Swords & Sorcery: Quest and Conquest in the Age of Magic

[SPI Advertisement c1978]

SWORDS AND SORCERY

Quest and Conquest in the Age of Magic

- Separate Army and Quest Game, plus Role-Playing Version

- Full Background “History” and Characters

- Professionally Illustrated by Tim Kirk

The Valley of the Great Sword is a much warred over area on a small planet in a trinary system many lightyears and eons removed from Terra. Superficially, there is no great difference between this highly prized region and any other coveted area that nations have fought over since time immemorial. But the Valley, and indeed the whole planet, guards a secret so valuable that few off-planet visitors that have visited that remote corner of the galaxy have all been mercilessly killed. For the Valley is an area of great magicks, where technology has all but disappeared.

Long ago in the Age of the Great Upheaval (which not even the oldest of the denizens of the Valley can recall), the Council of Wizards abolished all weapons that were more advance than those used in Earth's Middle Ages. This was because (most scholars have it) mages could be killed by long range weapons before they could employ their defensive spells, and greatly feared the advent of mass-produced technology. But the population of that world trusted mages no more than you and I, and there followed a series of great wars which succeeded in devastating all areas of the planet with the exception of the Valley (called Ararlve by the ancients).