Further Still: A Bachelors Tale

Disclaimer: I, as a fanfic writer, own very little. The main structure belongs to the J. R. R. Tolkien Estate as visualized by peter Jackson and Weta while the creatures, places and people belong to Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Summary: A tale is told of people who would be heroes attempting to reclaim a lost city of wonders for (one side of) their heritage. A hobo who is part conjurer part sage and part elemental embodiment of chaos will guide them to their goal. And one young man will come along to seek wealth, wonder... and ultimately himself.

April 16th, 1967,

Outskirts of Bowling Green, south of Toledo, Ohio.

It was on mornings like this, when Robert Olmstead awoke very early and needed artificial light to function at all, that he began to notice the changes that time had wrought upon him. His walking was getting slower, more awkward... and not necessarily because of arthritis or the other ravages of aging. His eyes were getting strangely better in the dark... but more and more irritated by harsh electric lights. Normally, he would have preferred to wait for sunrise to begin what he had to do... but he had a lot to do today, and not much time until he had to have it done.

Sitting down in his dressing gown at his writing desk, he looked around him at his study and, more broadly, at the house he lived in. His grandfather had built this house almost a century ago and had raised two sons in it. After that... well, that was why he was getting up so early.

After looking through all his notes and finding everything ready and sufficient, he took pen in hand and after looking wistfully at the old typewriter in the corner of the room, half hidden under books, put it to ink and then ink to the paper before him.

My dear collegiates...

Robert sighed, crumpled the paper and dropped in into the waste basket beside him. That was entirely too familiar an introduction. Putting pen to a new sheet, he began again.

Students of Miskatonic University...

Robert smiled. That was much better.

It has often been asked when the world got so strange. Residing in a town with such a deep and varied occult history, I assume that you have asked this more than anyone. The march of science has shown that natural laws are not constant across the cosmos, that life on Earth has taken a myriad of sentient forms over these strange and foreign aeons and that what was once termed 'magic' is little more than mathematics of a form that we may never truly understand. As to this question, I can honestly say that it always has been, and that over the last 40 years, you have been told the truth of the matter.

Robert paused, wondering, not for the first time, if he should even be doing this.

But it had to be done... and done soon.

But you may not have been told all of it.

As he looked up to refill his fountain pen, his eyes lingered on a monochrome photograph taken 40 years earlier. In it, a much younger Robert Olmstead posed with his fellows on a journey that would change his life and, in a roundabout way, the world. Some were young and fair, others of middle age and world-weary while others still were ancient by most standards and though not fair in appearance by the judgment of most, had been wise and just in most things.

I am old now and in a very real way, I am not the same man that I once was. I have come to understand that I am not long to walk the world under the sun. Most of you, especially those in the faculties of Anthropology, Law and History, should know of the events of 1928 that took place in the town of Innsmouth. You would know of the great raid, of the battle that had drawn in the surrounding towns and of the profound embarrassment that was laid upon the police and military in the aftermath.

He filled his pen anew.

I think it is time for all of you to know what really happened.

It began in a time so long ago that no civilization remembers, in a place far to the East, the like of which you shall not find in the world today...

The Raft City of Salan was all but a legend among most of the people of Hyboria. However, merchants of Argos, Shem, Zingara and Stygia, not to mention the pirates of the Barachan Isles, treasured the city as a source of wealth and trade and refuge. Among it's shining spires of fine, imported woods topped with domes of polished whale bone and it's streets paved with pumice, the true treasure of Salan was its markets. Drawing together the people of a dozen cultures, you would never find a greater array of riches, crafted from the bounty of land and sea. In all it's centuries of history, Salan had never known war or storm or famine.

This security and wealth was all because of one single fact, and the one that had prompted the building of the city. This fact was that far below the surface of the sea that Salan floated on, there lay the greatest kingdom in the world.

Y'ha-nthlei.

Here was the stronghold of Bn'glo-Dn, King of the Atlantic Ridge, greatest of all On'dy-uth rulers. The On'dy-uth, a culture of humanoid fish almost one hundred million years old, had long held sway over the sea, ruling in the name of the Sleeping Priest and trading with a host of sentient species... and even breeding with them. For the women of the On'dy-uth had the gift of being able to bear children of their race upon a multitude of sires and marriage had long been a tool of diplomacy. The Line of Dagon, first and greatest of the Old Patriarchs to whom Bn'glo-Dn was heir, held special power over gifts of spells and wisdom, and Bn'glo-Dn ruled with utter surety. There was no doubt that his house would endure, for his line lay secure in the lives of his sons and of his daughter.

To have seen Y'ha-nthlei is to have dreamt of nothing else for the rest of your days and to sink into despair if you could not reach it. Built deep into the side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the rumors surrounding the splendor of cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei outpaced even the wildest fantasies of many minds. Those rumors were as nothing compared to the reality. Its wealth lay all around it: in food plucked from the sea and in great seams of gold running like rivers through the stone beneath the halls. By the light of glowing coral and strange captive fish the craftsmen of the city worked wonders, fashioning objects of great beauty not just from gold, but from Coral, Pearl, Amber and Shell.

Downward the miners delved but also outward the searchers sought. Over the drowned bones of sunken Atlantis, wizards searched for items of magic and lore. Artifacts of Mu found their way into the city from trade with the other kingdoms and hybrid scholars brought back knowledge from a hundred sorcerous sects and wizards.

But as the years wore on, trouble came. The sorcerers who came to gawk and learn at the feet of the priests in the deep often stayed in Salan, and began to cause trouble with the locals. The ruler of Salan, the Hybrid son of a Y'ha-nthlei noblewoman and a Shemite trader, forbade them from staying more than a few days in his city, forcing many of them to go below the waves to conduct their studies. Away from the sensibilities of merchants, experimentation turned wild, sometimes beautiful and sometimes horrible. Powerful scrying spells were sent out, searching the seafloor for lost relics of sorcery and through this, many were indeed found. But they always sought out the seemingly impossible; something that they could find that would be beyond reckoning.

As it turned out, that something found them.

On a day that would be etched into the minds of all who survived it, the first sign of doom was an unholy stench. Smelling of rotting vomit and dead fish, the reek drifted up from the south, coming on the heels on white-tipped storm waves tossed high underneath a clear sky and calm winds. Then there was a growl, and a sound like thunder... and then Salan began exploding in a rain of wood and corpses.

Tentacles and massive extensions of hardened protoplasm began an exercise of destruction that had not been seen since the drowning of Atlantis. It was a war-shoggoth, a hill-sized leviathan forged in the last days of the war that had seen the On'dy-uths creators brought low by the arrogance of slave masters and the rise of Dagon's people as a true power.

Now it had come again, drawn by the magic and scrying spells of the Wizards. Salan never had a chance to defend itself and wanton death was dealt as to be indescribable, as this city of men was nothing to such a creature. It itself sought a greater prize.

Y'ha-nthlei was this prize. Drawn by the magic within it's foundries and libraries, the shoggoth proceeded to tear through defenses and fortifications. For all that the defenders tried, nothing could hold back such a beast, not spells nor spears nor the strongest poisons they had. The population was decimated, with perhaps a tenth of the population able to escape into the sea, the royal family among them. The city itself... was lost, for a shoggoth will guard its chosen lair for as long as it lives. The survivors surfaced, only to find Salan a sinking collection of flotsam and corpses, the few living hybrids rescued as they were forced to watch the surviving humans flounder and drown.

The trading ships turned away, for they were no longer able to turn a profit without a trading center and were fearful of the wrath of a monster from the deep past. No help came from Hyboria that day... or any days since.

For millennia, Dagon's people were forced to wander the world's oceans, a once mighty people brought low, refused sanctuary from other cities. They were forced to find refuge where they could find it, forging alliances with villages of men and giving their skill in taming the seas bounty in return for shelter and marriages. Hybrids would swell their numbers in times to come, but always would the king and his children remember the screech of breaking stone and the glow of hundreds of malevolent eyes. For they had seen the sinking wreckage... and a city erased utterly from the world.

And they never forgave and they never forgot.

And that, my listeners, is where I come in...