In another time, this one professionally imparted knowledge of the past.
Did you know (a form of) Ice Cream sandwiches predate the Roman Empire?
That aside, another thing about Conan lore is going to be purity.
Conan ™ as an intellectual property has been passed around with little care and much variation over the years.
He was an Avenger eating dinner with Dr Doom not long ago.
The leads at Funcom tend to lean heavily towards Howard purism, with a few exceptions.
So other than some serial publications, if you want the least contentious assembled documents, the early Gnome press stuff is your best option, excluding anything by Nyberg and sometimes anything “finished” by de Camp.
So basically:
The Coming of Conan
Conan the Barbarian
The Sword of Conan
King Conan
Hour of the Dragon
To note, these are mostly compilations of short stories published in Weird Tales back in the 30s.
From a purist perspective, absolutely skip Tales of Conan, as Howard had written those stories to be generic medieval, and de Camp rewrote Conan as a character into them.
Tower of the Elephant and Red Nails maybe good intros.
But in short, the lore is a bit of a hornet’s nest and people can be very… passionate… about their fandoms.
Vendyhan npc factions, or at least members of groups like the Black Hand would be nice too.
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