Thread by @DamndestBastard

.#EverythingYouKnowAboutConanIsProbablyWrong

Time for Conan's origin tale.

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of..."

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...Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet." - Robert E. Howard

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Robert E. Howard never wrote Conan's origin tale.

But, many details about Conan's youth and his homeland DO appear in other stories, poems, and essays that Howard DID write, and also in a letter to P. S. Miller in 1936, just months before his death.

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Nearly all these references were summarized with yeomanlike precision by Al Herron in a WordPress article back in December 2010.

The article is listed in my #DamndestChronolgy as the starting point for reading Conan's saga in age order. rehguide.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/con…

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Al's whole blog is a joy for any Howard fan.

It gets my highest recommendation.

Part 1 of the #DamndestOriginStory presents my own summary of those details.

Part 2, will discuss these details, why Howard presented them the way he did, and some of my own observations.

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In Part 3 I'll detail my theory of why Conan left Cimmeria.

Part 1: Howard's details of Conan's youth

Conan is born on a battlefield, his tribe repelling a band of Vanir raiders from the lands claimed and roved over by his clan in northwest Cimmeria.

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The first sounds to fill Conan's ears are the clang of swords and the yells of slaying.

Conan's father is a blacksmith.

His grandfather was born in the south of Cimmeria but left his clan due to a blood feud. After long wanderings, he settled in the northwest.

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So, although he is a pure-bred Cimmerian, Conan is considered by his people to have mixed-blood.

From the time Conan was a boy his grandfather entertained him with stories of raids into southern lands from his own youth and of his travels.

Such tales of adventure...

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...in softer, southern countries very likely stirred in Conan a desire to see them.

Conan is raised in the traditions of his people; instructed by his father, his grandfather, his mother and his clan in climbing, hunting, combat, mythology and even superstitions.

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The Cimmerian hills of his youth are a dark land of heavily wooded, shadow-haunted pines, menacing even by day. "Clouds hang always among those hills; the skies are nearly always gray..."

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...Winds blow sharp and cold, driving rain or sleet or snow before them, and moan drearily among the passes and down the valleys." There is little opportunity for mirth in his homeland and the wild and remote places harbour not only common predators...

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...but ghouls, goblins, hobgoblins, night fiends, ghosts, dwarfs, necromancers, wizards, and sorcerers. "Any hint of the supernatural would rouse all the dim monstrous instincts of fear that are the heritage of the barbarian." Conan learns to respect and fear their power.

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He is also taught to revere the gods of his people: Babd, Morrigan, Macha, Nemain, Lir an Mannanan mac Lir, Dagda, and Diancecht, but "Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent...

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...than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?" For Cimmerians, the world of the dead is a cold, sunless place...

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...of everlasting mist, where wandering ghosts go wailing forevermore. Conan comes to understand that Cimmerians have little hope here or hereafter, and they brood too much on the emptiness of life. Sometimes a strange madness of futility falls upon them when...

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...a little thing like a spinning dust-cloud, or the hollow crying of a bird, or the moan of the wind through bare branches can bring to their gloomy minds the emptiness of life and the vainness of existence. Only in war do Cimmerians find happiness.

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It is in these forbidding hills, among a people with an often grim outlook, that Conan grows to become a hunter and a warrior. Wearing a panther skin loincloth he learns to climb the crags and cliffs, to hunt the beasts of the mountain with spear, axe, and stones.

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It makes him strong.

Before he is 16 he breaks the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull.

His woodscraft is no less impressive; he learns to sense threats through the feel and smell of the wind, the sound of birds, insects, and the forest, even if they lay hidden from his sight.

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He can wait undetected while wild beasts prowl about his covert. His sleep becomes light as a wolf's; he trains himself to awake at the slightest noise.

Throughout his youth, Conan's tribe is constantly at war with the Vanir to the northwest, Aesir directly north, and...

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...the Picts to the west. In addition, feuds sometimes rage between Cimmerian clans. Tales of these exploits supplement the stories of his grandfather until he eventually becomes skilled enough to begin participating. As he grows in skill and stature, so does his renown.

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By the time he is 14 his name is already being repeated about the councilfires.

Not long after his 15th name-day, 30 or 40 Cimmerian clans set aside their feuds and unite to sweep down from the hills and destroy the Aquilonian fort and settlement at Venarium.

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Conan is among the warriors who travel to the lands of his grandfather to drive the invaders back with fire and blood.

At 15, he stands 6 feet tall, weighs 180lbs, and is a formidable antagonist though still lacking much of his full growth. His skin is darker than...

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that of the Aesir, Vanir or Aquilonians he has seen, but not so dark as the Picts. His brow is low and broad with eyes of volcanic blue that smoulder with an inner fire. His hair is long and black.

"There was the space of about a year between Vanarium and his entrance...

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...into the thief-city of Zamora. During this time he returned to the northern territories of his tribe, and made his first journey beyond the boundaries of Cimmeria. This, strange to say, was north instead of south. Why or how, I am not certain,...

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...but he spent some months among a tribe of the Aesir, fighting with the Vanir and the Hyperboreans, and developing a hate for the latter which lasted all his life and later affected his policies as king of Aquilonia. Captured by them, he escaped southward and came into...

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...Zamora in time to make his debut in print." Conan is "about 17" at the time of TotE.

Conan wears partial chain mail in The Frost-Giant's Daughter but his Aesir comrades and Vanir foes all wear scale armour; the chain armour is likely spoils from Venarium.

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In Tower of the Elephant, Conan finds the Zamorans "...strange and mysterious to him; they were not of his kind – not even of the same blood as the more westerly Brythunians, Nemedians, Kothians and Aquilonians, whose civilized mysteries had awed him in times past."

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Conan WAS awed, suggesting he is now more familiar with them. Yet he had never left Cimmeria until he went north. When did he become more familiar with them prior to Tower of the Elephant?

As well, Conan is already familiar with the renown of Taurus of Nemedia, another...

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...suggestion that he may have already visited Nemedia.

Patrice Louinet suggests God in the Bowl was one of the first 3 Conan stories to be composed, but was rejected by Weird Tales and wasn't published until after Howard's death.

In it, Conan seems to be...

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...extremely unfamiliar with civilization and the story easily fits into a time prior to Tower of the Elephant, in which Conan "...had squatted for hours in the courtyards of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of theologians and teachers, and come away...

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... in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the head."

Returning to Howard's comment in his correspondence about Conan being "about 17" when he makes his "...debut in print", it would remain accurate even if...

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...Conan visited Nemedia before that Tower of the Elephant because God in the Bowl was never printed in his lifetime.

The last hint about Conan's youth comes in Rogues in the House when he is 18. In his speech about Thak, Conan has already sent the souls of chiefs...

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...(so at least 2) into the dark. No hint is ever given as to who those 2 chiefs are.

...and that is everything Howard wrote in stories, correspondence, or reference documents about Conan's youth and people prior to Tower of the Elephant.

Anyone even passing familiar...

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...with the 1982 Conan film will notice a number of omissions:
-No brown hair
-No riddle of steel
-No Thulsa Doom
-No dead parents.
-No being enslaved as a boy
-No being chained to the Wheel of Pain
-No being taught sword fighting by Hyrkanian/Khitan masters

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-No being taught literature and philosophy while enslaved
-No being brought women while enslaved
-No pit-fighting
-No "What is best in life"
-No being driven away from his chains
-No finding a special sword, Atlantean or otherwise
-No getting seduced by a witch/hag

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-No Subotai
-No punching camels
-No recreational black lotus use
-No Valaria in the adventure with the tall tower
-No chilling with a wizard in a graveyard
etc...

...because Film Conan is a completely different character than Howard's Conan.

They are Conan in name only.

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That brings Part 1 to a close. I'll add Part 2 this weekend (hopefully).

Good night, Cimmerians.