Return to Appendix N Revisited!

 

Return to Appendix N Revisited!

     Back in 2017, I undertook a project I called "Appendix N Revisited". My intention had been to slowly read through much of Appendix N and then write commentary on the history of tabletop roleplaying games and especially D&D. Appendix N was the appendix in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide in which Gary Gygax listed authors and books he considered foundational to the creation of D&D (and thus, by extension, roleplaying games in general). The list was probably never intended to be exhaustive, and there are some curious omissions (famously, Clark Ashton Smith is absent from the list, but known to have been hugely influential, leading to decades of speculation as to why Gygax omitted the name of such an obvious and profound influence). And Gygax certainly changed the emphasis on certain authors over time (e.g., by the 80s and 90s, he strongly preferred to downplay the importance of J.R.R. Tolkien, which seemed rather absurd to most observers - not only were some of the first classes "elf," "dwarf," and "hobbit" (yes! hobbit! not "halfling"!), but the monster list included "ents" and "balrogs" in place of the now-familiar "treants" and "balors". Legal issues with the Tolkien estate and its licenses had changed the terms, but Gygax was steadfastly determined to keep the concepts under different and sufficiently legally distinct names. Early problems with estates and licenses hit Gygax hard, and perhaps in turn explain why TSR was so litigious as well. 

     The point is not that these books necessarily represent the only authentic influences and DNA of D&D. And many stories, books, and movies published since the 1970s have influenced the development of D&D since then just as profoundly as the original "Appendix N" list. But these authors, books, and stories are an important part of our history, and the flavor that was the goal of some of the earliest D&D is well represented in these entries. Pulp fiction, weird fiction, and what would today be labelled science fiction are just as big a part of the list as traditional fantasy. Gygax liked pulp fiction; he was clearly not snobbish in this regard. White male European and American authors are overrepresented, and given the time period in which much of the fiction originated, it is perhaps not surprising that many of the stories are problematic in a number of ways (sexism, racism, ableism, colonialism, and so forth), but they can be no less interesting and useful to re-read, as long as one is aware of and does not inappropriately value the problematic aspects). 

     I find it worthwhile to periodically return ad fontes, to drink from the springs of our Hobby and revisit the Muses of their Hippocrene Spring. I intend to embark on a re-read of as much of Appendix N as I am able (and to which I have access), and I invite you to join me in this. I hope you will enjoy my notes and find them interesting and useful. I am not going to try to follow a strict schedule, but would hope to read at least one book each month. 

The King of Elfland's Daughter Revisited - Appendix N Revisited, Part 9

The King of Elfland's Daughter Revisited 

Appendix N Revisited, Part 9

     Hello, and welcome to the nineth 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 nineth installment focuses on Lord Dunsany - Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany - and The King of Elfland's Daughter. If you have never read this book and wish to avoid spoilers, you should stop reading at this point, as I shall be discussing the book in some detail.

XXX

THIS WAS NEVER FINISHED, SADLY!

    

August Derleth Revisited - Appendix N Revisited, Part 8

August Derleth Revisited 

Appendix N Revisited, Part 8

     Hello, and welcome to the eighth 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 eighth installment focuses on August Derleth and his "posthumous collaborations" with H.P. Lovecraft. If you have never read these stories and wish to avoid spoilers, you should stop reading at this point, as I shall be discussing them in some detail.

     August Derleth, 1909-1971, was (I believe) the first to publish the works of Lovecraft in book form, the founder of Arkham House publishing, and a "posthumus collaborator" with H.P. Lovecraft. He is listed without annotation in Appendix N (Gygax does not tell us what, specifically, Derleth wrote that he found inspirational to D&D), and while he did write stories of his own, his most well-known work was connected to the Cthulhu Mythos (incidentally, I have read that Derleth was the one who invented the term "Cthulhu Mythos" - Lovecraft never really called his own invented mythology anything except the self-deprecating "Yog-Sothothery"). But it is worth cautioning the reader that Derleth put his own spin on that mythos, adding more comfortable elements from a Judaeo-Christian worldview that Lovecraft certainly did not share.

     The Interpretatio Derlethensis in brief: While Lovecraft's conception of the Cthulhu Mythos (or Yog-Sothothery) was of a cosmic horror that humans would label "evil" because it disregarded human entirely (e.g. Cthulhu and most of the other entities in this mythos are not really evil, they just see humans about the way humans see dust mites - beneath notice or consideration), Derleth wanted there to be good guys and bad guys. Reflecting his own Christian views, he saw the mythos as reflecting a "War in Heaven" theme in which the Elder Gods who were essentially good cast out and sealed away the Old Ones who were essentially evil entities, sometimes interpreted to be elemental forces. Humans make use of the "Elder Sign" like a crucifix in an old horror movie to ward off evil. Lovecraft's amoral universe is replaced by a universe of good at war with evil, and to my mind that certainly demeans the nature of the cosmic horror that Lovecraft described. But in some ways, it makes for better inspiration for fantasy RPGs, in which the protagonists (the PCs) are often involved in a good-vs.-evil war of some sort, and usually have some chance of defeating even cosmic challenges.

Ease of Availability

     For purposes of this review, I used my battered old paperback copy of The Watchers Out of Time, but I see that paperback and Kindle editions are easily accessible on Amazon. The book does not seem to be available as an audiobook from Audible at this time, but "The Survivor" (one of the stories in the collection) is, and Derleth is listed as an author in some sci-fi anthologies that are available.

Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!

"The Survivor" 
©1954 - Alijah Atwood leases the Charriere House on Benefit Street in Providence, RI, in 1930. Dr. Charriere was a surgeon who died and was buried on the property, in the garden by the old well. Mr. Atwood discovers documents left behind by Dr. Charriere including "strange, almost cabalistic drawings resembling physiological charts of various kinds of saurians," mostly of "order Loricata and the genera Crocodylus." Mr. Atwood finds that Dr. Charriere's will left the property to a "sole male survivor" who never appeared to claim his inheritance. In a style that Lovecraft had mastered and Derleth uses in a ham-fisted way, the audience realizes long before the protagonist that Dr. Charriere had been investigating ways to extend the lifespan by surgery and sorcery, that it was the same Dr. Charriere who had built the house around 1700 (and not, as Mr. Atwood keeps insisting, an ancestor), and that Dr. Charriere somehow intended to claim to be the surviving relative and claim the house. Mr. Atwood acquires a pistol, as he fears someone is trying to break into the house. He examines books left behind by Dr. Charriere, including one Lovecraft had invented for Derleth - the Cultes des Goules by the Comte D'Erlette (D'Erlette = Derleth). There is a rather awkward shoe-horning of mention of many races of creatures and entities from the Cthulhu Mythos. And then the incident finally occurs in which Atwood shoots the intruder in his house, and follows the blood trail to the well in his garden, finds cunningly concealed steps down to a hidden tunnel, and finds the casket and corpse of Dr. Charriere, whose experiments evidently had transformed him into a sort of lizard man. Atwood is shocked, but the audience is not, really, by the time the truth is "revealed." 

"Wentworth's Day" 
©1957 - Our protagonist is making a delivery near Dunwich (a Lovecraft-invented town in western Massachusetts), and is caught in a bad storm on dangerous roads in thinly-settled country. He takes refuge from the storm at the house of one Amos Stark. Lovecraft often attempted to render rural dialects phonetically (a somewhat less-successful literary technique, in my humble opinion), and Derleth attempts to imitate that here - e.g. Stark asks "Who be ye?" and "Storm ketched ye, eh?" "Come right in the haouse an' dry off. Don't reckon the rain'll last long naow." Stark tells the protagonist that this is "Wentworth's Day" - and it slowly is revealed that Nahum Wentworth was well-known around these parts, and had been an associate of Stark's. He lad loaned some money and some things, including the Seventh Book of Moses ("a kind of Bible for the supposed hexes" offering "spells, incantations, and charms to those readers who were gullible enough to believe in them") - this is the day the loan comes due, at midnight. But Nahum Wentworth is dead, killed in a hunting accident 2 months after making the loan - and it is slowly revealed that Amos Stark is the one who was holding the shotgun. He keeps insisting, as if trying to convince himself, that it was an accident. Anyway, the protagonist is offered a place to take a nap until the rain passes. While trying to sleep, the protagonist reads the Seventh Book of Moses, even reading aloud a passage containing an "incantation for the assemblage of devils or spirits, or the raising of the dead." Once again, Derleth is rather ham-handed about making sure he telegraphs to the audience what is going to happen while keeping it obscure from the characters! Amos Starks' clock is fast - he thinks the deadline has come and gone, but the protagonist knows that it is exactly midnight when there is a knock on the door. He hears "No! No! Go back! I ain't got it!" and runs to look - "Amos Stark was spread on the floor on his back, and sitting astride him was a mouldering skeleton, its bony arms bowed above his throat, its fingers at his neck. And in the back of the skull, the shattered bones where a charge of shot had once gone through." Like many Lovecraft protagonists, he faints from the horror. When he awakens, he finds Stark dead on the floor with fingerbones sticking out of his neck - and as he watches, those fingerbones detach themselves and go bounding away from the corpse, down the hall and out the door, to rejoin the corpse of Nahum Wentworth. While you can't "accidentally" cast spells in most fantasy RPGs, certainly PCs can accidentally trigger magical devices and processes (in the DCC modules The One Who Watches from Below and The Hole in the Sky, for example, there are names they are warned not to speak,  and consequences if they do!)

"The Peabody Heritage" 
©1957 - Begins, "I never knew my great-grandfather Asaph Peabody, though I was five years old when he died on his great old estate northeast of the town of Wilbraham, Massachusetts." His father refused to sell the property, saying "Grandfather predicted that one of his blood would recover the heritage." So when the protagonist inherits the property on the "sudden death by automobile accident of both my parents in the autumn of 1929," he finds the estate in a "sad state of disrepair" - built originally in 1787 by an ancestor who, we discover later in the story, fled charges of witchcraft at Salem. The protagonist retires from life as a lawyer in Boston and moves to the estate, which he begins slowly restoring and repairing.  He visits the family mausoleum, finds his great-grandfather's coffin disturbed and knocks off the cover to find Asaph was "accidentally" buried face down, so he "fixes" it. He has his parents re-interred in the family vault. The architect he hired to restore the house finds a secret room on the plans - a priest's hole? A room for runaway slaves? There were no Papists among the Peabodys, so he cannot guess. But the architect helps him find the room - signs of occupancy in the past, with leatherbound books, papers, chairs, and a desk. There are "curious signs drawn upon the floor, some of them actually cut into the planking in a crudely barbarous fashion." He begins to have "recurrent dreams of a most disturbing nature" about his ancestors, especially great-grandfather Asaph, accompanied by a large black cat, making "extraordinary progression through the air, quite as if he were flying." The next day, the architect informs of delay, for the locally-hired workmen quit the job. The protagonist notes that the townspeople seem quite hostile. He stops by the office of the family lawyer, Ahab Hopkins, who tells of the disappearance of a local child, something that used to happen quite often, and his family used to be blamed for it! "You are surely aware that your great-grandfather was considered to be a warlock!" He returns home to find a crude note - "Git out - or els." He has more bad dreams about Asaph, and lingering always in the background, a shadowy but monstrous Black Man - "not a Negro, but a man of such vivid blackness as to be literally darker than night, but with flaming eyes which seemed to be of living fire." His dreams also featured the sound of a child crying in pain, and a chanted voice, "Asaph will be again. Asaph will grow again." He has Polish workmen from Boston resume work, but they also quit when behind the walls are discovered yellowed paper covered in cabalistic signs, short dagger-like knives rusted by blood, and the smalls skulls and bones of at least three children! The protagonist removes these bones, which are crumbling to dust, to his family vault. Then he finds the desk in the hidden room freshly stained with blood, as if it had been used as a sacrificial altar! He starts examining the books and papers, which all pertain to Satanism and witchcraft. Then he finds a newspaper clipping about his ancestors who fled witchcraft charges in Salem, and a reference to "old wive's tales - that a warlock must be buried face downward and never be disturbed, save by fire." He has dreams that night of attending a Black Mass in which the black cat, Balor, becomes his familiar, and he signs the Black Book in his own blood from a scratch Balor made on his wrist - he awakens to find muddy footprints as if he had indeed gone to a Black Mass in the swamp, and he finds a real scratch on his wrist! He finds in his great-grandfather's journal that he had found his ancestor Jedediah buried face-down and had turned him over, bringing him back to life. The protagonist goes to the family crypt and opens Asaph's coffin, and finds that he is gaining flesh, as well as the withered corpse of the missing child! He drags Asaph's coffin out and burns it, as he learned that Asaph did in the end to Jedediah. He returns to the house and finds the demonic black cat, Balor - he tries to shoot it, but in vain. "This, then, was the Peabody heritage. The house, the woods, the grounds - these were only the superficial, material aspects of the extra-dimensional angles in the hidden room, the path through the marsh to the coven, the signatures in the Black Book . . . Who, I wonder, after I am dead, if I am buried as the others were, will turn me over?" There are Lovecraftian elements here, to be sure, but the Satanism described had its source in Derleth's Christianity, I am sure.  How do you permanently kill the undead in fantasy RPGs?

"The Gable Window" 
© 1957 - Our protagonist, Fred Akeley, moves into his cousin Wilbur's house less than a month after his untimely death, though "its isolation in a pocket of the hills off the Aylesbury Pike was not to" his liking (these Akeleys are apparently distant relatives of the Henry Akeley of Vermont who is a central character in the Lovecraft story "The Whisperer in Darkness"). Wilbur had been a student of archaeology and anthropology, gone on expeditions to Mongolia, Tibet, Sinkiang Province, South & Central America, and the southwest United States. Wilbur had remodeled the house, erecting a gable room over the south wing of the ground floor and installing a great round window of curious clouded class he had acquired in Asia - he had referred to it as "the glass from Leng" and "possibly Hyadean in origin" (Leng is a fictional place in Lovecraft's works, and the Hyades are stars connected to certain tales in the Mythos - Fred doesn't recognize the references, but presumably a reader familiar with Lovecraft would!). There are some of the usual elements of such a story -strange behavior of animals and pets around the house, strange sounds and feelings - ominous stuff. And then Fred finds an incomplete letter from Wilbur instructing that certain papers be destroyed, certain books donated to Miskatonic University (the fictional university of Lovecraft's stories), and that the gable window be broken - not simply removed and disposed of elsewhere, but shattered. Fred can't see any reason to do that. He finds the standard pile of Cthulhu Mythos books (including, of course, the Cultes des Goules of the Comte D'Erlette who is a counterpart of Derleth himself; D'Erlette=Derleth). There is a summary of what I call Interpretatio Delethensis, the version of the Cthulhu Mythos in which the good Elder Gods cast out the evil Great Old Ones. Delving into Wilbur's notes, he finds cryptic accounts of scenes or visions witnessed from October 1921 to February 1923, containing repeated references to making and breaking a star - evidently some sort of mystical pentagram. Sure enough, moving a rug in the gable room, he finds the faint chalk marks of a pentacle on the floor. He remembers and for some reason speaks aloud words found in his research (of course he does! Why does Derleth always have his protagonists absently speaking magical incantations? Lovecraft only used that device once that I can remember, in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and it was awkward then!): "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" Of course, the glass unclouds, and he can see some scene evidently from the American southwest - Arizona? New Mexico? - in which vaguely humanoid creatures called Sand Dwellers in Wilbur's notes emerge from a cave . . . and are pursued by another, more terrible,  tentacled creature! Fred hurls his shoe at the window with all his might, simultaneously wiping out part of the design of the pentacle, and hears shattering glass as he passes out (another over-used device). He awakens to find a severed ten-foot-long tentacle in the room . . . An inspiration for just about every magical portal or gate in fanatsy RPGs! 

"The Ancestor" 
©1957 - Protagonist Henry Perry goes to visit his cousin Ambrose and his German Shepherd, Ginger, at his secluded home in a dense forest to which he retired from a lucrative medical practice in Boston. Ambrose has 2 servants, groundskeeper and cook, Edward and Meta Reed, both in their sixties. Ambrose reveals that he has been conducting research into hereditary memory - a combination of drugs and music combined with fasting allow memory back to the womb and beyond, he claims. Henry is concerned that the addictive drugs Ambrose uses may be affecting his mind and body, but he helps type up his cousin's notes. These notes indicate that Ambrose has been experiencing regression to the memories of primate ancestors, and Ambrose himself begins to show signs of physical deterioration, including the inability to write (dismissed as temporary "cramps" or "nerve blocks"). Ambrose becomes increasingly reclusive, preferring simpler and simpler food (paleo diet!), the music he uses to inspire his trances becomes more "primitive" (records of Polynesian and ancient Indian music), until finally he locks himself away in his lab and refuses to come out or answer. Ginger becomes frantic, perhaps in reaction to a "pervasive and highly repellent musk emanating from the laboratory." In the end, Ginger ends up killing a small primate clad in the rags of Ambrose's clothing, and the audience realizes that "Ambrose had been trapped in that period of evolution." If you're a child of the 70s and 80s like me, and this sounds familiar, it's because this is basically the premise of the 1980 movie Altered States, which is always claimed to be based on sensory deprivation research - neither Lovecraft nor Derleth have ever been credited, to my knowledge. 

"The Shadow Out of Space" 
©1957 - One of Derleth's most derivative works of Lovecraftiana, opening with an epigraph from The Call of Cthulhu that "The most merciful thing in the world . . . is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents" and following very closely the plot of The Shadow Out Of Time. The protagonist, Nathaniel Corey, is a psychoanalyst, describing his work with a subject named Amos Piper, brought in for treatment by his sister after suffering some kind of nervous collapse and hallucinations. The description basically is a third-person version of the basic plot of The Shadow Out Of Time - Amos Piper's consciousness was "swapped" with a member of the Great Race of Yith (not called by that name in this story) from a time in the past before humankind existed. What seemed to happen to observers in the story was that three years earlier, Amos Piper suffered a mental break and total memory loss, although he was able to re-learn enough to be functional within a few months. He then took up travel to "strange, out-of-the-way places" associated in the Cthulhu Mythos with pre-human inhabitants of the Earth - "the Arabian desert, the fastnesses of Inner Mongolia, the Arctic Circle, the Polynesian Islands, the Marquesas, the ancient Inca country of Peru," etc. After three years, Piper suddenly regained his previous memories and personality, losing all memory of his activities in the intervening three years. Piper describes his dreams of existing in an alien body in the distant past before the evolution of human life. There is a recitation of the Interpretatio Derlethensis from the memories manifesting as Piper's dreams - cosmic good vs. evil, Elder Gods vs. Ancient Ones.  There is a recounting of other ages of the Earth, most from Lovecraft, though there are contributions that clearly come from Derleth's own late 1950s Cold War anxieties of inhabitants of "post-atomic earth, horribly altered by mutations caused by the fall-out of radioactive materials from the hydrogen and cobalt bombs of the atomic wars" (fodder for the Mutant Crawl Classics RPG?) Anyway, in dreams, Piper retains the memory of the Great Race's desire to flee the great cataclysms when the Ancient Ones escape their ancient bondage to rejoin the cosmic war against the Elder Gods. Then Piper suffers a "relapse" - claiming all the strange dreams and visions have vanished. The audience knows that he has been possessed by one of the Great Race again! Dr. Corey's office is broken into, files rifled, documents about Amos Piper removed - as if someone were covering up all evidence of what happened! Dr. Corey investigates Piper, but discovers that he joined an expedition to the Arabian desert that vanished. Then Dr. Corey notes that he is being stalked by a patient who strangely resembles Amos Piper . . . The story ends there with a note that it is a document found in Dr. Corey's office. Dr. Corey himself had suffered a mental break (which is described in such a way that the audience knows that he was also "mind-swapped" by an alien entity), and was confined to an asylum . . . There is really almost nothing new in this story that wasn't in the Lovecraft story that inspired it, sadly.

"The Lamp of Alhazred" 
© 1957 - The title is an obvious reference to Lovecraft's early "Arabian Nights" pseudonym, Abdul Alhazred, later a character in his stories who authors the dreaded Necronomicon. The protagonist, Ward Phillips, receives his grandfather Whipple's lamp seven years after his disappearance. He had been living in his grandfather's house on Angell Street in Providence, RI, reading from the "Whipple library," but finally he gets the lamp. It came from a tomb in Arabia, from Irem, the City of Pillars (which features in Arabian mythology and Lovecraft's stories); Old Whipple had written of the lamp that "It may bring pleasure equally by being lit or by being left dark. It may bring pain on the same terms. It is the source of ecstasy or terror." The lamp is inscribed with an unknown and impossibly ancient language, including some hieroglyphics or pictographs. One night, Ward lights the lamp, and works by its light, revising a poem in archaic style, but then he begins to have visions of past ages and ancient epochs, perhaps other worlds, strange vistas connected with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, etc. He abandons his tedious poetic revisions in favor of short, weird tales inspired by visions from the lamp. He writes for days without rest, keeping up his correspondence, and years pass without lighting the lamp again. Sixteen years later, he finds the lamp again and lights it once more. Instead of eldritch vistas, this time he sees his own childhood. He walks into the vision and disappears. Ward was never found - he is assumed to have died. The story is an allegorical retelling of the life of H.P. Lovecraft, and reuses the device Lovecraft used of his own Randolph Carter stand-in, who used a silver key to rejoin his own past. The first time I read this story, I was somewhat frustrated with how simplistic and uninteresting it seemed; after a lifetime of reading about the life of H.P. Lovecraft, I realize how closely this allegorical tale follows Lovecraft's own vision of his own life. It tries to be the autobiographical story H.P.L. would have wanted to tell, someday, had he lived.  

"The Shuttered Room" 
© 1959 - A somewhat unsatisfying story set in Dunwich, Massachusetts, with connections to Innsmouth, Massachusetts (both fictional towns invented by Lovecraft). Abner Whateley returns to his ancestral home in Dunwich. He finds the will of his grandfather, Luther S. Whateley, imploring him to destroy the old mill section of the house and kill anything living in it. He examines the house, which is empty - the shuttered room above the mill where his aunt Sarah had been confined has had its windows broken out from the inside. He meets with other relatives, including grandfather Luther's brother, Zebulon, and gets hints that an audience familiar with Lovecraft will understand to mean that Sarah was connected to the hybrid people of Innsmouth, who acquire amphibian-like traits due to interbreeding with the Deep Ones, a race that lives in the ocean. He also finds hints of a frog-like creature haunting the old house, and comes to realize that it is the son of his aunt Sarah, a creature grown savage and fierce. It attacks him in the end, and he throws his kerosene lamp at it, destroying it with fire. 

"The Fisherman of Falcon Point" 
© 1962 - The story of Enoch Conger of Falcon Point, a few miles down the coast from Innsmouth. Enoch is a fisherman who sells his catch in Innsmouth or Kingsport. One night he caught something like a woman - "she was not a mermaid" - off Devil Reef. A few years later, Enoch is injured and rescued by two other fishermen and brought back to his home; Dr. Gilman is called in from Innsmouth, but when he arrives, Enoch has vanished! There were signs of wet footprints with webbed toes! Enoch Conger never came back . . . but "Venerable old Jedediah Harper, patriarch of the coastal fishermen,"swore that he saw people (Deep Ones!) swimming off Devil Reef, and Enoch Conger among them! 

"Witches' Hollow" 
©1962 - Perhaps one of the most egregious cases of the Interpretatio Derlethensis being applied to the Cthulhu Mythos - Protagonist, Mr. Williams, came in 1920 to teach at District School Number Seven west of Arkham. A student names Andrew Potter comes to his attention - he lives in Witches' Hollow off the main road through the hills. Mr. Williams resolves to talk to Potter's parents about his excellent grades and potential, but finds Potter's father to be reluctant, even hostile - Andrew is only in school at all because the law requires it. He finds out that the land at Witches' Hollow was owned by "Old Wizard Potter" who died and left it to these relatives from Upper Michigan. They used to be "nice friendly people," but now have turned reclusive. People whisper that Wizard Potter "called something down from the sky, and it lived with him or in him until he died." In his research, the editor of the Arkham Gazette sends him to the Miskatonic University library with a note to let him see a book - the Necronomicon. Professor Martin Keane notes Mr. Williams reading it and approaches him. They discuss the Potter family in Witches' Hollow. Professor Keane invites Mr. Williams to his house, and gives him a 5-pointed stone star inscribed with strange symbols - the "Seals of R'lyeh, which closed the prisons of the Ancient Ones. They are the seals of the Elder Gods." Keane tells Williams to keep one on himself at all times, and to get Andrew Potter to touch one - if something happens, he cannot be allowed to go back home, but must be brought to Keane. For some reason, Williams agrees. He presses one of the seals to Andrew Potter's forehead later, and he has some kind of seizure, lapsing into unconsciousness. He brings Andrew to Keane, and they repeat the process with Potter's sister and father as they show up to investigate. They wait in vain for the mother - "She isn't coming," Keane says, "She harbors the seat of the intelligence." So they go to Witches' Hollow. When they finally get Mrs. Potter with the seal, a strange smoke-like entity arises from her body, and flies off into space in the direction of the Hyades . . . whence it came. 

"The Shadow in the Attic" 
© 1964 - Our protagonist is Adam Duncan, who unlike virtually any true Lovecraftian protagonist, has a fiancee named Rhoda Prentiss. He had a great-uncle named Uriah Garrison, and anyone who crossed Uriah, even within the family, seemed to die mysteriously. He lived in Arkham, Massachusetts, and had a shunned attic into which no one was permitted by day, nor with lamp nor light of any kind. When Uriah Garrison dies, Adam inherits the house, with the provision that he live there in the summer (Adam is a teacher, but can go live there in the summer months). He is working on a doctoral dissertation in English on Thomas Hardy (which seems to be a bit of an obsession for Derleth - Hardy references show up in a couple of his stories). Anyway, Adam moves in, and Rhoda shows up unexpectedly the next day. They go out to dinner in town, then come back to the house to sleep - Adam in his great-uncle's room on the 2nd floor, Rhoda on the first floor (How QUAINT! They're not married yet, so they sleep apart! But later, Adam tells us that she has spent the night in his bed before! Shocking! Well, it was the 1960s!). That night, he reaches out and feels a woman's breast - not Rhoda's "firm, beautifully rounded" ones, but "flaccid, large-nippled, and old" - he turns on a lamp but there is no sign. The mere mention of a woman's breasts should tell us that this story is more Derleth than Lovecraft! Anyway, the next morning, Rhoda says she thought that there was a woman in the house last night. Uncle Garrison's cleaning woman? Rhoda suddenly bursts out with "Oh, Adam - can't you feel it? . . . Something in this house wants you, Adam - I sense it. It's you the house wants." She begs Adam to leave with her, but he refuses, and she promises to come again later in summer, and makes Adam promise to write faithfully. The next day, Adam thinks of the locked attic room which no one ever dared enter. He goes in and finds it empty except for a chair, on which sits a woman's clothing (including rubber gloves, elastic stockings, and house slippers) and a rubber mask. There is a strange shadow on the wall, a distorted shape seemingly burned into the wood as if by a blast of flame. He also finds a mouse-hole with strange symbols "painted in garish red chalk or oil" around it. Adam tries to find out if the neighbors know anything, but all he gets are mysterious hints - "You seen the blue light yet?" "You heard anything you couldn't explain?" "Old Garrison was up to something. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still at it." Refusal to believe Uriah Garrison is really dead. One neighbor, Mrs. Barton, had dared to upbraid Garrison for keeping a woman . . . and was found dead of a heart attack the next morning - "scared to death." Adam tries looking into Garrison's library, but finds only a lot of stuff about superstition and witchcraft. Rhoda calls from Boston, saying all the books old Garrison had checked out from the Widener were on sorcery. She again fails to convince Adam to leave. That night, he hears the "cleaning lady" - and sees the spectral likeness of this great-uncle, who vanishes. He goes down to the kitchen, where a lamp is burning, and a woman cleaning. He goes to confront him, but she looks him in the eyes - "like pools of glowing fire, eyes that were hardly eyes at all" stares into his. He turns and flees upstairs to his room. He hears her go up to the attic room. He dares to peek out, and sees a blue glow under the attic door, fading. He throws open the door - empty! But then, from the mouse hole, "a drift of blue light, like smoke" . . . He runs to the bedroom and flings himself on the bed and falls asleep. He awakens to Rhoda pounding on the door. "Go away. We don't need you." "So - I'm too late, then." "Go away. Just leave us alone." Rhoda leaves. That night, he eagerly awaits the woman he now calls Lilith - blue light seeps in and forms a naked woman. He also sees the form of Uriah Garrison forming. Then he smells smoke, hears crackling flame, and then the voice of Rhoda calling to him. She had set a ladder under his window-sill. The house burned to the ground. He inherits the property, sells it, marries Rhoda (who later claims to have set the fire herself). Huh. OK.   

"The Dark Brotherhood" 
© 1966 - A strange piece that seems to partake more of 1950s and 1960s sci-fi sensibilities than the weird tales of Lovecraft. In short: The protagonist, Arthur Phillips of Angell Street, lives in Providence, RI, and frequents the Athenaeum (incidentally, one of my favorite places in Providence, and somewhere I spent ridiculous amounts of time when I lived there), courting a young woman named Rose Dexter (I used to "court" my now ex-wife there, as Poe courted Sarah Whitman there). AN YWAY, they meet a dark-clad man named Mr. Allan who, it happens, looks exactly like Edgar Allan Poe. They spend some time with him, individually and together. He promises the protagonist that he can prove the existence of extraterrestrial life with the help of his brothers. Arthur Phillips agrees, and seven identical versions of Mr. Allan show up and perform a sort of ritual (they refer to it as the "experiment") that causes him to have visions of a dying world, and creatures like rugose cones (a description Lovecraft used for the Great Race of Yith). Mr. Phillips does not handle this revelation well, and slips into denial, deciding it was "just a hallucination." The next afternoon, he goes to the house that the Allan brothers seem to occupy. He enters and finds strange technology he can not explain nor understand, and sees a replica of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as a perfect replica of one of the creatures from his vision. He flees. He cannot decide what to do. In the end, he thinks he should contact Rose Dexter - he gets in touch by phone, and she says Mr. Allan invited her over for the experiment. He tells her not to go, but can't say why, and she seems reluctant to obey him - he has no right to tell her what to do! He has been told that there are more than 100,000 inhabited worlds, most with life completely alien to that of Earth. The next night he tries to get in touch with Rose, but he is told by her sister-in-law that she left with someone he presumes is one of the dark-clad Allan brothers. He gets his father's pistol and goes to the house of the Allans, where he sees Rose in a trance in a machine, and in the case next to her a perfect duplicate, and another of those rugose cone aliens. He fires blindly at the machine, putting out the light and starting a fire, grabs Rose in the confusion  and drags her out to safety. The house burns down and an unidentifiable object bursts from it and vanishes skywards. He presumes the Allans were aliens with the ability to put their minds into replicas of humans, who settled on the image of Edgar Allan Poe not realizing that his image was not typical. He speculates, "God only knows how many of them may be here, among us, even now!" (Pretty standard body-snatcher pod-person stuff, right?) But then it occurs to him - "How can I be sure that, in those frenzied minutes, I rescued the right Rose Dexter?" He needs to see her to be sure. The story ends with a clipping from The Providence Journal, dated July 17, with the headline LOCAL GIRL SLAYS ATTACKER - Rose Dexter "fought off and killed a young man she charged with attacking her," "identified as an acquaintance, Arthur Phillips . . ." Dun dun DUN!

"The Horror from the Middle Span" 
© 1967 - The story claims to be the "Bishop Manuscript" found while investigating the disappearance of Ambrose Bishop, enclosed in a glass bottle thrown clear from a burning house, held in the office of the sheriff in Arkham, Massachusetts. The protagonist, Ambrose Bishop, came from London to lay claim to some property abandoned ever since his great-uncle Septimus Bishop disappeared about 20 years prior from his home above Dunwich. He goes to Dunwich, checks out the house, goes to the general store of Tobias Whateley (who wants nothing to do with him once he finds out he's kin to Septimus Bishop, who had a reputation as a healer or warlock, unknown to Ambrose). Tobias says that Septimus and his were killed, not disappeared.Ambrose goes back through record of the Arkham Advertiser, and finds two articles on Dunwich from that time, one on the disappearance of Septimus Bishop, the other about repairs to a pier that supported the middle span of a disused bridge over the Miskatonic River in the country above Dunwich. So Ambrose goes back to start working on Septimus' house, he finds the strange books and symbols we expect by now, and finds a secret passageway from the basement that ends up on a hillside overlooking that stone bridge over the river. He goes through the papers and finds several that connect Septimus to stories from the Lovecraft canon. For example, the first bears the heading "Starry Wisdom" and assures Septimus that the group still operates in Providence, with the Shining Trapezohedron that summons the Haunter of the Dark, signed Asenath - this is referring to both "The Haunter of the Dark" and possibly "The Thing On The Doorstep" by H.P.L. Another is from Wilbur Whateley, kin of Tobias (and a major figure in "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P.L.) - this letter mentions that "those from the air" can "take body" from "human blood," "as you, too, will be able to do if you are destroyed other than by the Sign." "I saw you there - and what walks with you in the guise of a woman." He feels disturbed and goes rambling in the woods, coming to that ruined bridge with the strange middle span. But a storm is threatening, so he returns home. The next morning, after the storm, he returns to look at the bridge, but the storm destroyed the middle span . . . and he finds a lot of bones! Some are human bones, some not. He returns to Dunwich to ask if there were an old cemetery nearby that might explain the bones. He does to talk to the local Baptist minister, Reverend Dunning, who derides the locals for their inbred superstitions. He returns home, and sees fresh blood on the altar in the basement, and runs out of the house. He sees an old man who says that he is clearly a Bishop, and asks which. When he explains that he is Ambrose, the figure says that he is Septimus Bishop. Ambrose faints (of course). When he wakes up, there is no one there (of course). There follows a rash of disappearances in Dunwich, and he is sure that Septimus has returned, and has dreamlike encounters in which Septimus warns that the villagers are coming for them . . . The Bishop Manuscript ends confusingly. It is followed by a clipping about the restoration of the old bridge that washed out, and the middle span crowned with the Elder Sign . . .  

"Innsmouth Clay" 
© 1971 - A short story in which an artist named Jeffrey Corey moves to the Innsmouth area to work. He sculpts a "Sea Goddess," but feels compelled to give it webbed digits and gills. He has strange dreams and compulsions that relate to the Deep Ones intermarried with certain Innsmouth clans like the Marshes and Waites, dreams of people living under the sea, the names Cthulhu and R'lyeh (garbled). The Corey vanishes. The narrator looks for him, sees a thing that looks like him in the water, but with gills . . . 

"The Watchers Out of Time"
A manuscript left unfinished at the time of Derleth's death in 1971. 

     The influence of H.P. Lovecraft on Gygax and early D&D is extremely obvious; the influence of Derleth is more subtle. In a way, though, Derleth's vision  of humans being able to align themselves with cosmic forces of good to oppose cosmic forces of evil is more in line with what D&D is about than Lovecraft's cosmic horror. Think about it - if you want to play an investigator into the Cthulhu Mythos who, true to Lovecraft, is doomed to madness and death, play the Call of Cthulhu RPG (now in it's 7th edition!). In fact, many editions of CoC have a disclaimer that they are based on Lovecraft's original vision, not later interpretations by others (meaning those like Derleth, though not mentioning any of them by name. Nevertheless, the CoC game does use the term "Cthulhu Mythos" which Derleth may have invented! But if, on the other hand, you want to play a mortal servant of an Elder God, a "cleric" if you will, and have that Elder God grant your character spells to defeat evil monsters, as in Derleth's interpretation of Lovecraft . . . well, play D&D.

     The influence of Derleth and Lovecraft can be felt in D&D from an early time. An early printing of Deities and Demigods had "The Cthulhu Mythos" as a pantheon of gods and beings with whom D&D characters could interact. This literary mythos, and that of Michael Moorcock, were removed early on (though Fritz Leiber's "Nehwon Mythos" remained in later 1st edition and into 2nd edition Legends and Lore printings). This early tendency to include Lovecraftiana, often with some Derleth coloring, has continued in fantasy RPGs to this day, including Cthulhu's inclusion as a Neutral deity in DCC RPG (yes, Neutral - he does not care for Law or Chaos or any other mortal concern!) and a monster (CR 30!) in the Pathfinder RPG (along with many other entities and monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos).

     There have certainly been too many influences of Derleth's version of Lovecraft on fantasy RPGs for me to list here - themes are used and abused, often badly, by too many authors for me to list. If you want to see an example of it being done well, allow me to recommend nearly anything by Daniel J. Bishop, who has a truly amazing grasp of the Cthulhu Mythos and how to use it in fantasy gaming. For examples containing an actual Cthulhu cult, check out Purple Duck Publishing's The Portsmouth Mermaid and its supplement, Three Nights in Portsmouth:

    I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about August Derleth. 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
Ides of October
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona

Next up for Appendix N Revisited: The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany!

Lest Darkness Fall Revisted - Appendix N Revisited, Part 7

Lest Darkness Fall Revisited 

Appendix N Revisited, Part 7

     Hello, and welcome to the seventh 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 seventh installment focuses on L. Sprague de Camp and Lest Darkness Fall. 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.

     L. Sprague de Camp (the L was for Lyon!), 1907-2000, was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. He also had the distinction of being one of the few authors specifically mentioned more than once by Gary Gygax in Appendix N - for "Lest Darkness Fall, The Fallible Fiend, et al." and with Fletcher Pratt for the "'Harold Shea' series, Carnelian Cube" . . . since I will be addressing Fletcher Pratt for Blue Star separately, I thought I would pick one of de Camp's independent works for this installment of this project. And as a professional Classicist, I could not resist starting with Lest Darkness Fall, about a man stuck in the past (near the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe) who determines that the best thing that he can do is prevent darkness from falling - prevent the worst of the Dark Ages - with the 20th century knowledge he has brought with him to the past.

     The Wikipedia article about de Camp points out that he was a materialist (like Padway!) "who wrote works examining society, history, technology, and myth" (I've read some of his nonfiction books on the history of technology). It also notes "a common theme in many of his works is a corrective impulse regarding similar previous works by other authors" - this certainly applies here! "Some, like Asimov, felt de Camp's conscientiousness about facts limited the scope of his stories: de Camp was reluctant to use technological or scientific concepts (e.g. hyperspace or faster-than-light travel)if he did not think them possible. This, his response to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court was to write a similar time travel novel (Lest Darkness Fall) in which the method of time travel was rationalized and the hero's technical expertise both set at a believable level and constrained by the technological limitations of the age." So, in a sense, Lest Darkness Fall can be seen as a critique of the genre of sci-fi time travel into the past in which the time traveller is easily able to overawe the people of the past with their modern knowledge.

Ease of Availability

     This is quite an easy book to find in paperback and Kindle format, but there does not seem to be an Audible audiobook available at this time.  

Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!

     The first version of Lest Darkness Fall to see print did so in December 1939, and a later version was published in 1941. I start with this to give the reader some notion of the 20th century world in which de Camp was writing - on the eve of the Second World War, and rewritten during the war. When de Camp wrote disparagingly of Benito Mussolini, it was while Mussolini was an ongoing concern! The protagonist of the story is Martin Padway, a student of history and archaeology visiting Rome under Mussolini. His host, Professor Tancredi (named for the famous hero of the Crusades?), shares with him a theory of the nature of time. Time, he says, is like a tree. On occasion, he believes, when someone just seems to disappear off the face of the earth, they have somehow slipped down the trunk of the tree. Where they end up begins a new branch of the tree, completely separate from their original timeline (of course, otherwise all sorts of logical paradox problems arise). Tancredi further theorizes that history is tough four-dimensional web, but with weak points - focal points in history where backslippers in time would arrive - "places like Rome, where the world-lines of many famous events intersect."

     Conveniently, of course, soon after Professor Tancredi shares these thoughts with Martin Padway, this is exactly what happens. Tancredi drops Padway off at the Pantheon, where Padway takes refuge from a growing storm, and as thew "grand-daddy of all lightning flashes" struck nearby, "the pavement dropped out from under him like a trapdoor" - he hung in the midst of nothing, blinded by the flash. Then suddenly his feet hit the ground with an impact "about as strong as that resulting from a two-foot fall." Padway does not realize it, but he has slid back down the trunk of time and come to rest in late antique Rome, at the beginning of a new branch of history caused by his own presence.

     It is a common enough theme in Appendix N literature - the man outside of his own time and place, plucked from our world (well, in this case, now, the world of 1939 or so, a world now almost as alien in its own way!) and dropped into another. But instead of John Carter on Mars, or David Innes in Pellucidar, modern men making their way in alien worlds, Padway is in the past, in history, and cannot (like David Innes) hope to get help from his own world. Padway has only the contents of his own mind to sustain him, and no hope of anything else!

     Padway runs into the Pantheon for shelter from the storm, thinking it odd that the electric lights were not on. As he looks around, he sees that the modern trappings of Rome have disappeared and been replaced with ancient and primitive features. Listening to the chatter of the people around him, Padway realizes it is not Italian, nor is it Classical Latin, but some "late form of Vulgar Latin, rather more than halfway from the language of Cicero to that of Dante." A nice bit of attention to detail on the part of de Camp, who could expect in 1939 that any reasonably educated person reading his book would understand the references. I think it's a bit harder for modern readers to follow, sadly.

     Padway's first thought is to find a policeman, and tries out his ability to speak proto-Romance based on his knowledge of Latin and Italian. COULD this be done? Well, with fluency in Italian, and the kind of fluency in Latin expected of education before Sputnik made everything about STEM, yes, theoretically. When I traveled in Italy, I was able to make myself understood just based on my knowledge of Latin and the principles of linguistics (how words were likely to have changed into Italian, mostly). But for Padway, the very concept he's attempting - policeman - doesn't really translate; does he want an "agent of the municipal prefect"? He next tries to establish the date. Reckoning by Anno Domini (by the "Year of the Lord" - the number of years since the birth of the Christ) is not yet in fashion, but he learns it is 1288 Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), which he is told is about "five hundred and something [years from the birth of the Christ]. Better ask a priest, stranger." (in fact, that would be the year 535 C.E. by out reckoning).

     Having roughly established where and when he is, with no way to return to the middle of the 20th century, Padway takes stock of his prospects for survival. He has little on him of practical value - no real technology from the future of use to him, no books, little hard currency. And really, what could he have that would change the world? My first Latin teacher, Mr. Hodge, played a little game with our class where would try to come up with one single thing to bring back and time to give to Julius Caesar (or whomever) and change the world. People came up with guns ("What happens when it runs out of bullets?"), radios ("To whom would he speak or listen?"), telephones (This before the age of smartphones or even ubiquitous cellphones - "Same problem - to whom would he speak? And without the network of telecom wires and cables?"), etc. Most students did not realize the problem. Mr. Hodge had thought when he gave the assignment that no student would come up with anything that would significantly change history. I changed his mind - my answer was "the stirrup" - replicable technology that would have introduced heavy cavalry - the armored medieval knight - at least five centuries early and could have changed the history of the whole planet! I was proud of that one! But anyway, Padway has nothing like that. He goes to a goldsmith/money-changer named Sextus Dentatus to try to convert the modern coins he has with him into Roman currency. He is offered a solidus for the whole lot. While he considers this, he is hailed in Gothic by a stranger who assumes from his outlandish garb that he must be a Goth.

     The stranger, Nevitta Gummud's son, convinces Dentatus to offer a better rate of exchange - 93 sesterces. Nevitta is there to get Dentatus to re-set a gem in a gold ring. He mentions that his house is under a curse, but when he describes the symptoms of this curse, Padway realizes that Nevitta is describing allergies, and suggests ways to alleviate the worst of the symptoms (have the dogs sleep outside, have the place swept well daily). Martin Padway, soon to be going by "Martinus," has realized that his 20th century knowledge can help him survive and perhaps even prosper in the past, if he is clever.

     Padway gets his new friend to recommend a lawyer (Valerius Mummius), a physician (Leo Vekkos), a banker (Thomasus the Syrian), and a place to stay (Nevitta helps him find a place and haggle to rent down from 7 to 5 sesterces). The next day, Padway goes to Thomasus the Syrian to try to procure a loan to start a business -perhaps making brandy? While there, he learns that the current ruler in Rome is Thiudahad, who murdered his co-ruler Queen Amalaswentha (an event in history of which Padway, as a historian, was aware, thus enabling him to orient himself somewhat in time). Again, the modern reader may be scratching his head, but it would not be unreasonable to assume that a historian of 1939 would know about such historical events that are now no longer taught much!

     Padway teaches Thomasus' clerks the use of Arabic numerals, and thus secures his loan at 10.5% interest. He hires a "dark, cocky little Sicilian named Hannibal Scipio" and they successfully distill some brandy, which impresses Thomasus. While out celebrating their production of brandy, a religious debate turns into a brawl, from which they are rescued by a Vandal named Fritharik Staifan's son. Padway hires out Fritharik as a guard a couple of weeks later. He also hires a serving-wench from Apulia named Julia.

     Once he is better-established in 6th century Rome, Padway finally gets around to doing some reading at a local library, including some works long-lost by the 20th century (how envious I am!). At the library he meets the patrician Cornelius Anicius and his daughter Dorothea, who appears to be intended as a love interest, though she does not reappear much.

      Padway and Thomasus visit the Baths of Diocletian, where Thomasus shares the latest news from Constantinople of a war between the Goths and the Byzantine Empire.

     Fritharik catches Hannibal Scipio stealing copper from the distillery and fires him. One senses that this will have ominous repercussions later . . .

     Soon thereafter, Padway begins to seriously contemplate the coming Dark Ages and whether or not he, one man, could change the course of history in order to somehow prevent the fall of civilization - "How to prevent darkness from falling?" Padway comes to the conclusion that he must build a printing press and become a printer. He soon discovers that creating a printing press from scratch is no easy task! None of the prerequisites, such as the paper, the ink, the type, and so forth yet exist! Nor are they easy to produce without the existing industries which make them!

     In the middle of February, Padway gets a visit from Nevitta, who notices that Padway is falling ill. He sends for his physician, Leo Vekkos, whose primitive medicine frightens Padway. Julia the housekeeper sends for her priest. Padway even has to chase away an astrologer!

     Sicily had fallen to the Byzantine general Belisarius in December. Now, in April of 536 C.E., Padway is ready to print his first book - an alphabet book, to help spread literacy. He also decides to begin a weekly newspaper - Tempora Romae ("The Times of Rome") - offered at 10 sesterces ("about the equivalent of fifty cents"). He enlists the city's scribes as journalists, but since there is no real concept of journalism as yet, he has to be careful of the gossip they keep turning in, particularly gossip about powerful nobles - Padway reminds himself that there is not yet any such thing as the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (which guarantees, among other things, freedom of speech and of the press).

     Padway soon realizes he cannot continue to publish on vellum - there are not enough animals to skin to meet the demand! - so he has a felter experiment with making rag paper. This is the sort of thing that an educated person at the time this book was written might reasonably be expected to come up with, though I suspect it would be a bit more challenging for the average person now!

      Over lunch with Fritharik and Ebenezer the Jew, Padway discovers that Thomasus the Syrian has sold the secrets of modern arithmetic for 150 solidi. Padway realizes that once he has loosed new technologies, they have a way of spreading without his knowledge or consent. Padway next tries to produce a clock, but finds this much harder than expected, even with his wristwatch for a model. He can't go to the Flaminian racetrack when Nevitta invites him because he's working on his newspaper, but agrees to visit Nevitta's farm in Campagna, where he discusses the future of the war against Belisarius with Nevitta's son Dagalaif.

     When Padway arrives back in Rome, he finds himself under arrest by order of the municipal prefect on charges of sorcery. Upon arrival at the jail, there is a debate about jurisdiction in a capital case involving a non-Gothic foreigner. He eventually finds that the complaint was sworn out against him by his prior employee, Hannibal Scipio. Padway is able to offer a bribe in the form of a promise to set up semaphore telecommunications, and a wedding announcement in his newspaper for the prefect's daughter.

     A semaphore telegraph sounds like exactly the sort of thing young D&D players were always trying to introduce to their medieval realms in the early 1980s. Primitive versions of existing tech, like the Professor on Gilligan's Island making cars out of coconuts - somewhat absurd, and only existing in the heads of characters because their players know about them and want them. But L. Sprague de Camp is being careful here, using technology that Padway would know about, be able to describe well enough to replicate, and is not absurd for its time and place - it's just that the Romans didn't think of it!

     Padway gets some Roman senators to invest in his semaphore signal towers, but makes sure that he has controlling interest in his corporation. He visits Florianus the Glazier to get lenses for the telescopes he'll need . . . and finds the man just can't deliver. So many things we would take for granted that Padway would be able to have made are impossible to obtain! Eventually, he gets some crude telescopes made by a glazier named Andronicus in Naples.

     Padway gets the Roman Telegraph Company under construction, but the Goths halt construction under suspicion that the project could be pro-Greek somehow! He needs to appeal to King Thiudahad. Padway journeys with Fritharik to Ravenna to seek an audience - requiring a bribe of 5 solidi and a bottle of brandy to get a timely one! Padway ends up bribing the king to get the project underway again!

     But upon returning to Rome, Padway finds that his lieutenant at the newspaper, George Menandros, printed some libel about the Pope! He tries to round up all the papers before they are distributed, but gets arrested by the Gothic authorities (again), and needs to bribe his way out of trouble (again).

     At this point, the first leg of the Telegraph Company is due to be completed in a week or so. Padway is coerced into a romantic liason with his housekeeper Julia, but when he breaks it off, he finds her priest, Father Narcissus, preaching against sorcery. "Padway feared a mob of religious enthusiasts more than anything on earth, no doubt because their mental processes were so utterly alien to his own." So Padway goes to the local bishop and reveals that he works hard to suppress scurrilous rumors about the clergy, and the bishop puts pressure on Father Narcissus to leave Padway alone.

     Padway bets Thomasus one solidus that Evermuth the Vandal will desert to the Imperialists. The first message received over the Telegraph is that Belisarius landed at Reggio and that Evermuth had gone over to him. But now King Thiudahad orders Padway to stop operating the Telegraph - word of Evermuth's desertion had been all over Rome within hours of it happening, which was very bad for morale! Through Thiudahad, Padway meets Cassiodorus, who likes him, though he is horrified by Padway's plans to print his newspaper in Vulgar Latin. He makes some inroads into polite society ("a couple of very dull dinners that began at four p.m. and lasted most of the night"), and accepts an invitation from Cornelius Anicius, bringing Fritharik with him. He overhears Cornelius preparing a speech (plagiarizing Sidonius). He comes close to a romantic engagement with Dorothea, but nothing comes of it. Later, Padway learns that Cornelius Anicius wants Padway to publish his poetry.

     In August of 536 C.E., Naples fell to Belisarius. A son of King Thiudahad names Thiudegiskel causes some trouble, trying to bully Padway, but he is chased off. Nevertheless, Padway decided to move his business to Florence, since as far as he could "remember his Procopius, Florence had not been besieged or sacked in Justinian's Gothic War" - but Padway is not half done with his preparations to move when soldiers come from the garrison to arrest him (again). He tries to bribe his way out of trouble again, but is unsuccessful this time - Thiudegiskel has accused him of colluding with the Greek Imperialists! Padway is put into a prison-camp at the north end of the city, between the Flaminian Way and the Tiber. After a few days, he hears about a moot called by the Goths to discuss the loss of Naples. He bets a patrician prisoner a solidus that "they depose Thiudahad and elect Wittigis king."

     Thomasus the Syrian is able to bribe his way in to visit Padway, and even bring him things needed for painting. Padway offers the captain of the guards, Hrotheigs, a portrait, and after that, he is allowed to paint landscapes from atop the camp's walls (under guard, of course). Soon after, Thiudegiskel is imprisoned in the same camp, since his father was deposed. Padway begins to consider the problem of whether or not he can truly change history, to prevent a long and devastating war in Italy. He gets Thomasus to smuggle in some sulphur and rope for him; he uses the sulfur to cause a distraction and the rope to escape over the wall.

     Padway goes to the home of Nevitta for help, and proposes to win the war for the Goths, thus changing history. Next, he goes to await Thiudahad on the Flaminian Way, hoping to catch the former king on his panicked flight to Ravenna. He warns Thiudahad that if he returns to Ravenna, he will be killed. The assassin sent to kill Thiudahad, Optaris, catches up with them and Padway is forced to fight him - he wins (more by accident than anything else).

     By September, Padway and Thiudahad are back in Rome. Using knowledge acquired in the future that Belisarius will come up the Latin Way in November, Padway plans for the defense of Rome. He is able to calculate where Belisarius' army will make camp near Fregellae, and has a large catapult ready with loads of sulfur paste to shoot into the Byzantine camp. His Goths have shields painted white for recognition. It seems well-planned, but Padway runs into problems of execution when his Gothic artillery crew decide it more honorable to charge into combat than wait for orders to fire the catapult again (a similar point is made repeatedly in Harry Harrisons' The Hammer and the Cross about the unsuitability of the ancient warrior ethos to modern military discipline, with soldiers - in Harrison, Vikings - unwilling to restrain themselves and follow orders when there is personal glory to be won!). The Gothic commander Liuderis is killed, leaving Padway in command of the Gothic forces.

     Padway captures Belisarius and tries to recruit him, but Belisarius will not forsake his oath - "the word of Belisarius is not to be questioned." He resolves to recruit Belisarius' secretary Procopius of Caesarea as a historian.

     Next, Padway and Thiudahad intercept the returning generals Asinar and Grippas, and turn their armies against Wittigis in Ravenna. They get into the city and head to St. Vitalis' church, where Wittigis intends to marry Mathaswentha, daughter of the mudered Queen Amalawentha, against her will. Padway is able to capture Wittigis and send him to Thomasus the Syrian as a prisoner.

     Padway thinks he is falling in love with Princess Mathaswentha, and she with him, but he discovers he does not truly love her when he begins to realize just how bloodthirsty she really is. He tries instead to arrange a match between her and Urias, Wittigis' nephew.

     Padway plans to extend the Telegraph, move the capital to Florence, and start a newspaper and school there. He wants to put Urias in charge of an academy for Gothic officers, and to introduce the crossbow and better armor.

     Trouble next comes in the form of Hlodovik, an envoy of the Franks, to whom Wittigis made certain promises as King that cannot be honored. Next, an envoy of the Bulgarian Huns - Boyar Karojan - they had an offer from Justinian to refrain from invading Byzantine territories, and the Huns wonder if they can get a better offer from Thiudahad. This envoy is sent away as well.

     Then General Sisigis on the Frankish frontier sends word of suspicious Frankish activity, and a letter from Thomasus that someone tried to assassinate Wittigis (apparently an old time secret agent of Thiudahad), and a letter is received from Justinian refusing peace with the Gothic kingdom - and releasing Belisarius from his vows. So Padway shuffles around military commands, sending Belisarius to face the Franks.

     Next, Padway tries to make gunpowder. The modern reader might be surprised that he did not attempt it earlier, but despite the ease with which this hurdle is cleared in popular culture (e.g. Bruce Campbell Vs. the Army of Darkness), the formula can be somewhat elusive if one does not already know how to make it. He a;so has trouble getting serviceable cannon from a brass foundry, but even once he has the cannon, he can't get the gunpowder formula quite right.

     Padway gives Urias his blessing to court Mathaswentha.

     Next, Padway gets word that Wittigis has somehow escaped detention, tried to kill Thiudahad, and was in turn killed by the guards. But Thiudahad is becoming increasingly unhinged, and is now generally recognized to have lost his mind. A new election is to be held at Florence, with Urias as a candidate after marrying Mathaswentha. Unfortunately, Thiudahad's son (and Padway's old nemesis) Thiudegiskel has a strong following among conservative Goths for the election - undermined a bit by having a child slave call him "atta" ("papa!") in public! So Urias is elected the new king.

     They then receive word of a new Imperial invasion coming up from Bruttium. While Urias organizes the defense of Italy, Padway resumes experiments with gunpowder. The war goes poorly at first, as Thiudegiskel joins the Imperial forces. But Padway issues an edict in Urias' name emancipating the serfs of Bruttium, Lucania, Calabria, Campania, and Samnium to fight against the Imperial forces. A second edict recalls Belisarius from Provence.

     By May of 537 C.E., Padway is at Benevento with his forces, bringing pikes to arm former serfs. He meets up with Dagalaif and learns that his old friend Nevitta died in battle. Padway tries to help with what techniques he can in the war against the Imperial forces. The arrival of Belisarius' reinforcements help to complete the victory.

     Dorothea is furious with Padway for the financial ruin of her family due to Padway's policies freeing the serfs - no romance for Padway!

     But Padway sees that his Telegraph, printing press, new postal system, etc. have become too well-rooted to be be destroyed by accident. He successfully turned a long, brutal, ruinous war into a short conflict, and changed the outcome. History had been changed. "Darkness would not fall."

     That's the rather unsatisfying ending de Camp gives this piece. The rather terse assertion that darkness - the Dark Ages - would fail to come about due to Padway's interference, at least in his branch of history.

     While one can see the influence of this kind of fiction on Gary Gygax, it is subtle and indirect. There is no module or campaign setting one can point to and say, "There! THAT was Gygax' homage to Lest Darkness Fall!" Time travel is not featured much in Old School modules. In fact, the only old module that addresses time travel well is CM6 Where Chaos Reigns, a great module I'd love to see revamped for a more modern audience - but it has little to do with Lest Darkness Fall. 

     There have been other attempts to use time travel in a FRPG setting (such as 2nd edition D&D's Chronomancer), but these were rather disappointing on the whole. It would be interesting to see someone attempt a OSR module inspired by Lest Darkness Fall. 

     I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about Lest Darkness Fall. 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

Running a bit late - originally this post was scheduled for July, and I didn't get around to posting it until September! 

Next up for Appendix N Revisited: August Derleth (with H.P. Lovecraft)!

Word Count Wednesday: The Trade, Ormsbani edits, and a Commitment Among The Giants

Hello everyone,

     Once again it is Word Count Wednesday! I just started on a new piece for Tales From Midhgardhur on Channillo entitled "The Trade." The current word count on that project is just under 2000 words.

    I have also committed to beginning work on a sequel to The Saga of Asa Oathkeeper for Camp NaNoWriMo in July. The working title is Asa Oathkeeper Among the Giants. Word count will remain at 0 until July 1st, when the NaNoWriMo madness will begin!

     I just finished integrating the last edits suggested by the Armadillo Authors' Workshop for the manuscript of Ormsbani. The editing of Ormbani is such a weird process - I cut huge, unnecessary chunks from the text, but then I add a paragraph here and there, and I think the balance often comes out about even. The current word count is 71,730. I haven't been able to attend the workshop for a few weeks due to major car trouble - and the final verdict is that my car would cost more to repair than the car itself is worth. But I'm hoping to get down there again tomorrow night. If you're an author in the Phoenix, Arizona area, feel free to join us at the Armadillo Grill down on Camelback. We're a friendly group!

     I'm also tinkering with a first draft of Tyrfingur, but that is in very early stages. It is still at a word count of 1730 or so.

     The latest installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project posted yesterday, with a look at Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria by Lin Carter. Check it out!

     Don't forget to join me on the Ides of July for a look at L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall!

Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd

Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria Revisited - Appendix N Revisited, Part 6

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 . . .

"Naga" from the AD&D (1st edition) Monster Manual

     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.

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

Next up for Appendix N Revisited: L. Sprague de Camp's  Lest Darkness Fall!