Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria Revisited
Appendix N Revisited, Part 6
Hello, and welcome to the sixth installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project! As I mentioned previously, in the course of this project, I want to revisit the classics of fantasy fiction, weird fiction, and science fiction that made up "Appendix N" to the original Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax, both to explore their influence on my Hobby (RPGs) and my own writing and conception of fantasy fiction. The sixth installment focuses on Lin Carter and Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. If you have never read the book and wish to avoid spoilers, you should stop reading at this point, as I shall be discussing the book in some detail.
Linwood Vrooman Carter (1930-1988), a "posthumus collaborator" with Robert E. Howard (also of Appendix N) and Clark Ashton Smith (who was left off of Gygax's list for Appendix N, which has been considered inexplicable by many who are certain that Gygax read Smith and was influenced by his work), writer of pastiches of H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany (both also of Appendix N) - I encountered him for the first time as the author of the forward to a collection of Lovecraft stories. I was very young, maybe not even a teen yet, and I thought "Lin" was a woman's name (I was very surprised years later to find "Lin Carter" referenced as "he/him" in something!). Anyway, he often did, Gygax added a notation to the Appendix N entry for Lin Carter - "World's End" series. In such notations, Gygax did not always mean that the book or series referenced was the only one he read or thought had influence, it seems to me that it usually means that the particular notation was something he considered particularly memorable or noteworthy at the time he compiled the appendix. In this case, I do not yet own a copy of the "World's End" books, but they're on my wishlists. Instead, I decided to go with Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria, a basic sword-and-sorcery yarn.
Ease of Availability
I acquired the Kindle edition of Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria quite inexpensively, as well as a few more books in the series. There do not seem to be audiobook editions available at this time from Audible (though there are audiobooks for the World's End series, I note!).
Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!
Lin Carter's Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria is a fairly generic sword-and-sorcery piece, almost a parody of the pulp genre. As such, it is actually less readable than I had hoped. The setting seems to be Earth of the unimaginably distant past, as it is in Howard's "Conan" stories, with references to the "Dawn Age" of the world and lost continents from the pulps, like Lemuria and Mu. I have since seen claims that it is meant to be an unimaginably far future, after some terrible apocalypse, but that theory does not seem to be supported by what Carter wrote in this book. Maybe the other books in the series that I have not yet read will shed more light on the origins of that theory. The book is dedicated to L. Sprague de Camp, who has the distinction of being mentioned twice in Appendix N.
Each chapter of the book has a fanciful title, like "Red Swords in Thurdis" or "Dark Wings Over Chush," accompanied by an epigraph. The epigraph invariably comes from some fictional work, such as The War-Song of the Valkarthan Swordsmen or The Lemurian Chronicles. Quite a few of the epigraphs are from staves of Thongor's Saga, apparently an "in-world" piece of literature that tells roughly the same story that Carter's work tells in ours.
Anyway, the protagonist of this book is Thongor of Valkarth, a man cut from much the same cloth as Howard's more familiar Conan - a barbarian, contemptuous of the scorn heaped upon him by soft, weak, "civilized" men. We meet him as he is about to start a tavern brawl with Jeled Malkh, an otar (a type of nobleman) under whom he had served as a mercenary, and who was now trying to cheat Thongor. Some purple prose later ("Steel rang against steel as the barbarian mercenary and the jewled scion of the noblest house in all of Thurdis fought"), and Thongor ends up killing his opponent before being knocked unconscious from behind.
Thongor awakens in prison, surely facing execution, but remains Stoically calm in the fashion of the "easy come, easy go" manner of the sword-and-sorcery hero ("he simply shrugged, with the fatalistic philosophy of he North that wastes no time worrying over what cannot be helped"). He plans to escape, but an ally comes to help him break out - Aid Turmis, a "thin-blooded Thurdan" but a fighting man nonetheless, whom he first met in a similar prison in Zangabal across the Patangan Gulf, where there was apparently an incident with a sorcerer whose house they burned down. So we establish that Thongor is used to landing in prison for his escapades, Aid Turmis has brought him his great Valkarthan broadsword and a dark cloak, and leads him to an exit from the prison.
Thongor had planned to steal a zamph (a kind of mount, later referred to as some type of reptile) and flee, but an alarm sounds and he realizes the stables will be guarded. Then he notices the Sark's (a title equivalent to "King") new "floater" - a flying boat of sorts, which the Sark's alchemist had constructed of urlium, the weightless metal. So of course, he decides to steal the floater instead. He easily defeats the guards and figures out the simple controls and takes off. He finds some supplies aboard (including a powerful, six-foot war bow of the sort used by the Blue Nomads). He flies through the night, navigating by the stars to the northwest. His course should take him over Patanga and later Kathool.
He has reasons to avoid Patanga - the city is "dominated by the yellow-robed Druids who worshipped Yamath, God of Fire, by burning women alive on his red-hot altars of fiery bronze," and rumors said that the princess Sumia of Patanga was practically a prisoner in her own palace, since the Yellow Druid Vaspas Ptol had virtually taken over Patanga since the death of her father, the former Sark. Phal Thurid, the Sark of Thurdis, wanted to marry her in order to annex Patanga. No, this was all too complicated for Thongor, who wants to lead a simple, mercenary life. He wants to head to Kathool, "whose Sark needed warriors to protect his jungled borders from the savages of Chush." So Thongor sets the controls and falls asleep in the floater, expecting to wake up somewhere near Kathool.
When Thongor wakes up, the endless jungles of Chush are below him. He realizes that the floater kept running until the springs wound down that powered the rotors, but then the winds carried the floater far off course into Chush. He ends up in a battle with several monsters of Chush that see the floater as a possible meal - a grakk, the "lizard-hawk" of Chush (soon joined by another), and a dwark, the "jungle dragon," Thongor tried to pilot the floater away, but the grakks attack and the floater crashes into a tree and becomes wedged in its branches, and Thongor falls to the jungle floor. He starts to make his way through the jungle on foot, armed only with his broadsword, evading the blood-sucking slith vines, dragging the floater along by its rope. Then he realizes that the dwark is still stalking him.
Despite his courage and prowess, Thongor knows he is no match for a dwark, so he tries to flee. He end up entangled in a vampiric slith vine, whose blossoms "emit a narcotic cloud of perfume that rendered its victims insensible" [an inspiration for some of the terrible plants of later RPGs, such as the Yellow Musk Creeper Vine in D&D?].
Still trying to shake off the effects of this poison so he can make a final stand against the dwark, Thongor hears a voice saying, "Hold your breath, swordsman!" A tall, robed figure was standing there, holding a small steel chest. He hurled from it some blue powder at the dwark, which does not eat Thomgor. The man explains it is the "dust of the dream lotus . . . One grain will transport a man to the dreamworlds of fantastic pleasure within his own mind for many hours. The dragon has inhaled enough to render a fair-sized city unconscious." He introduces himself to Thongor as Sharajsha of Zaar, an enchanter.
Thongor has heard of Zaar, "that weird city of magicians, far to the east" where the "Black Druids of Zaar were reputed to be devil-worshippers and devotees of the Dark Forces," as so keeps his broadsword handy. But Sharajsha invites Thongor back to his home for food, drink, and rest. Thongor reluctantly agrees. Like most sword-and-sorcery barbarians, he has no love or trust for sorcery, but he has heard of this wizard, Sharajsha the Great, called the Wizard of Lemuria by some, and could "not ever recall having heard anything dubious or evil concerning him," besides which Thongor had no fear of magic, even if he had no liking for it either. So Thongor accompanies Sharajsha back to his zamph, which will take them out of the jungles of Chush and to the wizard's home in the Mountains of Mommur. The wizard reveals that he saw Thongor's approach in his magical glass, and decided to rescue him, for "I have need of a warrior."
Sharajsha's lair under the Mountains of Mommur is a series of vast, fantastic underground caverns filled with all manner of wonders. After Thongor bathes and has his wounds tended, he takes a long sleep, after which they feasted ("the wizard spread a fine table"), and the wizard listens to the tales of the barbarian's adventures. Thongor mentions his intent to seek service with the Sark of Kathool, or a similar city along the Gulf. Sharajsha shows him a map and offers to help repair the floater, perhaps in exchange for an offer of employment - "thus were they met at last, Thongor of Valkarth and Sharajsha of Zaar, and thus were the feet of the youthful warrior set on the first steps of that mighty road that would either lead him to the glory of a kingly throne, or to a black and terrible death."
So, Thongor & Sharajsha retrieve the floater and bring it back to Sharajsha's underground lair, where the wizard begins repairs and Thongor explores the libraries and armories. When Thongor gets around to asking about his earlier statement that he had need of a warrior, the wizard says that he fears nothing less than "the destruction of the world."
Sharajsha tells of the Dawn Age, and the Dragon Kings with their "cold, cunning intelligence: malign, clever, and inhuman." They evolved into the serpentmen who ruled elder Hyperborea. The Nineteen Gods created the First Men, starting with Phondath the Firstborn. The first city, Nemedis, was built on the shores of the ultimate east of Lemuria. The Dragon Kings invaded when the snows overwhelmed their realm at the pole, "and there was war . . ." In the Thousand-Year War, "the heroism of the First Kingdoms of Man stood against the overwhelming might and science of the Dragon Kings." Finally, the great leader of the First Men, Lord Thungarth, called upon the Father of the Gods, Gorm, who bestowed upon him the Sword of Nemedis, the Star Sword the gods had forged. Then the last heroes marched forth and drove back the Dragon Kings to the northern shores of Lemuria, when Thungarth fell and the Star Sword slaughtered the last of the Dragons.
But Sharajsha reveals that Diombar the Singer (to whom some of the epigraphs at the beginnings of chapters are attributed) did not know the full story - that though the Dragon Kings fell, the Dragon wizards escaped to plot revenge upon the race of humans for millennia. "The Dragons plot a terrible vengeance that shall not only destroy mankind but wreck the very fabric of the cosmos." The Dragons seek to contact their dark gods, the Lords of Darkness that oppose the gods of men, the Lords of Light. When the Universe was created, they were exiled to the Chaos beyond, but the Lords of chaos plot to "re-enter space and time, to begin anew their stupendous conflict with the Gods of men." [The clash between Law and Chaos, between the powers the favor humanity and the forces which see humanity as insignificant, or even to destroy humanity, is very Appendix N!] The Dragons plot to open a portal through which the Lords of Chaos may enter space, which may be done when the stars are right - soon! 7007 years since Phondath the Firstborn was given life, "in just weeks we shall be into the hour of doom. The old year will pass - the Festival of the Year's End will come and go. It is within the first week of the the seven thousand and eighth year of man that the stars will be right for the Dragon Kings to reap their awful vengeance upon the world that drove them into exile."
"Only one thing can destroy them and their monstrous plans" - "The same Sword that destroyed their power six thousand years ago. The Sword of Nemedis" - but it was said to have been broken in the Last Battle! Sharajsha knows how to reforge the Star Sword, but needs a warrior to wield it! Thongor agrees to be that warrior.
After taking a week to repair the floater, Thongor and Sharajsha travel over Chush to Tsargol, the city of the Red Druids, where a "Star Stone" fell from the sky thousands of years ago. They seek to acquire a fragment of the Star Stone with which to forge a new blade. So they moor the floater to the top of the Scarlet Tower (where the Star Stone is kept) on a dark and cloudy night and Thongor climbs down into the tower to search for the stone.
As he searches for the Star Stone, Thongor hears a strange slithering sound - it turns out to be a slorg, a woman-headed serpent of the Lemurian deserts [like a D&D naga, or a "lamia noble"]. Worse, he realizes that he can hear more of them coming. He begins to fight his way through them, beheading the monsters with his broadsword. He fights his way to a chamber where he finds the Star Stone - "a rough black mass of metal slag" - on an altar, and secures it to the cable to the floater. The Star Stone is lifted away, but more slorgs attack Thongor, and he if left to fight them as the floater drifts away . . .
Thongor awakens in a prison cell - the slorgs were apparently instructed to capture rather than kill intruders. Soldiers take him from his cell and bring him to the throne room of the Red Archdruid and the Sark (twin thrones for the two powers of the city, sacred and secular). They demand to know what Thongor has done with the sacred Star Stone, threatening tortures. Thongor decides it would be better to die in battle as his god, Father Gorm, would demand, rather than face a slow wasting death by torture, so he catches the guards off balance, gets hold of a spear, and charges the throne. He sends the Sark sprawling with a blow from his spear butt and the Red Archdruid vanishes as the guards try to retake Thongor. They succeed in recapturing him, and (as Thongor intended) the Sark condemns him to die in the arena for the humiliation he suffered (despite the wishes of the Archdruid that he be kept alive for questioning until the Star Stone is recovered).
A much heavier guard is sent to take Thongor to the arena. There is another prisoner, the otar who previously led the guard, now punished for allowing Thongor to break free and threaten the Sark and Archdruid. His name is Karm Karvus, and he manages to earn Thongor's respect. As they are taken to the arena, the guard return Thongor's broadsword, for the Sark believes he will be more entertaining with his own weapon. They enter the arena facing the royal box where the Sark and Archdruid sit above a "grim iron gate made in the likeness of a horned human skull" - the "Gate of Death." The Sark gives the command to release the "Terror of the Arena" - a zamadar, "the most dreaded monster of all Lemuria" - a red-skinned, yellow-eyed creature of murderous rage, tremendous speed, a triple-row of foot-long fangs, and saliva of paralytic poison.
Thongor and Karm Karvus fight the zamadar together, but quickly realize that their blades cannot pierce its leathery flesh. Thongor jumps onto its back to try to get at its eyes ("the only vulnerable portion of the beast's entire body"); he drives his broadsword through the zamadar's eyes and into its brain [a DCC RPG Mighty Deed of Arms if I ever heard one!], but it still takes a long time to die! Then Thongor says, "That is how a man fights, Sark of Tsargol. Now let us see how a man dies," and flings his broadsword, which transfixes the Sark's chest and causes him to stumble and fall from the box above to the sands of the arena below, almost at Thongor's feet. Thongor then retrieves his sword.
Meanwhile, the Red Archdruid claims the Sark's fallen crown for himself. Just as his guards close in on Thongor and Karm Karvus, the floater descends on the arena, picking up the two warriors, and flies away!
After introductions, Sharajsha reveals the next step - he has a fragment of the Star Stone, and he can forge a new blade for the Star Sword in the Eternal Fire in "the crypts below the High Altar of Yamath, Lord of Flame", in Patanga, the City of Fire. When the floater arrives over Patanga, Karm Karvus is left to guard the ship while Thongor and Sharajsha go to fulfill the quest. They make their way into the forbidden crypts below the city without incident, and Sharajsha begins working on the Star Sword. But a Yellow Druid and dome guards approach, forcing Thongor to defend the wizard while Sharajsha completes the task. Thongor fights well, but in the end both he and the wizard are knocked out by narcotic vapors and taken prisoner.
Meanwhile, Sumia, the Sarkaja (or Princess, the terms being used interchangeably) of Patanga, is (as Thongor had been musing when he left Thurdis) imprisoned for resisting the advances of the Yellow Archdruid, Vaspas Ptol, who essentially took over the city when her father died. She is to be sacrificed this night, in the Festival of Year's End, to Yamath, the Dread Lord of the Fires. Thongor and Sharajsha are imprisoned with Sumia, still unconscious from the sleep vapors. When they awake, they discover that their manacles do not allow Thongor much movement, nor can Sharajsha use his magic with his hands so tightly bound.
Guards come to take them to their sacrifice - "The flaming altars of Yamath await the three of you, the God's most honored guests. And the God is impatient." They are brought into the great Hall of the God, a gigantic circular room with a domed ceiling 200' above set with stained glass windows. On the far side of the room is the brazen idol of Yamath - 10x the height of a man, with a horned bald head and a great fanged mouth grinning beneath eyes in which fires have been lit [does this make anyone else think of the "Demon Idol" cover of the AD&D Player's Handbook, except without the gemstone eyes? You grognards know the one I mean!]
The altars were in the cupped hands of the idol of Yamath, which rested on his lap. The altars "were also of brass, hollow, and beneath them the furnaces raged. The victims would be chained nude upon these altars and roasted alive."
As Thongor and his companions are marched to their certain death, he sees in the faces of the nobles of Patanga that they have no wish to see their Princess sacrificed, but they are unarmed, while the Yellow Druids carry swords, and "archers were ranged along the walls." At the base of the idol, the Yellow Archdruid Vaspas Ptol, dressed in jeweled robes of yellow velvet, halts them and offers Sumia a choice between accepting him embrace and ruling beside him, or "going to the fiery embrace of Yamath." She proudly refuses him, of course! So Vaspas Ptol prepares to sacrifice the three prisoners. They are bound upright to metal poles while the altars are being heated. Thongor begins to exert all of his massive strength against his bonds.
They see that on the platform where the Yellow Archdruid stands lie Thongor's broadsword and the Sword of Nemedis, apparently intended to be hurled into the flames of Yamath as sacrifices as well. A Yellow Druid begins to strip the prisoners bare, starting with Sumia. Her gown is ripped away, and she stares ahead defiantly as he reaches out for her bare body. Just then, Thongor's titanic strength finally snaps the chains of the manacle holding him. He hurled the Druid who had stripped Sumia down onto an alter, where he fries!
Thongor hurls the other priests off the platform, and uses the iron hilt of a Druid's dagger as a lever to snap Sumia's bonds and sets her to free Sharajsha, who then hurls magical bolts of lightning at their captors even as Thongor lays into them with a sword takes up from a fallen Druid! He gets to the platform where he retrieves his sword and the Star Sword, and turns to slay Vaspas Ptol, who leaps down to the floor below rather than face him. The stained glass windows above shatter, and the floater flies in to rescue them, piloted by Karm Karvus. The three climb aboard and the floater flies away to the northwest, seeking to reach the Mountain of Thunder before dawn . . . for the old year has ended, the new year has begun, and in just a few days the Dragon Kings would attempt to summon the Lords of Chaos!
After the reunion of Karm Karvus with Thongor and Sharajsha, they introduce him to Sumia, rightful Sarkaja of the City of Fire. Sharajsha says that he completed the work of reforging the blade of the Star Sword before they were captured. They fill Sumia in on the situation with the Dragon Kings and she resolves to join them, since she is now an exile from her home city. They fly all day and night towards the Mountain of Thunder, and arrive late in the morning the next day. This is where the next step must be performed by Sharajsha alone - he will take the Star Sword to the peak and call down the primal powers of the elements in order to imbue the blade with them.
While they wait for Sharajsha, Thongor spits, "Sorcery! Give me a good blade and a strong arm. That's all the sorcery one needs to fight an enemy!" [a pretty solid sword-and-sorcery barbarian attitude on the subject, and one which echoes that reported of those Vikings who scorned the aid of both Christ and pagan gods, preferring to rely on their own might and main]. Thongor watches the charming, civilized Karm Karvus conversing with Sumia, and feels a bit left out, as a rude barbarian who cannot converse with civilized princesses. Suddenly, though, Sumia screams! A grakk, a lizard-hawk like the ones that attacked him in Chush, is rushing to attack them! Thongor and Karm Karvus face the grakk together, saving Sumia, but they cannot defeat the grakk. Thongor sends Karm Karvus to get Sumia back to the floater while he hold off the grakk, but he is knocked out, snatched up, and carried off, leaving behind his broadsword!
Thongor awakens in mid-air, still clutched in the claw of the grakk, unarmed and alone. The grakk drops him onto its nest on a high pinnacle of rock to feed its three offspring. He takes up a long white bone with a jagged edge as a weapon. He manages to slay the three grakklets, but is stranded atop a lofty pinnacle of rock with no way down, waiting for the mother grakk to return to the nest . . .
Meanwhile, Sharajsha has returned from the peak of the Mountain of Thunder and the floater has set sail once more. Thongor's companions believe him dead, and "only hours remained before the moment of conjuration." They approach the Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis, and the Dragon Isles where they seek the Dragon Kings. The airship lands and the remaining heroes, hidden by the fog, "melted into the shadows under the walls of the black castle and vanished from sight" as they plan to infiltrate the stronghold of the Dragon Kings. The castle, in a nod to H.P. Lovecraft's sensibilities, is composed of cyclopean masonry whose "weird architecture of nightmare" seemed "designed according to the geometry of another world."
Suddenly, "monstrous black forms loomed out of the mist toward them." They arm themselves, but to no avail - a "glittering black hand clamped down on Sharajsha's wrist with crushing force," and the "Star Sword fell in a dazzling arc from his nerveless grasp," falling down into the thundering waves. Sharajsha then tries to use his magic, but is knocked unconscious by "an uncanny force," and when Karm Karvus tries to fight, he too is incapacitated by magic. A black, taloned hand with seven fingers, covered in scales, closes on Sumia's shoulder. The Dragon Kings had detected their approach in the airship, and plan to offer their life-energy to the Lords of Chaos!
Meanwhile, Thongor skins the grakklets in order to fashion a rope from their hides with which he might reach a ledge, from which he might make his way down from the heights - "it took him an hour to descend two hundred feet. But from there he would move more swiftly and surely, standing erect . . ." Reaching the bottom, Thongor follows a river towards the Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis, where lie the Dragon Isles. He has a run-in with some reptilian river-monster, and being unarmed, is forced to flee and take refuge in a cave. He follows the tunnels from the cave and emerges onto a rock not far from the Dragon Isles, out on the Inner Sea. He swims to the Dragon Isles, and finds the Sword of Nemedis in the surf by the shore! Thongor now assumes his companions must be dead, since they would not relinquish the Star Sword easily while alive!
The prisoners, meanwhile, are contemplating their fate. Sharajsha has no access to his magic, for his sigils and talismans [like D&D spell components] were stripped from him by Sssaaa, the Arch-Priest of the Dragon Kings himself! Later, as the time for the ritual approaches, the Dragon Kings come to fetch Sharajsha, Karm Karvus, and Sumia to be sacrificed. They are led through the alien citadel to an inner courtyard where there are rings of nineteen-foot-tall black stone pillars surrounding a circular altar of ebony stone. The pillars are engraved with Dragon runes that Sharajsha shudders to read. A score of Dragon Kings bearing spheres of red light in their hands and strange helms of red metal on their heads await. The prisoners are affixed to this altar by manacles of the same red metal.
The ritual reaches its climax as the stars turn red above, and reality itself seems to be rending apart. The carven hieroglyphics on the pillars glow, as do the manacles and helms of strange red metal. Sssaaa brings forth a sword of black metal with a pronged tip - the Sword of Sacrifice. Just as he is about to sacrifice Sumia to the Lords of Chaos . . . Thongor laughs behind him! Yes, Thongor is there, bearing the Star Sword. He points it at Sssaaa, and blasts of magical lightning arch from the Star Sword to the Sword of Sacrifice, then again to strike Sssaaa in his red metal helm, striking him down. Chaos ensues as the Dragon Kings try to flee, but the blasts from the Star Sword are shattering and toppling pillars onto them, annihilating them . . . The Dragon Kings are defeated!
When it is all over, Thongor strikes off the manacles of his companions, and kisses Sumia at long last . . .
In an epilogue, the companions have returned to Sharajsha's underground palace to celebrate. Thongor will take no reward for his service to Sharajsha, but the wizard gets him to take a personal gift - a gold arm-band that Sharajsha implies has special properties. Karm Karvus says he intends to follow wherever Thongor leads, and Sumia says the same. Thongor himself says he intends to return to Patanga to reclaim it from the Yellow Druids for Sumia . . . And so the story ends, but the series continues . . .
Lin Carter's influences are plain, including (as mentioned above) H.P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Thongor is, as I said, almost a parody of a sword-and-sorcery barbarian, sometimes almost a painful one. This kind of character did much to inspire the original barbarian class(es), and explain the enduring popularity of that type even to this day. Tim Kask, the first editor of The Dragon (later Dragon Magazine), recently said in an interview that this was the kind of character from fiction that Gary Gygax seemed to most admire, and he assumed player would all want to play Conan-types, and couldn't imagine (in the beginning) anyone wanting to play a magic-user, since they were usually the villains of this sort of story. Even if the Thongor stories did not directly influence Gygax (and I'm betting he did read some of them), it is exactly the kind of story that thrilled and inspired him.
Lin Carter's "Thongor of Lemuria" books have even inspired their very own Fantasy RPG, "Barbarians of Lemuria" by Simon Washbourne. While drawing obvious inspiration from D&D and other fantasy RPGs that preceded it, Washbourne's system is distinctly its own game, not simply a retro-clone of D&D. Certainly, the plot of this book alone sounds like it recounts several games in a lengthy RPG campaign!
Each chapter of the book has a fanciful title, like "Red Swords in Thurdis" or "Dark Wings Over Chush," accompanied by an epigraph. The epigraph invariably comes from some fictional work, such as The War-Song of the Valkarthan Swordsmen or The Lemurian Chronicles. Quite a few of the epigraphs are from staves of Thongor's Saga, apparently an "in-world" piece of literature that tells roughly the same story that Carter's work tells in ours.
Anyway, the protagonist of this book is Thongor of Valkarth, a man cut from much the same cloth as Howard's more familiar Conan - a barbarian, contemptuous of the scorn heaped upon him by soft, weak, "civilized" men. We meet him as he is about to start a tavern brawl with Jeled Malkh, an otar (a type of nobleman) under whom he had served as a mercenary, and who was now trying to cheat Thongor. Some purple prose later ("Steel rang against steel as the barbarian mercenary and the jewled scion of the noblest house in all of Thurdis fought"), and Thongor ends up killing his opponent before being knocked unconscious from behind.
Thongor awakens in prison, surely facing execution, but remains Stoically calm in the fashion of the "easy come, easy go" manner of the sword-and-sorcery hero ("he simply shrugged, with the fatalistic philosophy of he North that wastes no time worrying over what cannot be helped"). He plans to escape, but an ally comes to help him break out - Aid Turmis, a "thin-blooded Thurdan" but a fighting man nonetheless, whom he first met in a similar prison in Zangabal across the Patangan Gulf, where there was apparently an incident with a sorcerer whose house they burned down. So we establish that Thongor is used to landing in prison for his escapades, Aid Turmis has brought him his great Valkarthan broadsword and a dark cloak, and leads him to an exit from the prison.
Thongor had planned to steal a zamph (a kind of mount, later referred to as some type of reptile) and flee, but an alarm sounds and he realizes the stables will be guarded. Then he notices the Sark's (a title equivalent to "King") new "floater" - a flying boat of sorts, which the Sark's alchemist had constructed of urlium, the weightless metal. So of course, he decides to steal the floater instead. He easily defeats the guards and figures out the simple controls and takes off. He finds some supplies aboard (including a powerful, six-foot war bow of the sort used by the Blue Nomads). He flies through the night, navigating by the stars to the northwest. His course should take him over Patanga and later Kathool.
He has reasons to avoid Patanga - the city is "dominated by the yellow-robed Druids who worshipped Yamath, God of Fire, by burning women alive on his red-hot altars of fiery bronze," and rumors said that the princess Sumia of Patanga was practically a prisoner in her own palace, since the Yellow Druid Vaspas Ptol had virtually taken over Patanga since the death of her father, the former Sark. Phal Thurid, the Sark of Thurdis, wanted to marry her in order to annex Patanga. No, this was all too complicated for Thongor, who wants to lead a simple, mercenary life. He wants to head to Kathool, "whose Sark needed warriors to protect his jungled borders from the savages of Chush." So Thongor sets the controls and falls asleep in the floater, expecting to wake up somewhere near Kathool.
When Thongor wakes up, the endless jungles of Chush are below him. He realizes that the floater kept running until the springs wound down that powered the rotors, but then the winds carried the floater far off course into Chush. He ends up in a battle with several monsters of Chush that see the floater as a possible meal - a grakk, the "lizard-hawk" of Chush (soon joined by another), and a dwark, the "jungle dragon," Thongor tried to pilot the floater away, but the grakks attack and the floater crashes into a tree and becomes wedged in its branches, and Thongor falls to the jungle floor. He starts to make his way through the jungle on foot, armed only with his broadsword, evading the blood-sucking slith vines, dragging the floater along by its rope. Then he realizes that the dwark is still stalking him.
Despite his courage and prowess, Thongor knows he is no match for a dwark, so he tries to flee. He end up entangled in a vampiric slith vine, whose blossoms "emit a narcotic cloud of perfume that rendered its victims insensible" [an inspiration for some of the terrible plants of later RPGs, such as the Yellow Musk Creeper Vine in D&D?].
Still trying to shake off the effects of this poison so he can make a final stand against the dwark, Thongor hears a voice saying, "Hold your breath, swordsman!" A tall, robed figure was standing there, holding a small steel chest. He hurled from it some blue powder at the dwark, which does not eat Thomgor. The man explains it is the "dust of the dream lotus . . . One grain will transport a man to the dreamworlds of fantastic pleasure within his own mind for many hours. The dragon has inhaled enough to render a fair-sized city unconscious." He introduces himself to Thongor as Sharajsha of Zaar, an enchanter.
Thongor has heard of Zaar, "that weird city of magicians, far to the east" where the "Black Druids of Zaar were reputed to be devil-worshippers and devotees of the Dark Forces," as so keeps his broadsword handy. But Sharajsha invites Thongor back to his home for food, drink, and rest. Thongor reluctantly agrees. Like most sword-and-sorcery barbarians, he has no love or trust for sorcery, but he has heard of this wizard, Sharajsha the Great, called the Wizard of Lemuria by some, and could "not ever recall having heard anything dubious or evil concerning him," besides which Thongor had no fear of magic, even if he had no liking for it either. So Thongor accompanies Sharajsha back to his zamph, which will take them out of the jungles of Chush and to the wizard's home in the Mountains of Mommur. The wizard reveals that he saw Thongor's approach in his magical glass, and decided to rescue him, for "I have need of a warrior."
Sharajsha's lair under the Mountains of Mommur is a series of vast, fantastic underground caverns filled with all manner of wonders. After Thongor bathes and has his wounds tended, he takes a long sleep, after which they feasted ("the wizard spread a fine table"), and the wizard listens to the tales of the barbarian's adventures. Thongor mentions his intent to seek service with the Sark of Kathool, or a similar city along the Gulf. Sharajsha shows him a map and offers to help repair the floater, perhaps in exchange for an offer of employment - "thus were they met at last, Thongor of Valkarth and Sharajsha of Zaar, and thus were the feet of the youthful warrior set on the first steps of that mighty road that would either lead him to the glory of a kingly throne, or to a black and terrible death."
So, Thongor & Sharajsha retrieve the floater and bring it back to Sharajsha's underground lair, where the wizard begins repairs and Thongor explores the libraries and armories. When Thongor gets around to asking about his earlier statement that he had need of a warrior, the wizard says that he fears nothing less than "the destruction of the world."
Sharajsha tells of the Dawn Age, and the Dragon Kings with their "cold, cunning intelligence: malign, clever, and inhuman." They evolved into the serpentmen who ruled elder Hyperborea. The Nineteen Gods created the First Men, starting with Phondath the Firstborn. The first city, Nemedis, was built on the shores of the ultimate east of Lemuria. The Dragon Kings invaded when the snows overwhelmed their realm at the pole, "and there was war . . ." In the Thousand-Year War, "the heroism of the First Kingdoms of Man stood against the overwhelming might and science of the Dragon Kings." Finally, the great leader of the First Men, Lord Thungarth, called upon the Father of the Gods, Gorm, who bestowed upon him the Sword of Nemedis, the Star Sword the gods had forged. Then the last heroes marched forth and drove back the Dragon Kings to the northern shores of Lemuria, when Thungarth fell and the Star Sword slaughtered the last of the Dragons.
But Sharajsha reveals that Diombar the Singer (to whom some of the epigraphs at the beginnings of chapters are attributed) did not know the full story - that though the Dragon Kings fell, the Dragon wizards escaped to plot revenge upon the race of humans for millennia. "The Dragons plot a terrible vengeance that shall not only destroy mankind but wreck the very fabric of the cosmos." The Dragons seek to contact their dark gods, the Lords of Darkness that oppose the gods of men, the Lords of Light. When the Universe was created, they were exiled to the Chaos beyond, but the Lords of chaos plot to "re-enter space and time, to begin anew their stupendous conflict with the Gods of men." [The clash between Law and Chaos, between the powers the favor humanity and the forces which see humanity as insignificant, or even to destroy humanity, is very Appendix N!] The Dragons plot to open a portal through which the Lords of Chaos may enter space, which may be done when the stars are right - soon! 7007 years since Phondath the Firstborn was given life, "in just weeks we shall be into the hour of doom. The old year will pass - the Festival of the Year's End will come and go. It is within the first week of the the seven thousand and eighth year of man that the stars will be right for the Dragon Kings to reap their awful vengeance upon the world that drove them into exile."
"Only one thing can destroy them and their monstrous plans" - "The same Sword that destroyed their power six thousand years ago. The Sword of Nemedis" - but it was said to have been broken in the Last Battle! Sharajsha knows how to reforge the Star Sword, but needs a warrior to wield it! Thongor agrees to be that warrior.
After taking a week to repair the floater, Thongor and Sharajsha travel over Chush to Tsargol, the city of the Red Druids, where a "Star Stone" fell from the sky thousands of years ago. They seek to acquire a fragment of the Star Stone with which to forge a new blade. So they moor the floater to the top of the Scarlet Tower (where the Star Stone is kept) on a dark and cloudy night and Thongor climbs down into the tower to search for the stone.
As he searches for the Star Stone, Thongor hears a strange slithering sound - it turns out to be a slorg, a woman-headed serpent of the Lemurian deserts [like a D&D naga, or a "lamia noble"]. Worse, he realizes that he can hear more of them coming. He begins to fight his way through them, beheading the monsters with his broadsword. He fights his way to a chamber where he finds the Star Stone - "a rough black mass of metal slag" - on an altar, and secures it to the cable to the floater. The Star Stone is lifted away, but more slorgs attack Thongor, and he if left to fight them as the floater drifts away . . .
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| "Naga" from the AD&D (1st edition) Monster Manual |
A much heavier guard is sent to take Thongor to the arena. There is another prisoner, the otar who previously led the guard, now punished for allowing Thongor to break free and threaten the Sark and Archdruid. His name is Karm Karvus, and he manages to earn Thongor's respect. As they are taken to the arena, the guard return Thongor's broadsword, for the Sark believes he will be more entertaining with his own weapon. They enter the arena facing the royal box where the Sark and Archdruid sit above a "grim iron gate made in the likeness of a horned human skull" - the "Gate of Death." The Sark gives the command to release the "Terror of the Arena" - a zamadar, "the most dreaded monster of all Lemuria" - a red-skinned, yellow-eyed creature of murderous rage, tremendous speed, a triple-row of foot-long fangs, and saliva of paralytic poison.
Thongor and Karm Karvus fight the zamadar together, but quickly realize that their blades cannot pierce its leathery flesh. Thongor jumps onto its back to try to get at its eyes ("the only vulnerable portion of the beast's entire body"); he drives his broadsword through the zamadar's eyes and into its brain [a DCC RPG Mighty Deed of Arms if I ever heard one!], but it still takes a long time to die! Then Thongor says, "That is how a man fights, Sark of Tsargol. Now let us see how a man dies," and flings his broadsword, which transfixes the Sark's chest and causes him to stumble and fall from the box above to the sands of the arena below, almost at Thongor's feet. Thongor then retrieves his sword.
Meanwhile, the Red Archdruid claims the Sark's fallen crown for himself. Just as his guards close in on Thongor and Karm Karvus, the floater descends on the arena, picking up the two warriors, and flies away!
After introductions, Sharajsha reveals the next step - he has a fragment of the Star Stone, and he can forge a new blade for the Star Sword in the Eternal Fire in "the crypts below the High Altar of Yamath, Lord of Flame", in Patanga, the City of Fire. When the floater arrives over Patanga, Karm Karvus is left to guard the ship while Thongor and Sharajsha go to fulfill the quest. They make their way into the forbidden crypts below the city without incident, and Sharajsha begins working on the Star Sword. But a Yellow Druid and dome guards approach, forcing Thongor to defend the wizard while Sharajsha completes the task. Thongor fights well, but in the end both he and the wizard are knocked out by narcotic vapors and taken prisoner.
Meanwhile, Sumia, the Sarkaja (or Princess, the terms being used interchangeably) of Patanga, is (as Thongor had been musing when he left Thurdis) imprisoned for resisting the advances of the Yellow Archdruid, Vaspas Ptol, who essentially took over the city when her father died. She is to be sacrificed this night, in the Festival of Year's End, to Yamath, the Dread Lord of the Fires. Thongor and Sharajsha are imprisoned with Sumia, still unconscious from the sleep vapors. When they awake, they discover that their manacles do not allow Thongor much movement, nor can Sharajsha use his magic with his hands so tightly bound.
Guards come to take them to their sacrifice - "The flaming altars of Yamath await the three of you, the God's most honored guests. And the God is impatient." They are brought into the great Hall of the God, a gigantic circular room with a domed ceiling 200' above set with stained glass windows. On the far side of the room is the brazen idol of Yamath - 10x the height of a man, with a horned bald head and a great fanged mouth grinning beneath eyes in which fires have been lit [does this make anyone else think of the "Demon Idol" cover of the AD&D Player's Handbook, except without the gemstone eyes? You grognards know the one I mean!]
The altars were in the cupped hands of the idol of Yamath, which rested on his lap. The altars "were also of brass, hollow, and beneath them the furnaces raged. The victims would be chained nude upon these altars and roasted alive."
As Thongor and his companions are marched to their certain death, he sees in the faces of the nobles of Patanga that they have no wish to see their Princess sacrificed, but they are unarmed, while the Yellow Druids carry swords, and "archers were ranged along the walls." At the base of the idol, the Yellow Archdruid Vaspas Ptol, dressed in jeweled robes of yellow velvet, halts them and offers Sumia a choice between accepting him embrace and ruling beside him, or "going to the fiery embrace of Yamath." She proudly refuses him, of course! So Vaspas Ptol prepares to sacrifice the three prisoners. They are bound upright to metal poles while the altars are being heated. Thongor begins to exert all of his massive strength against his bonds.
They see that on the platform where the Yellow Archdruid stands lie Thongor's broadsword and the Sword of Nemedis, apparently intended to be hurled into the flames of Yamath as sacrifices as well. A Yellow Druid begins to strip the prisoners bare, starting with Sumia. Her gown is ripped away, and she stares ahead defiantly as he reaches out for her bare body. Just then, Thongor's titanic strength finally snaps the chains of the manacle holding him. He hurled the Druid who had stripped Sumia down onto an alter, where he fries!
Thongor hurls the other priests off the platform, and uses the iron hilt of a Druid's dagger as a lever to snap Sumia's bonds and sets her to free Sharajsha, who then hurls magical bolts of lightning at their captors even as Thongor lays into them with a sword takes up from a fallen Druid! He gets to the platform where he retrieves his sword and the Star Sword, and turns to slay Vaspas Ptol, who leaps down to the floor below rather than face him. The stained glass windows above shatter, and the floater flies in to rescue them, piloted by Karm Karvus. The three climb aboard and the floater flies away to the northwest, seeking to reach the Mountain of Thunder before dawn . . . for the old year has ended, the new year has begun, and in just a few days the Dragon Kings would attempt to summon the Lords of Chaos!
After the reunion of Karm Karvus with Thongor and Sharajsha, they introduce him to Sumia, rightful Sarkaja of the City of Fire. Sharajsha says that he completed the work of reforging the blade of the Star Sword before they were captured. They fill Sumia in on the situation with the Dragon Kings and she resolves to join them, since she is now an exile from her home city. They fly all day and night towards the Mountain of Thunder, and arrive late in the morning the next day. This is where the next step must be performed by Sharajsha alone - he will take the Star Sword to the peak and call down the primal powers of the elements in order to imbue the blade with them.
While they wait for Sharajsha, Thongor spits, "Sorcery! Give me a good blade and a strong arm. That's all the sorcery one needs to fight an enemy!" [a pretty solid sword-and-sorcery barbarian attitude on the subject, and one which echoes that reported of those Vikings who scorned the aid of both Christ and pagan gods, preferring to rely on their own might and main]. Thongor watches the charming, civilized Karm Karvus conversing with Sumia, and feels a bit left out, as a rude barbarian who cannot converse with civilized princesses. Suddenly, though, Sumia screams! A grakk, a lizard-hawk like the ones that attacked him in Chush, is rushing to attack them! Thongor and Karm Karvus face the grakk together, saving Sumia, but they cannot defeat the grakk. Thongor sends Karm Karvus to get Sumia back to the floater while he hold off the grakk, but he is knocked out, snatched up, and carried off, leaving behind his broadsword!
Thongor awakens in mid-air, still clutched in the claw of the grakk, unarmed and alone. The grakk drops him onto its nest on a high pinnacle of rock to feed its three offspring. He takes up a long white bone with a jagged edge as a weapon. He manages to slay the three grakklets, but is stranded atop a lofty pinnacle of rock with no way down, waiting for the mother grakk to return to the nest . . .
Meanwhile, Sharajsha has returned from the peak of the Mountain of Thunder and the floater has set sail once more. Thongor's companions believe him dead, and "only hours remained before the moment of conjuration." They approach the Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis, and the Dragon Isles where they seek the Dragon Kings. The airship lands and the remaining heroes, hidden by the fog, "melted into the shadows under the walls of the black castle and vanished from sight" as they plan to infiltrate the stronghold of the Dragon Kings. The castle, in a nod to H.P. Lovecraft's sensibilities, is composed of cyclopean masonry whose "weird architecture of nightmare" seemed "designed according to the geometry of another world."
Suddenly, "monstrous black forms loomed out of the mist toward them." They arm themselves, but to no avail - a "glittering black hand clamped down on Sharajsha's wrist with crushing force," and the "Star Sword fell in a dazzling arc from his nerveless grasp," falling down into the thundering waves. Sharajsha then tries to use his magic, but is knocked unconscious by "an uncanny force," and when Karm Karvus tries to fight, he too is incapacitated by magic. A black, taloned hand with seven fingers, covered in scales, closes on Sumia's shoulder. The Dragon Kings had detected their approach in the airship, and plan to offer their life-energy to the Lords of Chaos!
Meanwhile, Thongor skins the grakklets in order to fashion a rope from their hides with which he might reach a ledge, from which he might make his way down from the heights - "it took him an hour to descend two hundred feet. But from there he would move more swiftly and surely, standing erect . . ." Reaching the bottom, Thongor follows a river towards the Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis, where lie the Dragon Isles. He has a run-in with some reptilian river-monster, and being unarmed, is forced to flee and take refuge in a cave. He follows the tunnels from the cave and emerges onto a rock not far from the Dragon Isles, out on the Inner Sea. He swims to the Dragon Isles, and finds the Sword of Nemedis in the surf by the shore! Thongor now assumes his companions must be dead, since they would not relinquish the Star Sword easily while alive!
The prisoners, meanwhile, are contemplating their fate. Sharajsha has no access to his magic, for his sigils and talismans [like D&D spell components] were stripped from him by Sssaaa, the Arch-Priest of the Dragon Kings himself! Later, as the time for the ritual approaches, the Dragon Kings come to fetch Sharajsha, Karm Karvus, and Sumia to be sacrificed. They are led through the alien citadel to an inner courtyard where there are rings of nineteen-foot-tall black stone pillars surrounding a circular altar of ebony stone. The pillars are engraved with Dragon runes that Sharajsha shudders to read. A score of Dragon Kings bearing spheres of red light in their hands and strange helms of red metal on their heads await. The prisoners are affixed to this altar by manacles of the same red metal.
The ritual reaches its climax as the stars turn red above, and reality itself seems to be rending apart. The carven hieroglyphics on the pillars glow, as do the manacles and helms of strange red metal. Sssaaa brings forth a sword of black metal with a pronged tip - the Sword of Sacrifice. Just as he is about to sacrifice Sumia to the Lords of Chaos . . . Thongor laughs behind him! Yes, Thongor is there, bearing the Star Sword. He points it at Sssaaa, and blasts of magical lightning arch from the Star Sword to the Sword of Sacrifice, then again to strike Sssaaa in his red metal helm, striking him down. Chaos ensues as the Dragon Kings try to flee, but the blasts from the Star Sword are shattering and toppling pillars onto them, annihilating them . . . The Dragon Kings are defeated!
When it is all over, Thongor strikes off the manacles of his companions, and kisses Sumia at long last . . .
In an epilogue, the companions have returned to Sharajsha's underground palace to celebrate. Thongor will take no reward for his service to Sharajsha, but the wizard gets him to take a personal gift - a gold arm-band that Sharajsha implies has special properties. Karm Karvus says he intends to follow wherever Thongor leads, and Sumia says the same. Thongor himself says he intends to return to Patanga to reclaim it from the Yellow Druids for Sumia . . . And so the story ends, but the series continues . . .
Lin Carter's influences are plain, including (as mentioned above) H.P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Thongor is, as I said, almost a parody of a sword-and-sorcery barbarian, sometimes almost a painful one. This kind of character did much to inspire the original barbarian class(es), and explain the enduring popularity of that type even to this day. Tim Kask, the first editor of The Dragon (later Dragon Magazine), recently said in an interview that this was the kind of character from fiction that Gary Gygax seemed to most admire, and he assumed player would all want to play Conan-types, and couldn't imagine (in the beginning) anyone wanting to play a magic-user, since they were usually the villains of this sort of story. Even if the Thongor stories did not directly influence Gygax (and I'm betting he did read some of them), it is exactly the kind of story that thrilled and inspired him.
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| Babarian from the AD&D Unearthed Arcana book! |
Lin Carter's "Thongor of Lemuria" books have even inspired their very own Fantasy RPG, "Barbarians of Lemuria" by Simon Washbourne. While drawing obvious inspiration from D&D and other fantasy RPGs that preceded it, Washbourne's system is distinctly its own game, not simply a retro-clone of D&D. Certainly, the plot of this book alone sounds like it recounts several games in a lengthy RPG campaign!
The trouble that Sharajsha goes through to re-forge the Star Sword is a reminder that in Old School RPGs, making magic items was never a matter of taking a few feats and spending some gold. You had the "quest for it" idea, in which the players would be forced to consider difficult tasks and acquiring rare items to make a "simple" magic item - these Old School sensibilities are represented well in the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, where rare ingredients are needed to brew potions, and a module (#85, The Making of the Ghost Ring) exemplifies the kind of work involved.
I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. Please join me again for future installments of Appendix N Revisited, on or around the Ides of each month!
Until next time . . . Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona
Ides of June, 2017
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona
Ides of June, 2017
Next up for Appendix N Revisited: L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall!
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