The Phantagraph Supplement

Part three of Robert E. Howard's "The Hyborian Age" presents a pseudo-historical chronology of a fantasy world spanning approximately two millennia. The text traces the rise of Hyborian civilization from scattered warlike tribes to dominant kingdoms—Aquilonia, Nemedia, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Koth, Ophir, Argos, Corinthia, and others—across the western continent. Howard documents the displacement of earlier races (Picts, Atlanteans, Lemurians), the emergence of rival powers (Zamora, Zingara, Stygia, Turan), and the gradual racial intermixture among settled peoples versus the preservation of bloodlines among northern barbarians like the Cimmerians and Aesir. The narrative culminates in establishing the political and ethnic landscape of Conan's era, with detailed ethnographic descriptions of the various peoples—their physical characteristics, territorial distribution, and cultural practices. The piece functions as worldbuilding exposition, concluding that "this was the world of Conan's time," grounding the protagonist's adventures within a constructed historical framework.