The fate of the Witch-Queen... and Razma

Conan Exiles General Discussion Creative Corner
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Fellow Exiles,

I invite you to a little theory-crafting. After all these years, it still seems a bit unclear

  • how Razma acquired the Mask of the Witch Queen and
  • what happened to the “original” Witch Queen.

What do we know from the lore?

  • Razma’s Journals tell of her journey to Sepermeru. Her journey seems to be completely documented in her journals. [Note: I previously thought there was a gap after meeting the dogs of the desert, but I revise that position.]
  • In Sepermeru, she convinced other people living there to start an expedition to the Unnamed City to gather the “gems” to set them free from the bracelets (https://conanexiles.fandom.com/wiki/Razma’s_Journals#Razma’s_Journal_#8). Side note: The treasure seekers we encounter in the City may be survivors of her expedition. Never though of that before.
  • We find Razma “possessed” by the mask (Mask of the Witch Queen (Variant B) - Official Conan Exiles Wiki) in the jungle. When killed, she apparently respawns in her house in Sepermeru, similar to the player characters respawning at their bed.

What does that tell us about the Mask of the Witch Queen?

  • I think we can conclude that the Mask of the Witch Queen is some kind of memory storing device or even an intelligent artifact. The current wearer either has no agency and is controlled by the artifact. Or the wearer still has some sort of free will, but gains memories and maybe convictions from the mask.
  • Either way, the “Witch Queen” that led her people to the Exiled Lands, created the lore stones, waged war against the Giant Kings and so on may not have been a single person, but a series of persons possessed, controlled or inspired by the mask.

What was the Witch Queen’s fate?

  • It is, as far as I know, not documented where Razma found or got the Mask.
  • Let us assume the most simple explanation: She found it in the Unnamed City on the aforementioned expedition.
  • If that is the case, the Giant Kings or their human slaves must have defeated the Witch Queen, either in the city itself, or they killed her elsewhere and brought her body or at least the mask to the Unnamed City.
  • That would imply that the Lemurians lost the war, which seems consistent to the rest of the story imho. The Giant Kings’ realm was destroyed by their own weapon in the end, but before that, they seem to have more or less defeated the Lemurians. The Warmaker has survived, after all, implying that the Giant Kings at least weren’t wiped out. He tells us that he lost a great battle at Shattered Springs, but the Priest King unleashed the sandstorm after that. So, there seems to have been no invasion of the Unnamed City. The City is a ruin by now, but all damage I found so far can be attributed to time and the sandstorm, not to war.

So… did the Witch Queen die? Do you know of any lore, or do you have any idea where and how this happened? Are there any gaps or flaws in my summary abouve? Do you have found any clue where the mask may have been in the Unnamed City? Please let me know, at let us try to solve this mystery.

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Lovely to see a lore post here.

I have a slightly different view of the nature of the Witch Queen’s mask. I’ve always had the impression that is possessed by the Witch Queen’s own soul, not an advanced device or intelligent artifact. My own for that was always that she was so angry at what had been done to herself and her people that her spirit lived on in the mask itself. I also think it just completely robs the wearer of their agency.

As for the fate of the Witch Queen herself, I’ve always been a bit unsure. The Kinscourge’s boots whisper the name of the Witch Queen to him, and given the framing of it as a ‘tragedy’, her death in the war is not totally unreasonable. It could also potentially be her people’s enslavement and losses in the war, too.

In regards to the war, I always read it as the following:

  • The Lemurians are very much on the back foot until The Silent Legion takes Xullan, and Tyros falls in love with Telith
  • The Lemurians and Silent Legion slay The Archivist in the Circle of Swords
  • The Lemurians unleash sorcery at the Battle of the Shattered Springs and destroy most of the Giant King’s armies
  • After retreating, the Priestking demands The Warmaker call the sandstorm, then leaves to fight Tyros
  • Petruso stops the sandstorm, but dooms the lands.
  • Lemurians finish off any remaining Giant Kings and end up interbreeding with other tribes, or the beasts of the swamp, whereas Klael is the only living member of the Triumvirate, narrowly avoiding death.

I think the battle was likely a pyhrric victory, a war that neither side truly “won”. The Lemurians (in my reading) came off better, but not by much, given they’d already lost many of their own. The Witch Queen is conspicuous in her absence from the later-stage lore of the uprising, so it’s possible she may have been killed, or she may have died later, but her soul continued to live on in the mask.

As for where Razma found it, that’s probably the real mystery. If it was in the city, it could have been from her demise, but also could have been stolen, left there after the victory at the Shattered Springs, or left there by any number of people that traversed The Exiled Lands prior to Razma encountering it. I think the chain of custody is a bit too unclear to draw any solid conclusions.

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Witch Queen swore that her people would never be slaves again,
yet she added to the matrix which created the bracelets
that imprisoned her people within the Cursed Walls of the Exiled Lands.
Remember, they lived in prosperity and peace for a very long time with the “Giant Kings”. But something changed all that.

Enter the revelation of the Serpentmen. (the master illusionists).
They who wanted to rule over the world once again at any cost.
It is they who caused everything to change which led to war between the humans and the Giant Kings.

At the Circle of Swords one stone tells of the Lemurian’s plight.
Another stone warns us to be wary of those that live in the volcano.
Even the Giant Kings did not trust the Serpentmen, yet the humans believed they were allied with each other.\

Razma was driven nearly insane from being possessed by the Witch Queen’s Mask. But we save her to return to the Relic Hunter City. There she speaks charmingly of Conan and considers accompanying him along his journeys, where-ever they may lead.

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It’s also possible that the mask only carries the spirit of the last (or only) Witch Queen, yes. Personally, I find it more interesting to be the other way, and her lack of a name, use of language and suspiciously long live hint in that direction. No definitive proof, though.

What happened at the Shattered Springs is a bit mysterious to me. The Warmaker speaks of a strange “science” released upon his army. As the Giant Kings used sorcery themselves, I always understood him to mean something different, like a chemical weapon. But who knows, maybe the Giant Kings view their sorcery as a kind of science.

The fate of the Giant Kings except for the Warmaker is, indeed, a mystery. Where they killed by the Lemurians? Or did they just starve, wander off or interbreed with other species? I think both are possible.
Some of the Giant King bosses in the Warmaker’s Sanctuary are undead in game terms, while others seem to be alive. Maybe just an oversight, or maybe that’s on purpose.
We can also find some Giant Kings on the Isle of Siptah imprisoned in the Grey Ones’ figurines. Same for their slave soldiers, the Silent Legion - there are living Silent Legionaires on the Isle of Siptah, which is pretty significat imho. So maybe some emigrated to the Isle of Siptah. They may also have been captured by the elder races portals, but I’d be surprised if creatures as powerful as the Giant Kings during their prime got trapped by such magic.

So… if found in the city, where might the mask have been? And why? If it was magical or cursed by the death of its last owner, the Giant Kings would certainly have experimented with it, maybe made other humans wear it. But that there’s no hint - afaik - of its resting place really bugs me.

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Yeah. The Lemurians and her Witch Queen apparently were tricked by that, but that the Witch Queen unwittingly imprisoned her own people is a cruel fate.

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What i don’t get from what i read (i love these topics too by the way :laughing:), if Witch queen is responsible for the green wall, then why we have only one Lemurian camp on exile lands?
And if Lemurians and Giant kings are “friends” why we don’t have co existence of Lemurians and giant kings on North?

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I think you are misunderstanding, my friend. The Witch Queen helped the Giant Kings make the bracelets (but then they were for communication) - the Giant Kings later created the curse wall and used the bracelets as a way to lock people within it, but that was not what the Witch Queen had agreed to.

While Lemurians and Giant Kings were allied, the Giant Kings granted some land for the Lemurians to live in, but they did not want to live together. The Giant Kings already had their city and, as they say in the lorestones, they were slow to breed, so they did not need to spread into new areas. But the humans (Lemurians) bred fast and needed more and more space, which is part of what frightened the Giant Kings and led to the war.

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Thanks a million :sign_of_the_horns:.

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The Staff of the Triumvirate.
(A gift from the Serpentmen to the Giant Kings at a suspicious time).

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On the topic of only having one Lemurian camp, the Uprising was likely a long time ago. The Lemurians eventually spread out and bred with other races, as I assume the Lemurians born after the war weren’t bound the bracelet.

Yakira seems to indicate that the Lemurians that remained in Xel-Ha bred with the beasts and became beasts, which plays into the concept of devolution that is quite prevalent throughout the game, most notably in the Serpentmen. That’s likely why the apes and animals in Xel-Ha still lurk around the ruins and try to create “homes” with fires and such.

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If there were any children. We don’t see any children in the Exiled Lands, and all the tribes living there wear bracelets.

That may be due to outgame reason, but my head canon is that the Bracelets suppress the ability to procreate, but make humans effectively immortal, as even the humans’ souls are bound to the Exiled Lands in endless reincarnation (i. e. respawn).

Pure head canon, though.

Some quotes from the Witch Queen:

“I am the mother of your race.”

That may be a rhetorical choice of words, but it’d be pretty strange for that one. Dictators may style themselves “father of the country” or “father of our country”, but “of your race”? That creates a weird distance, as if she wasn’t human or Lemurian.

"I was an apprentice to the Cult of Dagon. But then came the great cataclysm. "

  1. So she seems to have lived a mortal live, being an “apprentice” once.
  2. The Witch Queen experienced the cataclysm, probably as a young person. The cataclysm happened about 6000 years before Conan’s birth, if I understand correctly (The Hyborian Age | Conan Wiki | Fandom). We do not know when the Giant King war happened, but 6000 years seems a long time ago.
  3. The Witch Queen seems to have experienced the migration of her people to the Khari lands and later the Exiled Lands and at least the beginning of the war, i. e. the whole time of Lemurians buildin their civilization. That time spanned several generations, as only then the rate of reproduction the Giant Kings complain about even plays a role. So, the Witch Queen had a live span of at least several generations. If the Giant Kings were quick to realize the problem, that may still be compatible with a modern age human live span of e. g. 80 years. But that doesn’t feel right to me at least. A tribe of refuges stuck in a jungle wouldn’t reproduce quickly; child mortality and other factors would have kept their population down. The multiplication that worried the Giant Kings would be visible after a few hundred of years, much long than any Witch Queen would naturally live.

“But the Giant-kings became alarmed, I suspect, at the rate at which we gave birth. Theirs was a people who took centuries to reach child-bearing age, and they remained few in number.”

This, again, hints at her seeing Giant Kings grow to adulthood. She may make that statement based on conclusions, but… well, I don’t believe so.

“We retaliated by destroying their aqueduct.We established an outpost, Xullan, in the north,”

The city of Xultan was build during the war. If we assume that it was build by hand, that would have taken a bronze or iron age civilization centuries. Maybe there was magic involved, but there’s little evidence of the Witch Queen being able to conjure up building from thin air. Even if aided by summoned demons or golem-like things as we encounter in her palace, building a city is nothing done in a few weeks.

The war, therefore, must have gone on for several generations, which would fit with the Giant Kings being much more powerful and having near endless resources, but still being threatened by hordes of - in their view - endlessly multiplying humans.

So… I believe that the Witch Queen was very, very old at the time of the Giant King war. Maybe she was immortal. It’s at least possible, though, that the Witch Queen that build the lore stones tells of memories gained from the Mask of the Witch Queen, just as Razma did much later.

It may all be lies and propaganda, though. Niether the Witch Queen nor the Giant Kings should be considered reliable narrators. The Giant Kings seem somewhat honest, but kind of limited or slow in their perception (i. e. stupid), and the Witch Queen used deception in the war. Maybe the Witch Queens displayed themselves as if immortal, but relied on oral tradition.

But… I choose to believe otherwise. :wink:

P. S.: Xulan’s build time may have been shorter. Angkor Wat, which is rougly similar in size and style, was apparently build in 30 years. However, it was build by an established kingdom in the 12th century, which is way, way more advanced that what we’re talking about in the Hyborean age. Even 30 years, let’s say even 10 years with the aid of magic, seems a long time during a war, and a long time in the live span of the Witch Queen.

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I disagree that the Lemurians bred with beasts - I don’t recall anything that directly indicates that (though if you do recall such indications I would be glad to see them) - but I certainly agree that they devolved to a more bestial state. The implication is very much that the Grey Apes are the remaining descendents of the true Lemurians (as opposed to the ‘Lemurian’ faction, which seems to be simply a faction with no specific racial background). Devolution is a common theme not only of the game, but of REH’s Hyborian Age in general, with several races devolving (and re-evolving) over the course of its long history. The collapse of a race back into apehood, especially after a long and devastating war, is entirely consistent with REH’s vision of such matters - for example, the following quote from “The Hyborian Age” essay by REH - "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. " These same Ape-men, having fallen back to a more primitive level, having once been civilised, will later re-evolve and become the ancestors of the Cimmerians.

(edited to add link)

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There’s a theory that i read in here through the years, that exile lands do not exist on the map in a normal geographical dimension. (it was @Tephra who said it first time if i remember correctly)
Then again the outcast giant (ymir religion conversation ) speaks of a dream. That each entity in this land is a dream.
What’s your position about it?
If this is true when we escape these lands do we wake up?
And if we wake up, where?

Ps. Apologies for the burning :laughing:.

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While not the target of the question, I’m certainly familiar with the debate. Personally, I quite like the ‘snowglobe theory’ that the Exiled Lands are some sort of isolated location not within the real world. I’m not quite as convinced about it as, for example, Jimbo, but I see enough evidence to believe it is a likely explanation. The Outcast is one of my favourite bits (though I know CodeMage does not like the ‘dream’ explanation).

A very interesting question :slight_smile: I suppose it depends on who is doing the dreaming - are we each individuals dreaming ourselves into the Exiled Lands, or are we aspects of some single being’s dream. I know that some would argue we are all trapped within Nyarlathotep’s dream - I don’t go quite that far. I prefer the idea that we are each individuals, but that the dream is collective - we all dream our way into the same place. But where do we dream from? Perhaps each person is someone from a ‘real’ location during the Hyborian Age, or perhaps each of us is from the modern world, dreaming ourselves into the Hyborian Age (essentially our real selves, playing the game…). I’d certainly be interested in hearing the viewpoints of others on this - personally I don’t believe there is a ‘correct’ answer, just a fun philosophical question to decide for ourselves :slight_smile:

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It is relative if everything is a hypnosis, unreal, a dream world. In this case the lore is the base, what haunts each exile in each form or race, but in a dream world everything can be mixed weirdly and although it makes no sense in reality, at the time it does.

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Which, among other things, provides an explanation for the path of the sun. (Even if the ‘real’ explanation is apparently just to do with the way the devs wanted the light to hit certain surfaces :wink: )

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Please let us not turn this thread into another discussion about the snowglobe theory. There’re enough questions about the Witch Queen, the war and other elements of CE’s lore.

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Well, we were being transported by boat from Stygia to the Exiled Lands when we were shipwrecked into Siptah. I think this puts a nail in the coffin in both the dream and the snow globe hypothesis.
IMO, the EL are just a weird physical location limited by a barrier and the devs messed up the sun orientation by mistake. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: I doubt it was on purpose or if it is it might be due to some technical constraint related to the lighting or something.

On a side note, I always thought the lore is too grandiose for what the game actually offers…

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(No problem - I just enjoy lore discussions and don’t mind where they go - happy to stay on track :slight_smile: )
So - the Witch Queen and her mask. I’ve never had a particularly strong opinion whether she is one woman or a succession of different women - either could fit REH’s mythos. The fact that she was ‘an apprentice to the Cult of Dagon’ before the cataclysm certainly implies a single figure. We know of other pre-cataclysmic survivors from Howard’s writings, so it would certainly not be impossible, given access to the right magics. On the other side, the effect the mask has on Razma suggests that a serial identity is also perfectly plausible - different young women ‘overwritten’ by the spirit within the mask - perhaps the spirit of the original Witch Queen, who may have created such an artifact in order to continue her work protecting her people.

I agree. It seems implausible that the rate of Lemurian reproduction would reach levels that worried the Giant-Kings within any normal human lifespan. Whether she is the same woman, or a sequence of women, it seems it would have to take several lifespans for that to happen.

Like you, I find that the least convincing of the options. I can believe the mask might ‘possess’ a new Witch-Queen generation after generation, but I feel confident in that case that the ‘soul’ would remain the same if not the body. Mere oral tradition and propaganda - while I suppose they could be the explanation - feel too limited for the way in which the Witch-Queen so clearly seems to regard herself as the same person. Even Razma, when under the influence of the mask, truly seems to believe she is the same Witch-Queen - that doesn’t seem to be just a story handed down.

Regarding Xullan’s construction time - while I think you have a legitimate point about it not being some simple quick undertaking, even with magic, it is also worth remembering that the technology of the Hyborian Age is also not as primitive as ‘bronze or iron-age’ - there are advanced civilisations here, some of them at least as advanced as any medieval kingdom. Stygia, Acheron, Lemuria, Atlantis, and before them the ancient pre-cataclysmic civilisations - these are some seriously advanced nations in their times. A key theme of Howard’s writing is the idea that civilisations advance and fall and rise again, and that our world is just one more set of rising before some inevitable fall back into barbarism once more. This isn’t just the fall of Rome or Greece back to Gothic barbarism, they would barely be a blip on the waveform he seems to have pictured.

That doens’t change that Xullan would have to have been a reasonably major undertaking for a refugee nation in the midst of a war with a more advanced species. Indeed, for the Lemurians to have even begun to undertake such a project would surely require them to have recovered somewhat from their own hardships.

Returning to ‘The Hyborian Age’ essay, we find several references to the Lemurians, which form the basis for the CE version of their story -
“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.” This is the beginning of their escape ‘Westwards ever westwards’ after the sinking of their homeland in the cataclysm, and their experiences with the Khari. "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. " Makes clear that they remained as slaves for a long period - long enough that in other parts of the world, the Picts and Atlanteans continue to destroy what is left of each other in an extensive series of wars that drives both races back into a deeply primitive state. Then comes another lesser cataclysm and “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.” This is described as being a thousand years after the lesser cataclysm. As can be seen, the timespan here is many centuries before the Witch Queen can possibly have led her people ‘a remnant of a remnant’ into the Exiled Lands. Even if we take her as meaning the lesser cataclysm in her earlier statement about being an apprentice of Dagon, that still implies an extreme passage of time before her people can come west in pursuit of the Khari.

Perhaps the intent is that she led a small part of her people in immediate pursuit of the Khari, while the rest ‘stalked among the ruins of their [Khari] strange civilisation’ for a thousand years. But then, for them to have a culture whereby she could be apprenticed to a religious cult, rather suggests that her origin is before the main cataclysm (and subsequent slavery), not merely the lesser cataclysm that precedes their uprising. To me this suggests she (or the spirit within the mask, depending which interpretation you prefer) is truly ancient, in the same sort of way as other figures like Akivasha or Khosatrel Kel.

As for where the mask is found by Razma - I think perhaps you are right - the Unnamed City seems a plausible location - we know she led an expedition there. And I have a faint memory of there being a reference to the Palace of the Witch Queen being recently rebuilt/restored (I’ll have to see if I can track down where I got that impression from) Certainly this would be very much in keeping with REH’s writing - Khosatral Kel rebuilds his entire civilisation pretty much overnight, so if we are to assume the Witch Queen might have some similar magics, why might she not also have that same sort of ability - at least for short-term construction (if not for something more longterm like Xullan).. How it got there though, that I think would only be speculation at best. (As if the rest of this is something more than speculation :wink: )

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My main point for the Lemurians breeding with beasts comes from Yakira’s dialogue:

In these jungles too stalk the ancestors of the Lemurians. They emulated beasts, lay with beasts, and became beasts. I do not begrudge them their path.
-Conversation, Section 3

Admittedly, there is only one data point for that, and Yakira’s trustworthiness is of course debatable. It doesn’t seem too unrealistic to me, though I doubt all Lemurians became the apes in Xel-Ha

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