We are now on Season Six: Shores of Blood! We hope to see you there!
This is not the Exiled Lands.
This is not Siptah’s Isle.
You are not an Exile.
You have chosen to be here.
Know O Prince, that in those times, to the north of Turan, between the shining Vilayet Sea and the eastern borders of Zamora, where the mighty mountains stood like a bulwark between east and west, and furtive, cruel hill tribes worshiped dark gods, there lay a wild, untamed hinterland. Here, perhaps more than any other land in the north, there were yet to be found the signs of the great civilizations that reigned supreme, before the waves swept over Atlantis, and wild, tawny haired barbarians threw down the devil haunted empire of Acheron.
Ruins stood there, the remnants of palaces and plazas and the tombs of long dead kings. And in those tombs were riches beyond imagining….
The Satrap of the most northerly province of Turan is dead, assassinated in his own home, for it is well known that in Turan, politics is conducted with dagger points and poisoned winecups.
In his place, a devil sits upon the throne. A man of boundless ambition, a man devoid of mercy. A man who would name himself king, and make this province his kingdom.
He rules with an iron fist, crushing all resistance to his authority. He has built alliances with ruthless raiders; Hyrkanians, Zuagir bands, Kozaki and many captains of the Red Brotherhood. It is even whispered that his vizier may be a sorcerer, steeped in deviltry and schooled in the dark arts. The northern frontier is despoiled, and help, in the form of an army from Turan, is likely months away.
Few stand against him. Few have the skills and the courage to foment rebellion. This is the land you find yourself in. The rebellion is fragile; a single, flickering flame in the midst of darkness born from wicked and cruel ambition. Will you help to nurture this flame, to coax it to a raging fire that will set the frontier ablaze and burn away the ambition of a tyrant?
Join our discord! Beyond the Road of Kings
In all honesty, if you want a high fantasy, high magic server, with a diversity of otherworldly and magical races, ours is not for you. If, however, you are searching for a server that captures the pulp sword and sorcery stories of Robert E Howard, we may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Beyond the Road of Kings is a heavily lore adherent RP server, with RP within the world created by Howard very much the emphasis. When we say that we are lore adherent, we mean it. We draw only on Howard’s work, or on sources approved by credible Howard scholars such as Dale Rippke’s “The Hyborian Heresies”, the ongoing “Robert E. Howard Conan Lore Project” and the fantastic Modiphius Conan RPG sourcebooks. Our main admins have been reading Howard’s works, and studying them, for many years. We are passionate about the world, and we strive to bring it, in as pure a form as we can. This said, we are aware that there are huge gaps in the lore as Howard wrote it, so are generally happy to discuss lore from some third party sources, though we cannot guarantee that we will always accept it.
We set our server to the north of the Vilayet Sea, an area largely undocumented in Howard’s stories, which gives us a fantastic blank page on which to write wonderful Hyborian Age tales. No Exiles here, just adventurers, cut from the same cloth as the eponymous Cimmerian.
We have an overarching server plotline as well as episodic events that evoke Howard’s Conan stories in look and feel. Our server GMs have decades of experience in running events in many formats of roleplaying, from MMOs and tabletop to freeform and LARP events. This experience allows them to approach scenario building and running from many angles not often seen in online RP. Players will be free to build and create, and to craft their own stories as they would on any server, but they will also be able to become embroiled in the ongoing server plot, or to drop in to short, self contained events on a more casual basis.
Ours is a “living world” where unfolding events may very likely have an impact on your characters. And, likewise, the actions of your characters can very easily have an impact on the server story as well. This is collaborative storytelling at its finest. The world itself is prone to change, you can’t always count on your knowledge of the map as a bandit ambush may appear around a bend where nothing was before or you may stumble upon a cave or ruin to explore. And you might just be accosted by thieves in the treacherous lower city…or maybe you’ll join their ranks in the shadowy Undergound.
For those of you who aren’t crazy about building you may enjoy our player housing in the city of Murun. From tiny hovel to lavish townhouse, there’s something for everyone, possibly even including a basement to stash your stuff in!
Our RP Dice System, used for some events, is bespoke and captures the feel of Howard’s Sword and Sorcery tales. The system has been designed from the ground up to enable fast play with an emphasis on RP. Players can select abilities that evoke Howard’s dynamic writing style such as “Rush in and die, dogs!”, “I have read from the iron bound books of Vathelos the Blind” and “When the broadswords sing” The system was written specifically for our server by one of our head GM, who was also part of the writing and design team on the multi award winning “Adventures in Middle Earth” books for 5th ed D&D.
Yes, we are also a PvP enabled server but no home to gankers and murder hobos, with a ruleset that emphasizes fair play and logical consequences, up to and including permadeath but with a Left For Dead system that mitigates such drastic outcomes while not taking them off the table.
We have an absolutely wonderful and friendly (and active!) playerbase as well as a crack staff of helpful and creative people who enjoy helping you tell your story as much as they enjoy working on the server’s.
So if you really want to do something besides build a pretty house and then stay inside it to just play with your clanmates, if you want to follow in the fabled sandaled footsteps of Conan himself, if you indeed want to love, slay and be content… and never bored… we might just be the server for you.
