Conan lore – the sage Epemitreus

This is an account on the long dead man who aided King Conan as part of ancient strife between gods.

The Phoenix on the Sword (1934), by Robert E. Howard (1906–1936), is the first written and published Conan story. It is however late in the chronology as it is about a middle-aged Conan.

Spoilers warning: for The Phoenix on the Sword, but it is in the public domain and can be read here https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600811h.html

The stories are set about 12,000 years ago in the fictive Hyborian Age. Conan came from Cimmeria (grey) but the Age was named after the Hyborian peoples; of their civilized kingdoms (yellow) was the strongest Aqualonia (blue). Also of interest here is the far older kingdom of Stygia to the south (red).

In his early forties Conan usurped the crown of Aquilonia. Yet he found the crown easier to claim than to keep, due to scheming nobles (art by pascalblanche).

The open-minded Conan heeded his own gods, but respected the Hyborian god Mitra. The Hyborians had conquered vast lands and prospered so Mitra was considered a strong god.

"But even the Hyborians fear Set" (Queen of the Black Coast; chapter I). In Stygia were towers, pyramids, and "blood-stained altars where naked women screamed, and where Set, the Old Serpent, arch-demon of the Hyborians but god of the Stygians, was said to writhe his shining coils among his worshippers."

A few years into the reign of Conan rebels led by the nobleman Ascalante used the enslaved sorcerer priest of Set, Thoth-Amon from Stygia, to aid their plot.

The night that Ascalante led assassins to kill Conan in the royal palace Thoth-Amon broke free; before he departed he invoked a demonic fiend to slay Ascalante and all around him (art by Al Harron).

The King slept in his palace chamber when he had a dream of a world of mist. There a voice called upon him to come, across the gulfs of Space or Time. Conan entered a corridor of black stone, covered with carved figures of ancient heroes and half-forgotten gods (art by sanjulian);

"He shuddered to see the vast shadowy outlines of the Nameless Old Ones, and he knew somehow that mortal feet had not traversed the corridor for centuries.
He came upon a wide stair carved in the solid rock, and the sides of the shaft were adorned with esoteric symbols so ancient and horrific that King Conan's skin crawled. The steps were carven each with the abhorrent figure of the Old Serpent, Set, so that at each step he planted his heel on the head of the Snake, as it was intended from old times."

– The Phoenix on the Sword; chapter IV, onwards

Past the stair came Conan to a crypt and saw a vague, white-bearded figure sitting on a tomb. The figure presented himself as Epemitreus (art by Tomás Giorello):

"`But Epemitreus the Sage has been dead for fifteen hundred years!' stammered Conan."

"`Harken!' spoke the other commandingly. `As a pebble cast into a dark lake sends ripples to the further shores, happenings in the Unseen world have broken like waves on my slumber. I have marked you well, Conan of Cimmeria, and the stamp of mighty happenings and great deeds is upon you. But dooms are loose in the land, against which your sword can not aid you" (art by Sanjulian).

"It is not against men I must shield you. There are dark worlds barely guessed by man, wherein formless monsters stalk—fiends which may be drawn from the Outer Voids to take material shape and rend and devour at the bidding of evil magicians. There is a serpent in your house, oh king—an adder in your kingdom, come up from Stygia, with the dark wisdom of the shadows in his murky soul."

He naturally referred to the sorcerer priest of the Old Serpent, Thoth-Amon (art by MrZarono):

"As a sleeping man dreams of the serpent which crawls near him, I have felt the foul presence of Set's neophyte. He is drunk with terrible power, and the blows he strikes at his enemy may well bring down the kingdom. I have called you to me, to give you a weapon against him and his hell-hound pack.'"

Folk said that Epemitreus slept in the black heart of Mount Golamira, whence his ghost would come on unseen wings to aid Aquilonia in times of need.

But Conan noted that he was an outlander and a barbarian. The ghost replied that Conan's destiny was one with that of Aquilonia (art below by Ronan Toulhoat);

"`Gigantic happenings are forming in the web and the womb of Fate, and a blood-mad sorcerer shall not stand in the path of imperial destiny. Ages ago Set coiled about the world like a python about its prey. All my life, which was as the lives of three common men, I fought him. I drove him into the shadows of the mysterious south, but in dark Stygia men still worship him who to us is the arch-demon. As I fought Set, I fight his worshippers and his votaries and his acolytes. Hold out your sword.'"

"Wondering, Conan did so, and on the great blade, close to the heavy silver guard, the ancient traced with a bony finger a strange symbol that glowed like white fire in the shadows."

Conan awoke from sleep, sword in hand, and his hair prickled at the nape of his neck, for on the broad blade was carven a symbol—the outline of a phoenix (art by Tomás Giorello).

"And he remembered that on the tomb in the crypt he had seen what he had thought to be a similar figure, carven of stone. Now he wondered if it had been but a stone figure, and his skin crawled at the strangeness of it all."

Conan soon faced Ascalante and his assassins, only to be attacked by a terrible fiend, but the King was saved using the enchanted blade. Afterwards he told his sceptical courtiers about his dream, when the high-priest of Mitra begged him to be silent (art by Andrew Robinson).

The priest whispered to the King (art by Michal Domanski):

"My lord, this is a matter beyond human understanding. Only the inner circle of the priestcraft know of the black stone corridor carved in the black heart of Mount Golamira, by unknown hands, or of the phoenix-guarded tomb where Epemitreus was laid to rest fifteen hundred years ago."

No one had entered it since, for the priests who placed the Sage in the crypt hid the entrance. Not even the high-priests knew where it was (art by Travis Smith):

"Only by word of mouth, handed down by the high-priests to the chosen few, and jealously guarded, does the inner circle of Mitra's acolytes know of the resting-place of Epemitreus in the black heart of Golamira. It is one of the Mysteries, on which Mitra's cult stands."

But Conan displayed his blade and when the high-priest saw the Phoenix on the Sword he fell to his knees (art by Tore Oliver):

"‘Mitra guard us against the powers of darkness!’ he gasped. ‘The king has indeed talked with Epemitreus this night! There on the sword—it is the secret sign none might make but him—the emblem of the immortal phoenix which broods for ever over his tomb!’"

Howard wrote nothing more about Epemitreus or about Conan beyond the years close after this adventure. Yet some may be told about the imperial destiny that Epemitreus secured. For five centuries after Conan Aquilonia grew into an empire and threatened even Stygia (art by ChrisQuilliams).

Yet nothing lasts forever. The Aquilonias became haughty and intolerant, hated by their neighbours, treacherous to their subjects, and increasingly reliant on barbarian mercenaries.

The barbarians were strengthened by their contacts with the empire, and at end large barbarian hordes invaded. Then both mercenaries and subject nations rebelled against Aquilonia, and "the Aquilonian empire went down in fire and blood" (The Hyborian Age, art by Christian Jegou).

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End note: if you would like to be added to the 'Barbarian notification'-list for my Conan and other barbaric posts (lore, art, memes etc) it is just to comment: Tell me of high adventure

Some related accounts (art by Gabriele Dell'otto):

The fiend of Thoth-Amon https://imgur.com/gallery/ybpQT1k

Thoth-Amon and Thulsa Doom https://imgur.com/gallery/GdCEa08

My Conan lore posts index: https://imgur.com/gallery/Xc4OIH8