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Post by zarono on Feb 26, 2016 10:14:17 GMT -5
REH mentioned the iron bound books of Shuma Gorath in "The Curse of the Golden Skull" and said no more about it, so we have no idea where he might have gone with the concept and we've discussed in other threads how Marvel used the name for their lovecraftian monster-god in Dr. Strange comics. So how about we wildly speculate on some other explanations of who or what Shuma Gorath could have been in the Howard-verse? I'll throw this one out to start, Shuma Gorath is the monster from The Valley of the Worm. The worm/Shuma Gorath was intelligent and worshiped by some kind of hairy beastmen so perhaps these beastmen wrote the iron bound books of Shuma Gorath (just because they are hairy it doesn't mean they are stupid) under the direction of their monster-god as a sacred religious text. The city of the beastmen is ruined and appears to be deserted by the Thurian Age so some bold sorcerer slipped in and sought the iron bound books for their mystical knowledge, of course the worm and his hairy flutist companion are still there but maybe the sorcerer eluded them or maybe he just copied part of the contents of the books and ran for his life when night fell. Let's hear some more Shuma-Gorathic speculation  |
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Post by deuce on Feb 26, 2016 10:52:32 GMT -5
Well, we really don't know when the ruins in TVotW were abandoned. "Valley" takes place at the very tail-end of the Hyborian Age, after the Hyborian kingdoms have been cast down. The Hyrkanians have retreated to the East. The Picts and Nordheimr are wandering in the post-apocalyptic ruins. Everything points to the story being set in the "pre-Med Basin", the region which sank prior to the relatively recent inundation. REH talks about all that in "Brachan the Kelt". During the Hyborian Age (judging from clues in TVotW) those ruins(?) would've been somewhere in what is now the eastern Med, possibly in a desert region. During the Thurian Age, the site would be somewhere in the "principalities" south of Valusia or maybe Thurania. We know that there was enough known about the "lost folk" that the Picts were able to learn it. So, I have to wonder if those ruins weren't still inhabited through the Hyborian Age. All that said, I don't see anything that argues against "Shuma-Gorath" being a very capable sorcerer (or occult scholar) of the Thurian Age (or even the Lomarean Age). Probably equivalent to Skelos in the Hyborian Age. About the only place likely to house the complete "books of Shuma-Gorath" in the Hyborian Age would be Yahlgan in the East or Kheshatta in the South.  Robert E. Howard never named his fictional eldritch tomes after demons/Old Ones to my knowledge. Roy Thomas had Zukala (misused) summon Jaggta-Noga in CtB. Perhaps we need an entire thread devoted just to sorting out all the critters and things mentioned in TCotGS. Or maybe just address it in a general "Religions of the Thurian Age" thread. |
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Post by zarono on Feb 26, 2016 12:19:58 GMT -5
Well, we really don't know when the ruins in TVotW were abandoned. "Valley" takes place at the very tail-end of the Hyborian Age, after the Hyborian kingdoms have been cast down. The Hyrkanians have retreated to the East. The Picts and Nordheimr are wandering in the post-apocalyptic ruins. Everything points to the story being set in the "pre-Med Basin", the region which sank prior to the relatively recent inundation. REH talks about all that in "Brachan the Kelt". During the Hyborian Age (judging from clues in TVotW) those ruins(?) would've been somewhere in what is now the eastern Med, possibly in a desert region. During the Thurian Age, the site would be somewhere in the "principalities" south of Valusia or maybe Thurania. We know that there was enough known about the "lost folk" that the Picts were able to learn it. So, I have to wonder if those ruins weren't still inhabited through the Hyborian Age. All that said, I don't see anything that argues against "Shuma-Gorath" being a very capable sorcerer (or occult scholar) of the Thurian Age (or even the Lomarean Age). Probably equivalent to Skelos in the Hyborian Age. About the only place likely to house the complete "books of Shuma-Gorath" in the Hyborian Age would be Yahlgan in the East or Kheshatta in the South. Robert E. Howard never named his fictional eldritch tomes after demons/Old Ones to my knowledge. Roy Thomas had Zukala (misused) summon Jaggta-Noga in CtB. Perhaps we need an entire thread devoted just to sorting out all the critters and things mentioned in TCotGS. Or maybe just address it in a general "Religions of the Thurian Age" thread. May the Spear of Ventoosla poke you in the rear Deuce! Now I have to rework that carefully constructed hypothesis! I also goofed in thinking the builders of the city were hairy beastmen, the builders were semi-human things that created the hairy anthromorphic flute playing weirdo to serve their god. I'm still thinking the city had been abandoned a very long time by the Hyborian Age because the picts found out about the lost race in dreams sent by their dead kin after they got clobbered by the worm: "But the dead came to their shamans and old men in dreams and told them strange and terrible secrets. They spoke of an ancient, ancient race of semihuman beings which once inhabited that valley and reared those columns for their own weird inexplicable purposes. The white monster in the pits was their god, summoned up from the nighted abysses of mid-earth uncounted fathoms below the black mold, by sorcery unknown to the sons of men. The hairy anthropomorphic being was its servant, created to serve the god, a formless elemental spirit drawn up from below and cased in flesh, organic but beyond the understanding of humanity. The Old Ones had long vanished into the limbo from whence they crawled in the black dawn of the universe; but their bestial god and his inhuman slave lived on." |
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Post by elegos7 on Feb 27, 2016 0:13:06 GMT -5
All that said, I don't see anything that argues against "Shuma-Gorath" being a very capable sorcerer (or occult scholar) of the Thurian Age (or even the Lomarean Age). Probably equivalent to Skelos in the Hyborian Age. About the only place likely to house the complete "books of Shuma-Gorath" in the Hyborian Age would be Yahlgan in the East or Kheshatta in the South. Robert E. Howard never named his fictional eldritch tomes after demons/Old Ones to my knowledge. Roy Thomas had Zukala (misused) summon Jaggta-Noga in CtB. Perhaps we need an entire thread devoted just to sorting out all the critters and things mentioned in TCotGS. Or maybe just address it in a general "Religions of the Thurian Age" thread. Roy Thomas introduced "Shuma-Gorath" as a demon imprisoned eons ago by Crom under Mount of Crom in Cimmeria (in Conan the Barbarian 258). Here is a pic: comicvine.gamespot.com/forums/battles-7/shuma-gorath-conan-the-barbarian-vs-shuma-gorath-m-537690/ |
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Post by deuce on Feb 27, 2016 10:45:00 GMT -5
May the Spear of Ventoosla poke you in the rear Deuce! Now I have to rework that carefully constructed hypothesis! Just as long as I'm not smitten by the War Club of Mamajambo! (dC/Carter reference) I am willing to ponder exactly why Rotath felt it would be worthwhile to "swear" upon the books of Shuma-Gorath. Even if we say your hypothesis is largely correct, it doesn't explain why the books, as opposed to Shuma itself, were invoked. Of course, we have the case of the "votaries" of Vathelos the Blind and his "books". The simple answer (probably), in pragmatic terms, is that REH was throwing in that mention "just because", emulating HPL's use of the Necronomicon somewhat. However, that does nothing to solve the conundrum on a subcreational level. What sort of "power" was invested in those books? Or, was invoking their name simply formulaic in an occult sense? |
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Post by zarono on Feb 27, 2016 19:37:51 GMT -5
It is written in the scrolls of Nash'nal Lamphoon:
There is power in the words of Shuma Gorath and that power may be invoked by one who has read them and understood their meaning.
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Post by Char-Vell on Jul 24, 2017 12:29:18 GMT -5
I will now engage in some thread necromancy.
Shuma-Gorath was not a god or man, but an ancient mystic technique or discipline, sort of like an evil version of yoga.
"Rotath fancied himself a master of the art of Shuma-Gorath"
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Post by zarono on Oct 22, 2019 11:29:00 GMT -5
Shuma-Gorath may be a movie star soon; read some online rumors that Shuma may appear in "DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS". Just rumor but if it works out that would be a foothold for the REH-verse in the MCU, who knows what might turn up down the road.
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Post by Char-Vell on Oct 22, 2019 13:00:48 GMT -5
Shuma-Gorath may be a movie star soon; read some online rumors that Shuma may appear in "DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS". Just rumor but if it works out that would be a foothold for the REH-verse in the MCU, who knows what might turn up down the road. That would be cool.
Maybe a flashback with Conan whooping SG's ass back in the day.
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Post by zarono on Oct 22, 2019 13:29:03 GMT -5
Shuma-Gorath may be a movie star soon; read some online rumors that Shuma may appear in "DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS". Just rumor but if it works out that would be a foothold for the REH-verse in the MCU, who knows what might turn up down the road. That would be cool.
Maybe a flashback with Conan whooping SG's ass back in the day.
Definitely a good spot for a Conan cameo, if I were the writer I drop in a Valley of the Worm reference too especially since Marvel is bringing it into mainstream lore with the Serpent War comic. Further speculation: if my memory is right the first contact Dr.Strange had with Shuma-Gorath was around 1974 and the same story had another Old One type of entity called Kathulos, which is a name borrowed from REH's Skull-Face. Maybe Kathulos will get a reference in the movie too. |
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 22, 2019 13:39:49 GMT -5
That would be cool.
Maybe a flashback with Conan whooping SG's ass back in the day.
Definitely a good spot for a Conan cameo, if I were the writer I drop in a Valley of the Worm reference too especially since Marvel is bringing it into mainstream lore with the Serpent War comic. Further speculation: if my memory is right the first contact Dr.Strange had with Shuma-Gorath was around 1974 and the same story had another Old One type of entity called Kathulos, which is a name borrowed from REH's Skull-Face. Maybe Kathulos will get a reference in the movie too. Yep, in the Marvel Premiere run #3-10, started by Stan Lee and, hey guess who, BWS and ended by Steve Englehart and, well whadda ya know, Frank Brunner. Lotta Conan connections there! |
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Post by zarono on Oct 22, 2019 14:20:31 GMT -5
Definitely a good spot for a Conan cameo, if I were the writer I drop in a Valley of the Worm reference too especially since Marvel is bringing it into mainstream lore with the Serpent War comic. Further speculation: if my memory is right the first contact Dr.Strange had with Shuma-Gorath was around 1974 and the same story had another Old One type of entity called Kathulos, which is a name borrowed from REH's Skull-Face. Maybe Kathulos will get a reference in the movie too. Yep, in the Marvel Premiere run #3-10, started by Stan Lee and, hey guess who, BWS and ended by Steve Englehart and, well whadda ya know, Frank Brunner. Lotta Conan connections there! The stars are aligning |
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Post by themirrorthief on Oct 22, 2019 22:05:05 GMT -5
Shuma-Gorath is the name of some reefer I bought in Colorado recently...turned me into a beast man when I went to a cat house
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Post by Char-Vell on Oct 23, 2019 7:24:42 GMT -5
I like Deuce's idea about SG being a sorcerer from a bygone era. That stokes the pastiche idea furnace.
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Post by zarono on Oct 23, 2019 7:42:50 GMT -5
I like Deuce's idea about SG being a sorcerer from a bygone era. That stokes the pastiche idea furnace. Maybe he's an outer thing that took human form sort of like Khosatral Khel.  |
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