– The Kingdom Of Koth –
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- Kothians
A Hyborian kingdom south of Ophir, Corinthia, and Zamora, North of Shem and Argos, and bordered on the east by Khoraja and Khauran.
The terrain of Koth is an exercise in geographical ingenuity. The steep peaks of the Karpash Range were an impassable barrier along the Corinthian border, as this area was not crossed by caravans. Further west, the mountains softened into hills below western Ophir, and were traversed by at least two passes. Along the Argossean frontier, the Pyrrhenian Mountains deflected moist air masses, creating Koth’s western meadowlands (sub-humid prairie), fading into known deserts east of Khorshemish. This mountain range curved south, then to the east above Shem. It quickly faded into rugged hill-country, gaining elevation and impenetrability again at the Flaming Mountains, a volcanic range.
The important road going south out of Khorshemish traversed a pass on the way to Eruk in Shem. One thousand miles of uplands culminated in the Kothian Escarpment, a huge wall that ran along the edge of the Eastern Desert before rising into the southern bulk of the Kezankian Mountains. The eastern region of the kingdom is described as “fertile uplands”. This presupposes that the hills south of Zamora acted as a moisture trap to water the region and fill its “blue lakes and rivers”. It also makes necessary a basin-style drainage pattern for eastern Koth. A saline body of water in the barrens of central Koth called Salt Lake, together with additional smaller bodies of freshwater, took care of the runoff.
Koth has meadows and orchards in the western and farms in the eastern uplands. The anomalous desert of Koth, mentioned in Return of Conan, has been placed in the central kingdom.
Its ancient capital, Khorshemish, is the center of the armor-making industry that is Koth’s pride and joy. Almost all scholars discussing Koth’s history have presumed it to be the first of the Hyborian kingdoms. The geography of the world-continent and its effect on the movement of the early Hyborians makes such a hypothesis unlikely. Koth is very old, but it was probably not originally established by Hyborians. Valusian refugees are more plausible precursors.