The Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith (Part II)

Having already drawn attention to two of the major story cycles in the work of Clark Ashton Smith yesterday, today I turn to two more: Zothique and Poseidonis. Each represents a distinct phase of Smith’s imaginative geography, namely, worlds poised at the edge of decline, saturated with decadence, strange magic, and the long shadows of forgotten civilizations. Where his earlier cycles explore other corners of historical (and prehistorical) fantasy, Zothique and Poseidonis focus on the dying days of Earth and the last flickering embers of Atlantis, respectively. Together, they showcase Smith at his most lush and melancholic, weaving tales that revel in beauty even as they chart the slow, inevitable unraveling of entire worlds.

Zothique 

Zothique is Earth’s final continent, rising millions of years in the future beneath a dim, blood-veiled sun, as the stars creep closer and ancient gods stir once more. It's a world steeped in entropy and oblivion, with endless deserts, hollowed ruins, and decadent, dying cities clinging to their last pleasures. Sorcery has supplanted all but the faintest traces of forgotten science, while humanity wallows in sensual excess, necromancy, and world-weary ennui.

The tales set in Zothique revolve around death as a form of release, the futility of ambition, and cruelly ironic reversals of fortune. It's also probably Smith’s most celebrated cycle and a foundational work of the “Dying Earth” subgenre. Beneath the lurid imagery lies a bleak, almost serene acceptance of decline, where even triumph tastes of dust. For my part, it remains my personal favorite – equal parts macabre, mesmerizing, and strangely beautiful.

Prominent stories in this cycle include:

• "The Empire of the Necromancers" (1932): Exiled wizards raise the dead as slaves in a barren land, only for the undead royalty of the ruin they intend to plunder to rebel against them.
• "The Isle of the Torturers" (1933): A plague-immune king endures sadistic horrors on a cruel island.
• "Xeethra" (1934): A shepherd gains royal memories, quests for a lost kingdom, and bargains with a dark god.
• "The Dark Eidolon" (1935): A sorcerer unleashes apocalyptic vengeance on an emperor, with ironic consequences.
• "The Last Hieroglyph" (1935): An astrologer follows cosmic guides to an unexpected revelation about existence.
• "Necromancy in Naat" (1936): A prince searches for his love on an island of undead slaves.
• "The Death of Ilalotha" (1937): A funeral orgy draws a lover to a reanimated corpse's embrace.
• "The Garden of Adompha" (1938): A king's grotesque garden turns against him.

Poseidonis 

Poseidonis is the last foundering isle of Atlantis, fated to be swallowed by the encroaching seas sometime after the fall of Hyperborea. Drawn heavily from the Theosophical vision of Atlantis and its people, it is an island steeped in sorcery and fading grandeur. Its crumbling cities and embattled coastlines stand as monuments to a civilization already half-lost to legend, even as its inhabitants cling to power, ritual, and ancient secrets.

The stories of the Poseidonis cycle dwell on memory, moral decay, and the inescapable certainty of doom, charting the slow unraveling of a culture that knows its end is near. Corruption festers behind gilded facades, while prophets and magicians vainly attempt to forestall the inevitable. In this way, Poseidonis becomes less a place than a mood. It's a twilight world poised on the brink between myth and oblivion, where every triumph is shadowed by the certainty of the sea’s final claim.

The core stories of this cycle are:

• "The Last Incantation" (1930): Aging Malygris summons his lost love's image.
• "A Voyage to Sfanomoë" (1931): Scientists flee the sinking of Atlantis by traveling to another world.
• "The Double Shadow" (1932): Wizards unleash a cursed shadow from an ancient tablet.
• "The Death of Malygris" (1934): The necromancer's "death" triggers terror among rivals.

The Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith (Part I)

Among the more interesting aspects of Clark Ashton Smith’s literary output is the way many of his best-known stories fall into a series of loosely connected “cycles.” Each cycle is defined by a shared setting, one that all the stories belonging to it inhabit, even if those stories are separated by vast stretches of time or only lightly connected by recurring names, places, or legends. While these cycles share certain common elements – decadence, black magic, sardonic humor, and a pervasive sense of decline – each nevertheless possesses a character and atmosphere all its own. A story set in Hyperborea feels different from one set in Zothique or Averoigne, not merely in geography but also in tone, mood, and underlying assumptions about history, magic, and humanity’s place in the cosmos.

Since I plan to write about several of Clark Ashton Smith’s settings over the course of the coming month, it seems worthwhile to begin with a short series of introductory posts outlining these worlds for readers who may not yet be familiar with them. Each post will offer a brief overview of a particular setting, highlighting its distinctive features and thematic concerns. I’ll also include a selective bibliography of some of the key stories associated with each setting, many of which I’ve already examined in earlier Pulp Fantasy Library posts. This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive or encyclopedic survey. Rather, I simply wish to establish a shared foundation, one that will make it easier to explore these settings in greater depth in later posts devoted to Smith’s most enduring and influential creations.

In this first installment, I’ll focus on two of Smith’s best-known settings – Averoigne and Hyperborea –with additional settings to follow in Parts II and III of the series.

Averoigne

Averoigne is a fictional region in southern France, with its own unique geography and history. It's a land of walled cities like Vyones (home to a grand cathedral and a scheming archbishop), winding rivers such as the Isoile, dense sinister forests, and ruined castles like Fausseflammes and Ylourgne. Set during the Middle Ages and early modern period, supernatural elements abound in the tales of Averoigne, like sorcery (often practiced covertly, even by clergy), vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and demonic intrusions. The Church holds sway but is frequently helpless or corrupt against these forces, which enables Smith to blend religious satire with elements of horror. The Averoigne stories often explore themes of lust, forbidden knowledge, and the clash between faith and paganism. 

The major stories in this cycle are:

• "The End of the Story" (1930): The earliest written story of Averoigne, it takes place in the 18th century. In it, a law student uncovers a forbidden tome at Périgon Abbey, leading to a romantic encounter with a lamia in a ruined chateau.
• "A Rendezvous in Averoigne" (1931): A troubadour and his lover stumble into a vampire-infested castle, blending romance with gothic horror.
• "The Maker of Gargoyles" (1932): A lustful stonemason's creations come alive to terrorize Vyones, serving as karmic punishment.
• "The Holiness of Azédarac" (1933): A bishop-sorcerer uses time magic to send a monk back to pagan times, where he finds love and questions his faith.
• "The Colossus of Ylourgne" (1933): A necromancer assembles a giant corpse to ravage the land, stopped by a heroic wizard in an epic tale of dark sorcery.
• "The Beast of Averoigne" (1933): An alien serpent creature arrives via comet, pitting science against religion as a sorcerer battles it.
• "Mother of Toads" (1938): A grotesque witch seduces a young man with potions, leading to horrific revenge.
• "The Enchantress of Sylaire" (1941): A dreamer enters a fairy realm, defeats a werewolf, and chooses eternal love over mortal life.

Hyperborea

Hyperborea is an ancient, lost land roughly where Greenland stands today, existing in a warm prehistoric era (possibly the Miocene or Pleistocene) before glaciers engulfed it. It's a jungle-clad realm of ebony mountains, opulent cities like Commoriom (abandoned due to dire prophecies) and Uzuldaroum, as well as northern locales like Mhu Thulan. Dinosaurs roam alongside mammoths and saber-tooths, while wizards, thieves, and elder gods like Tsathoggua dominate. The themes of cosmic indifference, ironic comeuppance, and the encroaching ice-doom of the land permeate the stories, often with black humor amid the horror. Smith's Hyperborean stories are the most sword-and-sorcery in content and tones of his work.

The key stories of this cycle are:

• "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (1931): A pair of thieves raid a ruined temple, awakening a monstrous guardian in ironic horror.
• "The Door to Saturn" (1932): Sorcerer Eibon flees to an alien planet, encountering bizarre creatures in a comedic quest.
• "The Testament of Athammaus" (1932): An executioner fails to kill a regenerating criminal tied to ancient gods.
• "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" (1932): A greedy lender chases cursed gems into a monster's lair.
• "The Ice-Demon" (1933): Treasure hunters face a malevolent glacier in a tomb city.
• "The Seven Geases" (1934): A hunter endures escalating curses, bouncing through underworlds to a punchline end.
• "The Coming of the White Worm" (1941): A wizard confronts a deceptive iceberg-entity enslaving others.

The Cursed Chateau

The Cursed Chateau by James Maliszewski

Fourth Time's the Charm?

Read on Substack

Thoughts Occasioned by Castle Amber

This post is not, strictly speaking, a Retrospective, since I've already done one on Tom Moldvay's 1981 module, Castle Amber – two, actually, if you count the repost as well. Nevertheless, in honor of The Ensorcellment of January, I thought it more than appropriate to take another look at the only old school Dungeons & Dragons module to take explicit inspiration from the works of Clark Ashton Smith. While I'll endeavor not to repeat much of what I said in my original Retrospective, there will inevitably be a few points to which I'll return, though I hope I'll offer some additional insights to justify doing so.

Despite my repeatedly thinking otherwise, the name of Clark Ashton Smith does not appear anywhere in Appendix N to Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide nor does he appear in the expanded list of "favorite authors [and] inspirational sources" in his 1992 Mythus Magick bonus. On one level, it's a very odd omission, as Gygax was quite well read when it came to fantasy and science fiction literature – including lots of early pulp fantasy authors, like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, both of whom he considered "among the most immediate influences" on his conception of the game he co-created. 

The fact that Gary Gygax, of all people, could seemingly have either not known or not cared about CAS suggests that, compared to many of his literary contemporaries, he has always been, if not necessarily obscure, something of an acquired taste. Speaking even as an avowed devotee of Smith, I can’t really blame anyone who finds his mellifluous prose, sardonic demeanor, and detached misanthropy a bit much, particularly when set beside the more muscular storytelling of Howard or the raw imaginative urgency of Lovecraft. Smith demands patience and a willingness to luxuriate in language for its own sake. His stories often feel less like adventures than like jeweled relics to be contemplated from a respectful distance.

Consequently, Smith’s fiction is not easily mined for gameable elements in the way Conan’s swordplay or Lovecraft’s Mythos can be. Howard offers clear models for heroic action and conflict. Lovecraft provides a cosmology of forbidden knowledge, cults, and monsters that can be lifted almost wholesale into play. Smith, by contrast, traffics in mood, decadence, and fatalism. His stories often lack conventional heroes, hinge on ironic or poetic reversals, and end not with triumph or revelation but with extinction, transformation, or bitter resignation. These qualities make his work harder to translate into D&D and that difficulty is probably at the root of why Gygax took little notice of him. Smith does not easily become a list of monsters, spells, or magic items.

Fortunately for me, Tom Moldvay did notice him. Although I’m still not absolutely certain that it was Castle Amber that first introduced me to Smith – it may well have been Call of Cthulhu, released the same year as module X2 – I can say with certainty that it was this adventure that solidified Smith’s hold over my imagination. Castle Amber suggested that roleplaying games could evoke not just action or terror, but a sense of dreamlike estrangement and baroque melancholy. It suggested that play could feel uncanny rather than merely dangerous, strange rather than merely challenging, and that those feelings could linger long after the dice were put away.

That lingering quality is a large part of why I still love Castle Amber four decades later. It is, above all else, unsettling. On the surface, it is just another dungeon for characters of levels 3 to 6, complete with monsters, traps, and treasure. Dig a little deeper, though, and the dungeon in question reveals itself as a kind of fun house, governed less by internal logic than by a warped, almost oneiric sensibility. Its 70 keyed locations feel less like rooms in a coherent structure and more like fragments of half-remembered stories stitched together by madness and decay.

One chamber hosts a boxing match against magical constructs; another contains the lair of spellcasting spiders imported from The Isle of Dread (itself another Moldvay creation); elsewhere, there is a kennel of hellhounds. None of these elements really belong together, at least not in a naturalistic way and that disjunction might be the point. The titular Castle Amber resists easy categorization. It feels wrong in a way that is difficult to articulate, as if it obeys a set of esthetic or even metaphysical rules that the players can sense but never fully grasp. Layered on top of this is the grotesque parade of the Amber family themselves – decadent, deranged, and occasionally tragic figures who are, unsurprisingly, closer to characters out of Smith’s own stories than to standard fantasy villains.

Castle Amber thus has a very strange vibe, one that I picked up on even as a twelve-year-old. It made me uneasy in a way that very few D&D modules ever have. How much of that vibe is intentional and how much of it is something I've been projecting onto it is difficult to say, especially after so many years of reading and playing it. I assume at least some of it must have been intentional, because Moldvay was adapting elements of Smith's Averoigne stories for use with D&D and those stories have a similar ambience. 

This brings to mind another question that has longed dogged me about this module: why was this particular module was ever released. Though not a close adaptation of the Averoigne tales, it's close enough that special thanks are given to CASiana Literary Enterprises, Inc. (the estate of Smith) "for use of the Averoigne stories as inspirational material." It's unclear whether TSR acquired or sought out a license from CASiana for use of the stories or not, but, even if it didn't do so formally, Castle Amber is an unusual early example of an RPG product published by TSR explicitly derived from a pre-existing intellectual property. 

Regardless, I count Castle Amber as one of my favorite adventure modules for any edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Not only did it play a role in making me a lifelong Clark Ashton Smith fan but it also forever affected my sensibilities when it comes to fantasy and fantasy adventures. It was, for example, one of the primary inspirations behind my own The Cursed Chateau (an adventure that I am, not coincidentally, in the process of revising for re-release). It's a weird, fun, disconcerting scenario and I think it still holds up today.

The Iounians

Over at Advanced Grognardia, I've got a post in which I provide game stats and a description of a monster from my Telluria campaign setting, along with some commentary on its origins. 

REPOST: The Sorcerer of Xiccarph

In light of a recent Pulp Fantasy Library entry, I thought readers might enjoy this write-up of Clark Ashton Smith's sorcerer, Maal Dweb. The description originally appeared in the "Giants in the Earth" column appearing in issue #30 of Dragon (October 1979), written by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay (though I suspect, given his love of Smith, that Moldvay was likely the author of this particular character).

Joe Doolin's Duo

The artwork that often accompanied the stories appearing in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines fascinates me. What strikes me about it is how good so much of it is. I don’t just mean in a technical sense – though that is obviously true – but also in its imaginative confidence and narrative clarity. These illustrations rarely function as mere decoration. Instead, they act as visual doorways into the story’s mood and possibilities, offering a concentrated distillation of wonder, menace, or strangeness that primes the reader before a single word is read. 

A good case in point is the single illustration included with Clark Ashton Smith's "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" from the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales. Here, we see the titular Satampra Zeiros and his ill-fated companion, Tirouv Ompallios, as they stumble upon the amorphous monster guardian the temple of Tsathoggua in ruined Commoriom. If you ever wondered where Call of Cthulhu's formless spawn of Tsathoggua came from, this is the story and that depiction, by pulp artist Joe Doolin, is probably the first one ever produced. 

One of the things I find notable about the illustration above is the way the two thieves are drawn. Both are attired in generic "Ancient World" garb vaguely reminiscent of a Greek chiton or Roman tunica, complete with sandals. This is common in fantasy art of the pulp era. Many of the earliest depictions of Conan, for example, are similarly dressed, so it's not unusual. Even so, seeing them here made me wonder when it was that we first start to see more genuinely fantastical modes of dress in fantasy or sword-and-sorcery art. That might be a topic worthy of further exploration.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Tale of Satampra Zeiros

With The Ensorcellment of January now underway, I’m taking a brief hiatus from H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands tales to share my thoughts on four Clark Ashton Smith stories I consider particularly worthy of attention. The first of these is a story of which I am especially fond, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros,” which appeared in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales. Whatever its other virtues – and they are many – it stands as one of the clearest early expressions of sword-and-sorcery literature. More broadly, it encapsulates many of the qualities that define what I think of as pulp fantasy at its most effective: immediacy, moral ambiguity, horror, and a palpable sense that the world is not merely indifferent to human ambition but actively hostile to it.

The tale opens with one of my favorite first sentences ever to appear in a fantasy story:

I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commoriom, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers.

The story that follows fully earns that opening. It is a first-person account by a professional thief explaining not only how he came to lose his right hand, but how his most recent heist ended in catastrophe. Not a bad beginning! Together with his companion, Tirouv Ompallios, Zeiros ventures into Commoriom, the long-abandoned capital of Hyperborea, a place shunned even by other robbers. Rumored to be cursed and haunted by strange gods, Commoriom nonetheless promises fabulous wealth to anyone bold (or foolish) enough to plunder it. For Zeiros, that promise is irresistible.

The two thieves break into an ancient, seemingly intact temple of the elder god Tsathoggua – the toad-god’s first appearance in Smith’s fiction – where they find no jewels or gold, but instead disturb a foul, viscous substance resting within a vast bronze basin. This substance rises and assumes the form of a monstrous, many-limbed creature that hunts them through the ruins all night long. At dawn, the thieves realize they have come full circle and have returned to the temple itself. Barricading themselves inside proves useless. The creature oozes through a damaged lintel, consuming Ompallios in silence and nearly claiming Zeiros as well. He escapes only by sacrificing his right hand, surviving to record the tale as a warning.

Smith wrote “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” early in his career as a prose writer, when he was still finding his footing in the pages of Weird Tales and the story bears the clear imprint of his literary influences. Poe’s fascination with doom, confession, and inevitable consequence is evident in the framing, while the French Decadents inform the luxuriant prose and preoccupation with corruption, blasphemy, and decay. At the same time, Smith is also clearly engaging with the raw material of adventure fiction – thieves, lost cities, fabulous treasure, and sudden violence. The fusion of these elements gives the story its remarkable staying power. Even decades after first reading it, I can still vividly recall the experience.

A great deal of the story’s success lies in Smith’s choice of protagonist. Zeiros is no hero. He is greedy, cynical, and ultimately self-preserving, surviving only at the expense of his partner in crime. This perspective strips the tale of any romantic gloss and reinforces a central truth of Smith’s Hyperborea, namely, that audacity is not rewarded, only punished. For that reason, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” is more than merely a foundational sword-and-sorcery text (though it certainly is that). It represents a decisive shift away from quests, kingdoms, and moral uplift toward immediate danger and personal survival. The stakes are not cosmic salvation or political destiny, but simply whether the protagonist lives to see another day. In that respect, it is a near-perfect encapsulation of the pulp fantasy ethos.

Though he never, to my knowledge, confirmed it, I have long suspected that “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” exerted some influence on Fritz Leiber’s conception of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. These roguish protagonists, with their ill-conceived schemes and narrow escapes, feel like natural descendants of Zeiros and Ompallios. Likewise, the relationship between Smith’s two thieves – transactional, greedy, and ultimately fragile – anticipates later depictions of adventuring partnerships defined more by convenience than by trust.

For similar reasons, I strongly associate this story with old school Dungeons & Dragons. The abandoned city of Commoriom, its forbidden temple, and its inhuman guardian are all immediately recognizable elements of dungeon-based play. More importantly, the story embodies an ethos in which exploration is genuinely dangerous and curiosity often carries a terrible price. Nearly a century after its publication, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” remains a sharp and unsettling work of pulp fantasy. It reminds us that an abandoned ruin may be a trap, filled with inimical gods and lethal consequences. In doing so, the story helped establish a tradition of fantasy that values peril over heroism and survival over glory, a tradition that continues to shape the genre today.

MA 50

Sometime this year – people better informed than I will know the precise date – James M. Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha will celebrate its 50th anniversary, the original having been released in 1976. Since I'm currently refereeing a campaign using these venerable science fiction RPG rules, I've been spending a lot of time online looking for additional resources to expand and enhance them. During one of these deep dives, I discovered a piece of news from March of last year that I somehow overlooked: 

Catalyst Roleplaying Games is proud to announce that we are working with Para Bellum Consulting for a special 50th anniversary release of Metamorphosis Alpha, an enduring classic of science-fiction roleplaying. This edition will honor the spirit and ingenuity of the original edition while offering exciting updates, including modernized gameplay and greatly expanded plot options.

The announcement doesn't give a release date or indeed provide much information of any sort beyond the usual marketing spiel one expects from such things. Even so, I'm intrigued. A few years ago, Goodman Games did, I think, a superb job of supporting the original Metamorphosis Alpha with new material, some of which I plan to incorporate into my campaign. From the sounds of it, Catalyst is creating an entirely new game, which isn't quite as exciting to me, but who knows? Maybe their "honor[ing] the spirit and ingenuity of the original edition" will be more than just empty words. 

If anyone knows any more about this new version of MA, please let me know in the comments. 

A Very Real Debt

Though this blog has, since its inception nearly eighteen years ago, been a staunch advocate for recognizing and celebrating the debt Dungeons & Dragons owes to pulp fantasy literature, there can be no doubt, despite the protestations of some (including myself, from time to time), that it also owes a significant debt to J. R. R. Tolkien, born on this day in 1892. That debt is not merely a matter of surface details, such as the presence of elves, dwarves, or halflings, nor even of familiar narrative trappings like ancient evils and lost kingdoms. Rather, Tolkien’s influence runs deeper, shaping expectations about the coherence of secondary worlds, the moral weight of history, and the idea that fantasy settings might possess an internal logic and gravitas extending far beyond the immediate needs of any single adventure.

Even when early role-playing games diverged from Tolkien’s sensibilities – or, in some cases, reacted against them – they did so in dialog with a vision of fantasy he helped to define. The very act of distinguishing pulp fantasy from Tolkienian (or "high") fantasy implicitly acknowledges the latter as a point of reference. On Tolkien’s birthday, then, it seems appropriate to set aside old debates long enough to acknowledge that, however indirect or contested it may sometimes be, his influence on Dungeons & Dragons and the broader hobby is both real and enduring.

Happy birthday, Professor Tolkien!