Shadow Lord

[Water Bob]

In the recent not-so-good-but-I-still-watch-it-and-leave-it-on-in-the-background-as-I-fold-clothes Conan The Barbarian movie reboot, the bad guy is one called Khalar Zym.

We know little about this powerful warlord other than his wife and daughter are witches of a powerful sorcerous cult and that he is known to be a Shadow Lord.

I've read the novel adaptation of the film (which, I've got to say, is better than the movie, spending the first third of the book focussing on Young Conan and a lot of detail not seen in the film), and there really isn't any more illumination on witch cult or the Shadow Lords than what we get in the film.

So...

That leaves a lot of room for us fans to just, well, make it up.

What do you think? What's your educated guess or speculation on the details of Zym's title as Shadow Lord and Marique's strange cult? From an RPG lore perspective.

I thought it might be fun for the Conan fans among us to put some meat on these ideas.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

SHADOW LORD- the title bestowed upon any individual who, time and time again, against all challengers, has proven he makes the best shadow puppets in the world.

 

[Water Bob]

On a more serious note: I've noticed that Zym doesn't seem to have any special powers other than being a consumate warrior. He does kick Conan's behonkus at the Shaipur Outpost. Conan has to create a distraction and run from him, jumping off over the wall and into the ocean.

I was thinking: Maybe the Shadow Lord serves a function in the hierarchy of Marique's (and Khalar's wife's) witch cult.

What if the order is male dominated, politically, but there is a separation of power in only the women can wield sorcerery?

Thus, the powerful witch is held in check by her Shadow Lord.



That would bring up a question, though. Why would a powerful witch bow down to a man with no sorcerous power of his own?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Perhaps his martial prowess is the result of a pact with some otherworldly being (as yet unnamed).

 

[mcmillan]

spam reported

 

[ExploderWizard]

On a more serious note: I've noticed that Zym doesn't seem to have any special powers other than being a consumate warrior. He does kick Conan's behonkus at the Shaipur Outpost. Conan has to create a distraction and run from him, jumping off over the wall and into the ocean.

He only starts doing so after his daughter delivers a debilitating poison to Conan. If not for that, and plot reasons, Conan would have killed him then.

 

[Water Bob]

And then there's the monks of the Order of Shaipur. They seem to have controlled a pretty large area that has fallen into decay. There's the Shaipur Monastery, where Tamara and the monks reside. There's the Shaipur Ravine, where Conan used the old catapult to vault Remo into Zym's lines. And, the region sports the Shaipur Outpost, on the coast, where Conan meets Zym and Marique, fights the sandmen, and jumps into the Shaipur Bay.

The monk order--in the book charged with protecting the ancient Archeron bloodlines--seems to me to have more of a purpose than just the bloodline guardianship.

The Outpost seems recently deserted. Is this because Zym's soldiers have scared all the monks off? Yet, the Monastery seems to have been falling into decay for centuries. With all those monks to take care of the place...why?

From the film, there seems to be two different types of monks. There's the brown-robed ones who seem to be the soldiers. They have pikes, spears, dual-wielded swords, and bows. And, they can do neat things like flip backwards while riding a horse and loose an arrow, straight and true, at their enemy. The other monks are white-robed, like Tamara and her master, Fassir. These seem to look into the future while tugging on an opium pipe (Fassir) and know how to fight in close hand-to-hand and dirk engagements.

My take is that the Order of the Shaipur is an aging, almost extinct, organization that remains the blood enemies of whatever cult Zym's wife and Marique belong to.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[Erekose]

Interesting - I watched this again at last weekend. My impression was that Khalar Zym was a fighter who matched Conan in their initial combat before beating him when Conan was poisoned. However, in the final fight (even though he's now wearing the mask) I never had the sense that Conan was ever in any real danger.

 

[Yora]

Maybe in his case, the title doesn't say about anything about his skills or powers, but really is just his rank.

And that shadow thing could be something rather mundane. The Black Prince probably got the name just by having a black crest. Erik the Red probably simply had red hair.

Maybe the Shadow Lord is just the Lord of a castle that lies in a valley surrounded by high mountains, so the sun rarely reaches it.