sststr

I have so many questions.... osier: a small Eurasian willow that grows mostly in wet habitats and is a major source of the long flexible shoots (withies) used in basketwork. withes: you see the definition above references withies, but the text I am reading from uses withes instead. Withes is a valid alternate spelling of the above word, and has at least two accepted pronunciations. I went with one that wasn't identical to the word 'with' as that might be confusing. anchorite: In Christianity, an anchorite is someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society to be able to lead an intensely prayer-orientated, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. They were required to take a vow of stability of place, opting for permanent enclosure in cells often attached to churches. Also unlike hermits, anchorites were subject to a religious rite of consecration that closely resembled the funeral rite, following which they would be considered dead to the world and a type of living saint. Anchorites had a certain autonomy, as they did not answer to any ecclesiastical authority other than the bishop. fillet: in this context, a band or ribbon worn around the head, especially for binding the hair. It is unclear to me how it should be pronounced with this usage, but as someone who has done a lot of fishing in my life time, I'd rather not pronounce it in the manner of fish meat when using the word in this other way... lamia: In this context, a type of phantom who seduces young men to satisfy their sexual appetite and feed on their flesh afterward. Yum! buskins: a calf-high or knee-high boot of cloth or leather eremetic: characterized by ascetic solitude cromlech: a megalithic construction made of large stone blocks. In this specific case, of the dolmen type, rather than the stone circle type. boscage: massed trees or shrubs; thicket purlieu: the area near or surrounding a place Avernus: a lake near Naples, Italy, looked upon in ancient times as an entrance to hell, from whose waters vile-smelling vapors arose, supposedly killing birds flying over it prosy: commonplace or dull gorge: throat (from which we get gorget) The picture used is of the dolmen du Mas de l'Artillou à Espédaillac (Lot, France), by PatPat46, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en). For some reason it kind of freaks me out that these sorts of megalithic structures still exist, in the numbers the do, in the state of preservation they are in. There's just something vaguely unsettling about it, given how densely populated most of western Europe is, and how valuable such large, quarried stone would have been, that they were left completely alone all this time, often 4 or 5 or more millenia. Good for archaeologists, I guess, but still creepy. It's not uncommon to see farms or other buildings built right nearby, but the stones have been left completely untouched. So it's not like people didn't know they were there, or were avoiding them, they just didn't see fit to reuse the stone for other purposes. Hmmm... To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/62/the-enchantress-of-sylaire More X2 fodder in this story - the PCs will need the Sword of Sylaire and will have to encounter the Enchantress and slay the werewolf to get it.

My heart is made a necromancer's glass, Where homeless forms and exile phantoms teem, Where faces of forgotten sorrows gleam And dead despairs archaic peer and pass: Grey longings of some weary heart that was Possess me, and the multiple, supreme, Unwildered hope and star-emblazoned dream Of questing armies. . . Ancient queen and lass, Risen vampire-like from out the wormy mould, Deep in the magic mirror of my heart Behold their perished beauty, and depart. And now, from black aphelions far and cold, Swimming in deathly light on charnel skies, The enormous ghosts of bygone worlds arise. ---- I'm unclear on the first line what "glass" is supposed to mean. There are many options: the thing you drink from, though that seems extremely unlikely; a mirror, which is certainly possible; an hourglass, but not here; binoculars or spy glass, but probably not; barometer, but that doesn't feel right here; vision correcting device, but definitely no. So I guess the most likely thing is a mirror. Unless... the object of the poem is, in fact, dead, and 'glass' here means gem or jewel to contain whatever spirit or essence the necromancer uses to reanimate the corpse. That's a nasty thought, but seems like it could be a possibility. aphelion: the point in an orbit which it is furthest from the sun The picture used is "necromancer" by Alissandra, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/362/necromancy

0:00:00 Chapter 1 - The Flight of the Necromancer 0:08:30 Chapter 2 - The Gathering of the Dead 0:20:17 Chapter 3 - The Testimony of the Monks 0:32:19 Chapter 4 - The Going-Forth of Gaspard du Nord 0:47:15 Chapter 5 - The Horror of Ylourgne 0:55:51 Chapter 6 - The Vaults of Ylourgne 1:13:09 Chapter 7 - The Coming of the Colossus 1:26:24 Chapter 8 - The Laying of the Colossus ---- More X2 material, defeating the colossus is a mandatory encounter to complete the module! Also the PCs will require Gaspard's mirror. The pictures used are Chapter 1: portrait of Nathaire Chapter 2: Château de Léotoing by Dominique Robert, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) Chapter 3: by Farnsworth Wright as an illustration for the original publication of the story Chapter 4: portrait of Gaspard du Nord Chapter 5: looking up from the bottom of an oubliette Chapter 6: a dungeon corridor Chapter 7: the Colossus of Ylourgne by Eugene Jaworski Chapter 8: the cover art from the D&D module X2 "Caslte Amber", by Erol Otus To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/27/the-colossus-of-ylourgne

0:00:00 Chapter 1 0:06:11 Chapter 2 0:21:16 Chapter 3 0:43:29 Chapter 4 0:52:15 Chapter 5 ---- So many names of devils and demons, and many of them are obscure enough to not have reliably documented pronunciations. Ugh. Well, at least not in English. Perhaps in Hebrew or some other particularly ancient language of the Jewish holy books there might be some help, but I just can't be bothered to research so many names that need to be spoken only once. Also we obviously get some Lovecraftian names, but with alternate spellings (such as Iog-Sotôt and Sodagui). But the names are being presented as they might appear in medieval French, so it shouldn't be surprising that the conventional spellings we are used to are not used here. My pronunciation of Azédarac is not perfectly consistent, but it is a particularly bizarre name of no obvious pronunciation to begin with. addlepated: confused umbrageous: affording shade; spotted with shadows innominable: incapable of being named Paynims: a pagan or heathen, especially a Muslim unctuous: excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily The Order of Saint Benedict was created in 529 in Italy, and made its way into southern Gaul by the end of the 6th century, and was the standard form of monastic life in most of western Europe by the 9th century Phlegeton: In Greek mythology, the river Phlegethon was one of the five rivers of the underworld. Plato describes it as "a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus". weft: a filling thread or yarn in weaving Interesting choice to use time travel to get rid of bothersome people instead of poison. You'd think poison would be easier and more reliable, although it does leave behind an incriminating corpse. But surely for a powerful sorcerer, bodies can be disposed of in some way that makes them difficult or impossible to be found or usefully examined. Although I love that Smith doesn't bother himself about time travel paradoxes. The characters just zoom around through time indiscriminately, no worries or bother about possible consequences! The pictures used are: chapter 1: "Head of a Bishop" by Gaetano Gandolfi. It's an Italian bishop, not a French one, but it'll have to do as a stand-in for Azédarac. It's surprisingly difficult (to me) to find pictures of French medieval bishops. At least using English language search engines. chapter 2: Photo forêt d'Orléans à Saran, Loiret, by Ryanblu. Let it stand in for the forest of Averoigne. While Ambrose is on the road between Ximes and Vyones, the two most important locales in Averoigne, a medieval road in a rural forest province would probably not be any much better than this. chapter 3: "Norma e Pollione" by Albert Bauer (1892). We'll have to imagine it being Moriamis calling off the druids to leave Ambrose alone. chapter 4: a tavern scene that is supposed to be a 15th century tavern in Flanders. Quite a bit off from 13th century France, but it's a lot closer than most of what I could find for medieval taverns or inns. Again, annoyingly difficult to find imagery of French medieval inns via English language search engines. chapter 5: AI art of a female druid in a blue dress. Technically Moriamis isn't a druid but a sorceress, but this image works well enough. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/91/the-holiness-of-az%C3%A9darac Now we finally get into some of the material you will find in the D&D Module X2. One of the things the characters will need to finish the module is a Potion of Time Travel, and they will have the chance to encounter any or all of Jehan or Azédarac or Moriamis to get it.

Obviously this isn't Averoigne specific, just a little bit of random prose poetry that could fit into a medieval theme. The picture used is "The Rift within the Lute" by Arthur Hughes To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/prose-poetry-plays/53/vignettes

0:00:00 Chapter 1 0:06:50 Chapter 2 0:17:07 Chapter 3 0:29:07 Chapter 4 ---- lineament: a distinctive feature or characteristic, especially of the face ferine: feral askance: with an attitude or look of suspicion or disapproval loups-garous: werewolves stryge: evil birds that feed on human flesh and blood. In D&D, you know these as stirges. Abaddon: a place of destruction; an underworld abode of lost souls; hell aspergillum: a brush or small perforated container with a handle that is used for sprinkling holy water in a liturgical service probity: the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency flambeau: flaming torch Amaimon: I couldn't find a consistent pronunciation on this name, so no idea what it is supposed to be. It's the 'mai', should it be 'my' or 'may'? Nobody seems to know. Oh well. catafalque: a decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state rapine: the violent seizure of someone's property mow: in this context, grimace mercer: a dealer in expensive fabrics lubricious: offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire verger: an official in a church who acts as a caretaker and attendant I love that Smith uses so many words related to evil: malignance, maelevolence, virulence, baleful, rancor, execrable. We don't use these words nearly enough any more. I guess everybody these days wants to attribute evil to a difficult upbringing, or social oppression, or alienation, or what not, and because these causes do not specifically seek to create evil outcomes, and because calling these causes as evil would require us to ask of ourselves some very uncomfortable and difficult questions, we no longer call the outcomes of these causes as evil, so the rich variety of words to describe evil has fallen away. But in medieval times, when you didn't have such psycho-social explanations, and heaven and hell were very real to you, good and evil were legit forces that could be used to explain things without any bother. The pictures used are: chapter 1: a gargoyle that strikes me as possibly akin to the murderous gargoyle of the story. Although I believe this one is actually to be found in London, so not French. chapter 2: a view of Carcassonne. It's a medieval French walled city in southern France. A fair bit further south than Averoigne should be, but I definitely didn't want to use a northern French city, so this is what we get. chapter 3: an illustration for the story from Weird Tales, Aug. 1932 chapter 4: Façade of the Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption de Clermont-Ferrand) in the town of Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, by Gnu thomas, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). I didn't want to go with the most famous of French cathedrals, like the Notre-Dame de Paris or Reims, they are so easily recognized and as such might take you out of the story. And I have no idea if French Cathedrals have any substantive stylistic architectural variation between northern and southern France, but just in case I looked for southern cathedrals both for being lesser known and, if relevant, more correct in style. Finding a real gothic looking one in Auvergne made for a no-brainer. You can't easily tell from a black-and-white photo, but this particular cathedral is made of black lava stone to boot! Look up some color pictures of it, it is incredible. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/121/the-maker-of-gargoyles

Lady, be the chatelaine Of my vagrant dreams and vain: Knowing naught is true and fair Save the love that is despair, In thy heart's withholden visne Share with me the might-have-been, Weave with me the sorcery Of the nevermore-to-be. Lady, let us pluck delight Only from a forfeit night, From the bedded myrtles strewn 'Neath a never-risen moon. From the coil of years made free In the climes of reverie, Flee we to the phantom Troy Of a time-forbidden joy. Lady, be the chatelaine Of my vagrant dreams and vain: Be thou true and be thou kind To the love we shall not find— Sweet as aught the sirens sang: Time shall bring no dearer pang Nor a mightier sorcery Than the nevermore-to-be. ---- chatelaine: a woman in charge of a large house visne: a neighboring or surrounding district; vicinity. As a legal term, it is a neighbourhood, or a jury selected from the neighbourhood, in which a disputed action or crime occurred. This is such an obscure word, I struggled mightily to find pronunciation help with it. In the end, I went with what Merriam-Webster indicated, as it fit as a rhyme, more or less, with 'been'. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/366/the-nevermore-to-be

obsequies: funeral rites bier: a stand on which a corpse or coffin is placed The picture used is of Conques-en-Rouergue in northern Aveyron, featuring the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy This town is entirely too tiny to match what is depicted in the story, in the past 150 years it was never much more than a thousand people, and it's not even half that today, but it is a foggy view of a medieval French Church (the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy, completed in the 11th century, after an 8th century oratory had been torn down to make room for the new building). Apparently this town is unusually well preserved in its medieval aspect. Seems like it would be quite amazing to visit. And if you were to record a walking tour of the city, it would give you a perfect representation of a small medieval town for the players in your medieval-themed RPG to feel fully immersed in the setting. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/155/a-night-in-maln%C3%A9ant If you do follow along, you will notice some variations, which I double-checked against the book I am reading and what I recorded is most definitely what is in my book, so I can only attribute it to different editions of the story, presumably for different releases over the years. The essence of the story is obviously the same, and while some of the differences are trivial, there are entire sentences added or removed. Just flavor text, but quite noticeable.

The structure of this poem is quite interesting, the stanzas having nine lines each, but the rhyming lines are 1-8-9, 2-7, 3-6, and 4-5. Anyways, welcome to medieval France! While Averoigne is purely fictional, if you were to try to place it on the actual map of France, it might roughly corresponds with the department of Auvergne, in the southern half of France. If you ever played D&D, and I mean going way back to the Moldvay basic and expert boxed sets of the early 1980s, you may recognize many of the names and places in this series from the module X2 Castle Amber (a.k.a. Château d'Amberville), as the module is explicitly based upon the Averoigne stories. (With plenty of other elements added in, like Poe and Zelazny, but that's beyond the scope of our current subject.) shoon: plural of shoe, in some dialect or another The picture used is the maps of Averoigne, both its location in France and the locales within the province which will appear in the stories to come. (Today France's administrative divisions are called departments, but prior to the Revolution of 1789, they were provinces.) To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/43/averoigne

Helmsdale is way at the far northern end of Scotland, in Sutherland county. But names like Malton Head and Marishes Ambo, although I can't find these places in the real world, there is a Malton town and a Marishes parish, but in North Yorkshire, so in England, not Scotland, much less the far north of Scotland. So who knows. Machen does tend to incorporate words from real place names into his fictional place names, after all, so presumably the places names are meant to be fictional, but still have a ring of authenticity. Unfortunately, I can't find anybody saying any of the words, so my pronunciations for places like Marishes Ambo or Malton Head may be wrong, compared to what a Scottish person, or a North Yorkshire person, might say. Use strange names with no pronunciation guide, get wrong pronunciations from people a hundred years later. That's how it goes. I can't find any Banwick though. Barwick, yes, but Banwick, no. "The Russians" and "The Angles of Mons" refer to other stories written by Machen, but which were reported in some news outlets as actual fact. "Gang oop to beasten and tell them sike a tale and they'll not believe it" - I have no idea what this is trying to say. If you are Scottish and can make something of it, please leave a comment below to help us out! Presumably along the lines of: Go up to (somewhere) and tell them such a tale..." Tom Smart: a character from Charles Dickens' "The Bagman's Story" For the younger audience who may not know the lesser details of the world wars, when he says it is for good reason there were no lights on in the town, that was a measure to protect against German u-boat attacks. Lights on in coastal towns at night made it easy for u-boat captains off the coast to see the silhouettes of ships plying the coast. Turning the lights off was a simple method to make the job of the u-boat commanders a bit more difficult. This was true in both world wars. Queen Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 to 1603. Childermas Day is Dec 28 (in the west, Dec 29 for eastern churches), also known as Holy Innocents' Day. A religious service and holiday commemorating the supposed Massacre of the Innocents in Judea around the time of the birth of Christ. Mattins: a service forming part of the traditional Divine Office of the Western Christian Church, originally said (or chanted) at or after midnight, but historically often held with lauds on the previous evening sacring: the act or action of consecrating glister: sparkle, glitter The picture used is "A view of Rievaulx Abbey from Rievaulx Terrace (NT)" by Wehha, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). Since I don't know where Banwick is supposed to be, other than probably not Sutherland county, Scotland, and given that some of the place names recall North Yorkshire, I decided to look up abbeys in North Yorkshire. There three notable ones (Rievaulx, Fountains, and Whitby), and this is the one I ended up going with. Any of them would have worked here, they are all quite amazing. They were all three seized by Henry VIII as part of his larger Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1541, and were all 300 to 400 years old by that time. That someone writing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth would have seen one of these monasteries before the dissolution and after is entirely plausible. I went with Rievaulx just because this picture shows some nearby buildings with the red tiled roofing that is mentioned in the story. There are some people and cars in the picture, which isn't optimal, but they are small and non-obvious so hopefully not distracting. To follow along: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607681h.html#11

It's finally gotten hot enough (in the 90s in Freedom units, or 32+ in Commie units) that my A/C can barely keep up. It's been running non-stop all day, and even though it is now well into the night time, and heavy overcast outside, and the temp outside is finally no higher than the temp the thermostat inside is set for, it still can't stop running. So I had to record with the A/C running, and use noise reduction to minimize it. There is still a slight hum in places, but there's nothing for it. I can't not run the A/C, I have 10 fish tanks and can't risk the temperature inside the house getting so high that the A/C can't get it back down, which would risk overheating the fish tanks and killing all the critters. So, this is what we get. And summer is just getting started... ugh. I will have an A/C guy come and check on it, probably a slow refrigerant leak somewhere, but it's a weekend and it's going to be Independence Day here shortly, so it may be a few days before I can get that done. Which means we are likely stuck for a little while with this noise reduction situation and the unnatural acoustic quality it lends to recordings. Those who have been with me long enough may recall some winter recordings where I had to do noise reduction due to unusually cold temperatures leading to non-stop furnace operation, so not the first time I've had to resort to this, but I sure don't like having to do it. Bleh. Anyways, annotations for the story: Holborn: a neighborhood in central London. The Church parish from which it derived is over a thousand years old, dating to 959. I'm glad I looked up the pronunciation before recording this. Why does the English speaking world not pronounce place names the way they are spelled? I know our language in general is littered with non-phonetic spellings, but it is especially awful with place names. And it's not just the UK where many place names were established prior to the Great Vowel Shift, it's a huge problem here in the US as well where no such disconnect exists. But especially in the UK: you cannot guess the pronunciation based on the spelling, all too often you will be wrong. Perhaps close, but wrong. plane tree: the platanus, of the family Platanaceae, these are common in London. Or at least were a hundred years ago, I have no idea about today. If you do, please leave a comment below! pastille ribbon: clearly this is (or was) some sort of tobacco product, but I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce "pastille". I don't know if this was even a historically real thing, or a made-up brand name, or what. The word 'pastille' does exist in its own right, meaning "1) a small candy or lozenge, or 2) a small pellet of aromatic paste burned as a perfume or deodorizer." I went with the pronunciation for that word, so if it's different in the context of this tobacco product, then oh well, I just don't know. The picture used is the Holborn Viaduct, circa 1900, from the Detroit Publishing Co., Catalogue J foreign section, Detroit, Mich. : Detroit Publishing Company, 1905. To follow along: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Ornaments_in_Jade/The_Holy_Things

The picture used is "Sonnenuntergang am Starnberger See" by Christian Thiergan, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). Surely the scene described in the story must be set in Wales, and Starnberger See is in southern Germany, but boy oh boy what a sunset in that picture! The story describes it like fire, and this does very much give that impression! To follow along: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Ornaments_in_Jade/Nature

Well, the title of this one will probably get it suppressed in the algorithm, but oh well, I didn't come up with it, and I'm not going to change it. And if the title doesn't bury it in the algorithm, the theme of the story probably will. This is a very British-centric story. Pudding for dinner isn't the kind of pudding us Americans think of, it would traditionally be a boiled savory thing. Haggis and black pudding (blood sausage) are good examples. And then there's the reference to cricket; and the "form master", where a "form", in the British schooling context, is an educational stage or class. So very British! The picture used is "A country lane, Hartley Green" by Stephen Pearce, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). For our British listeners, extra detail on this picture: This country lane leads to Gayton. The lane is circular so whichever direction you travel you will still arrive at Gayton, a small village near to Weston, Staffordshire. I thought it looked very English anyways. To follow along: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Ornaments_in_Jade/Torture

The picture used is "Water in English Gardens (33 of 33) | Lily Pond with Roses, Batemans Gardens, East Sussex, UK." by ukgardenphotos used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/). To follow along: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Ornaments_in_Jade/The_Rose_Garden

This is listed as a prose poem. Could be. Regardless, I rather like it. Hopefully you do too! refluence: ebbing, flowing back The picture used is "Throne room" by Vajrasimha, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/prose-poetry-plays/44/the-shadows

Sung dynasty: in Chinese history you have the Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279) dynasties, which can be romanized to Sung instead of Song, most notably in the older Wade-Giles style that was in widespread use in the 19th century. There's also a Liu Song dynasty (420-479 AD). There is, however, no dynasty referred to in an unqualified manner as Song or Sung. Now as it so happens, I have had reason to learn the basics of Mandarin Chinese in my life, so my pronunciations should be tolerably close. However, the text provides no explicit intonations, and my skill at Chinese is not good enough to know what they should be, and I'm not going to go looking it up since it isn't likely to be obvious when it comes to people's names in any event. Regardless, I was never very good with the intonations and even if I knew which ones to use, I probably wouldn't do a good job with them anyways :-P Shou Shan, the Taoist Paradise: I'm a bit confused on this, as Kunlun is the Taoist mountain paradise (Shan = mountain). I can't find any reliable reference on what Shou Shan is. As it happens, Shou in Wade-Giles is also Shou in Hanyu, so it's not a difference in the romanization. So I have no idea. If you know Taoist lore better than I, please leave a comment below regarding Shou Shan! morbidezza: an extreme delicacy and softness; a sensual delicacy of flesh-coloring in painting mere: lake or pond Mandarin: in this context, an official in any of the nine top grades of the former imperial Chinese civil service The picture used is a Chinese painting that has willow trees, a lake or pond, a bridge, and a building. No woman on the bridge, no misty mountains in the distance, so we'll just have to fancy this is a detailed zoom-in of a portion of a larger canvas. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/246/the-willow-landscape From everything I have come to know of Chinese culture and traditions and history, this story does feel quite authentic. There's nothing in it that stands out to me as noticeably wrong or bad or improbable. Good job, Mr. Smith, good job. Well, if I really wanted to be super picky, I never saw or heard of a bamboo bridge, or a bridge of anything other than stone or metal. A bamboo bridge would surely just be temporary while a more permanent bridge was being built near by? So there's that. But that's a level of nitpick of a detail that is not even slightly important to the story.

Who has seen the towers of Amithaine Swan-throated rising from the main Whose tides to some remoter moon Flow in a fadeless afternoon?... Who has seen the towers of Amithaine Shall sleep, and dream of them again. On falcon banners never furled, Beyond the marches of the world, They blazon forth the heraldries Of dream-established sovereignties Whose princes wage immortal wars For beauty with the bale-red stars. Amid the courts of Amithaine The broken iris rears again Restored from gardens youth has known; And strains from ruinous viols flown The legends tell in Amithaine Of her that is its chatelaine. Dreamer, beware! in her wild eyes Full many a sunken sunset lies, And gazing, you shall find perchance The fallen kingdoms of romance, And past the bourns of north and south Follow the roses of her mouth. For trumpets blare in Amithaine For paladins that once again Ride forth to ghostly, glamorous wars Against the doom-preparing stars. Dreamer, awake!... but I remain To ride with them in Amithaine. ---- Stars and wars? Seriously, Mr. Smith? I can make 'again' rhyme with 'Amithaine' (using Shakespearean pronunciation for 'again'), but I have no idea what inspired the 'stars' and 'wars' pairing. *boggle* Indeed, it is because of the strange (to modern ears) pronunciation of 'again' (but normal to Shakespearen ears!) that I settled on what should be the pronunciation of 'Amithaine'. The -thaine part I have high confidence I went with the correct pronunciation, although the Ami- part is only maybe 50%. chatelaine: I'm going to go with the definition of 'a woman in charge of a large house' The picture used is "Husaria's attack" by Aleksander Orłowski. I had been hoping to find a picture of armored knights marching forth from a medieval castle, but no such luck. But hey, Polish hussars!! If you have never heard the song "Winged Hussars" by Sabaton, go look it up immediately! If Hollywood could ever make a completely historically accurate movie of the 1683 Siege of Vienna without adding any random nonsense, it would easily be one of the most intense and exciting movies ever made. And the costumes and weapons and the castle and landscape, the opportunities for cinematography and choreography, it could be so mind-blowingly amazing. Hollywood today won't do it, of course, because Muslims are the aggressors in this story, and Hollywood can't bring themselves to have such a plot element in current year. There would be no need to turn the Ottoman's into cartoon villains, they can be presented fairly and respectfully, but Hollywood just won't allow Muslims to ever be a bad guy at this point in time. And yes, I am aware Renzo Martinelli made a movie about the siege, and it does some things very well, but does other things rather poorly. It's quite the mixed bag. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/19/amithaine

Lob-nor: now known as Lop Nor, a salt lake in the eastern edge of the Tarim Basin, in present-day Xinjiang, China Tarim River: the principal river of the Tarim Basin Khotan: Today known as Hotan, it is a major oasis town in the Tarmin Basin in southwestern Xinjiang Turkestan: a region in Xinjiang today knows as Transoxiana. To the Persians this region was known as Turan. Eastern Turkestan specifically fell under Chinese dominion in the 5th century AD, but went back and forth between various rulers, the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Mongols, and eventually back to China. Tchertchen: A river today referred to as the Qiemo or Qarqan River, it runs through the Tarim Basin and feeds the marshes of Lob-nor The author appears to have intimately studied an atlas before writing this story! Good! Even the mention of the Bactrian camel is appropriate for this locale! 20 feet = 6 meters 6 inches = 15.25 cm ostent: appearance, manifestation. It appears there are two valid pronunciations for this word. viscid: sticky crystalline apparently has multiple accepted pronunciations. It's the -line part that varies quite a bit. importunate: persistent, especially to the point of annoyance or intrusion commination: the act or an instance of threatening punishment or vengeance (Apparently in the Church of England this is also a recital of prayers, including a list of God's judgments against sinners, in the office for Ash Wednesday?) To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/107/the-invisible-city On the one hand, the plot was definitely too hurried to make much sense, who spills the beans on your most secret vulnerabilities to a complete stranger right off the bat? On the other hand, the story is already fairly long and to make it work more naturally would require a great deal more story which was no doubt deemed undesirable given the current length. Such is the hazard of short-story writing.

It's not obvious if the opening of this story is set in the US or UK, but in the US there are many, many towns around the country named Auburn. There's at least one Auburn in England as well, in East Riding of Yorkshire. But probably set in the USA. We do love our circuses! Especially a hundred years ago, they were prime entertainment. acromegaly: a disorder where your body makes too much growth hormone. In adults, too much of this hormone causes bones, cartilage, body organs, and other tissues to increase in size. allopathy: the treatment of disease by conventional means (in contrast to homeopathy) Banda Sea: east of Sulawesi (part of present-day Indonesia) and west of New Guinea proa: a type of boat, although the way westerners used the word during the colonial era is highly inconsistent and it could be describing any of a variety of different types of boats built by Austronesian peoples. Regardless, it's some type of boat or another native to the peoples of the Banda Sea region, and that's good enough for our purposes here. Salawatti: an island part of present-day Indonesia, but is located just off the coast of northwest New Guinea Arfak Mountains: These are on the Bird's Head Peninsula in what is today the West Papua province of Indonesia. This would be on the island of New Guinea proper, in the northwest extreme of the island, directly across from Salawatti. Andai: Today this word refers to a language spoken by a handful of people in eastern Papua-New Guinea. The way it is used here sounds like the name of a port town. Although one of the results returned by google is for a picture of a village named Andai taken in 1879, but it is possible the European explorer who took the picture conflated the name of the people with the name of the village, as there is exactly one, and only one, result suggesting it as a village name. Arrak: Like Andai, this doesn't come back with anything relevant from google. The use makes it sound like possibly a province name? Or some other geographic indicator. insuperable: impossible to overcome dammar: this is a type of resin, which in the case of being on New Guinea, must be from trees of the dipterocarpoideae family, although typically they are found in the lowland areas. Dammar resin has many uses, from making turpentine and paints, paraffin wax and caulk, and various medicines. A useful product, making the cultivation of forests of these trees pretty reasonable. sybaritic: voluptuary, sensual sago: a starch extracted from the pith, or spongy core tissue, of various tropical palm stems, especially those of Metroxylon sagu. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands. oklah: as best I can tell, this isn't a real animal? If you know your New Guinea fauna lore and can speak definitively to it, please leave a comment below! Anakim: a race of giants mentioned in the Bible as the descendents of Anak. thew: muscles and tendons perceived as generating physical strength The picture used is the Arfak Mountain Range, located throughout the eastern part of West Papua, by David Worabay, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/185/the-root-of-ampoi

In one of these (islands) the barbarians feign that Saturn is held prisoner by Zeus. -Plutarch ---- Clio and Euterpe are Muses. Clio is the muse of history (or lyre playing, depending on who you ask), and Euterpe is the muse of music (or lyric poetry) sempiternal: eternal xanthic: yellowish spindrift: sea spray, especially spray blown from waves during a gale croft: an enclosed field used for tillage or pasture, typically attached to a house and worked by the occupier. (Historically, it would be a small rented farm, especially one in Scotland, comprising a plot of arable land attached to a house and with a right of pasturage held in common with other such farms.) calamus: also called sweet flag, sway or muskrat root, myrtle root, sweet myrtle, among many common names, is a species of flowering plant with psychoactive chemicals, that grows on the edges of waterways, bodies of water, and wetlands plait: to braid hair The picture used is "Zeus punishment" by JuanSan, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/574/the-isle-of-saturn

So this story deals with an American of either late 19th or early 20th century adventuring in Africa. The language and attitudes will reflect the time period. Please don't complain to me about it, this is Smith's work, not mine. Given the length of the story, and for some reason my throat was already failing me before I even started recording this, I ended up have to record it across multiple days. So if there comes a point or two where there seems to be a noticeable change in voice quality or acoustics or what not, that's probably the cutover from one day's recording to the next. The Benuwe River (now spelled as Benue) runs through Cameroon (where it originates in the Adamawa Plateau) and Nigeria, being a tributary of the Niger River. It means 'Mother of Waters’ in the Batta language. The Adamawa Region is in Cameroon. This is consistent with German administration, as the Germans controlled Cameroon from 1884 until 1919. There is no acknowledgement of a war going on, so we can further narrow the time frame of this story down to some time between 1884 through 1913. German administration of the colony was considered harsh even by other European colonial powers of the day. Russian Hill is a neighborhood in San Francisco named after one of the original Seven Hills of the city. Given the time frame of the story, it is probable that the large house on Russian Hill occupied by Marsden would be one of the three notable mansions built in the 1850s on Vallejo Street Crest. sallow: (of a person's face or complexion) of an unhealthy yellow or pale brown color hoary: grayish white pharmacopoeia: either a book containing a list of medicinal drugs with their effects and directions for their use, or a stock of medicinal drugs. Both definitions make sense here. rictus: a fixed grimace or grin tetanic: relating to or characteristic of tetanus, especially in connection with tonic muscle spasm antipodean: relating to Australia or New Zealand. The pronunciation of this really caught me off-guard. It's obviously derived from antipode, but doesn't get pronounced like antipode! 9000 feet = 2743 meters durra: a variety of sorghum grown in Africa and India baobab: it appears there are two accepted pronunciations for the name of this tree. If you don't like mine, oh well, it's valid even so. Azombeii: as best I can tell, this is a fictional place name intaglio: a design incised or engraved into a material Foulah (now spelled Fula) is a widespread ethnic group in many countries, and they are fairly numerous in Cameroon (only Guinea, Senegal, and Nigeria have larger Fula populations). fecundation: to make fecund (i.e. fruitful in offspring) "Sudan" in this case is not referring to the countries south of Egypt, but to the Romans would have meant a geographic region south of the Sahara, stretching from Western Africa to Central and Eastern Africa (much of which is peopled by the Fula), which they would have said to be full of "Ethiopians", by which they would have meant black-skinned people, not people from the country of Ethiopia. It is confusing that the ancients used many words relating to Africa which we today use the same words but to mean very different things. (Another one would be 'Libya'.) vocable: a word, especially with reference to form rather than meaning. papaya is native to the Americas, but it was brought to the Old World in the 16th century and spread to pretty much everywhere shortly after that, so it should be ok for them to serve it here. turgid: in this context: tediously pompous or bombastic Elephantis: A 1st century BC Greek poet, author of a notorious sex manual. Why the author then uses the reflexive pronoun "itself" to describe him is odd, unless he is referring to the sex manual? inenarrable: incapable of being narrated; indescribable propitious: favorable invultuation: the use of or the act of making images of people, animals, etc., for witchcraft sedulous: showing dedication and diligence calabash: bottle gourd, so called because of its bottle shape, and when hollowed out and dried was frequently used to store liquids or other things. vituperation: bitter and abusive language lethiferous: lethal The picture used is a photograph of a village in Cameroon taken in 1904 To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/232/the-venus-of-azombeii Some of the names I did not pronounce with great consistency. If you've followed by channel for any amount of time, by this point you know very well my feelings about authors using names with no obvious pronunciations and then provide no pronunciation guides in the text... Oh, and my voice has gotten better. This recording ending up being stretched over three days, when originally, realizing how bad my voice was and that a single session wasn't going to be possible, I had hoped to do it in two, but taking the extra day on it I think really helped the voice quite a bit.

Dive Bouteille: the world's largest annual wine expo in France. But in this story he starts out in New York, so it's not that. Probably just your every day bar crawl. Well, hopefully you don't do it every day, if so then get help! Thomas Bulfinch: American author of the mid-19th century, best known for "Bulfinch's Mythology" Euripides was a Greek tragedian of the 5th century BC For those of us who grew up with D&D and didn't have a good prior knowledge of Greek mythology, the equivalence of Medusa and Gorgon may seem strange, but Medusa and her sisters were indeed called Gorgons by the Greeks. It may also be odd to think of Pegasus as a given name for a winged horse, and not as a generic name for all winged horses, but in the mythology it is indeed the proper name for one specific individual winged horse. vinous: resembling or associated with wine Captain James Cook undertook his first Pacific exploration in 1768 anthropophagi: cannibals Polynesia languages are not so much many-vowelled as they are consonant poor. Hawaiian, for example, has all 5 vowels, but only 8 consonants. When you have fewer letters, each of the letters has to do more work, including the vowels. I've actually eaten breadfruit! More than 20 years ago I took a vacation to Guam and picked up a cookbook that included breadfruit recipes. Then 10 or 12 years ago a nearby farmer's market happened to get in a load of breadfruit, for some reason. I bought up a bunch as I knew it was going to be the one and only chance I would ever get to give those breadfruit recipes a try. I was not impressed. I'm a decent enough cook, but breadfruit is just not a particularly good food item. It's rather a survival item. On many a Japanese-occupied Pacific Island in WW2 it was eaten by the natives when there was nothing else left to eat, and it kept them alive, but that's about it. Pandanus trees are found from Madagascar to Hawaii to New Zealand. But are most common in Polynesia and Micronesia. Breadfruit is native to New Guinea, the Philippines, and the Moluccas, although it was spread by the various peoples who populated all the other Pacific Islands over the centuries, so can be found pretty much everywhere in the Pacific. As to Chinese exploration of the Pacific, there was a guy in the 3rd century BC who made two expeditions into the Pacific, of which only one we have any record of, as he never returned from the second. China's actual big push into the Pacific was by Zheng He in the first half of the 15th century. But He didn't go very far eastward, hitting the Philippines, down to Borneo, Sumatra, and Java, but that's about it. To the extent the Chinese explored the Pacific, it was south and west, for the trade with India and the Middle East. Cannibalism among Pacific islanders was reportedly widespread according to early European explorers. So between the known extent of Chinese activity in the Pacific, and the range of Pandanus and Breadfruit, cannibalism not being much of a limiting factor, we are left with a likely location somewhere in the Philippines or Indonesia. Tons of tiny islands throughout both countries that could fit the bill. We do have the problem that guava is native to the Americas and would not be grown on Pacific Islands until after the Europeans came along, so that doesn't fit. We'll chalk that up to the author not having done his homework. Taro and pigs are fine, they appear pretty much everywhere from the earliest times, and of course coconuts are no issue either. As to time frame, we are likely looking at something from the mid-15th century up to the mid-18th century. That's a 300 year window, but it's something. The picture used is "Cannibal feast on the Island of Tanna, New Hebrides" by Charles E. Gordon Frazer To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/206/symposium-of-the-gorgon Oh look, I found a map of the extent of cannibalism in the 19th century! Let's see how I did... in the South Pacific we find the regular practice of cannibalism to be mostly in and around New Guinea and Australia and surrounding islands. It occurs on a limited basis pretty much everywhere in the Pacific, but the ones named are where it was most common. Well, that would suggest the story takes place a good bit further east of where I would have placed it, east of New Guinea even, maybe the Solomons or the Bismarck archipelago. Seems unlikely any early Chinese sailors would have wound up there, storm-blown or not. The more likely explanation is that he wound up someplace in Indonesia where it was an infrequent and ritualistic practice. They did, after all, bother to fatten him up first, with no hints that they were eating anybody else in the meantime, so that sounds like a more ritualistic practice and not so much everyday cannibalism, so it can still work with the data point I now have.

From here on out, the rest of the stories under the tag of Poseidonis are actually a collection of miscellaneous one-offs of lost lands and lost races in a broadly similar vein as Atlantis or Lemuria or Mu. Cocaigne is a land of plenty in medieval myth, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life does not exist. No relationship to the drug cocaine, despite the similarity of pronunciation. Cocaigne is from the French, cocaine is from the Quechua word 'kúka'. Not even remotely related language families. The picture used is "Das Schlaraffenland" (1567) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/prose-poetry-plays/24/in-cocaigne

This story is a one-off in the city of Ptolemides, which is a city that does not appear in any other of Smith's writing. it was written as a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. And again we run into the ambiguity of name pronunciation. Tomeron? Tom-er-on? Tome-ron? To-mer-on? How do we even syllabify it, much less know whether the vowels are long or short? The author left us no clues, so it is impossible to guess. This is driving me crazy!! I didn't even pronounce it consistently during the course of this reading, not because I wasn't trying, but because the name is so completely indeterminate in its pronunciation, and you get to a point where you just can't be bothered any more. If authors want their names to be narrated correctly, they need to put in a hint somewhere in their text as to what is the intended pronunciation. recondite: little known; abstruse lacuna: unfilled space or interval; a gap denouement: the climax of a chain of events, usually when something is decided or made clear adit: a horizontal passage leading into a mine for the purposes of access or drainage. adipocere: a grayish waxy substance formed by the decomposition of soft tissue in dead bodies subjected to moisture Apparently niche has multiple accepted pronunciations. Interesting. I recall many years ago a cow-orker who was really big into French corrected my pronunciation on this word, apparently insisting on the French pronunciation instead of whatever I used. According to Merriam-Webster, the French pronunciation in English usage is quite recent (they didn't include it in their own dictionary until the 1960s and which was still controversial even at the start of the 21st century, although is apparently widely accepted today). I use here the older, non-French, pronunciation. It's still considered valid. Deal with it :P The picture used is Die katakomben von San Gennaro dei Poveri in Neapel - eine kunsthistorische Studie (1877) It's two guys in an ancient crypt. It'll have to do. I did have some other ideas on types of images to search for that would have been appropriate, but couldn't find anything I liked. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/65/the-epiphany-of-death

This concludes the Lemuria cycle. Yes, unfortunately it was short, with a corresponding dearth of world-building, so we don't have all that much of an idea what to make of Lemuria. A few bits, but not much. ---- From dawn to dawn your eyes of graven spar For ever change, with chill, forgotten runes: But all the while your spirit lies afar, A sphinx that peers on prediluvian moons. ---- Normally I'd put a day's break after the conclusion of a series and the start of the next, but this was a rather short series and this poem is extremely short, so this will serve the purpose of a break before moving on to the next thing tomorrow. Among certain Tamils, Lemuria is known as Kumari Kandam. They have their own beliefs about this lost continent very different from the Europeans. Europeans proposed the idea of this continent solely to explain why Lemurs exist in both Madagascar and India, but not Africa or the Middle East. For the Tamils, Kumari Kandam was home to the Tamil forefathers. To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/293/lemurienne