"I need some Sword and Sorcery quotes" Topic

Here's a question I'm asking on several pages. As you know, I'm working on a fairly tongue-in-cheek game called "Chainmail Bikini". Each section of the rules start with a brief, 2-3 line quote from a Sword and Sorcery story that suits the topic. I'm trying for a mix of authors and time periods – any Otis Adalbert Kline fans out there? It doesn't have to be Howard or Leiber etc. There's plenty of material for things like smiting your foes into red ruin, but there are a couple of places where I'm coming up dry.

If you can locate a good, snappy line or two about 'Luck ' or "Poisons' – or simply point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful. As in 'won't burn your palace' grateful.

H

The Fantasy Hero rulebook (6th ed) has hundreds of quotes from S&S and Fantasy books. Check that out.

Example of what I'm looking for:

"May the ordure of demons bemire you from heel to crown! Cried the venomous ancient. "O lumbering, bawling idiot!"

Clark Ashton Smith, "The Seven Geases" 1934

(That's for the section listed as 'Curses and Insults').

I was going to find something from the Eye of Argon, but couldn't bear to keep reading. :)

andy

OK, then. :)

A bit too long:

"Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of @#!*% , barbarian", gasped the first soldier.

"Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!" returned Grignr.

andy

"Asps… very dangerous. You go first."

And of course, Shylock:
"If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?"
This may be The One. I think Shakespeare was a fantastic pulp writer. It will certainly add tone and class to your tawdry set of rules.
If The Bard were alive today, he would be writing Sword and Sorcery.
And it would be on HBO with bare boobies!

Those are the right stuff! Now, who by, and what from (and when?)

I know, I don't mean to be difficult.

Like so --

"The blackness coalesced into a tenebrous cloud. Out of it rose a head, malefic and terrible, with serpent eyes of ancient evil. A flattened head that swayed and rose on shimmering scaled coils--The head of Baal-Yagoth!"

Henry Kuttner, Beyond the Phoenix, 1938

Indiana Jones: "Why did it have to be snakes?"
YouTube link

Oh! That covers thosmoss' "asps" quote too!

"Now we will teach them why they fear the night."

"Do want to live forever?"

"Well said," Peter replied, "but I do notmean that you should be in servitude to any king, only in his service."
"The difference is only a matter of one syllable," said Raphael.

Sir Thomas More, Utopia

"Heroes and fools are the same thing."
Deathstalker, from Deathstalker (1983)

--

Princess Evie: "Oh, so you rob from the rich, and give to the poor?"

Deathstalker: "No, I rob from the rich, and pretty much keep it for myself."

from Deathstalker II (1987)

--

"Look, Kana, I could be so much more fun to you alive than dead, if you'd just untie these straps."

Deathstalker, from Deathstalker IV (1991)

There lived a man in the south, before Thangbald, Wilibald's son preached the White Christ in Iceland. He was named Eric Brighteyes, Thorgrimur's son, and in those days there was no man like him for strength, beauty and daring, for in all those things he was the first. But he was not the first in good-luck.

Henry Rider Haggard, Eric Brighteyes, 1890

Ron

So I thought of some that might work for some different chapters you might have. You might not have these chapters or anything close. I'm not the NSA, I don't know what's on your computer.

Chapter on combat

"How long does a battle last? Who can tell, in the soup of it?"

Chapter on special psychology rules

"Hate is a bond, Theseus. And I have hated you a long time."

Steven Pressfield, Last of the Amazons

Chapter on priestly magic

"And suddenly for the first time this day we remembered that we are the Damned. We remembered it and we laughed."

Ayn Rand, Anthem

Chapter on morale

"But now they will surely despise you as a man more woman than warrior! Run you pampered doll!"

Homer, The Iliad.

"Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes right—all that falls to them is so much gain—all their geese are swans—all their cards are trumps—toss them which way you will, they will always, like poor puss, alight upon their legs, and only move on so much the faster."

The Bros Grimm, Hans Luck

Too long perhaps but can be shortened.

And for the chapter on Siege & Assault:

"Have fun storming the castle!"

- The Princess Bride, by S. Morganstern

"That's not a knife. THIS is a knife."

- Crocodile Dundee

Chapter on spells:

"No, I'm not easily charmed, but I'm charmed by you Miss Archer."

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady.

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars."

or

"By this axe I rule!"

"I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content." – Robert E. Howard, Queen of the Black Coast, Weird Tales, May 1934

"There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this, too, Conan of Cimmeria—" she rose lithely to her knees and caught him in a pantherish embrace—"my love is stronger than any death! I have lain in your arms, panting with the violence of our love; you have held and crushed and conquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the fierceness of your bruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart, my soul is part of your soul! Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back from the abyss to aid you – aye, whether my spirit floated with the purple sails on the crystal sea of paradise, or writhed in the molten flames of hell! I am yours, and all the gods and all their eternities shall not sever us!" – Robert E. Howard, Queen of the Black Coast, Weird Tales, May 1934

Also Robert E. Howard & Conan but I don't know the attributions.

You speak in riddles. Let me see my foe and I'll cleave his skull to the teeth!

You can not escape me! Lead me into a trap and I'll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet! Hide from me and I'll tear apart the mountains to find you! I'll follow you to hell!

Damnation! What would I not give for a flagon of wine!

By the way, if anyone has not read the Conan short story "Queen of the Black Coast", you should do so as it is one of Howard's best. You can read it for free at Project Gutenberg: link

It's hard to beat REH, but my own favourite is Clark Ashton Smith, whose sense of humour is subtle but, well, wacky, like P.G. Wodehouse on opium:

"Snatching up the iron spade, Adompha brought it down on the small, withered head of Dwerulas with a fair amount of war-like strength inherited from heroic and piratic ancestors. The dwarf, still carrying Thuloneah, toppled forward into the deep pit."

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

— The Tower of the Elephant, 1933

Then we will fight in the shade

"You almost HAVE to be polite to someone carrying a battle axe…", pretty sure I read that in one of David Eddings books, but so long ago that I don't remember another thing of his writings.

Something from Groo the Wanderer maybe.

Movie Willow – Madmartigan: "I am the greatest swordsman that ever lived."

One of my all time favorite movies from my youth while playing AD&D; Hawk the Slayer. Here is a clip from the movie I love the line "Eater of Dung"

YouTube link

watch the movie there are several good lines to draw from.

What a literate bunch! Thanks for the good and awful quotes! I'd like to add this classic:

Mongol General: "Conan, what is best in life?"
Conan: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women."
Mongol General: "That is good, very good!"

I don't remember where its from…

"OK men, this time remember, its rape, pillage, THEN burn!"

YouTube link

Best in life

Wandering Horde General: "What is it you would call the greatest things in life?"
Cohen The Barbarian: "Hot water, good dentistry, and shoft toilet paper."

Man in Black: All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right… and who is dead.

Vizzini: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black: You've made your decision then?

Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

Man in Black: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Vizzini: Wait till I get going! Now, where was I?

Man in Black: Australia.

Vizzini: Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder's origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black: You're just stalling now.

Vizzini: You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black: You're trying to trick me into giving away something. It won't work.

Vizzini: IT HAS WORKED! YOU'VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHERE THE POISON IS!

Man in Black: Then make your choice.

Vizzini: I will, and I choose – What in the world can that be?

Man in Black: [Vizzini gestures up and away from the table. Roberts looks. Vizzini swaps the goblets]

Man in Black: What? Where? I don't see anything.

Vizzini: Well, I- I could have sworn I saw something. No matter. First, let's drink. Me from my glass, and you from yours.

Man in Black, Vizzini: [Vizzini and the Man in Black drink]

Man in Black: You guessed wrong.

Vizzini: You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" – but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line"! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…

Vizzini: [Vizzini stops suddenly, his smile frozen on his face and falls to the ground dead]

Buttercup: And to think, all that time it was your cup that was poisoned.

Man in Black: They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.

I always liked this bit from REH's "The Shadow Kingdom":

'The age of the city, its incredible antiquity, was almost oppressive to the king; it was as if the great silent buildings laughed at him, noiselessly, with unguessable mockery. And what secrets did they hold?

"You are young," said the palaces and the temples and the shrines, "but we are old."'

On Luck…

"Too much good luck was always dangerous."

— "The Sunken Land"

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

found here:

link

On Poison…

"Master, dear master,' he said, but Frodo did not speak. As he had run forward, eager, rejoicing to be free, Shelob with hideous speed had come behind and with one swift stroke had stung him in the neck. He lay now pale, and heard no voice, and did not move.

'Master, dear master!' said Sam, and through a long silence waited, listening in vain.

Then as quickly as he could he cut away the binding cords and laid his head upon Frodo's breast and to his mouth, but no stir of life could he find, nor feel the faintest flutter of the heart. Often he chafed his master's hands and feet, and touched his brow, but all were cold.

'Frodo, Mr. Frodo!' he called. 'Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo! O wake up, Frodo, me dear, me dear. Wake up!"
¯ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

link

I had not come across 'The Eye of Argon', a short story written (??) by a sixteen year old in 1970. Andy Skinner referred me to it, in all its misspelled glory, today. What can I say?

" If not for his keen auditory organs and lighting steeled reflexes, Grignr would have been groping through the shadowed hell-pits of the Grim Reaper. He had unknowingly stumbled upon an ancient, long forgotton booby trap; a mistake which would have stunted the perusal of longevity of one less agile. A mechanism, similar in type to that of a minature catapult was concealed beneath two collapsable sections of granite flooring. The arm of the device was four feet long, boasting razor like cleats at regular intervals along its face with which it was to skewer the luckless body of its would be victim. Grignr had stepped upon a concealed catch which relaesed a small metal latch beneath the two granite sections, causing them to fall inward, and thereby loose the spiked arm of death they precariously held in"

Gold! You can read the whole thing at:
link

Leiber's "The Sadness of the Executioner":

'Let's see, thought Death with a vast coolness that yet had a tiny seething in it, one hundred sixty peasants and savages, twenty nomads, ten warriors, two beggars, a , a merchant, a priest, an aristocrat, a craftsman, a king, and two heroes. That would keep his books straight.'

(I think there's more I'd use from the story, but I don't have the book handy)

YouTube link

YouTube link

YouTube link

You can find some gems here.

Shakespeare's insult generator will bring endless fun ,helpful or not.

pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker

Use the insult kit combinations they may help.

"No matter how subtle the wizard a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style."

Vlad Taltos (Steven Brust)

"Pick up your sword and die like a…..whatever you are!"

ok, the Shakespeare insult generator is really cool :)

On bartering/trading Yul Brynner The 10 Commandments

"Do not haggle with me like a seller of melons in the marketplace'

A fun Groo quote for use in any number of situations.

"Crom!"

"Oh, yeah, it's all fun and games until someone gets cursed!"

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Sergeant Paper is on target.

Man, I hope I'm not too late to add this -- go read / watch "The Princess Bride". Eminently quotable, geeks across the globe throw these lines almost as much as Monty Python.

True. But The Princess Bride (which I'm certain Howard is more than familiar with) is hardly quite right for "Chainmail Bikini." The man's looking for the sort of over-the-top prose and grandiose quotes out of REH or ERB, with maybe a side of Lieber— the sort of works Frazetta did the covers for.

Other possible sources might be The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, anything from Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar series, Gardner F. Fox's sword and sorcery tales from Dragon (Niall of the Far Travelers, etc.).

Correction: That should be "Niall the Far Traveler, or Niall of the Far Travels." He's called both in the stories.
link
It's got the works— beefy, devil-may care barbarian swordsman, evil sorcerers, a demon-goddess lover (who's bizarrely more good than evil), and of course the expected purple prose the genre demands.

Fox also did several Conan-esque comic books and other tales.

While I am a huge fan of 'The Princess Bride', it isn't really the right territory.

This is a game of savage Sword and Sorcery, where prose is purple, women have muscles, and it's perfectly okay to punch out a camel.

For example:

Wan Tengri finished his challenge with a hoarse shout and leaped upward to meet the swords, yet swayed back as the six blades chopped down together toward his red head. By the thickness of a steel dagger's blade, the hissing swords missed Wan Tengri and, afterward, his own mighty, curved blade whined through the air…Light as the touch of the dawn-wind, Wan Tengri feathered the curved tip of his sword across two throats before he sprang sideways…Two of the bearded (wizards) were staggering in bloody death, trying to contain their gaping throats with gnarled and trembling hands. Ludicrously, the half of their beards had already floated to the earth, and Wan Tengri laughed, whipping his blood-dimmed blade before him like a flail… "Come, small, twisted wizards!" he growled at them. "There are still five chins to be shaven!"

Norvell Page, Sons of the Bear Gods, 1939

My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. prepare to die.

I don't have a copy on hand at the moment, but Jack Vance's The Eyes of the Overworld and other Dying Earth books should have plenty of snappy lines in them. I do have one quote from them on hand, of possible use:

The dead man's companions at the counter started to their feet, but halted as Voynod with great aplomb turned to face them. "Take care, you dunghill cocks! Notice the fate of your fellow! He died by the power of my magic blade, which is of inexorable metal and cuts rock and steel like butter. Behold!" And Voynod struck out at a pillar. The blade, striking an iron bracket, broke into a dozen pieces. Voynod stood non-plussed, but the bravo's companions surged forward.

"What then of your magic blade? Our blades are ordinary steel but bite deep!" And in a moment Voynod was cut to bits.