This article
originally appeared in REHUPA #160
"The shift in the Earth's
crust was as sudden as it was devastating. It moved with such deadly
force, with such overwhelming ferocity that it caught everything in
its path unaware and unsuspecting. It came like a leviathan from the
ocean depths its jaws open wide ready to close on its victim.
Nothing signified its approach, nothing warned of its danger.
Like a thief in the night, the
deadly force moved, secretly and silently, propelled by centrifugal
forces, its primeval power multiplying in strength, multiplying in
intensity and with ever increasing velocity it carried its deadly
power encased in the frigid ice of the poles, and with a suddenness
born of seeming desperation, it tore the planets rigid crust
asunder. There was a moment of seeming indecision, and then the
earth virtually ignited in angry response as volcanoes erupted and
deadly earthquakes shook the globe.
The cataclysm came literally out
of the blue, shattering the earth's crust and driving the ocean into
a maelstrom of death as the waters, riling in rage, burst across the
land in 100 foot waves that afforded no warning to the inhabitants,
no mercy for the living. A great civilization was reduced to rubble.
With the passage of time only a legend of the dream of the Golden
Age that had been remained in the minds of those who survived. Those
that could had sought protection in the hills, others, less
fortunate but no less determined, fought it out with nature with a
courage born of desperation. Few prevailed, but those that did
wandered the ruins like wild children. They had been stripped of
their basic necessities and their dreams of tomorrow that their
civilization had provided. Bewildered, their trust in God, in
Nature, and even in their fellow man, shattered, yet driven by the
instinct to survive, they began the task of forging a living from
what remained, knowing nothing of what tomorrow would bring! It
would be many years, and countless aftershocks, before the event was
over, so, without choice, they lived minute by minute with an
anxiety born of panic, wondering, always wondering, if, or when, the
earth would shift again."
-
Excerpt from
THE HAMMER AND THE PENDULUM, by Richard Noone -
Dramatic, isn't it? The Great
Cataclysm leveled the world of its age, sending nearly every
surviving civilization back to the stone-age existence it had won
free from millennia earlier. The advanced nations of the time
disappeared from the stage of history, their survivors rapidly
succumbing to their lack of how to cope with a world that no longer
gave them every luxury. From the various source materials that
Robert E. Howard provided concerning the Great Cataclysm it is
possible to speculate on the cause and their far-reaching effects.
I believe that the
"trigger" of the Great Cataclysm was an cometary impact in
the sea between the small continent of Atlantis and the island chain
of Lemuria. This impact initiated a crustal displacement that in
turn triggered an unprecedented amount of earthquake and volcanic
activity as the faults of the earth were stressed past their
breaking points. The other long-term effect that this had was the
breakup of the ice caps at their various poles and the subsequent
rise in sea-level as their melt-water was released into the oceans.
Those hardest hit by the oceanic
impact were the islands and continents closest to it. Mu was totally
destroyed by the tsunami and shock-waves and was for the most part
completely inundated by the rising sea-level. Lemuria suffered
practically the same fate as Mu, even though a much greater portion
of it managed to remain above sea-level. Atlantis disappeared
completely as the mid-oceanic rift that ran beneath it opened up and
ejected enough magma to cause the crust to fall into the rift. This
displacement coupled with the rising sea-level drowned the continent
of Atlantis in short order. The Pictish Isles were washed clean of
inhabitants (only a few in high mountains survived) and then
destroyed as they were lifted high into the air to become the peaks
of a new continent.
The areas farther away from the
impact were less effected by it and more effected by the crustal
displacement and the sudden rise in sea-level. Valusia and the Seven
Empires were destroyed by earthquake and volcanism and shortly
thereafter by the sea as the sea-level rose an estimated 400 feet
and drowned the fertile lowlands. Through a miracle of fate (or the
gods), the pre-human civilization of Stygia the Elder survived
relatively unscathed. It can be argued that their megalithic style
of building was suited toward surviving the many earthquakes at the
time.
The uplift of the jungle-girt
continent (Kaa-u?) that lay to the south of the western portion of
the Thurian landmass created a great deal of havoc in the lands of
the Seven Empires. It pushed up range after range of mountains, with
their attendant volcanoes. The great stress caused a tremendous
upthrust south of what would one day be Koth. The western edge of
this upthrust broke apart and created huge volcanoes and sharp-edged
lava fields. This impassable area came to be known as the Flaming
Mountains of Khrosha. The uplift caused the shallow sea separating
Thuria and Kaa-u to drain westward and eastward, creating the deep
deserts of Stygia. A large sea was formed to the east of the Stygian
civilization which I will call the Eastern Sea (Howard never
mentions this sea, but it appears in several of the apocryphal
texts). During the Cataclysmic Age, the Styx (Nilus) River emptied
into this sea.
After a brief period (presumably
about three years) of never-ending winter due to the large amount of
dust in the atmosphere, the Earth began to experience a warming
trend due to all of the carbon released by the burning of the
biosphere by the volcanoes (CO2 being a great greenhouse gas). The
post-cataclysmic world began to become very warm very quickly. A
tribe of savage led by their leader Bori took advantage of this by
fleeing to the now-warming arctic circle to escape the volcanoes,
and eventually evolved into the race known as Hyborians.
The Great Cataclysm destroyed every
major civilization then in existence, with the exception of ancient
Stygia and a nameless nation inhabiting the eastern coast of the
Thurian continent. Other than that, only those peoples close to
their stone-age heritage were able to rise above the problems the
Cataclysm dumped in their laps.
One of these races, the Picts, was
ensconced in the mountains of southern Valusia as a buffer against
foreign invasions. When the Cataclysm overtook them, they forever
lost contact with the Pictish Islands far to the west. They reverted
back to using flint for their weapons, but within five hundred years
had managed to create a crude nation due to their unity and
ingenuity.
One of the mysteries at this time
was how the Picts managed to turn from a bronzed-skinned race to a
predominately white-skinned one. This isn't really all that hard to
explain as the Picts presumably absorbed hundreds of white-skinned
Valusian survivors into their genetic makeup. Over the years it had
the effect of lightening the color of the Pict's skin to a
dusky-white color.
The other barbaric race to thrive in
the post-cataclysmic world were the remains of the continental
kingdom of the Atlanteans. They also reverted to using flint to
battle for their lives against the myriads of beasts and savages
that inhabited the region around their enclave. It did not take long
before the struggling Atlantean tribes came in contact with the more
powerful Pictish nation.
A series of bloody wars ensued and
the Atlantean's culture was reduced to wandering tribes of savages.
The Pict's cultural development was also arrested although they
managed to remain a nation by advantage of their numbers.
It was during this five hundred year
period that the Stygian race expanded eastward toward the Eastern
Sea, since to their south were forbidding deserts and to their north
was an impassible volcanic rampart. I believe that the major Stygian
cities of Kuthchemes and Pteion were founded during this period, and
that important centers of worship were built along the north-flowing
Styx.
In the southeastern portion of
western Thuria, a race called the Zhemri are eking out an existence
hampered by volcanoes and earthquakes. They are a testament to the
ability of mankind to exist anywhere he wishes to live. Here and
there across the Thurian continent are scattered bands of barbaric
savages.
Five hundred years after the Great
Cataclysm, another, lesser cataclysm altered the face of the Thurian
continent. The Lesser Cataclysm was a relatively local event.
Presumably, the tectonic plate subducting the southern edge of the
Thurian continent slipped, giving rise to the Ilbars Mountains and
causing the Eastern Sea to drain westward in a nearly direct route
to the Western Ocean, creating the great western leg of the Styx
River and the Eastern Desert in the process. The extreme pressure
caused by this uplift on the center of the Thurian plate caused it
to crack and settle into a huge depression that eventually filled
with water and became the Vilayet Sea. The final separation between
the eastern and western portions of the Thurian continent had
occurred. To the west, the renewal of volcanism and earthquakes
completed the ruin of the wandering barbarian tribes and crude
nations that had formed, throwing everyone once again back into the
Stone Age. Thus the stage is set for the rise of the Hyborians and
the next world-age.
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