How to Make a God of the Hyborian Age

Well hey, long time no blog.

I've lately been getting back into the Hyborian Age, the setting of the stories of Conan of Cimmeria, and putting together a world digest for FKR-style play. Mostly this has involved pulling in whatever descriptions from various sources seem most pleasing. There's been a lot written about Conan and his world since Robert E. Howard's first story about the character published in 1932. Much of it contradictory, some of it downright silly. Largely I find the variance useful, because it means I don't have to worry at all about "accuracy," and there's precedent for making up my own crap to throw into the mix. To appropriate something often said about Glorantha, "your Hyborian Age will vary."

Case in point -- Robert E. Howard makes briefest mention of Amazon in his foundational description of the Hyborian Age, one of the African-themed Black Kingdoms. Literally no more than a name, it never appeared in any of the stories he wrote, or any of his unpublished drafts. Inevitably, later pastiches expanded on Amazon by depicting it as an oppressive matriarchy as conceived by a bitterly divorced man, annoyingly typical in adventure fiction of the 70s and 80s. I still wanted to put Amazon on the map, but in a more palatable style, so I've made it a nation of grassland nomads, aloof to outsiders and with a deep hatred for slavers. To foreshadow Amazon myths that would appear in "later" history, I kept the idea of women having high-status in its society through martial prowess, by framing a class of hunters riding saber-toothed cats.

To complete the sketch, I had to ask who they worshiped, and I wanted something unique reflecting their culture, not just slotting one of the established gods into the role. And this entailed evaluating how gods in the Hyborian Age are presented. Broadly, there are two established approaches:

* "Real" gods, who feel more or less in tone with how actual humans conceived divinities in ancient times, entailing priests and temples, the gods themselves never seen directly, more concepts than beings. Conan's often-invoked patron Crom, the "voluptuous" Ishtar, and the paternalistic Mitra are all in this style.

* "Pulp" gods, who are basically bundles of lurid description aimed at supporting the plot of a particular story or two. Yog, the cannibalistic "lord of empty abodes" (and obvious allusion to Yog-Sothoth of the Cthulhu mythos) and Ollam-Onga of Gazal are solidly in this style. 

I don't see much point in adding further pulp gods to the digest ahead of time -- as said, they're plot-specific, and seem mainly to come up when protagonists stumble into a lost city or isolated tribe and have to deal with its profane cult that'll never be seen again. "Our fearsome lord Zkta, the wasp god, hungers for your sacrifice! Hear the approaching thrum of his wings!"

As alluded, one of the consistent themes of the Hyborian Age is elements from our actual history foreshadowed in the setting, ostensibly because these elements are echoes of the forgotten epoch repeating in later ages. And that applies especially to its gods, many of whom are outright versions of real historical gods. There is an implication that these gods are still in a raw state, their myths not yet fully formed, or they are destined to fade from the world leaving only fragmentary lore. Some are notably absent -- the classic gods of Olympus and Asgard -- presumably because they haven't developed yet (and in the the battles between the mortal Aesir and Vanir tribes of Nordheim, we're clearly seeing the genesis of the myths that will one day give rise to that pantheon). 

So with that in mind I dug into mythology, and decided to draw from the Titans of Greece, the deities who preceded the Olympians, since the Amazons are associated with those myths. In a spark of inspiration, I decided Amazon would have twin sister gods, worshiped in tandem, representing contrasting but complimenting aspects of their culture. For the more civilized aspect, I settled on Themis, the "sober-looking personification of justice, divine order, law, and custom," inspiration for the Blind Justice statue of so many courthouses. Also, in a happy coincidence, likely the source of the name Themyscira for the island of the Amazons (Wonder Woman's birthplace) in DC Comics. 

For the other half of the duo, I wanted a hunter-warrior goddess, and chose Tethys. Little of her lore has survived to the modern day, she's mainly known as the wife of Oceanus and mother of many river gods, and a preferred artistic subject on the walls of baths. It was an interesting notion that she had been something wilder in the distant past, and that her association with water was only one small aspect of her originally. 

Futz with the spelling of the names a bit to evoke the sense of earlier iterations, and I ended up with the following:

Temis: The teacher of rhetoric, the giver of proper custom, bearer of strategic wisdom, who holds the judge’s baton. One of the twin goddesses of the Amazons, on all altars she stands beside and equally with her sister Tethis.

Tethis: The master hunter, speaker to animals, knower of the ways through wildlands, finder of water, giver of strength in battle, who carries the first spear. One of the twin goddesses of the Amazons, on all altars she stands beside and equally with her sister Temis.

They fit into the Hyborian Age rather well, I think.

 

Group shot of the gods from Marvel Comics 1986 Official Handbook of the Conan Universe. I'm pretty sure which ones are Adonis, Crom, Bori, Mitra, Gullah, Ymir, Ishtar, Yog, Set and Derketa ... but I've no idea whot the liitle guys lurking in both lower corners are.