Ignore the last one I’m doing this on mobile and fat fingered post
Gonna type this one a lot faster so keep up;
Exiled lands are historically impossible. REH’s essay The Hyborian Age says the lemurians were enslaved by humans, revolted, and then those human captors were enslaved by the pre-human race to the south.
Dale Rippke reaffirms this in his Great Migration essay. And I know his word has weight, given he outlined the Dark Storm Chronology, which joel confirmed the games view as canon.
He names this human peoples the Khari, and attaches the pre-human title to the Giant Kings for the first time.
So the problem is simple;
If it were the khari enslaved by the giant-kings, why does the game say lemurians? There is the khari city of Old Sepemeru*(wine cellar)*, but given their acheronian inspired architecture and worship of Set, that places it there post-fall of the giant kings. Meaning the lemurians came first.
Given both the Great Migration and Hyborian Age are written as an omniscient account of events, unreliable narrator is out. Lemurians likewise can be ruled out given their testimony is first-hand and we can see them there ourselves.
So I have two theories:
Intentionally wrong, snowglobe theory breadcrumbs
Someone made an oopsie.
This detail I think is too major to be a mistake, so I’m leaning towards the first. Anyone else have any ideas? Please, I’m open to anything. Nothing can be more outlandish than alien ghosts in a pocket dimension of insanity This isn’t a challenge darth don’t do it
It could be that the Exiled Lands are the forerunner to Keeping up with the Kardashians and the Giant Kings were simply ahead of their time. The Staff of the Triumvirate certainly has a reality show vibe and most of sepermeru evokes Jersey Shore. Clearly Snookie is slated to be a named thrall and Gordon Ramsey will bring us Specialist Cooking XI.
I can’t wholly chalk that out. We have minor mistakes like black lotus powder being the wrong color or the fact we still don’t have cheese
But.
This is a core, integral part of the game. Joel wrote the lore because of his fascination with the giant-kings. You’d think he would have reread the sources he had to work off a few times and caught the slip if that were the case. Especially when we have so many obscure references, you know they did their homework. Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me, there should be more checks and balances against a mistake this large
I would consider these technical issues with gameplay mechanics, whereas the lemurians being present goes far above and beyond that. They had writers, voice actors, designers, everyone on board to flesh out the lemurian’s story. And nobody stopped to check if there was a mistake in it.
Then we will agree to disagree. As the game is based on the books, I would argue that makes the books the definitive resource.
The witch queen gives a direct account and claims she was present for the entire ordeal, starting with the sinking of lemuria. If her story is to be believed, that would concretely cement the people as lemurians
Not exactly. I’m actually referring to Lorestone #2, where the original witch queen talks about how she was once an apprentice to the cult of dagon before the sinking. It’s presumed she takes the mantle of queen after, meaning the mask is hers and full of only her memories, not all predecessors and successors
Not a bad theory, and one I initially thought off. Small issue though, there’s a roughly 1000-1500 year gap depending on the source. The Lemurians were enslaved by the khari for a millenia before revolting and driving the khari south/west. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for the khari to follow the leader of the rebellion against them in a migration. Especially since we know the lemurians stayed behind and became hyrkania. That would imply the witch queen left her people behind to lead the refugees of her defeated enemies. This also doesn’t work, as lorestone #4 says only a few Lemurians escaped the initial enslavement, no mention of revolt
This is incorrect. The Lemurian lorestones chronicle the beginning of the war, so unless they were created via time travel this is not the case.
This is a bit of a stretch, but I can’t deny it is possible. However, how would you explain the absolute lack of khari architecture or style in their appearances? It’s one thing to take their religion and another to completely forsake all your conventions and appearances.
I’m thinking either you misread or I miswrote. What I mean is there is a 1000-1500 year gap between the lemurians being enslaved by the khari, and the khari or whoever arriving in the land of the giant-kings in the wake of the slave revolt
That’s plausible, I’ll take that and try to do some more homework on the idea.
Wine cellar was actually Old Sepemeru, and it was aboveground before an earthquake swallowed it. There’s journals detailing the fall scattered throughout.
It is excellently designed for sure, but given they worked with funcom to incorporate it into the main game I feel like there was some communication between both parties to ensure it fit the lore.
To test that theory, I’m gonna light the campfires and summon the mighty @Snowhunter to see if they can shed some insight on the matter for us
That is actually incorrect. Here is a direct quote from the Hyborian Age essay
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 the “Khari”, as they had become know (or perhaps were already known when their Lemurian slaves overthrew them) came upon the pre-human empire they were not themselves enslaved but they conquered them and drove them north of the River Styx (where they established the Kingdom of Acheron). Some of them had stayed behind and had intermixed with the Khari who had called themselves Stygians and adopted the worship of Set from the Giant-Kings they had vanquished.
This calls into several points I have always had issue with in the funcom games (though I have never let them stop me from enjoying the games).
The Lemurians do NOT exist at any point in time in which these games take place. At best their decendents do, but they would be the Hyrkanians and Turanians and have no memories of ever being Lemurians.
The Giant-Kings are NOT as they are depicted in the game. Taller than a normal human, yes (thus given the name) but not so massive as they are being depicted and not so alien looking either. In fact, since you bring up Dale Rippke he does a great dive into just who the Giant-Kings likely were, and who in the works of Robert E. Howard may have actually been members of this race with some in depth analysis on the subject matter.
To be frank, nope. Just look at the map for one. Lemuria was, by modern terms, in the Pacific Ocean when it sank and those who managed to escape the devistation of their home were forced into slavery.
Far to the east, the Lemurians, levelled almost to a bestial plane themselves by the brutishness of their slavery,
Far to the east the Lemurians are evolving a strange semi-civilization of their own.
Now the Lemurians enter history again as Hyrkanians.
At what point in time do you think that the Lemurian, still considering themselves to BE Lemurians, have left the far east to travel all the way to modern day Europe to encounter Acheron and the Giant-Kings, or to have somehow made it to Stygia prior to the Khari? Sorry, there is no way in which the Lemurians had any contact with the Giant-Kings.
That giant fish said it all…everything from the ruins to the boat ride to the worshippers at the sunken city is Lemurian…then the giant fish head forgot?..maybe a side effect of the de-volving state of the race?
I’m glad you’re here, you were the one originally who showed me Rippke’s Great Migration
I think it’s a bit of both actually. The way I interpret it and the way I believe it’s implied is that the khari did indeed overthrow the giant kings to form stygia, but the leading up to that was their enslavement. Rippke doesn’t describe exactly how they conquered them, only that the giant kings fell quickly. This could be the result of their capital, the now unnamed city being destroyed and their Triumvirate being mostly killed save for Klael who chose to wander the ruins instead of save the remnants of his empire. This is entirely theory, as is much of everything we have to go off.
Exactly. This is that thousand year gap I bring up.
This more or less is what I’m stumped about, described a bit more detailed.
There’s much that doesn’t make sense and I’m trying to carve some sense into it
That’s the son of Dagon. The god of the Lemurian peoples, but also of the Deep Ones. Not a reliable narrator given the manipulation often employed by Lovecraftian dieties.
Even assuming he’s real is a bold first step. Assuming any of this is real is bold given the massive amount of Nyarlathotep undertones everything has
I like the idea that the Witch Queen mask resurrected Lemurian culture long after its fall.
It seems plausible, considering how it overtook Razma’s thinking. Maybe the mask not only controls minds, but also creates things or helps its wearer and her followers to create them.
The inner palace, clothing, golems all seem much too new to be remnants of an ancient past. Somebody must at least have done some renovations.
Are the “Lemurians” ingame racially diverse as the other factions? If so, it would make sense that they’re not ethnic Lemurians who somehow survived for millennia, but some kind of cultural remnant or resurgence, possibly created by the mask’s influence.
Would solve a lot of problems. And it would really fit the dismal, fatalistic athmosphere of the game: The “Lemurians” were led into war not by a conscious decision of their legitimate queen, but by some crazy artifact from a bygone age. That would be similar to how the Giant Kings were deceived by the Staff of the Triumvirate to destroy their empire.
About the Khari… I think the game gives us little information on how they fit into the timeline. Neither their records nor the Giant Kings’ lore stones and account are reliable. The Giant Kings may even have coexisted with them without them mentioning later. Their perception of humanity is somewhat different from ours, after all.