 Red Sonja's character was loosely based on Red Sonya (note different spelling) of Rogatino in Robert E. Howard's short story "The Shadow of the Vulture" ("The Magic Carpe"t, January 1934), which Roy Thomas rewrote as a Conan story for Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian #23 (1973).Thomas also somewhat based Red Sonja on another Howard character, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a sword woman in 16th-century France.For the Red Sonja series, Tierney and Smith were paid $1,000 per book and set the stories in the Hyborian Age, 15,000 years ago.