When he began writing about Conan, Howard developed an imaginary history and geography of Conan's world. This enabled him to maintain a consistency of setting and events from one story to the next. The events in The Hour of the Dragon are set in an imaginary Hyborian Age, which succeeded a Pre-Cataclysmic Age of the barbaric civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria. With the coming of the Cataclysm, Atlantis and Lemuria sank into the oceans and the semi-civilized peoples of the world sank back into savagery.

Eventually the Hyborians, a northern race, became the dominant civilization of the western world. Their Hyborian Age lasted more than a thousand years, ending when the Picts and other enemies finally swept away their kingdoms.

Eventually, an ice age erases most of the remnants of their culture, leaving only their names for places and peoples, such as Picts (ancient inhabitants of what is...