Episode 506 - Queen of the Black Coast - Part 1

This is an old video but YouTube recently decided that the stars were right and it was time for me to see it. I thought it was pretty funny, lots of mentions of Crom! https://youtu.be/OBGOQ7SsJrw

Admittedly Conan stories have never been my favorite, though I always enjoy your takes on them. To pass the time during this pandemic, some friends were doing a dramatic reading party of the infamous Eye of Argon, and I realized, about halfway through the word "thews" appeared for the first time, and I realize that Eye of Argon is the greatest unintentional Conan parody ever written. All of which is to say, if you guys ever do another April Fools' show...

Stewart Huntsman

Hi, I just listened to this episode a few weeks after release. Dragging my feet a bit on more Conan to be honest but…wow Chad! That song at the end was awesome. Glad I made it through (made it thew?) to the music. My favorite track I’ve heard from you.

When you announced this story I was like, "Cool, I've read that one!" but then I clicked the link and realized that I'd confused it with Brian Lumley's SHIP OF DREAMS, which is set in HPL's Dreamlands and features a sexy zombie queen.

Iranistan always felt a little on the nose to me.

I'm a few weeks late to the party, you guys were talking about the relationship between the lands of Shem and the Semitic people (or children of Shem). What I've pasted below is from the "Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of" RPG Core Book by Modiphius Press. They try to stick much closer to the original REH material than any other prior game or comic, and I think their cultural comparisons are more in-line with Howard's intent than the list on Wikipedia. The Hyborian Age may seem familiar to modern readers because it is based in part on real-world historical eras and cultures. As a writer, Robert E. Howard wanted to evoke the feeling of history yet did not want to be confined by it. As an avid reader, Howard was familiar with both popular and obscure theories of continental drift, recurring cultural patterns, lost worlds, and the notion that much of the historical record has been irretrievably lost. Thus he created his Hyborian Age, guided by history but not enslaved to it, using ancient era and medieval cultures as the models for the countries and peoples of the Hyborian world, tying the world thematically to our own but allowing for new and original interpretations of these elements. His use of names was a type of shorthand, evoking the familiar, yet presenting them in new context, suggesting a world buried under layer upon layer of cultural, environmental, and geologic change. Here’s a quick overview of the Hyborian Age cultures and their real-world equivalents, grouped thematically: ■ AQUILONIA: Medieval France ■ ARGOS: Merchant-ruled Italy ■ ASGARD AND VANAHEIM (NORDHEIM): Viking-age Denmark or Norway ■ BARACHAN ISLES: The Caribbean Islands, particularly Tortuga ■ BORDER KINGDOM: Baltic countries such as Estonia or Latvia ■ BOSSONIAN MARCHES: Medieval Wales and/or Scotland ■ BRYTHUNIA: Medieval Germany, Poland, or Lithuania ■ CIMMERIA: Gaelic Ireland and Scotland ■ CORINTHIA: Medieval Greece ■ DARFAR, KESHAN, KUSH, PUNT, ZEMBABWEI, AND THE BLACK KINGDOMS: Ancient African kingdoms such as Darfur, Nubia, Kush, Somaliland, Zimbabwe, and others ■ HYPERBOREA: Medieval Rus (Russia), particularly Novgorod ■ HYRKANIA: A cross between Mongolia and Scythia ■ IRANISTAN: Caliphate Iran ■ KHAURAN: Medieval Syria ■ KHITAI: Feudal-era China ■ KHORAJA: Constantinople or the land known as Outremer ■ KOTH: The Byzantine Empire ■ NEMEDIA: The Germanic Holy Roman Empire ■ OPHIR: Medieval Sicily or Malta ■ PICTISH WILDERNESS: A combination of Scotland and Native American North America ■ SHEM: The west is the Iron Age Levant (Canaan) and Assyria, and the east is Arabian ■ STYGIA: Ancient Egypt ■ TURAN: Seljuk Turkey ■ VENDHYA: Mughal India ■ ZAMORA: Persia, especially Baghdad ■ ZINGARA: Reconquista-era Spain However, these are not exact correlations. Despite their apparent similarities, these countries remain uniquely Hyborian...

L'chaim!

Andrew M. Reichart

Love them so much. 🤘💀🤘

Andrew M. Reichart

Like the name!

Unfortunately, due to the Pandemic by collection of Conan is stuck in another province and I won’t be getting it until The beginning of August. So, I won’t be listening to this episode or part 2 until after I’ve emerged myself in the story. However, as always I am positive you two have pulled off a stellar episode and I look forward to listening to it.

Enjoyed this SO much, can’t wait for Pt. 2!

Every time they said boat – swain, I kept imagining a medieval troubadour skipping from bow to stern strumming his lute and serenading the crew with some piece about steely thews, panther crouches and ebony black manes until Conan lops his ridiculously behatted head off.

Boatswain? Yes, that’s the formal spelling, but guys - seriously? Say it with me, folks - bosun. BOSUN. Bow - front of the ship. Stern / aft - back of the ship.. We now return you to your regular Thewsday morning programming...

Scott

I’m so here for this.

Andrew Blanke

I can't wait until Part 2 releases and I can grab my dial to thewn right in!

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

I'm enthewsed.

Steve

Yeah, the colours all mix together eventually. Conan cannot be doing with that.

Steve

My Favorite Emily Dickinson poem is "I chase a Panther, Heavy thewed."

Very excited THEW-ly is back, and can't wait to jump into Queen of the Black Coast. ABLAZE comics recently published this story, and has started on Red Nails. Curious to see how they adapted it

Wulf Mungus

Speaking of 'live, laugh, slay,' there were some web/print comics done some years ago called "By, Crom!" which was basically conan giving (not all that bad) life advice to the author in a semi-autobiographical format. I don't know if physical or digital copies are even available/in print anymore, but I think you guys would enjoy them, especially in thewly. https://www.wealdcomics.com/?page_id=690 if you can't track anything down, maybe we can figure out a way to get my copies to you or at least scanned in or something.

Man, I love Conan stories. The descriptions are amazing and I agree thar everything about them is pornographic and intense: emotions, violence, enviroment... You feel that you are part of the action!

"Eat, Slay, Love" surely. Yass Kween!

Yay, more Conan! I'm also quite interested in this song about hobo warlocks in the style of THE hobo warlock. That which closes out the episode reminds me of Sonic Youth or the Cure.

But for you guys, I would have gone my whole life not realizing that Belit, the Shemite Queen of the Black Coast, was a role that Rachel Brosnahan was born to play. Thanks for washing the scales from my eyes.

It’s fun to hear you namedrop the band Electric Wizard in a Conan episode, because “Barbarian” is a doom metal classic. It’s definitely about Conan, and it’s the song I like to listen to when I feel like putting a broadsword in a bureaucrat: https://youtu.be/m4rqgHbGeOo “His Black mane sweeps across his face, Grim and silent with a steely blue gaze, Like a panther ready to strike, His blade crashes down to end your life, no!”

I love how Conan says he enjoys the sting of strong wine on his “pallet”... i was hoping Chad was about to launch into a bit where he riffs on Conan doing a wine tasting, taking about how he detects a “bouquet of dusty wind as my enemies are driven be for me” and “notes of leather and blackberries”.

Michelle Elbert

I thought you said "Conan would have hated playdough."

Aaron Gullison

Chad's description of doing the Mashed Potato naked with no musical accompaniment made me laugh out loud! Between this, Manimal, and Chris' seductive description of bee mating habits in The Drone episode, you two could do a relationship advice show based on the lessons learned from weird fiction.

Nathan Adam

Iron thews that is