If Conan hates civilisation so much why does he shave?

>>96094487 (OP)
You haven't read a single Conan story nor have you watched the films.

>>96094487 (OP)
He's uncivilized, not filthy. Even amazon tribes practice shaving and plucking their body and facial hair.

>>96094518
Ding ding ding.

Spamming pig doesn't read, spamming pig doesn'tt play.

Pre-empting that "twadishunal gaaaaayyMMMEESSSS WAAAAHHHHH T.T" faggot with tg-related conan

>>96094672
>fighter thief hybrid
Neat.

>>96094672
... and that changes the fact that OP is a spamming faggot posting off-topic threads... how, exactly?

>>96094487 (OP)
Conan loves civilization, though. He doesn't pine for Cimmeria, he spends majority of his time in civilized nations and enjoys the pleasures of civilization to the fullest.

>>96094672
I'm gonna give you guys some perspective on how ridiculous this guy's stats are. Heracles, arguably the most famous legendary hero known for his insane exploits, is statted as a level 15 ranger with 25 strength in Deties and Demigods 1e. Conan could put up a serious fight against Heracles

>>96094734
Does he not only ever visit Cimmeria to see family and that is it? Like he only has bad memories and feelings of tragedies about his homeland and he hates ever thinking about it other than when thinking of family.

>>96094487 (OP)
>Conan hates civilisation
Conan doesn't hate civilization? He just keeps getting chased out.

>>96094661
Amazonian tribes and native Americans in general just tend to have less facial hair then other people

>>96094792
Cimmeria's just really, really boring. He goes back every few years, hangs out in the home village; nothing's changed. He checks in with his parents, makes sure they're still alive, hangs out for a few days, hears the same story about that time uncle Kesh let the goats get loose (because it's really the only exciting thing that's happened in his lifetime on knowing them), gets bored, and leaves.

>>96094792
>>96094935
I don't remember anything about him going home. He mostly wanted to take loot and spend it, and he couldn't really do either back there.

>>96094792
Nope
Not much about his past is stated in the books, but it's heavily implied that his family is dead. In the movies his home village is destroyed in the intro.

>>96094890
Doesn't change fact that people have been removing facial and body hair to various degrees since the neolithic age.

>>96094487 (OP)
For the same reason why Bronze Age Germans shaved. Just because you aren't a domesticated Urba*oid, doesn't mean you are a filthy and disgusting. For masculine cultures beards, mustaches and clean-shaven looks go in and out of fashion regularly. Bronze Age Germanics liked the clean-shaven look. Roman-era Germanics had more beards, but every single tribe had their own fashion style. Suebi Germans for example had a very peculiar hair-knot style.

>>96094792
>>96094935
>>96095018
>>96095113
He doesn't go back to Cimmeria, because his close kin are dead. There are probably still tribes, related to his tribe running around, but his story is fundamentally about a Barbarian being in civilization. I am listening to the audio books currently and I think not a single story has him interact with a Barbarian, who is like himself. He is always the only Barbarian in any interaction.

>>96094672
Can you give us a time Conan showed up in your games amd how his facial hair routine impacted them?

You DO play traditional games, RIGHT?

>>96095196
He interacts with people of his nature from time to time. The tribes of Afghulistan in "People of the Black Circle", the Picts in "Beyond the Black River", and extensive contact with barbarous tribals in Red Nails.

>>96095288
I have only listened to maybe half of the audio books, which are available to me. Maybe these stories were written later. The only story I can think of, where he interacts with Barbarians, are the black-skinned slavers, but they don't feel similar to Conan at all and are only there to be slaughtered, while a scared girl runs into a horror valley, because she is scared Conan will rape her.

>>96095330
>I have only listened to maybe half of the audio books
Then don't make sweeping generalisations about what's in all of them.
The Picts are directly called out as being much the same class of savage as Cimmerians, just from a different place.

>>96094487 (OP)

REH's interpretation of history was that you have civilized people(organized but weak) and savages(strong but disorganized). So the best thing you can be is a barbarian with a foot in both worlds. A Genghis Khan figure or Conan himself.

>>96095196
>He is always the only Barbarian in any interaction.
False.
In "beyond the black river" he is fighting picts as an aquilonian mercenary.
"The Frost-Giant's daughter" opens with conan fighting a barbarian from vanaheim.
"The Vale of lost Woman" begins with Conan being a guest in a barbarian village which he later slaughters with another barbarian warband lead by him.
Pretty sure I'm still missing some.

>>96095500
>>96095592
>"The Frost-Giant's daughter" opens with conan fighting a barbarian from vanaheim.
Sure, he is fighting them. But he doesn't interact with them as characters. The only Barbarian character in these stories is always Conan himself. The other Barbarians never get the same character treatment as him. They don't become friends, brother-in-arms. You don't see their perspective.

>"The Vale of lost Woman" begins with Conan being a guest in a barbarian village which he later slaughters with another barbarian warband lead by him.
Those "Barbarians" are black-skinned slavers, who Conan finds no common ground with. He openly despises them and considers it his duty to save a White woman from them, because they shouldn't be slaves to Blacks.

>In "beyond the black river" he is fighting picts as an aquilonian mercenary.
I am not sure, if I listened to that story, but you can see the point I am making. To understand my point you have to understand the Conan stories as STORIES and not as autistic lore like a wiki nerd.

>>96095563
I've not read every Conan story, but I don't remember any of them having a giant flying elephant-man. That's a new one.

>>96095592
He's also hetman of the Kossaki (Russo-mongol Cossacks) for several stories, if you count them as barbarians, which I would.

>>96095660
Take that goal post and stick it up your ass.

>>96095660
>fighting isn't interaction
Fuck off retard.

>>96095695
Tell me a single story, where Conan sits down with another Barbarian, realizes they are both the same and laughs with him about the silly "civilized people".

>>96095715
>interaction solely refers to agreeing with someone
I told you to fuck off, retard.

>>96095715
>>96095660
>Ackchyually, I was only talking about this very specific type of interaction I didn't mention before everyone was pointing out how retarded I am.

>>96095662
Tower of the Elephant is one of the best Conan stories, and you should definitely read it.

>>96095838
>>96095922
You can also just be generous, when reading what someone has to say and interpret it in the way he meant. That is basically what language fundamentally is. My point was obviously that Conan is "The Barbarian" character in almost any interaction with other characters. When he's a mercenary, pirate, thief or even king, he doesn't have a second "Barbarian" with him, who backs him up. Conan is always the lonely Barbarian. He doesn't even seem to invite his own tribe or related tribes to his kingdom to fill out some positions after conquering his own kingdom. I have never even heard of another Cimmerian anywhere in the stories.

That said now that I think about it. When he followed and tried to rape the ice witch, there were some minor characters, who IIRC were Barbarians, who followed his footsteps and rescued him. But they were really one-note characters and didn't re-appear yet. They were just there to close the story.

>>96096080
I remember the Elephant-man, but I don't remember him having wings. But maybe the Sorcerer cut them off or something, since he tortured him.

>>96096140
>just read my mind, not my words
I can't. That's what your words are supposed to be for.
>When he's a mercenary, pirate, thief or even king, he doesn't have a second "Barbarian" with him, who backs him up.
I'm confused as to why you expect him to. Which is why I can't understand why you're fixated on this specific idea.

>>96095196
This
Domesticated urbanites try to pretend that any positive aspect of humanity(art, technology, etc) is a result of civilization and utterly inseparable from it, when not only can these things exist without civilization they ultimately exist in spite of it, as a result of the fading embers of the primal barbarian spirit which ushers in change, growth and improvement

>>96096261
>I'm confused as to why you expect him to.
I'M NOT! That is the entire point of the short stories. That's their ENTIRE theme. It's about a Barbarian with Barbarian honor interacting with civilized people, who lack his Barbarian values.

>>96096328
Excactly. The survival and evolution of the Barbarian spirit in the European Aristocracy is also the very reason for Europe's unique greatness in the world. Look at how Germans built towns in the HRE. They built them like Pagan Barbarians would, if they continued to exist. Men, who come together and make an OATH to defend the town. That's the foundation of citizen. Not some slave, some urban drone, but a FREE MAN making a committment, pooling resources together with other FREE MEN to invest in the future. Slow, steady, long-term growth. No one back then could have predicted this way of life would create a society, which easily eclipsed this human hive of the Eastern cities and civilizations, like China. But it did eventually after hundreds of years of FREE MEN investing in the land they owned and were able to give to their sons as their PROPERTY. That's a better way of life than a Tyrant squeezing the humiliated slave caste of their society dry to defend against Barbarians, until they degenerate too much and become the new slave caste to the former outsiders and new aristocracy. The Germanic tribes had no idea what to do with proper cities, when they conquered them from the Romans. They gave Italian cities autonomy, but the larger cities in Roman Germania they gave to the Bishops. They prefered to live in the countryside away from it all in fortified manors and kept their barbarous nature through excessive hunting and private wars. Legality and willingness to kill for your right was one and the same.

>>96096405
>I'M NOT!
Then why do you think anyone else would expect him to, and thus assume that's specifically what you meant by "interaction"? It's like you said, "Conan never wears clothes", but expected everyone to know you specifically meant he never wears a dress. It's a weird leap to a specific point for no discernible reason.

I mean its even in the movies her grew a beard

>>96094487 (OP)
>slop thread posted from a phone

>>96096405
Nobody tell this guy that the Germanics were also a agricultural society with towns and major land holders that ruled over them and that by the time they took over the romans place they had become highly Romanized Christians themselves

>>96096328
What a retarded take. On the one hand the further we stray from hunter-gathering on the savannah the worse our instincts align with reality. On the other look what happens to a feral child raised without language, they are literally neurologically stunted by the absence of cultural software. The effects aren't as pronounced in other areas but the fact is that discarding civilisation instead of seeing what aspects of it can be reconciled with living authentically first is cowardice.

>>96094487 (OP)

Pretty simple, shaving IS barbaric

>>96095660

>But he doesn't interact with them as characters.

He’s coming to, Horsa,” said a voice. “Haste—we must rub the frost out of his limbs, if he’s ever to wield sword again.”

“He won’t open his left hand,” growled another. “He’s clutching something—”

Conan opened his eyes and stared into the bearded faces that bent over him. He was surrounded by tall golden-haired warriors in mail and furs.

“Conan! You live!”

“By Crom, Niord,” gasped the Cimmerian. “Am I alive, or are we all dead and in Valhalla?”

“We live,” grunted the Aesir, busy over Conan’s half-frozen feet. “We had to fight our way through an ambush, or we had come up with you before the battle was joined. The corpses were scarce cold when we came upon the field. We did not find you among the dead, so we followed your spoor. In Ymir’s name, Conan, why did you wander off into the wastes of the north? We have followed your tracks in the snow for hours. Had a blizzard come up and hidden them, we had never found you, by Ymir!”

>>96096405
>I'M NOT! That is the entire point of the short stories. That's their ENTIRE theme. It's about a Barbarian with Barbarian honor interacting with civilized people, who lack his Barbarian values.
Beyond the black river is literally about a barbarian defending civilised people against barbarians you absolute retard
It's so funny seeing people who know nothing about conan try to define him without even having read the stories
The actual POINT of the conan stories is that they allowed howard to write historical adventure stories without having to care about historical accuracy. Which is why you had conan as a medieval knight, as a 17th century pirate and as an 18th century frontiersman

>>96098949

Yeah, and I'll add that if there is one thing the Conan stories don't give a fuck about, is honor (barbarian or not).
Conan plays fair, hard but fair. That's about it.
You can't really point out that civilization is more corrupt than "barbarism", even - just that it's more hypocritical.

>well, maybe looting and burning half of the Black Coast wasn't that fair, but you get my point

>>96098807
Languages is a human trait that can exist without civilization. A feral child isn't something that natural occurs mostly resulting from abusive people.

>>96094792
Not a single REH story has Conan in or returning to Cimmeria. He only ever brings the place up to contextualize how tough life there necessarily makes his people. He never dwells on his family but in his nation generally (extolling their physical virtues as they apply to him) or barbarian ethics (which, while he vastly prefers the fruit of civilization, he can't stand civilized 'manners').

Conan occasionally grows facial hair, btw.

>>96094487 (OP)
Traditional games?

>>96095113
Only known facts about his family is that his father was a blacksmith, he claims to have been born on a battlefield and in one of Howard's essays (not actually in a story) that his grandfather also traveled the world and brought back stories. Also that Cimmeria is a dour, mountainous place, but not north enough for Conan to be a not!Viking.
Proto-Conan was Irish.

>>96094487 (OP)
Because he wants too.

>>96102902
I was gonna say that I could swear there was a Conan story where he returns home to find his old girlfriend kidnapped by another tribe, but apparently it was only a Conan story in the comics ('Night of the Dark God', being an adaptation of REH's 'The Dark Man' with Conan as the lead).

>>96098707
The concept of barbarism in general is kind of inherently vague. But yeah, Germanic peoples, as well as Gauls and a whole lot of people Romans, let alone the Greek, would've considered barbarians, lived in pretty complex, large and ordered societies, farmed, traded, worked metal and so on. Not very barbaric, all in all.

>>96100745
How would you define civilization, anon?

>>96103114
We can also suppose that like Conan they participated in the siege of Vanarium.

>>96094487 (OP)
good point.

conan fags are shitting and pissing themselfves rn

>>96094487 (OP)
Wasnt he the king of fantasy france for a long while?

>>96094487 (OP)
Conan hates the hypocrisy and weakness of overcivilized and oversocialized people, not the concept of civilization itself

>>96095662
>I've not read every Conan story, but I don't remember any of them having a giant flying elephant-man. That's a new one.

That's like one of the most famous ones

>>96105540
He became king of Aquilonia for the rest of his life.

>>96098807
Jumping into the thread to talk about this idea but it seems reductive to write off civilization or barbarism, each has their strengths and weaknesses. It's undoubtedly true that civilization offers man material comforts, but the wilds are what our brains were wired for and our bodies evolved for. So we don't starve and we don't get killed, but we have existential dread and we end up fat or frail. Conan enjoys the fruits of civilization, what he dislikes are the manners and the falsehoods that emerge from it.

It's a bit interesting since most people you meet write off tribes and older cultures as savages, but it's not as if songs will be sung of the average office worker. We've got things easier when it comes to physical labor, but we now lack an environment in which we are afforded to do things with meaning.

>>96094487 (OP)
What does shaving or not shaving have to do with Civilization? Conan isn't a caveman he knows what a blade is. (He is quite good with it in fact.) Conan main problem with civilization is people being dependent on it and all.

>>96094672
>>96094677
So what is the point of the barbarian class if it doesn't emulate Conan?

>>96118633
Barbarian was an unearthed arcana class

>>96118633
It was because Gary through Conan was to OP to be a class and so made a "Fixed' version by going full noble savage with it.

>>96094734
Yeah but he also fucks off whenever civilized trappings get on his nerves. He enjoys the fruits of civilization but chafes when its time to trim the hedges or get stung by bees. He'll happily fight his way out of a courtroom rather than be badgered by some judge when he feels like it.

>>96119109
That is until he gets older and accepts the politics of being a king despite the bullshit involved.
I don't think we ever got a proper timeline from REH but to my understanding from rading the stories.
Conan heads south as a young unaware man and slowly makes his was farther and farther south through Aqulonia and its neighbors until he reaches the sea. Then he becomes a pirate for a good few years before departing to various adventures across the farther flung locals of his age before circling back to Aqulonia and becoming king.
It was really his time at sea that caused him to mellow out and mature compared to his earlier more reckless days.

>>96096140
>I remember the Elephant-man, but I don't remember him having wings.
For what i remember he told Conan that he and his (already dead) people somehow lost their wings over the ages, but he doesn't give any details how.

>>96118253
>but it's not as if songs will be sung of the average office worker.
Code Monkey like fritos
Code Monkey like tab and mountain dew~
Code Monkey very simple man
With warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you~

>>96100745
>Languages is a human trait that can exist without civilization.
As a communicative tool, sure, but language is much, much more to us and it requires a structure to get it to this level.
Only fucking retards still believe there's any true meaning in the civilization/nature dichotomy. The second we started conceptualizing and developing our linguistic forms we gained access to the hyperastronomical. Which is why many ancients were much better mathematicians than the average zoomer with a computer.

>>96095018
Its only mentioned in the pre faces, which come from Howards notes , which are included in most compilations of the stories and describe what Conan did between his adventures.

>>96125452
This fucking takes me back.

>>96094667
absolutely insufferable post

>Conan hates civilization
What the fuck are you talking about????

Conan is 85% of the time in civilization trying to rob palaces and rich estates out of their jewels and gems so he can spend his days in bars and taverns within civilization, visiting empires of other foreign lands to nab women of those cultures, and interacting with cults and religious orders to steal their prized possessions or save a maiden made for sacrifice. Conan is unruly, he doesn't hate civilization, in fact, he sees civilization as the places where all his vices and trades can be met.

>>96094890
>native Americans in general just tend to have less facial hair then other people
They still grow enough facial hair to the point that it was common for men to carry tweezers, they're found in Mexico all the way down to Peru
It's actually an example of precolumbian metallurgy. Doesn't disprove what he said desu