Hyperborean

Overview
Hyperborea is a cold, windy land to the east of Asgard with a population approaching perhaps two million souls. The Hyperboreans are noted slavers. They are tall and gaunt, with pale eyes and hair despite the foreign blood in many of them. They ride and herd horses; these horses are likely shaggy ponies. At one time, they built homes out of horsehide; however, by the time of Conan the Hyperboreans live in cities. Hyperboreans know how to move through the pine forests and survive in the wild for days. Many Hyperboreans go on extended wilderness forays, even going so far as to visit other countries.

Slavers
Hyperboreans are a cruel people, given to torture to create fear in others. They are extremely tall and rugged but centuries of oppression by their overlords has made them a people that are not strong in character or personal, inner strength. Still, they are physically strong, malicious and aggressive. Given their height and alien appearance and their reputation for cruelty, most people prefer to give wandering Hyperboreans a wide berth.

Cults and Magic
Those that practice sorcery, and there are many in this grim land, are known as Witchmen. They rule from many of the bleak fortresses that squat horribly on the tops of cleared knolls and wooded ridges. They serve sorcerous queens and kings, dressing solemnly in black with white, faceless masks. The Witchmen use wooden rods with rounded, platinum ball-tips as mystical weapons that can shoot pain through their victims with the merest touch without leaving a tell-tale mark. Many of the Witchmen worship a death-goddess and often choose a powerful sorceress as her living incarnation. The Witchmen are also known as the White Hand, which is their symbol. The White Hand is a weird cult of pale wizard-assassins that holds power in Hyperborea through the terror of their horrible arts. They kill without leaving a mark and fight only with their strange, platinum-tipped rods. Those who serve in the White Hand undergo strange mortifications of body, mind and will. They are considered the deadliest fighters in the world, immune to fear and pain. In addition to the death goddess, they worship a whole host of devil-gods and avatars.

Clothing
A Hyperborean woman usually wears a hornshaped cap, a long laced bodice, a hip-length jacket and a broadstriped cloth skirt. Aprons are worn as well, as are warm cloaks for outdoor travel. Girls wear silk or linen headbands instead of hats. Noble girls wear thin tiaras or more elaborate headbands. A Hyperborean man wears a simple shirt, long trousers, a jacket or coat, a hat or cap, and often a scarf about his neck during the long, cold winters. The men usually wield broadswords or axes. Stone weapons still see use in the backwoods, isolated areas of an already isolated nation.

Social Standing
Hyperborean nobles live in great stone castles, aloof and distant from the serfs who live beneath them in stone-walled villages. Most Hyperborean nobles dabble in magic or multi-class into scholars. They tend to be languid and bored, slow of speech and lacking in strength of character.

The culture does not support the social mechanisms for true knights. Few Hyperborean nobles have the drive to learn to fight as soldiers for an army. That is the purview of the lesser Hyperboreans. However, some of the border nobles have learned to fight nomad invaders and do call themselves knights. They wear mail shirts under scale hauberks with helmets stolen from Æsir, Cimmerian, Hyborian or Hyrkanian invaders. They carry lances into battle while crouching behind teardrop shields and use Æsir broadswords when their lances break.

Hyperborea is not a populous kingdom, despite its large size. The warmer climes to the south were inviting to the original clans and most pushed on southward. Those that remained were a stubborn breed that loved the ridged hills and dark forests. The small population is often not enough to do the necessary work for the various lords in their stone citadels, so the Hyperboreans use slave labour extensively and are harsh taskmasters. The use of slaves in Hyperborea eventually gave way to the lords of that kingdom treating all people, even Hyperborean serfs, as slaves of a sort.

Trade and Economy
The gaunt Hyperboreans still hunt wild animals, herd domesticated animals, gather meager berries and pick pale mushrooms to supplement their sparse gardens of grains and vegetables. Their culture, although prosperous at first, became introverted, shunning most outside trade contact, so the Hyperboreans have minimal industry. Still, the Hyperboreans are skilled at woodcraft and stonework.

Military
Hyperborean soldiers are massive men who carry great swords and fight to keep the grim nobles and languid scholars safe in their stone keeps and granite castles. Many soldiers leave Hyperborea to become mercenaries in foreign armies. They are slow of speech but are not necessarily dim or foolish. Some are little more than gaunt brutes but others are keen and sharp, always alert, ready for someone to assume they are as slow of movement, reaction and thought as they are of speech. They often wear scale hauberks and fight with techniques similar to the Æsir.

Religion
Most Hyperboreans still worship the old Hyborian godhero Bori. Isolated and aloof, these Hyborians missed the religious revolution which enveloped the rest of the Hyborian kingdoms and converted them to Mitra worship. Likely the worship of Bori is some form of ancestor worship. Still a primitive culture, at least by Hyborian standards, the Hyperboreans probably still worship their ancestors rather than some more complex, ritualized religion. Faith and Fervour has more information on the worship of Bori. Over time, and through contact from their slaves, the Hyperboreans may have added some foreign deities to Bori’s pantheon, such as Ymir from Nordheim or the skygods of the Hyrkanians.

Hyperboreans also pray to spirits that inhabit the natural world surrounding them, such as individual trees, the rivers, the ridged mountains, or even the forests as a whole. Possibly imported from Hyrkanian slaves, shamanism likely also exists as a means of interceding between the people and the spirit realms of nature. Shamanism usually co-exists with blacksmithing, so the town blacksmith may be considered vested with near-magical powers in strongly shamanistic areas.