Cykranosh

Saturn within Smith’s fiction

The narrative identifies Cykranosh with Saturn, but constructs its surface as a fantastic inhabited world. Visitors can breathe its air, travel on foot and find food that sustains them. These are conditions of the story, not a scientific description of the actual gas giant.

Sources: [1]

Cykranosh is also a stage in the reported travels of Zhothaqquah before the deity's arrival on Earth. Some of his relatives remain there. A distant planet therefore becomes part of a network of migration, kinship and worship extending beyond humanity.

Eibon's destination is specified before he enters the panel. He is not merely dropped into an unnamed dimension: the route joins two particular worlds, even though the process crosses a higher spatial dimension.

The first landscape

Eibon arrives on an ashen slope below formidable mountains. A slow stream of liquid resembling mercury descends toward a lake of the same substance. Rock terraces surround the lake, suggesting a vast natural stairway.

The vegetation is difficult for him to classify. Bluish-purple forms resemble obsidian cacti, combining the appearance of mineral growth, plant and animal. Their branches end in sharp projections; faint ringing sounds accompany his passage. He wonders whether they communicate, although he does not establish that conjecture.

Above is a greenish-black sky crossed by three immense bright rings. The air is cold and sulfurous, and the ground crumbles beneath his feet. The scene makes arrival uncomfortable through several senses at once: sight, breath, sound and insecure footing.

Sources: [1]

Light, distance and travel

The sun appears small and chilly. Ring-light remains sufficiently bright for Eibon and Morghi to leave their hosts at night and travel a considerable distance before dawn. Smith later refers to the luminous formation as a ring of moons; an illustration should preserve the story's fantastic sky without treating it as modern astronomical mapping.

Roads connect inhabited regions. Between them lie mineral thickets, stretches of ash, fungal forests and high mountains. The travelers eventually cross a pass into a more fertile region where mushrooms and other fungi grow to enormous proportions.

Travel remains physical and tiring after the initial miraculous crossing. The visitors must ration provisions, seek a route, sleep in exposed places and avoid dangers they cannot remove by a spell.

Sources: [1]

Hziulquoigmnzhah beside the metal lake

The first intelligent being Eibon encounters has a rounded body, a hanging head, very long arms and disproportionately short legs. It moves down the terraces largely on its hands and drinks the liquid metal. Eibon notices a resemblance to his own patron despite the unfamiliar arrangement of the body.

He addresses it by the difficult name supplied by Zhothaqquah. The being seems to correct his pronunciation, points along the shore, utters a short phrase and retreats to a cavern. Eibon later identifies it to Morghi as the paternal uncle of Zhothaqquah.

The god's presence does not make him a guide who explains the whole planet. His brief dismissal leaves the human visitors to construct their own itinerary and interpretations.

Sources: [1]

The Bhlemphroims and Vhlorrh

The Bhlemphroims are hairless bipeds whose features occupy their torsos instead of separate heads. Their chief town is Vhlorrh. They cultivate fungi and keep large, many-legged animals as beasts of burden; one such animal leads Eibon and Morghi to their first sustained contact with a community.

These hosts are practical and hospitable. They retain traditions of the gods but no longer maintain an active system of sacrifice and prayer. Their respectful reception of the strangers expresses gratitude for the return of a lost animal, rather than recognition of the visitors as priests.

This distinction matters because Eibon and Morghi arrive equipped to understand society through religious office. The Bhlemphroims' priorities do not reward those assumptions. Even demonstrations of Hyperborean magic make less impression than the visitors would like.

Sources: [1]

The national mother

Reproduction among the Bhlemphroims centers on one female selected for each generation. Known as the Djhenquomh, she grows to immense size on food prepared from a special fungus. Her role is to produce the next generation for the community.

The hosts regard their own loss of distinct heads as an unfortunate development. Eibon and Morghi, who possess the admired feature, are chosen as potential fathers. Their apparent elevation conceals a lethal consequence: the husbands are eaten after their reproductive duties.

The episode exposes a fundamental incompatibility within an otherwise courteous encounter. The visitors understand the threat and flee; the hosts apparently cannot imagine that the proposed honor would be rejected.

Sources: [1]

Other peoples along the road

On their later journey, the Hyperboreans encounter the Djhibbis, flightless bird-people who remain on individual stone columns for prolonged meditation. Communication among them consists of sparse syllables said to carry extensive esoteric meanings.

The small Ephiqhs make homes inside large fungi. Because the structures decay rapidly, finding new dwellings is a recurring necessity. The unseen Ghlonghs inhabit the underground and avoid both sunlight and ring-light; the travelers hear them but do not see their bodies.

These brief encounters widen Cykranosh beyond the two communities developed at length. They should not be inflated into complete histories or political systems, since the story supplies only these glimpses.

Sources: [1]

The Ydheems and the relocation of Ghlomph

The Ydheems possess rudimentary heads and preserve the old religious language. They worship Hziulquoigmnzhah and related deities, including an image recognizable to the visitors as Zhothaqquah.

An avalanche deposits Eibon and Morghi in one of their towns. When Eibon repeats the phrase given by the god, the survivors take it as an instruction to relocate. They carry their household goods and idols to a new site a day's march away and rebuild Ghlomph beyond the mountain's immediate danger.

Both visitors become honored priests. Eibon can establish himself as a minor prophet; Morghi finds religious society again, although the Ydheems' tolerance prevents him from founding the inquisition he would prefer. The planet becomes their final home.

Sources: [1]

A connected world with limits

The story provides a route through selected places rather than a planetary atlas. It does not establish the dimensions of the continents, a complete population, or the location of every deity associated with Saturn elsewhere in the Mythos.

Its strongest organizing principle is the travelers' changing relationship to local knowledge. What appears to be a monster becomes livestock; apparent worship proves to be gratitude; a divine mission begins as a misunderstood dismissal. Cykranosh repeatedly rewards learning about circumstances more than insisting on the authority imported from Earth.

Sources: [1]