These swirling portals in The Temple of Frost

Conan Exiles General Discussion Players Helping Players
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It’s not the desert that bothers me. The difference between a desert and a jungle is humidity and soil nutrients, as we can see in the real world by seeing how the Sahara desert is expanding. A magical Sandstorm could easily have accelerated that development.

What bothers me is that only a few kilometers north is a snow-covered tundra with permanently sub-zero temperatures. That should be possible only if there was an extreme difference in elevation. Mt. Kilimanjaro is snow-capped even though it’s on the same latitudes as many great jiungles and rainforests, but it’s almost six kilometers tall.

104

The tundra is likely also artificial.

The Witch Queen says, “It was a fertile land - rolling grasslands and temperate hills that gave way in the south to the dryness of a desert. In the north were mountains, but not the snow-covered mountains that we had seen on our journey, just jagged rocky peaks. And a swamp, thick and brooding, that lay over the eastern part of the region like a shadow.”

This seems to indicate that the tundra did not exist yet at the time the Lemurian Remnant arrived, however, the map-room does depict the tundra. So when did the tundra appear? Between the Lemurians arriving and the war breaking out? The tundra likely appeared when the Disjunction was opened, so that (relatively) short time period may be when it opened and the frost giants arrived in the Exiled Lands.

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I think that is supposed to be a direct result of those portals. The frost temple is by far and away the coldest place on the map and the snow is all radiated from that I think. So its like someone left the door open and a draft is coming out. Shut those portals and the snow goes away.

106

That actually makes sense.

107

So from what I can tell “forged of a meteor” is all that’s referenced. “Star metal” is the cartoon term, unless I’m missing the term in the story.

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This would be the timeline of the Exiled Lands to the best of my current knowledge and understanding:

  • Some unknown beings were present and constructed the Circle of Swords.

  • The Giant-kings arrive. They build a city in the fertile lands north of the desert.

  • The serpent-men arrive and befriend the Giant-kings while secretly plotting to overthrow them, giving them the Staff of the Triumvirate, actually an avatar of Nyarlathotep, as a “gift.” They take the volcano and build a subterranean city. The serpent-men likely introduced the Giant-kings to Set and the Old Serpent became their god.

  • The Lemurian Remnants, led by the Witch Queen, arrive and befriend the Giant-kings, together creating the bracelets to communicate. They take the east coastline.

  • The Disjunction is opened and the frost giants arrive. They take the northwest.

  • The map-room is designed. The bracelets are likely upgraded at this time to allow for teleportation.

  • The Lemurians reproduce too quickly and outgrow their territory, causing concern with the Giant-kings. They send scouts north to search for new fertile land north of the Giant-king’s territory (more evidence the tundra is artificial), but discover the serpent-men.

  • The Lemurians demand the Giant-kings break off their alliance with the serpent-men and stay out of the way while the humans eradicate them, but the Giant-kings refuse and this starts the war.

  • Xullan is constructed to put a barrier between the Giant-kings and the serpent-men.

  • Tyros, the half-human son of the Priestking, leads the army of the Giant-kings, but, after taking Xullan, falls in love with Telith, the daughter of the Witch Queen, and they produce a son, Xalthar.

  • The Staff of the Triumvirate advises the Priestking to use the Diadem of the Giant-kings to curse Tyros and his men, creating the Silent Legion. This foolish act solidifies Tyros as an enemy of the Giant-kings and he kills his father in battle.

  • The humans reproduce so much faster than the Giant-kings and use powerful magic to devastate their army. In response, the Staff advises the Warmaker to summon the sand elemental to wipe away the Lemurians, but Petruso sacrifices his freedom and sanity to bind the sand elemental in a time loop that causes it to infinitely repeat its path through the Exiled Lands, utterly destroying the fertile land and replacing it with desert.

  • The Staff advises the Archivist to activate the curse wall, trapping the humans inside.

  • The Lemurians offer a peace talk, so the Archivist meets with the Witch Queen at the Circle of Swords to negotiate, but it was a ruse and he is betrayed and murdered there.

  • The Giant-kings were defeated, with Warmaker Klael as the only survivor. The Staff was recognized as an enemy and inscribed with the word BETRAYER before being chucked into the sewers.

  • The Khari, enemies of the Giant-kings who had been warring against their empire outside the Exiled Lands, arrived and built a settlement in the west. The Khari adopted Set as their god because they felt the Old Serpent had abandoned his worshippers in the Giant-kings.

  • The Khari are ancestors of the Stygians, so the Stygians continued to worship Set.

  • An earthquake sunk the Khari city into the earth and everyone was killed when Khor believed Set to have abandoned the Khari too and summoned Thag as a replacement.

  • Thoth-Amon, evil sorcerer ally of King Cstephon of Stygia, discovers the Exiled Lands and steals the Serpent Ring of Set from tombs under the Unnamed City, allowing him to gain control over the bracelets.

  • Thoth-Amon knows there are other powerful magical artefacts in the Exiled Lands and begins using the land as a prison where he can toss anyone he finds inconvenient and wait for them to uncover the artefacts.

  • Many exiles arrive and divide into factions, building camps across the land.

  • Razma of Shem, a member of royalty and an enemy of Thoth-Amon, is captured and exiled too.

  • Conan discovers the Exiled Lands and rescues Razma.

  • Razma wanders until she discovers the Mask of the Witch Queen, when she put it on, she is possessed by the spirit of the Witch Queen.

  • Conan rescues some more exiles from their crosses, and when they speak with him later, he asks them to look for Razma.

  • After defeating the spirit of the Witch Queen, Razma returns to Sepermeru.

  • A king, indebted to Thoth-Amon, sells his daughter to the sorcerer to settle his debts. She is thrown into the Exiled Lands.

  • Kurak, a powerful serpent-man sorcerer and servant to Nyarlathotep, arrives in the Exiled Lands - possibly via time travel, and begin recruiting followers, granting them some of his power.

  • Mek-kamoses, an exiled sorcerer and rival of Thoth-Amon, attempts to thwart Kurak and takes the exiled princess captive to serve as a ritual sacrifice.

  • Other exiles are recruited by Mek-kamoses to assist him, and they try to stop Kurak’s ritual, but Kurak arranged for everything to happen as it did and, with his name written in the Book of Azathoth, his death is his success.

  • Conan attacks Mek-kamoses and rescues the princess, as he is prone to do. She decides to follow him rather than attempt to return home to her father who sold her.

  • King Cstephon begins invading the Exiled Lands with his army to increase his wealth.

Edit: I incorporated this post into a timeline article on the wiki where I also included sources for everything.

2 Likes
109

Great write-up!

About one point, I’m not sure:

The description of the Shining Trapezohedron says:

“Perhaps fleeing their genocide at the hands of the legendary Kull of Atlantis, they made their way to the Exiled Lands where they befriended the Giant-kings through worship of their deity, Set. In return they were allowed to live in the Caldera of the volcano and build their cities there.”

That sounds as if either they both worshipped Set and found a basis in their common faith, or that the Serpentpersons adopted the worship of Set from the Giant-Kings.

The latter seems less plausible to me, but both seem possible. So maybe, “possible” instead of “likely”.

What I really don’t get is where Razma found the Mask of the Witch-Queen.

There are hints that she found in or near Sepermeru:

  • Her journals tell a consistent story of her going to the Unnamed City, then to the Black Galleon, the Den and finally Sepermeru. There’s no hint of her finding the mask or being possessed by it in any journal. She has dreams, but that’s it.
  • When we “kill” her in the Lemurian Ruins, she has the key to her house in Sepermeru on her. That only makes sense if she acquired that house beforehand.
  • When we meet her in Sepermeru, she was “killed” and still has fading memories from the mask. It seems likely that after that event, she moved home to recover (or, if the same rules apply to her as to player characters, respawned at her bed…).

But why was the mask there? Who had it? Did Treasure Seekers find it somewhere? Where? How did it get there?

Besides Imi’s story, which probably was tol by Telith’s missing ghost, that’s one of the biggest open questions in Conan Exiles to me.

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110

The serpent-men are the children of Set and a very ancient race that predates humanity. They definitely worshipped Set before anyone else. I do not know when the Giant-kings adopted Set, but it would have in some way or another come from the serpent-men, whether here or sometime sooner.

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It has been speculated that the Giant-Kings are the Thurian-Age “pre-human civilization” mentioned in Howard’s essay The Hyborian Age, so they may have had contact with the Serpent-men even back then. This earlier connection would also explain why the Giant-Kings had such strong ties with the Serpents that they chose to stay on their side rather than let the Lemurians slaughter them.

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