Gaming at the World's End

Some of you may recall that, back in November, I did a two-part interview with Marzio Muscedere about his upcoming roleplaying game based on Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique setting. Since I dedicated this month to CAS and his works, I approached Marz to do a short guest post on a topic related to Smith and roleplaying and he kindly offered up the following, which I am pleased to share with you.

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Most fantasy settings are about beginnings — the rise of kingdoms, the forging of alliances, the defeat of looming evils to save a still vibrant and hopeful world.

Zothique begins where those stories end.

Zothique is the far future, where the world we know is gone, drowned and buried by time. What remains is a final continent filled with ancient cities, decadent courts, fading cults, and scholars poring over scraps of maddening lore. It is a place where necromancers converse with the dead in shadowed tombs, while besotted rulers cling to ceremony as their palaces crumble to ruin around them.

For gamers accustomed to the default assumption that adventurers will, in some fashion, make the world better, Zothique offers a stark alternative — nothing is getting better. Empires are not being forged. They are rotting in place. Gods do not promise salvation — they are distant and cruel. Sorcery does not herald progress — it invites doom and corruption.

For players, this creates a different kind of motivation. Characters may find themselves searching for meaning, wealth, forbidden knowledge, or fleeting power in the world’s final gasp. Their goals are immediate and personal, steeped in wonder and doom. They explore not to save the world, but to plunder the secrets of a forgotten past. They make bargains with demons and devils not because they believe in salvation, but because they want something — anything — before the dimming sun finally fails.

For game masters, this is exactly what sword-and-sorcery and old-school gaming was made for. Dangerous magic is not an exception but the norm. Exploration is everywhere, whether it’s a tomb, a crumbling dungeon, a cursed city, or a half-forgotten cult clinging to its last rites.

Zothique reminds us that a fantasy RPG can be intimate, fatalistic, and strange without losing its power. It trades grand destiny for atmosphere, epic salvation for personal risk, and shining heroism for decadent desperation.

In Zothique, the question is not whether the world can be saved.

Only what your characters will do before the light finally fades.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Isle of the Torturers

Clark Ashton Smith’s cycle of stories set on Earth’s last continent, Zothique, has long been a personal favorite of mine. For that reason, I assumed I had already written a Pulp Fantasy Library post about each of its tales. I was mistaken. An obvious omission was “The Isle of the Torturers,” first published in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales. This lapse strikes me as particularly odd, since the story is among the most memorable in the cycle, rich with images and ideas that recur throughout Smith’s work. It is, in fact, a minor masterpiece of decadent irony, a grim parable about the impossibility of escape in a dying world.

Like the other Zothique stories, “The Isle of the Torturers” gives voice to Smith’s cosmic pessimism. Written during his most fertile period as a prose writer, it captures the moment when his poetic sensibility fused seamlessly with the demands of pulp fantasy. As with “The End of the Story,” which I discussed last week, it is less a conventional adventure than a dark moral fable, concerned not with triumph but with a protagonist trapped between two equally terminal forms of damnation.

The tale opens with a cataclysm known as the Silver Death, a plague foretold by astrologers to descend from the star Achernar and perhaps inspired by Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” This scourge does not merely kill; it transforms its victims into rigid, gleaming corpses, their flesh sealed in a “bright, metallic pallor.” Young King Fulbra of Yoros survives only because his sorcerer, Vemdeez, fashions a magical ring of black-jeweled stone that repels the contagion. Fulbra’s subsequent flight from his silent, silvered kingdom is no journey toward renewal or safety. It is a panicked retreat into the wider, equally doomed world of Zothique.

Cast ashore on the island of Uccastrog, Fulbra discovers that he has exchanged the indifference of Nature for the calculated cruelty of Man. Uccastrog is ruled by King Ildrac, whose people have elevated torture into a supreme esthetic discipline, giving the island both its infamous sobriquet and the story its title. Here, pain has become the last meaningful sensation in a world where extinction looms ever closer. Torture is not merely punitive or sadistic; it is treated as a refined art, one of the few remaining assertions of human will in the face of cosmic decay.

Smith’s treatment of torture is distinctive. He does not linger on visceral realism but instead cloaks suffering in an ornate, almost ceremonial elegance. The torments prepared for Fulbra, such as the constricting coils of hair-covered, ell-long serpents or the psychological horror of a glass-walled dungeon, are described with the same meticulous care Smith might apply to exotic landscapes or jeweled relics. The effect is unsettling. The reader is drawn in by the beauty of the language even as the subject matter repels, reinforcing the story’s theme of estheticized despair.

At the heart of the tale’s irony stands Ilvaa, a woman of Uccastrog who appears to take pity on Fulbra. She offers him hope, whispering of a hidden vessel and an escape from Ildrac’s dungeons. Smith deliberately plays upon the reader’s expectations here, invoking the familiar “rescuer” trope only to subvert it with shocking cruelty. Ilvaa is not Fulbra’s savior but a living instrument of torture. Her role is to weaponize hope itself, intensifying Fulbra’s suffering when she finally reveals that there is, in truth, no escape. Psychological torment proves as refined and devastating as any physical agony.

The story’s climax delivers a form of poetic justice characteristic of Smith at his most mordant. King Ildrac, covetous of Fulbra’s protective ring, forcibly removes it, unleashing the Silver Death that had been suppressed but patiently “waiting” within Fulbra’s flesh. The very plague Fulbra crossed the sea to escape becomes, paradoxically, his sole means of release from the torturers of Uccastrog.

As the silver crust spreads over Ildrac and Fulbra alike, Smith closes the tale with a line of chilling finality:

“And oblivion claimed the isle of Uccastrog; and the torturers were one with the tortured.”

“The Isle of the Torturers” captures the elegant hopelessness of Zothique with exceptional clarity. It mourns the erosion of human agency in a universe governed by entropy, while refusing to offer the consolation of heroic resistance or moral victory. Instead, Smith gives us a king who finds his only peace in becoming a statue. The story ultimately suggests that we are all fugitives from a fate that cannot be outrun, a fate that will, sooner or later, claim us, regardless of how desperately we attempt to flee.

The Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith (Part II)

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

Zothique 

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

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

Prominent stories in this cycle include:

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

Poseidonis 

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

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

The core stories of this cycle are:

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

Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here. 

5. Can you talk a little about the process of turning Zothique into a RPG? I'm interested not just in the game mechanical side of things but also in your experiences working with CASiana Literary Enterprises. Did you find it easy to translate Zothique into a roleplaying game?

For me, the RPG writing process usually starts the same way: with a deep dive into the source material. For Zothique, that meant going back into Clark Ashton Smith’s stories and reading them with a critical eye. Luckily, I’ve always been a note-taker when reading, highlighting passages, turns of phrase, perspective shifts, metaphors – anything that catches my attention.

So when I returned to my old CAS collections, they were already filled with highlights and margin notes (sacrilege, I know) and those became the foundation for the game. From there, I began organizing everything into categories – locations, creatures, gods, artifacts, NPCs, spells, etc. – and slowly drew the setting out piece by piece, ensuring that every element carried the same atmosphere of doom, decadence, and fatal beauty that runs through Smith’s work.

Stats come last. For me, stats always come last. I don’t fret over them. No one remembers your adventure because a creature had AC 15 instead of AC 12. Now, I’m not saying stats aren’t important – bad stats can certainly break your game – but I’m not sure they can make your game. People remember your adventures because of how they made them feel when reading and playing.

I’ve always tried to make my games feel lived in – dripping with atmosphere and history – and I don’t mean paragraphs of exposition. I mean placing items, objects, strange writings, or locations that hint at something more, something ancient, something mysterious. In my opinion, good RPGs don’t feel like they were created just to run characters through like a carnival ride or funhouse. Good RPGs feel alive and mysterious, with the weight of ages upon every item and location – steeped in secrecy and the lingering sense that others have come before.

As for working with CASiana Literary Enterprises, it has honestly been a privilege. Chris has been supportive since day one – a great guy to work with and genuinely passionate about Clark Ashton Smith’s legacy. They’ve been open, helpful, and just as excited as I am to bring Smith’s world to a new generation of readers and players. I really think people are going to like what they see.

6. Why did you decide to use Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark as the rules for your game? I know you're very familiar with DCC but why Shadowdark rather than, say, Swords & Wizardry or Old School Essentials?

I made the decision early that I would not create a new RPG system for Zothique, but rather bring existing systems into Zothique. The setting is the constant; the rules are the lens. My goal was for the world to remain entirely faithful to CAS – its geography, its gods and necromancers, its tone of grandeur and decay – while allowing players to experience it through systems they already know. That’s why each version, whether written for 5E, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or Shadowdark, is fundamentally the same world. The dice may differ, but Zothique itself does not.

Choosing those specific systems came down to both philosophy and practicality. Dungeon Crawl Classics was a natural fit – its pulp roots, Appendix N inspiration (I know, CAS doesn’t appear there… but that’s an argument for another day, lol), and focus on strange sorcery and peril align perfectly with Smith’s fiction. Plus, it is what I do. 5E made sense because it’s the most widely played system and one I know intimately from years of conversion work for Goodman Games and play. Shadowdark, on the other hand, was chosen out of the many requests for me to do so. The more I spoke of my upcoming project at cons or online, the more I was asked to bring the setting to Shadowdark. So I looked into the system – and I loved it. The aesthetic, the tension, the fast, streamlined play - I think it fits Zothique perfectly.

It’s important to note that I’m not bringing Zothique to these game systems – I’m bringing these game systems to Zothique. Regardless of which ruleset you prefer, the world itself remains the same – true to Clark Ashton Smith’s original vision. The laws of Zothique do not change, only the dice that measure them do. In short – the rules serve the setting – not the other way around.

And why stop at three systems? Because, frankly, if I didn’t, I think I’d go mad.

7. Can you talk a little more about the rules and other game mechanics of the various versions of the Zothique RPG? What's unique about them? Are there any elements you're especially proud of or think would catch the interest of old school gaming fans? 

Zothique isn’t a new RPG system – it’s a setting designed to haunt the games you already know. Built to run seamlessly with Dungeon Crawl Classics, 5E, or Shadowdark, it lets players step into Zothique without learning a new rulebook. Familiar mechanics are reskinned in the decadent tone of Clark Ashton Smith’s last continent, supported by new character classes – the Astrologer, Doomed Prince, Tomb Robber, Court Slayer, Sorcerer-Priest, and Necromancer – along with new spells, creatures, and relics. The game introduces a new mechanic – a Doom & Decadence track, a creeping mechanic of temptation and ruin that grants power only at terrible cost. In Zothique, every act of sorcery, every indulgence, and every favor from the gods exacts a price – for nothing beneath the dying sun comes without decay.

8. You're also working on an omnibus of all of the Zothique stories. What can you tell us about that? As a huge fan of Smith, who already owns his collected fiction in several versions, what does this omnibus offer that we haven't seen before? 

The Zothique Omnibus gathers the entire cycle – fifteen stories, one poem, one six-act play, and several rare fragments – in a single lavishly illustrated volume. Artist Lucas Korte brings the dying world to life with over fifteen full-page illustrations of necromantic grandeur and ruin. It’s both a perfect introduction for new readers and a definitive companion for long-time admirers of Clark Ashton Smith’s darkest creation.

9. Is there anything else you'd like to share about this project – something that you really want gamers and fans of Zothique to know about?

What I’d most like people to know is that Zothique isn’t just another fantasy world – it’s the final dream of Earth, brought to life through the words of Clark Ashton Smith. Every page of this project was written to capture that strange beauty and fatal grandeur beneath the dying sun, exactly as Smith envisioned it – decadent, dreamlike, and filled with both wonder and doom. Every rule, map, spell, and description was crafted to feel like something drawn straight from one of his stories – strange, poetic, and tragic in equal measure.

We’re only halfway through the Kickstarter and there’s still so much more to share – more art, more lore, and more glimpses into the last continent. I want to thank everyone who’s taken the time to explore the project, and especially those who’ve backed it and helped bring Zothique closer to life.

And finally, a heartfelt thank-you to you, James, for the interview and for shining a little more light into the dusk of Zothique.

Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part I)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hidden Masters of Pulp Fantasy

One of the regular series for which this blog was once known is Pulp Fantasy Library, in which I highlighted individual fantasy and science fiction stories I felt had been influential, directly or indirectly, on the development of the hobby of roleplaying. The series eventually grew to more than three hundred entries and taught me a great deal in the process of writing it. However, it also required considerable effort and often received little reader engagement, so I brought it to a quiet close in 2023. I sometimes consider reviving it in a modified form, but I’ve yet to find the right approach. Still, I keep thinking about these early works of fantasy, which is what led to this post.

From the vantage point of the first quarter (!) of the twenty-first century, it’s all too easy to forget just how strange fantasy and science fiction once were – not merely in their imaginative content but in the intellectual and spiritual traditions from which they drew. We tend to think of early speculative fiction as arising primarily from a matrix of adventure tales, scientific romances, and classical mythology. However, another powerful and often overlooked influence is the world of Spiritualism, Theosophy, and other esoteric traditions. These weren’t mere fads in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; they were serious systems of belief for many, including a surprising number of the authors who helped lay the foundations of what we now call genre fiction.

Even more fascinating is how many once-occult concepts have since become commonplaces of fantasy and science fiction, like astral projection, past lives, lost advanced civilizations, invisible planes of existence, and cosmic cycles of spiritual evolution, to name just a few obvious ones. These weren’t originally the products of scientific or rationalist speculation. They were occult doctrines, often articulated with the structure and certainty of any other religion. Early speculative fiction served as a powerful conduit for these ideas, transmitting them into the cultural imagination.

Take, for instance, astral projection, which recurs throughout pulp fantasy and science fiction. In Theosophy, this is the “etheric body” or “etheric double” leaving the physical body to traverse the astral plane. In fiction, this idea becomes John Carter’s unexplained voyage to Barsoom in A Princess of Mars, where his body remains behind on Earth while his spirit is transported to another world by sheer force of will. Burroughs never offers a scientific explanation for the phenomenon nor did he need to do so. His readers would likely have recognized the trope from already extant popular occult literature.

Similarly, reincarnation and karma, central tenets of Theosophy and many forms of Eastern-influenced Spiritualism, appear in the works of authors like Talbot Mundy, whose protagonists sometimes recall past lives in ancient empires. The same is true of many tales penned by Abraham Merritt. In The Star Rover, Jack London tells the story of a prisoner who escapes his unjust physical confinement by entering trance states that allow him to access a series of former incarnations. This isn’t merely a fictional conceit; it reflects a specific metaphysical worldview in which human identity unfolds across many lifetimes, a view that gained traction during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even readers who didn’t share this worldview would nevertheless have been familiar with it.

William Hope Hodgson is another fascinating case. He blends arcane science with mystical speculation in his "Carnacki the Ghost-Finder" stories, which feature protective sigils, vibrational zones, and references to the "Outer Circle," a realm inhabited by malevolent entities existing just beyond human perception. All of these ideas draw heavily on contemporary occultism. His novel The Night Land, a work of science fantasy more than horror, is set on a dying Earth haunted by monstrous spiritual forces and saturated with the oppressive weight of cosmic time. It echoes Theosophical doctrines of vast evolutionary cycles and the occult preoccupation with psychic resistance to spiritual evil.

Marie Corelli (born Mary Mackay), once one of the most popular authors in the English-speaking world, is now rarely read. Her novel, A Romance of Two Worlds, for example, blends Spiritualist belief with melodrama and science fictional concepts, such as portraying electricity as a bridge between the material and spiritual realms. She directly influenced writers like H. Rider Haggard and even Arthur Machen, both of whom in turn shaped the subsequent development of fantasy. Even Edward Bulwer-Lytton, now best known for the infamous incipit “It was a dark and stormy night,” was a serious student of esoteric lore. His novel Zanoni depicts an immortal Chaldean adept who achieves transcendence through secret knowledge, an early example of the “hidden masters” who would later become a staple of Theosophy.

Which, of course, brings us to Theosophy itself, which had perhaps the most lasting and far-reaching impact on the development of both esoteric thought and fantasy. Founded in the 1870s by the Russian-born mystic, Helena Blavatsky, Theosophy combined elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Neoplatonism, and esoteric Christianity into a vast occult cosmology. Through books, journals, and lectures, it promoted a view of the universe in which mankind was but one phase in an immense spiritual drama, involving lost continents, ascended masters, and ancient wisdom. These ideas found fertile ground in genre fiction. The controversial “Shaver Mystery” stories published in Amazing Stories in the mid to late 1940s and purportedly based on true events involve ancient subterranean races like the evil Deros (which itself served as an inspiration to Gary Gygax). Shaver's stories read like Theosophy blended with pulp sensationalism.

Even Clark Ashton Smith, whom regular readers will know is my favorite of the Weird Tales trio, drew on esoteric themes. Ideas like cyclical time, forgotten civilizations, and arcane knowledge recur throughout his work. His Zothique cycle, set on the last continent of a dying Earth, reflects the Theosophical notion of a future “seventh root race” and the eventual exhaustion of history.

Against this background, H.P. Lovecraft stands out, not because he rejected religion in general (though he did), but because he specifically targeted Spiritualism and occultism. He was deeply familiar with the claims of mediums, astrologers, and Theosophists and dismissed them with open contempt. In his correspondence, he regularly mocks the “credulous” who place faith in séances, reincarnation, and similar beliefs. At the behest of Harry Houdini, Lovecraft even collaborated on a book titled The Cancer of Superstition, intended as a wholesale debunking of Spiritualist claims. The book was never completed due to Houdini’s sudden death in 1926.

Despite this, Lovecraft’s stories are filled with forbidden books, lost knowledge, and ancient alien races whose truths are too terrible for the human mind to bear. In this way, Lovecraft doesn’t discard the tropes of occult literature – he inverts them. Where Theosophy promised spiritual enlightenment and cosmic unity, Lovecraft offers only madness, degeneration, and a universe that is not merely indifferent but actively hostile to notions of human significance. His “gods” are not hidden masters but incomprehensible and uncaring forces. Structurally, however, he preserves much of the occult worldview: a hidden reality lurks behind the surface of things, accessible only to initiates – scholars, madmen, and cultists. Lovecraft didn’t reject that structure; he twisted it and filled it with dread.

All of this makes it remarkable just how thoroughly modern fantasy and science fiction still bear the imprint of these early occult influences. Astral travel, alternate planes, soul transference, hidden masters, and cosmic cycles remain staples of the genres. They’re treated today as neutral, even secular, tropes of worldbuilding, even though their origins are anything but secular. They are spiritual, mystical, and often explicitly religious in intent.

My purpose in this post isn't to diminish these genres or to reduce their works to a list of influences. Nor am I offering an invitation to embrace the esoteric as literal truth. Instead, I'm reminding everyone of just how permeable the boundary between belief and imagination has always been and how fantasy, in particular, has long served as a vessel for metaphysical speculation, even when dressed in the garb of swords and sorcery or rocket ships and ray guns. Perhaps this is one of the reasons these genres endure: they don’t merely entertain; they echo the ancient human desire to find meaning in a world that so often seems devoid of it.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Tomb-Spawn

If the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales looks familiar, it should. That's because it may well be one of the most famous in the entire run of the Unique Magazine: the first cover appearance by Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian, courtesy of Margaret Brundage. Of course, the issue in question featured more than "Queen of the Black Coast," justly famous though that tale is. Also to be found in its pages is Clark Ashton Smith's "The Tomb-Spawn," a short but nevertheless satisfying story set in Zothique.

"The Tomb-Spawn" introduces two brothers, Milab and Marabac, who are jewel merchants from Ustaim. They had traveled by caravan to far-off Faraad, in search of goods to take home with them for sale. While relaxing with other foreign merchants in one of Faraad's wine shops, they listened intently to a local storyteller. He regaled them with the legend of the wizard-king Ossaru, who "once ruled over half the continent of Zothique."

According to these legends, Ossaru was "half immortal" and favored by "Thasaidon, black god of evil." Even more significantly, Ossaru "was companioned by the monster Nioth Korghai, who came down to Earth from an alien world, riding a fire-maned comet." 

"Ossaru, by his skill in astrology, had foreseen the coming of Nioth Korghai. Alone, he went forth into the desert to await the monster. in many lands people saw the falling of the comet, like a sun that came down by night upon the waste; but only King Ossaru beheld the arrival of Nioth Korghai. He returned in the black, moonless hours before dawn when all men slept, bringing the strange monster to his palace, and housing him in a vault beneath the throne-room, which he had prepared for Nioth Korghai's abode.

"Dwelling always thereafter in the vault, the monster remained unknown and unbeheld. It was said that he gave advice to Ossaru, and instructed him in the lore of the outer planets. At certain periods of the stars, women and young warriors were sent down as a sacrifice to Nioth Korghai; and these returned never to give account of that which they had seen. None could surmise his aspect; but all who entered the palace heard ever in the vault beneath a muffled noise as of slow beaten drums, and a regurgitation such as would be made by an underground fountain; and sometimes men heard an evil cackling as of a mad cockatrice.

In time, the monster "sickened with a strange malady" and died. Ossaru then surrounded the body of Nioth Korghai "with a double zone of enchantment, circle by circle" within the vault where had dwelled. Later, when Ossaru himself died, his remains, too, were placed within the same vault, beside the alien beast that had served him.

The legend does not end there, however. According to the storyteller, 

No man has ever found their tomb; but the wizard Namirrha, prophesying darkly, foretold many ages ago that certain travelers, passing through the desert, would some day come upon it unaware. And he said that these travelers, descending into the tomb by another way than the door, would behold a strange prodigy. And he spoke not concerning the nature of the prodigy, but said only that Nioth Korghai, being a creature from some far world, was obedient to alien laws in death as in life. And of that which Namirrha meant, no man has yet guessed the secret."

Milab and Marabac then set off from Faraad toward Ustaim, traveling once more by caravan in the company of other merchants. Unfortunately for them, their caravan is ambushed by a horde of the "wild and half-bestial" Ghorii: " Akin to the ghouls and jackals, they were eaters of carrion; and also they were anthropophagi, subsisting by preference on the bodies of travelers, and drinking their blood in lieu of water or wine." The Ghorii quickly kill the brothers' companions and would have killed them as well, had the camels they were riding not been so frightened that they bolted away from the scene of the ambush.

As their camels flee in unexpected direction, Milab and Marabac spy "the white walls and domes of some inappelable city" that appears to be much closer than it actually was. By the time they finally reach it, a couple of days later, they are in need of food and water. Desperate, they enter the heart of this once-great metropolis, looking for a possible source of refreshment. 

Wandering hopelessly on, they came to the ruins of a huge edifice which, it appeared, had been the palace of some forgotten monarch. The mighty walls, defying the erosion of ages, were still extant. The portals, guarded on either hand by green brazen images of mythic heroes, still frowned with unbroken arches. Mounting the marble steps, the jewelers entered a vast, roofless hall where cyclopean columns towered as if to bear up the desert sky.

The broad pavement flags were mounded with debris of arches and architraves and pilasters. At the hall's far extreme there was a dais of black-veined marble on which, presumably, a royal throne had once reared. Nearing the dais, Milab and Marabac both heard a low and indistinct gurgling as of some hidden stream or fountain, that appeared to rise from underground depths below the palace pavement.

Eagerly trying to locate the source of the sound, they climbed the dais. Here a huge block had fallen from the wall above, perhaps recently and the marble had cracked beneath its weight, and a portion of the dais had broken through into some underlying vault, leaving a dark and jagged aperture. It was from this opening that the water-like regurgitation rose, incessant and regular as the beating of a pulse.

If I have a complaint about "The Tomb-Spawn," it is the lack of subtlety Smith displays in setting up the situation in which Milab and Marabac find themselves. I wish that he had somehow been able to present the legend of Ossaru in such a way that its eventual discovery by the brothers did not seem so obvious. He makes some effort at justifying the course of the tale through Namirrha's prophecy, but that is, in my opinion, a weak, even lazy, artifice on his part. 

Fortunately, Smith outdoes himself when it comes to the conclusion of "The Tomb-Spawn." What the brothers find in the vault beneath the dais is delightfully frightful and more than worth the wait. I don't wish to oversell it, but I believe it's one of Smith's creepier creations. Take the time to follow the link at the start of this post and read the tale – as I said, it's not very long – to see if you agree.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Master of the Crabs

Something that's often overlooked when discussing the "Big Three" of Weird Tales is that, while both Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were dead by March 1937, Clark Ashton Smith lived for another quarter-century. Now, it is true that, following the death of his own father in December 1937, CAS largely abandoned fiction writing in favor of both his original avocation, poetry, and sculpture, he nevertheless continued to write fiction, albeit with far less industry than he had during the fruitful period between 1926 and 1935. Often, he did so at the behest of others, who encouraged him to pen new stories for his most famous literary cycles.

A good example of this is "The Master of the Crabs," a tale of Zothique he wrote after being asked by Associate Editor Lamont Buchanan to contribute to the upcoming 25th anniversary issue of Weird Tales. This issue would appear in March 1948, making it the second to last Zothique story Smith ever wrote (the last being "Morthylla"), though, like so many of his later fiction efforts, it was based on an idea he'd had years earlier (in this case, 1932 or earlier). Though "The Master of the Crabs" is by no means one of Smith's best works, it's both comparatively short and contains enough imaginative elements to make it worthwhile.

The story is almost Vancian in its set-up: two rival sorcerers – Mior Lumivix and Sarcand – contend for possession of "the fabulous chart of Omvor," which 

was a thing that many generations of wizards had dreamt to find. Omvor, an ancient pirate still renowned, had performed successfully a feat of impious rashness. Sailing up a closely guarded estuary by night with his small crew disguised as priests in stolen temple-barges, he had looted the fane of the Moon-God in Faraad and had carried away many of its virgins, together with gems, gold, altar-vessels, talismans, phylacteries and books of eldritch elder magic. These books were the gravest loss of all, since even the priests had never dared to copy them. They were unique and irreplaceable, containing the erudition of buried aeons.

Omvor's feat had given rise to many legends. He and his crew and the ravished virgins, in two small brigantines, had vanished ultimately amid the western seas. It was believed that they had been caught by the Black River, that terrible ocean-stream which pours with an irresistible swiftening beyond Naat to the world's end. But before that final voyage, Omvor had lightened his vessels of the looted treasure and had made a chart on which the location of its hiding-place was indicated. This chart he had given to a former comrade who had grown too old for voyaging.

No man had ever found the treasure. But it was said that the chart still existed throughout the centuries, hidden somewhere no less securely than the loot of the Moon-God's temple. Of late there were rumors that some sailor, inheriting it from his father, had brought the map to Mirouane. Mior Lumivix, through agents both human and preterhuman, had tried vainly to trace the sailor; knowing that Sarcand had the other wizards of the city were also seeking him.

Despite this, "The Master of the Crabs" is told in the first person from the perspective of neither of the wizards, but of Manthar, the apprentice of Mior Lumivix, whose primary task up to now has been the grinding of ingredients for his master's "most requested love-potions." Manthar's youth and inexperience make him a good viewpoint character, just as his ignorance of arcane matters and the details of the quarrel between Sarcand and Mior, provide excellent excuses for Mior – and Smith – to pontificate amusingly to the reader. 

By occult means, Mior had spied upon his rival, in the process learning of his recent actions and whereabouts.

"Tonight I did a dangerous thing, since there was no other way. Drinking the juice of the purple dedaim, which induces profound trance, I projected my ka into his elemental-guarded chamber. The elementals knew my presence, they gathered about me in shapes of fire and shadow, menacing me unspeakably. They opposed me, they drove me forth... but I had seen — enough."

Sarcand, Mior explains, had traveled by boat westward to the island of Iribos, which in the past had been known as the Island of Crabs. Urging Manthar to gird himself with weapons like himself, Mior decides to set out after Sarcand.

"My familiars warned me that Sarcand had left his house a full hour ago. He was prepared for a journey, and went wharfward. But we will overtake him. I think that he will go without companions to Iribos, desiring to keep the treasure wholly secret. He is indeed strong and terrible, but his demons are of a kind that cannot cross water, being entirely earthbound. He has left them behind with moiety of his magic. Have no fear for the outcome."

With that, the master and his apprentice set out for Iribos – and their confrontation with Sarcand. Their journey to the island takes three days. Iribos is rocky and covered with sparse "funereal-colored vegetation." It is also uninhabited – by human beings at any rate – which only heightens the seeming danger of the place. Rowing closer, the pair eventually spy "the low, broad arch of a cavern-mouth" that Mior Lumivix takes to be worthy of closer inspection. Because of the highness of the tide, piloting their sailing vessel past the archway proves difficult. The low roof of the cavern snaps the boat's mast and, in doing so, causes additional damage that the vessel, which soon takes on water and begins to sink.

The master and apprentice survive by swimming and make their way into the dark cave beyond. Inside is a stretch of sand and a wrecked boat not unlike their own. They also saw "two reclining figures," which they approached warily, their weapons hidden beneath their clothing.

As we neared the figures, the appearance of a yellowishbrown drapery that covered them resolved itself in its true nature. It consisted of a great number of crabs who were crawling over their half-submerged bodies and running to and fro behind a heap of immense boulders.

We went forward and stopped over the bodies, from which the crabs were busily detaching morsels of bloody flesh. One of the bodies lay on its face; the other stared with half-eaten features at the sun. Their skin, or what remained of it, was a swarthy yellow. Both were clad in short purple breeks and sailor's boots, being otherwise naked.

'What hellishness is this?" inquired the Master. "These men are but newly dead — and already the crabs rend them. Such creatures are wont to wait for the softening of decomposition. And look — they do not even devour the morsels they have torn, but bear them away."

It's here that the story approaches its climax, leading to a fairly satisfying, if not entirely unexpected, conclusion, one very much in keeping with Smith's penchant for black humor.

Compared to his best stories of Zothique, "The Master of the Crabs" is undoubtedly one of Clark Ashton Smith's more modest efforts. Nevertheless, it contains all of the elements one expects of such a tale – mystery, mounting horror, baroque vocabulary, and a touch of wit – that I think it worth reading at least once, especially if you've never done so before. My primary pleasure in reading it are its little details about Zothique and its geography and peoples, as it's my favorite of Smith's fictional settings. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Vance on CAS and HPL

A comment to yesterday's post reminded me of a longstanding mystery: the influence, if any, of the works of Clark Ashton Smith on those of Jack Vance. Purely on the basis of subject matter and style, I'd long assumed that Vance's tales of The Dying Earth had been influenced by Smith's own tales of Zothique. I eventually read something – I cannot recall precisely where – that addressed the matter, claiming that Vance had not in fact read Smith and, therefore, any resemblance between the two mordantly witty writers was purely coincidental.

The aforementioned comment, however, spurred me to look into the question once again. In doing so, I discovered a new piece of information, new to me at any rate. The May 2005 issue of Cosmopolis reprints an old interview with Jack Vance from September 1981. The interview is fascinating for a number of reasons, but it's what Vance has to say about Clark Ashton Smith (and H.P. Lovecraft) that is of most immediate interest. The relevant section begins with the interviewer, Charles Platt, referencing Smith:

I mention that Don Herron, a critic who contributed to a symposium on Vance, deduced that Vance had been heavily influenced by the work of Clark Ashton Smith. 

"That's true. Can't help it; Smith is one of the people I read when I was a kid. But it only influenced The Dying Earth.

"I was one of those precocious, highly intelligent kids, old beyond my years. I had lots of brothers and sisters, but I was isolated from them in a certain kind of way. I just read and read and read. One of the things I read was the old Weird Tales pulp magazine, which published Clark Ashton Smith. He was one of the generative geniuses of fantasy. The others, Lovecraft, for instance, were ridiculous. Lovecraft couldn't write his way out of a wet paper sack. Smith is a little clumsy at times, but at least his prose is always readable.

"When I wrote my first fantasies, I was no longer aware of Smith – it had sunk so far into my subconscious. But when it was pointed out to me, I could very readily see the influence."

Leaving aside Vance's, I think, unfairly harsh assessment of Lovecraft, I find it strangely vindicating to see him admit to the influence of Smith on his own work. That's not something I'd ever seen acknowledged previously, though, as it now appears, Don Herron correctly surmised it more than four decades ago. Regardless, a longstanding mystery over I'd puzzled for years has been resolved.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Black Abbot of Puthuum

Many adjectives could be ascribed to the pulp fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, but "heroic" is generally not among them. Yet, for all of its intimations of hidden horror and ancient secrets (to paraphrase H.P. Lovecraft's own assessment of the story), I cannot help but feel that "The Black Abbot of Puthuum" is a rare example of a largely heroic tale within Smith's canon. First published in the March 1936 issue of Weird Tales, the yarn belongs to the Zothique cycle, which chronicles the people and events of the last inhabited continent of Earth sometime in the distant future. As I've noted before, Zothique is one of my favorite imaginary settings, so it's always a pleasure to return to it in the Pulp Fantasy Lilbrary series.

The tale begins simply enough. A pair of mercenaries, Zobal the archer and Cushara the pike-bearer, are traveling as the bodyguards of Simban, the chief eunuch of King Hoaraph's harem. Together, they are making "a tedious journey through the tract known as Izdrel" in order to acquire "a young maiden of celestial beauty" rumored to dwell among the herders of the area. Zobal and Cushara, we are told,

had poured many a libation to their friendship in the sanguine liquors of Yoros and the blood of the kingdom's enemies. In that long and lusty amity, broken only by such passing quarrels as concerned the division of a wine-skin or the apportioning of a wench, they had served amid the soldiery of King Hoaraph for a strenuous decade. Savage warfare and wild, fantastic hazard had been their lot. The renown of their valor had drawn upon them, ultimately, the honor of Hoaraph's attention, and he had assigned them for duty among the picked warriors that guarded his palace in Faraad. And sometimes the twain were sent together on such missions as required no common hardihood and no disputable fealty to the king.

Perhaps it is the use of "the twain" above, but this introduction to Zobal and Cushara reminded me a little of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, at least with regards to their friendship in arms. In any case, the trio make their way to the tribe of herders without any trouble. There, Simban sets about his business on behalf of the king.

Cushara and Zobal, on their part, were instantly smitten by the charms of the maiden, whose name was Rubalsa. She was slender and of queenly height, and her skin was pale as the petals of white poppies; and the undulant blackness of her heavy hair was full of sullen copper gleamings beneath the sun. While Simban haggled shrilly with the cronelike grandmother, the warriors eyed Rubalsa with circumspect ardor and addressed to her such gallantries as they deemed discreet within hearing of the eunuch.

Again, something about this passage brought to mind Leiber's heroes, but perhaps I am seeing something that's not really there. Regardless, Simban is successful in his endeavor and, having acquired Rubalsa, he and his two guards begin the journey back to the kingdom of Yoros. Their journey is interrupted by

a peculiar pitch-black darkness had covered a great portion of the sky and hills, obliterating them wholly. This darkness, which seemed due neither to cloud nor sandstorm, extended itself in a crescent on either hand, and came swiftly toward the travelers. In the course of a minute or less, it had blotted the pathway before and behind them like a black mist; and the two arcs of shadow, racing northward, had flowed together, immuring the party in a circle. The darkness then became stationary, its walls no more than a hundred feet away on every side. Sheer, impenetrable, it surrounded the wayfarers, leaving above them a clear space from which the sun still glared down, remote and small and discolored, as if seen from the bottom of a deep pit.

Zobal and Cushara believe the darkness to be "devilry" and fear the "pestilential mist." Nevertheless, they press forward, hoping that they might somehow outrun it or, if necessary, pass through it. Within the magical gloom, they hear "a horrible multitudinous clamor as of drums, trumpets, cymbals, jangling armor, jarring voices, and mailed feet that tramped to and fro on the stony ground with a mighty clangor" and they believe themselves beset by an enemy army. 

As "the terrain grew rougher and steeper" and twilight was soon upon them, the trio sees a cloaked figure approaching them, bearing a lit lantern, In the distance, behind the figure, they also see "a square dark mass ... [that] was evidently a large buildng with many windows." The figure soon reveals himself to be a large, dark-skinned man "garbed in the voluminous robe of saffron such as was worn by certain monkish orders, and crowned with the two-horned purple hat of an abbot." Seeing their surprise, the man introduces himself.

"I am Ujuk, abbot of the monastery of Puthuum," he said, in a thick voice of such extraordinary volume that it appeared almost to issue from the earth under his feet. "Methinks the night has overtaken you far from the route of travelers. I bid you welcome to our hospitality."

Ujuk then leads them back to his monastery, where he offers them food and drink – but partakes of neither himself. Though Zobal and Cushara assume that this is simply because the abbot has already eaten, they are also wary, all the more so when he seems to know who they are and what they are about.

"How far have we gone astray from the route to Faraad?" asked Simban.

"I do not consider that you have gone astray," rumbled Ujuk in his subterranean voice, "for your coming to Puthuum is most timely. We have few guests here, and we are loth to part with those who honor our hospitality."

"King Hoaraph will be impatient for our return with the girl," Simban quavered. "We must depart early tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is another matter," said Ujuk, in a tone half unctuous, half sinister. "Perhaps, by then, you will have forgotten this deplorable haste."

Upon hearing this, the two warriors become even more suspicious and choose not to partake of "the powerful ale of Puthuum," which both Simban and Rubalsa had drunk and which had quickly made them drowsy. Ujuk then offers them all beds in which to spend the night before bidding them good night and leaving them alone. 

As Smith baldly telegraphs, things are not right in the monastery and the abbot and his fellow monks do not have the best interest of these four travelers at heart when they offered them their hospitality. This is precisely the point when "The Black Abbot of Puthuum" takes a turn that differs from that of most CAS tales. Normally, one would expect a bleak, perhaps darkly humorous, ending; that is, after all, Smith's stock and trade. In this case, though, what we get in something that is genuinely heroic, as the two comrades in arms, Zobal the archer and Cushara the pike-bearer, work together to defeat the evil within the monastery, as well as to protect Rubalsa not merely from the terrors of the monastery but also her fate as another odalisque in King Hoaraph's harem. This is a fun pulp fantasy very much in the spirit of Leiber and is well worth a read.

My Top 10 Favorite Imaginary Settings (Part II)

As I prepared the second part of this list, what struck me is that three of the top five entries are roleplaying game settings. Thinking on it, I suppose that only makes sense. I spend a lot more time exploring imaginative settings through roleplaying than I do through simply reading stories set in them. In any case, this was a useful exercise for me, since it helped me to understand better the things I find most attractive in imaginary settings. Readers will notice certain commonalities between my favorites, though I think there's also a fair degree of diversity too.

Part I can be found here.

5. Zothique

Of all the settings created by Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique is by far my favorite. I was first introduced to Zothique through his short story, "The Empire of the Necromancers" and it very rapidly became one of my favorite imaginary settings. Evoking melancholy and ennui, as well as making ample use of mordant humor, one might call it the Clark Ashton Smith-iest of all his imaginary settings. I've derived a great deal of pleasure from reading stories that take place on the Last Continent; several of them are regular reads that I return to year after year.

In some respects, Zothique is quite similar to Vance's Dying Earth, in that it's really our Earth in the impossibly far future, when sorcery and congress with extra-terrene entities are now facets of everyday existence. However, it lacks the technology-as-magic (or is that magic-as-technology?) conceit of the Dying Earth, focusing instead on the return of black magic and alien gods as a consequence of mankind's enervating boredom as it awaits the end of all things. Zothique drips with a decadence that is equal parts repulsive and enchanting – heady stuff, especially for someone whose life is as staid as mine.

4. Lankhmar

You can be forgiven for thinking I meant Nehwon, but I can assure you that I mean Lankhmar, the City of the Black Toga and home base of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The truth is that, for the most part, I don't find the world of Nehwon all that interesting. Indeed, I'm not even certain that Leiber found it all that interesting himself. Lankhmar, on the other hand, is endlessly fascinating and is practically a world in itself, with its dark, winding streets, remarkable locales, and even more remarkable inhabitants. It's not for nothing that Leiber's best stories all take place within the city's walls.

Lankhmar is the setting that first taught me the potential a single well-described place could hold. Leiber ably demonstrated that there's absolutely no need to create an exhaustive fantasy world to tell amazing stories. Bring a single city to life and you have everything you need to present many tales of adventure. Lankhmar is also probably why I've long had a fascination with cities and city-states in fantasy, as well as why I hope one day to referee a campaign set entirely within a city. I haven't done it yet, but, if I do, you can be sure there will be more than a little Lankhmar in the proceedings.

3. Glorantha

Even a few years ago, I doubt Greg Stafford's Glorantha would have made it onto my top 10 favorite imaginary settings, never mind my top 5. For a long time, my early experiences with the setting made it difficult for me to recognize its brilliance. Recently, though, Glorantha has risen considerably in my estimation, thanks in no small part to my having had the chance to play in a couple of RuneQuest campaigns that allowed me to experience the setting on its own terms. The result was a re-evaluation of both the setting itself and what Stafford was attempting to do with it.

If D&D's default idiom is pulp fantasy, then RuneQuest's is mythology. Glorantha has a mythic feel, like the world of Greco-Roman myth but with numerous unique and, dare I say, modern twists on them that make it feel genuinely unique. Stafford was a keen student of myth, religion, and spirituality of all kinds and that shows in the cultures, societies, and beliefs of Glorantha. It's a thoroughly engaging place, all the more so, I think, because that seems to have been the intention. Through their characters, players are supposed to grapple with the meaning of myth and legend, even to the point of potentially rewriting them through their characters' actions. And to think I once dismissed it as too "Californian."

2. Tékumel

Some of you will no doubt have expected that Tékumel would take the top spot on this list and I can't blame you for thinking so (though those who know me well will not be surprised by my actual top choice). I was a relative latecomer to Tékumel, only really discovering it in the early '90s, through a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the setting of Empire of the Petal Throne. Once I discovered, I was hooked and became a lifelong devotee. Recent revelations have not dimmed my love for the setting nor weakened the enthusiasm of myself or the players of my ongoing House of Worms campaign, which barrels on toward its eighth year of continuous play.

My fondness for Tékumel is based on several factors, the chief being that it's not a vanilla setting. Instead, it's a complex, detailed world whose main inspirations are a variety of non-European historical cultures. Despite this, it's not nearly as difficult to understand as some have claimed and can, in fact, be enjoyed by roleplayers of all stripes. I also love Tékumel for its blending of science fiction and fantasy, something that you'll see in many of the settings on this list. And despite the claim that the setting is so detailed that there is no room for individual creativity, I have found just the opposite. Rather than being an impediment to my own creativity, the detail has served to inspire me, often in unexpected ways. I've had more fun refereeing my Tékumel campaigns than I have almost any other – high praise from a gamer who's been playing for more than four decades.

1. Third Imperium

If you correctly guessed that the Third Imperium would be at the top of this list, congratulations, you know me and my tastes well. I regularly tell people that, when it comes to RPGs, "D&D is my first love, but Traveller is my true love." A big part of the reason why I feel that way is because of the game's "official" setting. Players older than I remember a time when Traveller, like Dungeons & Dragons, was simply a rules set without a setting of its own. For them, Traveller remained a game of "science fiction adventure in the far future," while, for me, it's always been "science fiction adventure in the Third Imperium."

My fondness for the setting is born of several factors. The first is the deft way that Miller and his colleagues at GDW borrowed and riffed off elements of the great sci-fi writers of the '40s through '70s to create a setting that was simultaneously familiar and original. The second is that I've spent more time playing and refereeing in the Third Imperium than I have in any other imaginary setting. In many ways, the Third Imperium is home and I know it like the back of my hand. Finally, my first professional writing credits were for Traveller in the 1990s, which, in turn, introduced me to a number of others who subsequently became some of my oldest and dearest friends. I can think of no better marker of excellence than that.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Death of Ilalotha

Since last week's Pulp Fantasy Library post concerned a Zothique pastiche by Gene Wolfe, it seemed only right that I should follow it up with a discussion of one of Clark Ashton Smith's own tales of the Last Continent, in this case "The Death of Ilalotha," which first appeared in the September 1937 issue of Weird Tales. The story is one of which Smith was himself quite fond, calling it a "somewhat poisonous little horror" in a letter to August Derleth. Despite this, he apparently had difficulty selling it to Weird Tales. The magazine's editor, Farnsworth Wright, claimed "there is no story here" and returned it to Smith, who then reworked it to give it a stronger narrative. Smith's revisions not only met with Wright's approval but with the readership of Weird Tales, who voted it the best story of the issue. (As an aside, the September 1937 issue is notorious for its Margaret Brundage cover, which landed it in hot water with censors in Philadelphia at the time of its publication.)

Loath though I am to agree with the dread satrap Pharnabazus – one of H.P. Lovecraft's satirical nicknames for Wright – I can't deny that "The Death of Ilalotha" is very weak as a story, especially when compared to many of Smith's more celebrated efforts. It's still an enjoyable read, both for its unparalleled use of language and the mood it conjures, but one should not expect to be wholly satisfied with its plot, which remains quite weak. Rather than a "story," I might instead call "The Death of Ilalotha" a "situation" – and an unnerving one at that.

The piece begins with the funeral observance of the titular Ilalotha, whom we learn was a lady-in-waiting to "the self-widowed" Queen Xantlicha of Tasuun. According to the customs of Tasuun, funerals lasted several days and were the "occasion for much merrymaking and prolonged festivity."

For three days, on a bier of diverse-colored silks from the Orient, under a rose-hued canopy that might well have domed some nuptial couch, she had lain clad with gala garments amid the great feasting-hall of the royal palace in Miraab. About her, from morning dusk to sunset, from cool even to torridly glaring dawn, the feverish tide of the funeral orgies had surged and eddied without slackening. Nobles, court officials, guardsmen, scullions, astrologers, eunuchs, and all the high ladies, waiting women and female slaves of Xantlicha, had taken part in that prodigal debauchery which was believed to honor most fitly the deceased.

Only Clark Ashton Smith could write the phrase "funeral orgies" without its seeming laughable. From his pen, it seems not only natural but fitting, especially in light of the morbid melancholy of Zothique. In the midst of describing the licentious festivities, CAS takes a moment to comment on the deceased.

With half-shut eyes and lips slightly parted, in the rosy shadow cast by the catafalque, she wore no aspect of death but seemed a sleeping empress who ruled impartially over the living and the dead. This appearance, together with a strange heightening of her natural beauty, was remarked by many; and some said that she seemed to await a lover's kiss rather than the kisses of the worm.

 I trust no one will be surprised to learn that these comments are not idle ones. 

We soon discover that also present is Lord Thulos, "acknowledged lover of Queen Xantlicha," who had been away and only just arrived. He was thus unaware of the nature of the festivities. Prior to his having taken up with the queen, Ilalotha had been the paramour of Thulos and, "it was said, had grieved more passionately over his defection than any other."

Thulos, perhaps, had abandoned her not without regret: for the role of lover to the queen, though advantageous and not wholly disagreeable, was somewhat precarious. Xantlicha, it was universally believed, had rid herself of the late King Archain by means of a tomb-discovered vial of poison that owed its peculiar subtlety and virulence to the art of the ancient sorcerers. Following this act of disposal, she had taken many lovers, and those who failed to please her came invariably to ends no less violent than that of Archain.

Seeing his obvious sadness upon viewing Ilalotha's dead body, Queen Xantlicha approaches Thulos and warns him that "men say she was a witch." He cannot believe this, for he knew her well. Xantlicha continues to assert the truth of her charge, adding that Ilalotha had died "from no other fever than that of love."

"It was from love of thee," said Xantlicha darkly; "and, as all women know, thy heart is blacker and harder than black adamant. No witchcraft, however potent, could prevail thereon." Her mood, as she spoke. appeared to soften suddenly. "Thy absence has been long, my lord. Come to me at midnight: I will wait for thee in the south pavilion."

With the queen gone, Thulos turns his attention once again to Ilalotha. He then begins to imagine that she is not dead, that she has just kissed him, and that she calls to him with outstretched arms. "Come to me at midnight. I will await for thee … in the tomb," he hears her say. Though Thulos doubts what he has just imagined, he cannot be certain that it was a mere hallucination. What if the queen is right and Ilalotha was a witch. If so, she would surely have found a way to escape even death. He had to find out, even if it meant failing to keep his assignation with Xantlicha at the same time.

"The Death of Ilalotha" is a "poisonous little horror," as Smith described it, full of creeping dread and intimations of doom, not to mention luxurious language. The narrative itself is slight but I doubt anyone will mind, given its brevity. One reads Clark Ashton Smith for his ability to set a scene and induce unsettling – yet somehow still pleasurable – feelings in his readers. "The Death of Ilalotha" easily delivers that and more.

Pulp Fantasy Library: A Traveler in Desert Lands

As a general rule, I tend to be skeptical of the efforts of writers who take it upon themselves to play in someone else's playground. Heck, I'm similarly skeptical about the efforts of writers who return to their own playgrounds many years after the fact. The results in both cases are rarely good in my opinion, which is why I tend to avoid them. Nevertheless, I occasionally make exceptions, usually because I'd either heard something positive beforehand or because I allowed my own enthusiasm get the better of them. The Last Continent: New Tales of Zothique is an example of the latter.

Edited by John Pelan and published in 1999, The Last Continent is an anthology of original stories set in Clark Ashton Smith's setting of Zothique. Now, Zothique is a favorite of mine. Of all of Smith's creations, it's the one I most enjoy – which is saying something. Consequently, when I heard about this collection, I quickly snapped it up, hoping I'd find at least one new Zonthique story worthy of the Bard of Auburn himself.

As it happened, I found several, but the one I most recall, years later, is "A Traveler in Desert" lands by Gene Wolfe. Wolfe is, of course, the celebrated author of The Shadow of the Torturer and the other volumes of The Book of the New Sun, so his byline on a short story set in Zothique is not entirely surprising. The world of Severian is a kind of far future "dying earth" with some similarities to Zothique and Wolfe's command of archaic and esoteric vocabulary is every bit as hypnotic as that of CAS. That said, "A Traveler in Desert Lands" contains little that explicitly links it to Zothique beyond its mellifluous style and morbid subject matter. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed it as much as I do; unlike some of the other stories in this collection, it doesn't read like someone's Clark Ashton Smith fan fiction but rather a wholly original homage to his works.

The titular traveler is making his way across a desert on the back of a camel. Tired and thirsty, he stops "in the soft and shifting dust of the lost town of the dead" where he spies a very slender woman walking with a water jar upon her head. Courteously, he asks her if he might take some water from her.

"You would honor me by drinking," the woman with the jar said, "and by filling whatever skins and bottles you may have. If you empty my jar," her face convulsed as if to dislodge some brass-backed carrion fly that none but she could see, "it is a matter of no moment, for I can easily refill it at our well."

Though this surprises the traveler – he did not expect to find water so readily in the desert – he is very grateful. He takes a drink of water to slake his thirst and then asks where the well is, so that he might fill all his canteens and water his camel before moving on. 

The woman does not respond; instead, she simply walks away. The traveler and his camel follow her into the nearby town and its "bleak streets of tombs." 

Some remained sealed – or so it appeared. Others had clearly been broken into, looted, and abandoned. Still others gave evidence of habitation; and at the door of one he saw an old man seated, his dusty cheeks streaked with tears and his raddled face stamped with grief. The woman with the water jar halted to speak to this old man, though the traveler could not hear what she said; the old man nodded in response, his face perhaps a trifle less hopeless than it had been. 

As he continued to follow the slender woman, hoping she was leading him to the well of which she had spoken, his mind wanders. He thinks about the tombs he sees everywhere and what they imply.

Where there were tombs and men who robbed them, there might be silver and gold besides, necklaces and emeralds and torques starry with opals. The thought revived him more, even, than the water had – for the traveler had been born of woman and suckled at the breast, and like all the breed was in need of money. 

I smiled when I first read these sentences, as they struck as being not only true to so many of Smith's venal protagonists but also to the player characters one encounters in many a fantasy roleplaying game campaign. In any case, the woman does eventually lead him to the the well, located underground and accessible by a set of stone steps. She tells the traveler to leave his camel behind and to descend into the depths with her.

He agrees and fills canteens to capacity. He also takes up water for his camel, a process that, even while aided by the woman, takes some time. Before long, the night is beginning to fall. This leads the woman to ask him, "Will you stay in our town tonight?" Again, the traveler agrees, hoping that, in addition to rest, he might be able to buy or trade for provisions from the inhabitants of this strange settlement. The woman assures him her people can provide him with goat's meat, cheese, and vegetables – but only in the morning. The traveler accepts this and prepares to settle in for the night.

This being a pulp fantasy story – and one after the fashion of Clark Ashton Smith, no less – things are not what they appear to be, as the traveler soon learns. What separates "A Traveler in Desert Lands" from other stories of this kind is not so much its revelations as the overall mood of the piece. Wolfe does a superb job of slowly building tension through the accumulation of small details and hints. His description of the town where the woman and her family live is a good example of this, as the reader slowly comes to realize that they actually live inside of a looted mausoleum. "Town of the dead" is not a metaphor; this is no ghost town in the conventional sense. Rather, it is an ancient cemetery whose tombs have now become the dwelling places of later inhabitants. It's wonderfully macabre and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to find in a good tale of Zothique. That I found it in a Zothique tale not written by Smith is all the more remarkable – but then Gene Wolfe is no ordinary writer.