The Dark Man
core short fiction 1931 Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn
Record
| First published | 1931 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | short fiction |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.89 (35 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| Page count | 52 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780345461544 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
Set many centuries after Bran Mak Morn's own death, this story likewise depicts the surviving remnants of the Pictish people worshipping their ancient king as a kind of dark idol, exploring how his historical legend gradually transformed, across generations of decline and isolation, into outright religious veneration among his diminished descendants. The tale helps establish the recurring cult mythology that threads through Robert E. Howard's wider Bran Mak Morn cycle, in which Bran's memory outlives his mortal reign by a very long margin and continues to exert a dangerous pull over those who still honor him in secret. As with its companion pieces in the cycle, the story is more interested in the eerie persistence of Bran's cult than in any single new adventure of the king himself, deepening the sense of a once-great people reduced to worshipping their own vanished past.
Where it sits
- Universe: Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn
- Series: Bran Mak Morn (lifetime-published stories) core; position 4 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Robert E. Howard
Notes
- From the series record (Bran Mak Morn (lifetime-published stories)): The 5 Bran Mak Morn stories Howard sold and saw published in his own lifetime (all Weird Tales, 1927-1932), per a dedicated Howard-scholarship bibliography (reh.world). 'The Lost Race' (Bran mentioned only as legend; the protagonist is a Gael, Cororuc) and 'The Children of the Night'/'The Dark Man' (in-story framing device narrators, not Bran himself) are included per that same scholarship source's own classification of the Bran Mak Morn cycle -- Worms of the Earth and Kings of the Night are the only 2 with Bran as the story's own on-page protagonist. 'Kings of the Night' (Weird Tales, November 1930) is a crossover: Kull of Atlantis (admitted separately this same run) is summoned via time-travel magic as a guest character to help Bran fight the Romans.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Bran Mak Morn (lifetime-published stories): position 4 of 5: previous The Children of the Night (1931) · next Worms of the Earth (1932)
- Internal chronology, within Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn: position 6 of 7: previous The Children of the Night (1931) · next Worms of the Earth (1932)
Sources
- The World of Robert E. Howard: Bran Mak Morn
- Wikisource: Weird Tales, Volume 9, Issue 1 -- The Lost Race
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Mak_Morn
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