Video Game / Conan Hyborian Age

"Conan Hyborian Age is a Massive Dungeon with a Quest. It was designed to introduce in the most possible lore friendly way the Items of Conan the Barbarian Movie 1982 by John Milius and Oliver Stone."

— PROMETHEUS_ts, official mod's description on the Skyrim Nexus

Conan Hyborian Age is a The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim mod created by PROMETHEUS_ts, which adds a quest, a large dungeon (three levels), new items, new crafting recipes, and new loading screens, all of them heavily inspired by Conan the Barbarian (1982).

The house of Clan Gray-Mane contains an interesting book, talking about the "secret of steel", the fulgurite (made from a rare ore), which has properties that are very interesting for creating powerful weapons; in Skyrim, only the Whiterun Skyforge is able to craft items from fulgurite. The book also refers to the Hyborian Mound, a mound in the moor west of Whiterun, which contains a sword crafted in this alloy and which power is said to be similar to Daedric weapons'. Inside the mound, the Dragonborn encounters the ghost of Conan, who explains he was cursed by Thulsa Doom and seeks to be freed.

The mod can be found here (Legendary Edition) or here (Special Edition). There's also two versions available, one of them ("V5") has a bit more content but is considered as a Beta by the mod's creator.

Unrelated with Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, though both are adaptations of the Conan the Barbarian franchise. See also Relics of Hyrule, another Skyrim mod with a similar premise but based on The Legend of Zelda (and with much more content).

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Conan Hyborian Age Provides Examples Of:

• Adaptation Amalgamation: While the mod is mostly based on Conan the Barbarian, the V5 version also includes a bossfight against Dagoth from Conan the Destroyer.
• Blackout Basement: Contrary to Skyrim usual Hollywood Darkness in underground areas, most of the Hyborian Mound is filled with complete darkness, the only exceptions being either rare rooms with lit candles or braziers, or rare instances of rooms with holes in the ceiling. The mod's description even explicitely advices to bring torches.
• Bonus Dungeon: The core of the mod consists in exploring one.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The iconic Conan outfit (loincloth, fur boots, leather bracers, a leather circlet, and the amulet) is available in the mod, but it offers so little protection that it turns the Dragonborn into a Glass Cannon (unless you fully mastered and researched the Light Armor and Smithing skills).
• Crossover: The mod basically uses the Conan the Barbarian setting as a distant past of the Tamriel setting, with a few alterations to the former in order to fit the Elder Scrolls lore (like Crom being renamed "Shor", or the Atlantean Sword being renamed "Atmorean Sword"). The Hyborian Mound itself is a combination of the mound in which Conan finds his sword, Thulsa Doom's lair, and the gladiatorial arena from the beginning of the movie.
• Cut and Paste Environments: Some parts of the dungeon are copies of areas from the unmodded game.
  • Doom's room is a copy (with much more skeletons, less light, and a double-snake statue added) of the vanilla room where you encounter Red Eagle.
  • The pitfigh arena is a copy of the room where you fight Potema's "council" during "The Wolf Queen Awakened".
• Dem Bones: Aside a dragon priest ( Thulsa Doom) and two trolls, the enemies encountered are only skeletons and Draugr.
• Disc-One Final Boss: You thought the bossfight against Thorgrim, Rexor, and Thulsa Doom was the end of the dungeon, did you? It isn't, and there's still one full level after this (including its own bossfight.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: One of the ways to end the quest is finding parts of three broken swords, then reforging one of them.
• Dual Boss:
  • Thorgrim and Rexor are fought this way, with Conan supporting the player character. Since Thulsa Doom's sarcophagus is right behind their thrones, moving to far toward the end of the room during the fight can spawn him as well, making the bossfight even more difficult.
  • The two trolls guarding the exit of the Hyborian Mound.
• Dungeon Crawling: The premise is basically the exploration of a dungeon to find ancient weapons, while fighting the monsters inside.
• Durable Deathtrap/Ragnarök Proofing: In the very old Hyborian Mound, not only the traps are still ready to be triggered and work perfectly, but some candles and braziers are still lit.
• Elaborate Equals Effective: The Atmorean and Cimmerian sword/greatsword, which are better than any unenchanted weapons of thoses classes from the unmodded game, have very detailed pommel and hilt, as well as a blade engraved with runes. The Atmorean sabre/greatsabre are similar, though less detailed (no runes).
• Flunky Boss:
  • Thulsa Doom in Doom's room, with a dozen of skeletons.
  • The Pitfighter bossfight involves a dozen of skeleton mooks, as well as a few (weaker) draugr with the same boss name.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The lever in Doom's room is supposed to open the gate to the exit of the Hyborian mound but it sometimes doesn't work, leaving you trapped forever unless you use cheats to bypass it.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The Pitfight Circlet is technically a light armor piece of headgear instead of an unarmored circlet, but it offers ridiculously low protection, which makes sense, since it only consists in a thin band of studded leather.
• Guide Dang It!: To complete the "Riddle of Steel" quest, you need to reforge one of the swords. While the quest marker leads to the Skyforge, the objective actually requires to talk to Eorlund Grey-Mane, who may be anywhere in the town. The only clue on the mod's page is "to reforge weapons you need skysteel forging ability and arcane smithing", which further implies that finishing the quest requires to reforge the sword yourself.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Conan fights with a greatsword.
• Homage: Conan Hyborian Age is basically one giant homage to the 1982 movie.
  • The quest is titled "Riddle of Steel". The Secret of Steel (the book which grants the quest) is Conan father's monologue from the beginning of the movie (with some names changed to fit the Elder Scrolls lore).
  • All the new weapons and pieces of armour appear in the movie.
  • The bosses are characters of the movie.
  • One of the new characters is a fully voiced Conan with a Germanic accent.
  • The witch and her house can be found in the plain west of Whiterun (V5 only).
  • There are new Conan the Barbarian-flavoured loading screens.
• Happy Ending Override: The mod provides one to the movie. Conan explains that he may have killed Thulsa Doom, but the dying wizard cursed him and he gradually became weaker and weaker each day until he eventually was unable to wake up.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The weapons that can be crafted after completing the quest are more powerful (and lighter) than their daedric equivalent, and can be created way earlier, though tempering them require an even rarer resource.
• Interface Spoiler: Checking the map when standing near the entrance of the second level shows an area transition in the middle of a corridor. After the bossfight against Thulsa Doom, when you backtrack through the whole level, the floor collapses there and the pit which appeared under your feet contains a transition to another level.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Despite appearing scantily-clad (she wears the Pitfight Cuirass, cf. Sideboob) in one of the loading screens (said loading screen being of the pictures illustrating the mod in the Skyrim Nexus), Valeria doesn't appear in the game.
• Loading Screen: The mod adds a few custom loading screens to the native ones. They follow the Skyrim style of "lore-related quote + 3D picture of a character/object", with quotes from the movie illustrated by 3D artworks of Conan, Valeria, or various new items.
• Loincloth: The iconic Conan-like loincloth is one of the items acquired in the dungeon. It's actually more protective than the lowest-level light armors.
• Lost Technology: Fulgurite. The Gray-Manes are researching it, with little success: aside from the quest-giving book, their house contains a letter stating that a boat carrying the fulgurite freight they ordered sank in area off of Dawnstar's coast.
• Magical Accessory: You can find the Wheel of Pain amulet in the chamber where you first meet Conan's ghost. Gameplay-wise, it's exactly like an Amulet of Talos with a custom name and appearance.
• Mythology Gag: A character mentioned in the mod but not encountered is a smith named Mordec of Duthil, after a character from Conan of Venarium, a Conan novel written by Harry Turtledove.^note The original Mordec of Duthil is Conan's father in the novel; since the mod's Conan is supposed to be long dead while this version of Mordec sent letters to Eorlund Gray-Mane, they're probably not supposed to be the same person.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: The Hyborian Armor and Pitfight Cuirass when worn by a female character (cf. Sideboob).
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The official trailer and screenshots from the Skyrim Nexus feature a protagonist which is a look-alike of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan, implying that the mod's player character is canonically supposed to be Conan himself. It's actually not the case, because Conan appears as a (ghost) NPC. ^note The mod Nexus page also provides a link to another mod by the same creator, which allows to create your perfect Schwarzy/Conan look-alike, while adding an alternate version of Conan's outfit which can be found out of the Hyborian Mound
  • One of the screenshots of the mod's page on the Nexus features a character with a loincloth, leather bracers, fur boots, and a horned helmet. All of those armor pieces are functional items appearing in the mod, but this specific outfit is actually non-optimal ingame, because it mixes light and heavy armor.
• Post-Final Boss: After defeating four very powerful bosses, the final room in the Hyborian Mound consists in either fighting against two (regular) trolls (fully-tested version) or Dagoth (V5 only) guarding the dungeon's exit.
• Sequence Breaking: After the bossfight in Doom's room in the second level, the Dragonborn must backtrack to the dungeon's first level, in which the exit gate is now open (unless the player missed the lever in the boss room). On the way, the floor collapses under the player character's feet when walking in a corridor, sending the Dragonborn down in a chasm to the third level of the dungeon. With the right timing, it's possible to get back when the floor starts collapsing, then to jump above the hole, allowing to completely skip the third level.
• Sideboob:
  • When worn by a male character, the Hyborian Armor looks like Conan's classical loincloth, and Pitfight Cuirass is a leather breach with leather suspenders from the belt to the shoulders. When worn by a female character, the former adds a kind of leather apron on the chest (which only covers the front of the body, not the side), and the latter replaces the suspenders by two thick strips of leather which covers the breasts while reveal the cleavage down to the stomach, and leaving the side of the breasts exposed.
  • The Fur Pitfighter armor is identical for both genders: its top consists in fur covering the chest-belly and the back, leaving the sides of the ribs exposed.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: Entering the Hyborian Mound requires to blindly jump into a pitch dark pit without any obvious exit.^note This part of the mod is based on the scene where Conan finds the Atlantean sword, but in the movie Conan has the excuse of accidentally falling inside the mound
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • Has Eorlund been killed by a dragon attack or a vampire raid? Well, unless you resurrect him with the console, you're now unable to reforge the sword and complete the quest.
  • The room where the bossfight against Thulsa Doom, Rexor, and Thorgrim happens opens with a single pressure plate right before the entrance, in a narrow corridor. Said pressure plate also closes the door if you step on it while the door is already open, and there's no way to open it from inside the room. The plate is close enough from the door to allow to enter the room while it starts closing. It's possible to step on the plate to open the door, change your mind to go back exploring the dungeon, then go back to the already open room, and trap yourself in it because you step again on the pressure plate.
  • The rusted weapons you need to find to complete the quest of reforging them aren't hard to identify (you only need one of them out of three, the first one you pick up advances the quest diary, and two of them are lying in noticeable places where you must go to procede, making them impossible to miss), but they aren't technically considered as quest items, so you can drop them in unreachable places, store them in respawnable containers, sell them...
• Wheel of Pain: As another homage to the movie, one of them shows up near the end of the dungeon. You must push it to open a door past the pitfight arena.
• Wrecked Weapon: The "Cimmerian Sword Broken" is a broken weapon (technically a dagger) in the mound. It's made from the sword's handle and the lower part of its blade. The upper half of the blade of another sword (the Atmorean Sword) is found lying elsewhere in the dungeon. The quest ends when a single one of those swords is reforged at the Skyforge, either as a one-handed sword or as a greatsword.