[Dragaera] "Kieron The Conqueror"

[Scott]

I'd be interested in reading some Kieron stories in the style of Robert E.
Howard. I think Dragaera lends itself particularly well to the idea of
various stories in styles that mimic classic fantasy genres. I've always
wanted to see a series of Kiera stories, set during the Interregnum, in the
vein of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Steve is pretty clearly versed in Fritz
Leiber. Lankhmar = Adrilankha. Fafhrd's sword is Greywand. The Mouser's
knife is Scalpel, and if you don't see the relation to Godslayer, just ask
what else would you use to cut out the diseased flesh of the world? Vlad
reminds me a lot of what the Mouser might have been like if he'd been more
inclined to death than theft.

Getting back to Kieron - There are some background things to keep in mind.
There isn't likely to have been much of an Easterner's Empire for the
Dragaeran's to defeat, nor is Kieron likely to have had much interaction
with said "empire" or to have been socially repressed by them the way Vlad
and his kind have been repressed in the Dragaeran Empire.

It seems reasonably clear that, in the first couple of centuries PJ
(post-Jenoine) the tribes were migrating more or less as a large group. It's
unlikely that they met any Easterners at all until they eventually reached
the area where the present-day Empire exists. My understanding is that the
Eastern Mountains were ostensibly terra-formed into place by the Jenoine as
a barrier meant to keep their control group (relatively pure Terran stock,
aka Easterners) separated from the experimental group (Dragaerans). 

Additionally, the Easterners don't appear to have ever had a single
government. There isn't any "Eastern Empire". Rather, there are a number of
Eastern lands and cultures. The distinction is lost on most Dragearans, who
would likely say "You all look alike to me.", so they tend to treat all
Easterners as a single people. To Easterners, however, being a Fenarian or
some other nationality makes a difference. In _Issola_, for example, Vlad
mentions a minor knowledge of several Eastern languages, and also makes a
passing reference to the many Eastern Kingdoms in comparison to the "more
civilized" Dragaeran Empire.

In reality, from the Dragaeran point of view, "Lankhmar" could be some
Eastern Kingdom of strange cultures, strange gods, and weird and fantastic
magic (aka Witchcraft). Kieron would be unlike Conan, though, because Conan
was born into Hyboria and carved out his niche there. Kieron would be the
Conqueror from the beginning, defeating and uniting his own people first and
then destroying "Hyboria" or at least chasing the "Hyborians" back to the
East. He would lack that facet of Conan's past that tied him to Hyboria
itself. Those sorts of stories would be the stories of Kieron's rise to
power within the the original Dragaeran tribes, rather than stories about
his defeat of the indigenous Easterners.