Road of Kings, The

The lands of Hyboria are a rich tapestry of wealth, poverty, pitch-black evil and epic struggles for life in a world determined to kill even the hardiest. Herein is written the descriptions of this harsh world: Proud lands of tarnished civility burning with civil wars; barbaric wildernesses of savage killers hunting with primitive weapons; dreaming kingdoms of dark priests worshipping with bloodied daggers; noble demesnes of arrogant knights fighting with grim determination; ancient realms of haunted towers lurking with baleful menace; towering crags of icy rock slumbering with hidden peoples; and great seas of crimson waves brimming with cruel pirates.

As the Road of Kings takes a traveler through the glittering and decadent realms of the lost Hyborian Age, so too does this tome work toward the same end. These fabled lands of ancient times are the shimmering backgrounds of your Conan games - the gleaming backdrop against which your action is set. These cultures, the grand forbearers of more modern times, are magnificent and degraded all at the same time. Each culture has its dark, rotten core and its flashy exterior, its gilt mask of civility.

It is our world, yet it is not a world any of us would recognize. It is a world dimmer than the memory of a fleeting dream, yet is bright as the glowing dimness of a dying ember lying amid the coals of a lost fire. It is a world of the distant past, from a time before our recorded history, a time that is forgotten by us. Almost.

Open up the book of Von Junzt, which lies grim and foreboding in front of you, and read about an age undreamed of by modern science. Open the tome called Nameless Cults, where is written a translation of the Nemedian Chronicles, and read of black eons known to us as the Hyborian Age.