Doom's Standard

Doom's Standard is the dread battle banner of Thulsa Doom, the dark sorcerer who leads the Cult of Set. It is first seen by the boy Conan during the Vanir raid on his Cimmerian village, where it hangs suspended from a wooden frame adorned with the horns of beasts, its rich fabric embroidered with the ominous symbol of writhing serpents upholding the orb of a sable sun. This emblem, which the boy sees once more as it entraps the eastern light and is incarnadined thereby, is the symbol that long would haunt his dreams. The standard is carried by a deformed thing, more beast than man, despite his iron helm and armoured leathern garments, whose pride in raising aloft his fear-inspiring device declares his lack of all humanity. Behind this misshapen bearer rides the magnificent figure of Doom himself, resplendent in armour of overlapping leaves gleaming like the scales of a serpent, his bejewelled helmet covering his nose and cheekbones so that only his eyes, flaming with unholy fires, are visible. The steed he rides is very like its master: lean, graceful, and aglitter with jewelled trappings, its eyes burning with the light of living coals, so that Conan thinks devils from the nether parts of Hell might come howling up on such a steed to ravage the green hills of earth.

The Standard in the Raid on the Cimmerian Village

The standard first appears at the climax of the Vanir raid on Conan's village, when the boy has just witnessed the death of his father, Corin the smith. As Rexor, the giant lieutenant, receives the blade that no man could have wrested from Corin's living grasp and raises it to study its splendid craftsmanship in the sun's slanting rays, a shudder suddenly erases the grins from the faces of those still ringed around the embattled pair. Conan looks up to see the standard, set upon an ebon pole, coming slowly into view high against the rising sun. A grisly fringe of scalps dangles from the frame, and gaunt skulls grin mockingly from the spikes that adorn the upper reaches of the structure. Even Rexor bows his head as that hideous standard entraps the eastern light. The boy recoils when he sees the bearer of the banner, a deformed thing, more beast than man, despite his iron helm and armoured leathern garments, whose pride in raising aloft his fear-inspiring device declares his lack of all humanity. Behind this misshapen offspring of the devil rides the magnificent figure of Doom himself, resplendent in armour of overlapping leaves, gleaming like the scales of a serpent in the opalescent light, his bejewelled helmet covering his nose and cheekbones so that only his eyes, flaming with unholy fires, are visible. The steed he rides is very like its master: lean, graceful, and aglitter with jewelled trappings, its eyes burning with the light of living coals, so that Conan thinks devils from the nether parts of Hell might come howling up on such a steed to ravage the green hills of earth.

The Standard in Conan's Memory and the Journey into Vanaheim

After the raid, as the boy Conan staggers along bent beneath the weight of his chain, chilled by the upland winds and the iron collar that clutches at his throat, the standard becomes one of the startling images that make up the dreamlike horror of the endless journey into Vanaheim. In his blurred montage of memories, the grisly standard is uplifted against the sky, flaunting its emblem of tangled serpents and a black sun, alongside fur-clad riders whirling past the bowed, staggering line of captives, an old man unchained from the line and speared with uncaring savagery, small red footprints left on the ice by the torn feet of barefoot children, and the cold winds in the mountain passes. The standard thus becomes inseparable from the trauma of enslavement, a visual anchor for the boy's uncomprehending dread as he is herded through the palisaded gateway of the Vanir town of Thrudvang and chained to the Wheel of Pain, where he grinds grain to powder beneath its ponderous weight beside other ragged, dull-eyed youths and men from lands unknown or rarely mentioned in Cimmeria.

The Standard's Recurrence in Shadizar and the Cult of Set

Years later, in Shadizar of Zamora, the crossroads of the world, the standard's symbolism recurs in the processions of the Cult of Set. Conan, now a young man, witnesses a procession led by girls and young women draped in soiled white garments with garlands of wilted flowers crowning heads of unbound hair, followed by ranks of youths beating time on deep-voiced drums or making discordant music with cymbals, lyres, and plaintive flutes, their eyes glazed like dreamers walking in their sleep. Among them stalk robed men with shaven pates bearing brazen pots in which incense smoulders. As the procession wends its way toward a slender dark tower piercing the tenuous fabric of the sky, a chant arises and floats back above the noises of the street: "Doom... Doom... Doom..." The young Cimmerian freezes in his tracks as that ominous chant awakes images long dormant in his memory, and he sees young men, scarcely more than boys, staggering along with faces blank and drained of colour, lashing their naked flesh with whips made of the hides of serpents and barbed with snakes' fangs, so that with each stroke their flesh is beaded with blood, chanting as they go: "Doom... Doom... Thulsa Doom... Thulsa Doom..." The standard itself, though not explicitly described in this procession, is the emblem that gives the chant its power, the symbol of the cult's hold over the corrupted young of Zamora.

The Standard at the Battle of the Burial Mounds

The standard reappears in full force at the Battle of the Burial Mounds, where Conan and Subotai have set up their defences on a mound. Like figures materializing out of Conan's boyhood nightmares, a score of mounted riders, black against the grey and shrouded passage of the day, explode into a storm of trampling hooves and clanking armour, and above the standard-bearer's head floats the well-remembered banner of two writhing serpents with fanged mouths, intent upon upholding the black orb of a ragged sun. Faceless in their ornate helms, the minions of the snake god raise their spears and swords and howl like wolves beneath a gibbous moon. The standard's appearance here is a direct echo of the raid on the Cimmerian village, the same emblem that haunted Conan's dreams now leading the attack against him, and it is this recurrence that makes the battle a personal confrontation with his past as much as a physical struggle. The earth opens up beneath the hooves of the foremost riders, and three horsemen and their mounts pitch into the spear-impaling pit prepared by the Cimmerian and his companion, but the standard itself remains aloft, a rallying point for the snake god's minions.

The Standard's Significance and the Fall of Thulsa Doom

The standard is more than a military banner; it is the visual embodiment of the Cult of Set's power and the threat it poses to the kingdoms of the Hyborian Age. King Osric, in his audience with Conan, Subotai, and Valeria, laments the presence of this demigod in his poor kingdom, speaking of snakes in his beautiful capital, of black towers with their black-hearted priests everywhere in Brythunia and Corinthia, stealing away children and turning them into monsters, into reptiles like the snakes they worship. The standard, with its emblem of writhing serpents upholding the orb of a sable sun, is the symbol of this corruption, the banner under which the cult's followers are recruited and its enemies destroyed. It is also the symbol of Doom's charismatic authority, the device before which even Rexor bows his head, and the emblem that the cult's followers chant to as they lash their own flesh in devotion. When Conan finally confronts Doom in the great temple, where the Faithful of Set are gathered to hear the exhortation of their master, the standard's power is broken along with its master. Conan's sword sighs as it sweeps up in a great arc and clove the swaying snake head from the human body, and the severed head rolls slowly down the long flight of stairs to come to rest beside the fountain pool. The standard, like the cult it represents, is left behind as Conan turns to face the guards who still hold the assemblage at bay, raising the Eye of Set and commanding them to go back to the caves from which Doom called them. The emblem that once haunted his dreams is finally vanquished, its power dissolved with the death of the sorcerer who bore it, and Conan's words over the fallen body — that what matters is not the steel within the blade, but the steel within the man — mark the final rejection of the standard's dark symbolism in favour of the Cimmerian code of individual strength and will.