This article
originally appeared in REHUPA #157
Nothing quite excites people like a
good mystery. The best one are like a puzzle, working piece by piece
until a coherent vision is made from a mass of chaotic parts. In
this essay, the first of several, I am going to look at several
mysteries that famed author Robert. E. Howard didn't address while
writing the framework he hung his Kull and Conan stories on: a
vision of the past called "The Hyborian Age".
"The Hyborian Age" was
published in 1938 in booklet form and was intended to show how the
background of the Conan stories was formed. The document in and of
itself is pretty complete. However, Howard wrote a good number of
stories that make reference to parts of his history that "The
Hyborian Age" doesn't address. These are the parts that
comprise the mystery.
Mysteries of the
Thurian World Age
There are several mysteries
pertaining to the time of Valusia and the Seven Empires. Are there
any other countries or people mentioned in the saga? Did anything
exist before the Pre-cataclysmic Age? How are the continents
arranged in this world-age?
The first mystery of the
Pre-cataclysmic age makes its appearance as a throwaway line in the
third paragraph of "The Shadow Kingdom", a story of King
Kull. The line reads:
"Behind those proud and
terrible ranks came the motley files of the mercenaries, fierce,
wild-looking warriors, men of Mu and Kaa-u
and of the hills of east and the isles of the west."
What and where are Mu and Kaa-u?
They are both obviously countries in existence at the time of the
Seven Empires. Does Howard tell us anything more about them? To make
this simple, we will look at them separately.
Mu is only mentioned in two stories
in the Kull saga; "The Shadow Kingdom" and "Riders
Beyond the Sunrise". Both times no real information other than
its name and the fact that it sends mercenaries to Valusia is
imparted to us. Fortunately, there are two other Howard stories that
tell of Mu. One is a Solomon Kane story, "The Moon of
Skulls", and the other is a story fragment called "The
Isle of the Eons". In "The Moon of Skulls" we learn
that Mu's capital city has crimson walls, and that it was swallowed
by the waves at the same time as Atlantis. "The Isle of the
Eons" tells us much, much more. Mu was a continental-sized
landmass lying in what is now called the "South Seas", the
area of the Pacific Ocean south and east of the Lemurian Islands.
There are twenty cities and millions of people on the continent. The
capital of Mu is called Karath, the Shining City. The people of Mu
are connected to Lemuria as they share the same alphabet and
presumably the same language. The story tells the history of a
religious war, where the nation's god, Poseidon, is flung down and
the worship of the First God, Xultha, is reinstated. High up in the
mountains of Valla, a new capital is built, called Na-hor, the City
of the Cresent Moon. From this city, priests of Xultha were sent to
the Seven Empires, Atlantis, and a place called "The Islands of
the Sea". After a time, the god Poseidon returns and submerges
the continent, so that only the tops of the mountains of Valla
remain above the sea. The city of Na-hor flourished for several
ages, at last falling into ruin near the end of the Hyborian Age.
Kaa-u is mentioned only in "The
Shadow Kingdom in the sentence quoted above. Speculation on where it
is located tends toward the only other continental-sized landmass
mentioned in the saga, the land south of the western Thurian
continent. We know from "Queen of the Black Coast" that
the City of the Winged Ones is located there. "The Moon of
Skulls" states that Atlantis placed the colony city of Negari
in this area. And finally, in "Shadow Kingdom", Kull
remembers the serpent scent he smelled in "southern
jungles". If Kaa-u, like Mu, were a continent, I would feel
safe in placing it here.
The second mystery appears in the
Kull fragment that Lin Carter turned into the story "Wizard and
Warrior". A mysterious people called Celts are mentioned twice
in the story. Brule's eyes are blue like those of Celts, and the
Celts are a seafaring race that raids the Isles of Sunset. Now since
this is a fragment it is possible Howard might have changed this if
he decided to finish the story. Lin Carter kept the Celts in his
version of the story, so I can only speculate that the Celts are a
tribe of Atlantis or one of the islands nearby.
The final mystery dealing with the
people and places of the Pre-cataclysmic Age concerns the mysterious
civilization, dwelling on the eastern Thurian continent, that
originally came from a shadowy and nameless continent lying to the
east of Lemuria. My belief is that they came from the continent of
Mu, the continent lying to the east of Lemuria. After Lemuria sank
during the Great Cataclysm, its refugees headed to the one place
they thought they might be welcomed. Lemuria and Mu did share the
same language after all. Now it may be possible that another
continent lay to the east of Mu, about where South America now lies.
It is also possible that most of South America was under the sea
during the Thurian Age and that only the peaks of the Andes
mountains were above sealevel. These peaks might very easily be the
"Isles of the Sea" mentioned earlier.
Did any civilizations exist before
the Thurian Age? Several stories talk about a prehuman race called
"the Old Race," that
ruled the world before the age of man, during an era called the
"Elder Days. Mention
of this race is made in "Delcardes' Cat", "Riders
Beyond the Sunrise", and "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune".
So where are the Isles and
Continents of the Thurian Age located? Using Atlantis as the
centerpoint:
The Thurian continent lies to its
immediate east.
The Isles of the Sunset (Pictish
Isles) lies to its immediate west.
Lemuria lies southwest of the
Pictish Isles off the eastern Thurian coast.
Mu lies south of the Pictish Isles
and southwest of Atlantis.
Kaa-u lies southeast of Atlantis
and south of western Thuria.
The Isles of the Sea possibly lie
south and slightly west of Atlantis.
Pretty simple, isn't it?
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