It’s not unfeasible though… maybe the frontiersman found a dead pict woman in the woods, her tiny offspring still sucking on their dead mother’s breast. And since the frontiersman and hios wife have been denied children, they see it as their duty in Mithra’s eyes to take care of the young heather, show him the right path.
It’s not without precedent.
Also, REH probably shows us only part of the tale. Like on the american frontier, is it so unbelievable, that more peaceful pictish tribes also exist, maybe bartering with settlers at the border every once in a while? Couples from both cultures could start up from coexisting for a while, as has happened for time immemorial, see the romans in britain. I find it much more unbelievable that a kill on sight exists for everyone on both sides on the frontier.
The way the Picts are described in REH’s Conan stories the child’s tribe will find this couple of invading foreigners, take the child back and slaughter everyone else.
Peaceful coexistence is not a thing that could be seen or extrapolated from the original Conan stories. They focus on the savage struggle for survival and dominance - no mercy shown from either side.
See, we don’t disagree… but because REH focuses on the savage side and the struggle for survival, might it not be argued that we don’t see the “softer” part of the world in his stories, that it exists alongside his descriptions but is seldom seen? After all, civilization exists, which it probably wouldn’t if it were “all savage all the time”.
And if a GM comes to the conclusion that this softer side can exist, he could use it as a backdrop in his campaigns without going against the spirit of REH’s writing? Every GM puts his own stamp on the stories he decides to tell after all. The only important thing is that everyone at the table have fun… and if that includes a not-so-violent pictish tribe in the vicinity of aquilonian settlers, Howards world (if perhaps not his stories) has room for that imho. The savagery could come later, if a different pictish tribe comes across this arrangement, kills aquilonians and “traitors” alike and leaves the young PC unconscious in the flamin ruins of his childhood, his heart either burning for the accptance of his pictish brothers or for revenge against them…
Yes, of course. And what works for a certain group is always perfectly fine. There will not be any REH “scholar” somehow showing up to stop this “badwrongfun”.
As the Picts by REH do show quite a lot stereotypes as north-american indians, you can certainly set up stories like classical western movies, where you have a “half-breed” or such, with all their interpersonal drama. That will work fine, as most Sword&Sorcery fantasy stories are essentially Western stories without firearms.