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Lighter Cimmerians
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14 Feb @ 9:00pm
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Dread Swoop
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Lighter Cimmerians

Description
Hello everyone,

With this mod, Cimmerians will now use the three lightest skin colors.


Why?

In Robert E. Howard's Notes on the Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age, the Cimmerians are described thus:
They were a tall, powerful race, averaging six feet in height. They were black-haired, and gray- or blue-eyed. They were dolichocephalic, and dark-skinned, though not so dark as either the Zingarans, Zamorians, or Picts.

That would seem to contravene the mod's intention, and indeed it does.

However, other depictions of the Cimmerians as light-skinned exist, such as:

* 1982's Conan the Barbarian film.

* Funcom's prior entry into the universe, the MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

As well, interpretation of other evidence provided by Howard, such as Cimmeria being a foggy land of the north, the linkage of the Cimmerians with the Celts (particularly the Gaels), and descriptions of Conan's dark skin often qualified as the result of heavy sun exposure during his adventures, would support those depictions.

And it is for these reasons that the mod exists, to provide players with that depiction should they wish it.


Compatibility

The mod operates via control table merger for the Cimmerian entries in RaceTemplateDataTable, replacing only the skin color values.

This mod will only affect newly-spawned Cimmerian NPCs, your existing thralls will remain as they are. In the same way, Cimmerians recruited using this mod will retain their looks if the mod is disabled / removed.

The mod can function either with the base game or with the Heritage mod. If used with Heritage, Lighter Cimmerians must come AFTER Heritage in the load order for the changes to appear.

In order to maintain its full compatibility with Heritage, this mod will receive updates whenever I add new unique presets for Cimmerian NPCs in that mod, but those using the base game appearances should notice no changes.


Conclusion

As always, feedback, suggestions, criticism, and other observations are welcome.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy,


Dread Swoop


Mod ID: 3427581182


NOTE: Factors such as region, time of day, and weather (particularly rainstorms) can affect in-game appearance. Images taken at 8:30 AM in-game, subjects sunward-facing.
6 Comments
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Dread Swoop  [author] 5 Jun @ 8:38pm 
@Draugheru In Howard's works, Conan is the only Cimmerian who ever appears. Indeed he may be only one of a few who've ever traveled far from Cimmeria or the lands surrounding it, because in many introductions other characters often don't know what Conan is, thinking him possibly Hyperborean or some other northern barbarian.

If most Cimmerians remain in Cimmeria, they're most likely going to be affected by that environment, and given that it's described as a foggy, gloomy place, they're going to be lighter-skinned than Conan is described to be due to less sun exposure.

Of course the Picts live in a densely-forested region and are dark-skinned, so environmental factors don't have universal outcomes, but it's a matter of comparison between Conan and other Cimmerians.
Dread Swoop  [author] 5 Jun @ 7:57pm 
@AkaRai Sorry for the delay, sometimes I read a comment, get distracted, then never respond.

The story you're referring to is "Shadows In Zamboula" . I need to re-read the story again, but I think you're correct. There are also mentions in the story "Queen of the Black Coast" , and others as well. For example, there is:

"And survivors of butchered Stygian ships named Bêlit with curses, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes remembered this man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore crimson fruit in the years to come."

and:

"The warriors fell into single file, creeping through the primordial twilights like black phantoms following a white ghost."

among others. It's possible that Howard referred to Conan as white in those stories in the sense of the 'white race', as in both he is among many black characters, but it's also likely his actual skin was being described.
Draugheru 4 Jun @ 10:02pm 
I always equated the Cimmerians to Norse/Nordics and Vikings who were know to travel and trade as far south as Babylon in Iraq. So one could imagine some Cimmerians being very tanned.
AkaRai 20 Apr @ 3:07pm 
A trifling thing either way, but I will say every Conan story I've read backs up this view. He's constantly described or describes himself as white. In particular I'm recalling one story -the name of which escapes me- where everyone locks their doors at night and refuses visitors because Darfari cannibals roam the streets for someone to drag off and eat. When Conan is refused entry to a tavern he argues "Can't you see that I'm alone and a white man?"
Dread Swoop  [author] 7 Apr @ 7:39pm 
@Rhodes I'd agree with those interpretations.

There's a lot of wiggle room in Howard's descriptions, for example Conan's skin was often referred to as bronzed or browned from the sun, but bronze skin isn't that dark, and brown can cover a very wide swath of tones. Even then, given the qualifier of sun exposure, Conan would probably be much darker than most Cimmerians in Cimmeria.

I know the Zingarans, weren't portrayed as particularly dark, and they're supposed to be darker than Cimmerians. They're also supposed to be much lighter than the Picts, who would probably have skin tones comparable to Amerindians.

I haven't looked into it too deeply, but I think that Howard may have described Cimmerians in that manner as a mythological origin of the "black Irish", with which he felt some affinity.
Rhodes 6 Apr @ 5:36pm 
Always thought the Cimmerians should be lighter in game. To me, having read the Howard stories, they sounded like they would be olive at the darkest. Mind that at the time Howard was writing, Italians were considered 'Swarthy' i.e. dark skinned. That said, Howard was very, very clear when someone wasn't of 'the white races', regardless of having fair skin or not.

IIRC The Black Stranger (title unrelated, the stranger was a shadow demon) mentions that a very beautiful woman was fair skinned, and 'could have been mistaken for one of the white races at a glance'. She was Zingaran or Zamorian I think. Shadows in Zamboula is also replete with examples.