SOURCE: "The Treasure of Tranicos" (1953)  by Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp

DESCRIPTION: "The blue mist had condensed into a monstrous black figure, dimly seen and not quite definite, which filled the hither end of the cave, blotting out the still, seated figures behind...The black monster reared up, looming gigantic against the flame, great arms spread wide. A dim face leered through the drifting smoke--semi-human, demonic, altogether terrible. Conan glimpsed close-set horns, the gaping mouth, the peaked ears..." ("The Treasure of Tranicos" by Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp)

John Buscema and Klaus Jansen

NOTES: The cave demon is a terror from the lower hells conjured up by a Pictish shaman to avenge the deaths of his tribesmen killed when the pirate Tranicos came ashore with his eleven captains about a hundred years before Conan lived. The demon strangled all twelve men, whose mummified bodies share the secret chamber with the monster. The shaman trapped the demon inside the chamber along with Tranicos' famed treasure. The wizard Thoth-Amon losed the demon and sent it to the mansion of the Zingaran nobleman, Valenso. After killing the count, the demon was destroyed by Conan the Cimmerian, who threw a silver candelabra at it, forcing the monster into the fireplace. Silver and fire are the only things that can hurt the demon.

HISTORY: The original Conan tale, "The Black Stranger", was unsellable so Howard re-wrote it has a straight pirate adventure. L. Sprague de Camp re-converted it back into a Conan story, adding in references to Thoth-Amon, who would be a big villain later in Conan's history. The sections that place this story in Conan's later life before he take his throne feel tacked on and not really part of Howard's original. The Conan version of this story is not yet in the public domain but the non-supernatural version "Black Vulmea's Vengeance" (The Golden Fleece, November 1938) is. This lengthy story was a two-parter in Savage Sword of Conan #47-48. The monster in the comic version reminds me of the Hideous Sun Demon from that film.