num_pages: 194
description: An exciting repository of the tales of an empire that pre-dates the solar system's recorded history. A spectacular homage of ten 'romantic tales of high adventure' written in the American pulp imagination style of breathless bravado. A return to an era when the exploration of time and the mystery of space travel held the attention of the reading world with heroes/heroines that faced dangerous unknowns with hopes and fists raised high!20000 years ago the first Emperor of Sol ascended the Iridium Throne of Earth. A sorcerer who learned to extend his life through elixirs and potent demonic bargains he ruled a thousand years until deposed by a conspiracy among his wives. His youngest wife the most cunning became the first Empress of Sol and began the Imperial practice of tracing lineage through the female.This anthology's present is 10000 years after the Ruin of the Empire of Sol an event immortalized by a cabal of poets who wove history with myth. Civil war erupted inside the Empire when warlords of another planet sought to seize the Iridium Throne of Earth. War rent the system until finally a doomsday weapon was deployed. This weapon caused the Ruin; it shattered worlds and threw the citizens of the Empire into such a state of savagery that it has taken 10000 years to make it to a current Dark Age. The worlds of the solar system have slowly emerged to reclaim only the most slender portion of the ancient splendor of the Empire. Through the combined efforts of sorcery and science mankind and alienkind have returned to the stars in Aether ships though even these are considered crude by the ancient Imperial standards.Above them all looms a mysterious THREAT on the horizon. Augurs see bad omens demon familiars speak of a coming cataclysm; a few ships have gone missing along the fringes of the system only to be spotted and boarded later . . . ghost ships with missing crews. One had a cryptic note scrawled in blood: They're coming!Foreword by Fletcher VredenburghSword &amp; Planet is the Genre We Need by John O'NeillPrologue by Scott OdenTo Save Hermesia by Joe Bonadonna &amp; David C. SmithThe Lost Princess of Themos by Tom DoolanWhat Really Happened at the Center of the World by Christopher M. BlanchardA Sand-Ship of Mars by Charles Allen GramlichWhispers of the Serpent by Howard Andrew JonesOutcasts of Jov by Mark FinnWritten in Lightning by Keith J. TaylorSurvivors of Ulthula by E.E. KnightHunters of Ice and Sky by David HardyA Gate In Darkness by Paul R. McNameeEpilogue by Scott Oden
language: None
title: Scott Oden Presents The Lost Empire of Sol: A Shared World Anthology of Sword & Planet Tales
publisher: Rogue Blades Foundation