More background information about the game

I think this is a flub in UE. I’ve never seen any conformation that the game’s skybox rotation is canon.

Incoming textwall

TLDR; Snowglobes are internally consistent but need not be stored in an extra planar space, altho travel to and from is likely extra planar.

The Sun path being as… Curious as it is leans more towards Snowglobe in this one’s opinion.
Likewise the fact that there is an interplanar vortex (non-operational, unless) located in the same building as the Black Ice smithy.

According to the Khari plate not far from it it is both a junction point and a place where things can be made real through desire.

The Snowglobe need not be entirely removed from reality… it may have pathing in and out that connects at fixed points relative to the Khari Annex yet not appear on any map nor occupy space in relation to it’s entry points (such as how many dungeons float in the sky above the “northeastern” part of the map). We know one could access the eastern swamps via the sea from old Lemuria and the Southern desert via the sands near Stygian.
Then there are the stranded Black Hand to contend with.
The Khari bracers are linked to the ghost wall but also to their teleportation magics.
We must all remember that the Khari could bend space and create permanent teleportation hubs, possibly going through the outer dark to do so. It is possible that the Ghost wall creates something of a hub all it’s own, with each facet between statues marking a connection to a different location in the Hyborian World.

With teleportation it need not even be a pocket dimension, but it does need some enclosure. Otherwise it might run afoul of the gods it is creatively re-interpretating.
For some time this one found the inability to set up shrines for Dagon (who is nothing but civil throughout all our personal interactions with him in game) vexing. However, there is a deeper concern about how Dagon was bound and how (or if) travel to and from the Sunken City bypasses the Ghost wall.

“It’s magic” is often a cop out.
Often.
But if it’s presented with internal consistency it is not. So long as the magic is part of the world build, it’s no more lazy than gravity.
The climate absolutely does not work if the Exiled Lands are part of a normal (even by Hyborian standards) ecosystem. So we already know the Khari annex is borking with that, which is supported by the elemental sorcery foundation that is the scourgestone.

It’s well noted that the sorcery masquerading as religion is a cheap knock off somewhere on the lines of a placebo, but also explained by Lorestone near the Disjunction.
There was prior communion with both Set and Yog in the annex. The Summoning Place is very interesting. The Khari are Settites, and yet they kept a complex that was Yog adjacent. It seems their interactions with the Lord of Empty abodes was significantly different from what the Exiled Dafari have now. They even remark that his whispers may corrupt the mind. Perhaps The Summoning Place was not used to target Yog originally but instead it’s use attracted Yog’s attention. This is pure speculation on this one’s part.
Not of speculation is the demon bats and their summoned nature. Between that and teleportation the Khari held together a va-
Actually, really small area considering how large they are and how advanced their architecture is. Like, seriously, their population probably wasn’t more than a village and scaling everything size wise for them we are looking at something that’s roughly the size of a modern county in the western U.S. if we account for condensed time (default day length being used to represent a day’s worth of travel). On the other hand, time may be deliberately mutable. The Sunrise and such may be features controlled by the annex’s microcosm rather than related to anything happening outside.

Now, one major hole in that sorcerously controlled biome is the Khari reliance upon an aqueduct. Unless the Khari themselves were in decline to the point of decay and they themselves no longer fully understood how they built their annex. Alternatively directly controlling the weather was just too much of a pain in the @$$ and the techniques were known only by the Priest-King and he’s a demonstrable ~redacted explitive~.

Could all of these biomes be smushed so closely together in an open system?
Nope. Not even with some of the wackiness that is prevalent in the Hyborian Age. The Sun Path is wrong, the proximity of Permafrost to flowing Lava, to a coastal Swamp, bordered on two sides by Desert, with temperate Meadows in the middle just doesn’t hold up. There is no place in any functional world you can shove a county that wildly diverse and yet free of seasons and pyroclastic thunderstorms.
Thus it needs to be isolated by physical proximity from any other locations where people might be.
Fortunately the Khari are demonstrable masters of teleportation.
Within their own private Idaho they can sculpt a closed series of biomes that form a microcosm where the borderline nonsensical ecology can be supplemented with fell sorceries.

Hiding this place could be possible, but the Khari are not demonstrated to be masters of illusion. Nor really of mind control. The Witch Queen had more of that, and while she helped make the bracers, she didn’t make the Ward towers. Again, it needs to be isolated.

Hence it is a Snowglobe, or at least a controlled biome dome, located in an irrelevant and out of the way location but one that, through remnant Khari sorcery, is connected to many places in the Hyborian World.
It may not be floating in the outer dark, but one likely crosses it (probably without realizing it) to get there.

TLDR; Snowglobe, because anything else is even more internally inconsistent than Mitra rewarding Human Sacrifice.

1 Like

Incoming counterwall

It may not be active now, but it is the reason the frost giants are in the area. They’re from another world, so this portal definitely reaches across dimensions and space.

I’m gonna slap a correction on this:

The Giant-Kings are not Khari. In the timeline of events, the Khari are the original inhabitants of Hyrkania who were driven out by the lemurians and conquered the rest of the giant-kings empire, forcing those remnants across the nilus/Styx to form Acheron in what is now nemedia and aquilonia. The lorestones are from the giant-kings empire. Given Acheron isn’t founded yet, anything referred to as Acheronian in the game is a misnomer, for a previously unnamed culture that will later become Acheronian. To keep it easy, I’ll just refer to this empire as the giant kings.

They absolutely did. Nyarlathotep was present at, and a forming component of the bracelets. The disjunction temple of frost likely passes through there as well.

That is the son of dagon, not dagon himself. If you do the dungeon with subtitles on, he explains that he was sent by his father to guide them and in turn they imprisoned him.

While the giant kings worshipped Set, much of their magic comes from deals and pacts with outer gods. Yog is one of many, and I do believe you’re right that the summoning place was meant to commune with more than just Yog. He was drawn to the place as an area where the borders of reality are thinner, as he is looking to enter reality to end his exile outside of time and space.

The rest of what you put is pretty spot-on, but the debate still remains if the snowglobe was created by the giant-kings for their own benefit, or if it was created by some other force as a prison to all before it became a prison to the slaves of the bracelet

2 Likes

Thank you for catching my Khari misnomer.

This one does not recall when they picked up that incorrect association.

Also, thank you for the Dagon pollywog correction. This one had missed the subtitles. They are not always identical to the spoken words.

If Acheron is yet to be founded, then that throws the entire Siptah storyline into a rather nasty spiral doesn’t it?
This one has been under the impression that Acheron fell about 3 millennia before the coming of Conan, having previously controlled swathes of what is now Brythunia as well as Nemedia, Koth, Ophir, portions of Aquilon and Shem. And that while ancient Stygia was a sister state of sorts (same founders, different directions), modern Stygia had absorbed remnant Acheron. Furthermore, that Acheron was a successor state of those who had enslaved the Lemurians of old. In that the Lemurian Lorestone regarding seeing signs of their ancient oppressors could have been either Acheronian in nature or Serpentfolk. While the Witch Queen expresses loathing for what is in the Volcano, this would imply a connection between the Valusian Serpentfolk and the Proto-Acheronians. As they are all Settites (demon snake worship seems a unifying factor amongst the big bads spanking the Thurian and Hyborian) it’s possible that led to convergent social/architectural evolution, it still seems a stretch for such geographically isolated groups. Mind you, the Valusian Serpent’s aren’t the only Serpent hold outs, but this one thinks they are called out by name at some point.

But back to the Snowglobe, it is unfortunate that the Archivist doesn’t have more for us on the founding of the Giant King annex. However, it is understandable that the game would not include it. If a thing is confirmed, it becomes one thing. If it is one thing, it cannot be all things. Then we wouldn’t be having these stimulating exchanges.

1 Like

Not really. There is no evidence the city of X’chotl was built during the reign of the giant-kings, instead of after. It’s likely that it was built by refugees during the formation of Acheron, as they were displaced from their homeland by the khari invasion.

Yes. This takes place between the events recorded in the game and current time.

Not really, although their cultures shared a large overlap due to the Khari, now dubbed Stygians, taking a lot of the culture from the conquered giant-kings and replacing their own previous culture.

Not quite. Acheron was formed by the surviving remnants of the fallen giant-king empire, interbred with humans to form a new Acheronian race; not quite fully human but also not fully giant-king.

Humanity and serpent-men have been mortal enemies since the dawn of time, with the conflict coming to a head in the Thurian age under the rule of king Kull. They had been in hiding until that point, until they were exposed to the world and Kull swore to eradicate their kind. The serpent-men came to the giant-kings before the lemurians did, likely as refugees of Kull’s genocide. They had originally been on the isle of siptah, before betraying the other elder races that lived there to move into the volcano in the exiled lands, bringing with them the Shining Trapezohedron. After the lemurians arrived, they discovered the giant-kings had been harboring their old enemy and this is what sparked the war between the races.

Worship of Set was likely brought to the giant-kings by the serpent-men when they arrived, as that is their patron diety. The giant-kings otherwise consort with all manner of gods, not so much in worship but in transactional sorcery.

Out-of-Game Citations:

The Great Migration
The Coming of the Hyborians
The Mystery of Pre-human Stygia

2 Likes

Ah, this one had a juxtaposition.
This one had thought you meant the events of the game Conan Exiles was taking place before the founding of Acheron.

So this was cleaned up under Rippke.
As this one understands he fell hard on the purist side this should be largely free of contention. Thank you for the REHUPA links.
Good reading that. Jogged a few memories what had set dormant for awhile.

1 Like

Hate to be that guy :tm: again, but the entire snowy region is cold because of an extradimensional portal, and black ice comes from the outer void.

An artificial ski hill is not a permafrost region.
However, it is extremely unnatural.

Tundra does not abutt against Savannahs.
Also, the Desert as a result of the persistent Sandstorm does not account for the Desert outside of the green wall to the (apparent) South and West. Yes, the central region was once greener… There also was a massive aqueduct system. Something that was evidently necessary for the Giant King city to function. Which is odd. Given how extremely humid the East it would take a significantly more extreme border mountain range to keep the rain from coming further inland. The transition is far too abrupt for how flat it is. With the Sandstorm present it makes sense, but beforehand, nope.
But what if the air currents run from the desert behind the city towards the Sea?
Even more curious considering the interaction of High and Low pressure streams relating to temperature and ambient humidity. If these wild temperature differences were in such close confines, there would be tornadoes and significant pyroclastic thunderstorms near constantly, especially with the Sandstorm running rampant.
We can see beyound the Green wall (west), and there is a tiny strip of open land between hot desert and the frozen snowfield. Walkable in less than a day. Rolling hills at most, not mountains.
This doesn’t actually work.

The closest we get in this world is New Zealand, and that is not a place one can walk from a mainland to. Even then, the high altitude mountain snow is not at all the same as a permafrost snowfield within walking distance of a arid heatstroke. On Madagascar we can get dessert on one side of mountains and some wetlands on the other. But no tundra. Also an island and much much larger than the Exiled Lands could be.

Getting two or three of these biomes together is easy enough. Getting them all simply doesn’t work due to weather and water systems. Even if we chop off the desert and savannah, we aren’t going to find artic snowfields and steamy swamps within a single day travel if we also have coastal streams.

But then again, you noted several magic events in your explanation for why things are as borked as they are…
So, you broke your own point?
Millennia after catastrophes, unless something remains persistently aggravating, biomes stabilize or become completely uninhabitable.

Well, so long as we are hand waving the impossible ecology off, this one fails to understand why you have such an intense hatred for the Snowglobe.

What about this incites such opposition from you?

Also, please share an example of a Hyborian location as clucked up as the Exiled Lands, this one is legitimately curious. There is some very… flexible ecology in the mytho history, but nothing this egregious that can be easily recalled.

1 Like

I can speak for myself but I think drachenfeles is in at least partial agreement; having it not in the real world is a story copout. It excuses inconsistencies in the story rather than allowing that not all yet has been revealed. It is lazy storytelling in the sense that any inconsistency can be waved away as “pocket dimension”. At that point, none of the conan lore even matters anymore because anything goes. Anyone who holds the stories up as any guidepost to where the game story should go should be repulsed by that description. Not only that but Conan is traveling thru between stories, as described by the devs. He has no bracelet and Conan would not just wander thru a dimensional hole for shiggles and hang out there; he hated magic.

1 Like

I can see why you may think that, but not quite. Let me reiterate how dimensions work in the scope of the REH/Cthulhu Mythos.

It’s not like marvel’s multiverse or any other interpretation of multiple or infinite alternate realities that mirror our own. There is just the one, core comprehendible reality. That is the three dimensional space that us as humans exist within and can understand. Beyond this, are an incomprehensible vastness of other dimensions and methods of traversal. For example, Yog exists outside of our understanding of space and time. He is confined to outside of these four dimensions, while simultaneously being able to observe everything to ever exist across time and space. It’s a topic I admit I am not qualified to get into, and REH and HPL both are also not by any means experts on, but they wrote about it to the best of their ability.There’s some complex words on wikipedia that can at least cover it a bit better than I can.

The snowglobe as it would exist, is a three-dimensional space located adjacent to our three-dimensional reality, along the line of some incomprehensible extra dimension. Think “above” in a sense. Reaching this dimension is possible without the use of some magic portal, through some divine power or sorcery we mortals can’t understand to move us along this line. Our consciousness may travel via dreams, a door could allow crossing the threshold on to another planet, or something more simple, like going for a walk on a cold winter’s day.

Speaking of that last example,

This mans has already done this canonically because he was down bad for a giant. Not to mention all the extended works, going to fight Set in the dimension of the serpent-men in Conan The Adventurer, and don’t even get me started on the Marvel years. These aren’t core canon so take with a grain of salt, but aspects from both have bled into the games already as is.

However, I do think Conan did indeed wander in by accident; and is capable of leaving as well. Assuming @LostBrythunian is correct in saying

It’s likely the exiled lands are in a real place in the real universe, albeit not necessarily anywhere in hyboria, or even on earth, or even in this point in time. Hell, it could be squared away somewhere in Zothique. What is likely is there is a way to get there without some complex ritual or portal necessary. It could be as simple as a road you walk, but as you go down it you’re travelling across more than one line dimension. We know Thoth-Amon found this place without the bracelets, so it’s likely they aren’t needed to get there, it’s solely to stop you from leaving.

Wherever it may be located across space and time, it’s borders are likely held on both sides by a similar enchantment to the one used by Ezdagor. Fallible, but potent.

Not really. In fact, the more people are aware of the stories the more on board they are from what I’ve seen. I summon @Bizcotto and @Oduda to confirm this

More or less… I think its still WIP.

Lol you cited the cartoon but wont use comics cuz they aren’t canon…. Priceless. And I’m sorry, if you are saying Conan did some kind of extradimensional travel with the frost giants daughter, you are reading way too much into that. The only travel he did was thru the snow.

This one does find it perpetually amusing that we get food poisoning from raw oysters and elk meat but can drink the water in the Dregs, actual sewer water inhabited by a demon, with corpses all in it, with no adverse impact.

2 Likes

Conan Exiles: Isle of Septic is a missed opportunity.

2 Likes

I actually cited both side by side and said neither was canon. Or at least that was the intention. I can edit it for clarity but my statement pertained to both.

“The land changed; the wide plains gave way to low hills, marching upward in broken ranges. Far to the north he caught a glimpse of towering mountains, blue with the distance, or white with the eternal snows. Above these mountains shone the flaring rays of the borealis. They spread fan-wise into the sky, frosty blades of cold flaming light, changing in color, growing and brightening.
Above him the skies glowed and cracked with strange lights and gleams. The snow shone weirdly, now frosty blue, now icy crimson, now cold silver. Through a shimmering icy realm of enchantment Conan plunged doggedly onward, in a crystalline maze where the only reality was the white body dancing across the glittering snow beyond his read - ever beyond his reach.”


“Conan was leaping forward, arms spread to seize her, when with a crack like the breaking of an ice mountain, the whole sky leaped into icy fire. The girl’s ivory body was suddenly enveloped in a cold blue flame so blinding that the Cimmerian threw up his hands to shield his yes from the intolerable blaze. For a fleeting instant, sky and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson fires. Then Conan staggered and cried out. The girl was gone. The glowing snow lay empty and bare; high above his head the witch-lights flashed and played in a frosty sky gone mad, and among the distant blue mountains there sounded a rolling thunder as of a gigantic war-chariot rushing behind steeds whose frantic hoofs struck lightning from the snows and echoes from the skies.
Then suddenly the borealis, the snow-clad hills and the blazing heavens reeled drunkenly to Conan’s sight; thousands of fire-balls burst with showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel which rained stars as it spun. Under his feet the snowy hills heaved up like a wave, and the Cimmerian crumpled into the snows to lie motionless.
In a cold dark universe, whose sun was extinguished eons ago, Conan felt the movement of life, alien and unguessed. An earthquake had him in its grip and was shaking him to and fro, at the same time chafing his hands and feet until he yelled in pain and fury and groped for his sword.”


“‘He is delirious’, whispered a warrior.
‘Not so!’ cried the older man, whose eyes were wild and wierd. ‘It was Atali, the daughter of Ymir, the frost-giant! To the fields of the dead she comes, and shows herself to the dying! Myself when a boy I saw her, when I lay half-slain on the bloody field of Wolraven. I saw her walk among the dead in the snows, her naked body gleaming like ivory and her golden hair unbearably bright in the moonlight. I lay and howled like a dying dog because I could not crawl after her. She lures men from the stricken fields into the wastelands to be lsain by her brothers the ice-giants, who lay men’s red hearts smoking on Ymir’s board. The Cimmerian has seen Atali, the frost-giant’s daughter,’
‘Bah!’ grunted Horsa. ‘Old Gorm’s mind was touched in his youth by a sword cut on the head. Conan was delirious from the fury of battle - look how his helmet is dented. Any of those blows might have addled his brain. it was an hallucination he followed into the wastes. He is from the south; what does he know of Atali?’
‘You speak truth, perhaps,’ muttered Conan. ‘It was all a strange and wierd - by Crom!’
He broke off, glaring at the object that still dangled from his clenched left fist; the others gaped silently at the veil he held up - a wisp of gossamer that was never spun by human distaff.”

While the ending is definitely debated, my takeaway from this is that it was objectively not a dream, and Conan was not hallucinating. The landscape itself changes, as his place in reality is shifting. Howard very clearly implies the frost-giants to be alien, and following the inspiration of his best pen-pal Lovecraft, this definition holds as an explanation for what happened. Gods and aliens are one and the same, magic and alien science are the same thing. You can fight the Lovecraftian influence all you want, but it’s in vain. It’s intertwined, without it we wouldn’t have Conan as we know it.

Not hallucinating but bewitched and in the presence of the daughter of a god. Things gonna get weird.

Yes, exactly. He was transported to the realm of the frost giants and then banished from it. Things got wierd

No

2 Likes

Wouldn’t it be interesting if players could ask questions like these to the NPCs themselves? The current 2 or 3 sentences like “You shall never return to your den!” get so old after the first 2 or 3 times. Give them some intelligent dialogue and a way for players to prompt a conversation with all human thralls and NPCs.

1 Like