This article contains spoilers for the Robert E. Howard story "People of the Dark". Consider this fair warning. This is a first draft of what will hopefully be a longer article for publication, so all feedback is appreciated.
First, allow me to begin by saying that no justification is needed for including anything in one's own roleplaying game campaign. These diversions are created solely for the amusement of ourselves and our circle of friends, so anything goes. It's our pastiche, and we can do what we want with it. However, there are those who, when including some element that does not appear in Howard's canonical Conan stories, feel the need to explain the presence of those elements in a manner that appears to be supported by the canon, or at least does not directly contradict it.
Much debate has occured as to whether serpent people exist in Hyborea during the Age of Conan. While the surely did exist at some point in Howard's prehistory, the last were reported to have been destroyed by King Kull, and none appear in any recorded Conan tale.
For evidence supporting a contrary claim, we must turn to Robert E. Howard's weird tale "People of the Dark". The protagonist, John O'Brien, has pursued a man named Richard Brent to a location known as Dagon's Cave with the intention of killing him. Brent has stolen away O'Brien's love, a woman named Eleanor Bland. Upon entering the cave, O'Brien become dizzy and forgets who and where he is. After a moment, he recalls that he is Conan the Reaver, a Gael pirate.
The tale could easily be dismissed as coincidence, that O'Brien was the reincarnation of, or channeling the memories of, an Irishman conicidentally named Conan, save for one thing: he invokes the name of the Cimmerian god Crom. It can easily be assumed that O'Brien, lacking context for these past memories, attempts to place them within a historical time period and location he is familiar with, as most knowledge of the Hyborean Age has been lost by the early 20th century. Toward the end of the tale, O'Brien refers to the gap as between the lifetimes as three thousand years, but this is surely a mere guess on his part.
The reptilian race, referred to as "little people", that appear in the story take on two forms. In the flashback of Conan the Reaver, they are multitude and described as follows: "Erect, it could not have been five feet in height. Its body was scrawny and deformed, its head disproportionately large. Lank snaky hair fell over a square inhuman face with flabby writhing lips that bared yellow fangs, flat spreading nostrils and great yellow slant eyes". While not the serpent people of Kull's time, these may well be some half-caste or servant race, resulting from the corruption of, or even interbreeding with, Picts (further support of this theory can be found in the Howard tale 'Children of the Night").
In O'Brien's time, one lone reptilian is encountered. "This thing was more giant serpent than anything else, but it had aborted legs and snaky arms with taloned hooks. It crawled on its belly, writhing back mottled lips to bare nedlelike fangs, which I felt must drip with venom. It hissed as it reared up its ugly head on a horribly long neck, while its yellow slanted eyes glittered with all the horror that is spawned in the black lairs under the earth". O'Brien assumed that this is the last of its kind, and also assumes it is a degenerate form of the little people encountered by Conan the Reaver. This may or may not be so. It seems more probable that this was a remnant of the serpent people of Kull's time, unknown to Conan the Reaver, who controlled the actual Pict-hybrid (of corrupted-Pict) little people.
First, allow me to begin by saying that no justification is needed for including anything in one's own roleplaying game campaign. These diversions are created solely for the amusement of ourselves and our circle of friends, so anything goes. It's our pastiche, and we can do what we want with it. However, there are those who, when including some element that does not appear in Howard's canonical Conan stories, feel the need to explain the presence of those elements in a manner that appears to be supported by the canon, or at least does not directly contradict it.
Much debate has occured as to whether serpent people exist in Hyborea during the Age of Conan. While the surely did exist at some point in Howard's prehistory, the last were reported to have been destroyed by King Kull, and none appear in any recorded Conan tale.
For evidence supporting a contrary claim, we must turn to Robert E. Howard's weird tale "People of the Dark". The protagonist, John O'Brien, has pursued a man named Richard Brent to a location known as Dagon's Cave with the intention of killing him. Brent has stolen away O'Brien's love, a woman named Eleanor Bland. Upon entering the cave, O'Brien become dizzy and forgets who and where he is. After a moment, he recalls that he is Conan the Reaver, a Gael pirate.
The tale could easily be dismissed as coincidence, that O'Brien was the reincarnation of, or channeling the memories of, an Irishman conicidentally named Conan, save for one thing: he invokes the name of the Cimmerian god Crom. It can easily be assumed that O'Brien, lacking context for these past memories, attempts to place them within a historical time period and location he is familiar with, as most knowledge of the Hyborean Age has been lost by the early 20th century. Toward the end of the tale, O'Brien refers to the gap as between the lifetimes as three thousand years, but this is surely a mere guess on his part.
The reptilian race, referred to as "little people", that appear in the story take on two forms. In the flashback of Conan the Reaver, they are multitude and described as follows: "Erect, it could not have been five feet in height. Its body was scrawny and deformed, its head disproportionately large. Lank snaky hair fell over a square inhuman face with flabby writhing lips that bared yellow fangs, flat spreading nostrils and great yellow slant eyes". While not the serpent people of Kull's time, these may well be some half-caste or servant race, resulting from the corruption of, or even interbreeding with, Picts (further support of this theory can be found in the Howard tale 'Children of the Night").
In O'Brien's time, one lone reptilian is encountered. "This thing was more giant serpent than anything else, but it had aborted legs and snaky arms with taloned hooks. It crawled on its belly, writhing back mottled lips to bare nedlelike fangs, which I felt must drip with venom. It hissed as it reared up its ugly head on a horribly long neck, while its yellow slanted eyes glittered with all the horror that is spawned in the black lairs under the earth". O'Brien assumed that this is the last of its kind, and also assumes it is a degenerate form of the little people encountered by Conan the Reaver. This may or may not be so. It seems more probable that this was a remnant of the serpent people of Kull's time, unknown to Conan the Reaver, who controlled the actual Pict-hybrid (of corrupted-Pict) little people.
