HYPERBOREA / Cultists & More

**Posted by Spider of Leng** 4/23/2019 9:01 pm

For those of you looking for inspiration on cults, settings and beings from the Cthulhu Mythos, you may want to check out a couple of the new books from the Modiphius 2d20 Conan game. Nameless Cults has info on many of the Old Ones including Cthulhu, Dagon, Tsathoggua,The King in Yellow, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sototh and their cults, in addition to the full pantheon of Howard's deities. Ancient Ruins and Cursed Cities has write-ups on Sarnath, the Plateau of Leng, R'lyeh, a Mi-Go mining encampment, the City of the Old Ones, and an Yithian Library, among others. The mechanics are a far cry from AS&SH but the flavor text and maps are great, as is the artwork.

**Posted by Caveman** 4/24/2019 4:50 am

Yeah, I got books and I can agree that the material is reasonable, but, it just it annoyed me, then adding it to a Conan game, but true it can be used in other setting, even CoC.

Thing about AS&SH it blends good story styles, but as for Conan 2D20, it just ruins it for me to turn a Conan game into a CoC game with Conan in the shadows in the background and taking second place.

Still will give them a reread and steal stuff from it as I usually do.

**Posted by mabon5127** 4/24/2019 8:21 am

They are great sourcebooks! One of the issues with this type of inspiration is it causes me to overuse the alien, demon, beastie, troupe when in the Conan literature most of his enemies were men. I had to make a conscious decision to weave more mundane encounters into my campaign to make the extramundane stand out. I would definitely use the background for human members of the cult and how they behave and treat outsiders.

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/24/2019 7:52 pm

Those sound pretty cool, but I don't quite understand why these are sourcebooks for a Conan game. Lovecraft's creations don't appear in the Conan stories at all.

I would applaud the idea more if I thought it was just the writers at Modiphius being creative, rather than having no clue about what is actually in the Conan stories...

**Posted by Spider of Leng** 4/24/2019 8:45 pm

Blackadder23 wrote:
Those sound pretty cool, but I don't quite understand why these are sourcebooks for a Conan game. Lovecraft's creations don't appear in the Conan stories at all.

I would applaud the idea more if I thought it was just the writers at Modiphius being creative, rather than having no clue about what is actually in the Conan stories...

Actually, the Modiphius folks make a big deal out of claiming they are only using Howard's original material and none of the later pastiche material. They boast of their stable of "Conan scholars." HPL & Howard were pen pals and did freely contribute to each other's respective universes. In fact it was Howard who created Von Junzt's Nameless Cults.
But is funny how these games based on fictional universes often start out claiming some kind of literary authenticity, but then quickly start bringing in/making up extraneous material. The Cubicle 7 Middle Earth game does exactly the same thing while promising the most authentic Middle Earth experience, whatever that is. I don't care if they add new things to make the game fun. But don't get snobbish about your "authenticity."

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/24/2019 11:14 pm

Indeed, Howard and Lovecraft contributed quite a bit of material to each other's works, and Howard did use the Cthulhu Mythos in some of his stories (such as "Worms of the Earth" and "The Black Stone"). But no Cthulhu Mythos material appears in any of Howard's Conan stories (I don't read the garbage by back-stabbing "posthumous collaborators" like de Camp, so God knows what is in there). The Outer Gods, Old Ones, and all of these alien races are nowhere to be seen in Howard's Conan stories. All of the gods mentioned are either anthropomorphic (Mitra, Ymir, Bel) or animal gods (Set, Hanuman).

Quite frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of very many examples of cults in the stories at all. Usually Conan encounters a lone sorcerer, who may or may not have any religious component to his nefarious activities. I suppose, if you want to stretch a point, he does run up against Set-worshippers in Stygia in The Hour of the Dragon. But Set-worship is the state religion of Stygia, so that's hardly a hidden or secretive cult. Honestly, the whole thing sounds like it was probably inspired by the pastiches written by hacks like de Camp, or even by pitiful trash like the Schwarzenegger movies, rather than by Howard's actual stories.

Anyway, I don't object in principle to a game adding the Cthulhu Mythos and tons of cults to Conan's world (although I do think it's somewhat incongruous to the milieu as Howard conceived it), but doing so while claiming to be presenting an authentic Howard Conan experience is pretty rich, and makes me question the credentials of the alleged scholars doing so.

**Posted by Caveman** 4/25/2019 5:19 am

Well I agree with both of you, best keep Conan 'Conan,' and not CoC, but still it good material and artwork still good, though I loath to say it...

The promise of authentic work is confusing, but maybe that's what makes it more scary is they not notice?

**Posted by mabon5127** 4/25/2019 8:05 am

I'm not sure you need a lot of secret cults when the "mainstream" gods are so unorthodox!!

**Posted by Ghul** 4/27/2019 4:05 pm

I'd say the closest we get to a "Mythos" old one in a Conan yarn is Thog, from "Xuthal of the Dusk".