139 replies to this topic

[Ironhand]

Hey Scout! I'd really, really like to reply right now, but I HAVE TO head over to Missouri. Running late as is. I'll get back with y'all tomorrow evening.

Hey Deuce! Where in Missouri? Anywhere near St. Louis?

[deuce]

Hey Scout! I'd really, really like to reply right now, but I HAVE TO head over to Missouri. Running late as is. I'll get back with y'all tomorrow evening.

Hey Deuce! Where in Missouri? Anywhere near St. Louis?

Hey Ironhand! Just got back. No (though my sister and her family lives in St. Louis). I was doing a little recon in Exeter and the surrounding environs of Barry County. REH spent part of a summer there at his grandpa Ervin's house (his only trip north of the Mason-Dixon line). There's still fine women and good times to be had there.

[deuce]

I was just getting more questions into this discution. I was thinking about the name of this and other wizards and I do think "naming" is important to get Xaltotun's or Acheron cultural background.

Hey Scout! I agree.

Yes, Stygia is a Greek name, just like Cimmeria and Atlantis but in the Hyborian Age they had nothing to do with the actual classic world.Maybe Stygia and Cimmeria were the names hyborians gave to these lands. And it is by this naming that we know them.The hyborian kingdoms, at least in my opinion, got a lot from the greco-roman world ( or what became of that in the "dark ages"). It is only natural as the Greco-Roman world was the zenith of western civilization in the ancient world. And so we got that hyborian wizard with an alien name, he is not Xaltotunus nor Xaltotunis but XALTOTUN.

Well, "Cimmeria" is derived from the Latinized version of Kimmerioi, which in turn was the Hellenized version of the Indo-Iranian "Gimirri" (or something similar). Didn't Plato say in Critias that "Atlantis" and other names in the tale were "translated" into more "Hellenized" forms? Anyway, I agree that Howard used a sort of "bastard Greco-Roman" naming-scheme to represent "standard Hyborian". I will say that "Xaltotunos" would look vaguely "Greek/Hellenistic", IMO.

At the moment I think that Acheron ( also a Greek name) was founded by Hyborians but they got their blood mixed. I'm not sure if when Acheron fell there was any "pure" hyborian alive. Acheronians seam to be a mixed race, half hyborians half something else we don't know. If so maybe it is not correct to call them hyborians as they were now mixed at the ending of the empire.

As I've said several times before, the Acheronians definitely don't appear to be "pure" Hyborians. On the other hand, REH stated in Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age and The Hyborian Age essay that NONE of the Hyborian nations were "pure". Trocero and Prospero were both brunettes. So was Tarascus. So was Strabonus.

First I thought wizards had weird names like Tsotha-Lanti who I saw as a Kothian. After re-reading TSC I got that he was in fact (or legend) a Zamoran. There was an hyborian guy who was a wizard that still had his hyborian name: Orastes.
Xaltotun doesn't look like a hyborian name not even a Stygian one to me, even with that "TOT" in the middle. I think his name comes from another race or culture that was dominant or well accepted in Acheron. If there is any hyborian character without a Latinized/Greek name please post it and I'll forget that naming thing. It is possible I'm mistaken.

It may be impossible to determine what other race(s) added to the mix. I wouldn't rule out "Xaltotun" as being some sort of "Acheronian" version of a Stygian name. On the other hand, REH almost seems to imply that there was little difference between the ancient "Nemedian" and Acheronian tongues. There is also the "Xuthltan" option to consider.
As for "non-Greco-Roman" names of Hyborians: Gault Hagar's son, Olgerd Vladislav, Strom and Tomar come to mind.

Yes some germans had latinized names but there was a cultural/political/religious background that linked them to the Greco-Roman world, after all germans had their own Roman Empire

I think the Imperial Roman/HRE and Stygian/Acheronian situations share many similarities. One reason I pointed that out.

[Mondas]

WOW??

[Spartan198]

I'm putting together a plot for an Hyborian Age fanfic and I was curious as to the story behind the Acheronean Empire? I've read on wikipedia that it covered Aquilonia,Nemedia,Argos,and parts of Zingara and Ophir before it fell three millenia before Conan's time,but that's pretty much it. Are there any revised versions of maps or REH's Hyborian Age essay dealing with Acheron,its geography,and history?

[deuce]

Hey SpartanGlory! This thread has been moved, since discussions about the history, geography etc... of the Hyborian Age normally go on this board. There are two threads that already discuss Acheron on this board. Here are the links:

http://www.conan.com...p?showtopic=290


The "SEARCH" function works great on this forum, BTW.

[Spartan198]

I'm working on a plot for an Hyborian Age fanfic,and I was wondering if there are any revised Hyborian Age maps or essays that work in Acheron and its history,geography,etc..? Or would I pretty much have to composite my own? If any do exist,could someone tell me where I can find them? Or do I pretty much have to make my own (maps,I mean)?

[Spartan198]

Oh,okay. Wasn't sure. I only frequent the Conan forums.

[deuce]

I'm working on a plot for an Hyborian Age fanfic,and I was wondering if there are any revised Hyborian Age maps or essays that work in Acheron and its history,geography,etc..? Or would I pretty much have to composite my own? If any do exist,could someone tell me where I can find them? Or do I pretty much have to make my own (maps,I mean)?

Hey Spartan! Check out the "Maps of the Hyborian Age World" thread. Emirikol did some, but I think the links may be dead. You might have to just go by what REH said and make your own. Good luck!

This may be a good time to examine the extent of the Nightmare Empire, as indicated by Robert E. Howard. Taranaich? Axerules? Fernando? Anybody else, feel free to chime in.

[Spartan198]

Yes,definitely. You guys are all FAR more knowledgable on Conan and his world than I am. I want to use Acheron as the plot location because of the "evil empire" description I constantly hear of it. Aquilonia,being based by REH on medieval France,just doesn't fit the story,and the wikipedia article suggests that Howard based Acheron on the far more bloodthirsty Roman Empire (and I'm far more knowledgable on classical civilizations than I am medieval ones).
Please,any and all with info that might help me,speak up!

[Spartan198]

I checked those threads earlier and,unfortunately,all are either dead or 10,000 BC (I feel the 20,000 to 9,500 BC timeline to be far more logical for Thuria's transformation into Hyboria). I have no knowledge whatsoever on how to create anything like the maps I've seen so far. I'm trying to draw up an enlarged map of Corinthia at the moment with various named regions and additional cities on it (REH's only listed city is present and accounted for,plus several dozen others that I've made up),but I just can't create anything I'm really satisfied with. I'd post it here on the Forums if I knew how,but I don't.

Edited by SpartanGlory198, 15 February 2008 - 07:23 AM.

[God-King_of_Lethe]

People, i must admit you got me seriously lost here - the initial pages of this topic on their own got me curious enough to join the forums just so i could throw my own to 2 cents. I admit to not having read everything that has come back and forth in the previous pages. So here goes nothing:

Deuce began the subject mentioning The Bloody Crown of Conan (Del Rey) and a quote implying that Xaltotun is, or at least seems, Hyborian... I haven't read it, but i do have an old "Conan the Conqueror" Ace edition from 1954 and there's no such implication in it, thought his speaking of "archaic accented nemedian" certainly appears. But that can relate to much - he might know it because it was the lingua franca of hyborians, or at least semi-civilized of hyborians serving the acheronians as vassals and/or slaves. I do remember texts that imply escaped slaves helped spur the hyborian invasions with their tales of acheronian and stygian riches.

Also, it might be that nemedian language has more elements of whatever the acheronians spoke than other hyborian languages - its most certainly possible considering the presence of acheronian survivors as semi-independent hillfolk in Nemedia.

I think it should be mentioned too that there's original material enough to imply stygians from Conan's don't look like the ancient eastern race they originated from. In Xuthal of the Dusk there's Thalis, a dame of the stygian high nobility and (implied) pure stock - tall, fair-skinned and black maned. Not to mention the renegade stygian prince from Black Colossus, Kutamun, a man even bigger than Conan!

Or going in a whole different direction, what if acheronians don't descend from proto-stygians, but from the Giant-Kings the stygians supposedly replaced?

There's much that Howard left in the dark, much of it on purpose apparently... he seemed to look for a pseudo-historical fiction feel in his Sword & Sorcery: sounding like ancient & middle ages but with freedom to develop without historical research.

I remember texts using the name Khari the ancestors of stygians and related evil empires, but for all i know it might come from Lin Carter & Sprague De Camp's stuff. There's also mention of an "Elder Hyperborea" among those supposedly khari-descended nations. But who's to say there were only 2 or 3 such nations?

What if Kutchemes was no Stygian colony, but part of a wholy forgotten kingdom? And the Border Kingdom, couldn't the cesspool of monstrosities that inhabit that country be the festering remains of a sorcerous might long lost?

And there's also unexplained places like the green stone cities of Xuthal, Xuchotl and Dagon, the great abandoned city of Alkmenoon from the Jewels of Gwahlur or the pre-human Citadel of the Winged One... The Hyborian Age is chockful of lots pieces of secret history.

It's stuff certainly worth of some looking for.

[Spartan198]

Welcome to the forums,God King.

Some interesting points you bring up.

[Kortoso]

This passes from the lips of Amalric as Xaltotun is resurrected:

"By Mitra!" whispered the tall, yellow-haired man on the left. "He was not a Stygian. That part at least was true."

[Axerules]

Welcome G-KoL, glad to see someone else interested in this "pseudo-historical" stuff joining us.

I think it should be mentioned too that there's original material enough to imply stygians from Conan's don't look like the ancient eastern race they originated from. In Xuthal of the Dusk there's Thalis, a dame of the stygian high nobility and (implied) pure stock - tall, fair-skinned and black maned. Not to mention the renegade stygian prince from Black Colossus, Kutamun, a man even bigger than Conan!

Prince Kutamun is describded as a dark giant in Black Colossus.

I remember texts using the name Khari the ancestors of stygians and related evil empires, but for all i know it might come from Lin Carter & Sprague De Camp's stuff. There's also mention of an "Elder Hyperborea" among those supposedly khari-descended nations. But who's to say there were only 2 or 3 such nations?

The "Khari" term wasn't coined by REH. It comes from the GURPS RPG, AFAIK.

What if Kutchemes was no Stygian colony, but part of a wholy forgotten kingdom?

Kutchemes did belong to the northern holdings of "old" Stygia. Read again Black Colossus and beware if you own a "corrupted" text, I think LSDC added a reference to Acheron inside this yarn in the Lancers.

And there's also unexplained places like the green stone cities of Xuthal, Xuchotl and Dagon, the great abandoned city of Alkmenoon from the Jewels of Gwahlur or the pre-human Citadel of the Winged One... The Hyborian Age is chockful of lots pieces of secret history.

We already speculated on some of this stuff, you might be interested in checking some old threads in "The Library of Epemitreus" or "The Hyborian Age" boards. Lots of interesting things can be found there.

It's stuff certainly worth of some looking for.

Very true !

Edited by Axerules, 08 April 2008 - 12:42 AM.

[Fernando]

I think LSDC added a reference to Acheron inside this yarn in the Lancers.

Hello, meu amigo! H? quanto tempo! (How many time!)

Don't "think"; be 100% sure it was a LSDC's adding, my friend!

All online versions of BC - including the THE COMMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN's one - hasn't the name "Acheron" into this yarn.

[deuce]

I think LSDC added a reference to Acheron inside this yarn in the Lancers.

Hello, meu amigo! H? quanto tempo! (How many time!)

Don't "think"; be 100% sure it was a LSDC's adding, my friend!

All online versions of BC - including the THE COMMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN's one - hasn't the name "Acheron" into this yarn.

Axerules is quite right. My source is the ACE reprint of Conan the Freebooter (ca. 1980)...

Copyright page:
Copyright ? 1968 by L. Sprague de Camp. All rights reserved.

Black Colossus was first published in Weird Tales for June 1933; copyright 1933 for Popular Fiction Publishing Company. It was reprinted in Conan the Barbarian, N.Y.: Gnome Press, Inc., 1954.

As you can see, this edition is simply a reprint of the Lancer edition. The altered version by de Camp (who seems to have the ENTIRE CONTENTS of "CtF" copyrighted in his name) was first published in 1954 and was the "standard" until the 21st century.
Here are the passages that Axerules is referring to...

In that ivory dome lay the bones of Thugra Khotan, the dark sorcerer who had reigned in Kuthchemes three thousand years ago, when the kingdoms of Stygia and Acheron stretched far northward of the great river... (p.56)

They had stormed over Kuthchemes like a tidal wave, washing the marble towers in blood, and the kingdom of Acheron had gone down in fire and ruin. (p.57)

THAT is what Conan fans read as "fact" for 45+yrs.

[deuce]

[quote name='God-King_of_Lethe' post='85730' date='Apr 7 2008, 11:19 AM']People, i must admit you got me seriously lost here - the initial pages of this topic on their own got me curious enough to join the forums just so i could throw my own to 2 cents. I admit to not having read everything that has come back and forth in the previous pages.[/quote]

If you hadn't read all of the discussions so far, why did you post? Have you read them now? Not doing so runs a serious risk of asking questions that have already been answered and wasting time. You might not be so "seriously lost" then. My two lunas.

[quote]Deuce began the subject mentioning The Bloody Crown of Conan (Del Rey) and a quote implying that Xaltotun is, or at least seems, Hyborian... I haven't read it, but i do have an old "Conan the Conqueror" Ace edition from 1954 and there's no such implication in it[/quote]

That quote didn't "imply" anything. Robert E. Howard flat-out, unequivocally stated in the "HotD" synopsis that Xaltotun was "an Hyborian". Whatever else can be argued about this topic, there is no leeway for "implication" in that particular quote. Howard wrote that Xaltotun was "an Hyborian". Period. I'm glad that you've got the de Camp-edited/renamed/generally-screwed-with "version" of The Hour of the Dragon (sorry, "Conan the Conqueror" ) to use as an infallible reference.

[quote]thought his speaking of "archaic accented nemedian" certainly appears. But that can relate to much - he might know it because it was the lingua franca of hyborians, or at least semi-civilized of hyborians serving the acheronians as vassals and/or slaves. I do remember texts that imply escaped slaves helped spur the hyborian invasions with their tales of acheronian and stygian riches.
Also, it might be that nemedian language has more elements of whatever the acheronians spoke than other hyborian languages - its most certainly possible considering the presence of acheronian survivors as semi-independent hillfolk in Nemedia.[/quote]

I know of no reference in REH's tales that indicates a great difference between the Aquilonian and Nemedian tongues. Tarascus speaks of ancient ties. Aquilonian and Nemedian names appear basically interchangeable. I'd like to know what "texts" you've read that "imply" the Hyborians threw down the Acheronians and the northern Stygians due to these "slaves' tales".

[quote]I think it should be mentioned too that there's original material enough to imply stygians from Conan's don't look like the ancient eastern race they originated from. In Xuthal of the Dusk there's Thalis, a dame of the stygian high nobility and (implied) pure stock - tall, fair-skinned and black maned. Not to mention the renegade stygian prince from Black Colossus, Kutamun, a man even bigger than Conan!
Or going in a whole different direction, what if acheronians don't descend from proto-stygians, but from the Giant-Kings the stygians supposedly replaced?[/quote]

I think it should be mentioned that there is not ONE single Stygian MALE that is EVER described by REH as "fair-skinned". Not one. When/if you find one, get back with me.
WHERE does Howard describe the appearance of the "proto-Stygians"? The earliest description of Stygians by REH ("timeline"-wise) can be found in "QotBC". There, the "pre-historic Stygians" are described as "dusky". Considering that they seem to be at a "Bronze Age" level of metallurgy, their arrival on the Zargheba would have to be fairly soon after the "proto-Stygians" reached Stygia. Males of the Stygian upper classes (the only ones that count) are consistently described as "tall" and "dusky".

As for the "Monster/Giant-Kings", all the evidence in The God in the Bowl (the only evidence there is) points to these mysterious entities as being giant, human-headed serpents. "Monster" and "Giant" would equally apply. Xaltotun and the Acheronian remnant population appear to be human. Xaltotun is described as "tall" just as often as "giant". Answer me this: How can "pre-humans" be "human"? How can there be "humans" BEFORE "humans"? REH doesn't try to call the "Black Ones" "human". Far from it. Why would he call supposedly "humanoid" "Monster/Giant-Kings" "pre-human" IF they were somehow "human"?
There is zero evidence for a "humanoid" "Monster/Giant-King" migration/invasion of the Hyborian lands. Here's what the Hyborian Age essay says:

"(The Stygians) fall upon that mysterious pre-human kingdom of the south and overthrow it, substituting their own culture, modified by contact with the older one. The newer kingdom was called Stygia, and remnants of the older nation seemed to have survived, and even been worshipped, after the race as a whole had been destroyed."

So the Stygians decided to worship other "humans"? "Humans" who had just gotten their arses kicked by those self-same Stygians? How could the rag-tag, fugitive "proto-Stygians", who had trekked through 3,000+mi. of wasteland (and wielding bronze weapons, apparently) "overthrow" the "Monster/Giant-Kings", yet there be enough "remnants" of these oh-so-human "prehumans" that they (the "M/G-Ks") could then conquer a sizable empire in the barbaric Hyborian lands? Are you saying that the "Stygians" were tougher than barbaric Hyborians? From the context, the "remnants" remaining after the "Stygian" conquest were quite small in numbers. Nor is there ANY indication that any remnants "fled" or "migrated" north.

[quote]There's also mention of an "Elder Hyperborea" among those supposedly khari-descended nations. But who's to say there were only 2 or 3 such nations? What if Kutchemes was no Stygian colony, but part of a wholy forgotten kingdom? And the Border Kingdom, couldn't the cesspool of monstrosities that inhabit that country be the festering remains of a sorcerous might long lost?[/quote]

"Elder Hyperborea" was established by Hyborians. Check the "Hyperboreans -- References?" thread. Corinthia, Ophir and Koth appear to have existed as Hyborian kingdoms before the fall of Acheron. Kuthchemes WAS a Stygian city. Robert E. Howard said so. Where in all of Crom's hells did you find a reference to the BK being inhabited by a "cesspool of monstrosities"?

[quote]And there's also unexplained places like the green stone cities of Xuthal, Xuchotl and Dagon, the great abandoned city of Alkmenoon from the Jewels of Gwahlur or the pre-human Citadel of the Winged One... The Hyborian Age is chockful of lots pieces of secret history.
It's stuff certainly worth of some looking for.[/quote]

I agree.

[Kortoso]

I know of no reference in REH's tales that indicates a great difference between the Aquilonian and Nemedian tongues. Tarascus speaks of ancient ties. Aquilonian and Nemedian names appear basically interchangeable. I'd like to know what "texts" you've read that "imply" the Hyborians threw down the Acheronians and the northern Stygians due to these "slaves' tales".

Good point. Look at how many Nemedian and Aquilonian names have similarities. Probably we looking at mutually intelligible dialects.

[korak]

On the subject of the origin of Acheron, as I have sped read through this topic, I noticed that someone mentioned that DeCamp had added Acheron to the Lancer Hyborian Age essay, so I went and got out my old Lancer first edition of Conan to check on that. Sure enough, abuot eight pages into the Hyborian Age, page 29, DeCamp inserts a paragraph in italics, with his initials as the author. In this he conjectures that the Lemurian refugees that founded Stygia actually founded two kingdoms, a southern kingdom, Stygia proper, and a northern kingdom, Acheron, with its capital of Python. According to his theory, then, Stygia and Acheron are sister nations the exact same age, founded in the same period of time.

I don't buy that. As far as I am concerned, REH gives us a prototype summary of Acheron in the Hyborian Age, and by my interpretation Acheron is the older "mysterious pre-human kingdom of the south" that the Lemurian refugees invade and usurp to create Stygia, Acheron's successor. That would give Acheron the necessary antiquity to match up more confortably with the history of Xaltotun in Hour of the Dragon.

Because Howard doesn't name it as Acheron in the HA, that suggests to my mind that this concept was in a very embryonic state at that time, though he had already fixed in his mind that he might do something with that idea sometime, which he does finally in HOUR. By that time, in taking this old idea from HA and dealing it out afresh, he somewhat revised the concept of Acheron to render it more dramatic narrative for his Conan novel, having it overwhelmed with barbarians rather than mere Lemurian refugees. So maybe then, there is also something in what DeCamp added, that in some way, Acheron still existed after Stygia came about, either as a rival power or as a figurehead power, which might be read into Howard's statement in HA that they retained and worshipped elements of that previous race and culture.

The Hyborian Age is a very spartan summary and so any number of meticulous events could have occurred over the course of centuries within Acheron and Stygia that are sped over and ignored or summarized in only the briefest terms in that essay, up until the last long section, the story of the life of the Pictish conqueror.

That's my two cents for what it's worth.