Appendix N makes no specific mention of which Leigh Brackett works are of inspiration for D&D. Thanks to the presence of John Carter in the Appendix, many gravitate to the Eric John Stark stories, especially Black Amazon of Mars. This post is not about Stark, but it is about a square-jawed American confronting ancient evils on Mars.
Appearing as the first story in "The Coming of the Terrans", this story is about a guy (Captain Burk Winters) who thinks his lady is dead, and wants to forget. There's a trendy new "drug" on Mars: Shanga, the Going-Back. In smaller doses, it regresses the mind of the user down the evolutionary chain, and overworked Terran yuppies come to Mars to get regressed to primitive man and frolic in a garden for a few hours. But our hero wants more. He wants to regress so far he forgets his lost love forever. He doesn't want some diluted, gentrified product, he wants Shanga in the fullest mode of experience. He cuts a deal with a shady Martian, who brings him out to an ancient city far from modernity. Here, radiation is beamed at the subject, and they regress not just mentally but physically. Winters finds himself hairier, stronger, more primitive. But worse, he finds himself in a huge arena, a contained artificial jungle populated by all manner of horrible beasts, all different creatures that were once men before the Shanga dragged them down the primordial chain. Here, in this arena overseen by an evil priestess and resentful colonized martians, our hero must fight to survive against the monstrous antedilluvian ancestors of man, and win before the Shanga pulls him deep enough to be beyond saving. You can read the story in like an hour and a half, so I won't spoil what happens, but you can find it on Project Gutenberg and get in on the goodness yourself!
The story rules, and as far as gameable material goes its a no-brainer. If you do not see the gaming potential in a combination colisseum and zoo where abducted slaves are driven by addiction to mutate down into pre-hominid beasts, observed and mocked by a dying race fuming with ressentiment for ascendent humanity, then you do not deserve to be a Dungeon Master. Tease the players with it, make a mild, diluted Shanga available from some elves as a carousing sort of environment, and let them get drawn in to the web of intrigue centred around a walled-garden dungeon full of prehistoric beasts. Does Shanga work on dogs? Chickens? Bears? I don't see why not. The Monster Manual is full of Paleolithic goodies, make use of them. Tie Shanga in with the Conclave of 6 for a Brozer crossover. Give the Shanga-Crystal to a wizard player at the domain level. Use your imagination, this is high-grade stuff and you'd be an idiot not to use it.
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