⚔️ Conan's Youth
More of Conan cosplay from Danny... 😘
Cimmerians had long noticed that flexible boys were a whole lot luckier in battle than their strong but stiff friends. Flexibility became so popular in Cimmeria that it turned into an unspoken rule than each great warrior must possess a contortionist level physique. Gods and people frowned upon battles that didn't show off a plenty of extreme stretching...
Not only that but Cimmerians possessed quite an interesting sense of beauty, seeing extremely stretched bodies as something divine, immortalizing them in monuments and frescos.
Their wrestling tournaments were still strength contests but the winning condition was often to force the opponent into a specific contortion pose, e.g. make his head to touch his own crotch in a backbend, or make him sit on his own face, or stretch the opponent's legs into a 360 degree oversplit and interlock his feet until he's begging for mercy (or for more?), or twist the opponent's torso 180 or even 360 degrees around, etc, etc, etc...
Needless to say that such battles had two winners, the one who managed to force the other to bend was the winner on the strong side, while the other one who took the extreme bending was the winner on the flexible side. Both were praised and loved equally, and of course they greatly enjoyed each other too, spending the rest of the evening in each other's company as they couldn't wait to bend over...*cough* Anyway!
To become such great warriors, the youths had to start early and prepare themselves in two ways, first they trained to be flexible to not break anything in case their opponent happens to be stronger, second they trained to be strong themselves as it was against traditions to get bent without struggle. They trained their stamina for hours a day because one who runs out of stamina first would be most likely forced in bend.
Conan, ever since he could remember, loved his barbarian life to bits, always stretching as much as he could every day and always wrestling with his friends. At the end of the day he liked to relax upon the mountain, watching the sunset in his favorite backbend, dreaming about his adventures as a fully trained warrior...