Not trying to start a dispute or any racism here, this is just a lore based question.
From what I know of Howard’s Hyborian Age lore, the races/cultures in Conan stories are predecessors to different ancient and modern day ethnicities, such as the Shemites being the predecessors to Arabs and Jews (coming from Shem, Noah’s son, also the term “Semite” and Semitic people coming from such an origin), the Aesir and Vanir being the predecessors to the Scandinavian ethnic groups/Vikings, Khitan being pre-China Han Chinese, and Hyrkanians being the ancestors of the Mongolians. Specifically though, the Cimmerians are supposed to be the descendants of the people of Atlantis (those who survived the cataclysm) and are the ancestors of what will eventually be the Celtic people that occupy the British Isles, the game Acknowledges this by giving the Cimmerians a Scottish accent (Anachronistic, but, I understand why they do this).
However many of the Cimmerians are as dark as people from Kush and Darfar, eg Africans… which doesn’t make sense for an ethnic group settling Northwest Europe and the British Isles. has Funcom seen Irish people? Now I understand that the prevalence of red hair in the celtic people is an influence from Viking invasions and the original Celts are classically described as having dark hair and grey eyes. But still I would think they’d be as pale as the Nordheim.
But in my game, shemites are one of the “whitestest” races (with a pale skin and dark hair) cimmerians are all dark haired, blue - grey eyed folks. I agree that they should all have a pale skin, it’s kinda weird to find darker tons in their ranks, but they are never as dark as dafaris, or even some of the zamorians / kushtes folks. stygians are one of the most “mixed” race imo. they can have a pale or dark skin. they can have any hair/ eyes colours except the colours that are exclusive to the nordheimers like red. Nordheimers have the palest skin in the game, bright eyes colours such as blue- green and grey. And as the cimmerians from the frozen north are not afraid of the cold, the nordheimers from the “heirs of the north” are wandering around topless in snowy areas.
Zamorians, and kushtes both have a dark skin. It’s like zamorians were from central - south africa and kuschites were from the maghreb, north africa, since they have very different facial features.
Then you have the dafaris who are probably the darkest skined race of this game with a very pronounced “tribe aspect” and they could be classed as cannibals as well.
According to what you were saying, it seems that funcom has managed to keep this mongolian aspect for the hyrkanian race, which i like a lot.
Hyborian seem to have all kind of possible hair colours (from black to blond) with vey fine facial features.
Sorry i had to replace the original race name by “kushte” because of the insults filter system.
Do you agree? did you notice the same thing in your game Arato ?
Yeah, in a Jonny Lee Miller or Christopher Lambert way!
I have commented on the presence of an incorrect character set among the Nords, and like the Cimmerians I expect it’s an oversight or a skin shuffle. If I were to make an RP stab, I’d say folks of a different phenotype/genotype may have been enslaved, and adopted into the clan. Considering how we chew through people, I reckon the Cimms need every swingin tasset. (But I still think it’s an oversight.)
The Stygians represent Ancient Egyptians, which are at a crossroads between Asia, Africa, and Europe so historically and also in Howard’s lore, they’re a very mixed ethnicity culture. There’s been all kinds of colors of skin represented in Ancient Egyptian Heiroglyphics and among their pharaohs even… Kush is a region of Northern Sudan just south of Egypt, it was also once called Nubia, Darfar is in Western Sudan (the Darfur region). The Zamorians however, are supposed to represent the ancestors of the Romani people (aka Gypsies) so they’re European but distinctly darker skinned than most Europeans.
Basically Robert Howard was very interested in ancient history but he didn’t live in an area with good libraries for research so he made up the Hyborian Age as a “lost period of time” so he didn’t have to do extensive research for his stories but could still have some element of the real world and its people and cultures in it.
I’d always been led to believe that the cimmerians were a race of brown haired bronze skinned people due to them always being out hunting and gathering under the sun.
The bronzed skin thing is mostly used to describe Conan (who is of course a Cimmerian) - though he’s obviously extraordinary and only representative of his people in a few characteristics.
Cimmeria itself is foggy and melancholic and doesn’t get a lot of sun - though arguably any Cimmerians found in the Exiled Lands would be getting a fair amount of sun (Desert especially) so could well be “bronzed”. Bronzen is, of course, a far cry from being “dark skinned”.
Yeah I mean like the one you can talk to Braga, he looks like a Celt that just got tanned from being in the exiled lands, his skin is ruddy, but not really dark, but I’m talking these guys are black, not as black as Darfari, but as Black as Zamorians and Kush.