Justifying Serpent People in the Age of Conan

UncleBear

Mongoose
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.
 
Interesting...
My opinion is that serpent people did survive the eradication of their race led by Kull, but they are no more existant as a civilization.
In the novel "The Shadow Kingdom", Howard told of a once thriving (serpent) race which enslaved mankind. Humans rebelled and destroyed that slaver empire. Snake-men still survived but they never reached again the heigth of their civilization.
From a situation of domination they were thrown in the shadows and tried to infiltrate the human society (especially the nobles and the kings). They could have succeeded but failed on Kull which decided to hunt them all until their total annihilation.
Though he didn't succeed, he destroyed them as a sentient race and the story "people of the dark" shows how they declined in power. They are just lone monsters surviving in the dark of the earth.
 
because Set is worshipped there. Where else would you include them? Do you tell me you agree with de Camp about the last city of the serpent men in the south of the continent (from Conan of Aquilonia). I consider these 4 stories the worse ever write by de Camp.
Considering they power to imitate humans I don't see why they would live in a remote area. Howard would have had them infiltrate some kingdoms like the black seers of Yimsha.
 
VincentDarlage said:
Stats for serpent men and several varieties of Little People from Howard's tales will be appearing in something I am writing.

Mayhap it's in the Ruins book promised later this year. That would make sense since they are part of the Atlantean history. I'm anxiously awaiting both the Ruins and Stygia books...
 
Uncle Bear,

I always got the impression that the "serpent-people" of that story were actually a race of degenerate humans, that had lived under the ground for so long that they had evolved serpent-like characteristics, much like the "Worms of the Earth" in the Bran Mak Morn story. The race was evolved from the first humans to occupy the British Isles... and, through a recent discovery, it has been determined that humans were there first some 700,000 years ago! Perhaps they retreated under ground first to retreat from the glaciers, not the incoming waves of proto-Picts as Howard always believed. So they are not serpent-people of the Thurian variety, merely serpent-like degenerate humans. Another such Howardian race is found in his western story, "The Valley of the Lost."

As to Crom, Crom is actually an Irish god known as Crom Cruach, and Howard nicked it from Irish myth to be the primary god of the Cimmerians. The Conan the Reaver from "People of the Dark" is no coincidence. "People of the dark" was published in Strange Tales in June 1932... the first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," a reworked Kull story, was published in Weird Tales in December 1932. It seems that when he needed to re-work the Kull story into something more savage, he re-used the Conan the Gael character from "People of the Dark." Howard had been itching to do a rough-and-ready wandering warrior series for some time, but had been constrained by the nature of history, both real and that he had created for Kull earlier (besides, Kull was too introspective). So he created the Hyborian world, which was like history but not quite the same, wedged it between Kull's time and our own, and filed off "the Gael" from a character he'd had a lot of fun with before. And the rest, as they say, is history...
 
Crom is Gaelic for "curved, bent, arched" etc. & may be related to Krump in German(?).
I always imagined that Crom was a hunchbacked, or stoop-shouldered, stern figure perched atop Ben Morgh, scowling through the thick clouds...
 
BTW, I`m reading Worms of the Earth in the moment. From the text I`m not sure that the monsters there are serpent people, but in the Cthulhu Dark Ages book there are stats of them, including quotes from this story.
 
Teutonic said:
There is no "Krump" in German.
Do you mean "krumm"?

Sorry, I guess I should have been more exact. The word is often written "krump" in older stages of German. I have seen it written this way many times in incunabular works and manuscripts.
 
Teutonic said:
BTW, I`m reading Worms of the Earth in the moment. From the text I`m not sure that the monsters there are serpent people, but in the Cthulhu Dark Ages book there are stats of them, including quotes from this story.

Then I'd give good odds that the creators of that Call of Cthulhu supplement believe that the "Worms of the Earth" are degnerate serpent people but that leaves one problem: the "worms" in the story are implied to be able to interbreed with human beings. If serpent people are a seperate species than humans this shouldn't be biologically possible. Note I said shouldn't- there are some pretty weird hybrid beings in the Hyborian world.
 
The revised article, containing additional information based on the feedback from this forum, can be found here:

http://berinkinsman.blogspot.com/2006/01/justifying-serpent-people-in-age-of.html

Thank you, one and all, for the additional information. I love this sort of exercise. It's my idea of fun.
 
Raven Blackwell said:
Then I'd give good odds that the creators of that Call of Cthulhu supplement believe that the "Worms of the Earth" are degnerate serpent people but that leaves one problem: the "worms" in the story are implied to be able to interbreed with human beings. If serpent people are a seperate species than humans this shouldn't be biologically possible. Note I said shouldn't- there are some pretty weird hybrid beings in the Hyborian world.
Perhaps humans have some common ancestors with the serpent people. :wink:
 
enjoy using them in any rpg scenarios..
since it is both probable + possible that a 'real' 'serpent-men /reptilian' race is responsible for all our appaling human history so far..

the 'serpent-men /reptilians' realised it was easier to rule mankind by deciet, stealth, mass brain-washing + illusion.
they rule through their puppets - the super wealthy human elite families + leaders, using brilliantly designed secret corrupt different systems of government + mass manipulation devices, etc...

they divide + rule us by continual organised fear + false conflicts on a massive scale.
while we are kept struggling to live, in fear, confusion, conditioned by clever lies, + we obey our leaders new laws.. they have nothing to fear from us. :shock:
but they need us like we need water.. we are their unknowing slaves + fodder, + we always have been..?

humans will only ever exist as duped slaves. we are good at it. [we were probably designed for it?]. as a race we thrive on it. + while many humans blindly enjoy preying on their own kind there is no hope for any real changes.

the only slight 'consolation' is that there are many other planets across the universe with abused slave populations much like our own. succesful system models are always refined + expanded by the clever abusers..

so, just 'con'-spir-acy theories? sci-fi? experimental psychological philosophy? the true human nature? the 'truth' that we have been conditioned to disbelieve?
or so uncomfortable that we prefer to ignore it + laugh it off? [there is f-all we can do about it anyway now?! ] :? .. :wink:

btw, fantasy stories + rp-games were only designed to help distract us all from our boring, painful, human lives.
so are they helping u? [enjoy your fantasies. whatever reality u exist in?! ] :)
 
My opinion is actually we;re an abandoned slave species of an extinct race of such beings alone in the dark and left to our devices. But that's more of a Conspiracy X sort of of concept really...
 
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