No Cthulhu, Bokrug! Just as paralyzing, the terror!
Back in 1920 H.P. Lovecraft published a short story entitled "The Doom That Came to Sarnath." It was one of his "dream cycle" stories that preceded the "Cthulhu" ones.
The events take place, uh, 10,000 years or so ago.
Here's the basic idea: the city of Sarnath sits on the shore of an inland lake, the "still lake," HPL calls it, founded by settlers who had moved westward from a number of other olden realms with names like Kadatheron, Ilarnek, Thraa.
Also on the lake, however, is the ancient city called Ib, "peopled by beings not pleasing to behold," HPL also tells us. A legacy of a time when darker beings prowled the universe.
The men of Sarnath grow to despise these beings, and one day, they assemble their army, go to the city, and slaughter every one of them.
They commit genocide, in other words ... even if the beings "genocided" were not human.
They take the statue of the god these beings worshipped, named Bokrug, back to Sarnath and install it in their own High Temple.
But that very night, something terrible happens. In HPL's immortal words, "weird lights were seen over the lake, and in the morning the people found the idol gone and the high-priest Taran-Ish lying dead, as from some fear unspeakable. And before he died, Taran-Ish had scrawled upon the altar of chrysolite with coarse shaky strokes the sign of DOOM….”
So what happened? Surely there's a larger story here. What killed the High Priest. And how did DOOM finally befall Sarnath? HPL tells us it was destroyed in one terrible night following a massive celebration of the destruction of the city of Ib and its inhabitants.
This mini-novel retells the story, bringing Taran-Ish to life, along with a cast of other characters prominent in Sarnath as it was ... including Taran-Ish's partner, the wise and beautiful Bria-Kasha, who warns him and anyone else who will listen: leave these other beings alone! Not only have they not harmed us, we have no understanding of the forces we might unleash by harming them!
Her wise counsel falls on deaf ears. Taran-Ish urges the destruction of the other city, and pays the terrible price.
Not before feeling a lot of unease at the ghastly-appearing thing the warriors of Sarnath brought back and installed in the Temple.
Bria-Kasha cannot know the terrible things he'd been shown ... by the Old One himself, Bokrug ... awakened, and who (not altogether unexpectedly) did not take kindly to having his progeny wiped off the map.
Bria-Kasha survives the loss of her High Priest but cannot escape the sense of a terrible presence out there, emanating from the still lake, watching and waiting.
Can the school she founds offer some Sarnathians a form of redemption....?
Especially as Sarnathians have taken to holding an annual celebration of the mass slaughter, and Bria-Kasha finds herself in trouble with Sarnathian authorities for denouncing the new practice.
Some of these themes go beyond H.P. Lovecraft, who (so far as I know) never introduced a female character, not to mention a strong female character such as Bria-Kasha; nor does his universe leave us much in the way of a sense of right versus wrong, such that those who commit wicked acts pay for it ... even when payment is exacted by something worse!
