"The Devil in Iron" is a Conan the Barbarian story by Robert E. Howard. First published in August, 1934.
Tropes included[]
- Action Prologue: The fisherman breaking into the temple
- The Bait: Octavia
- Barbarian Tribe: Conan is leading them
- Blue Blood: Octavia
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Octavia is threatened with this to make her act as the bait.
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: The fisherman rouses the evil by his curiosity
- Deadly Decadent Court: the city that appears; what Octavia fled
- Distressed Damsel: Octavia
- Faux Death: He finds people rousing from it.
- Femme Fatale: Octavia was ordered into it.
- Human Sacrifice: In the back story
- Intro-Only Point of View: the fisherman dies and so exits the story
- Made a Slave: Octavia's Backstory
- Necromancer: Who roused the city
- Rescue Sex: Conan is surprised that Octavia rejects this and has to seduce her.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Necromancer
- Temple of Doom: Where the trouble was unleashed
- This Was His True Form
- Thunderbolt Iron: Enabled a slave revolt
- Wait Here: Conan tries this on Octavia