3 March 2010
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Continuity and Tradition, Part V
MAR 02, 2010 12:40P.M.
In a comment on my recent post about the upcoming Conan film,
Charles Rice makes an interesting point:
Conan ... has really been a more popular fictional universe,
more akin to characters like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula,
Batman or Superman.
Many authors and artists have interpreted the character, and
many of those interpretations have taken root in the general
consciousness.
When printing Howard’s stories, I think all that stuff (de
Camp, Lin Carter, Frazetta, Roy Thomas) should be kept at
bay.
When making a movie, I think it needs to be considered,
because a certain percentage of the audience will only know
Conan from those other sources. [Italics mine - JDM]
Charles’s point is interesting on several levels. I actually agree that a
great many people, perhaps even the vast majority of them, don’t know
the real Conan. They’ve never read a word of REH and probably never
will. To them, “Conan the Barbarian” — a moniker I have come to dislike
rather strongly — is, effectively (or literally, in some cases), a comic book
character brought to life by a succession of bodybuilders-turned-actors.
What’s ironic is that, whenever an author’s work is popularized by
Hollywood, criticisms of the liberties taken with the source material are
often dismissed by claiming that “by getting X out into public
consciousness, it’ll draw people back to the original,” the implication
seemingly that the original material is incapable of succeeding on its own
merits or, less strongly, that it’s somehow unsuitable to popular tastes. If
this line of thinking ever actually bore fruit — and I welcome examples to
the contrary — I might be willing to stomach it. But, from where I’m
sitting, every time Howard (or any other author) gets bastardized under
cover of “this will draw people back to the Real Thing,” it only reinforces
popular misconceptions and makes it that much more difficult for the
genuine article ever to enter the popular imagination. Conan is Exhibit A
in just the kind of miscommunication I was talking about last week. Who
is Conan? I’d wager that a large percentage of the English-speaking
world “knows” Conan, who, as Charles rightly notes is now a pop-
cultural icon like Sherlock Holmes or Dracula, but is that really Conan?
Or is it, as I would contend, a caricature of Howard’s creation, a mere
1
shade of a far more complex literary creation that deserves to be better
known and appreciated in its own right?
What’s so frustrating about this new Conan movie is that it’s being made
after a generation-long critical re-evaluation of Robert E. Howard as a
writer, culminating in his short stories being canonized by Penguin
Classics and included in a collection of fantastic tales published by the
prestigious Library of America. Freed from the shackles of pastiche
(thanks in no small part to the pioneering work of none other than Karl
Edward Wagner), Conan — and his creator — have finally come into their
own, being judged for what they truly are rather than for what others
claimed that they are. Conan is not so strange a character nor his
adventures so esoteric that they could not be faithfully adapted to film —
or at least more faithfully than we’ve seen to date. Why, in this day and
age, when Howard’s writings are more well regarded and critically
appraised than ever, must the shadow of L. Sprague de Camp still fall
over the Cimmerian?
If asking for a film in which Conan is recognizably the character created
by Robert E. Howard and whose plot is drawn substantially from an
actual story in which the character appears is “way too high a bar,” as
Charles suggests, is it any wonder that I’m so down on Hollywood these
days?
ROGUE FEED
Grognard’s Grimoire:
Quintelemental
MAR 02, 2010 10:11A.M.
The material in the quote box below is hereby designated Open Game
Content via the Open Game License.
While the sublunary world is made up of four primary elements, scholars
know that there is in fact a fifth element — ether — which fills the void
between the worlds and fuels the empyrean stars. In its natural state,
ether is a subtle, luminiferous gas, but, under Ioun’s influence, it
solidifies into a silvery-black liquid known as azoth. The supernatural
beings composed entirely of ether are known by Men as quintelementals
and are the most powerful of all elemental beings. Only those who retain
the knowledge of Eldritch magic (or posses one of their magical devices)
may conjure a quintelemental, which explains their rarity in the present
age.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 3 March 2010

Quintelemental
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
% in Lair: N/a
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: Fly 450’ (150’)
Armor Class: 2/0/-2
Hit Dice: 8/12/16
Attacks: see below
Damage: 1d8 or 2d8 or 3d8
Save: F8 or F12 or F16
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: None
XP: 2,070/3,600/4,200

For every hit die possessed by a quintelemental, it will have a

diameter of ½’ and be 2’ high. For instance, a quintelemental
summoned by a spell would be 32’ high and have a 8’
diameter. Their appearance is that of a barely visible cloud of
silvery luminescence. Quintelementals surprise their
opponents on a roll of 1-3 on 1d6, who suffer a -1 penalty on
all attack rolls due to their nigh-invisibility. Casters of magic-
user spells suffer an extra 1d8 points of damage from
quintelementals.