Kolari

Kolari is a mere crossroads encampment in the Hyborian Age, a way station where traders from near and far rest before continuing on across the steppes and tundras. It lies in a region of rolling hills, and its lone tavern serves as a gathering place for travelers. Despite its modest size, Kolari becomes the site of a catastrophic earthquake that destroys the village, kills Conan's master Toghrul, and frees the Cimmerian from his chains, marking a decisive turning point in his journey from slavery toward the vengeance that will define his life.

Setting and the Cave Prison

Kolari's significance in Conan's story begins when Toghrul, the Hyrkanian pit master, brings his caravan to the village for a few days' halt during a profitable season among the Nordheimers. In a hillside cave, Toghrul finds a place to keep and exploit his champion. The cave had once been the abode of a holy hermit, who had brought to it some amenities and, to deter unwanted petitioners, had fitted a door of iron bars across the entrance. To make the place more comfortable, Toghrul added wall hangings and cushions from his own yurt. He locked the Cimmerian within, and for hours every day he stood outside collecting fees from people who wished to gape at his famous Pit-fighting champion.

Inside this furnished prison, Conan's massive physique contrasts sharply with the dainty comfort of his surroundings. Sitting with his back to the wall of the cave, he tries by candlelight to decipher the words on a scroll, having picked up a smattering of written Hyrkanian. With knotted brow and slowly moving lips, he puzzles out each word written in the spidery script of Turan. The writing on the scroll is a love poem, which mightily perplexes the youth even when he understands most of the words, for he has never before heard sentiments like these. This moment of quiet intellectual struggle within the cave foreshadows the deeper questions that will later consume him.

The Earthquake and the Escape

One evening at sunset, the curious depart for their evening meal, and Conan is left alone in the cave. Suddenly the earth shakes. A muffled moan within the ground swells to a rumbling roar. The ground cracks open, and a stream of rocks cascades down the hillside past the entrance to the cave. A girl who had come to the cave, a slim young woman wrapped in a cloak of fine sable who had wished to retain Conan's services as a love partner for the night, wakes screaming and fumbles for her lover. But Conan, fully clad, is crouching on the cave floor, his outstretched arms braced against the stone wall, as the ground heaves and shakes beneath him. Huddled there, he recalls the legends that his father told him about giants in the earth and wonders whether some of them, astir, are causing the catastrophe.

The rumble increases in volume until Conan has to shout to the trembling girl, urging her to join him. From Kolari comes a continuing ululation of screams as terror-stricken people rush from their tumbling houses. Behind Conan and the girl, a section of the cave roof collapses with a thunderous roar, filling the air with rock dust. As Conan, growling curses, seizes the bars that pen them in, the ground beneath his feet splits open. A line like black lightning zigzags down the rock in which the hinges of the barred gate are set. The gate loosens in Conan's desperate grip as the lower hinge parts from its setting. A violent push, and the gate hangs awry.

"Get out, girl!" shouts Conan, as he forces the gate ajar. The girl squeezes past him through the narrow opening and runs screaming into the night, clutching her furs and flimsy garments against her naked bosom. With another mighty heave, Conan breaks the gate loose from its remaining hinge and hurls it down the hillside. As the earth rocks and vibrates beneath his feet, he staggers out into the moonlight and glares wildly at the scene of devastation. In the middle distance, he perceives the houses of Kolari in ruins, and their homeless tenants running aimlessly about, like ants after the obliteration of their nest.

The Death of Toghrul and the End of Slavery

In the chaos of the earthquake, Conan hears a desperate cry: "Conan! Conan! Help me!" It is the voice of Toghrul, his master, calling for aid. The pit master, who had compelled his fighters to shave lest they present their opponents with an advantage, who had chained Conan to the Wheel of Pain and dragged him through the streets with a chain wound around the pommel of his saddle, now finds himself in need of the very slave he had exploited. The earthquake that destroys Kolari also claims Toghrul's life, and with his death, Conan's bondage ends. The Cimmerian, who had been sold into slavery after the Vanir raid on his village and had toiled for years at the Wheel of Pain before becoming a Pit fighter, is finally free.

This moment of liberation is not one of triumph but of survival. Conan emerges from the cave into a world turned upside down, the village of Kolari reduced to rubble and its people scattered like ants. The earthquake, a force of nature that Conan half-believes is the work of the giants his father spoke of, has accomplished what no human power could: it has broken the chains of the pit master's champion. The death of Toghrul in the Kolari earthquake severs the last tie to Conan's life as a slave and Pit fighter, setting him on the path that will lead him across the steppes toward Zamora and, ultimately, toward his confrontation with Thulsa Doom.

Narrative Significance

Kolari functions as a threshold in Conan's journey, a place where the old order of his life is violently overturned. The cave, with its iron bars and hermit's furnishings, represents the paradox of his existence as a celebrated slave: comfortable in his prison, admired yet confined. The earthquake that destroys the village is a cataclysm that mirrors the earlier destruction of his Cimmerian village by the Vanir raiders, yet with a crucial difference. In the first catastrophe, Conan was a helpless child dragged into slavery; in the second, he is a man who breaks free through his own strength and presence of mind. The girl who flees the cave, the villagers who run aimlessly through the ruins, and the voice of Toghrul calling for help all underscore the chaos of the moment, while Conan's calm, deliberate actions mark him as one who has been forged by suffering into something harder and more purposeful.

The destruction of Kolari also carries a thematic weight that resonates through the rest of the narrative. The earthquake is a reminder of the indifference of the natural world to human affairs, a force that neither rewards nor punishes but simply acts. Conan's survival is not a reward but a chance, an opening in the fabric of fate that he seizes. From the ruins of Kolari, he will travel to Zamora, where he will meet Subotai and Valeria, and where the twisted snakes upholding a black sun will lead him toward his destiny. The village that was once a mere crossroads encampment becomes, in retrospect, the place where the slave died and the free man was born.