halter that bound her breasts. She was a gamin who laughed and swayed her hips as she sang, and her eyes flashed and flirted with the slack-jawed farmers in from the fields and furrows. A sudden jostling took the farmers and the merchants as they made way sullenly for the file of Sfarri soldiers who came shouldering a path arrogantly through the press.

They looked like fighting men, trim in black and gilt field uniforms. Their black eyes moved everywhere, missing nothing. Now the Sfarri detail was closer to the marble fountain where Crom sat with Flaith huddled close against him.

He could feel the shiver run through her bare arm where it pressed his side. He could read the approval in them. A man cursed softly in the shadows. There was a wild flurry of capes and sandal feet. A peddler, with a scraggly gray beard flowing across his chest, ran like a frightened rat from a group of Kas cattlemen and into a thick thong of rug merchants from Stig.

Crom felt the fury rise in him. The Sennorech governed the people of this land as they might a herd of cattle. There was no emotion in the chase. It was hunting a man down, capture him! In his darkest eyes, Crom read the angry terror that lay deep within him.

Teeth gritted, Crom moved clumsily, bumping into the foremost of the Sfarri pursers, throwing him off balance. Two others ran into him and fell heavily to the cobblestones of the square. The Sfarri officer rose, tight-lipped at this clumsiness.

His hand went to the hilt of his sword. Crom rammed a fist to his middle and slid sideways, the green crystal in his hand. The blow knocked the crystal from his hand. He scrambled after it, where it lay on the cobblestones. His fingers missed as he snatched at it as it made clinging sounds against the stone street. At the harsh, discordant sound that rose into the air, the Sfarri officer who had been reaching for him fell awkwardly to the stones, sprawling lifelessly.

Other Sfarri were falling too as if the breath of life had been blown from them. They lay here and there beside the fountain, like dead men. Crom stared dumbly, hearing the shouts of the people of Clonn Fell falling back from the lifeless Sfarri soldiers. Then he whirled and slipped in among the crowding merchants and farmers, pretending that he was driven by stark terror. A moment of wild flurried movement, and he was free, darting behind a wooden wagon toward the heavy drapes of a carpet stall.

Flaith was shrinking back, also losing herself in the milling mob. He caught her hand, dragged her into an alleyway where the massive stone walls of ancient buildings towered high above them. The dark shadows they cast lay like shielding hands that shrouded them in sudden darkness.

They went swiftly through the narrow streets, burdened only by the green crystal. Under a stone archway, Crom swung to the right. A small figure stood in the doorway, beckoning to them. It was the bearded peddler Crom had saved from the soldiers. An oak door opened. From it, a stone stair led down into a pit of Stygian blackness.

They went swiftly, toward a stream of water that rushed and gurgled darkly between two narrow paths of brick that jutted outward from the sheer rock walls. Quickly, along the ledge! Gods be with us! The peddler whimpered in his fear as he scurried along the narrow brick ledge. Crom and Flaith ran after him. Soon their sandals were wet with the accumulated filth and slime of centuries.

When they emerged into bright sunlight, they stood on a wide beach where the gray, cold waters of the Taganian Sea rolled restlessly. Flaith sank on a rock, one hand pushing back her thick red hair. Crom read her weariness in her haggard face. Lunol shrugged. It was Flaith who explained. It is a place forbidden to all people of Sennorech. The old man whimpered his fright. It was many months ago. He was a tall man with a bald head and scrawny, withered arms. And yet there was something in the manner of his walking, something in the way he held his head, that sent a cold chill of terror down my spine!

Terrible, frightening dreams! Dreams of places where no man has ever been! The soldiers of Sennorech have been hunting me ever since then. Once I am on its sands no man will ever be able to find me! I know them as I know the fingers of my hands.

Crom looked at Flaith. They know what we look like. We left the Sfarri soldiers lying as dead men, remember! Why they fell out of the air like poisoned insects. Why they fell I do not know. Do you? Lunol shrugged his shoulders. I do not know about these things. Now players and demonlords can add the Sorcery half of their Sword and Sorcery games.

Containing all the rules for summoning spirits, creating sorcerous items, and much, much more! Issue 5: Lairs! This issue includes all the templates, guidelines and rules for creating your own Lairs and Stories for the game. Printed in Black and White with a colour cover, measuring 8. Issue 6: Sorceress of Zhaan. This is one big issue! And that's not all! Newsletter Email address:. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.

Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.