The Grey Ones are obviously inspired by the Black Ones from Pool of the Black Ones. I guess they are a related species or maybe just a different ethnicity.

That doesn’t help a lot, of course, as Conan doesn’t find out much about the Black Ones.

What hints can we gather from what we see ingame?

  • The places they live in look like ruins. Did they build these once-great palaces? I assume so, as the pools are similar to the pool the Black Ones have build, so it was probably the Grey Ones who built these.
  • The Grey Ones are, we can assume, intelligent. They created cities, craft weapons, bury their dead, seem to have a social structure - all signs of intelligence and culture.
  • The Grey Ones look similar to humans, but don’t seem to be actual humans. It is possible that they are related, but I guess they’re not. I wouldn’t be so surprised to learn that they’re related to the Giant Kings and Frost Giants. but there seems to be no evidence suggesting that.
  • The Grey Ones seem to have stone-age like technology. There’s no or little metal in their equipment and buildings. They are very skilled in producing stone and obsidian weapons, and seem to command some weird magic, but that seems to be it.
  • The Grey Ones’ magic seems to be quite powerful. They trapped some of the most dangerous creatures of this world and some from beyond. Despite trapping creatures, they don’t seem to have mastered anything useful as far as we can see. For fighting, they rely purely on phyisical strength and their weird, but apparently stone-age level weapons.
  • I found no reason why their cities and palaces look so run-down. Their society seems to be in decline. It is even possible that they don’t create new weapons and buildings, living off the craftiness of their ancestors. The nearby obsidian forges probably are theirs, but there’re no Grey Ones even near them. But what caused this decline? The arrival of the First Men? Interference from the war going on on the main isle?
  • The ruins and therefore their society must be quite old. You can summon living (!) Silent Legion members (at that time, not “Silent” Legion, to be precise) and a living Giant King from them. So, they must date back at least to the age of the Giant Kings, more precisely to the time of their war against the Lemurians.
  • It’s puzzling how and why creatures from the Exiled Lands got to the Isle of Siptah during the Giant King age. From the lorestones, we learn that Serpentpeople travelled from the Isle to the Giant Kings’ lands. But the reverse? The Giant Kings would have had better things to do during the war to mount expeditions to faraway islands, I assume. My guess is that the shrines were active at that time and teleported creatures from the Exiled Lands to the Isle of Siptah. Some surprised Giant Kings and Silent Legion soldiers seem to have stumbled upon the Grey Ones and got trapped by them.

In conclusion… there’re more questions than answers. But that is what one should expect from the Hyborian age. Conan doesn’t seem to understand many things happening around them (e. g. “dragons”), and our characters live in a similary mysterious world.

Also, some story elements going missing doesn’t help the already obscure lore, such as Telith’s ghost or any hint where Razma got the Lemurian mask. These gaps should be closed.

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