The Testament of Athammaus

short story by Clark Ashton Smith

[@galacticvagabond9772]

Clark Ashton Smith was one of the greatest. It is to bad that after the deaths of his friends R.E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft that he lost interest in writing and returned to sculpting. But he left behind an amazing body of work.

[@paysonterhune290]

Chris Nelson I think hes the best of the three, just not blessed with "brandable" characters like Conan or Cthulhu....You wouldnt be Chris Nelson from Palo Alto, would you? Its a common name but I thought Id ask..

[@vladimirremmirez7671]

@@paysonterhune290 You're stupid, Clark Ashton Smith doesn't need brandable characters his writing is his brandable characters.

[@TorinMizenko]

His fiction writing fell off, but he still wrote quite a bit of poetry. Some of his later poems are the best.

[@bulkkington8281]

Why not cremate the body or sink it at sea? Good story nonetheless

[@Neverpaints2024]

@@bulkkington8281 right? I was wondering why they didn't burn it!

[@Sophiewimmer443]

"why dont we just burn the body this time?" NONSENSE! BURY HIM AGAIN!

[@nikolaihanuschak191]

We could seal him in a vat of acid,,,,We could burn him,,,, we could dig a hole 10ft deep and seal him in concreate.....HMMMMM.....POPYCOCK I SAY!!! continue with the burying! LOL

[@minimmats]

Julian Wimmer Given his seeming antediluvian resilience, I'm sure that would have only served to agitate him.

[@bloke1348]

Yeah I wondered about that too...

[@Xbalanque84]

@@minimmats Or made him laugh.

[@towelgirl21]

"If we do it enough times, surely it will work!"

[@bloke1348]

What a fantastic underrated reader...and writer!!!

[@guilledcf1547]

very cool. you should have the authors name in the title tho. you'd probbly get more views.

[@Dustpuma1]

Theyir from the audible audio books theirs like 5 of them.

[@Xbalanque84]

Knygathin Zhaum is easily my favorite demigod in the Mythos. I like to imagine the warping of his face as it kept reattaching ended up looking like the Trollface meme.

[@dogbeachdigest1139]

This story is an homage to the beginning of Beckford’s “Vathek”.

[@joannewatts6501]

Splendid👾.... .!

[@nowhereman6019]

Did the Hyperboreans not have fire or something?

[@ryanrobison8973]

You know, I did note that the meal the narrator has was entirely without any meat. It was just some fruit I think. Was there any mention of fire in the tale?

[@jaketurambar800]

I live for this shit. please tell me the name of the orator

[@Arkanoid1212]

Mmm, there are multiple candidates but probably Roy Dotrice, he passed sadly in 2017.

[@tombofgiants3678]

Narrator is Bernard Setaro Clark

[@Xbalanque84]

@@tombofgiants3678 Thank you.

[@louithrottler]

@@Xbalanque84.....noobs mate, the voice actor (Double Shadow, Dark Eidolon, etc) is Fleet Cooper. (www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Fleet+Cooper)

[@michelelyons9410]

A marvelous tale, beautifully written and well told! However, it feels somehow unfinished, like the entire story had not been told. Of course one has to ask why the city guards did not burn the body of the man monster before it had mutated into something unstoppable. But aside from that, we have the narrative of a direct witness to the monster frightening everyone away from the city, but what happened after that? Did the people re-establish another city, or drift away to join other cities? Did the monster ever appear again? It seems odd that it would just stop or go away, since it had shown that it was clearly malevolent and that armed men could do nothing against it. Did anyone ever venture back into the deserted city, either to loot it or look for the monster? It is very unlikely that someone would not have gone back into the city, considering all the valuables that were left behind. So did they simply not return, so there were no tales of what they saw there? No gossip about people disappearing around the deserted city? The narrator of the tale seems curiously uninterested in anything after he, as a much younger man, left the city himself. No follow up as to what he did, where he went, what happened to the people or his own troops, his ruler. No speculation as to what the man monster was or why it scared everyone away from the city, but after all, did not inflict a great deal of carnage on the populace? It basically let them go unmolested when they ran away. And what was the "prophesy" that the executioner spoke of, which seemed to have something to do with the happenings of the story. We know, from the narrator's own words, that he lived to be an old man, so why was nothing further told? The narrator would have thought about this event for many years, so it seems odd that he would not have more to say. I have noticed this tendency with older stories. Many of them are beautifully and elaborately written and plotted, with fabulous imagery and ideas----but they seem to come to an end very abruptly. More like they were cut off suddenly, rather than brought to a complete conclusion. I don't know if it was just the writing style of the time when these stories where written, or if it is only the mindset of the more modern reader that wants more of a detailed ending to a story. But many of the stories of this kind seemed to end in a way that makes them feel unfinished, as if someone had snatched the pen away from the writer before he was entirely done writing. Even so this story was marvelous and well worth listening to.

[@Xbalanque84]

They literally said they moved their capital. Also, the city is reentered later (decades or centuries later, I can't recall how long offhand) in _The Tale of Satampra Zeiros._ Two thieves enter the ruins to loot them, finding only the formless spawn of Tsathoggua, all descendants of Knygathin Zhaum.

[@jonathansingh8484]

Good

[@JayTyme420]

So nice

[@Arkanoid1212]

;)

[@towelgirl21]

Why didn't they burn the body? "I believe in science" my ass.

[@ryanrobison8973]

I don't know if they actually had access to fire. Maybe it's a reach, but I did notice that the meal the narrator ate was without any kind of cooked food/meat. It was just some fruit/plants/berries of some kind. Was there any mention of fire in the story at all?

[@ryanrobison8973]

Okay I just got to the part where they all have torches lmao yeah "scientific mind" for sure

[@Xbalanque84]

​@@ryanrobison8973 Athammaeus mentioned torches being set up while his team was guarding Zhaum's head. Commoriam definitely had access to fire technology. Hell, I'm pretty sure the Voormis had fire, too (they were hominins after all).