Hyborian Age

The Hyborian Age is the legendary epoch in which the tale of Conan unfolds, a half-forgotten era situated between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the rise of the sons of Aryas. It was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. Into this world came Conan, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, to tread the jewelled thrones of the Earth beneath his sandalled feet. The proudest kingdom of this age was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming West, and it was from this throne that Conan ruled as Conan the Great, the mightiest lord of his day. The many tales spun about his youth make it difficult to perceive the truth amid the many legends, a difficulty that frames the entire narrative as a recollection of a mythic past.

The Age as a Setting of Contrasts

The Hyborian Age is defined by stark contrasts between the natural world and the encroaching touch of civilization. The vast emptiness of the firmament stretched above travellers, deep blue by day and cloudless, while by night it became a canopy of black velvet upon which the prodigal gods had stitched handfuls of diamonds. Below lay a seldom-travelled track snaking across the flat prairie and the rondure of patient hills, where the naked black soil flaunted its shabby finery of withered grasses. This was the source of man's wide migration, a land of eternal monotony broken only by scrub vegetation. The age's geography is a patchwork of distinct lands, from the barren Hyperborea and the northern realms of Asgard and Vanaheim, sometimes together called Nordheim or Northlands, to the eastern steppes of Hyrkania and the darkling land of Zamora, a territory of shadowed secrets, furtive spies, profound philosophers, depraved kings, and sloe-eyed women.

The Crucible of Conan's Youth

The Hyborian Age serves as the crucible in which Conan is forged. The years of back-breaking labour at the Wheel of Pain toughened his sinews and made his muscles bulge, giving his body the strength and flexibility which soft iron gains when it is heated in the furnace and pounded by the hammer of the smith. This process of physical forging mirrors the smithing of the ancient sword by Corin, who turned iron into steel through an arcane art inherited from the ancient Atlanteans. The age's harshness is embodied in the pit master Toghrul, a red-bearded man from Hyrkania who travelled with his troupe staging fights for the amusement of local chieftains, luring neighbourhood champions with promises of gold to do combat with his Pit fighters—slaves all, whose final adversary was always Death. It was in this environment that Conan made his silent vow to his indifferent northern gods: Men shall die for this!

The Lure of Civilization

The Hyborian Age presents civilization as both a marvel and a corruption. In Shadizar of Zamora, the crossroads of the world, Conan found himself in the midst of a colourful throng, rubbing shoulders with merchants in rich robes, artisans hawking trays of brass ornaments, gems, and weapons, bearded farmers guiding wains laden with sacks of wheat and barley, stiff-backed soldiers, mobile-hipped whores, beggars, urchins, and priests. He saw squat Shemites with curly beards, lean Zuagirs in head cloths, kilted Brythunians, booted Corinthians, and turbaned Turanians. The city's broad boulevards, pillared temples, domed palaces and mansions, and lush, walled gardens amazed him, yet the back streets swarmed with hags and pimps, with painted children for sale to degenerates, with the poor and the ill. Here flesh was for sale, or at least for rent, and every pleasure, however decadent, could be had for money. In these back streets lurked violence and sudden death, a constant reminder of the age's brutality.

The Age's Religious and Mystical Dimensions

The Hyborian Age is steeped in religious and mystical forces that shape its events. The Cult of Set, with its worshippers who prized polished precious stones, deep and unwinking like the eyes of the serpents they adore, drew tribute from every Set cult in the kingdom—gold, drugs, jewels, wine, and women. The age's gods are distant and indifferent, as Conan learned, for the immortal gods have little interest in the affairs of men. Yet facing almost certain death, the barbarian breathed a supplication to Crom, god of the Cimmerians, acknowledging that valour pleases the Lord Crom and asking for revenge before he died. This prayer reveals the age's spiritual landscape, where gods demand courage rather than worship, and where a man's fate hangs on a slender thread.

The Age's Enduring Legacy

The Hyborian Age is remembered as a time of legendary figures and epic struggles. Conan, no longer the penniless runaway slave who once traversed the forbidding land, later returned to the Kezankian Mountains clad in fine raiment, with a tunic of mesh-mail over his clothing, a steel cap on his head, and the ancient sword taken from the cave of the grinning skeleton whetted to a razor edge and thrust into a splendid scabbard of reptile skin. The age's legacy is one of transformation, where a slave could become a king, and where the riddle of steel—the question of what steel is compared to the hand that wields it—could be answered through blood and vengeance. It is an age undreamed of, whose tales are difficult to separate from legend, but whose influence on the world that followed is undeniable.