bipeds, known as the Voormi, once populated Hyperborea, but were wiped out by the pre-human settlers who migrated here from the south. These pre-humans built the first capital of Hyperborea, at Commoriom. Later they moved to Uzuldaroum, when prophesies foretold of Commoriom's doom.
Gods
Abhoth
described a sort of pool with a margin of mud that was marled with obscene offal; and in the pool a grayish, horrid mass that nearly choked it from rim to rim... Here, it seemed, was the ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination. For the gray mass quobbed and quivered, and swelled perpetually; and from it, in manifold fission, were spawned the anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. There were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with fishes' fins; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous, that grew in size as they departed from the neighborhood of Abhoth. And those that swam not swiftly ashore when they fell into the pool from Abhoth, were devoured by mouths that gaped in the parent bulk.
— Clark Ashton Smith, ''The Seven Geases''
Abhoth ("The Source of Uncleanliness") resides in the cavern of Y'quaa beneath Mount Voormithadreth. It is a horrid, dark gray
protean mass and is said to be the ultimate source of all
miscreation and
abomination.
Obscene monsters constantly form in Abhoth's gray mass and crawl away from their parent. No two of Abhoth's children are alike. In general, they are complex life forms, but the majority of them are simple-minded, acting on impulse. Their forms can be anything from amorphous blobs and singular body parts to queer humanoids and monstrous mutants. Abhoth's tentacles and limbs grab many of them, pulling them back and devouring them. Most of those that escape simply wander off; only a few of them tend to their sire's needs. Abhoth has a twisted and cynical mind and can communicate
telepathically with others near him.
Abhoth does not have any human worshippers, although an inhuman cult, known as the Unclean Ones, led by
Yeb, is devoted to him.
The
demon lord
Juiblex in the ''
Dungeons & Dragons
''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (T ...
''
role-playing game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...
is likely derived from Abhoth. Abhoth is one of the Ancient Ones in the board game ''
Arkham Horror''. He is included in the
Dunwich Horror expansion. Abhoth is also mentioned in
Colin Wilson
Colin Henry Wilson (26 June 1931 – 5 December 2013) was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his p ...
's ''
The Mind Parasites
''The Mind Parasites'' is a science fiction horror novel by English author Colin Wilson. It was published by Arkham House in 1967 in an edition of 3,045 copies. It was Wilson's first and only book published by Arkham House.
The book is based ...
''.
Atlach-Nacha
In the short story ''The Seven Geases'' (
1934
Events
January–February
* January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established.
* January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a max ...
), Atlach-Nacha is the reluctant recipient of a human sacrifice given to it by the toad-god
Tsathoggua.
Atlach-Nacha resembles a huge spider with an almost-human face. It dwells within a huge cavern deep beneath
Mount Voormithadreth, a mountain in the now vanished kingdom of
Hyperborea in the
Arctic
The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada ( Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm ( Greenland), Finland, Iceland ...
. There it spins a gigantic web, bridging a massive chasm between the
Dreamlands and the waking world. Some believe that when the web is complete, the
end of the world will come, because it will create a permanent junction with the ''Dreamlands'', allowing monsters to move freely into the waking world.
Atlach-Nacha probably came to Earth from the planet
Cykranosh
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel ''Micromégas'' by Voltaire. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. The planet is occasionally visited by ...
(or
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; ...
as we know it today) with
Tsathoggua. Because of its appearance, Atlach-Nacha is often referred to as the ''Spider-God(dess)'' and is believed to be the regent of all spiders. Furthermore, the giant, bloated purple spiders of
Leng are thought to be its children and
servitors.
There is some disagreement about its gender. In Smith's original story, Atlach-Nacha is referred to as a male, but in later stories by other authors, it is implied to be a female.
Rlim Shaikorth
Rlim Shaikorth appears as a huge whitish worm with a gaping maw, and eyes made of dripping globules of blood, and is thus commonly known as the white worm. He travels on a gigantic
iceberg
An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially-derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". Th ...
called ''Yikilth'', which it can guide across the ocean. In its colossal ice-citadel, the White Worm prowls the seas, blasting ships and inhabited land masses with extreme cold. Victims of the White Worm are frozen solid, their bodies appearing eerily white, and remain preternaturally cold—they will not melt nor warm even when exposed to fire. (''The Coming of the White Worm'',
1941
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January– August – 10,072 men, women and children with mental and physical disabilities are asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber, at Hadamar E ...
)
Tsathoggua
See
Tsathoggua.
Ubbo-Sathla
There, in the grey beginning of Earth, the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods.
— Clark Ashton Smith, ''Ubbo-Sathla''
Ubbo-Sathla ("The Unbegotten Source", "The
Demiurge
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge () is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term ''demiurge''. ...
") is described as a huge
protoplasm
Protoplasm (; ) is the living part of a cell that is surrounded by a plasma membrane. It is a mixture of small molecules such as ions, monosaccharides, amino acid, and macromolecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, lipids, etc.
In some defin ...
ic mass resting in a
grotto
A grotto is a natural or artificial cave used by humans in both modern times and antiquity, and historically or prehistorically. Naturally occurring grottoes are often small caves near water that are usually flooded or often flooded at high ...
deep beneath the frozen earth. The being is of a monstrous fecundity, spontaneously generating primordial
single-celled organisms that pour unceasingly from its shapeless form. It guards a set of stone tablets believed to contain the knowledge of the
Elder Gods.
Ubbo-Sathla is said to have spawned the prototypes of all forms of life on Earth, though whatever its pseudopods touch is forever devoid of life. Ubbo-Sathla is destined to someday reabsorb all living things on Earth.
Ubbo-Sathla possibly dwells in gray-litten Y'qaa underneath Mount Voormithadreth, and may have spawned another of its residents, the being Abhoth, whose form and nature is very similar. This similarity has led some writers to speculate that Ubbo-Sathla and Abhoth are the same entity viewed at different epochs under different names. The tablets that Ubbo-Sathla guards have been oft sought by sorcerers, though no sorcerer has yet succeeded in acquiring them.
Yhoundeh
In Smith's ''The Door to Saturn'', Yhoundeh the elk-goddess is the name of the deity worshipped in the waning days of Hyperborea. Yhoundeh's priests also banned Tsathoggua's cult, and her inquisitors punished any heretics. As the Hyperborean civilization drew to a close, Yhoundeh's priests fell out of favor and the people returned to the worship of Tsathoggua.
According to the
Parchments of Pnom, Yhoundeh is the wife of
Nyarlathotep, messenger of the
Outer Gods.
Cities
Commoriom
Commoriom was the first seat of power in Hyperborea, established by the pre-Human migrants from the south. In its heyday, Commoriom was a grand city, built of
marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorpho ...
and
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies und ...
and marked by a skyline of altitudinous spires.
Legend has it that the populace fled Commoriom when the White Sybil of Polarion foretold of its destruction. However, Athammaus,
headsman of Commoriom, disputes this claim and attributes the abandonment to the increasingly loathsome depredations of the horrid outlaw Knygathin Zhaum.
Uzuldaroum
According to Smith's "
The Tale of Satampra Zeiros", Uzuldaroum became the capital of Hyperborea after the populace left Commoriom. The city lies a
day's journey from the former capital. It was the last population center in Hyperborea before glaciers overwhelmed the continent.
In H. P. Lovecraft's ''
At the Mountains of Madness'', the city of the
Elder Things is called "a Palaeogaean megalopolis compared with which the fabled...Commoriom and Uzuldaroum...are recent things of today--not even of yesterday".
Geographical locations
Eiglophian mountains
The Eiglophian mountains, mentioned in Smith's "The Seven Geases", are a terrifying range of ebon peaks, said to be "glassy-walled", and are believed to be honeycombed with hidden tunnels. The Eiglophian mountains cross the middle of the Hyperborean continent, with one range stretching to the south and another to the east.
Mhu Thulan
Mhu Thulan was a province in northern Hyperborea famous for its sorcerers. It was where the wizard Eibon dwelled, as well as many other notable sorcerers of Hyperborea, such as Zon Mezzamalech.
Mount Voormithadreth
Mount Voormithadreth is a four-coned extinct volcano and is the tallest peak in the Eiglophian mountains. It is the dwelling place of various horrors, including the toad-god Tsathoggua and the spider-god Atlach-Nacha.
Y'quaa
The gray-litten cavern of Y'quaa is the dwelling place of Abhoth, the Source of Uncleanliness. It is indirectly connected with the Cavern of Archetypes. Atlach-Nacha originated here. Y'quaa might be the true home of the enigmatic Ubbo-Sathla.
Cavern of Archetypes
The Cavern of the Archetypes is a vast cavern inhabited by the spectral archetypes of all life on this earth.
Nug and Yeb
This is a compendium of the lesser known Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.
__NOTOC__
Overview
In Joseph S. Pulver's novel ''Nightmare's Disciple'' several new Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are named. The novel mention ...
reside here.
Polarion
Polarion was a region of northern Hyperborea, separated from the rest of the continent by an unnamed mountain range. It used to be a fertile place, but was later overtaken by glaciers. The White Sybil is said to originate from here.
Notable denizens
Voormis
The voormis are the three-toed, umber-colored, fur-covered humanoids that once had a thriving civilization in
Hyperborea. They dwelled underground and worshiped the god
Tsathoggua.
After most were wiped out by other pre-human settlers, the most savage of the Voormis became restricted to caves in the upper slopes of the Eiglophian mountains.
Cthulhu Mythos Timeline by James "JEB" Bowman
Before Hyperborea's fall, the remaining Voormis were hunted for sport.
Citizens
Athammaus
Athammaus, who appears in Smith's "The Testament of Athammaus", was the headsman, or executioner, of Commoriom before its downfall. He was also one of the last to leave the city when the population fled to Uzuldaroum. Afterwards, he recorded a chilling testament of Commoriom's final days.
Athammaus was descended from a long line of headsmen. A consummate professional, Athammaus always took great pride in his skill and never shirked his official duty. His career suffered in Commoriom when he faced the task of executing the outlaw Knygathin Zhaum, but he later resumed it in Uzuldaroum where he served 11 lusters .
Eibon
Eibon, a character in Smith's "The Door to Saturn", was a sorcerer and priest of Zhothaqquah (Tsathoggua). He is renowned as the writer of the '' Book of Eibon'', a tome that, among other things, chronicles Eibon's life, and includes his magical formulae and rites of Zhothaqquah (it is introduced in Smith's tale "Ubbo-Sathla"). Eibon lived in a five-story, five-sided tower made of black gneiss
Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures a ...
that stood beside the sea on Mhu Thulan. Eibon disappeared shortly after Yhoundeh's premier inquisitor, Morghi, came to his black tower with a writ for his arrest.
When the inquisition came knocking, Eibon fled to Cykranosh
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel ''Micromégas'' by Voltaire. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. The planet is occasionally visited by ...
(the planet
A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a ...
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; ...
) through a magic panel given to him by Zhothaqquah. Eibon was never again seen on Earth after that. (When Morghi vanished close on the heels of Eibon, many believed that he was in league with the sorcerer all along and so is largely responsible for the decline in the worship of Yhoundeh.)
Knygathin Zhaum
Knygathin Zhaum was a notorious outlaw of Hyperborea. He was possibly the child of Sfatlicllp and a Voormi. Athammaus
The Hyperborean cycle is a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith that take place in the fictional prehistoric setting of Hyperborea. Smith's cycle takes cues from his friends, H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and their works. Lovecr ...
tried to execute him by beheading, but because of his preternatural heritage, such attempts proved unsuccessful and only served to aggravate him.
Satampra Zeiros
Satampra Zeiros, who appears in Smith's "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" and its prequel, "The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles", was the master thief of Uzuldaroum. His exploits are legendary. He lost his right hand during a failed venture to loot the deserted city of Commoriom (though his companion Tirouv Ompallios suffered a worse fate).
The White Sybil of Polarion
A strange woman, reportedly coming from the realms of ice creeping upon Hyperborea. She is presented in both "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" and "The White Sybil." In the former, she is portrayed prophesizing the doom of Commoriom; in the latter, a character besotted with her pursues her into the ice realm, where he is in the end so blinded by her vision that when found by a common girl he takes his rescuer for the Sybil, weds her, and lives out his days in a joyous illusion, bearing the mark of the Sybil's kiss on his face.
See also
* Hyperborea in Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of ...
* Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906June 11, 1936) was an American writer. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subge ...
's Hyborian Age
The Hyborian Age is a fictional period of Earth's history within the artificial mythology created by Robert E. Howard, serving as the setting for the sword and sorcery tales of Conan the Barbarian.
The word "Hyborian" is derived from the le ...
* Clark Ashton Smith bibliography
* Averoigne
Averoigne is a fictional counterpart of a provinces of France, historical province in France, detailed in a series of short stories by the American writer Clark Ashton Smith. Smith may have based Averoigne on the actual province of Auvergne (prov ...
* Poseidonis
Poseidonis is the fictional last remnant of the lost continent of Atlantis, mentioned by Algernon Blackwood in his short story "Sand" (published in 1912) in his collection ''Four Weird Tales'' and also detailed in a series of short stories by ...
* Zothique
References
Primary sources
Bibliography
The following short stories are considered part of Smith's ''Hyperborean cycle'':
* " The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (1931)
* "The Testament of Athammaus
"The Testament of Athammaus" is a short story by American writer Clark Ashton Smith, part of his Hyperborean cycle. It was published in the October 1932 issue of '' Weird Tales''.
Publication history
According to '' Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ash ...
" (1932)
*
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
(1932)
*
The Door to Saturn
(1932)
*
The House of Haon-Dor
(1933) tory fragment*
The Ice-Demon
(1933)
*
Ubbo-Sathla
(1933)
*
The Seven Geases
(1934)
*
The White Sybil
(1935)
*
The Coming of the White Worm
(1941)
*
The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles
(1958)
Books
*
*
Secondary sources
Books
*
Journals
* West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press.
Web sites
*
*
* (Online version of the "Introduction" to ''The Book of Hyperborea'' .)
Citations
External links
"Introduction to ''The Book of Hyperborea''
by Clark Ashton Smith, edited by Will Murray, and published by Necronomicon Press.
Glossary of Hyperborean terms
Map of Hyperborea by Tim Kirk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyperborean Cycle
Arctic in fiction
Clark Ashton Smith
Cthulhu Mythos locations
Fantasy books by series
Fiction set in prehistory
Prehistory of the Arctic
Hyperborea