Gates of Empire presents eight of Robert E. Howard's classicadventure stories, all of which are set during the Crusades. "Red Blades ofBlack Cathay" finds a 12th Century Norman Crusader on the Eastern frontiers ofthe world as it was known to his European contemporaries, rallying a rich butmilitarily weak splinter kingdom against the invading hordes of Genghis Khan."Hawks of Outremer" and "Blood of Belshazzar" feature a hard-bitten knight, thehalf-Irish Cormac FitzGeoffrey, during the time of the Third Crusade. "TheSowers of the Thunder" pits two evenly matched characters against one another:Red Cahal is an exiled Irish prince who has been cheated out of kingship. Thered-haired Baibars the Panther is a former slave who will one day seize athrone. Figuratively, one man will be the death of the other, and in a sensethis is Howard's version of Poe's classic :William Wilson," played out againstthe turbulent background of the 13th Century. In "The Lion of Tiberias," twostorylines diverge and then converge. In one, a gigantic British Dane named JohnNorwald is sent to the galleys by the warlord Zenghi, there to toil for morethan twenty years as a cold, hard core of hate keeps him alive. The otherstoryline concerns Miles Du Courcey, a Crusader who invades Zenghi's strongholdto rescue his kidnapped sweetheart. "The Shadow of the Vulture" and "Gates ofEmpire" reveal a lighter side of Howard; yet here too, darkness lurks underneaththe light. Although "The Shadow of the Vulture" is best known as the story inwhich Howard introduced Red Sonya of Rogatino, the prototype for Roy Thomas' RedSonja of the comics and Sam Raimi's "Xena, Warrior Princess," the maleprotagonist is Gottfried Von Kalmbach, a dauntless but somewhat oblivious Germanknight.