We have Werehyenas, wolves and bears in CE but their lore has not even been explained. There is a very rich and detailed vampire and wear-creature lore in Robert E. Howard’s Conan univers. From the novels to comics. I would love to see both of these explained more in detail and if it could be worked into the game, the ability to become or atleast utilize some of the characteristics of these creatures of the night. Ive included links to videos explaining in detail the histories and lore of each.
My ultimate desire in Conan Exiles is the ability to become a vampire.
However… I am not sure Grim Dark’s theory crafting is a great source for how to do it. His theory crafting is a lot of stuff he just makes up - which is fine, it is “theory crafting,” but stuff made up by Grim Dark is not lore.
I don’t see players being able to become Vampires or Werewolves in CE. We’re talking about some incredibly powerful entities here. The werehyenas that are children of Jhebbal Sag and the Werewolves we see in game are incredibly weakened versions of what they used to be.
Vampires are a whole other issue as well. We have one assuredly canon Conan story, Hour of the Dragon that shows a young girl (about 14-16) who became a vampire, Akivasha. Her strength was something even Conan could not overcome and didn’t even want to try. All he could do is run in fear.
We have the the were-creatures in game already. Having a vampire as a boss could be something to consider. But playing one of these creatures would be incredibly overpowered unless they neutered them down to the point of not being viable.
However we do have roleplay available, and for those who want to go out of the way for visuals, there’s mods on PC.
I do not find that description accurate. For one thing, she is only described as a girl, not young or teenaged. The title of the chapter, which is also a statement she makes herself is “I am the woman who never died.” While she may be 10000 years old, I would think it peculiar that she would identify herself as a woman if she were physically only 14.
There are several parts that definitely do give some sort of description of “fear” from Conan, including, “he was aware of a fearful fascination and an icy fear”, “Behind him the girl was laughing and the sound froze the blood in his veins. He whirled back to her, the short hairs on his neck bristling”, “he sweated as he groped in the darkness for the arch in a near-panic”, and “His wanderings through those black, winding tunnels, were a sweating nightmare.”
However, while I think it is fair to said that Conan was afraid of Akivasha to some degree once he realized what she was, I think he ran away from her more out of disgust rather than fear. Note this bit, “And through his fear ran the sickening revulsion of his discovery.”
It describes “his physical revulsion” multiple times as he thinks of her as a “foul perversion.”
I think Conan could have defeated her if he really wanted to. He physically tosses her off of himself (proving that his is far stronger than she is) and also outright threatens her: “Keep away from me or I’ll slash you asunder,” he grunted, his flesh crawling with revulsion. “You may be immortal, but steel will dismember you.”
Additionally, the panicked escape only happens after Akivasha extinguishes all light, effectively blinding Conan. He already knew when he was walking with her prior to this that she could see in the dark, so he was put at a significant disadvantage without any source of light.
I do not believe that Akivasha was too powerful for Conan to defeat. Conan was perfectly willing to face off against demons far stronger than her and emerged victorious.
But can we appreciate Grim Dark’s video intro sending Jimbo into a fit of rage?
While not necessarily the line of theory craft this one would have gone down…
The real question where to put them.
The game already makes one fight to get lore.
It’s not always overt or easy to find.
The Midnight Grove does an admirable job, as do some torn notes, of giving an outsider view of therian-thropy.
As for Vampires…
They weren’t exactly common were they?
We already have a tormented quasi-living/demi-dead individual in the Black Keep.
Then there is Mek’Kamose who is exploring ways to get ahead in an unnaturally extended existence.
There are a few other examples, but these are prominent in main story or easily accessible, respectively.
Yeah Grim Dark’s videos are chuck full of “because I said so” made up nonsense but said in a way that they are presented AS FACTS! They are not, in any way, facts. They are nothing more than his own fan fics done in video format for the most part.
If someone is significantly lighter than you, which I imagine a young Stygian (or in this case Nilusian) Princess to be compared to Conan. Then it doesn’t matter if they have the Hulk’s strength, you can toss them around like a rag doll.
There’s only one mentioned in the original REH Conan stories. He does have others in other stories not related to the Hyborian age though.
Like I mentioned before, they would make for an interesting boss fight and dungeon theme.
She was clinging to Conan at that moment to bite him. He “tore her away and flung her” not just a throw, a removal and throw. If she had strength exceeding or even anywhere near to his, she could have resisted him pulling her off himself.
There is ample evidence to make the claim that Conan feared her, but there is zero evidence that she was more powerful than he was. In fact, she allowed him to escape. She was capable of keeping up with him in the darkness when he could not see, but for some reason, she let him get away - or perhaps for a very good reason, like the understanding that she could not defeat him.
Conan being afraid of Akivasha in no way implies that he could not have defeated her if he really wanted (or had) to.
We just got the sims update! Now you want twilight? 
people are never satisfied 
This would be cool, especially if the boss had a new move set. I feel like lore accurate dungeons are also fun to design.
“Her only sin was that she loved life and all the meanings of life. To win life she courted death. She could not bear to think of growing old and shriveled and worn, and dying at last as hags die. She wooed Darkness like a lover and his gift was life – life that, not being life as mortals know it, can never grow old and fade. She went into the shadows to cheat age and death.”
Yeah I think that would be cool, it could even be an ordinary looking NPC at first but then later on changes to something more demonic sort of like a Blood Defiler perhaps. I really wish there was an elder vault on EL and that would be a perfect boss for it in a vault that is a labyrinthine tomb full of unimaginable horrors and eldritch powers lurking in the darkness.
As far as players becoming Weres (maybe a Jhebbal Sag temporary shapechange ability) or Vamps (again Jhebbal Sag or maybe a sort of Derketo boon) or through Sorcery/Demonology - I don’t really see this feasible in a sort of way ESO for example does it or other than purely for cosmetic or RP reasons.
There are already many types of blood in the game (regular blood, demon, black, sacred etc.) if it could be used to ‘drink’ it similar to eating flesh, then it could perhaps quench thirst or even bestow temporary effects (both negative and positive) - if one had the Vampire trait/curse that might be the only way to feed/heal by consuming blood this way since there is no ‘biting’ mechanic.
My wife liked to sort of play something like that on a private RP server where she was a bit of a Vamp/Witch and she only accepted various blood as payment for trade or services.
PS: not sure if I remember correctly but wasn’t Akivasha from the age of the Giant Kings?
Yes she most certainly was. In fact, she pre-dates the Hybroina itself.
Akivasha is around 10000 years old when Conan finds her (which happens after his time in the Exiled Lands).
The war between the humans and Giant-kings in the Exiled Lands also took place around 10000 years before we get exiled there.
So Akivasha would be getting turned into a vampire around the same time the Giant-kings were losing their war with the humans in the Exiled Lands.
This does not pre-date the Hyborian Age. The Lemurian Remnants did not even arrive in the Exiled Lands until after the cataclysm, which marks the transition from the Thurian Age into the Hyborian Age.
Oh it doesn’t? 
I’m going to side with someone a bit more knowledgeable about this subject matter on this one.
Well, in order to place the datings according to ALL of Howard’s Conan material, you need to add some other stuff not found in “The Hyborian Age”.
Pre-Cataclysmic Age [381–2]
0: Cataclysm: Atlantis and Lemuria sink, Pictish Islands heaved up. Continental Picts and Atlanteans survive. Lemurians escape to eastern coast of Thurian Continent, enslaved by the ancient race there. Proto-Hyborians flee north, drive the snow-apes north. [382–3]
500: Pictish–Atlantean wars end. Lesser cataclysm; creates inland sea. [382–3]
1000: Acheron founded by the children of the Giant-Kings.
1500: Lemurians have risen and destroyed their masters, who came west, overthrew the giant-kings, founded the “human” kingdom of Stygia. Hyborians have spread over the north; begin to drift southward [383–4]
2000: Hyborians sweep south. Descendants of Zhemri revive. Sons of Shem wander east of Stygia. Agriculture evolved in valley of Zingg. Hyperborea has come into being. [384–5]
2000-2500: Zamora founded. Stygia expands into the lands settled by the Shemites, and lays claim to the lands east of the growing empire of Acheron. Zingara’s aboriginal inhabitants absorbed by a Pictish influx.
2500–3000: Hyborian tribes settle in the lands under Stygian rule. Hyborian tribes settle the strip of land that exists between Acheron and the Pictish and Cimmerian wilderness. The first Hyborian nations (Koth, Ophir, and Corinthia) are founded, but remain under Stygia’s domination. Zingara founded after a tribe of Hybori conquer and absorb the region’s inhabitants. [385]
3000–3500: Koth, Ophir and Corinthia successfully rebel against Stygia and sack Kuthchemes. The nation of Acheron falls under the combined weight of a Hyborian invasion. Aquilonia, Nemedia, Argos and Brythunia are founded. Koth flexs its might and drives the Stygians south of the Styx. [385–6]
3500: The kingdoms of the world are defined: the Hyborian kingdoms, Zamora, Zingara, Stygia, Cimmeria, Picts [385–6]
3500–4000: Æsir and Vanir in Nordheim. Lemurians emerge as Hyrkanians, establish Turan. [386]
4000: Hyborian civilization enters its height [386–7]
5000: Kothic adventurers carve the small kingdoms of Khauran and Khoraja out of the Shemitish lands to the southeast of Koth
6000(approx) Conan becomes King of Aquilonia.
6500: Fall of Hyborian civilization [387–97]
A predominance of the non-“Hyborian Age” source material comes from “Black Colossus” and “Hour of the Dragon”. The “Hyborian Age” essay was written when Howard first began to write the Conan stories, and while it can be used as a guide to the world, some of it’s datings were superseded by history that Howard established in later stories. It can’t be thought of as “written in stone”.
So when you look at this timeline, if the Cataclysm which ended the Thurian Age took place 6,000 years before Conan becomes King of Aquilonia (and he meets Akivasha while he is king of Aquilonia), then that would put Akivasha’s death (mortal death) at 4,000 years prior to the Hyborian Age. AKA during the Thurian Age. Not only that, but:
Kull of Valusia was the greatest king of the Pre-Cataclysmic Age, and a central individual of his time, much like Conan the Cimmerian some 8,000 years later.
Yup, she was around some 2,000 years before Kull of Atlantis took the throne of Valusia.
Then when you also look at what is written in the Hyborian Age Essay as well as the Hour of the Dragon, as shown below:
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. The survivors of that civilization, who have escaped the fury of their slaves, have come westward. They fall upon that mysterious pre-human kingdom of the south and overthrow it, substituting their own culture, modified by contact with the older one. The newer kingdom is called Stygia, and remnants of the older nation seemed to have survived, and even been worshipped, after the race as a whole had been destroyed.
The huts were dark. Behind them the black towers of Khemi rose gloomily against the stars that were mirrored in the waters of the harbor; ahead of them the desert stretched away in dim darkness; somewhere a jackal yapped. The quick-passing sandals of the silent neophytes made no noise in the sand. They might have been ghosts, moving toward that colossal pyramid that rose out of the murk of the desert. There was no sound over all the sleeping land.
Conan’s heart beat quicker as he gazed at the grim black wedge that stood etched against the stars, and his impatience to close with Thutothmes in whatever conflict the meeting might mean was not unmixed with a fear of the unknown. No man could approach one of those somber piles of black stone without apprehension. The very name was a symbol of repellent horror among the northern nations, and legends hinted that the Stygians did not build them; that they were in the land at whatever immeasurably ancient date the dark-skinned people came into the land of the great river.
So yeah, clearly if you do the math, and research, Akivasha pre-dates the Hyborian age by quite a bit and that she is from the pre-human race that inhabited the land known as Stygia by the time of the setting of Conan Exiles. It is all quite evident from the words of the author himself but by all means, take a read from this article here about the fact that she is just one of three members of the Giant-King race written and described by Robert E. Howard, all of whom are described in the same manner.
The Mystery of Pre-Human Stygia
You can also read here about the Migration of the Khari if you like.
Migration of the Khari
Firstly, thank you for the links - they were interesting to read.
That said, I now have a much lower opinion of Rippke’s scholarship than I did before I read his work. Migration of the Khari can, in my view, be ignored entirely, as he offers no evidence for any of his claims. This appears to be nothing more than a fanfic attempt to expand on the few details REH did provide.
The mystery of Pre-Human Stygia is more interesting. I am, broadly speaking, confident in the conclusion that the Giant-Kings were the same ‘mysterious pre-human race’ referenced in The Hyborian Age - the quote from God in the Bowl, and the evidence of Xaltotun seem pretty clear. It is also 100% clear that these ‘Giant-Kings’ bear no resemblence to Funcom’s Giant-Kings.
As for the rest of it though, Rippike uses a lot of assumption to try to strengthen his theory, along with basic misreadings - on a level that quite frankly suggest dishonest scholarship - he cannot possibly be so unfamiliar with REH’s writing style as to imagine that the description of a tall sinister priest is evidence for being a Giant-King. Nothing in The Altar and the Scorpion remotely suggests the priest is anything other than human, unless we are also to conclude that several of Conan’s companions on adventures (themselves decribed at times as ‘giant’) were also pre-human. It’s like someone taking a description of a character having a ‘wolfish gleam in his eye’ and deciding that proves he’s a werewolf.
The fact that he then takes this claim and uses some slight similarities in the description to act as ‘evidence’ that Akivasha is similarly a Giant-King is like heaping some bricks on quicksand and calling it a structure. He’d have been better off pointing out her similarities to Xaltotun, who is at least provably ‘proto-Stygian’ and therefore, by implication, should be a Giant-King. As it is, I’m left with the impression from this essay that Rippke has no evidence for his assertion that she is a Giant-King, and she could just as easily be from almost any of the Thurian kingdoms.
In the end, I am glad to have read the articles. But mostly am left with the feeling that I now rank Rippke’s scholarship alongside DeCamp’s writing skills - and we’ve discussed in the past our mutual opinion of those…
I am not a Conan lore-master, so I do not have the expertise to address every point here. What I can say is that in REH’s story, Kings of the Night, which takes place leading up to the Roman invasion of Britain (which began in 43 A.D.), a Pictish wizard called Gonar used a magic jewel to transport Kull of Atlantis through time to aid the king, Bran Mak Morn, in battle against the Roman Legion. In this story, Kull is said to have been dead for 100000 years.
Estimates of when the Hyborian Age takes place range fairly significantly, but even if we use the oldest time given by Dale Rippke (who is probably considered canon by Funcom anyway), that only puts the Hyborian Age back to 32500 B.C., which means the Thurian Age is still 67500 years older.
Additionally, Joel Bylos, who wrote the backstory for the Exiled Lands, said that the Kinscourge was 10000 years old. That sets the time of the war. The war happened quite some time after the arrival of the Lemurian Remnants, who, according to the Witch Queen, escaped from the Khari. The Lemurians were enslaved by the Khari right after the cataclysm, which means the cataclysm has to have occurred more than 10000 years ago.
Well for one thing there is no way to say anything with 100% certainty, in one way or the other, unless the original author himself had stated it directly. However, as well all know, Robert E. Howard liked to leave bits and pieces of things here and there. Hints of things, but not firm statements for lots of it. And yet at the same time there are several things that are stated quite clearly.
As stated above we know that the civilization that existed in the land now known as Stygia was inhabited by a “pre-human” civilization. We also know that the people who lived there prior to the Stygians were knows as the Giant-Kings due to this line from The God in the Bowl.
Kallian Publico believed that it contained the diadem of the giant-kings, of the people who dwelt in that dark land before the ancestors of the Stygians came there.
Xaltotun died 3,000 year prior to Conan’s reign, which is still 7,000 years more recent than than Akivasha.
You are Xaltotun!’ exclaimed Orastes, like a hypnotist driving home his suggestions. ‘You are Xaltotun of Python, in Acheron.’
‘By Mitra!’ whispered the tall, yellow-haired man on the left. ‘He was not a Stygian. That part at least was true.’
In the jade sarcophagus lay a living man: a tall, lusty man, naked, white of skin, and dark of hair and beard.
slowly intelligence grew in his dark eyes and made them deep and strange and luminous. It was as if long-sunken witch-lights floated slowly up through midnight pools of darkness
So here we have a man fro Acheron, which was founded by the remnants of the pre-human peoples of what was to become Stygia who we have established to be the Giant-Kings and a fairly decent description of him. Compare that to the description of Akivasha, who is found deep within a Pyramid in Khemi.
Her ivory skin showed her to be Stygian of some ancient noble family, and like all such women she was tall, lithe, voluptuously figured, her hair a great pile of black foam, among which gleamed a sparkling ruby.
Once when he spoke to her, she turned her head toward him and he was startled to see her eyes glowing like golden fire in the dark.
She reared up on the couch like a serpent poised to strike, all the golden fires of hell blazing in her wide eyes.
And so we find some strikingly similar list of traits now don’t we?
As for Guron from The Alter and the Scorpion, there is a little less to work with though Robert E. Howard himself likely had not considered the whole idea of the Giant-Kings yet since the Hyborian Age did not yet exist and although they themselves existed during the Thurian Age he did not explore it must due to the Kull stories failing to sell (mostly due to a “lack of sex” 
). But to claim that he was nothing more than a “human” is quite a bit of a stretch!
Guron the high priest was a tall, gaunt man, a cadaverous giant. His evil eyes glimmered like fiery pools under his penthouse brows and his thin gash of a mouth gaped in a silent laugh
He swept towards the cowering youngsters and gripped their white shoulders, sinking his talon-like nails deep into the soft flesh. They sought to resist but he laughed and with incredible strength, lifted them in the air, where he dangled them at arm’s length, as a man might dangle a baby. His grating, metallic laughter filled the room with echos of evil mockery.
How many humans do you know can lift two other humans, one in each hand, and dangle them each at arm’s length while laughing at them? 
Not even Conan would have pulled off a feat like that.
So, when you have an author who wrote a tremendous body or work all by the age of 30 at a time when the most sophisticated technology at his disposal was a type-writer (in terms of writing assistance) all the while writing in a multitude of genera (sword and sorcery of which he is considered the father of was just one of the many he wrote) you are left with, as I said, bits and piece of clues to piece together. It is simply a matter of how you can take said clues and piece them together and present them in a logical manner.
As for the article about the Khari migration, that was completely written by Dale and he never attempted to claim otherwise. I “think” that he even came up with the name Khari though I may be mistaken on that part. He wrote that article to give a reasonable explanation to explain what exactly happened to the remnants of the “ancient race” which had once enslaved the Lemurian refuges to such a savage and brutal point that they no longer remembered being Lemurian and eventually rose up and destroyed their (kingdom, empire) civilization. And then they suddenly appear from the coast of what would not be Asia’s pacific coast to what is not Egypt and are strong enough to take down the “pre-human” empire that exist there and set up their own empire, and expand it quite a bit, before the Hyborian expansion shrinks it back down to the size it is today (game time).
Many Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the Thurian Continent, which was comparatively untouched. There they were enslaved by the ancient race which already dwelt there, and their history, for thousands of years, is a history of brutal servitude.
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. The survivors of that civilization, who have escaped the fury of their slaves, have come westward. They fall upon that mysterious pre-human kingdom of the south and overthrow it, substituting their own culture, modified by contact with the older one. The newer kingdom is called Stygia, and remnants of the older nation seemed to have survived, and even been worshipped, after the race as a whole had been destroyed.
So as you can see, it was merely an attempt to explain how they, a once mighty civilization who themselves had been destroyed by their former slaves and had become wandering exiles could then become strong enough to conquer another empire and settle that land to form a mighty nation of their own. You can take it for what it is, but the simple fact that Funcom have included the Khari in the wine cellar dungeon kinda says that they themselves tend to lean towards the Khari migration being at least plausible.
All of which clearly contradicts the Hyborian Age essay.
Many Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the Thurian Continent, which was comparatively untouched. There they were enslaved by the ancient race which already dwelt there, and their history, for thousands of years, is a history of brutal servitude.
In the distant east, cut off from the rest of the world by the heaving up of gigantic mountains and the forming of a chain of vast lakes, the Lemurians are toiling as slaves of their ancient masters.
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.
Far to the east the Lemurians are evolving a strange semi-civilization of their own. To the south the Hyborians have founded the kingdom of Koth,
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.
So as we can see those people who had one been the Lemurians are by this point in time known as the Hyrkanians and the furthest west they have pushed is Turan, the only place in which they have created a Kingdom with cities and permanent settlements as east of the Vileyet they tend to remain at least semi-nomadic traveling across vast stepps.
So at what point did this war between the “Lemurian Remnants” and the Giant-Kings occur, and and at what point did the Lemurian’s “escape from the Khari”? They rose up and utterly destroyed the Khari civilization! It was the Khari who fled and escaped, the people who had once been the Lemurian’s never left, until over the centuries they slowly made their way westward but never past what would become Turan. (Well at the very end of the Hyborian Age they did press further west but that is after this point in time so that isn’t relevent).
None of that garbles giberish that Joel and company wrote makes any bloody sense when you actually look at the established lore, or even at the time lines presented by the original author.
Yeah, people love to use this story. But this was written, or at least published, in 1930. It may have been written in 1929 but we only have the dates when they were first published. The first Conan story published was in 1932, two years later and the Hyborian Age Essay was written to be the backstory upon which he based all of the Conan stories as much as possible. A “history” of the world to draw upon when writing. We know that, based on that essay, he linked the two ages together as the Cataclysm which ended the Thurian Age is what sparks the events of the beginning of the history of the Hyborian Age essay. There are also plenty of dates used in the essay, as well as other sources as explained above which can clearly show how long the Hyborian Age lasted and therefor when the Thurian Age ended. Thus, 10,000 year before Conan WAS DURING THE THURIAN AGE and it was also TWO THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE KULL.
The Lemurian Remnants are not the entirety of the Lemurian kingdom, they are remnants.
They are a fraction of the Lemurian people who managed to escape from the Khari during their enslavement.
The Witch Queen covers this in the lorestones:
Perhaps you were born a slave, and you do not remember the fate that shaped us. We were a people of the sea, voyagers and traders. Our islands were warm and prosperous and we spent our days fishing and sailing. I was an apprentice to the Cult of Dagon. But then came the great cataclysm. The world shook and our islands exploded in fire and chaos, then slowly, they began to sink beneath the waves. The dark water came, lapping, unstoppable, inevitable. The ocean, once our ally, now claimed all that we were with an insatiable hunger. We gathered what boats and wreckage we could, and we fled, into the west.
To know the past, child, is to avoid the same mistakes in the future. When we fled from our sinking islands we made landfall on the eastern coast of this continent. There were a people there with whom we had traded from time to time. As we made landfall on their coastline, they took it as an act of aggression. Half-drowned, numbed by the loss of our homes – the wicked Khari took full advantage of our plight. We were rounded up, chained, and put to work. That was the first time that our people became slaves.
As masters, the Khari were relentless. For you, child, I do not need to detail the brutality of existence under the Khari. You live a similar existence today, under the yoke of your masters. Needless to say, there were those of us who lived beneath the Khari who were versed in lore that was alien to them. Our island civilization was far more advanced than theirs – if the war had been a fair one, we would have shattered them with our powers. As it was, some of us escaped. A remnant of a remnant, thousands strong, but all that remained of a mighty empire. We fled west, always into the west.
The trials of the journey were long and our people grew weary. We came to the shores of an inland sea and built boats and rafts to cross it. There were islands there – at least two of which had been inhabited before our coming. Some of our people chose to stay, hoping to recreate the seafaring life that we had enjoyed before the cataclysm. But the water had betrayed us once, so many of us continued westward – a remnant of a remnant of a remnant.
The Lemurian Remnants who arrived in the Exiled Lands are “a remnant of a remnant of a remnant” of the pre-cataclysmic Lemurian kingdom.
We do not know. There were generations of people born, enough that they outgrew the eastern swamps offered to them by the Giant-kings and journeyed into the volcano to search for new land when they discovered the serpent-men.
The war also had to conclude before the Khari won their war against the Giant-kings outside the Exiled Lands, as when the Khari arrived in the Exiled Lands, they were already worshipping Set, which only started after they defeated the Giant-king empire.
Agreed. Which is why I said
Which is why I said
“Thuron, the high priest, was a tall, gaunt man, a cadaverous giant. His eves glimmered like fiery pools under his heavy brows, and his thin gash of a mouth gaped in a silent laugh. His only garment was a silken loincloth, through which was thrust a cruel curved dagger, and he carried a short, heavy whip in his lean, powerful hand.” - Kull of Valusia - “The Altar and the Scorpion”
This is absolutely consistent with REH’s way of describing a tall sinister human. The term ‘giant’ is used repeatedly to describe any man of significant height. As for the eyes, again that is a common REH descriptive to suggest evil, it certainly does not need to be taken as ‘he literally had glowing eyes that looked like there was fire shooting out of them’. If every instance of a writer in general, let alone REH, describing someone’s eyes as ‘gleaming’ ’ glinting’ ‘burning with an unholy lust’ ‘afire with rage’ etc etc was supposed to indicate literal demonic ancestry, there’d be almost no human characters at all.
As for the display of strength, several points. First, the characters being lifted are described throughout as ‘a boy’ and ‘a girl’, though there is a reference at the end to ‘the youthful lovers’ which suggests teens. I am not particularly big and can lift a 14 year old at arms length. I can’t lift two, but I am also not an REH character. REH liked his characters to be ‘larger than life’, they routinely perform physical acts that are actually unfeasible, without it being intended to suggest they are more than human. Many of the ‘giant’ pirates and tribesmen Conan encounters during his travels could equally have been described lifting a couple of teens, and I have no doubt at all that REH would have considered Conan capable of such a feat. Hell, modern day World’s Strongest Man competitors could not only hold a teen at arms length in each hand, but could compete to do so for the longest time. And while REH was unfamiliar with World’s Strongest Man, he was known to be familiar with many large physically powerful men.
Good. Though I’m not sure what purpose the essay serves, since it doesn’t appear to add anything of meaning, other than to perhaps invent the name ‘Khari’. All of the important details are already covered in The Hyborian Age - they were driven westwards by the expansion of their former slaves; they destroyed and absorbed the pre-human civilisation, they established ‘modern’ Stygia. Nothing in Rippke’s essay adds anything meaningful to this.
The ‘Khari’ migration is not only plausible, it is established ‘fact’ from The Hyborian Age. The only ‘fact’ that Funcom take from Rippke is the name. And given that Funcom’s Giant-Kings are so dramatically different from REH’s Giant-Kings, I’d say it’s more likely that they just grabbed whatever bits looked ‘cool’ to them, and made up their own stuff around it.
The assumption would be that a group of Lemurians, under the Witch Queen, escaped during the Khari’s early attempts to enslave the Lemurians. This would then be the group that made their way to the Exiled Lands, while the majority were left behind to the fate REH describes. There is no other way that any of the Lemurian Lorestones can be true, nor is there any way that Lemurians in the Exiled Lands would have still called themselves Lemurians otherwise. (The ones we meet in the ‘modern day’ are, of course, just a faction of Exiles using the name, the Witch Queen’s followers being long gone.) Of course, none of this is in any way backed up by REH, it is all Funcom…
But Funcom canon is as relevant as anything Rippke made up, or anything DeCamp/Carter, Jordan or the dozens of others made up. Indeed, Funcom canon is more relevant than the others (that aren’t REH) when it comes to the game, since that is the ‘reality’ behind their version of the lore. It doesn’t mean their version of the lore is ‘right’ (or necessarily even good), but just because they choose to use the term ‘Khari’ doesn’t make Rippike’s headcanon any more relevant either.