The first edition had four stories ("Imprint of Chaos", "Break the Door of Hell", "The Wager Lost by Winning", and "The Dread Empire") and was issued in 1971 in the Ace Science Fiction Specials line.

[1] A subsequent 1986 edition contained an additional story, "The Things That Are Gods", and was titled The Compleat Traveler in Black.

The series deals with an unnamed protagonist, who "has many names but only one nature" and who bears a staff of curdled light, traveling through a landscape in which Order and Chaos conflict.

The following morning, the Traveller finds the assassin's body on a dunghill: his crimes have been discovered and properly attributed to him, and he has received the execution the law prescribes.

Colin Greenland reviewed The Traveller in Black for Imagine magazine and stated that "the chronicle of the softly-spoken little pilgrim with the staff of curdled light, whose task it is to end the rule of Chaos and usher in the age of Order.