Dreaming of Swords and Rayguns...

I had a weird dream the other night. It started out with Conan the Barbarian (not the Arnie one, but the John Buscema one from Marvel Comics) and me battling our way through some ancient back alley. We were probably in a Turanian city like Aghrapur or Zamboula as there was sand everywhere. I’ve been readin’ a lot of Conan lately, could you tell? Anyway, we were fighting some nefarious, robed rogues on a dark street, with me mostly bobbing and weaving so Conan could do his slaughter thing, when our surroundings changed. The sword and sorcery street morphed into a modern version and the thugs were gone.

The two of us looked at each other with befuddlement before we jogged to the end of the street to get our bearings. When we rounded a corner we ran into a group of what looked liked beggars. They had tattered; dirty clothing and a few were deformed. I quickly noticed that they weren’t actually begging but bartering with each other, using all manner of junk from makeshift wagons. I paused, looked at Conan and then looked around and noticed that we weren’t in a modern city but in the remains of a modern city. Recognizing this to be some sort of post-apocalyptic world, I grilled an old man (it’s always and old man isn’t it) for details. He told me that a huge battle was raging outside the city between the forces defending the city and a group of super-mutants. …Super-mutants?!

Well, being the protagonists of my dream, Conan and I set out for the desert. The rest of the story is kinda’ hazy, but we immediately linked up with an armored group of what looked like the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout. Their commander showed me a small device that had a digital readout, showing the progress of the battle via a hex grid. It looked a lot like a computer strategy game. I don’t really remember the rest, but I think Conan and I left for the “front” to engage the super-mutants with me feeling a lot more useful in this world than in Conan’s Hyboria. At this point I woke up and realized: “Hey, I had a Conan / Fallout crossover.
It’s strange because I don’t usually have such direct dreams about pop culture. Usually, if they’re interesting at all, my dreamscapes have to do with creepy investigations, beachfront environments or urban excursions. This particular dream is the first time I’ve ever “interacted” with any kind of comic book character, like Conan. I’m thinking it must be because another collection of the Conan comics is on the way (here). Dark Horse has been doing an excellent job reprinting the old Conan the Barbarian series with new coloring. Also, a possibility is that Mongoose Publishing is releasing the 2nd edition of the Conan RPG. I’m pretty excited about that too.

As for Fallout… well, I’ve always been a big fan of post-apocalyptic stories and both Fallout and Fallout 2 are my favorite computer games. I had recently gone on youtube and watched some of videos from the game. I guess I was kinda’ nostalgic so that’s why I must have dreamt about Fallout. Supposedly Fallout 3 is in the works, but who knows when that’s coming out. The guys making it sure don’t.


When comes to the crossover aspect, the only thing I can come up with is… I want a Fallout comic books series. Think about it. I really enjoy both the new and the old Conan comics currently being published by Dark Horse. Conan’s adventurers occur in an incredibly detailed fantasy universe. Fallout, by comparison, has this amazingly rich, visually engaging retro-futuristic world. It just begs for a comic series. I think that a comic company could make some serious cash on it as long as they stayed true to the computer game’s themes. Also, another aspect might be that I’ve always wanted to run/or play in a nice long post-apocalyptic campaign. Conan’s got a good tabletop RPG, so I’d like something compatible for Fallout. Darwin’s World comes close but… I just haven’t gotten around to it.

Anyway, my dreams were back to normal last night as I had an excursion through a city that couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to be New York, London or Frankfurt.

-Swinebread