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Post by boot on Jul 9, 2022 15:50:25 GMT -5
I find the ghoul that Conan runs into in The Hour of the Dragon to be vague. It's easy to think of a standard D&D type of ghoul, but maybe this is something different. Do you read it as something undead?
Or, do you think the name "ghoul" is attached to a living, breathing human--maybe a cannibalistic pre-human--member of savages who have a community in the forest between Argos and Zingara?
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Post by robp on Jul 10, 2022 3:23:22 GMT -5
To me they feel more in line with Lovecraft's ghouls, such as in Pickman's Model and the Dreamlands stories
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Post by zarono on Jul 10, 2022 8:42:57 GMT -5
To me they feel more in line with Lovecraft's ghouls, such as in Pickman's Model and the Dreamlands stories Same here, I think they are pretty much Lovecraft inspired ghouls. REH's says they are the unholy mating of a forgotten race of humans and underworld demons, so they are powerful hybrid creatures not quite human with bestial features like canine jaws and claws but fully material and vulnerable to normal materials. I don't remember REH mentioning anything about them being hairy just clammy corpse like skin so again leaning more to the Lovecraftian ghoul than something ape like, Conan also fights an ape creature earlier in the story so I think the ghouls would be something very different. REH also mentions they dwell in the tombs of a ruined and accursed city in the region, would be nice place to have an old fashioned dungeon crawl. Nice article about HPL's ghouls on ERBzine if anyone wants to dig in more on the subject: www.erbzine.com/mag17/1787.html |
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Post by mingerganthecat on Jul 10, 2022 8:45:56 GMT -5
To me they feel more in line with Lovecraft's ghouls, such as in Pickman's Model and the Dreamlands stories That's what I was thinking. Vicious and at least semi-intelligent, but ultimately mundane. |
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Post by boot on Jul 11, 2022 7:57:02 GMT -5
Do you think they breed like most animals, have young, and raise them?
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Post by mingerganthecat on Jul 11, 2022 16:38:51 GMT -5
That seems likely, yes. Lovecraft's ghouls occasionally did the changeling thing, but I think that's more of a cultural than biological imperative.
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Post by mingerganthecat on Jul 11, 2022 16:57:17 GMT -5
I wonder if there's any overlay between the ghouls encountered by Conan of Cimmeria, and the reptilian monsters from the Bran Mak Morn stories. In those, the Worms of the Earth and the Children of the Night were both formerly-human tribes driven underground by the invading Aryans, which caused them to evolve into their current state.
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Post by zarono on Jul 11, 2022 18:10:52 GMT -5
Do you think they breed like most animals, have young, and raise them? REH doesn't give any details on his version of the ghouls other than they are human/demon hybrids who dwell in the tombs under a ruined city. If you were expanding on the idea for a story or game you could have them breeding among themselves and/or carrying off humans to mate with them (as in Worms of the Earth/Children of the Night) perhaps the underworld demons they originally mated with were full ghouls (the Lovecraft type with the hooves). In HPL's version humans can become ghouls but I don't think that fits REH's version as he states they are the offspring of humans and demons and not humans who degenerated into ghouls. |
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Post by boot on Jul 11, 2022 20:24:22 GMT -5
What got me wondering about them is that they're so "common" in the story. I get the feeling that everybody knows about them. People don't enter the woods because they know the wood is infested with ghouls. Zingara and Argos fight their battles at sea in order to avoid troops in those woods.
This whole ghouls-in-the-open thing seems so different from the way the rest of the Hyborian Age is presented, where most people never see anything like that. Their monsters are men--raiders and bandits and such. It is only in the forgotten cracks of the world where forgotten species and un-holy things scamper around in the darkness.
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Post by zarono on Jul 11, 2022 21:37:42 GMT -5
Depends on how you look at it I guess, the knowledge of the ghouls might be common because they've done a lot of horrible deeds.
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Post by robp on Jul 12, 2022 7:04:42 GMT -5
I wonder if there's any overlay between the ghouls encountered by Conan of Cimmeria, and the reptilian monsters from the Bran Mak Morn stories. In those, the Worms of the Earth and the Children of the Night were both formerly-human tribes driven underground by the invading Aryans, which caused them to evolve into their current state. I don't know. Though I think the WOTE were more reptilian, as you say, where ghouls always seem canine. Having said that, there seems to be no "origin story" in HPL or REH about ghouls, maybe they even came from Dreamlands? |
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Post by Char-Vell on Jul 12, 2022 7:39:51 GMT -5
Do you think they breed like most animals, have young, and raise them? Such questions are best left uncontemplated. |
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Post by Char-Vell on Jul 12, 2022 11:57:01 GMT -5
I always assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the ghouls were degraded humans. perhaps a re-read is in order.
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Post by boot on Jul 12, 2022 12:49:10 GMT -5
Here's the passage...
Conan lay and stared, half expecting it to vanish like a figure of a dream, and then a chill of recollection crept along his spine. Half-forgotten memories surged back, of grisly tales whispered of the shapes that haunted these uninhabited forests at the foot of the hills that mark the Zingaran-Argossean border. Ghouls, men called them, eaters of human flesh, spawn of darkness, children of unholy matings of a lost and forgotten race with the demons of the underworld. Somewhere in these primitive forests were the ruins of an ancient, accursed city, men whispered, and among its tombs slunk gray, anthropomorphic shadows—Conan shuddered strongly.
He lay staring at the malformed head that rose dimly above him, and cautiously he extended a hand toward the sword at his hip. With a horrible cry that the man involuntarily echoed, the monster was at his throat.
Conan threw up his right arm, and the dog-like jaws closed on it, driving the mail links into the hard flesh. The misshapen yet man-like hands clutched for his throat, but he evaded them with a heave and roll of his whole body, at the same time drawing his dagger with his left hand.
They tumbled over and over on the grass, smiting and tearing. The muscles coiling under that gray corpse-like skin were stringy and hard as steel wires, exceeding the strength of a man. But Conan's thews were iron too, and his mail saved him from the gnashing fangs and ripping claws long enough for him to drive home his dagger, again and again and again. The horrible vitality of the semi-human monstrosity seemed inexhaustible, and the king's skin crawled at the feel of that slick, clammy flesh. He put all his loathing and savage revulsion behind the plunging blade, and suddenly the monster heaved up convulsively beneath him as the point found its grisly heart, and then lay still.
And a little more a few paragraphs further...
With a curse the king hewed right and left with his broadsword, thrust and ripped with his dagger. Dripping fangs flashed in the moonlight, foul paws caught at him, but he hacked his way through to the stallion, caught the rein, leaped into the saddle. His sword rose and fell, a frosty arc in the moonlight, showering blood as it split misshapen heads, clove shambling bodies. The stallion reared, biting and kicking. They burst through and thundered down the road. On either hand, for a short space, flitted gray abhorrent shadows. Then these fell behind, and Conan, topping a wooded crest, saw a vast expanse of bare slopes sweeping up and away before him.
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Post by boot on Jul 12, 2022 13:07:03 GMT -5
Ghouls, men called them, eaters of human flesh, spawn of darkness, children of unholy matings of a lost and forgotten race with the demons of the underworld. Somewhere in these primitive forests were the ruins of an ancient, accursed city, men whispered, and among its tombs slunk gray, anthropomorphic shadows—Conan shuddered strongly. It's hard to tell if Conan is recollecting fact or all the ramblings of what men say to each other over a pint. Malformed head. Conan calls him a "man" and a "monster" in the same thought. Dog-like jaws. Misshapen, man-like hands. Gray, corpse-like skin that is slick and clammy (supposedly from sweat). Long fangs and claws. Semi-human. They way Conan kills him--he doesn't seem to be undead at all. Conan plunges his blade through the ghoul's chest, into its heart. Based on this, I think the ghouls are beasts--living things, but not unnatural walking dead. They could be something changed by sorcery. They could be degenerated humans from the cataclysm. Someone up thread said that it is probably best that we don't know--and, the more I think about that, the more "correct" that seems. Conan doesn't know. He only knows what he's heard. What they really are is a mystery if one doesn't believe what men say. I think it is clear, at least it is for me, that these "Ghouls" are not what I normally think of a ghoul. They eat human flesh, sure, but they're not zombies. They're not supernatural beings with no blood running through their veins. They're not the dead that move around. They are some sort of creature or something that used to be a man. REH has thrown new light on a ghoul, and I think, made the creature more interesting. |
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