Arejun

Thanks for the input Vince, also I saw in the essay published by darkstorm some time back

http://www.dodgenet.com/~moonblossom/Cmuse14.html

he mentions “the blood stained God” haven’t read the book, any comments about the story?

I am going through the process of preparing to bring the characters in my campaign to Zamora (we are about to finish ancient kingdoms: Mesopotamia adapted to hyboria, great work Thulsa)

http://hyboria.xoth.net/adventures/mesopotamia_conversion_notes.htm

I remembered this essay from some time back posted on this forum, I though people new to the forum might find it as useful as I
 
Belkregos said:
I am going through the process of preparing to bring the characters in my campaign to Zamora (we are about to finish ancient kingdoms: Mesopotamia adapted to hyboria, great work Thulsa)

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Let us know how it all played out...

- thulsa
 
thulsa said:
Belkregos said:
I am going through the process of preparing to bring the characters in my campaign to Zamora (we are about to finish ancient kingdoms: Mesopotamia adapted to hyboria, great work Thulsa)

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Let us know how it all played out...

- thulsa

Warning some sppoilers

I only was able to run the adventure till chapter 10 “the Ziggurat of the ghoul queen” before work got kind of in the way and one of the players had to pick up the game, we just gave him the boot but Voltumna is going to finish the rest
After that im going to pick up again, that’s way I’m preparing
I’ll comment about the chapters I set up,
the one I enjoyed the most was “the red waste” I always enjoy interesting NPC’s and the Zuaguirs have a lot of flavor, the intrigue with the vulture priest made it interesting

the ziggurat of the ghoul queen was cool, the players where freaked out when they tried to sneak in through one of the back tunnels and I had the “sleeping” ghouls burrow in the tunnel walls covered in mud and they started to wake up when they where in the middle

the oasis of purple dreams was the first scenario I runned and it set the tone just right

the sea of bones gave a sense greatness, of walking in a place where forgotten history was written

They where barely able to escape the pit of Yaht, when the players figured out the background of the scenario they really liked it but knew better and did not return

Voltumna wrote about another session
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8681&highlight=
“my zamorian thief is 10th level now! in our previous to last session, we were cought by the enemy. so in the last session we were bound in a tent, waiting to be sacrificed in a ghastly ritual to a dark god. the bounds were hard to escape, none could pull escape artist or strenght checks, but the barbarian (belkregos in this forum) doing a feat of strenght burst his bounds, and then everyone was untied. the thief sneaked out of the tent in the enemy campgorund, soldiers everywhere, but senaked into the next tent where there were a bunch of enemy soldiers asleep. the thief picked up an axe and slaughtered everyone in the tent laying there helpless, and at disadvantage to perceive noise. he then disguised himself as a enemy soldier, gathered a bunch of weapons and got back to his friends. he then got out again to create a diversion that would give alies a chance to escape. the thief entered two or three other tents with asleep soldiers, and slayed them all in their sleep. something like 20-24 foes. it was exhilarating to roll all that dice: 3d8 form the axe, 6d6 from sneak attack as he was unarnoured. the fort dcs were impossible to make in the order of 40+ dc. but as always, the thief failed his move silently check with the very last soldier laying helplessly asleep. the bastad awakened, and started shouting for help. there was a brief combat, and the thief slayed the soldier just before help was coming through the flaps of the tent. as the thief was already disguised as a soldier he shouted: "the asassin just escaped through the bakside of the tent, search for him!" the newly arrived soldiers hesitated for a while, but the thief pulled out the bluff, and started leading them in the chase in the oppiste direction of his firends! as they run thorugh ruined streets (playing mesopotamia) he directed the soldiers to follow different paths and got rid of all of them to finally escape to his own hideaway. it was pretty neat, none of my thieves never slayed so many foes in a single game session!
and then all the party came back and slayed the sorcerers and their henchmen. we got back our akbitanan weapons, and are ready to dungeon crawl again in the main ziggurat. it was tough. the thief didn't shine as before as expected, trying to get near to the archsorcerer to pull a sneak attack, but we are on the path of the tomb raider again.”

I’ll let Voltumna write about the chapters he is going to set up
 
Where is Arejun? According to the Shadizar Box Set it is centrally located almost due west of Shadizar (Book 1 inside cover). The Tower of the Elephant has it on the Road of Kings south-east of Shadizar.
 
Ok...

I know this has been discussed before.

I reread "The Bloodstained God" last night, trying to get some inspiration for an adventure. It starts off in Arenjun, and wouldn't you know, REH places Arenjun on the eastern border of Zamora near Turan. It takes Conan maybe six hours of riding to get into the Kenzankian Mountains (which happen to for a border between Zamora and Turan).

Now, I have the Shadizar box set, but, why is it that both Shadizar and Arenjun are misplaced? This isn't the first geographical error that I have noticed. As mentioned before, Zamboula is too far north according to the writings of REH.

Sure, as a GM I can place them wherever I want. But I have this really kewl map that came with the GM screen (which has who knows how many errors), and I really don't want to reread every story just to pick out all the geographical errors and then explain these to my players, etc.

Seems to me that the Mongoose staff and writers have done a great job of putting these products together and keeping true to REH's work, but I would like to know:

Who is to blame for these geographical errors???

(sorry, I was in the Army for almost 10 years and was pretty good with a map IMHO)
 
Mongoose, please stop using the unnecessary pastiche name 'Arenjun', and referring to the setting of the Conan tales as 'Hyboria'.
 
urdinaran said:
Ok...

I know this has been discussed before.

I reread "The Bloodstained God" last night, trying to get some inspiration for an adventure. It starts off in Arenjun, and wouldn't you know, REH places Arenjun on the eastern border of Zamora near Turan.

No. L. Sprague de Camp erroneously places it there. REH did not write that as a Conan story. De Camp changed the original REH tale into a Conan story and got the geography wrong in the process.

The original story was called “The Trail of the Blood-Stained God” (and renamed, IIRC, as "The Curse of the Crimson God"), and was set in modern-era (for Howard) Afghanistan. I believed it starred Kirby O'Donnell. It definitely is not a canonical REH Conan tale.

urdinaran said:
It takes Conan maybe six hours of riding to get into the Kenzankian Mountains (which happen to for a border between Zamora and Turan).

Now, I have the Shadizar box set, but, why is it that both Shadizar and Arenjun are misplaced?

They are not misplaced in Mongoose's game. If Arenjun is considered to be one and the same with The City of Theives, then L. Sprague de Camp misplaced Arenjun. Mongoose's product (which treats the two cities as one and the same) has it placed correctly according to REH's story (which takes precedence over de Camp's).

Even Dale Rippke places The City of Thieves where we placed it (and makes convincing arguments for that placement). He moves Shadizar, though (but REH never says where Shadizar is), and makes Arenjun a separate city from the City of Thieves, which is a nice way of handling it.

urdinaran said:
Who is to blame for these geographical errors???

Blame L. Sprague de Camp. His rewrites and pastiches have forever screwed up the landscape to the point that nothing will ever match if we try to include his stories alongside REHs.
 
Faraer said:
Mongoose, please stop using the unnecessary pastiche name 'Arenjun', and referring to the setting of the Conan tales as 'Hyboria'.

Although the former does not bother me, the latter is a pet peeve of mine as well. The setting should be The Hyborian Age, not Hyboria.

I have no problem with calling The City of Thieves either that or Arenjun.

Seriously, though. Who would name their city "The City of Thieves"? It is obviously a nickname.
 
VincentDarlage said:
Seriously, though. Who would name their city "The City of Thieves"? It is obviously a nickname.

Imagine the problems their Chamber of Commerce would have attracting new businesses. :)
 
VincentDarlage said:
Seriously, though. Who would name their city "The City of Thieves"? It is obviously a nickname.
But I can easily imagine the nickname supplanting whatever original name the settlement had. People there just call it 'the city', and others know it by its sordid reputation as 'Zamora's Thief-City', etc. So the 'Arenjun' name is unneeded, part of de Camp's literal-minded systematization of Howard as Derleth did with Lovecraft.
 
GregLynch said:
VincentDarlage said:
Seriously, though. Who would name their city "The City of Thieves"? It is obviously a nickname.

Imagine the problems their Chamber of Commerce would have attracting new businesses. :)

Their new ad campaign:
"What you bring to Arenjun, stays in Arenjun." :shock:
 
Faraer said:
But I can easily imagine the nickname supplanting whatever original name the settlement had. People there just call it 'the city', and others know it by its sordid reputation as 'Zamora's Thief-City', etc. So the 'Arenjun' name is unneeded, part of de Camp's literal-minded systematization of Howard as Derleth did with Lovecraft.

To be totally honest, I actually prefer how Dale Rippke handled it - in his article The City of Thieves, he makes the city Arenjun a different city altogether. I am not sure CPI would allow Mongoose to make that official, though.
 
I like Dale Rippke reasoning also. What strikes me about this, is that having a lot of foreigners would be an ideal situation for Zamoran thieves. They probably find that not fraternizing with the foreigners makes it harder to get identified. I mean, don't all Zamorans look alike to you?

Also, the real name of the city may be a homonym for thief, and some bright foreigner made the translation and the Zamorans just never corrected the arrogant foreigners. It could actually have been, "City of Silence," or something like that.
 
Back
Top