History
Kara-Shehr, the City of the Dead, was stated to have been old already when Set emerged from the sands of Stygia.
It was an outpost of Acheron, a dark and hulking thing of great uneven walls, massive battlements and shattered, cyclopean columns,[1] surrounded by the Iranistani Desert southeast of the Vilayet Sea, at middle distance between the Hyrakanian city of Ashrak at north and the city of Bab-El-Shaitan at south.[3]
Kara-Shehr somehow became a lost city, inhabited and in ruins,[1] though the circumstances of this fall is unknown (possibly the Fall of Acheron).
Conan and Bourtai searched Kara-Shehr's ruins, looking for the precious Azure Eye gem, and found it in the castle's throne room, clutched by a skeletal hand. Bourtai took the great blue gem, but Conan made him put it back, and the skeletal hand closed on the gem again. At that moment, bandits appeared, having tracked Conan, and their leader, Kai Shaah, took the gem, only to be immediately killed by a mysterious creature of mists and fangs, burst from the wall as Conan worked on the bandits. In the melee, Bourtai also grabbed the jewel and the creature turned on him, leaving only a skeleton. Conan, the only one remaining, turned and walked away.[1]
Notes
- Kara-Shehr was created by Robert E. Howard in the Cthulhu Mythos[4] story "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" (Weird Tales; December, 1936), which was freely adapted as a Conan story in "Hell-Spawn of Kara-Shehr" (Conan the Barbarian #35; February, 1974), written by Roy Thomas and penciled by John Buscema.
See Also
Links and References
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Conan the Barbarian #35; The Hell-Spawn of Kara-Shehr
- ↑ Conan the Barbarian #35; Cover
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Handbook of the Conan Universe #1; Map
- ↑ "Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard" is a collection of Cthulhu Mythos short stories by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in 2001 by Chaosium Press.
