There's something inherently hilarious about a narration of ancient struggles between eldritch forces manifesting as powers beyond time and space in the realm of Conan dropping the term "Devil Trigger" into your lap out of nowhere, then immediately moving on as if it somehow doesn't know what it just did.
I wish Conan had magic like this... I'd LOVE to create a sorceress who uses magic to control her thralls instead of pain wheels. Imagine if you had to sucessfully dominate a thralls mind making active skill checks while it tried to kill you.
There is a spell on tabletop called enslave. So you probably could. I made a cimmarian shaman that practices necromancy and learns from communing with the dead. Often being told lies or being outright assaulted.
A more dangerous sorcerer would bring real benefits. Peasants living in a desert, safe from marauding armies by the wastelands around them, the water they need for life provided by the sorcerer. The peasants would need no enchantments to fight to the death for the sorcerer who keeps them alive and safe.
@@GrimDarkHalfOff I feel giddy watching this - like a real sorcerer's apprentice, sitting down to absorb knowledge like a sponge takes in water, listening to the tales an old and learned archmage is willing to share.
A lot of this blurs the lines between Howard Canon, extra canon, and tangential canon, without really demarking the lines between them. Some of the schools mentioned are classes in Age of Conan, which was a bit contentious for increasing the capability and prevalence of magic beyond what the Howard Canon could support for the sake of having traditional MMO style caster classes. That said, it's still a really good overview, and the image of the assorted magics and their wielders battling each other was awesome!
Ah! But there is a path darker yet. In stygia of the many tombs, in the darkest depths ,where light never reached,she waits her lovers.She alone immortal in the flesh, eternal princess, symbol of youth and beauty. Her kiss brings life eternal ,among the shadows, but its more than your life you pay for it. The last to surely encounter her beauty, was the king of Aquilonia. He alone went from her chamber living , for he held in his fist a fire no shadow can subdue. The burning heart of a star, source of life and death, was in his fist. She dared not approach too close, fire is ever hungry and cares not what it consumes. Seek her if you dare. Ask for her kiss on your knees. She may give it, but what you become is up to you. Thus for her path to magic ,for indeed she knows much which even the elder gods are ignorant of. Shadow after all, is forever between light and dark and partakes of both. Forgive that i do not name her. I know much that the world would forget, her true name among others, yet i have no wish to incur her wrath. it would be .. inconvenient at this time. She holds sway among the priests of seth, even those of the black ring, while they hold sway over some of the least of seth's children. Again forgive i do not name her. Things like us are beyond such conventions , yet some sounds have power and resonate, as do some thoughts. If you think the path suitable, seek her out. Not me though, i will make no more children. One daughter was enough to disabuse me of the notion.
10:07 So, what did the fish man do!? He straight up came out tha water, banished a rampaging shoggoth like any Good Samaritan, and was just about to dip when some Egyptian dudes come outta nowhere and cut his head off??? “For justice” my ass 💀
Logic isn't the most powrrful force in Lovecraft stuff. Fish bad, tentacles = "incomprehensible paradoxes" somehow which of course is always described in anything but paradoxical terms because saying "I can't tell you what it looks like" is boring.
Don't worry about the views. These are some top tier quality videos. This is the only channel that scratches that itch. Keep it up and you're channel will be huge!
@@GrimDarkHalfOff It really does scratch an itch I knew I had, but could not give a name to. There it is, crawling 'neath my skin again. It will not leave me alone unless I watch your videos, absorb all that I can, then, as if by magic, become inspired, and go to work on the notes of my own book.
This channel deserves a bigger following! You're so well-versed in Robert E. Howard's work it's astonishing! I've read his books since freshman year of highschool and I still learn something new with every video. Well done!
That's something that I always love to study when it comes to fantasy universes, HOW does the magic system work? Mana? Divine grant? Magic words? Catalysts? What limits it all? What kinds of magic is there? Natural magic? Etc. etc. So do you just need to have enough mana in you, a catalyst (like a wand) and to know the magic words? or do you also need to know how the magic works so you need to study for months or even years to learn just a single spell? What limits you from conjuring anything you can imagine like a god? What chooses who can use magic in the first place? and are you fixed at a limit to how powerful magic you can use, or can you become stronger in it? SOOOOO many questions.
In the beginning there was Chaos, From its everywhat depths emerged the Champion of Law who battled it, defeated it, yoked it and built the world we know upon it, but the Champion did not kill Chaos. It lives still, restless beneath us. Few are those who can see it roiling there beyond the veil, fewer still can touch it and try to work their will upon it. Magic is not for the casual or the curious. Only the most driven can look upon the face of Chaos and not go mad. And even an iron will may rust in the course of time. The first tenet of magic is to never use it unless you have to. The second tenet is that when you wrestle with Chaos sometimes you will lose. So magic is manipulating the Primordial chaos underlying reality. Goes without saying that that is hella dangerous. That chaos can be visualized as a roiling mass of elemental cords and currents. When wizards wave their hands around what they are doing is tying knots in those aetherial cords. When they are speaking spells those are not words as such but sounds more akin to throat singing and those sounds help make the aetherial cords more flexible. The reason that they need wands and staves is again to extend their reach and manipulate the cords. One can imagine that specific wand and staff materials are superior for moving certain elemental cords. So who can use magic? Anyone with the right tools, but few would dare. Theoretically anyone could strap on a wingsuit and jump off a cliff, but how many people actually would? Only those with drive and intelligence would survive the magical learning process. The limits on your power would be willpower, intelligence and skill (along with a fair bit of luck). If those were on the godly level then yeah, you'd be a god, but it wouldn't take too many failures to take you out of the game entirely. Personally I've never liked it when people use magic routinely and casually (aka Potterverse). That robs it of all its specialness. There should be a price to pay for it and I think that price would be that the more you use it the more the taint of chaos builds up on you (unless you use substitutionary rites and make someone else pay the price for your spells of course).
Great video, man. I wish the background music was a little more spooky and less medieval soft jazz though. Keep up the good work! Except the medieval soft jazz.
Funny thing; I've asked a few Conan circles where in the lore it /explicitly states and is made exactly clear/ that 'fireball magic' and such cannot exist. None of them ever even answer that and can't even give me evidence to support their insistance. All they say is 'bUt nO WoW fIrEBaLL magic allowed!'. Literally their entire argument is centered around 'I don't like it and I don't want it', without anything to actually base their claim on.
Also, considering the variety of magick there, it would be possible, just extremely difficult. Nothing would prevent a sorcerer from enslaving a spirit of flame and bringing it around to turn it into a occasional fireball, and a wizard who conjures a daemon of storms could do something similar, as a summoner of alien tempests. Just, it should be rare, demanding, risky and not used sparingly. Far worse than controlling a lesser horror and sending it to smash your enemy. We even got in the novels a magician Who could magically rip hearts out of people and One Who could summon earthquakes.
@@theloweffortchannel7211 still a case of Conan magic that May be used for an elemental spell, albeig with the help of a magic item. And instead of Just "he caused an earthquake", they Say "he controlled the elementals of earth".
Aw crap my PC went through Warp again. I somehow got a notification for this NOW and I've been following this channel for only a few months. I'm just gonna have to marathon this channel. Not that is a problem, but my Tech Priest and I are not on any good terms right now. So that this notification bell just shuts up, also it sucks switching to light mode just to type this. Why do I have to do this you might ask? Simple, I was typing stuff in my google docs, using the quick key strokes, and somehow while listening to Grim Dark (50% Off) I fumbled my fingers and somehow switched to the youtube tab and all my typing in dark mode is currently invisible..... All sadness aside I really like this channel please continue on the good work. But if you ever lose steam in Conan, Warhammer and 40K are great stuff.
Just subbed as I've been playing Exiles since early access and am loving your lore vids. Also, rumour has that the next large patch may contain magic finally so you may be in luck re sorcery! Pray to Crom! oh wait.
It would be cool to see a lore video on the various villains that face off against Conan. Especially like Thoth Amon. You could do a biography on him of things that are covered in REH's stories as well as other authors, his appearances in Marvel and Dark Horse comics and the game Age of Conan. In the cartoon Conan the Adventurer, there is the character Wrath Amon, I don't know if that is him or they changed it for copywrite reasons. There is the movie version in Conan the Destroyer, but he wasn't as powerful as he once was. Maybe he had lost his ring by then. And there is also the story "Haunter of the Ring" where his ring is found by some people here in the 20th century. Just a thought.
I love the idea of Dr. Stephen Strange/Mordru/Druid (even though he kind of sucks) himself seeing a wannabe sorcerer through time and casting them out.
It is an interesting beginning, and the setting seems neat, but if I were to try to use this for myself the most I can find very useful without further deep-dives is that "all magicians can do anything" with the exception for black and white magics. Not that useful, but certainly a taste of interesting ideas.
I play a runequest game set in Conan universe I am a sorcerer it is so hard to find magic the game has been going on 30 years has a established lore it is set in koth near the border where shadizar is I am a newer character but my uncle has a sorcerer who is a member of the black ring and he is really dangerous
When speaking of the different racial countries, you missed one of them. Zamora, the Zamorian country, had a strong presence of sorcery. It wasn't just a country of thieves, prostitutes, and slave trade but also of sorcery, given that Zamoria was a country mixed with all races and not just one race. Not only that, Zamora is also the country that worships Zath, the spider god.
It seems you need to be born with the skills or ability. For awakening the powers it requires bunch of blood sweat and coom, not to mention luck to have even a little chance to gain any magical power.
I’m glad you asked. They were most likely the higher culture or pure culture of the Giant kings before their already decayed state when they were encountered by the Lemurians in the lore of Conan Exiles. As far as how they tied into magic they seemed to have convergent evolution with humans meaning that their magic could better be described as artifacts or Eldritch technology hence why it is not on this list. At some point I will make a long form Acheron deep dive using footage from both popular Conan RPGs, but for now you can check out my giant kings video
Soo the Albino Rune wielders? Are they Witchers or some in-universe variant thereof? The acrobatic swordsmanship, the stamina draining rune magic, the pale skin, c'mon, gotta be Witchers right?!
@@GrimDarkHalfOff I always wondered if Sapowski planned to add Geralt to the Eldritch/Conan Mythos before his fans pushed him more to writte an own World for the Witcher ;-). Based on Witcher lore a crossover lets say in an PNP Campaign woudld be easly possible.
@@GrimDarkHalfOff Or go the Chinese route, go up in the mountains, meditate and suck up as much magic as you can and hope you don't go mad or blow up before actually progressing.
It would publish the long running iconic comic series that many would consider to be the definitive adaptation of the character. As a result the Conan universe often effected Marvel canon: Namor, Dracula and Dr. Strange being good examples. However, other than an addition of a Sorcerer Supreme or a Ghost Rider being present in the Hyborian Age (NOT Dr. Strange) there isn’t much difference.
@@zacharyrodriguez4348 He explains it better in another video, basically you can think of the "Hyborean Age" as it's own thing besause it's so old, but it leads to one of three futures depending on who you ask: Lovecraft's world (more or less), the "real" world, or Marvel's world. The lack of "cannon" as a hard concept back then has led to a long tradition of writers associating their stories with Hyborea somehow (hence Marvel, and Elric for that matter). Your Hyborea May Vary.
0:15 Aww, he's saying he likes us! :D More seriously, I've been going through your entire Conan Lore series for the past day-and-a-half (sleepless, mind you; it doubles as an attempt to fix my sleep), as it was about time I better acquainted myself with Robert E. Howard's work, especially since I've been a Lovecraft fan for nearly two decades, yet always put off Conan's mythos for a later date. Perhaps the fact I've started seriously lifting for the past half-year has augmented my curiosity in this regard, adding a certain kind of impetus to learn more about one of the original wellsprings of buffness in popular culture. I don't suppose any of the stories outlines how Conan trains when he's not pioneering new kinds of deadly wrestling moves, uncounted millennia before the sport even comes into being? Given Howard's personal experience with physical fitness, I wouldn't put it past him to have included such in scattered parts of his body of work.
11:10 man is what Final Fantasy theme Suppost to be before they mix anime trope in it. at least they return some old school element in the online game version.
I have been looking for a good magic high/low fantasy game but nothing shines as of late. I think the last time I had good fun w magic was magicka, and before that skyrim and dark messiah. Nowadays all fantasy games are stylized to absurdity, and usually this means magic taking the back seat to guns or some wacky mechanics. I waited forever for the conan exiles devs to add magic, only for them to bail on it at the last moment.
I know that feeling. Hosav is trying to make it more beginner friendly through the EEWA mod, but I don’t think the devs will ever truly care enough to ass it.
So this is probably a dumb nitpick, but it was probably Kimmerian, with a hard C. Gomer is likely the Biblical Hebrew version, and it makes more sense to have gotten a hard G from a K sound, rather than an S.
Meme Me: I would like to travel in time to Hyborean age to show the wonders of modern world. Shaman: Granted. I appeared in front of a crowd in Aquilonia. Somebody: Tell us more about the magic of your world. How do you produce that famous electricity? Me: Er... I don't know.
I was kind of wondering if anyone knew the name of the spell caster described at the timestamp 10:45 ? I was trying to find the reference for the class that uses signs and runes.
That is from the Elric series which is canon with in Conan. This is more from lore itself and less from any specific class. It would have to be a home brew.
I was waiting to see if Elric was going to be mentioned. I am Not disappointed!! Since Elric appeared in two issues of Conan. Wish they brought him back. It would be nice to see them go on adventures together.
Wait wait wait. A deep one using an elder sign? What? How? I thought that symbol was abhorrent to the deep ones. Everything I've heard states they'll rip you to shreds if you use it and dare go back into the water. Is that rule for humans only or something?
I understand the confusion. Deep ones are born from Dagon, but Dagon is not himself and entity. Rather he is created by Cthulhu in the very material world specifically for the environment of earth. Deep ones are themselves mostly material beast men and are only really descendent from something created by something the elder sign would hurt. Plus they have Shoggoth tamers in their culture which implies both knowledge and regular application of the Elder Sign.
@@GrimDarkHalfOff should the Elder sign even work on Shogoths? The whole point of the elder things was to portray a alien buy mostly mundane technological society at the height of its of power so it could serve as a foil to humanities budding pursuit on the path of science and you know hammer home no matter how advance you get time destroys everything given long enough. Shogoths should as an elder thing creation be like humans and most life on earth in the Mythos be a product of conventional if highly advanced genetic engineering not occult sorcery. The only outright eldritch things mentioned in at the mountians of madness is there war with Cuthulu and his star spawn and whatever dwells in the unknown Kadath that drives the main characters friend mad as they fly away from the elder things city. The elder things themselves are referred to as the humans of another era and their creations the product of the peak of mundane sciences.
In this context the fire and lightning were coming from Dr. Strange’s sorcery. However, through Xotli one could easily call upon fire like powers as demonstrated in Age of Conan and through Ymir one could easily call down lightning provided they have the god’s favor as seen in The Frost Giants Daughter short story. There really is no definitive Conan canon so you’ll find that my videos use original works mixed Cthulhu mythos information mixed the parts of the Marvel mythos that compliment or expand on that information. As far as Necromancy the lore has always been horribly unclear on its origins.
@@GrimDarkHalfOff That was incredibly informative, thank you very much. It seems as though there are as many varied forms of magic as there are people in the world, lol
There’s something about the Hyborian age and those original Conan stories that are absolutely special and magical. Hyboria rivals Middle Earth in my opinion as a fantasy world (I’m a huge fan of both) They’re very different in tone, Tolkien is more fairy tale like and optimistic for the future while Howard reflects the brutal forces of history and the world, neutral to our needs and suffering. Middle Earth and Hyboria are similar in that they tell of Earth in a distant past in another state of imagination, but where Tolkien is more mythological Howard is historical. Ancient jungles and deserts dotted with antique civilizations, the cold north of Cimmeria and Asgard, and the Pictish Wilderness full of Indo European like peoples and the origins of Norse mythology. Both worlds show that the magic of long ago ages of humanity has faded.
Be mindful savages, as a caster for no matter what you wish to achieve as a user of sorcery as further you go, the further you will change. You will become a hallow shell of yourself. A Priest of Mitra doesnt use spells as Mitra and his followers dislike magic, what a Priest uses are blessings. The shamans and witches do not go far into their studies of the Outer Dark as it would change them, and so they are limited compared to the Sorcerers, Demonogilist, and Nercomancers. Sorcerey is evil. It will consume your soul and will use you as you use it. It is the worst drug a human can use.
I really want to run a swords and sorcery D&D campaign. It would be really cool to have a less flashy magic system for the spellcasting players to mess with.
Well, there is Low Fantasy Gaming and Beyond the Black Sea. Both try to give the feel of a sword and sorcery campaign. In that vein Zenobia and Cepheus Fantasy only need 2d6 to play. Plus Barbarians of Lemuria.
While TRPG systems like Low Fantasy Gaming, AS&SH, etc, bend the D&D system's themes to fit grittier sword & sorcery tropes, they still resemble D&D too much for my taste. Most notably in retaining the use of D&D's Vancian style magic in which spells are very specific both in use and amount available for use per day, and are still mostly just the same spells. There are quite a few titles which do this. Those are good games in their own right, don't get me wrong. Fortunately there are others which aren't quite so rote. For those retaining some D&D mechanics, I'd say Dungeon Crawl Classics is one which remade the magic system into a dangerous and, notably, unpredictable practice quite well. Then there are other systems not bound by D&D mechanics, such as the aforementioned Barbarians Of Lemuria and, of course, Modiphius' 2d20 Conan. Any way you go, there are more appropriate options than stock D&D for better swords & sorcery, even if you want to retain much of it's mechanics.
Sadly there's really no games that I can think of where you have some proper magical exploration that's all occultic and mystical. Learning magic is usually pretty gamey and banal
You can take a look at the game called Outward, magic is somewhat less arcade like. You have to lay done sigil circles or cast rune patterns to cast spells.
@@Arnsteel634 Still "gamey and banal" unless you'rel talking about hero questing or something, which isn't really representing it mechanically at all, any system can do that.
Man with that little narrative you did 3 minutes into this video and you talking about role playing in your Hyborian cultures video, if you aren’t running a “Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed of” tabletop game for friends or family, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity
I'm just letting you know that this Winter I am going to work with one of my Manga Artist Friends and draw out a story in relation to this awesome video you made with a little shout out in it. Once it is done I will post the video and let you know about it brother. Keep your blades sharp and your magic strong! Shalom!