Crom is the chief god of the Cimmerians.
History and Cult Practices
Crom is worshiped by the bulk of the Cimmerian people. Crom is a grim and gloomy god, ever watching from atop his mountain in dark clouds or obscuring mists, ready to pass a disapproving judgment on any and all. Still, he is said to approve of an individual's courage and tenacity, even if the human is too frail to succeed in a major task. He isn't so much worshipped as invoked. In Howard's work, Conan exclaims phrases like "Crom and his devils!" as a curse. He is called upon when trying to gather one's courage.
Cimmerians believe he is the cause of earthquakes, including the one that sank Atlantis. Cimmerians are his chosen people, and because he has bestowed them at birth with "[the] power to strive and slay" - the courage to go on, survive, and vanquish adversity, he considers any further pleas to be an insult to those gifts. Crom disdains worship and is offended by flattery. So, even prayers of praise and gratitude will be punished. The only way to show devotion to Crom is through action, though building a monument of a mountain struck by lightning, Crom's emblem, is permissible.
In the canonical stories, Conan remarks in conversation that it's best to avoid doing anything which would draw Crom's attention, as he hands out only dooms and trouble.
Crom only directly intervenes in Conan's life once, unasked, to save a middle-aged Conan from a dishonorable death at the hands of a malevolent magician. Crom is saving him, presumably, for a more honorable one involving overwhelming odds, heaps of mangled corpses, and rivers of blood. Conan is aware of the intervention and afterward sheepishly makes his first sacrifice to Crom since boyhood, doing it secretively for fear of others thinking he has "gone religious in [his] dotage."
In the 1982 film
In Conan the Barbarian (1982), Crom is referenced similarly to in Howard's works, with one exception. During a theological discussion, Conan says that when he dies, he will go in front of Crom who will ask him the Riddle of Steel and if he does not know the answer, Crom will mock him and cast him away from Valhalla. The Riddle of Steel is not mentioned in Howard's stories, though it may reflect Crom's similarity to Odin.
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