Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrists, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.
— from Conan the Barbarian (1982)
"Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian; black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."
— The Nemedian Chronicles, as quoted in The Phoenix on the Sword, the very first Conan story by Robert E. Howard.
Stories of Arnulf dominate our oral history. He - it? - is rumored to hail from Scythian times, or even earlier; they say he even fought Alexander the Great. Arnulf rode with the Huns to destroy Rome; Arnulf helped the Turks sack Constantinople; and Arnulf was with the Mongols when they destroyed Hungary and Poland. We don't know why he acted as he did; a follower of his own wiles, he had few words for chronicles. Arnulf was more a force of nature than a vampire: he exemplified the barbarian's impulse to steal the fruits of civilization and move on... and they say he took revenge on promising barbarian leaders who embraced the mantle of civilization after sacking a city. He wanted to demolish civilization and return to primitive, simple nights, for a barbarian to surrender his strength and fatten himself with the riches of cities was the ultimate crime.
—Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Gangrel (Revised)
