Smith's Most Well-Known Creation

Artwork by Clark Ashton Smith

I've already touched on the fact that, compared to his contemporaries, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the overt influence of Clark Ashton Smith on later writers is minimal and I stand by that assessment. I would, however, like to point out an obvious exception to this: the deity Tsathoggua. Unlike nearly everything else CAS created in his weird tales, Tsathoggua not only reappeared multiple times within his own story cycles but was also used by some of his colleagues in theirs. Indeed, the first time the name Tsathoggua appears in print is not in one of Smith's stories but in Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness."

In that story, Tsathoggua is mentioned three times, mostly in passing, as part of a litany of other ancient beings, like Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath. However, one of these mentions not only describes him but associates him with CAS:

It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came – you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.

Klarkash-Ton is, obviously, Smith and "the Commoriom myth-cycle" is then-unpublished "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros," which had been written in 1929 but not published until a few months after "The Whisperer in Darkness." We must remember that the writers in the Weird Tales circle regularly discussed and shared drafts of their work with one another, which is how HPL beat Smith to the punch when it came to introducing his own creation.

When "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" was published, Smith talks a bit more about Tsathoggua by reference to one of his idols:

He was very squat and pot-bellied, his head was more like a monstrous toad than a deity, and his whole body was covered with an imitation of short fur, giving somehow a vague sensation of both the bat and the sloth. His sleepy lids were half-lowered over his globular eyes; the tip of a queer tongue issued from his fat mouth.

Smith would go on mention Tsathoggua several more times in his Hyperborean stories, as well as in his Averoigne stories, where the god appears under the variant name Sodagui. From these other stories, we learn that Tsathoggua – also known as Zhothaqquah – once dwelled on the planet Cykranosh, which we call Saturn, where "some of [his] relatives were still resident ... and were worshipped by its peoples." His relatives include his "uncle," having the unpronounceable name of Hziulquoigmnzhah, about which I'll have a little more to say in an upcoming post.

From "The Seven Geases," we find out that, after having from Saturn "in years immediately foIlowing the Earth's creation," Tsathoggua slept in a secret cave beneath Mount Voormithadreth. That story describes him as having "great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad." This particular story is interesting, because Tsathoggua not only appears in the flesh but actually speaks, carrying on a brief conversation with its unfortunate protagonist, Ralibar Vooz. We also learn that the god enjoys blood sacrifices offered to him by his worshipers.

I can't help but wonder why it was that Tsathoggua, of all of Smith's creations, should be the one that Lovecraft (and, apparently, Robert E. Howard, though the story in question was never completed during his lifetime) should find compelling enough to include in his own stories, if only by reference. I don't really have any theories to offer, since, as fond as I am of Tsathoggua, he's nothing truly notable about him. Perhaps Lovecraft and others simply liked the sound of his name. Whatever the reason, I think it's unquestionably the case that Tsathoggua is Smith's most well-known creation. 

Retrospective: Trail of Tsathogghua

I continue in my Quixotic quest to find RPG products that show the influence, explicit or otherwise, of Clark Ashton Smith. As I wrote last week, this has proven a surprisingly difficult endeavor, so I hope I can be forgiven for grasping at whatever straws I can find, which is why, this week, I'm taking a look at Trail of Tsathogghua, a scenario pack for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, first published in 1984. 

Now, as I've mentioned many times before, the Dungeons & Dragons module, Castle Amber, is probably – probably – what first introduced me to Clark Ashton Smith. I can't say that for certain, especially after forty-five years, in part because Call of Cthulhu was released the very same year, 1981, and it includes a number of references to Smith and his creations, most notably Tsathoggua. Having been a devoted CoC fan since its initial appearance, it's just possible that it was this game rather than Castle Amber that turned me on to CAS, but I think that unlikely.

Speaking of Tsathoggua, perceptive readers will no doubt have noticed that I spell the name of the Hyperborean bat-toad god differently than does the title of this scenario pack. For reasons unknown to me, author Keith Herber inserted an "h" into the deity's name, an addition not attested in Smith's own work nor, for that matter, in Call of Cthulhu itself, whose entry on him spells it as I do. Given that CAS includes a mangled spelling of the name (Zothaqquah) in his Averoigne stories, this isn't a particularly unusual variant, but I nevertheless can't help but wonder why it was used here.

Trail of Tsathoggua is a 64-page book, featuring a terrific cover by Steve Purcell, an artist who, in his later career, would work for LucasArts, Nelvana, and Pixar. The book consists of three adventures, the first two of which are loosely connected to one another, while the third stands on its own and is, by far, the best of the trio – and indeed widely regarded as one of the best Call of Cthulhu scenarios of its early years. 

The first adventure shares its title with the book itself, albeit with the definite article added, "The Trail of Tsathogghua." It concerns an Miskatonic University archeological expedition to Greenland, where a massive stone slab carved with a giant bas-relief and odd hieroglyphs has recently been discovered. As it turns out, the slab is an artifact of ancient Hyperborea, as described by Clark Ashton Smith, providing information not just about the prehistory of the region but also about the location of a temple to Tsathoggua that is strongly implied to be the same one Satampra Zeiros attempted to plunder untold millennia ago.

The second adventure, "The Curse of Tsathogghua," moves to Canada, British Columbia specifically, as characters investigate rumors of the Sasquatch and a connection to the Greenland expedition from the first adventure. Like the first scenario, this one has a connection to Smith's work, albeit a more tangential one, since the Sasquatch are depicted as present-day descendants of the furry Voormis of Hyperborea. The adventure also includes the possibility that, if successful, the investigators might draw the attention and patronage of the Canadian prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King (incorrectly called simply William Lyon McKenzie [sic] in the text), who, in real life, was secret Spiritualist with a keen interest in the occult. 

The third and final adventure, "The Haunted House," a title it shares with the classic adventure found at the back of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook, takes place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has little to do with the other two. Instead, it focuses on the Van Laaden Mansion, which is plagued by all manner of unusual and possibly supernatural events. The explanation for this is a clever and genuinely spooky one: centuries ago, a druid merged his consciousness into a tree that was later felled and shipped to America as some of the lumber used to build the Van Laaden Mansion. Now, his spirit possesses the place and wreaks havoc.

Taken as a whole, Trail of Tsathogghua is a mixed bag, but there are enough good ideas here to make it useful to almost any Keeper running a Call of Cthulhu campaign. As a fan of Clark Ashton Smith, it's nice to see ideas from his Hyperborea cycle incorporated into the game, even if the incorporation doesn't have a huge overall impact. Too few RPGs look to CAS at all, so I suppose I'm naturally inclined to give bonus points to products like this one that make even a small effort to do so.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The End of the Story

When I was writing my three-part series on the worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, I realized that I had somehow never written a Pulp Fantasy Library post about “The End of the Story,” the very first tale of the Averoigne cycle, appearing in the May 1930 issue of Weird Tales. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. “The End of the Story” is frequently overlooked, probably because, unlike most other entries in the cycle, it is set not in the Middle Ages but in 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution. [Note: The text linked above gives the date as 1798, which I believe is simply a typographical error. —JDM]

Even so, I feel a little sheepish about this, as it's an excellent story, both within the Averoigne cycle and within Smith's larger body of work. It's also one of his earliest fiction works, written just a few years after "The Abominations of Yondo." Though still a relative amateur at prose, the story nevertheless presents a clear expression of Smith’s decadent sympathies and his esthetic rebellion against conventional morality. Consequently, it is less a horror story than a parable of temptation and the lingering bitterness that follows salvation.

The story is framed as a manuscript discovered after the mysterious disappearance of a young law student, Christophe Morand. The manuscript contains his confession, written at his father’s estate near Moulins in the province of Averoigne. What Morand recounts there is not a description of an ordeal escaped, but of a paradise glimpsed and lost.

Caught in a violent storm while riding through the forest, Christophe stumbles upon the abbey of Périgon, where he is warmly received by its abbot, Hilaire. The abbot is no ascetic but rather a cultivated Epicurean. He is well-fed, well-read, proud of his wine cellar, and even prouder of his astonishing library. The abbot’s library is a treasure trove of lost antiquities, holding lost fragments of Sappho, an unknown dialog of Plato, and many other unique literary and philosophical curiosities. 

Also present is a hidden volume that the abbot fears – an anonymous text written in archaic French, which he claims is cursed. Hilaire's warning is melodramatic, full of signs of the Cross and invocations of Satan. Unfortunately, it's precisely for this reason that Christophe is so tempted by it. Smith handles the temptation represented by the forbidden text beautifully. It is not lust, ambition, or even greed that drives Christophe, but pure esthetic curiosity. It is the scholar’s hunger for forbidden beauty.

When Christophe eventually does read the manuscript, he finds that it tells of Gérard de Venteillon, a medieval knight who, on the eve of his wedding, encounters a satyr in the forest. The creature whispers a secret so powerful that Gérard abandons his faith, his fiancée, and the world itself. He then follows a hidden path to the ruins of Château des Faussesflammes, presses a triangular stone, and descends into the earth, never to return.

The satyr says that

The power of Christ has prevailed like a black frost on all the woods, the fields, the rivers, the mountains, where abode in their felicity the glad, immortal goddesses and nymphs of yore. But still, in cryptic caverns of the earth, in places far underground, like the hell your priests have fabled, there dwells pagan loveliness, there cry the pagan ecstasies."

Though the words are those of a satyr, it seems clear to me that they're also the words of Smith himself, who had little use for formal religion of any kind, least of all medieval Christianity.

Later, from his window at the abbey, Christophe recognizes nearby ruins. Like Gérard before him, he feels irresistibly drawn to them. Ignoring every warning, he slips away, finds the triangular stone, and descends into the vaults beneath Faussesflammes. Instead of the horror he was promised, Christophe discovers a radiant pastoral world – a classical paradise of laurel groves, flowing rivers, marble palaces, satyrs, and nymphs. This is no hellscape but Arcadia restored, the world Christianity erased.

At the heart of this paradise waits Nycea. She is one of Smith’s most memorable creations: a lamia, an ancient vampire-serpent whom Christophe perceives only as a goddess of beauty. Their meeting is neither violent nor coercive. It is, in fact, strangely tender, luxurious, and, above all, intoxicating. Yet Christophe’s response goes beyond simple lust, just as his desire for the forbidden manuscript in the abbey was more than mere curiosity. Nycea represents recognition, the sense that he has always loved her without knowing it. Smith presents their union not as corruption but as fulfillment. The reader is meant to understand why Christophe would risk damnation for her.

It is at this point that Hilaire bursts in, brandishing holy water. Nycea flees, and the paradise Christophe has discovered collapses into dust. The vision vanishes, and he comes to his senses amid the rubble of the vaults beneath Faussesflammes. Hilaire explains that Nycea is an ancient demon who lures men to their doom, drains them, and devours them. The manuscript was her bait, her carefully laid trap. Gérard and countless others met their deaths this way, and Christophe, the abbot insists, is fortunate to have escaped the same fate.

Christophe feels no gratitude. He feels only rage. He does not believe he has been rescued; he believes he has been robbed.

Unheedful whether or not he had rescued me from dire physical and spiritual perils, I lamented the beautiful dream of which he had deprived me. The kisses of Nycea burned softly in my memory, and I knew that whatever she was, woman or demon or serpent, there was no one in all the world who could ever arouse in me the same love and the same delight.

The true end of the story comes when Christophe vows to return. He swears that he will seek out the ruins of Faussesflammes again and descend once more into the vaults below. He has chosen to risk death and damnation, because he cannot unsee paradise and cannot accept a world without it.

“The End of the Story” is among Smith’s finest tales. Though it differs in many respects from later Averoigne stories, I have always found it especially compelling. Those later entries lean more overtly into the grotesque, but this one is strangely moving and elegiac. It mourns not only the loss of one man’s vision of paradise but also the passing of an older, pagan world – a realm of beauty, sensuality, and wonder erased by the march of Christianity and history.

In the end, Smith does not ask us to decide whether Christophe is a fool or a tragic hero. Instead, he leaves us with something far more unsettling: the suggestion that some illusions are worth dying for and that paradise, once glimpsed, can never truly be forgotten.

A Poet Among the Pulpsters

CAS at age 19

When discussions turn to the triumvirate of Weird Tales – H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith – there is a tendency to group them together as if they all sprang from the same soil and wrote from the same impulses. In reality, Smith stands apart in a crucial way. Lovecraft was, at heart, an antiquarian essayist who transformed his philosophical anxieties into cosmic horror. Howard, by contrast, was a storyteller of raw physicality, a bard of blood and thunder who wrote like a man shadowboxing the page. Smith, however, came to weird fiction by a very different road. He was a poet first, last, and always and that vocation shaped every sentence he ever wrote.

Today marks the 133rd anniversary of Smith’s birth, which seems as good an occasion as any to reflect on what made his work so distinctive. Rather than simply commemorating another member of the Weird Tales stable, I think it’s worth pausing to consider how Smith’s early life as a poet (and the literary circles in which he moved) gave his fiction its singular texture and enduring power.

Clark Ashton Smith’s literary career began not in pulp magazines but in the rarefied world of early twentieth-century poetry. Born in 1893 in Auburn, California, he had little formal schooling, largely due to health issues, but he compensated through voracious self-education. He devoured classical literature, taught himself French and Spanish, and immersed himself in the Romantic and Symbolist poets. By nineteen, he had produced The Star-Treader and Other Poems, a volume so striking in its imagery and diction that contemporary critics compared him to Keats and Shelley. For a brief moment, Smith seemed destined for a serious poetic career.

Central to his early success was George Sterling, often called the “uncrowned king of Bohemia” in San Francisco literary circles. Sterling became Smith’s mentor, champion, and friend, introducing him to writers and artists and encouraging his lush, decadent style. Sterling himself wrote in a fin-de-siècle mode, rich with classical allusions and sensual imagery, and Smith absorbed this esthetic deeply. From Sterling, Smith learned that language could be luxuriant, that excess was not a vice but a virtue, and that literature could aspire to the condition of dream or myth rather than mere narrative efficiency.

CAS and George Sterling

If Sterling gave Smith his ornate beauty, it was Ambrose Bierce who supplied the venom. Bierce, by then an aging icon of American letters, recognized Smith’s talent and corresponded with him. Where Sterling fostered romance and rapture, Bierce sharpened Smith’s sense of irony and cruelty. Bierce’s influence can be felt in Smith’s merciless endings, his delight in cosmic indifference, and his refusal to grant characters easy moral victories. The combination of Sterling’s estheticism and Bierce’s mordant wit produced something rare: prose that is simultaneously sumptuous and pitiless.

The problem for Smith was that poetry did not pay. By the 1920s, the market for ornate verse had largely collapsed. Smith found himself in financial difficulty and turned, reluctantly at first, to writing fiction for magazines like Weird Tales. It is important to emphasize that Smith did not approach this shift as a conversion. He did not become a pulp writer in the way Howard wholeheartedly embraced the form. Instead, he treated fiction as trade work, seeing it as necessary labor to save himself and his aging parents from utter penury.

Even so, Smith never simplified his voice. He did not trim his sentences, streamline his vocabulary, or abandon his baroque imagery. If anything, he doubled down. While other writers adapted themselves to the expectations of pulp magazines, Smith forced the magazines to accommodate him. His stories read less like conventional narratives and more like prose poems that just happen to feature necromancers, dying empires, and alien gods.

I think this poetic foundation explains why Smith’s fiction feels so different from that of his peers. In Smith, language is not merely a vehicle for story; it is the story. His plots are often simple – curiosity leads to doom, hubris invites annihilation, etc. – but the pleasure lies in how those ideas are expressed. He builds atmosphere through rhythm and sound, crafting sentences meant to be savored aloud. His vocabulary is famously archaic and exotic, not as an affectation but as an extension of his poetic training. Words matter to Smith almost like physical objects, chosen for their texture as much as for their meaning.

His worldbuilding, too, reflects a poet’s sensibility. Whereas Howard constructs the Hyborian Age through action and Lovecraft builds his cosmos through dreadful revelations, Smith creates settings through sensory accumulation. Colors bleed into one another. Landscapes are described like paintings glimpsed in flickering torchlight. Cities feel half-remembered, as if drawn from some collective unconscious. His imaginary realms, whether Zothique, Hyperborea, or Averoigne, are not maps but moods.

Perhaps most telling is Smith’s attitude toward horror. Lovecraft’s terror is intellectual, rooted in the shattering of human significance. Howard’s horror is visceral, something to be fought or fled. Smith’s horror is esthetic. His monsters are often beautiful, seductive, or strangely noble. Doom is inevitable, but it arrives wrapped in velvet. This, too, comes from poetry, from the Decadent tradition that finds fascination in decline and ruin. For Smith, decay is not merely tragic; it is strangely lovely.

This places him at a peculiar angle to his Weird Tales compatriots. Lovecraft wrote to reveal philosophical truths. Howard wrote to thrill and exult. Smith, however, wrote to evoke. His stories appeal to me not because of memorable protagonists or clever twists, but because of the way they sound and even feel, if that's the word. They linger in my mind like fragments of strange dreams.

In the end, Clark Ashton Smith is best understood not as a pulp writer who could occasionally write beautifully, but as a poet who temporarily inhabited pulp fiction. Forced by circumstance to trade verse for narrative, he brought with him Sterling’s decadent romanticism and Bierce’s biting skepticism, infusing Weird Tales with a voice unlike any other. Sixty-five years after his death, that voice still echoes, ornate and unforgiving, reminding us that even in the cheapest magazines, true art can take root and flourish in the strangest soil.

REPOST: Pulp Fantasy Library: The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis

[I was initially reluctant to do offer up a repost during The Ensorcellment of January, but the fact remains that this is such a good story that I think it's worth making an exception in this case. I hope you'll agree.] 

Although the stories of Clark Ashton Smith that most interest me are those that belong to his Hyperborea, Averoigne, and (especially) Zothique cycles, his May 1932 story of Mars, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis," may be his best story. 

Allow me to qualify that statement before going further. I’ve said before that Smith’s best work resists easy classification. Although his stories are clearly fantastical, it does them a disservice to label them simply as “fantasy,” as the recent Night Shade Books volumes do. Likewise, trying to be more precise by pedantically sorting individual tales into “horror,” “science fiction,” or similar categories misses the point. Such labels attempt to box in writing that deliberately refuses neat boundaries. In fact, I suspect Smith’s reputation has suffered in part because his work and subject matter are so thoroughly sui generis.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" is very accessible and nicely highlights Smith's talents as a writer: luxuriant language, an aura of dread, sardonic humor and irony, and the sense of the immensity of history. Reading this first-person account of Rodney Severn, "the one surviving member of the Octave Expedition to Yoh-Vombis," one is easily transported to a version of Mars quite unlike anything found in the pages of Burroughs and his imitators. It is, for lack of a better word, "weird Mars," a place that that, while ostensibly within the realm of science fiction, is not limited by the strictures or expectations of that genre but instead plays with those literary boundaries to present a tale that is both enthralling and genuinely unsettling.

We know from the start that Octave Expedition's journey to the ruined Martian city of Yoh-Vombis ended in tragedy. Thus, the story is one of mounting revelation, as we learn, bit by bit, the details of the events that led to demise of everyone except Rodney Severn, who himself hopes to die in order to escape "the compulsion of the malignant and malevolent virus which is permeating my brain." Stories of this sort are, in my experience, difficult to pull off properly. With the conclusion foregone, the writer needs to find some way to ensure that the reader nevertheless is surprised, shocked even, by what it was that led to the already-known end. Smith succeeds in doing just this, but, compared to the atmosphere he conjures, that of an immeasurably ancient and dying Mars – a kind of "hyper-Zothique" – it is a small accomplishment.

"That place is deader than an Egyptian morgue," observed Harper. 

"Certainly it is far more ancient." Octave assented. "According to most reliable legends, the Yorhis, who built Yoh-Vombis, were wiped out by the present ruling race at least forty thousand years ago." 

"There's a story, isn't there," said Harper, "that the last remnant of the Yorhis was destroyed by some unknown agency – something too horrible and outré to be mentioned even in myth?" 

"Of course, I've heard that legend," agreed Octave. "Maybe we'll find evidence among the ruins, to prove or disprove it. The Yorhis may have been cleaned out by some terrible epidemic, such as the Yashta pestilence, which was a kind of green mould that ate all the bones of the body, starting with the teeth and nails. But we needn't be afraid of getting it, if there are any mummies in Yoh-Vombis – the bacteria will all be dead as their victims, after so many cycles of planetary desiccation. The Aihais have always been more or less shy of the place. Few have ever visited it: and none, as far as I can find, have a thorough examination of the ruins."

And so Severn and the other members of the Expedition set off into the ruins to discover the fate of once-great Yoh-Vombis. This gives Smith the opportunity to describe the eldritch beauty of the place, illuminated by the lights of Phobos and Deimos. As the archeologists descend into the depths, Smith has the opportunity to employ some of his most evocative language:

The air was singularly heavy, as if the lees of an ancient atmosphere, less tenuous than that of Mars today, had settled down and remained in that stagnant darkness. It was harder to breathe than the outer air; it was filled with unknown effluvia; and the light dust arose before us at every step, diffusing a faintness of bygone corruption, like the dust of powdered mummies.

Here, Severn and his companions discover just what happened to the inhabitants of ancient Yoh-Vombis and pay the price for their knowledge. I won't spoil the ending here, in part because I don't think that, in straight, expository language, I can do justice to it. This is a good example of how Smith's unique ability to transport his readers through an alchemy of language turns what could very well have been a banal, ineffective resolution into something terrifying. "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" shows Smith at the top of his game and I highly recommend it to anyone who's never read it before. It's as good an introduction to this overlooked author as almost any I can recommend.

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.

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 Ensorcellment of January

Clark Ashton Smith occupies a peculiar and sometimes uneasy place in the history of fantasy literature. He is neither obscure nor widely celebrated, frequently cited yet rarely dwelt upon. For many readers, he exists at the margins of awareness: a friend of Lovecraft, a regular contributor to Weird Tales, a stylist whose prose is admired in quotation more often than his stories are read in full. Yet those of us who do venture deeply into his work quickly discover something far more imposing. Smith’s imagination is vast, luxuriant, and final, as though one had strayed into a world already immeasurably old, already in decline, and wholly indifferent to human ambition or consolation.

Smith was a poet before he was a fantasist and that origin is, I think, essential to understanding his work. His fiction bears the unmistakable stamp of a writer for whom language was not merely a means of conveying a narrative but a source of power and pleasure in its own right. His tales linger over sorcery, extinction, voluptuous cruelty, and the slow unraveling of civilizations that have exhausted their last illusions. Zothique’s dying earth, Hyperborea’s sardonic barbarism, and Averoigne’s sensuous medievalism are linked less by genre than by sensibility – a worldview in which beauty and horror are inseparable and where cosmic immensity inspires not only dread but a dry, almost amused fatalism. Smith’s audience has always been comparatively small, but his influence has quietly seeped into fantasy, horror, and even roleplaying games that prize atmosphere, decadence, and the poetry of ruin over straightforward heroics and tidy resolutions.

The Ensorcellment of January will be a month-long exploration of Smith’s life, work, and legacy. Like The Shadow over August before it, this series is intended neither as hagiography nor as corrective, but rather as an effort to better understand a creator whose contributions to fantasy literature are both substantial and too often overlooked. Longtime readers of this blog already know of my fondness for older, stranger currents of fantasy and horror, works shaped as much by language as by plot, by implication rather than exposition, and by a fascination with time, decay, and forgotten worlds. In that regard, Smith’s influence is widespread, even when it goes unrecognized.

Smith’s legacy, like the man himself, resists easy classification. He was a friend and correspondent of both H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, yet his sensibility remained distinctly his own. He was deeply pessimistic but never humorless, luxuriant in style yet frequently merciless in outcome. This series, therefore, aims to honor that complexity. Over the course of January, I’ll be drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources in an effort to present a clearer picture of who Clark Ashton Smith was and why his work matters within the broader history of fantasy and weird fiction.

The Ensorcellment of January is therefore less a survey or reassessment than a sustained act of attention. In the weeks ahead, I’ll be returning to Smith’s stories, poems, and letters, sometimes to analyze them and sometimes simply to admire them. I’ll share my own reflections along the way, but my central concern will be understanding why I believe Smith continues to speak so powerfully to certain sensibilities and why his work still surfaces, unexpectedly, across contemporary fantasy. This is not an attempt to rescue Smith from obscurity so much as an invitation to linger with him awhile, to listen closely to a voice that remains singular in its cadences and uncompromising in its vision. If you’re willing to slow down and let the spell take hold, I can think of no better time than the month of Clark Ashton Smith's birth for such enchantments.

The Ensorcellment of January

Though the initial response to my post about whether to devote the month of January to either Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith was muddled, in the days since, CAS has pulled decisively ahead – so much so that I now feel I can declare him the winner. That means that January 2026 will be The Ensorcellment of January, just as this past August was The Shadow over August. 

Like The Shadow over August, this series will consist of daily discussions of the life, legacy, and influence of the Bard of Auburn over subsequent fantasy, science fiction, and horror, with special attention paid to what roleplaying games owe to him and his works. Naturally, there'll be Pulp Fantasy Library posts featuring Smith stories I've not yet covered on Grognardia, but I also plan posts on many other topics, with at least some of them consisting of original CAS-inspired game content. 

Also like The Shadow over August, my plans for The Ensorcellment of January are not intended to be exhaustive, much less scholarly. They will follow my own interests and whims, shaped now and then by reader feedback. My aim is simple: to help the least well known of the Big Three of Weird Tales claim a larger share of the attention he justly deserves. I hope you’ll join me in January as we journey beneath Zothique’s dying sun, wander the haunted ruins of Averoigne, and trek across sorcerer-haunted realm of Hyperborea – all in celebration of Clark Ashton Smith and the strange, decadent brilliance of his imagination.

Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part I)

Even though I spent this past August writing primarily about H.P. Lovecraft and his enduring legacy, when it comes to the Big Three of Weird Tales – Robert E. Howard, HPL, and Clark Ashton Smith – it's actually Smith whom I'd select as my personal favorite. That's why, in another life, I pursued the license to produce a game based on Smith's three most interesting and well-developed settings, Hyperborea, Averoigne, and Zothique. 

Sadly, my plans came to naught, but another inhabitant of the Great White North – Marzio Muscedere – has succeeded where I did not. His company, Marz Press, is publishing an officially licensed Zothique RPG, along with a deluxe illustrated omnibus of all the stories of the Last Continent. I reached out to Marzio to learn more about him, his appreciation of CAS, and the Zothique game he is producing and he kindly agreed to answer my questions, the answers to which will appear today and tomorrow.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

My name’s Marzio Muscedere, and I live in a land of nightmare and sorcery deep in the steaming jungles of southern Canada – well, maybe not all that, but I do live in the southernmost tip of the country.

I first got into role-playing back in 1984, when one of my best friends – and forever DM (he still is, by the way) – scored that sweet D&D red box with the Elmore cover. We were in the fourth grade and instantly hooked. We played every chance we got – hours and hours on end. Marathon sessions, campaigns that ran for years in real time. We sailed and reaved across Oerth, where we were the scourge of the Flanaess. We delved dungeons, put every creature to the sword, and hauled away every coin that glittered. I’m sure we mangled half the rules, and I couldn’t pronounce most of the words in the books, but none of that mattered.

As we grew, we tried all kinds of other RPGs between D&D campaigns – West End Star Wars, Top Secret, Rifts, Chill, Torg – you name it. Then, in my teen years, I stopped playing. Twenty-three years went by without a single die roll. Still, I never completely left the hobby. I’d haunt used bookstores, collecting old modules just to read them. Then around 2014 I stumbled onto Dungeon Crawl Classics and that reignited everything – both my love of gaming and my drive to write. Since then, I’ve had over twenty published works and started Marz Press, where I’m now running my fourth Kickstarter.

2. When did you first encounter Clark Ashton Smith? What was the first story of his that you read?

That’s a great question – and honestly, I wish I remembered exactly when it happened. My story’s probably a familiar one: I started with Conan, but back then it was all the Tor paperbacks. From there I found Lovecraft, then eventually the real Conan through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections. And somewhere along that path, I found the last and greatest of the Weird Tales trinity – Clark Ashton Smith – or rather, I like to think he found me.

Like the poisonous gleam of a forbidden jewel, his decadent, doom-laden prose pulled me in and never let go. And his vocabulary – I often joke around that the Canadian school system failed me – for here was a self-educated man living in a wooden cabin with no running water who knew more words than anyone I’d ever met!

As for the first story I read, it was “The Abominations of Yondo,” which I ended up using as inspiration for the adventure that won me the contest that led to a contract with Goodman Games. It’s still one of my all-time favorite CAS stories.

3. When did you first come across Zothique, and what was it about the setting that made it so appealing to you?

I really can’t pinpoint when I first came across Zothique – other than to say I discovered it later than many other sword-and-sorcery worlds. And I’m glad that I did. Experiencing Zothique as a more mature reader allowed me to appreciate it in ways I never could have when I was younger. The poetic and purple prose, the at-times perplexing vocabulary, the purposeful absence of a central protagonist, the decadent and dreamlike atmosphere, the world’s inevitable decline into oblivion – all the things that might have turned me off as a younger reader are exactly what captivated me as an adult.

Aside from all that, what makes Zothique so appealing to me is the simple fact that it’s a world at the end of time. It breaks from so many other fantasy settings by embracing fatalism over heroism. In Zothique, there are no true heroes – only doomed figures and decadent sorcerers reeling toward ruin. And unlike many other dying-earth settings, there is no trace of our modern world here – sorcery and superstition have completely supplanted science. Zothique lies in the far future, when the sun itself is dying and civilization has risen and fallen countless times. It is a place of alchemy, necromancy, and forgotten gods – equal parts sin and sorcery – where even the most powerful march toward their own inevitable doom.

I’ve also always loved how there’s an entire side of Zothique that remains just off camera – a vibrant, lived-in world intermingled with an age where corpses walk and dead gods whisper from the mouths of idols. Beyond the necromancers and ancient tombs, you can still feel the pulse of life – the bazaars and bustling marketplaces, the jewelers and innkeepers, the caravans hauling spices and silks across dying seas. There are peddlers of fine wines, traders of strange gems, and merchants and mercenaries far traveled from outer lands.

All of it persists amid the decay – a civilization both decadent and alive, teetering between the everyday and the eternal. It’s that tension, between the living world and the shadow of its own ending, that makes Zothique feel so different from other settings.

For role-players, Zothique is wonderful because it isn’t a world that grows or evolves – it is a world that erodes. This gives it endless room for imagination. Every mountain could hide a forgotten city; every desert could hold a necropolis; every sea, an uncharted isle. It’s a sandbox at the edge of time, filled with tragedy, wonder, and peril.

4. At what point did you decide to produce a roleplaying game set on Zothique?

I wanted Conan. I’ll admit it – I really wanted Goodman Games to get the Conan license so I could write a Conan RPG and adventures. But the more I thought about Conan, the more I found myself turning to Clark Ashton Smith for inspiration in the adventures I was already writing.

And then it just kind of clicked. Here was a world so different, so hauntingly beautiful – why not turn it into an RPG setting? Like most things that have real merit, it came down to creating something you truly love. Zothique is the world I want to play in, so I’m creating it.

My hope is that you’ll want to play in it too – and so far, I’m glad that there are people who do.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Mandrakes

Of Clark Ashton Smith's three main cycles of fiction – Zothique, Hyperborea, and Averoigne – I encountered Averoigne first, thanks to the Dungeons & Dragons module, Castle Amber. Consequently, I've retained a great affection for that "sorcery-ridden province" of pre-modern France, even though my estimation of Zothique has since eclipsed it. Averoigne is a place of sinful passions run amok, where pride, envy, wrath, and, above all, lust are given full vent, with frequently horrific results. 

"The Mandrakes," which first appeared in the February 1933 issue of Weird Tales, is a good illustration of prcisely what I mean. The short story tells the tale of a married couple, Gilles Grenier and his wife, Sabine. The pair came "into lower Averoigne from parts unknown or at least unverified" and soon established themselves in a little hut

close to those marshes through which the slackening waters of the river Isoile, after leaving the great fosest, had overflowed in sluggish, reed-clogged channels and sedge-hidden pools mantled with scum like witches' oils. It stood among osiers and alders on a low, mound-shaped elevation; and in front, toward the marshes, there was a loamy meadow-bottom where the short fat stems and tufted leaves of the mandrake grew in lush abundance, being more plentiful and of greater size than elsewhere through all that sorcery-ridden province. The fleshly, bifurcated roots of this plant, held by many to resemble the human body, were used by Gilles and Sabine in the brewing of love-philtres. Their potions, being compounded with much care and cunning, soon acquired a marvelous renown among the peasants and villagers, and were even in request among people of a loftier station, who came privily to the wizard's hut. They would rouse, people said, a kindly warmth in the coldest and most prudent bosom, would melt the armor of the most obdurate virtue. As a result, the demand for these sovereign magistrals became enormous.

Initially, the couple worry that their activities might attract unwelcome attention and, with it, charges of witchcraft. Instead, they find the opposite: they enjoy "a repute by no means ill or unsavory," even among the local clergy, "because of the number of honest marriages promoted by the philtres." 

Ironically, Gilles and Sabine themselves do not seem enjoy such a marriage.

It was rumored by visitors that [Sabine] had oftentimes been overheard in sharp dispute with her husband; and people soon made a jest of this, remarking that the philtres might well be put to a domestic use by those who purveyed them. But aside from such rumors and ribaldries, little was thought of the matter. 

Consequently, when, five years after their arrival in Averoigne, Sabine is no longer seen with her husband, the locals simply accept the explanation of Gilles, namely that " his spouse had departed on a long journey, to visit relatives in a remote province" even though "there had been no eye-witnesses of Sabine's departure." For his part, the sorcerer took to

living tranquilly with his books and cauldrons, and gathering the roots and herbs for his magical medicaments, was well enough pleased to have it taken for granted. He did not believe that Sabine would ever return; and his unbelief, it would seem, was far from irrational. He had killed her one evening in autumn, during a dispute of unbearable acrimony, slitting her soft, pale throat in self-defense with a knife which he had wrested from her fingers when she lifted it against him. Afterward he had buried her by the late rays of a gibbous moon beneath the mandrakes in the meadow-bottom, replacing the leafy sods with much care, so that there was no evidence of their having been disturbed other than by the digging of a few roots in the way of daily business.

Gilles, we soon learn, "was not sorry that he had killed Sabine," as "they had been ill-mated from the beginning" and "it was far pleasanter to be alone." 

The following spring, "there was much demand for his love-philtres among the smitten swains and lasses of the neighborhood" and so Gilles "went forth at midnight beneath the full May moon, to dig the newly grown roots from which he would brew his amatory enchantments." 

Smiling darkly beneath his beard, he began to cull the great, moon-pale plants which flourished on Sabine's grave, digging out the homunculus-like taproots very carefully with a curious trowel made from the femur of a witch.

Though he was well used to the weird and often vaguely human forms assumed by the mandrake, Gilles was somewhat surprized by the appearance of the first root. It seemed inordinately large, unnaturally white; and, eyeing it more closely, he saw that it bore the exact likeness of a woman's body and lower limbs, being cloven to the middle and clearly formed even to the ten toes! These were no arms, however, and the bosom ended in the large tuft of ovate leaves.

Gilles was more than startled by the fashion in which the root seemed to turn and writhe when he lifted it from the ground. He dropped it hastily, and the minikin limbs lay quivering on the grass. But, after a little reflection, he took the prodigy as a possible mark of Satanic favor, and continued his digging. To his amazement, the next root was formed in much the same manner as the first. A half-dozen more, which he proceeded to dig, were shaped in miniature mockery of a woman from breasts to heels; and amid the superstitious awe and wonder with which he regarded them, he became aware of their singularly intimate resemblance to Sabine.

When Gilles digs up another plant "with less than his usual care," he accidentally cuts into "one of the tiny ankles."

At the same instant, a shrill, reproachful cry, like the voice of Sabine herself in mingled pain and anger, seemed to pierce his ears with intolerable acuity, though the volume was strangely lessened, as if the voice had come from a distance. The cry ceased, and was not repeated. Gilles, sorely terrified, found himself staring at the trowel, on which there was a dark, blood-like stain. Trembling, he pulled out the severed root, and saw that it was dripping with a sanguine fluid.

With that, "The Mandrakes" becomes a story of revenge, as the murdered Sabine seemingly seeks satisfaction from beyond the grave. Smith handles this turn effectively in my opinion, as Gilles receives his much deserved comeuppance. "The Mandrakes" is brief and to the point, wasting no verbiage on extraneous details, focusing instead on the crime of Gilles Grenier and the supernatural retribution it brings about. It's an enjoyable little yarn that somewhat reminds me of Poe – a compliment I suspect Smith would have gladly accepted.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Satyr

H.P. Lovecraft's career as a writer was seriously hampered by the fact that he would regularly withhold publication of his stories unless they were printed without alteration. His friend and colleague, Clark Ashton Smith, whose 130th birthday is this coming Friday – Friday the 13th, appropriately enough – had no such qualms. He understood well that, if one were to make a living as a writer of pulp fiction, one had to be both prolific and willing to acquiesce to even the most whimsical of editorial alterations. Consequently, Smith saw a phenomenal number of his stories published during his lifetime. Weird Tales alone published fifty-three of his tales, more even than Robert E. Howard, another of HPL's friends who understood the compromises necessary to make money as a writer.

Smith's willingness to compromise extended not only to the content of his writing, but also to the markets to which he'd peddle his work. In the case of "The Satyr," one of the earliest stories in his Averoigne cycle, he made concessions to both. After repeated rejections from his usual publishers, who regarded it as "overly risqué," he sold it to La Paree Stories, a "spicy" pulp, whose pages were filled with erotic fiction and nude photography. Further, he changed the story's original ending to make it less ambiguous – a man's gotta eat, after all! The link above, sadly, goes to the version that appeared in the July 1931 issue of La Paree Stories; the original ending would not be restored until 2006.

As so many of Smith's tales do, "The Satyr" opens amusingly:

Raoul, Comte de la Frenaie, was by nature the most unsuspicious of husbands. His lack of suspicion, perhaps, was partly lack of imagination; and, for the rest, was doubtless due to the dulling of his observational faculties by the heavy wines of Averoigne. At any rate, he had never seen anything amiss in the friendship of his wife, Adele, with Olivier du Montoir, a young poet who might in time have rivalled Ronsard as one of the most brilliant luminaries of the Pleiade, if it had not been for an unforeseen but fatal circumstance. 

The references to Pierre de Ronsard and La Pléiade place the story in the mid-16th century, which is later than most of his Averoigne stories, whose time period is more clearly medieval. Count Raoul, despite his usual trusting nature, somehow begins to suspect that perhaps there is something untoward in the relationship of his wife and the handsome young poet who composes "melodious villanelles and graceful ballades ... in celebration of Adele's visible charms." 

it is hard to know just why M. le Comte became suddenly troubled concerning the integrity of his marital honour. Perhaps, in some interim of the hunting and drinking between which he divided nearly all his time, he had noticed that his wife was growing younger and fairer and was blooming as a woman never blooms except to the magical sunlight of love. Perhaps he had caught some glance of ardent or affectionate understanding between Adele and Olivier; or, perhaps, it was the influence of the premature spring, which had pierced the vinous muddlernent of his brain with an obscure stirring of forgotten thoughts and emotions, and thus had given him a flash of insight.

So, when he discovers that his wife and Olivier had recently left his chateau to go "for a promenade in the forest," he sets off after them – armed with his rapier.

Even ignorant of what her husband has planned, Countess Adele is worried. 

Adele and Olivier had wandered beyond the limits of their customary stroll, and were nearing a portion of the forest of Averoigne where the trees were older and taller than all others. Here, some of the huge oaks were said to date back to pagan days. Few people ever passed beneath them; and queer beliefs and legends concerning them had been prevalent among the local peasantry for ages. Things had been seen within these precincts, whose very existence was an affront to science and a blasphemy to religion; and evil influences were said to attend those who dared to intrude upon the sullen umbrage of the immemorial glades and thickets.

Olivier, however, is not concerned, claiming that Adele's worries are based on "stories to frighten babes and beldames." He reassures her, "There is enchantment here, but only the enchantment of beauty." The pair proceed deeper into the forest, until at last they come upon a beautiful clearing that possessed both "an air of antique wisdom" and "tranquil friendliness." "Was I not right?" Olivier queried. "Is there ought to fear in harmless trees and flowers?"

I doubt it will come as a surprise to anyone that Adele's fears are well grounded. Even as "the spell of their desire" is upon them and "everything beyond their own bodies, their own hearts" is "vaguer than a dream," they nevertheless become aware that they are being watched.

The apparition was incredible; and, for the space of a long breath, they could not believe they had really seen it. There were two horns in a matted mass of coarse, animal-like hair above the semi-human face with its obliquely slitted eyes and fang-revealing mouth and beard of wild-boar bristles. The face was old - incomputably old; and its lines and wrinkles were those of unreckoned years of lust; and its look was filled with the slow, unceasing increment of all the malignity and corruption and cruelty of elder ages. It was the face of Pan, as he glared from his, secret wood upon travellers taken unaware.

In both versions of the story, the leering vision serves as a catalyst for Adele to fling herself into the arms of Olivier and, at long last, they give into the unspoken ardor that they had long felt for one another. Later, their passion consummated, they lie together in the clearing, at which point Raoul finds them. In the published 1931 version, the Count prepares to impale both lovers with a thrust of his blade, but is prevented from doing so by the sudden appearance of the titular satyr, who grabs Adele and carries her off while laughing maniacally. In Smith's original version, Raoul succeeds in slaying the adulterers as he had planned. The satyr never appears in the flesh; instead, the count only hears his laughter.

Both endings have their merits. For myself, I prefer Smith's version, as there is some ambiguity as to whether or not the satyr exists at all or whether it might instead be a manifestation of Raoul's own bloodlust. In any case, "The Satyr," though a lesser work within the Smithian oeuvre, is a quite effective tale of horror and passion – fitting perhaps, given its title. 

The Unspeakable

I've never been very fond of Deities & Demigods, though, being a TSR fanboy, I nevertheless dutifully purchased it. In my youth, the DDG sat on my bookshelf largely untouched, which is why my copy of it looks practically pristine to this day, in stark contrast to my copies of the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide, and – especially – the Monster Manual. 

Even so, I'd occasionally flip through its pages and read random sections to see what little bits of esoterica I might find. I strongly remember the first time I noticed the following statement at the end of James Ward's preface:

Special thanks are also given to Chaosium, Inc. for permission to use the material found in the Cthulhu Mythos and the Melnibonean Mythos.

This baffled me, since there are no references to either the creations of Lovecraft or Moorcock in Deities & Demigods. What could this possibly mean? Sometime later, I learned from one of the older gamers whom I knew that there'd been some sort of "legal dispute" between TSR and Chaosium, resulting in the removal of chapters on the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythoi from the DDG. As you might imagine, this revelation filled me with excitement, though it wouldn't be until I was in college that I'd ever set my eyes on these expurgated chapters.

Thanks to a very kind friend, I now own a copy of the original printing of Deities & Demigods, which has probably seen more reading than my original one, largely because of the two chapters TSR removed. I suspect I've spent more time reading the Cthulhu Mythos chapter than the Melnibonean Mythos chapter and a big reason why is its downright funky art by Erol Otus. 

All of the art in this chapter is awesome, but the piece that really sticks with me is this one:

Supposedly, this depicts Hastur the Unspeakable, who is little more than a name in Lovecraft's works but was a favorite of August Derleth, who decided that Hastur was Cthulhu's "half-brother," whatever that means. The DDG entry describes Hastur as having "a scaled, elongated body, a lizard's head and maw, and taloned lizard claws. It also has 200 tentacles projecting from its body ..." I have no idea where this description comes from, since not even Derleth bothered to describe his favorite Great Old One as far as I can recall.

Regardless, there's no question it's a very striking image. I particularly like the juxtaposition of a fairly ordinary looking medieval castle with this bizarre monstrosity. I've sometimes thought it might be interesting to referee a medieval Call of Cthulhu campaign, perhaps taking inspiration from Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne series, but I've never pursued the matter seriously. If I ever do, you can be sure I'll take inspiration from this piece by Erol Otus.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Devotee of Evil

After last week's post, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at the third story featuring Clark Ashton Smith's author insert, Philip Hastane. Entitled "The Devotee of Evil," Smith finished writing it in early 1930 but had difficulty in finding a market for it. After failed submissions to Ghost Stories, Galaxy, Illustrated Detective Magazine, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he included it in his self-published The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, which appeared in June 1933 (and also included the eponymous "The Double Shadow" and "The Maze of the Enchanter"). Almost a decade later, it re-appeared in the pages of the February 1941 issue of Stirring Science Stories. 

The story concerns new owner of "the old Larcom house," 

a mansion of considerable size and dignity, set among oaks and cypresses on the hill behind Auburn's Chinatown, in what had once been the aristocratic section of the village. At the time of which I write, it had been unoccupied for several years and had begun to present the signs of desolation and dilapidation which untenanted houses so soon display. The place had a tragic history and was believed to be haunted.

This owner is one Jean Averaud of New Orleans (hence Smith's submission of the tale to the Times-Picayune). Averaud – whose name is reminiscent of the French province of Averoigne – is reputed to be "a recluse of the most eccentric type" as well as "extravagantly rich." He moves into Larcom House with his beautiful woman "who was believed to be his mistress as well as his housekeeper." 

Hastane serves as the story's narrator and mentions that, before their first formal meeting, he had seen Averaud several times and made an assessment of him based on his appearance.

He was a sallow, saturnine Creole, with the marks of race in his hollow cheeks and feverish eyes. I was struck by his air of intellect, and by the fiery fixity of his gaze — the gaze of a man who is dominated by one idea to the exclusion of all else. Some medieval alchemist, who believed himself to be on the point of attaining his objective after years of unrelenting research, might have looked as he did.

In time, though, Averaud specifically seeks out Hastane, whose reputation as a novelist of the weird has elicited his admiration. When he finds him, Hastane is in the midst of reading an item in the local newspaper about an "atrocious crime," namely the murder of a woman and her two young children. Averaud takes note of this and uses it as an opportunity to philosophize on the subject of evil.

"I believe in evil — how can I do otherwise when I see its manifestations everywhere? I regard it as an all-controlling power; but I do not think that the power is personal in the sense of what we know as personality. A Satan? No. What I conceive is a sort of dark vibration, the radiation of a black sun, of a center of malignant eons — a radiation that can penetrate like any other ray — and perhaps more deeply. But probably I don't make my meaning clear at all."

To the contrary, Hastane understands his meaning quite well and is intrigued by his musings. Some time later, Averaud invites the novelist to Larcom House, an offer he accepts, in part to sate his curiosity about both the ancient building and its newest inhabitants. In Averaud's library, he finds "an ungodly jumble of tomes," dealing with "anthropology, ancient religions, demonology, modern science, history, psychoanalysis and ethics. Interspersed with these were a few romances and volumes of poetry. Beausobre's monograph on Manichaeism was flanked with Byron and Poe; and "Les Fleurs du Mal" jostled a late treatise on chemistry." 

"You have been looking at my books," he observed immediately. "Though you might not think so at first glance, on account of their seeming diversity, I have selected them all with a single object: the study of evil in all its aspects, ancient, medieval and modern. I have traced it in the religions and demonologies of all peoples; and, more than this, in human history itself. I have found it in the inspiration of poets and romancers who have dealt with the darker impulses, emotion and acts of man. Your novels have interested me for this reason: you are aware of the baneful influences which surround us, which so often sway or actuate us. I have followed the working of these agencies even in chemical reactions, in the growth and decay of trees, flowers, minerals. I feel that the processes of physical decomposition, as well as the similar mental and moral processes, are due entirely to them.

"In brief, I have postulated a monistic evil, which is the source of all death, deterioration, imperfection, pain, sorrow, madness and disease. This evil, so feebly counteracted by the powers of good, allures and fascinates me above all things. For a long time past, my life-work has been to ascertain its true nature, and trace it to its fountain-head. I am sure that somewhere in space there is the center from which all evil emanates."

Averaud further explains that his studies have led him to believe that "certain localities and buildings, certain arrangements of natural or artificial objects, are more favorable to the reception of evil influences than others." He adds that he has a theory that, because of some manner of "interference with the direct flow of malignant force," there has never been an instance of "pure, absolute evil" manifesting itself in the world, only echoes of varying degrees of potency.

Averaud intends to initiate an experiment that test this theory. He tells Hastane that

 "By the use of some device which would create a proper field or form a receiving station, it should be possible to evoke this absolute evil. Under such conditions, I am sure that the dark vibration would become a visible and tangible thing, comparable to light or electricity." He eyed me with a gaze that was disconcertingly exigent. Then:

"I will confess that I have purchased this old mansion and its grounds mainly on account of their baleful history. The place is unusually liable to the influences of which I have spoken. I am now at work on an apparatus by means of which, when it is perfected, I hope to manifest in their essential purity the radiations of malign force."

Hastane soon takes his leave of Averaud, unsure of just what to think about the eccentric fellow and his plans. Though fascinated by Averaud's notions about the true nature of evil, he is less certain about the feasibility – not to mention desirability – of finding a means of manifesting pure, absolute evil in the world. The remainder of the story details what happens when Hastane returns to Larcom House to witness a supposed demonstration of a device invented by Averaud for this very purpose – and the consequences of its operation.

"The Devotee of Evil" is frequently criticized as little more than an imitation of better works of H.P. Lovecraft. While I can understand why one might make such criticisms, I don't think they're entirely fair. Certainly, the story is not one of Smith's best – it's much too short to do justice to its intended subject, for example – but its central conceit, the idea of evil as a fundamental force of the universe akin to those of the Standard Model of particle physics is a genuinely clever idea. Indeed, it's one I'd love to see developed further in one form or another. Consequently, I have some fondness for "The Devotee of Evil" and recommend it as an all-too-brief examination of a chilling notion.

An illustration by the great Hannes Bok that accompanied the story