The Picts were an especial favourite race of Robert E. Howard and are mentioned frequently in his tales, having a continuity from the Thurian Age tales of King Kull of Valusia, where they are his allies, to the Hyborian Age of Conan the Barbarian, where they are the mortal enemies of the Cimmerians (who are actually descended from the old Atlanteans, though they don't remember their ancestry or old alliance). Howard also wrote tales about the last King of the Picts Bran Mak Morn set in real historical time, and they figure commonly as enemies of Cormac Mac Art. Of all the races and civilizations in Howard's writings, the Picts are the race or civilization with the longest history. They even appear in his story "The Valley of the Worm", set long before Kull, where a tribe of Picts help the protagonist, Niord, battle a giant snake and a creature which resembles a shoggoth. Howard gave the Picts a sense of continuity between different ages by making Bran Mak Morn a descendant of Kull's ally Brule the Spear Slayer, and then describing how the king's soul had been affixed to a black stone statue worshiped by the medieval Picts. The status of the Picts and their civilization generally declined over time; the Picts of the Thurian Age were far more sophisticated than their primitive, brutish descendants.