Strange Shadows
Hosted by Tim Mendees and Rob Poyton of the Innsmouth Book Club, Strange Shadows is a fortnightly podcast devoted to the weird fiction of Clark Ashton Smith. One of the Trinity of Weird Tales authors, Smith, alongside Lovecraft and Howard, redefined cosmic horror and fantasy fiction.
With his distinct baroque style, Smith's work remains rich, powerful and evocative. Using the five volume Night Shade Press collection of Smith's work as our guide, we will be covering each of his stories in chronological order, as well as screen adaptations and aspects of the author's life.
Occasional guests will be joining us to share their knowledge and opinions about this most poetic of the Weird Tales writers. Episodes are free, with bonus content and other rewards available for patrons - click Subscribe or visit our Patreon page for details. See you in Zothique!
Strange Shadows
SS4 15 The Dark Eidolon
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Join us for what is widely regarded as Smith's finest tale, The Dark Eidolon. We talk infernal spectacles, noisy neighbours, spectral equines, revenge, film adaptations and SFX.
Reader: Simon Frazier Nash
Favourite words: Simoom, diddered, bezom, guernon, odalisque, capricoles, haliotis, involutate.
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Strange shadows.
SPEAKER_03The Kharcass and Smith Podcasts.
SPEAKER_00On Zaltique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer, and out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man. The gods forgotten since Hyperborea, since Mu and Poseidonis, bearing other names but the same attributes. And the elder demons had also returned, battening on the fumes of evil sacrifice, and fostering again the primordial sorceries. Many were the necromancers and magicians of Zothik, and the infamy and marvel of their doings were legended everywhere in the latter days. But among them all there was none greater than Namira, who imposed his black yoke on the cities of Xylac, and later, in a proud delirium, deemed himself the veritable peer of Thacidon, Lord of Evil.
SPEAKER_01Greetings, folks, and welcome to season four, episode 15 of Strange Shadows, the Clark Ashton Smith podcast. The voice you just heard was friend of the show, Simon Frazier Nash, reading the opening paragraph of today's story. I'm one of your hosts, Tim Mendies.
SPEAKER_02And I'm the other one, Rob Hoyton. And boy, what a story we've got today. Uh, I think last time was Smith Turned Up to 10. This is Smith turned up to 15, isn't it? This one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is widely regarded as his is probably his best known work, isn't it? I would say.
SPEAKER_02I think so, yeah. I've certainly seen a lot of podcasts have covered this when I was doing some research for it. Um, I mean, all the usual ones you'd expect. Actually, it was quite good because I found a few more weird fiction podcasts as well through searching for this. So I'll be taking a look at those.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, yes, we're gonna be looking at the dark idolin today. And yes, we did have to uh Google how you pronounce that because uh you can pronounce it several different ways, but we're going with idolin. So there we go.
SPEAKER_02Well, well yeah, and do if you're inclined to disagree, do write in and let us know because you know us some pronunciation. Uh well, we've got the north-south divide as well, scone or scone kind of thing. Yeah, then I've got my glottal stops and all that. So it's a it's a nightmare, isn't it? It is, yeah. My flat vowels. However, before we delve into the dark eye dolon, just a quick mention of the Innsmouth Literary Festival 2026. You can still get early bird tickets up until the end of March. So just uh about another week at time of recording. And as we mentioned before, our guests of honour this time are fantasy artist Les Edwards and author and editor Stephen Jones, whose Insmouth Anthologies trilogy has just been re-released by Titan Books as well. Nice, nice. And uh speaking of anthologies, I believe you've got something coming out.
SPEAKER_01Indeed, yes. I'm gonna have a story included in Redcake Publishing's Tales of Cosmic Horror, which is coming out soon. It's available to pre-order now. We'll put the universal link in the show notes. Uh, I've got a story in it called Through the Lens, which involves a certain uh deity that uh wears a sepia gown and uh dwells in Carcosa. So there we go.
SPEAKER_02Ah, that masked gentleman in the corner. Yes, indeed. Yes. Excellent. I'll be keen to have a look at that one. And just one final quick news item. If sci-fi horror is your thing, then I am putting up episodes of my mothership campaign up on my YouTube site, Dragon Seed, at the moment. We're we're putting up the playthroughs of each week. This one's got tentacles in. Now we're talking. So now another Zoth Ectow. Shall we start with our favorite words? Because we've got quite a long list to get through again.
SPEAKER_01Indeed, yeah, yeah, why not? Um, yeah, I got a few here, some I had I had no idea. The first one here is simum, which is something I wasn't familiar with, which is a hot, dry, dust laden wind blowing in the desert, especially the deserts of Arabia. Ah, interesting. Which ties in with what we were talking about last time about um you know Arabian Knights being an influence, possibly.
SPEAKER_02So yes, yes, and that and that's a little bit different because all the other words I had to look up here were very sort of medieval French, Latin, or English origin as well. Yeah, and a lot of stuff here I'd never heard. I'm gonna start with didd. Nice, which is uh oldie English apparently for tremble, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Never heard that before. Ah, well, some of these I've actually noticed are sort of northern uh or Scottish, because that is you still used in north, and the words that I have not heard since I was a kid, because there's two meanings for this word, but I've not heard this from since I was a kid because my gran used to use this word, but beesum, which is a broom made of twigs tied onto a stick. That's one meaning. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the other meaning is a northern English and Scottish term, a derogatory term for a woman or girl. Ah, I've not heard that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. My next choice is saltant, salt with an ant on the end, which is from the Latin saltare, I believe, to leap or to dance.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I heard that one. I've never heard that one before. So it'll be a good one. My next one is a breed of horse. There's a palfrey, which was a highly valued horse in the Middle Ages. It's lightweight, smoothly gaited, and suitable for long distance.
SPEAKER_02Lovely. There we go. Lovely. Now, one there's two spellings of this. The original spelling, funnily enough, given the term, is F-A-R-S-E-D, fast. Which when you think of farces, you know, that that brings a certain type of comedy to mind. Indeed. But the word fast actually means to stuff or to fill. I mean, I suppose there's an entendre. Oh, why?
SPEAKER_01Fancy a fasting. I was gonna say that's a that's almost uh a Bernard Breslau pun, isn't it? From a carry-on movie. Mr. Fast. Yeah, Mr. Fast. Uh keeping with that that kind of thinking. My next one is Castrados. Oh yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02I read that in a slightly different accent. I was going, Castrados, yes, indeed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, almost like the um the Inquisitor from that from Blackadder, Blackadder the Second. Yes, yes, yeah, testiculos over over a fuego. Yeah, Castrados, which is a eunuch.
SPEAKER_02Uh, another one I had no idea of at all, and again, I'm not sure on the pronunciation of this. Guerdon, G-U-E-R-D-O-N, which is a reward or recompense. Totally unfamiliar with that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a yeah, that sounds French, that one to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now I'm not sure whether we've had this one before, I think we may have done, but we're having it again because I like it so much. It's Odolisk, which is a female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one in the service of the Sultan of Turkey. There we go.
SPEAKER_02The Sultans of Swing. Another marvelous sounding word, which relates back to the uh the equine is Capricoles, which means prancing.
SPEAKER_01Yes, nice. Yeah, I'm gonna finish up now with involition, I think is how you pronounce it. Now, we've got multiple meanings here. So the act of instance of enfolding or entangling, you call also mean the state of being involved or complicated. In mathematics, it's an operation where a number is raised to a specified power. In biology, it describes the shrinking of an organ to its original size after childbirth. Oh my god, that got worse. I know. It could also refer to the progressive degeneration occurring naturally with advancing age. Oh well, we're all subject to that. Yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_02How many meanings for one word? And all quite different as well. Yeah, yeah. Strange, isn't it? And I'm gonna finish with a word that I had to look at twice. Haliotis. Because there's the obviously you you know when people give you a mint, uh-huh, you think, are they just being nice, or does my breath stink, you know? But of course, that's halitosis. Haliotis is a type of mollusk or sea snail, a gastropod. Yes, very cool, very cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, certainly he's on form in this one, isn't he? With his language, he's very uh Baroque again. Yes, pulled out all the stops.
SPEAKER_02I you know, I I don't know what sort of state he was in when he wrote this, but I've got uh an image of him just sort of sitting down and writing this from start to finish in one fevered rush, a fevered outpouring.
SPEAKER_01Well, actually, you'd be wrong on that score, because if if we look at the publication history, you we it's um he actually wrote out the the synopsis of it in his black book and then he actually revised it a couple of times, changing the names of characters and things like that. So it was actually one of his more involved um creations than you would have thought. Yeah, he actually tinkered with this quite a bit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So he completed the story around December the 23rd, 1932, after several revisions, and he announced August Dirleff, so we're gonna have a quick delve into eccentric impractical devils here. This is the letter dated on the 23rd of December. I have finished the Dark Eyedolan, which ran upwards of 10,000 words, and have shipped it to Wright. It's a devil of a story, and if Wright knows his mandrakes, he certainly ought to take it on. Now, this is interesting considering I well know you're going to be talking about in a bit. If the thing could ever be filmed, and no doubt it could with a lot of trick photography, it might be a winner for diabolical drama and splendid infernal spectacles. Oh infernal spectacles, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think you can get those in boots.
SPEAKER_01I think I'm wearing a pair of them. So he submitted it to Wright and Wright rejected it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, for I yeah. Yeah, I know. It's so frustrating. It it really is, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It's uh Did he did he give a reason for the rejection? Yes, he he he actually did, because Smith wrote to Derlith on January the 4th saying, Wright has just sent back my new thriller, The Dark Eyedolan, complaining that the latter part of the story, about one-third, is too long drawn out. I am somewhat at loss to know whether he refers to the incidents themselves or their treatment. I suppose something will have to be done with the yarn, which contains, as Wright admits, some of my best imaginative writing. It certainly does that. So Smith took it away and removed a hefty chunk of the story. Now, unfortunately, we don't know exactly how much was removed, and that seem all seems to have been lost. Oh no, this is that's a terrible shame. Yeah, so what we've what we've got and what was obviously in the penguin classics and everything is as complete as we have of this story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But but yeah, but what we originally it seems to it seems to have lost, which is a real real shame. But Wright accepted it with the revisions and actually paid Smith $100. That's a fairly hefty sum for the day. Yeah, not a bad amount for the time at all. And it was published in the January 1935 issue of Weird Tales. If you notice the dates, that's pretty much exactly two years after the acceptance. Wow. They're getting longer and longer, aren't they? These accept these delays. Yeah, how are you supposed to make a living with that kind of delay? But no wonder he always struggled if he was sort of like waiting, because obviously Gern's back, let's face it, was uh he had a some kind of allergic reaction to opening his wallet.
SPEAKER_02Um, wasn't that uh only the threat of legal action, wasn't it, that prompted him in the end?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, he actually hired us, hired a bloody solicitor to to send him a writ, I think, you know. But uh yeah. Well, Wright did also include an illustration by Smith in the store when he when it was um published, which bagged him an extra seven dollars. Nice. It's not to be sniffed at, but you know, I mean seven dollars back then, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll see if I can dig that illustration out and and put that up for the as the uh picture for the show.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there we go. That's the publication, quite straightforward this time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think as you said, maybe one of the reasons this is one of his better-known stories is because it was used as the title for that collection, the penguin collection.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've got it here, and it actually has the Smith illustration on the front of it. Uh I'm not sure what the illustration is. I don't think it's the one for the story, but it is an illustration by Smith.
SPEAKER_02So we've heard the opening paragraph of the story, but I actually want to go back before that to the poem that leads us into it. I would like to read this out, if you will indulge me. Yes, indeed. The Sidon, Lord of Seven Hells, wherein the single serpent dwells, with volumes drawn from pit to pit through fire and darkness infinite. The Sidon, son of nether skies, thine ancient evil never dies, for I thy somber fulgers flame on sunken worlds that have no name. Man's heart enthrones thee, still supreme, though the false sorcerers blaspheme. The song of Xithra.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very nice. Now I've got a little bit about that, actually. Funnily enough, that you bring it up. Uh, that was added later. He added that after it had been accepted, after first sending it to HPL, who who said, Yeah, that's awesome, you need to get that on the you know. So he sent that to Wright later.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Oh, that's cool. So he did the story and then that. Interesting, nice. Yeah. And uh I'd I'd like to hear more of that, wouldn't you? The song of Z from.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's very cool.
SPEAKER_02So back to Zothic, then the last continent of Earth. And uh, we're straight into die in earth territory.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do like in this first paragraph that you've got mention of the gods forgotten since Hyperborea, since Mu and Sidonis. It's like he he's tying all of his little milieus in together. I like that. It's nice, it gives it all a thread going all the way back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think this is probably the most world-building we've seen in Smith. Uh, it seems to put this more into South Think than anything else. Perhaps because it is the sum of all the other settings, as you say there, in a way, drawing all those threads together. And I love this idea that there's new stars in the heavens.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and elder demons returning and all that. It's like heavy portents right at the start, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yes, and just this lovely expression here. The sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as with a vapour of blood. Vapor of blood, splendid.
SPEAKER_01That's a band name.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Oh, I think if you want a band name, just read this one, put a pin in it somewhere. Yeah, yeah, you'll get a band name. And uh we're introduced very early on to our lead character, Namura, who's the top necromancer and magician in Zothik, which is saying something because uh one thing that's interesting with this story is everyone's bad. Oh, yeah. I mean, some are bad, some are mad and bad, some are just really, really bad and mad, and uh there's not a redeeming feature amongst any of them, is there?
SPEAKER_01No, and one of them is an actual demon.
SPEAKER_02So doesn't get much badder than this. That thacidon, thasadon? Oh, I was going with uh Thasidon. Thasidon, right? We'll go with that, we'll go with that.
SPEAKER_01Don't say it three times in a row. Oh no, especially not in front of a mirror. Yeah, because that this and Namira chap, he's a certain ne'er do well, isn't he? But he I like this, he has imposed his black yoke on the cities of Xilak. So again, we're straight in with the world building, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, we we get a lot of uh locations mentioned here, don't we? Because uh we've got the desert realm of Tar Sun, and that's the place everyone thinks that this necromancer comes from, but actually he was born in Umaus, that's the city of his birth to which he has returned, and the reason he has returned is to wreak his revenge upon well, is now the emperor was the prince at the time, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because he was a young beggar boy, wasn't he? An orphan of questionable parentage, who begged his daily bread in the streets and bazaars of a mouse. So yeah, he was quite a bit of an urchin, really, very sort of Dickensian kind of thing here, really, isn't it? It's a bit of a please circle I have some more kind of character, isn't it? Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh he didn't get any more, did he? No. Not off of Prince Zatula anyway. And one day the Prince Zatula, a boy but little older than he, riding arrested Palfrey, came upon him in the square before the Imperial Palace. Satula, scorning his plea, rode arrogantly forward, spurring the palfrey, and Narthos was ridden down and trampled under its hooves. Afterwards, nigh to death from the trampling, he lay senseless for many hours while the people passed him by unheeding. Is left with uh a physical scar, he's got this big hoof mark in the middle of his chest, and uh mental scars as well.
SPEAKER_01I mean that that's just adds on the grimness, doesn't it? I mean you can picture that, this poor wretch lying in the street, bleeding, trampled near to death, and people just carrying on their daily stuff around him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, but we learn that's what the people of this city are like, right? They're all bastards, basically. Yeah, and uh the favourite parts times are sort of uh torture, you know, sexual perversion and uh more torture, really.
SPEAKER_01Pretty much, yeah. I mean it it kind of it kind of echoes that again, that Dickensian thing, because it's like I I read a lot into like Jack the Ripper and all that kind of stuff. And if you read about the East End in that sort of era of just like drunk and insensible prostitutes lying in the gutter and people just carry it on and all that just carry on around it, just step over the step over the guy who's been shanked, you know, tightly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Stratford weren't much different in the 70s, to be honest. There you go. So he survives this incident, Narthos, and he drags himself off and he decides he's gonna leave the city. He goes southward into Tarsoon, where he gets lost in the great desert with uh echoes of uh yondo, I think there for me. And I like this line. Finally, he came to a small oasis where dwelt the wizard Ufalok, a hermit who preferred the company of honest hyenas and jackals to that of men. That's very Smithian observation, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that. One thing I've noticed as well, because you know, in the last few stories, we've noticed uh a sort of favorite word which ties into the theme. Yes, it seems to be a Smith thing where you will reuse a word like we had vampiric in Genius Lochi and things like that, which ties into the whole sort of feel and is the main concept of it. Here it's jackals and hyenas, right? Predatory dogs, you'll see jackal turning up several times, and that ties in with the the characters, they're predators, they're bestial, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes, with that implication that at least your actual hyenas or jackals are honest about it. Yeah, exactly. I'm a predator, you know, where their bad behaviour is tied up in courtly manners, one thinks a dissemblement and liars and deceits.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you get the get the feeling Smith's having a bit of a bit of a dig again in this one, don't you? That high society and all that kind of stuff, and the machinations of politicians and all that, you know.
SPEAKER_02So the boy Narthos becomes apprentice to Ufalok, and he does very Well, it becomes the heir of his demon rested lore. Strange things he learned in that hermitage, being fed on fruits and grain that had sprung not from the watered earth, and wine that was not the juice of terrine grapes. And we get this mention here of he drove his own bond with the archfiend, Poseidon. Now we have seen that name before, and is is it's the equivalent of Satan, isn't it? In Zothique, I think basically the Prince of Darkness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's also a bit of a bit of a trickster, from what I remember as well. So he's got like almost a Loki kind of aspect to him.
SPEAKER_02That plays very much into the ending, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. What I want to know is what this wine from not terrene grapes. Yeah what is it, you know, Venusian wine?
SPEAKER_02The fruits of hell. I don't know. Grows in the vineyards of hell, perhaps. I want to know where you can get a bottle. Try the cart. And this is where the boy Narthon changes his name to Namira and goes forth as a mighty sorcerer because, of course, his mentor dies and he kind of takes over his mantle. But where Azufalok was a hermit, Namira goes back out into the world and starts plying his trade and builds up a huge reputation. Again, given that this is a time of great sorcerers and necromancers, and is spoken of far and wide, even in the cities of Yoros and in Zulbar Shiya, the abode of the ghoulish deity Mordigan, who we we met just a couple of weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01Indeed. Yeah, the great ghoul himself.
SPEAKER_02But even with all that, he's not forgotten this incident and this desire for revenge burns deep within his breast. Meanwhile, in Umaeos, Pitame, the father of Prince Zatullah, this this was nice, isn't it? He was slain by the sting of a small adder that had crept into his bed for warmth and on an autumn night. Oh, that was handy, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean I get echoes of you know Cleopatra and asps and things like that, you know.
SPEAKER_02Infamy, infamy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you gotta wonder if there was if somebody had uh ushered said reptilian friend between the sheets, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, there is speculation, but uh anyway, Zotullah takes over, he becomes emperor of Zilak, and he ruled evilly from his throne. Indolent he was and tyrannic and full of strange luxuries and cruelties. But as we mentioned before, the people who were also evil acclaimed him in his turpitude. That's a great expression. Have you ever been acclaimed in your turpitude?
SPEAKER_01I don't know, I feel like probably have at some point. If not, you bloody well should be. Yeah, I like this line here. So he prospered, and the lords of hell and heaven smote him not.
SPEAKER_02It's quite biblical, some of this, isn't it? The the writing, and I was thinking like um and emause is quite a similar word.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like all the little tie, all the little ties and Easter eggs here, because we've already had the mention of Digsian, but now we've got um the mention of the infamous Isle of Nat, the Isle of the Torturers.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. It does pull everything into this one, doesn't he? There's so many mentions throughout. Yes. And here's a lovely image as well, because this this is uh a sort of physical thing, but also I imagine his his soul. Still grosser, he grew, and his sins were as overswollen fruits that ripen above a deep abyss. That's that idea of sometimes when things grow, it's not always in a healthy way, is it? You know, they they grow large on corruption.
SPEAKER_01Corpulent.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, puffy, the puffy grave worm.
SPEAKER_01Puffy grave worm, yeah. We're back to the conqueror worm again.
SPEAKER_02So it is in the year of the hyena. There's uh there we go. There we go. The month of the star Canicule. Zotilla is uh given a great feast to his people, and uh there's a lot of uh food and wine in this as well as we go through, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I think it's that that Smith is conveying that decadence again, isn't he? You've just got images of these like platters laden with you know cutlets and dripping grease and blood and all that. You get that, you know, it's that sort of decadence into decay again, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, red wine running down the chin and staining the tunics and and all that sort of thing. Lots of laughing and guffoing going on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The wines awoke a furious mirth and a royal madness, and afterwards they brought a slumber no less profound than the lethe of the tomb. And one by one, as they drank, the revellers fell down in the streets, the houses and gardens, as if a plague had struck them. Sort of shades of the red death there as well, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's interesting. I did actually get a bit of a Poe-esque echo again in in various bits. There's a there's a couple more things I want to uh bring up later on, but we'll get to them in due course. But Poe is obviously a bit of an influence on this.
SPEAKER_02And this heralds the return of Namira. So whether he had something to do with uh everyone going into this comatose state is open to speculation, I suppose, but it sounds quite plausible. And basically, when everyone wakes up next morning, next to the palace, there's this huge tower has appeared, which couldn't possibly have been built in that time, so it's obviously uh of sorcererous origin, and uh this is where Namira has moved in. Hello, I'm your new neighbour. I love that.
SPEAKER_01There's this tower's just randomly appeared. But that's a that's sort of a common trope in things like this. I mean, it's happened in Doctor Who and all that, like suddenly a monolith appears out of nowhere. It's very uncanny, isn't it? But that thing you look out your window and in your back garden there's suddenly a statue.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, the statue. And I'm almost thinking of the uh the slab in 2001. Oh yeah. It's just so out of place in this sort of prehistoric landscape, and there's this object suddenly appears. Yeah, it's very it's very creepy, that isn't it? I think up to now it's been Smith in his very Zothic manner. We're we're we're the needle is nudging up. Yes, yeah, and from here on in, it we're we're in the red now, aren't we? We're we're feeding bag like crazy. It's just it just goes absolutely mad. Yeah, we're into the realm of blown speakers and distortion and yeah, yeah, ring modulators, and a whole lot's going off, man. Ripped speaker felt. Yeah, here we go. We're having it, we're having it now. So we get a very nice description of the tower. Uh Onyx and Porfrey are hewed as with dragon's blood. Uh again, I have the same problem uh with this as in the the previous stories. We could just read the whole thing out. There's so much great language and description in here. Great was the dumbfoundment, deeming the marvel work of wizardry. The women gathered about him, crying out with shrill cries of awe and terror, and more and more of his courtiers awakening came to swell the fearful hubbub, and the fat castrados diddered in their cloth of gold like immense black jellies in golden basins.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. That's a great sentence, isn't it? Bloody hell. I like I like the description that dude uh as well. It just says that this n this structure has domes like monstrous fungi of stone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Great stuff. They all go out to have a closer look at this tower, and and this is where things start. It seemed that the portals were deserted till they drew near, and then, on the threshold, there appeared a titanic skeleton, taller than any man of earth, and it strode forward to meet them with L long strides. The skeleton was swathed in a loincloth of scarlet silk with a buckle of jet, and it wore a black turban starred with diamonds, whose topmost foldings nearly touched the lofty lintel. Eyes like flickering marsh fires burned in its deep eye sockets, and a blackened tongue like that of a long dead man protruded between its teeth, but otherwise it was clean of flesh, and the bones glittered whitely in the sun as it came onward. That's Ray Harryhausen on steroids, that is, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It's great, it's absolutely tremendous. Yeah, and just before he send that, we get again we get a reference here to jackal's hyenas, because he he says, Now who is this that is presumed to enter a mouse like a jackal in the dark? So yeah. But yeah, this skeleton. He sent his courtiers, go and find out who this miscreant is, you know, his walking great skeleton.
SPEAKER_02Oh, amazing. I like the way that everyone is just shocked into silence, and the only sound is the creaking of their girdles, which says something about their girth, perhaps, the shrill rustling of their silks, and the footbones of the skeleton clicking on the pavement of sable onyx.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the putrefying tongue began to quiver between its teeth, and it uttered these words in an uncuous, nauseous voice. Return and tell the Emperor Zutullah that Namira, seer and magician, has come to dwell beside him.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty much it, isn't it? One of the most powerful emperors in Zothi kind of goes, Uh oh, all right then, that's nice. Thank you. Do pop over for tea sometime.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the emperor's wrath died out like a feeble and blustering flame. Nice.
SPEAKER_02So, what do you do when you've got a problem like this? Well, again, Smith's observations on human nature and behavior. They sort of just pretend it's not there, really. Just ignore it. Perhaps he'll go away.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, well, it's a tool that just basically gets pissed and feasted, doesn't he? Just like I'm just gonna drink lots of wine and eat all this food, you know.
SPEAKER_02And people do notice that there's some strange things going on in this tower. There's there's strange lights. Sometimes there came a stony cachination, as if some adamantine image had laughed aloud. Sometimes there was a chuckling like the sound of shattered ice in a frozen hill. Dim shadows moved in the porticos when there was neither sunlight nor lamp to cast them, and red, eerie lights appeared and vanished in the windows at an eve, like a blinking of demoniac eyes.
SPEAKER_01And that's not even the worst of it. Because it says here, the followers of Namira were the dead of strange kingdoms, the demons of sky and earth and the abyss, and mad, impious hybrid things that the sorcerer himself had created from forbidden unions.
SPEAKER_02Oh, there it is. There it is. There's Mr. Smith. But even that they sort of get used to and accustomed to, or at least uh are able to shut it out. But then we get that thing that I think probably most of us have suffered at some point or other. Noisy neighbours. The worst, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Sitting one eve at his banquet table with his courtiers about him, the emperor heard a noise as of a myriad iron-shod hooves that came trampling through the palace gardens. And the courtiers also heard the sound and were startled amid their mounting drunkenness. And the emperor was angered, and he sent certain of his guards to examine into the cause of the trampling. But peering forth upon the moonbright lawns and parterres, the guards beheld no visible shape. I was put in mind straight away to this of uh Karnaki, horse of the invisible, right?
SPEAKER_01I was gonna I was gonna bring this up because I was like, this has gotta be an inspiration. Um obviously, yeah. The horse of the invisible, a short story by William Hope Hodgson, was first published in The Idler in April 1910. There we go. What a great name for a magazine. Yeah. And something else I thought of was Robert E. Howard's story, The Thing on the Roof.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yes, that's that that which tramples an elephantine tread or something, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yes, indeed. Which is one of REH's mythos stories. And that was actually published in 1932 in Weird Tales. So just before or around the same time this was getting completed.
SPEAKER_02Right. So there's that possibility there's a little bit of cross-fertilization there.
SPEAKER_01Hmm, yeah, yeah. So I just thought that was worth bringing up. That's a great story, that one. But they're both are. I love the horse of the invisible, it's one of my favourite Karnaki stories.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and that was the one that got adapted with uh Donald Pleasant's right. It was the the rivals of Sherlock Holmes, wasn't it? Yeah, great, that was really good. Yeah, good series. That's a good series. So, um the noise is bad enough, but even worse, Satula's Immaculate Garden is wrecked. This is like when kids go over the park and uh pull up roses and drive their motorbikes through the flower beds and all that kind of stuff, isn't it? And this seems to piss him off more than anything. And here's just a a great a great paragraph here from Smith. A pox upon the mirror if he has done this, cried Zatula. For what harm have I ever done him? Verily I shall set my heel on the dog's neck, and the torture will shall serve him, even as these horses from hell have served my blood red lilies of sotar, and my vain coloured irises of nut, and my orchids from Ucastrog, which were purple as the bruises of love. Yea, though he stand the viceroy of Poseidon upon earth, and overlord of ten thousand devils, my will shall break him, and fires shall heat the wheel, white hot in its turning, till he withers black as the seared blossoms. It's a bit annoyed, isn't he?
SPEAKER_01You can just imagine him, red-faced. You know, it reminds something I kept thinking of in my mind's eye when I was doing this. You remember them old illustrations that you used to get of the gentry in magazine in like the newspapers and magazines poking fun, and there were always these very rotund people with the the red faces, like the bulging waistband and all that, so eating a chicken leg kind of thing, right? While while somebody dies starving below below them, kind of thing. And in the satirical newspapers of the times, sort of Victorian and all that. It just reminded me of that. It's that kind of image, isn't it? Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02This happens again and again. So his garden's getting destroyed, the noise is disturbing him, this monstrous clanger means no one can sleep because they're going on all night now. All night the hooves thundered back and forth, echoing awfully in the vaulted stone, while Zatula and Obeksa, listening, huddled close to amid their cushions and coverlets, and all the occupants of the palace, wakeful and fearful, heard the noise but stirred not from their chambers. And this time when they go out, the hoof marks are found on the marble flags of the porches and balconies. So it's like they're getting closer. That's a very good nightmare thing as well. That's uh Mr. James, right? The mezzotint.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's getting closer to the door to the open window, isn't it? Every every day, every time they look at the paint the um the mezzo tint. Yeah, it's a good one.
SPEAKER_02And the next night the hawk the hooves are actually inside the palace. They fill the palace with their iron clatterings and they rung hollowly on the topmost domes, as if the courses of gods had trodden there, passing from heaven to heaven in tumultuous cavalcade.
SPEAKER_01Having a bit of a run. Having a gallop. There we go. Well, we worse still now, is Zatula and Abexa, it's inter interfering there, rumpus now. Oh dear, you know, yeah, exactly. Laying together while the terrible hooves went to and fro in the hall outside their chamber, had no heart or thought for sin. No, nor could they find any comfort in their nearness.
SPEAKER_02And even though it's it's gotta be Namira, right? People are still saying, Well, perhaps it's not him. There's a there's a new wizard who has risen in Tinarath far to the east. Perhaps it's something to do with him. It's like they're they're trying to turn a blind eye. No one wants to face this problem. No, certainly no one wants to confront the sorcerer. This is like you've got the guy next door who's seven foot two, and you want to go around and say, Can you turn your music down, please? Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly it, isn't it? So Zatullah does what all good leaders do. He calls together his priests and magicians and soothsayers and says, Uh, go and have a word with him, will you? Find out what's happening. They're like, Oh shit. Yeah. Loath were the wizards and soothsayers, fearing Namira and caring not to intrude upon the frightful obscure mysteries of his mansion. But the swordsmen of the emperor drove them forth, lifting great crescent blades against them when they tarried. So they're not really got much choice about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great image of these powerful magicians and stuff that's going I'm not going round there. Yes, you are, mate.
SPEAKER_02They do come back though. Foul muttering and distraught. They come back just before sunset, and this is the message. Be it known to Zatullah that the haunting is a sign of that which he has long forgotten, and the reason of the haunting will be revealed to him at the hour prepared and set apart by destiny, and the hour draws near. Fonamira bids the emperor and all his court to a great feast on the afternoon of the morrow. Having delivered that message, they all leave town. Yes. I'm off. Yeah, quite covertly. I don't want to be seen to sneaking off. But the next time he calls on them, someone says, uh, actually, they've all gone.
SPEAKER_01Well, don't I don't blame them, do you? I'd have been away at me toes and all. I like this because I mean, uh, like spectral hooves and things like that are a common haunting, aren't they? Probably best known woman in black. Oh, yes. On the causeway. But it's like load of local stuff, like there's a pond over Binstead, which uh yeah, here hooves because there was they crashed into the pond and some kiddie drowned kind of thing. But that is a common haunting over here, especially. I wonder if it was over there as well. I wonder why that's Smith's sort of drawn on it.
SPEAKER_02Well, you had that um like the headless horseman, wasn't it? The the hes the Hessian and all that kind of stuff. So oh, of course, Sleepy Hollow. Yeah, yeah, and and spectral sort of wagons and carts, and yeah, that seems to be quite a common thing. Indeed. Supplanted in some way, I suppose, by the spectral hitchhiker, isn't it? Or the the motors the motorbike is quite a common one as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. Yeah, funnily enough, there's a spectral hitchhiker just up the road here, apparently, on the on the on the big A road heading out towards Hayward Heath. Right. Which is almost um, funnily enough, uh almost what it's supposed to happen is almost adjacent to Clayton Tunnel, which is haunted, which was the inspiration of Charles Dickens's signalman.
SPEAKER_03Oh really?
SPEAKER_01It's where that it's where that rail disaster was. Oh Clayton Tunnel. Wow. Um, which is almost underneath Devil's Dyke, where there's spectral hounds.
SPEAKER_03It just gets better and better, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh we cut now to Namira. We we get a sort of change of perspective, and uh this is like through the keyhole, isn't it? Who lives in a tower like this? A mental necromancer, apparently. On the same evening in the great hall of his house, Namira sat alone, having dismissed the mummies, the monsters, the skeletons and familiars who attended him ordinarily. Before him on an altar of jet was the dark, gigantic statue of Sosedon, which a devil begotten sculptor had ruled in ancient days for an evil king of Tar Sun called Farnok. The archdemon was depicted in the guise of a full armoured warrior lifting a spiky mace as if in heroic battle. This is um Chekhov's mace, right? Yes, so we're gonna see that in action before the end of the story. And it's just this the most of the rest of this page is just a fantastic description of seven silver lamps wrought in the form of horses' skulls, lurid light, just this, I suppose, archetypal necromancer's lair. Uh we've not even got onto his lab yet. We do see that later on.
SPEAKER_01This is this is his uh his sitting room, this is his lounge, isn't it? It's interesting. I've got envy you know for his furnishings. I want this chair, a serpent carven chair. It's uh that'd look that'd look right fetching in my in my own living room, that one.
SPEAKER_02And we we get the conversation between him and Thoseon, and it is this kind of typical bargain, isn't it, that's going on. Well, if I do this for you, necromancer, then there's a price to pay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll I'll pay that, don't worry. Well, we we see how this plays out because Thoseidon says, I will not aid you in this revenge you have planned, for the Emperor's Atula has done me no wrong and has served me well. Well, though unwittingly, and the people of Zylac, by reason of their turpitudes, are not the least of my terrestrial worshippers. So it's kind of saying, Leave this guy alone, he's actually uh a a good servant for me. He's spreading evil and hatred. So why would I want to do anything to him?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like how he continues on because he bet he essentially says that in a roundabout, weird kind of way, by trampling you, he did you a favour because you then went on and found the necronancer, became a student, yada yada yada, and here you are now, everything happens for a reason, kind of thing. You know, it's always the butterfly effect, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, and then this brings me on to Conan the Barbarian, uh John Millius, pretty much exactly the same. Now I'm a Robert E Howard purist, and that film has very, very little to do with Robert E. Howard's Conan. But if you set that aside, one of the themes of the film is Thulsa Doom kills Conan's family, puts him into slavery, etc. etc. In effect, he creates Conan the Warrior. Yes, because without all that, he'd still be back in his village toiling the fields or whatever they do in Samaria. So that is the whole uh scene at the end between the two of them, the climax of the film. I made you, I am your father, kind of thing. Uh, to which, of course, Conan responds to that by cutting his head off. Yeah, of course, of course. You know, yeah. So, yeah, it is it is that interesting idea of you're seeking revenge on something, but that event made you what you are. It's an interesting theme.
SPEAKER_01It's a common trope. I mean, you find that a lot in these gangster movies as well, isn't it? Because again, it's like somebody's well, Batman, Leon. Prime example, prime example. Yeah, he was created by this kind of thing and became the man that he is through it.
SPEAKER_02So and I think, I mean, just jumping ahead a little bit to the end, but we'll put that in now as we're talking about it. When he does wreak his revenge and reveal this plan that he's been developing for years, the the emperor says, What? Yeah, it's not even a memory for him. He trampled, he trampled a beggar once. Yeah, he can only imagine the things he's done since then. This is way down the list.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, especially as he seems to be an adherent of Nat, you know, the Isle of the Torturers. He seems to like his old uh, you know, he's he he's definitely got a dungeon room somewhere, hasn't he? And not just for Hankus Pankus. I'd say the whole palace is a dungeon room. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Smith predicted Torture Garden.
SPEAKER_02The film and the club, indeed. Yeah, what an interesting place that was. Yeah. In an old church as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a great venue, great venue.
SPEAKER_02So we have this sort of refusal from Poseidon, but Namira is so set on his course of revenge, he's gonna go against the Dark Lord, and he makes certain other preparations. This is uh going up to the high dome of his house, in which there was a small single round window that looked forth on the constellations. This is this um Smith and the stars, isn't it? Again, so much of his work revolves around the stars. Things come from distant stars or people travel to distant stars, and it's that similar feeling we get in Lovecraft, almost as though the stars themselves are uh entities of some kind.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Lying prone on the curved interior of the dome, with his face over the abyss and his long beard trailing stiffly into space, he whispered a pre-human rune and held speech with certain entities who belong neither to hell nor the mundane elements, and were more fearsome to invoke than the infernal genii or the devils of earth, air, water, and flame. With them he made his compact, defying Psiedon's will while the air curdled about him with their voices, and Orion gathered paley on his sable beard from the cold that was wrought by their breathing as they leaned earthward.
SPEAKER_01Very visual.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's our cosmic horror, isn't it? We're going beyond heaven and hell now into the cosmos. So this really takes us into the last scene. I say last scene, this is pretty much the back half of the story. And this is one of those things that just gets more and more crazy as we're going along. Oh, yeah. But it's basically the feast. Everyone gets invited to the feast, and uh whether they want to go or not, they're going, as we find out, and we get this series of events. I mean, it makes a red wedding look like a sort of Boy Scout's picnic, doesn't it? Really?
SPEAKER_01It does, and there's so many sort of echoes in it. I mean, the one big echo I got was obviously the Colossus of a lawn, you know, because you just got this. Oh, yeah, you just he starts it off here, always your mask and a red death kind of thing, but then it just ramps up and up and up, and before you know it, you've got you've got Godzilla kind of kaiju thing going on, right?
SPEAKER_02Because it Satilla don't really want to go, does he? And it's it he he gathers what priests or wizards uh are left, though uh there's not many of those. He does get some priests turn up, and I like this. The priests thronged the hall of audience so that the paunches of the foremost were straightened against the imperial dais, and the buttocks of the hindmost were flattened on the rear walls and pillars. You get the idea they're somewhat corpulent, these priests. Yes. But this is where we get the idea that whether you want to go or not, you're going. And this is just a fantastic scene. Then into the hall there filed an array of tall mummies, clad in royal ceremonies of purple and scarlet, and wearing gold crowns on their withered craniums, and after them, like servitors, came gigantic skeletons who wore loincloths of nasserat orange, and about whose upper skulls, from brow to crown, live serpents of banded saffron and ebon had wrapped themselves for headdresses. And the mummies bowed before Zatula, saying this with thin, seer voices. We who were the kings of the wide realm of Tasun aforetime, have been sent as a guard of honour for the Emperor Zatula to attend him as is befitting when he goes forth to the feast prepared by Namira. And um it's kind of like a weird Pie Piper thing. Everyone in the palace just gets up and follows these over to Namira's tower.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, being ushered on though it's uh it's an incredibly visual thing. You can just picture it, these throng of skeletons with the serpents all hissing and writhing and brilliant, absolute great stuff.
SPEAKER_02And this great bit with the mummies, as they start moving, their ceremony stirred and fell open, and small rodent monsters, brown as bitumen, eyed as with a cursed rubies, reared forth from the eaten hearts of the mummies like rats from their holes, and chittered shrilly in human speech, repeating the words.
SPEAKER_01It's just Brown Jenkin. I got real echoes of brown janking there, man.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. And uh we we get a little bit of musical accompaniment, kind of reinforcing that Pied Piper idea. Each of the skeletons drew from the reddish yellow folds of his line cloth a curiously pierced archaic flute of silver, and all began a sweet and evil and deathly fluting as the emperor went out through the halls of the palace. A fatal spell was in the music, for the chamberlains, the women, the guards, the eunuchs, and all members of Zotulla's household, even to the cooks and scullions, were drawn like a procession of night walkers from the rooms and alcoves in which they had vainly hidden themselves. So it's the it's the whole shebang, everyone in the palace. Uh again, what an amazing visual image this is. Uh what an amazing scene that would make in that an adaptation. And it doesn't stop, does it, when we get to the open portals of Niras house?
SPEAKER_01The Emperor saw that they were guarded by great crimson wattled things, half dragon, half man, who bowed before him, sweeping their wattles like bloody beesams on the flags of dark onyx. Bloody beesams. Nice.
SPEAKER_02Now we're going to get a Doctor Who reference in here, of course. Of course we are. It does seem a bit TARDIS like this place, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Mm. It doesn't.
SPEAKER_02You get the impression of a tower on the outside with a few domes. The inside it's just a vast chamber.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It seemed he gazed down great avenues of topless pillars and vistas of tables laden with piled up veons and thronged urns of wine that stretched away before him into luminous distance and gloom as of starless night. So I'll give that to Lamira. He's put on a good spread here. It's not just gone down Iceland and got some buffet stuff, has he?
SPEAKER_03You know?
SPEAKER_02Iceland volumes. With prone cocktail, you know, still a bit frozen in the middle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've all had pub buffets.
SPEAKER_02And it's not just the food, it's the people serving it as well. This, I I mean, again, it just goes from uh level to level to level. Kingly cadavers in robes of time rotten brocade, with worms seething in their eye pits, poured a blood like wine into cups of the opalescent horn of unicorns. Lamias, trident towed and four breasted chimeras came in with fuming platters lifted high by their brazen claws. Dog headed devils, tongued with lolling flames, ran forward to offer themselves as ushers for the company. So it is there's nothing earthly or normal about any of this. And just when you think, oh, we've had a giant skeleton, now we've got mummies, now we've got more giant skeletons, now we've got red dragons. Now what what the what the fuck is this now?
SPEAKER_01Black iron basilisks as well.
SPEAKER_02All lit by the glow of those of the flames of the seven horse skull lamps burning restlessly behind him. I just thought there, the the horse skull thing, that of course that's referring back to the instant, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There's a fair bit of horsey imagery in this as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Horses and dogs seem to be the the themes of this one.
SPEAKER_02Their host is present, of course. He rises to greet them. Uh this is such a nice phrase. So his eyes were bleak and cold as distant stars. His lips were like a pale red seal on a shut parchment of doom. Oh, Mr.
SPEAKER_01Smith. Nice. Yeah, that's a good one. But again, that's like very gothic, isn't it? It's gothic with a capital G again, as all the Zothique stuff is. But again, that that thing, I mean, that summons of doom, you got it on the parchment with the seal. Once you've broken the seal and you read the thing, that's it, you're dead, don't you? You know?
SPEAKER_02Yes. And another little observation on human nature here, because Obexa, peering beneath lower lids, was abashed and frightened by the visible horror that invested this man and hung upon him even as royalty upon a king. But amid her fear, she found room to wonder what manner of man he was in his intercourse with women.
SPEAKER_01It's uh you know, it's the Sheriff of Nottingham factor, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, but but but especially, you know, Rick Alan Rickman, right? Especially Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. None of the women I know at the time or even now with that film, nobody was talking about Kevin Costa and how they wanted to bed Kevin Costa. It was always the sheriff, it was always Alan Rickman.
SPEAKER_02I think it's that black hose and doublet that does it. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because it's dull you twit, it'll hurt more. Yes, brilliant.
SPEAKER_02And now we get the sort of um well, I suppose we had a show of power, but now we start on the humiliation, really, don't we? Because Zotula is being served by his own dead father.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Dark and corpse-like hand pouring wine for him in Crystal Cop. Yeah. The signet ring, isn't it? That he uh notices it.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. And this is quite graphic as well. He was aware of its bulging, unregarding eyes, and its livid purple mouth that was locked in a rigour of mortal silence, and the spotted adder that appeared at intervals with chill ools from its heavy folded sleeve as it leaned beside him to replenish his cup. And I was thinking about this because uh we also get with Abexa now, she's being served by the flayed annihilate corpse of her first lover, who was a boy from Syndrom, who she kind of had a dalliance with and had her way, and when she got bored with him, she handed him over to the torturers.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02So Namira knows all their secrets, right? Because he's spoken to all their victims. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. Namira proposes a toast with a wine that was buried long ago with the royal dead, of course. Corpse wine.
SPEAKER_01He really has pulled out all the stops, you know. If he if if necromancy and sorcery didn't work out for him, he could have had a really you know, he could have made it made it big in event planning.
SPEAKER_02I'd go to this, wouldn't it? Oh yeah. I mean, yeah. So the wine sort of freezes their tongues, and then uh we get on to the meat. Prithy make trial of this meat, quoth Namira, for it is very choice, being the flesh of that boar which the torturers of Uchastrog are wont to pasture on the well minced leavings of their wills and racks. And moreover, my cooks have spiced it with the powerful balsams of the tomb, and have fasted with the hearts of adders and the tongues of black cobras, yum yum. Yes. Or's fed on human flesh and uh spiced with uh balsams of the tomb.
SPEAKER_01I mean, because there's I mean, we know that there's that cheese and stuff that they people let maggots eat the rind off and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but they're and and the coffee that comes out of a monkey's arse and all that kind of a rat's arse or something. Yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_02But you know, but this is above and beyond even that, right? Yes, I would like to say he has certainly made an effort. But um the mirror says, but you know, oh, I see you find that a bit, you know, it's a bit devoid of savour and the wine without fire. So enough of feasting, pour forth my singers and musicians, and here we go on to the next level. It just keeps ramping up this, doesn't it? Now, here is one of my favorite lines in all of Smith that we've read so far. Anon, anything that starts with anon, you know, is gonna be good. Yes, anon, there appeared the singers who were she gulls with shaven bodies, and hairy shanks. There's two band names there.
SPEAKER_01There's the sheaguls with shaven bodies and the hairy shanks, long yellow tushes full of shredded carrion curving across their chaps from mouths that formed hyena-wise on the company. Great.
SPEAKER_02The musicians, let's hear it for the band, some of whom were male devils. I think we'll we can guess you know how we know they're male devils, pacing erects on the hindquarters of sable stallions and plucking with the fingers of white apes at lyres of the bone and sinew of cannibals from mat, and others were pied satires, puffing their goatish cheeks at hort boys made from the femurs of young witches, or bagpipes formed from the bosom skin of negro queens on the horn of rhinoceros. I mean, what was he smoking?
SPEAKER_01I know, but I was just about to ask you that. Do you think he'd been, you know, he'd recently been in San Francisco and got some good stuff off Mr. Sterling or something.
SPEAKER_02High as a kite. Yeah, yeah. And this this whole scene we get, it it's just uh so cinematic, and and you can hear it. We've got the dolorous howling, we've got uh a lament that was like the moaning of desert bolt winds. Satullah shivered for the singing filled his marrow with ice, and the music left in his heart of desolation as of empires fallen. Well, says Namara, that was okay, I suppose. But you probably still find that a bit dull. Let's have some dances. It's it's really planned this out, isn't he? Oh yeah. This strange mist fills the hall, and when it rolls away, Zatullah sees that the tables have gone, but all his subjects, his palace inmates, are now trussed with thongs on the floor, like so many fowls of glorious plumage. So we've had singing ghouls, now we get dancing skeletons.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this really this reminded me of Disney. The skeleton dance. Oh yeah. That really early one of the first animations, wasn't it? Yeah. The skeleton dance, that's which would have been around this time.
SPEAKER_02It would have been yeah, 20 early 30s, I would think that was starting tugboat willy and all that sort of stuff, wasn't it? It was was coming out then. Yeah, it was all around this sort of time, so yeah. Uh oh, I shall have to have a have a look at that again. And I don't know, in my mind, I hear it's it's very obvious, but Sanson's dance bacabra, all right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh but it's not just skeletons, it's the mummies as well, and others of Namira's creatures moved with mysterious caperings, and they're jumping about almost like pogo in and pirouetting, and they're actually they're actually landing on the poor sods tied up on the floor, which is unpleasant enough, but then these creatures, the dancers, start growing taller and heavier. So when they start jumping on these people now, well, the description is those were on they danced were as grapes trampled for a vintage in autumn, and the floor ran deep with the sanguine must.
SPEAKER_01Yes, squishy. Namira, he's loving this, isn't he? He's like, Ah, it would seem that my dancers please you not. So, on to the next bit of entertainment. Isn't it bloody? What's next? Yeah, so now I will present to you a most royal spectacle. Arise and follow me, for the spectacle is one that requires a whole empire for its stage. And here we go, this is kaiju time. Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02This is this is really opening up now, isn't it? Uh and again, so visual the way Smith describes it. I I get that image because they go up onto a balcony and you get that sort of perception shift. Like in in in films, they do it sometimes with mirrors, don't they? Curved mirrors, or obviously now CGI and everything. Yes. It's like Zotula can see his whole empire laid out before him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the balcony pitched a little. So yeah, it is very much like that film thing. You get that camera trick where it'll suddenly the it'll change the the zoom and the person will stay in the foreground, but everything will sort of rush around him and become wider or closer in. It's that, isn't it? It's that kind of effect.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. And uh, we get a neat little invocation here. Shall I try this?
SPEAKER_01Oh, go on, I'm not trying it.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_02Uh uh. Let me just uh do a little bit of light stretching. Gana Podambris Devampra Thungis Furidor Avarogomon.
SPEAKER_01Very good. Well done.
SPEAKER_02Bravo, bravo, bravo. Instantly it seemed that great ebon clouds of thunder beetled against the sun. Lining the horizon, the clouds took the form of colossal monsters, with heads and members somewhat resembling those of stallions. Rearing terribly, they trod down the sun like an extinguished emperor, and racing as in some hippodrome of titans, they rose higher and vaster, coming towards Umaeus. Ghost Riders in the Sky, eh? Riders on the storm, man.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. Oh nice. I didn't think of that. Yeah, Ghost Riders in the Sky. Love it.
SPEAKER_02And here we get a great name. Uh, another band name, I think. Nose Atullah that I have called up. The Courses of Thamogorgos, Lord of the Abyss. Thamogorgos. Love it.
SPEAKER_01That should be that'd be a death metal band, wouldn't it? Thamogorgos.
SPEAKER_02Uh and basically they just smash fuck out of everything. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just caper around and crush the crap out of the entire empire.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant. There's that mention of Heliotis, the snails. Fair temple domes were patched like the shells of the Heliotis, and haunty mansions were broken and stamped in the ground, even as gourds. Everything is just smashed to pieces under the avenging hooves. And uh you got Zatullah and Abexa for the last hour or so. They're just going, What the fuck?
SPEAKER_01I know. Oh dear. Yes. And yeah, Namiro again. Now that was a goodly spectacle. He is absolutely loving this, isn't it? Then turning to the Emperor, he added malignely, think not that I have done with thee, however, or that doom is yet consummate. Oh, it should be Vincent Price again, shouldn't he? Oh, it should be. This, yeah, yeah, I mean it's gotta be. But that doom is yet consummate. Yes.
SPEAKER_02If you've got a necromancer, it's gotta be Vincent Price.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The Emperor now is is starting to feel something. I think up to now he's just been well, I suppose you'd just be overawed by this. But now he can see his whole empire has been crushed. And despair weighed upon him like a foul incubus on the shoulders of a man lost in some land of a cursed night. They're taken away back down, and Obeka disappears at this point. He doesn't know where she's gone. Uh, and this is where we're taken into Namira's lab, which uh yeah, like the Colossus of Elon. If you're gonna write a DD description of your necromancers layer, then cut and paste this basically.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We've got the alembics, we've got dark liquids, we've got liquid bubbling and sending forth a spiral vapor, we've got goblets of gold rimmed iron, saffron red like the spilt ica of devils, we've got aludels and crucibles and black athenors. It's all there. It's happening, yeah. Brilliant. Well kitted out, well kitted out. Come to NecromancesR Us.com.
SPEAKER_01Need some robes, need some sable robes. Oh, I love Father Ted, Habbit hat. Always ready where you got got priest clothes and these old priest socks that were a very special black. They were more black than normal black socks. Because normal black socks were just very, very, very dark blue.
SPEAKER_02Oh dear, and the music underneath would be there. Available now. Alembics, three for a pound. I'll three for your crucibles. So Namira's cooked up some sort of potion here, and he pours them a goblet each and says, uh, I bid thee quaff this liquor. Now Zatullah obviously fears that this is poison, but the necromancer drinks it himself as well. So they've got a goblet each and they both drink it. And now we get this transference, which is Zatullah becomes uh, I suppose like a free floating spirit, basically, isn't it? Yeah, a phantom. Yeah. A houseless phantom, he describes it as. And his body is taken over by the necromancer. So he's floating around in the ether, watching his own body being controlled. He hears this strong, arrogant voice of Namira saying, Follow me, O houseless phantom, and do in all things as I enjoin thee. They go back up to the banquet hall. There we've got another nice little scene laid out, another little nice necromancer scene. We've got the altar of Thoseon, the seven hall skull lamps burning before it. Upon the altar, Zatullah's beloved Lemon Obexa, who alone of all women had the power to stir his sated heart, was lying bound with thongs. But the hall beyond was deserted, and nothing remained of that Saturnalia of Doom, except the fruit of the treading. Saturnalia of Doom album name.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure if it already hasn't been, it should be the name of a Sisters of Mercy live bootleg. You know who used to get the on the rec albums, the really thick vinyls that you know, the bootlegs. Yeah, they all had titles like that. And if it hasn't been used already, it should be.
SPEAKER_02But this is where the necromancer makes a mistake, isn't it? Really, as it turns out, because he puts Zatula's spirit into the, or as he calls it, the Dark Eidolon, into the statue of Thoseon, uh to sort of imprison him and hold him there. While he's doing that, we can guess he's gonna do something to uh Obexa or uh you know killer eventually, at some point I imagine. But in doing so, he puts Zotula in direct contact with Thoseciodon, who's not too happy.
SPEAKER_01No, he's not, is he? I am Thessadon, Lord of the seven hells beneath the earth, and the hells of man's heart above the earth, which are seven times seven. For the moment, O Zotullah, my power is become thine for the sake of mutual vengeance. Be one in all ways with the statue that has my likeness, even as the soul is one with the flesh. Behold, there is a mace of adamant in thy right hand. Lift up thy mace and smite.
SPEAKER_02Oh, and we should say in the meantime, the uh body of Zotula, under the mirror's control, has developed horse legs. Yes, the hind legs of a black stallion with hooves that glowed redly as if heated by internal fires, and basically is putting one of these burning hooves directly onto Abexa's chest, which obviously mirrors what happened to him before. Uh she's screaming, as one might expect.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02But Zatullah, now aware of the power of the giant fuse about him, responded agilely to his will. He hefts the huge spiky-headed mace, and uh well, I suppose in a way he's bashing his own brains out, isn't he?
SPEAKER_01He is, yeah, yeah. He is self-destruction on a sort of almost biblical scale.
SPEAKER_02And again, quite graphic. He struck down with one crashing blow the impious thing that wore his own rightful flesh, united with the legs and hooves of a demon courser, and the thing crumpled swiftly down and lay with the brain spreading pulpily from its shattered skull on the shining get. And the legs twitched a little and then grew still, and the hooves glowed from a fiery blinding white to the redness of red hot iron, cooling slowly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think just even adding to because that's a grim description, but adding to the grimness is this following passage. For a space there was no sound other than the shrill screaming of the girl of Bexa, mad with pain and the terror of those prodigies which she had beheld. So again, visual, you just the scream and the everything else is silent, and just the yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and her mind is gone. Yeah. So for Phociadon speaks once more and says to Zatullah, go free, for there is nothing more for thee to do. So Zatullah basically is off into utter nothingness and oblivion, is gone, is done. Namira, however, is still around because the body's been destroyed, but his own body is uh still lying in the other room. He seems a little bit confused by this turn of events, and uh he seems to have forgotten about the little chap with the ad the ad with Poseidon who said, Look, don't do this, or there's gonna be a price to pay. But he's still got this exorbitant longing for revenge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but he can't remember anything, he's got partial amnesia. That's quite a cruel trick, isn't it? Because he's got this burning desire for revenge, but he can't remember why or what for.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. We joined the Foreign Legion to forget. What did you come here to forget? I forgot. So he goes back into the main chamber, he's got uh he doesn't really notice the stallion-legged horror on the floor or the moaning of the girl Abexa, who still live beside it. But his eyes were drawn by the diamond mirror that was upheld in the claws of black iron basilisks on the altar. And looking in the mirror, he doesn't see himself, he sees Zotullah. Now he uh he's got an enchanted sword by now, he's picked that up earlier. So he draws that and starts to hue at the reflection. And Abexa, although she's dying, she sees this, and all she can see is Namira battling with his own image, which causes her to burst into peals of mad laughter again. Yeah, she's definitely failed the sand roll. And then above all, we get the final sentence of the piece. Above her laughter and above the cursings of Namira, there came anon like the rumbling of swift driven storm, the thunder made by the macrocosmic stallions of Thamo Gorgos, returning golfwood through Xylac, over Umaos, to trample down the one house that they had spared aforetime.
SPEAKER_01Oh dear. He was on form in this one, wasn't he? It's just complete devastation. Yes, I need to lay on the divan with a cold compress, I think, after reading that one. It's uh yeah, it's just carnage upon carnage upon carnage, isn't it? It is incredibly grim as well. It's like we often like draw attention to Robert E. Howard for his graphic descriptions of blood and guts. You don't often think of Smith in the same breath, but yeah, this story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's almost Hawadian in yeah, the brain splattered on the floor and all that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, he's giving giving old two gun bob a run for his money in that one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and that's a bit like I think with the sword and sorcery stories, I I feel that's where Smith joins the other two together in a sense. Yes, yeah, you know, it it's that combination uh with his own unique take on it as well. So, do we get the impression there that Poseidon used the the riders on the storm? He used the necromancer's own tool against him in effect.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. From that's how I read it anyway. It's uh yeah, it's a low key, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02I wonder if they kind of tipped him off on whatever infernal plane or whatever communication goes on. They're down the club and Sam O'Gorg says to him, Oh, your uh your bloke there, he he got in touch with me, he wants to smash up an empire next week. Oh, oh, does he now?
SPEAKER_03Oh does he now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You just imagine him sitting in like a drawing room or with like the Pikmin Pikmin papers, like Pickwick papers kind of thing, you know. So what did you do this week? Well, this necromancer over Natway, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I wonder if the kind of thing with both of them is like Namira is getting a bit too big for his boots, you know. Yes, that's uh common theme with with people making deals with the devil and packs with dark powers, isn't it? You overreach of the Faustian Pact.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it is, yeah. Yeah, it is that Faustian pact, isn't it? Well, yeah, tremendous, tremendous story.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and he gets his revenge, but it it's totally meaningless at the end. Everyone goes, you know. Now I suppose we could argue that the whole place was full of horrible people, but then you know, the servants and all that sort of stuff, they all got it as well, didn't they? That's true, that's very true, yeah. So, do we have anything in our correspondence between Messrs. Smith and Lovecraft about this town?
SPEAKER_01Indeed, we do, yes. So I'm gonna look in Dawnwood Spire Lonely Hill. And because we have there's only a couple of fleeting mentions, but I want to do them anyway so we can get the return addresses, right? Bizarre. Yes. So we're going to a letter dated the 16th of January 1935. Here we go. House of the Knolls, Hour of the Thin Pittering. Oh, nice, nice. The thin pitterink. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. And now I must virtually invent new superlatives to describe the dark eyed dolin, which I didn't get a chance to read till last night. I was on the point of dropping you a card of congratulation, for verily, that story's gorgeous opulence and cosmic suggestion surpasses all previous standards. For the second consecutive month, you absolutely dominate Weird Tales. Yeah, I think that yeah, I can't couldn't agree more. And the very next letter he continues. So again, we get another one, right? This is a letter dated the 30th of January. Ruins of the Primal Citadel, Hour of the Sentient Wind.
SPEAKER_02Oh, dear, I've had that sentient wind before. That's no fun, I tell you.
SPEAKER_01No, I think not. And it's really funny because you know he said he'd have to invent superlatives. Right, we get one in a second. The Dark Eyedolan is gaining a clamorous and unanimous panegyric among all my correspondents, and it certainly deserves it. Edo? What a yarn. It comes close to the best weird tales as ever printed. And then in the next place it says, confound that ass farmabosis for rejecting something else. And so there you go. Tremendous stuff. So yeah, HPL was a fan.
SPEAKER_02I don't think you can argue that this is a weird tale, can you? I mean, no, it's about as weird as we've seen, certainly. Uh yeah, we we mentioned adaptations as well, and uh, we're gonna turn to Worlds Unknown, the letters of Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wondre, Howard Wondre, and R. H. Barlow, edited by David E. Schwartz and S. T. Joshi. And there's just a short line in here, but I thought it was interesting. This is from Auburn, California, dated December the 10th, 1949. Smith writes, Dear Donaldius. And the the body of the letter is really about the Borderland translations and some other poetry. Now, Wandre was involved. I I think perhaps there was an adaptation of his work in in play form or writing a play. I need to check up on that. But Smith writes, I hope your play goes over. I've wondered sometimes why the producers of fantastic films have missed out on the spectacular possibilities of some of my tales, such as The Dark Idolon and The Colossus of Elon. It would be a help if I could ever make a little money. Well, yeah, and I know this was not beyond the realms of possibility because Chambers had adaptations of his writings, made unfortunately the romantic ones.
SPEAKER_01There is one at one adaptation from the 40s, black and white, but it's uh it's Spanish. And but there has been English subtitles done for it now. Um, yeah, with the yellow of the yellow sign. Oh, well, I didn't know that. Yeah, I have it without the subtitles, but I I saw recently that there's been a ver been an English subtitle, somebody's done for it, so I'll try mounting it, and if I can get it to work, I'll send it over to you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, because I know uh Hollywood did some of his uh his other films. I think people tend to forget that uh Chambers was very, very well known in his day.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, for his romantic stuff was incredibly popular. I mean, oh you can see why he ended up doing that because he made a very tidy living out of it, but you know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So if Hollywood had done this, I don't know, we've sort of spoken about this before. I I guess we're thinking sort of King Kong, aren't we? Yeah. That kind of thing. Or there was a film with Spencer Tracy from the 1930s, Dante's Inferno. Oh yes. That is largely set in uh a sort of circus, I think, was it? I might remember him right. I think so. So it's largely normal, but then there's this whole scene, nightmare type scene of descending down into hell. And it is quite fantastic. If I can find a YouTube clip, I'll put it up because for its time it's quite incredible. Nice, nice. So, yeah, not beyond the the bounds of possibility back in the day, and now even less so. I mean, come on, 15-foot skeletons with hissing snakes as turbans, that's not beyond anything these days, is it?
SPEAKER_01It's it's not, is it? But you know, I I'd prefer if they did went the Harryhauser routine and went stop motion on it. That just because that's just way cooler than CGI, man. Oh, yeah. I think it ages better as well. I mean, uh, you still watch things like Jason the Argonauts and think, oh wow, that's great. Totally, totally. Whereas you watch like from the Doctor Who, when it was rebooted in like 2005, you watch them uh early series with like Christopher Eccleston and stuff. Oh my god, the CGI is terrible, it's aged really badly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Now, speaking of adaptations, let's turn to our mailbag next. And this is Mao Concerning Episode 14, The Charnell God. And Neils posted up on the Insmouth Forum because we were speaking about adaptations, but Niels posted, I love the Charnel god and Mordiggian. Goth as F. I like that they use the art from a serie e Krikun as the thumbnail for the video. His stuff is great. Yes, indeed. As to comic adaptations, Mockman Press's Hyperborea comic, which adapts the Town of Satanbrazeros, and Skinner's Skincrawl number two, which adapts the Seven Geoshis, are the only ones I know of in print. Jason Bradley Thompson, Mockman, gave me a listed compiled of Smith comic adaptations, which I'll probably turn into an issue in my Smith zane in a few months. And I did remember, I don't know if I mentioned it at the time, but there was a Conan comic version of the Abominations of Yondo. And Niels confirmed that. He said, Yeah, it's Marvel's Conan the Adventurer number 12, according to my comic list. I apparently have it. Well, I definitely have it in one of my boxes upstairs, so I shall dig that out at some point. I think that was maybe one of the 90s, late 90s issues or something like that. But I'll dig that out and have a look.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've just got to dive in straight there and say, I need a copy of Skinner's Skin Crawl 2. Yeah, I wonder where that's available. I'll have a I'll have a delve around. Skinner's Skin Crawl. I love it. I love it. The more I hear about this man, the more I appreciate him.
SPEAKER_02I I follow him on Facebook and he's putting out some amazing work at the moment. The the colours are just incredible.
SPEAKER_01Right, so yeah, we're back on the Insmith Foreman here for a message from Alta. I love pulp magazine covers. I have two t-shirts with covers from astounding stories from the Lovecraft issues. I also came across a pretty interesting website. It's a never-ending source of great covers. Yes. And funnily enough, I I was designing uh a band t-shirt for our tour uh the other day, and I found uh it's basically a repository of all the illustrations from inside of Weird Tales. And there's some absolutely tremendous stuff. I'll try and dig out the link and we'll put that as well as that website link up in the notes.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant. Thank you, Alta. On YouTube, Rick Kennett wrote about the Charnell god, just about my favorite Smith story, tying with the Dark Eidolon, which should be coming up next time. And indeed it has. And yes, it's uh difficult to separate those two, innit, in terms of quality, I think.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. But it was such a run in this in this volume. This has been such a run of top-notch tales, and we're not over yet, are we? I think we've got Volfoon coming up soon as well, haven't we? Oh, yes, yes. There's a few classics left. Yeah, not far off. So, yeah, over on Patreon, uh, a new patron. Thank you for this. Casa Torvald writes, Love, love, love this. Clark Ashton Smith at his best. Yes, yeah, yeah. Couldn't put it better myself.
SPEAKER_02You you'll get no argument here for that one.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02So thanks, folks, for writing in. As always, do let us know your thoughts, any suggestions for the show, and uh any mispronunciations we've made there. Uh, I hope no one will uh unleash the riders on the storm upon us because we we just decorated our front room and I'm on it trashed. I mean, it's bad enough having two dogs running around in here, you know, let alone uh spectral horses from the nether dimensions. Yes, the hounds of Tinderos. As always, you can leave a message at the Innsmouth Forum, you can post on YouTube or on our Patreon site, and while you're on Patreon, do think about signing up and helping support the show. Of course, you get access to bonus content for Strange Shadows and the Innsmouth Book Club. You'll get your quarterly PDF copy of Innsmouth News and free entry to the Innsmouth Literary Festival. Put that date in your diary, folks, 19th of September 2026. A whole host of guests we're lining up. We've got some interesting talks this time as well. And uh for the evening, I'm just uh talking to someone who does uh a very interesting take on Lovecraftian adaptations. Let's put it like that.
SPEAKER_01Nice. What do we got next time, sir? Right. Well, next time we're going to a story that I'm not familiar with. I don't think I've read this. I mean, it's possible I have at some point, but um don't recall it. We're going for The Voyage of King Euveran. Yes, which I always read as Eurovan. I read it as Eurovan, that's why I had to pause to get my brain out of that way.
SPEAKER_02Eurovan. Which is about uh a man who rocks up an airport to hire a van.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh god. Oh, them high don't remind me. We had that after after playing Whitby in November, we broke down on the way back and we had to get a hire from Leeds Airport. That's an existential crisis all in itself. Trying to get a hire vehicle from fucking Enterprise. Oh, yes, still.
SPEAKER_02Still, there we go. That's the that's the sort of mundane terrors we have to put up with. I don't know, wouldn't you rather be facing Shaven Sheagulls?
SPEAKER_01Shaven Sheagulls. That sounds like a Zothic rumpy magazine. What was it? Shaven Havens was there.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, and on that pornographic notes. Thanks for joining us today, folks. It's goodbye from me, Rob Poyton. And it's goodbye from me, Tim Mendies. Filth, absolute filth.