A Sword & Sorcery setting cobbled together by James Nostack?, Vaxalon, and various other people.

Overall feeling Bronze Age with anachronisms. James is thinking Mediterranean/Near Eastern as the "heartland," with optional jaunts to different environments as needed. Generally, something like a fever dream is a good to have here-- read Kubla Khan for the raving mood James has in mind.

Sword And Sorcery Genre Conventions - Sword & Sorcery books, compared to most modern day fantasy novels

Demonology

In Sorcerer & Sword there are a couple of types of demons: your fairly traditional hellspawn stuff (covered in the main Sorcerer rules), prehistoric beasts, pagan things, the Old Ones, and so on.

James kind of likes the idea that the "hellspawn" otherworldly demons have a jewel embedded in their skulls/forehead. The particular type of gemstone indicates its status in the netherworld. Sometimes these jewels are obvious; other times they can only be spotted if the demon utilizes its supernatural powers. (I.e., James is open-minded here, he just likes the aesthetics.) Whether other types of demons like the undead or prehistoric beasts have such soul-gems is open right now.

Simple Setting Notes

Gyre is called "the gleaming city" and has seven pinnacles. Maybe it is not the biggest city in the world; it could even be a ghost town, fallen into ruin. But it was something to see.

The Palabash Tower Academy trains mesmerists who can enslave others to their will. Masters of this art receive tattoos upon their lips, for the words they speak are powerful. Zeroun the Pale Sorcerer is of this school, and may be accompanied by a specially bound bodyguard, escort, or helper. (Zeroun is called "the Pale" because he never ventures into direct sunlight.)

There are Insect Soldiers who wear armor that lets them crawl on walls, and wield poison-tipped spears. Their spittle is hallucinogenic. Their armor was created by Hamashu the Father of Insects. Semyon the Beetle, a noted mercenary, makes his way with this equipment.

The Guild of Scribes has a solid lock on writing and literacy. Merchants employ some simple math and arithmetic, but anything involving genuine written language belongs to the guild members. The Scribes Guilds insist on absolute confidentiality, but of course this is not always preserved. They control history and the lawbooks, which gives them great control over many things, but most aristocrats scorn them. (The Guild, of course, varies from city to city.) Radha, supervisor of the Southern Archive where the guild keeps its most prized possessions, must drink rare inks to survive--or so the rumor goes.

Instead of corporations they have "money groups." This is a bit like Venice's early companies for insuring ships and lending money. They're also a bit like secret societies or Chinese tongs. Note that without widespread literacy these money-groups have to be a handful of neighbors or locals. Some money-groups are covers for conspirators.

(Suggestion from Fred: you can have records without true literacy. Imagine a clay tablet, with a number written across the top, a signet impression on the left, another on the right, and another written across the bottom. This is a loan agreement; the man identified by the signet ring on the left is borrowing the amount on the top from the man on the right, and agrees to pay back the amount on the bottom. Tradition dictates that loans always run from one particular holiday to the same holiday the next year, call it the "Day of Obligation".) (James responds: Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind. Merchants and bureaucrats probably have unique ciphers or codes, but that's not the same as literacy per se.)