The Black Stranger

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"The Black Stranger" is one of the original stories by Robert E. Howard about Conan the Cimmerian, written in the 1930s but not published in his lifetime.

The Treasure of Tranicos (aka "The Black Stranger") by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, Ace Books, 1980

The story was later rewritten by L. Sprague de Camp and published in Fantasy Magazine for February 1953. It was retitled "The Treasure of Tranicos" for book publication later the same year. Its first hardbound publication was in King Conan, published by Gnome Press, and its first paperback publication was in Conan the Usurper, published by Lancer Books in 1967. It was republished together with an introduction and two non-fiction pieces on the story and on Howard by de Camp and illustrations by Esteban Maroto as The Treasure of Tranicos by Ace Books in 1980.

Howard's original version of the story was first published in 1987 in Echoes of Valor and more recently in the collection Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Three (1935-1936) (Del Rey Books, 2005).

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Plot Overview

The story finds Conan in the Pictish Wilderness fleeing native warriors who are hunting him. Finally he turns at bay before a hill, whereupon he sees them inexplicably abandon the chase and turn back. He realizes the spot must be a taboo place to the Picts. The hill turns out to hold a treasure cave, along with the preserved bodies of the pirate Tranicos and his men. Moreover, the treasure draws others to the forbidden cave in quest for it — one Count Valenso, and both Zingaran and Barachan sea reavers. But the bane of Tranicos is quite ready to take new victims, and Conan must outmaneuver all of them if he is to claim the riches.

Howard's version of the story pointed toward a new piratical career for Conan; one of de Camp's major changes was to make it lead instead into the revolution that would bring the Cimmerian to the throne of Aquilonia.