In the 1920’s a depressed and talented pugilist took up his hand at writing for pulp publications of the time. Later this man would become a contemporary of era standing next to pillars like Howard Phillip Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Stemming from his love of history, particularly that of Europe and Asia, he created the Hyborian Age (”Hy” being Irish for “country of” and “Borea” meaning “north wind”). In this setting he solidified his previous fictional works of the brave Pict warrior Bran Mak Morn and the exiled Atlantian King Kull as the Thurian Age of “the past” and set the scene for his most famous character: Conan.

What started with a short poem (poetry being R.E. Howard’s first passion), he created the land of Cimmeria spurred on by a memory held of hill-country in the heart of Texas after a winter rain. It was from this land which Conan left to seek his crown, and the land which Howard hardly wrote about besides that it was a war ravaged nation of nomadic tribes. When Howard wrote Conan he used the character as a vent for understanding his own internal conflicts about society and lonesomeness. Yet he still understood how to tell a good story: weave an interesting yarn.

“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

As I’ve only recently found Howard as a writer, I’ve long been an admirer of his work without even knowing it. My interest stems from many viewings of the campy and violent outing of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan. While quite different from the Howard stories in point, it gets much of the essence of the character just through the acting and setting in which the film takes place. As a young boy it captivated my imagination. Years later when I found HP Lovecraft I never realized that he and the writer of Conan weren’t only good friends, but that I’d read some of Howard’s Cthulhu mythos stories. He and Lovecraft were good friends and writing partners. They died within a year of each other, both tragically: Howard committed suicide after the death of his mother, and Lovecraft a victim of cancer.

My first videogame experience with Conan was before I’d ever even heard of the NES with the Apple ][ game Conan. I spent many hours attempting to learn this game, and it remains one of my fondest memories on the Apple ][, even though I’m positive I never even finished the fourth level. Twenty something years later Funcom has released Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures. It’s one of those online games that everyone’s talking about. As I’m not completely adverse to such things I got swept up in the hoopla and decided that, yes, I did want to play this game because it offered a setting which I thought excellent for something on such a massive scale.

My time with the game so far has been brief and mixed, but outside of the bugs (somehow more acceptable with new online only games) I’ve loved nearly everything about it. Recently I found a way past a fake wall in the game and, as I’m wont to do, I explored behind the scenes quite a bit and got some fantastic screenshots. I’m withholding more infomation about the game itself because things are still early (as far as MMO’s go) and I’ve still yet to see nearly half of the game, so today I just give you my cartographic experiences behind the scenes in a pictoral manner. Fear not though, I’ll talk more on the game proper at a later date. Till then I recommend picking up the original RE Howard books.

This first image I present with the HUD is only to point out the upper right mini-map to show that I am indeed, off the map… as thought the abrupt end of the earth isn’t enough of a clue Also, I took over 30 screen shots behind the scenes, the following are only the choicest of the group.

As a side note so I don’t seem perverse with the above “up skirt” image, that was taken while swimming through mid-air and not from the ground looking up.