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Post by boot on Aug 6, 2019 19:10:26 GMT -5
Thoth Amon is considered the most powerful sorcerer during Conan's Hyborian Age.
Or...is he?
Is his standing due to how he's been built up in pastiche writings and comics?
In Howard's first published Conan story, The Phoenix on the Sword, Thoth Amon appears, but he's a slave. He says that he was once deemed the most powerful sorcerer in all of Stygia, yet, here he is, a slave.
Was his power only due to this ring? He said that a thief stole the ring, and with the ring gone, his sorcererous rivals rose up against him so that he had to flee Stygia. He disguised himself in a caravan that was raided, and he bargained for his life from the raiders by telling them who he really was.
The implication is, that without the ring, Thoth-Amon ain't much. Why can't he cast spells without the ring? Why isn't he still a formidable mage sans the, albeit powerful, magic item?
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Post by charleshelm on Aug 6, 2019 20:54:22 GMT -5
I get the feeling that he wasn't strong enough to go up against all his enemies without the ring, but not that he lacked power. He certainly felt invulnerable with the ring.
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Post by sorcerer on Aug 6, 2019 21:16:40 GMT -5
The implication is, that without the ring, Thoth-Amon ain't much. Why can't he cast spells without the ring? Why isn't he still a formidable mage sans the, albeit powerful, magic item?
The question of how magic "works" is handled differently by different fantasy authors (and game systems), but Robert Howard I think has done a truly excellent job here of pretending to answer the question by pushing it back one level into obscurity and exoticism. The people of Hyboria do not have magic inside of them, nor any potential for power. Arcane ability is thus derived through magical devices or by connecting to astral realms by dreaming under the influence of the black lotus.
How do the magical devices or chemicals in black lotus get their power, then? Howard doesn't tell us, and he shouldn't; once fully explained, magic usually becomes an embarrassment. (For example: midi-chlorians.)
On the other hand - and this is the really exciting part - people who have read Howard more broadly than I have may well make a fool of me for this post.
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Post by themirrorthief on Aug 12, 2019 23:21:45 GMT -5
we are all fools here, but we love this stuff anyhow
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Post by zarono on Aug 23, 2019 21:57:53 GMT -5
Thoth Amon is considered the most powerful sorcerer during Conan's Hyborian Age. Or...is he? Is his standing due to how he's been built up in pastiche writings and comics? In Howard's first published Conan story, The Phoenix on the Sword, Thoth Amon appears, but he's a slave. He says that he was once deemed the most powerful sorcerer in all of Stygia, yet, here he is, a slave. Was his power only due to this ring? He said that a thief stole the ring, and with the ring gone, his sorcererous rivals rose up against him so that he had to flee Stygia. He disguised himself in a caravan that was raided, and he bargained for his life from the raiders by telling them who he really was. The implication is, that without the ring, Thoth-Amon ain't much. Why can't he cast spells without the ring? Why isn't he still a formidable mage sans the, albeit powerful, magic item? I think Thoth-Amon is a very formidable sorcerer to begin with since he's mentioned in God in the Bowl and Hour of the Dragon but the ring is a tool that took him into a new level of power that was head and shoulders above his rivals. Thoth immediately summoned a powerful demon from another dimension when he got his ring back, maybe he could have done something similar without the ring with some complex magical ritual but using the ring he did it in minutes and on the spot. Thoth-Amon's ring also turns up in "The Haunter of the Ring" and it is said to have been handed down by cults of sorcerers since the days of Stygia so it must be an extremely powerful artifact to have been preserved for over 10,000 years (although the sorcerer in that tale only uses the demon in the ring to gain some limited mind control over a young lady to make her attempt to kill her husband , I guess he didn't have anywhere near Thoth's magical skill or he would have brought the demon into the physical world to do the dirty work instead). |
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Post by keith on Sept 25, 2019 8:55:05 GMT -5
I believe that ring had real moxie. It's always fascinated me. "The Haunter of the Ring" is a good story, and inspired me to do a post on it for "REH: Two Gun Raconteur." It's called, of course, "The Ring of … Set?" And a ring which is apparently the same one featured strongly in a novel about my Egyptian wizard Kamose, which dammit never did get published. Thoth-Amon was a great lurking background menace, but I always thought that Tsotha-lanti seemed more formidable and Tsotha-lanti's rival Pelias was cooler.
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Post by zarono on Sept 27, 2019 21:13:00 GMT -5
I believe that ring had real moxie. It's always fascinated me. "The Haunter of the Ring" is a good story, and inspired me to do a post on it for "REH: Two Gun Raconteur." It's called, of course, "The Ring of … Set?" And a ring which is apparently the same one featured strongly in a novel about my Egyptian wizard Kamose, which dammit never did get published. Thoth-Amon was a great lurking background menace, but I always thought that Tsotha-lanti seemed more formidable and Tsotha-lanti's rival Pelias was cooler. Agree with you on Tsotha-Lanti, he was pulling the strings on two powerful kings, kept his greatest rival wizard wrapped up in the tendrils of a soul sucking devil vine, and lived on top of a monster filled dungeon, on top of all that he was half demon. Not a guy to mess around with! |
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Post by darklordbob on Sept 28, 2019 7:55:19 GMT -5
And lest we forget he survived being decapitated by Conan. Last we saw of ol' Tsotha his headless body was angrily chasing after the eagle that flew off with his head (an eagle that laughed with Pelias' voice no less). I'm honestly surprised he hasn't shown up in any later pastiche stories.
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Post by keith on Oct 3, 2019 22:32:28 GMT -5
I believe that ring had real moxie. It's always fascinated me. "The Haunter of the Ring" is a good story, and inspired me to do a post on it for "REH: Two Gun Raconteur." It's called, of course, "The Ring of … Set?" And a ring which is apparently the same one featured strongly in a novel about my Egyptian wizard Kamose, which dammit never did get published. Thoth-Amon was a great lurking background menace, but I always thought that Tsotha-lanti seemed more formidable and Tsotha-lanti's rival Pelias was cooler. Agree with you on Tsotha-Lanti, he was pulling the strings on two powerful kings, kept his greatest rival wizard wrapped up in the tendrils of a soul sucking devil vine, and lived on top of a monster filled dungeon, on top of all that he was half demon. Not a guy to mess around with! Fully agree with all that. And the monster filled dungeon was strongly depicted, a chamber of horrors to give the reader real shudders, not just a compendium of clichés. Turning the good old "monster filled dungeon" into a hackneyed yawn was terribly easy to do, even back in the 1930s, when it hadn't been used quite so much. REH avoided the trap on his head. The eighty-foot serpent Satha is scary enough, and he's the least appalling of the things in that wizard's pit, seeming, as Conan himself thinks, "the mildest of them … when he remembered the weeping, tittering obscenity, and the dripping, mouthing thing that came out of the well."
Tsotha-lanti, unlike Pelias, had been fathered by something not human, and while the story doesn't specifiy just WHO that was, there's a very perceptive article that provides great speculation on the subject, by Deuce Richardson. It appeared in YAGKOOLAN! Number 11, of December 2014, if you can find it, but Deuce has had, I believe, some legal and/or technical difficulties with reprinting it. Pity. I consider it great and I read it again regularly.
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Post by zarono on Oct 4, 2019 8:03:41 GMT -5
Agree with you on Tsotha-Lanti, he was pulling the strings on two powerful kings, kept his greatest rival wizard wrapped up in the tendrils of a soul sucking devil vine, and lived on top of a monster filled dungeon, on top of all that he was half demon. Not a guy to mess around with! Fully agree with all that. And the monster filled dungeon was strongly depicted, a chamber of horrors to give the reader real shudders, not just a compendium of clichés. Turning the good old "monster filled dungeon" into a hackneyed yawn was terribly easy to do, even back in the 1930s, when it hadn't been used quite so much. REH avoided the trap on his head. The eighty-foot serpent Satha is scary enough, and he's the least appalling of the things in that wizard's pit, seeming, as Conan himself thinks, "the mildest of them … when he remembered the weeping, tittering obscenity, and the dripping, mouthing thing that came out of the well."
Tsotha-lanti, unlike Pelias, had been fathered by something not human, and while the story doesn't specifiy just WHO that was, there's a very perceptive article that provides great speculation on the subject, by Deuce Richardson. It appeared in YAGKOOLAN! Number 11, of December 2014, if you can find it, but Deuce has had, I believe, some legal and/or technical difficulties with reprinting it. Pity. I consider it great and I read it again regularly.
Deuce's article on the Tsathoggua/REH connection should be required reading for any delver into the deeper mysteries of the Hyborian Age. The pits under The Scarlet Citadel has always been one of my favorite parts of the entire Conan saga, one of the eldritch wonders of the Hyborian Age. To my mind a very important element of the story too, Pelias mentions that Tsotha descended into a well in those pits and "came out with a strange expression which has not since left his eyes" maybe that was where he learned exactly who his father was and his full potential, like Wilbur Whateley there is "much of the outside" in Tsotha. (I'm only speculating though, it may be that Tsotha just saw something that scared the crap out of even him  ) |
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Post by sorcerer on Oct 10, 2019 17:13:31 GMT -5
Deuce's article on the Tsathoggua/REH connection should be required reading for any delver into the deeper mysteries of the Hyborian Age. Do you have a link? I don't know if I read that yet. |
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Post by zarono on Oct 10, 2019 21:17:36 GMT -5
Deuce's article on the Tsathoggua/REH connection should be required reading for any delver into the deeper mysteries of the Hyborian Age. Do you have a link? I don't know if I read that yet. It's not online, maybe someday Deuce will post it in some form. Deuce, Keith Taylor, and many others who occasionally post on this forum have great insights into REH's fictional universe and you might enjoy browsing this archive version of the REH: Two-Gun Raconteur journal to read some of their scholarly work: web.archive.org/web/20170602112341/http://www.rehtwogunraconteur.com/ |
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Post by Char-Vell on Oct 11, 2019 7:06:26 GMT -5
The Scarlet Citadel is one I need to re read soon.
I can see the Frank Brunner art for the SSoC adaption in my mind's eye.
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