Well I agree very closely to your idea, I had it 5 billion years in future with a dying sun and in my small section of Hyperborea in my Grey Coast setting, the southern most part, that I call the Greyland is infested in undead due to a some magical explosion that killed the land around it and caused the dead to rise.

I working at the materializing island of Thule which has just arrived and planning to base the inhabitants; something very like: Acheron from Howard's work.

Gods: Trying to include everyone  of the gods of the saga within area, but it be extreme to include too much influence from the lot of them. Raven influences a small group of Tlingit on the Little Italy peninsula and a mixed Yakut-Tlingit group have become CE berserkers types and raid the rest of Grey coast, probably using Thaumagorga to influence them. There is a hive of Yig worshippers in Brigand's Bay which affect the local land and Apollo, Artemis, Aurorus Helios are the peoples gods, though I want to add Xathoqqua into the area, as well as Yithaqqa in the cold mountains around the area and Kraken (Khalk-Xu) controlling the local seas. There is a Viking influences from Vasaland and New Vinland, so Ullr is present and also has a temple in Blackmarsh Castle due to the Vasan assisting the Hyperborean regain their land, when they once had been removed from power by an Hyperborean sorcerer usurping their territory . Last their is Yoon'Deh guarding the wilderness areas. I near used most of the gods provide and probably will create a few of my own, but it will do for the present.

People: As mentioned before, a small group of Tlingit, the new Thuleans, Rurasin (The CE Berserkers), Kelts had come south and settled lands, Kimmerians had also crossed the mountains from their steppes and settled, this of course creating Kimmeri-Kelts. The Viking of course, and a group of common people called Ostrobards with Anglo-Saxon influences. Mongolians roam a small part of land in the Soutland and Mongol-Kelt groups have occurred. Two very small group of Atlanteans which live in a inland salt-watered lake and out at sea close to a small group of islands. And of course the Hyperboreans, who maybe be more common in my idea of the world than others...?

Ah, and the Bird-men with arms and more cruel and nasty than the official version, which are attempting to gain as much as they can for themselves! There is a lot more; I trying to edit my scripts of the land and of it's different locations is taking longer than I would have wanted, but it getting there (about another year of work probably)!
 

Great thread, love reading everyone’s intepretations. 

Please keep the ideas coming, I am always interested in seeing various interpretations of Hyperborea.

mabon5127 wrote:

Xathoqqua's church is in control and struggles constantly to maintain dominanceMagic is feared 

Hi Mabon, your impressions of Hyperborea are pretty much in line with mine. It's a cruel, cold place.  I've elaborated on the overall fear of magic and how the Xathoqquan Orthodoxy maintains dominance.  I'd go so far as to say that power structures must regulate magic to stay in charge. 

In the City-State of Khromarium, magic is theoretically reigned in by the Magicians' Guild, Hyperborean noble families, and inquisitors of the Xathoqquan Orthodoxy on behalf of the Oligarchy. In practice, there is little risk for the unlawful practice of sorcery provided one is discreet or influential. Punishments for unsanctioned magic are harsh precisely because it is so difficult to enforce.  

Rural folk and barbarians tend to look upon magic use with great suspicion unless performed by a native, typically a druid or shaman. 

Necromancy is feared and hated almost everywhere outside of Ix but interestingly enough, it is also the most commonly practiced school of magic.  

The Orthodoxy ruthlessly maintains its status quo as the dominant religion in Khromarium. With the complicity of the Oligarchy, mutants, necromancers, heretics, and daemonologists are burned at the pyre by witch hunters of the Xathoqquan inquisition in front of the grand temple each week, drawing large crowds.  

 

Grimmshade wrote:

Not sure it completely fits the topic, but I have fully converted Hyperborea to the Hyborian Age, and it doesn't really take a lot of work. There are so many little homages from REH's work already in the game, and both worlds are left pretty open for interpretation anyway. 

Another great strength of AS&SH is that is draws upon a few powerful sources of inspiration and doesn't include everything under the sun in an attempt to be all things to all men like Forgotten Realms or Golarion. I've strengthened the Howard and Lovecraft connections in my version of Hyperborea. For example, Yig is known as Set in Khromarium and the Stygians of the Hyborian Age have contributed much to the Ixian bloodline.

Last edited by Brock Savage (11/10/2017 4:39 pm)

• The monsters in the bestiary are just the most common kinds that everyone can agree exist. There are much, much stranger things out there.
• The Hyperboreans at the height of their power were a cosmos-spanning anti-empire. Many Hyperboreans were so powerful as to be (in their minds) godlike. They were not far off in their estimation. There were some variations, and some "commoners" who were merely insanely powerful, but the civilization was one of the great powers of the multiverse for a time. Petty concerns like empire and monarchy were way beneath these people. Each Hyperborean sorcerer-tyrant was an empire of one. Households became very important for preserving the race, and that's what Hyperborea proper was used for.
• The wilderness is vast and howling. Seriously. Overland travel is extremely dangerous. Heavily armed caravans sometimes attempt it. But most travel is sea-based. Adventurers are idiots. A widely acknowledged fact.
• There are few governments as such. Gal towns have their petty kinglets. Picts have their Old Man. The Witch-Queen rules her desert. Khromarium is mainly governed by the will of the Entowered: name-level and above classed individuals who have conquered one of the ancient Hyperborean towers of the city proper, or at least made peace with the forces that control it. An uneasy equilibrium prevails as the egos and desire not to be bothered of these people lead to a mostly stable place with a rotating council of people who actually have to deal with troubles
• Following on the above: none of the peoples in Hyperborea ever had European feudalism in their cultural histories, and it does not exist here. Kings are boring. I do not play AS&SH to re-create all the boringest parts of 80s-90s modules.
• Fear death by water!
• The most important feature for every settlement is the calendar. The year of darkness is coming. It marks everything and everyone. And the land shows it, too. Magic items are constructed by and for calendrical needs.
• NPC magic is different from PC magic in many cases.
• Because of the Hyperboreans' previous reach, portals to and from Hyperborea are pretty common. And some of the extraplanar intelligences don't even realize things have changed, a few thousand years being pretty small potatoes to them. The gods who have chosen to extract power from Hyperborea are easily bothered by this.

Probably some other stuff.

mabon5127 wrote:

Handy Haversack wrote:

Adventurers are idiots. A widely acknowledged fact.

Truth! Haters gonna hate...and serve the survivors!
 

It's a cookbook!

This is a great thread!  Definitely agree with and employ most of what is being described above in the campaign I am leading.  

​Through some interesting dice rolls and other RP happenings at the beginning of our campaign, the Hyperborean Rhaan family (thanks for the amazing name generator by Colin Chapman), is the only one of the remaining 16 that did not emerge from the Spiral Mountain Array following the Green Death.  This has resulted in some interesting adventures and a larger background story arc where Rhaan artifacts and other buried items and locations begin to appear and/or become accessible.  House Rhaan, in our game, has become potentially one of the more intriguing features of the campaign, and learning about the ways that they tried to prevent their demise during the coming of the Green Death, the technology they developed and employed to do so, and how their plans somehow backfired, has been a blast for the players to uncover.