Back when he was writing the Sword & Sorcery Codex, Garnett Elliott was posting on MeWe about his influences  and one of the things he mentioned was the cover illustration of an old paperback featuring Kull (it was from the 70s or 80s I think). It was a great illustration, and he said that for him it summed up the antediluvian world of King Kull. It popped into my head today as I was reading the last setting in the Codex – Primordial.
 
Those four and a half pages of broad-brush setting are a great distillation of what makes an antediluvian world such a great place to adventure in. I had read those pages before, but this time I read slowly rather than skimmed them, and I was struck by the fact that although there is plenty of room to add your own stuff, it really is a really good solid foundation for your own creativity. Just like the level of detail in Simon’s Lemuria, in fact.
 
All the inhabitants of the world are drawn from other pages of the Codex, and the only thing I think is missing and that would have been nice to have would have been a world map in a style of something painted onto cured hide – something a general would roll up and take on campaign.
 
The army of the Yxian Empire with it’s chariots, citizen phalanx, and elephants - sorry, Mastodons – and auxiliary infantry drawn from around the world, reminded me of Carthage in the early part of the Punic Wars. The nods to Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith are well done.
 
The only thing is…how do you pronounce ‘Yx’?
 
If like me, you just skimmed Primordial  because it was the last thing in the book, take another look. I just might end up going there…