I think you’re missing the point?
Conan’s world IS the whole thrust of the game. You’re in the world of Conan. Yes, it’s your story but it’s IN his world!
Otherwise it’d be “Nimrod Exiles” or whatever. They take lore from Conan’s world and plop you in on top of it.
And the backdrop makes the play, doesn’t it?
When was the last time you saw MacBeth on a stage set for the nutcracker suite?
Could play Ark, but I’m not into dinosaurs.
Could play Space Engineers, but I’m not into legos.
I picked this game because of it’s background and was looking for the backdrop to be complete, not full of holes.
However, I did find a video that did a very good job of making sense of the story as a whole, and it works to put together scenes that I played through in a logical order: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8PRTq3EQ4
No, I get your point, I just disagree with you. Disagreement does not imply a failure to understand.
I get what you’re complaining about and I’m suggesting to you that you had false expectations of what the game would be. Also, I’m suggesting for your consideration that if you’re willing to re-eveluate your expectations you will find the game to be more enjoyable than you have so far.
It’s not “Conan’s world”, it’s the world he exists in, those are not the same thing. The thing that is of primary importance in Conan Exiles is not Conan, it’s the Exiles. You’re putting the emphasis on the wrong word. The world is the point, Conan is not.
From your character’s perspective, Conan is not the central character in Conan Exiles, he’s just some other heroic dude that your character is aware of. Your character is on their own hero’s journey, which they consider just as epic, and even more personally important, than Conan’s journey. Conan is in the title, but he’s external to the life your character is living.
A title is not a synopsis. The problem is that you’re hanging your hat on an interpretation of the title that is too literal, too narrow.
Side note: Bonus points for using “Nimrod”, I lol’d.
A good title gives you some information about a game (or book) but almost never gives you a complete understanding of the contents within. A good title has to have a hook, any title that provides a strictly literal description of the game play would be a pretty awful title.
“Adventures in the Exiled Lands: You get to be a hero just like Conan”
“Come be a Hero in the Same World Where Conan Lives”
“If You Pay Us Money You Can Pretend You’re an Heroic Adventurer Instead of Just an Ordinary Human Being Playing a Video Game”
“A Hero is You!”
et. al.
Since you’re a self-described English Lit nerd you understand very well that the primary goal of a title is to get people interested. It’s darned near impossible for most works of fiction to have a title that accurately and wholly describes the contents.
Examples:
Following your logic, Jane Austen’s book should have been titled, “A Novel of Manners”. But instead it was called, “Pride and Prejudice” even though that’s a poor description of the themes explored by the novel, because “Pride and Prejudice” was a better hook to get the attention of readers (and make more sales).
“1984” is not a calendrical chronicle.
“Lord of the Rings” is not a biography of a dude named Sauron who has a co-dependent relationship with his jewelry.
“Gulliver’s Travels” is not a travel journal.
More like “in the middle of it” or “immersed within”. At no time are you on top of Conan’s story, he’s just the character from R.E.H.'s world that would inspire the most people to buy & play the game. Conan and you both exist in the same world but you are not inhabiting him as a character nor are you experiencing his existence. Neither your character nor your game play are superimposed on top of the character named Conan. You’re thrown into the same world but are not co-experiencing it.
I’m arguing that no, the backdrop doesn’t make the play, the play makes the play.
The backdrop to a story is not the story.
The prologue to a story is not the story.
The lore behind a story is not the story.
Those things only exist to give the reader/player a frame of reference for the events that are taking place in the story itself, or in this case the world in which they’re creating their own story. A frame of reference does not have to be thorough (not in novels, and not in games), a frame of reference doesn’t have to explain every detail of the story (and in lots of stories the frame of reference explains very little of the story), it’s there to set the stage before the story begins, but once the story itself begins it always takes precedence over the backdrop.
Maybe this will help clarify what I’m driving at: Conan is not the story in this game, he’s the MacGuffin. He serves to draw the player to the world, but the’s not the raison d’être.
You’re comparing apples to oranges. This game is not being played on a different set, it’s being played in the same setting where Conan lives. It’s not being played in The Shire, it’s not being played on the island from Lord of the Flies, it’s not being played in Narnia. The setting is very definitely R.E.H.'s world. There may be details that are hazy, there may be lore and background that could be fleshed out, but even if we agree that the lore could have more, it’s not accurate to suggest that the game is in some other setting.
Beyond that key point, do you really want to go down the rabbit hole of discussing how many interpretations of MacBeth there have been (or of Romeo & Juliet or of Richard III or of… ad nauseum) with the play being set in a variety of different backdrops?
I mean, even if we only count the “faithful” interpretations they would still include versions like the 1978 version staring Ian McKellan and Judi Dench in which the single most iconic image from the movie shows the two lead characters wearing sweatshirts.
Just this one example alone should be enough to demonstrate that the backdrop does not make the play, but just in case the point needs reinforcing…
…and these are just the movies & TV shows I could find with a 2-minute web search. It doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of how many stage interpretations there have been.
Backdrops are extremely malleable, the backdrop does not make the play, the play makes the play.
For what it’s worth, in no way am I suggesting to you that you should like the game if you don’t.
What I am suggesting to you is that your expectations are not aligned with the type of game this is. Whether you want to refer to it as a “sandbox game”, a “survival game”, an “open world survival crafting” game or some other descriptive moniker the game is intended for open-ended game-play. The lore in an open-ended game will never be complete, because the incompleteness is, in many cases, by design. Novels & movies are (mostly) not open-ended, RPG’s are (mostly) not open-ended, they are a narrative form of story telling in which you follow along the story that someone else has crafted for you in advance. But in an open-ended game like Conan that’s not the case, here the players themselves are collaborators in the process of creating their own stories.
If you don’t like the nature of open-ended games that’s understandable, lots of people don’t. But if you can let go of the expectation that the lore in a sandbox game should be as thorough and complete as the lore in an RPG, you might find greater enjoyment than you have so far in the experience of creating your own story.
Don’t fool yourself. This is not an MMO by any means.
Stop thinking like just another everyday gamer who is addicted to being hand-held through a storyline. Really, that is monumentally BORING.
Conan happens along to get your crucified buttocks off of a cross. That’s it.
The irony is he shows up for any “first-timer” who ends up being crucified.
(HINT: Think Illusion).
The only other interaction you get with him is in the Relic Hunter’s City of Sempermaru. Pay attention to what he tells you.
There is indeed an incredibly rich background story to this game and believe it or not, it is directly tied to the Isle of Siptah. The catch is, you have to think like a detective to find the clues and piece it together for yourself (if you so choose to do so). But it goes even farther than that by making an intriguing connection between the Hyborian Age of Conan the Barbarian (Current age) and the Thurian Age of King Kull the Conqueror (Previous Age).
As for your nemesis who “seems” to be responsible for putting you there, all you can do is collect information about him.
He is, for all practical purposes, out of your reach.
But after you get all the clues together, you might figure out that maybe he really wasn’t the one who put you there in a strange land in the first place.
"… captured by unknown means … " (hint).
I could tell you who I believe really put you there, but that would be a serious spoiler. Believe me, it is a jaw dropper. That one, you get to meet.
I’d certainly like to see more history books/volumes.
Interesting would be the “scroll of scholar XYZ about some event in history with his interpretation” style.
After all, there is a “neutral” city in the Exiled Lands filled with members of one of the most educated peoples in the known world (god how my skin crawls - me and I praise those snake worshippers) and one or two scholars would certainly be found there - and where there is a scholar there is a library …
While the story is non-existing and the lore almost never being used properly, the books, after which the game allegedly is taking after, are used just as an excuse to keep the game in a mediocre state.
For example, there is no sorcery in the game, no story from the actual books except for this drunkard that you can find in Sepermeru who has been drinking there for 7 years and keeps at it. There are 2 maps(the Exiled Lands and Isle of Siptah) that cannot be found on the Hyboria map) and of course the bazaar which acts as a portal to other dimensions, because to be honest last i checked Conquistador was a 16th Century thing and not part of Conan Universe.
If you’ve come this far reading my opinion and you feel offended, good.
The statement they made, if true (false gods, aka aliens posing as gods, are not great sources of truth), would simply verify that both of those theories are plausible.
There’s also room for interpretation there. Is Dagon simply the overgrown Deep One from Cthulhu mythos or are we talking about Dagon/Dagoth from Hyborian lore? If it’s the latter, then we’re talking about a deity who most likely exists outside what we call “space” and “time”.
That’s the beauty of having the source material that keeps things vague: you can play a lot with interpretations
I can certainly agree with your disgust, especially concerning those races that R. E. Howard himself did not introduce into his Conan series (or Kull the Conqueror series).
Those “extras” were introduced by his successors after his passing away.
Now it doesn’t specify the Haunter of the Dark, but that is the only known entity attached to the Shining Trapezohedron. I find it unlikely to be anything else given the context and purpose of the entity. Nyarlathotep and his avatars are well known to manipulate lesser beings.
This line triggers if you have the staff placed down at your home and you’ve collected the other keystone pieces in order already. If you bring the staff to the volcano with you, it vanishes. If you do the dialogues out of order, it may not play. I don’t believe the staff is referring to the serpent-men specifically as his master, more likely the trapezohedron itself being the conduit connecting the avatar to the true form. Nyarlathotep has shown to be protective of the gem, having one of his later avatars Nephren-Ka collect it and store it within a windowless crypt in Egypt.
It’s not possible to align it with anywhere on the Hyborian continent, which is the basis of the theory it is otherworldly. However, it does loosely line up with some depictions of the Thurian Age continent (Stanford library)(Marvel comics not canon but somewhat credible)(Swords of REH community-made map). To the southeast of the Thurian continent lies a jungle home to a mysterious and ill-defined “pre-Human society”. It can be assumed that this race is the very same Giant-Kings. During the Thurian age, this particular part of the continent was west from the Lemurian Isles, which would track with the travel path the Lemurians took. Slight issue with that is the Lemurians came this way after the Cataclysm, which sunk the rest of the world. We know the exiled lands are the capital of a larger Giant-King empire, given quotes confirming this made by several entities including the lorestones and the staff. Out of game, the best source I have is Dale Rippke’s Great Migration essay. REH purists will be quick to point out that this isn’t an official work, but I would argue Rippke is a leading expert on unfinished lore Howard left behind, and Funcom would agree - his chronology is their accepted “canon” timeline of the stories. Rippke is also the primary source for a lot of Giant-King lore in the game(s), and by extension Acheron. In the essay linked above, Rippke tells of how the Khari overwhelmed the Giant-Kings after being driven out of their home by Lemurian slaves. This corroborates the Witch-Queen’s lorestones saying many lemurians were left behind to be enslaved by the Khari. Her group left the enslavement and carried on, reaching the Exiled Lands. The war we learn about from the lorestones, the sandstorm, and the subsequent destruction of the Unnamed City are the aforementioned “slave revolt” in the essay that weakened the rest of the Giant-King empire, allowing the later migrating Khari to decimate what was left of them. Curiously, the Lemurians sailed west and found the Exiled Lands by sea, yet the Khari migrating west did not find such a place, instead coming to Kuthchemes.
I will first posit that the Lemurians found the hidden way in, guided by Dagon and sorcery. A world between worlds, lost to time where they could seek refuge. The Khari eventually found this place, after they dominated and took over the region now known as Stygia. If you visit Old Sepermeru underneath, notes from the time describe them as Set worshippers at the time of the collapse. This worship took place after the Khari defeated the Giant-Kings. The placement of their settlement on the opposite side of the map also leads me to believe they found a different entrance altogether, furthering my theory there are scattered ways in all across the world.
So that’s where the ghost fence comes in to fruition. During the Cataclysm, the Giant-Kings sought a way to preserve their capital while the rest of the world sank around them. I believe they worked with this “moonbeam messenger” (Nyarlathotep) to section off their slice of reality and preserve it from the ravages of time on the outside. So the Exiled Lands once did used to be a physical place in the world, only to be separated and cast off. The echoes of the past are the way in, old roads and sea routes that once were still are, if you can find them. The reason I believe it is in the Dreamlands specifically is because exists as a sort of parallel and perpendicular earth, a world itself where the rules of time and space work differently. Nyarlathotep holds immense power here, arguably moreso than the ‘normal’ world. Even if it’s not specifically in the Dreamlands, it’s not entirely on earth either. It intersects and disconnects from our reality. It exists, as the son of Dagon says, a world between worlds.
You’re operating under the assumption that aliens aren’t gods. The Elder Gods and Great Old Ones existed long before the earth itself. They are all by nature alien. Even young gods, like Yag-Kosha are alien.
Gods are as false or true as the belief people hold in them. Men wield the power to create and destroy gods. Zath was willed into being by mankind. Belief can make real, and a forgotten god is a dead god. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.
Fair enough - I had missed the phrase ‘summoned a presence via the trapezohedron’ - that certainly strengthens the link.
I was actually refering to the Haunter in the story, rather than to the staff. I have indeed heard the staff speak many times (to the point of sometimes refering to it as ‘the damn talky stick’ ). However - I had not encountered that final monologue. I guess I never managed to trigger it (possibly always had the staff with me when I went to the volcano). A nice bit of text - largely just confirms what we already knew by this point, but nice to have confirmation that the staff feels it is manipulating us to return it to the serpentmen (manipulating by refusing to tell us anything about them ‘that’s a dangerous line of questioning’ and leaving us to find our own way there, and end with the death of the last serpentman - don’t think that went entirely to the staff’s plan, lol). I will admit, I’m not so convinced from the way it is written that the staff doesn’t mean the Degenerate as its ‘true master’. The juxtaposition of ‘true master’ straight into ‘last remnant’ feels to me like that is the intended meaning - though I will concede I can see how it could also be interpreted as separate (especially given that the staff entity has based its entire existence on saying things that get misinterpreted to its advantage - manipulation through language). Given that the Degenerate has the trapezohedron on his person at the point in time the line is refering to (‘Behold the last remnant’ - so clearly the trigger is a bit wonky, but the line belongs at the time you are in the throne room), I can see how the staff entity could consider itself to have reached its true master without having to refer to the serpentman and meaning instead the conduit. But, I think on balance my headcanon is still on the serpentmen as the true master in question - quite possibly provided to them by Nyarlathotep - but that fits in more to me as the unknowable source behind various powers rather than something truly interacting on such a comparatively mundane level. Maybe just my barbarian brain prefering to deal with the simple things in front of me - live, love, slay and survive - than to try to fully comprehend the alien and unknowable, lol.
I’m starting to wonder if I read Rippke’s work at some point, because this is all very familiar. I thought this topic was covered in Howard’s ‘Hyborian Age’ essay - though perhaps in less detail? Certainly I remember Lemuria sinks and its people are enslaved by mainland neighbours. Then later they overcome these masters (Khari) and drive them west, where they in turn wind up destroying the ‘pre-human society’ and forming the basis for the ruling class of Stygia (and I believe Acheron?). Giant Kings, at least within the expanded canon, are far and away the best candidates for this society.
(My childhood brain always connected it with the being from Tower of the Elephant (Yag-Kosha?) - but iirc the suggestion is more that he came from elsewhere - space, or ‘void’ - there doesn’t seem to be much distinction drawn in Lovecraftian mythos between ‘outer space’ and ‘outer dark’ - I guess you don’t need ‘dungeon dimensions’ when you’ve got all that out there…)
Slight tangent - another possibility for the ‘pre-human society’ (though, I think, far less likely) would be essentially a ‘civilisation’ of apes (‘pre-humans’ in at least some of Howard’s thinking - the snow apes that later become Nordheimers, being a similar idea though without the society). While I think Howard would probably have been clearer if he had meant apes, it does at least fit with some of his (somewhat Theosophist) ideas about evolution and devolution of humanity in multiple phases, and with his presentation of Gray Apes in particular. In the end, I think this is unlikely to have been Howard’s intent here, but it is a possibility I cannot fully discount.
But back to the main track - assuming the Giant Kings as the answer -
To be honest, I see this as less of an issue than if they had tried to sail that way pre-cataclysm - boats don’t travel so well on land…
I feel that still works ok - the Lemurians under the Witch Queen sailed west, which would take them round the coast of ‘southeast asia’ (Hyborian version) until coming to somewhere around the east coast of Africa/Arabia, and the borders of the Giant King’s post-cataclysm territory. Meanwhile the Khari I always felt were driven west overland (with the (Funcom timeline) second group of Lemurians - those that had been slaves and were now driving the Khari - following behind to become ancestors of the Hyrkanians) - overland route might naturally take them to the northern part of the Giant King’s kingdom rather than to what would become the exiled lands.
The problem I do have here is the old contradictory geography problem of the Exiled Lands still makes the Lemurian arrival an issue. Sailing into an area already isolated off from ‘normal’ geography still makes more sense here. But the creation of the ghost fence as the moment that isolates the EL also makes good sense. It’s hard to reconcile.
Exactly. But then, from the Lemurian part of the story, there is no need for the Giant Kings to be that ‘pre-human’ race, as the EL could have originated anywhere. The Khari part of the story, however, does still tie it to that region, so I think we are fairly safe in the link. (More because of what seems clear as Khari defeat of Giant Kings - the link to Set is a strong indicator - and therefore logical inference that EL must have some connection to the region near Stygia as that was part of the same kingdom.)
Not so sure about the ghost fence - that only really comes into action after the Lemurians arrived, so if that is the ‘division’ of the EL from the rest of the physical world (leaving only the scattered entrances, which we agree on), then the Lemurians would need to have sailed to it in its original location, which is more of a problem. The text from the staff that you showed earlier even says - “I whispered to the Archivist, and he activated the curse wall, trapping the humans forever.” making clear it was activated after their arrival. Or is the idea that the wall itself already existed, serving an initial function of separating the capital from the cataclysm, and subsequently was altered into its ‘trap’ form?
While I think the connection to the pre-human race destroyed by the Khari is strong, and therefore provides a rough geographic location for the Giant Kings’ empire, I’m still not so convinced with regards to the EL. I’m feeling like maybe the capital was always ‘outside the world’ - again I’m thinking of Thoth-Amon’s meditation realm - a pocket dimension, though in its heyday with many links to the rest of the empire. I can see this fitting the Giant Kings’ often quite passive/defensive ethos - a heartland that can never be conquered by force - and perhaps an idea that Thoth Amon might adopt from them. Whether directly carved from the Dreamlands, created by sorcery/science or created by their collective will… I don’t know. I just have problems with it ever having started in a single fixed location.
Of course, all of this is predicated on certain assumptions - reasonable though those assumptions may be. If, for example, the pre-human society was not the Giant Kings, then the foundations turn to sand and much of the edifice constructed on them crumbles. But then, that’s a part of the fun of theory crafting - we’re never going to have truly definitive answers, let alone answers that will make everyone happy and I’m not sure I would want them. Ultimately we’re all making our own interpretations and our own headcanon - which fits well with the nature of a sandbox game - and, to circle back round to the original premise of the thread, making our own story.
The Hyborian Age essay laid the groundwork for this and presents a thinly detailed sequence of events. Rippke expanded upon and connected a lot of preciously unconnected dots.
Stygia was founded by the Khari on land taken from the Giant-Kings. Acheron, for the sake of clarity - New Acheron was founded by fleeing Giant-King remnants in what is now the Hyborian kingdoms, namely Nemedia and Aquilonia. This is the Acheron we mainly know of in Age of Conan, and the settlement of X’chotl in Siptah is from this era. Over time, due to dwindling population the Giant-Kings interbred with the lesser humans, creating a hybrid race of taller, pale skinned people with an innate sorcerous ability. This is the race that Xaltotun is a part of, as well as the still existing Stygian royal family.
This Acheron was wiped out later by the second Great Migration, commonly referred to as the Hyborian Drift.
“Old” Acheron is never directly named such, but the game alludes to this by describing certain things with the Giant-King style as Acheronian, although they technically predate it.
I don’t see this as possible. Howard is pretty clear in The Hyborian Age essay that the idea is survivors of the Catacylsm devolved back into apes before re-evolving. It wouldn’t make much sense for there to be an already devolved race before the devolution. The Giant-Kings fit this connection the most, and that’s what Rippke asserts.
Well that’s the thing, when the Cataclysm happened it rapidly shifted the shape of the world. Lemuria itself sank, but out of the sea rose new land. They sailed on to find what is now modern day Hyrkania. The only way they could have sailed out of that is through the Vilayet sea, which is a landlocked sea. However, we know for certain the exiled lands do not exist on the coast of the Vilayet, because nothing geographically lines up, and more importantly, we already know what is on the coast of the Vilayet. Also, chronologically using Conan as a distance metric plotting his last known location and the next, this is half a world away from both.
The big issue with a lot of amateur guesses on the “where” of the Exiled lands is they just arbitrarily slap a red circle over a part of the world where you could overlay the shape of the exiled lands if you squint hard enough and ignore literally every single detail. My “favorite” of these maps put the exiled lands as the entirety of the northeastern continent and put whole countries in to fit the biomes. Obviously that makes no sense, and yet people still try it.
Impossible. Hyrkania is west of “hybor-asia” already so them sailing all the way east around it and then immensely far south would not align with the “west” direction the Witch Queen describes.
To me the best thing I can think of is something along the lines of Homer’s Odyssey or even Gulliver’s Travels - through some mystery means*(probably Nyarlathotep)*, they sail to some fantastical, otherworldly place never seen by human eyes before. It’s also worth noting, in the Dreamlands you can travel to the moon via a regular ship, not a spaceship. You can sail to other planets. So it wouldn’t be entirely impossible for a connection into such a place would operate under similar rules.
The wall existed before the curse, the curse was made to fit the confines of the wall. The wall has always existed as the borders of the land, protecting the capital from the ravages of the cataclysm, and the madness of the raw unguarded outer void.
Yes. Joel himself said that the Exiled Lands was Thoth Amon’s prototype Mark of Acheron so it’s very likely that he’s used the idea of this place and what it does a lot.
A little correction here. Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu sank during the Cataclysm. The Pictish Island rose up to become the mountain tops of a new continent. The Picts and the Atlantians who had established colonies on the mainland (aka Valusia) were the ones who survived to become the Picts and Cimmerias of the Hybroian Age. Valusia did not sink, at least not in whole. Parts of it might have, but not all of it. The kindgom it self fell, as did all of the Seven Kingdoms of the Thurian Age.
I did dark and terrible magic with the Serpent Ring of Set, which I found in a nighted tomb a league beneath the earth, forgotten before the first man crawled out of the slimy sea.
Does that sound like the Exiled Lands? Does that sound like the Dreamworld? Sure as heck does not sound like either one to me, yet that is a direct quote from Thoth-Amon himself, written by Robert E. Howard himself in The Phoenix on teh Sword. So how can we then claim that it was found here in the Exiled Lands, or that the Exiled Lands (where he supposedly found it) are the Dreamlands?
I know you personally are not making these claims, so this is not directed at you. I am simply pointing out that these claims made in game and by fan theories do not seem to back up the information that is provided in the stories written by the original author.
I think you hit the nail on the head here! Even the addition of the Lemurians makes little to no sense at all! By the point in time that they escaped the bondage of slavery they no longer even had any memory of BEING Lemurian and became known as the Hyrkanians, so if they in fact traversed the vast steppes to the Vileyet Sea and then sailed over and found themselves in the Exiles Lands they sure as FVCK would NOT be Lemurians.
Far to the east, the Lemurians, levelled almost to a bestial plane themselves by the brutishness of their slavery, have risen and destroyed their masters. They are savages stalking among the ruins of a strange civilization.
Now the Lemurians enter history again as Hyrkanians. Through the centuries they have pushed steadily westward, and now a tribe skirts the southern end of the great inland sea—Vilayet—and establishes the kingdom of Turan on the southwestern shore.
Again, the very words of Robert E. Howard himself make it clear that they were not called Lemurians by the time they pushed far enough westward to even reach the Vilayet Sea.
He was clear that SOME human survivors, such as the Atlanteans devolved where as other humans, such as the Picts, did not. The Picts never really devolved no evolved even in a technological sense, they pretty much stagnated.
These stone-age kingdoms clashed, and in a series of bloody wars, the outnumbered Atlanteans were hurled back into a state of savagery, and the evolution of the Picts was halted. Five hundred years after the Cataclysm the barbaric kingdoms have vanished. It is now a nation of savages—the Picts—carrying on continual warfare with tribes of savages—the Atlanteans. The Picts had the advantage of numbers and unity, whereas the Atlanteans had fallen into loosely knit clans. That was the west of that day.
A thousand years after the lesser cataclysm, the western world is seen to be a wild country of jungles and lakes and torrential rivers. Among the forest-covered hills of the northwest exist wandering bands of ape-men, without human speech, or the knowledge of fire or the use of implements. They are the descendants of the Atlanteans, sunk back into the squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality from which ages ago their ancestors so laboriously crawled. To the southwest dwell scattered clans of degraded, cave-dwelling savages, whose speech is of the most primitive form, yet who still retain the name of Picts, which has come to mean merely a term designating men—themselves, to distinguish them from the true beasts with which they contend for life and food. It is their only link with their former stage. Neither the squalid Picts nor the apish Atlanteans have any contact with other tribes or peoples.
But again, aside from that one minor thing you are pretty much spot on.
