Eibon

A sorcerer on the northern coast

In The Door to Saturn, Eibon lives in Mhu Thulan, on a headland above the northern sea. His tower is built from black gneiss and has five sides. Three of its five levels rise above the ground; two lie beneath it. The setting joins a recognizable working residence to the vertiginous coastline of Smith's prehistoric northern world.

Sources: [1]

His study contains an ivory writing table, astronomical calculations on calamite paper and paintings associated with the deity Zhothaqquah. These details present him as a scholar with equipment and an established practice. He is also physically capable: when flight becomes necessary, he carries a sword, negotiates difficult terrain and eventually climbs mountains more successfully than his pursuer.

The story identifies him as a mature magician. It supplies neither a complete childhood nor a dated catalogue of apprenticeships. The distinctive portrait emerges through his conduct during a crisis.

A relationship with Zhothaqquah

Smith uses Zhothaqquah as a form of the name Tsathoggua. Eibon has cultivated the deity through offerings and receives useful knowledge in return. This is an ongoing association, with practical benefits that include information about events beyond the sorcerer's ordinary perception.

The god describes a journey through worlds before reaching Earth and speaks of relatives still living on Cykranosh, the planet Saturn. Eibon receives the name of one of those relatives as a possible introduction. The god also gives him an extraordinary metal panel through which he can reach that world.

Eibon is initially skeptical about the panel's advertised destination. His willingness to trust it rests on previous experience of the deity's truthfulness. The relationship therefore includes an almost businesslike confidence alongside religious devotion.

Sources: [1]

Why Morghi pursues him

Morghi, a high priest of the elk-goddess Yhoundeh, moves against Eibon as a heretic. Religious competition forms part of the background: the sorcerer's success and the popularity of his patron threaten the established priesthood.

Warned of the proceedings by Zhothaqquah, Eibon recognizes the danger of imprisonment and torture. He takes bread, meat and wine, gives thanks to his protector and uses the concealed panel in his study.

Morghi arrives with subordinates and discovers the same escape route. His decision to follow Eibon turns the intended arrest into a shared exile. On Cykranosh the priest's institutional authority has no supporting guards, prison or congregation.

Sources: [1]

Making an ally of an enemy

When Morghi catches up, Eibon draws attention to their changed circumstances. Both are armed, but killing each other would waste the only assistance either has in an unfamiliar world. The sorcerer persuades the priest to suspend their dispute.

Eibon shares his limited provisions. He also maintains a confident account of a mission supposedly entrusted to him by Hziulquoigmnzhah, the being he has encountered beside a lake of liquid metal. In reality, he does not yet understand the words spoken to him.

This mixture of generosity, calculation and concealed ignorance governs their partnership. Morghi remains suspicious, but Eibon repeatedly supplies the decisions that keep them moving. Neither conventional heroic virtue nor omniscient magic adequately describes his effectiveness.

Sources: [1]

Language and mistaken miracles

The travelers follow a large armored animal along a road. Eibon makes it move by thrusting his sword between its plates while pronouncing impressive divine names. To Morghi, the sequence looks more like a display of power than an encounter with an ordinary beast of burden.

The owners, the Bhlemphroims, welcome the pair because their lost animal has been returned. Eibon initially interprets the reception as recognition of his sacred message. During the following months, his aptitude for language allows him to discover the less flattering explanation.

He becomes an increasingly informed visitor, learning both the local economy and the limits of his hosts' interest in religion. Knowledge improves his judgment without eliminating his preference for a dignified public account of events.

Sources: [1]

Escape from Vhlorrh

The Bhlemphroims select Eibon and Morghi as prospective fathers of their next generation, hoping to restore separate heads to their descendants. Their chosen mother has been enlarged through a special fungal diet. The visitors then learn that her husbands are customarily cooked and eaten after completing their reproductive role.

Eibon avoids a confrontation by formally accepting the honor. Because the hosts assume that the proposal is welcome, the visitors remain unguarded and can leave during the night.

The sorcerer represents this second flight as a continued search for a people worthy of the god's message. Beneath the ceremonial explanation lies an immediate and rational wish to survive.

Sources: [1]

A successful ending on another planet

An avalanche carries the travelers into a town of the Ydheems. There Eibon repeats the divine phrase. The townspeople understand it as an order to leave, and the coincidence of the message with the disaster prompts them to establish a safer settlement.

Only afterward do the Hyperboreans learn that Hziulquoigmnzhah had simply dismissed Eibon. An ordinary command has become a socially effective revelation. The new town, also called Ghlomph, honors both men and installs them among its priests.

Eibon spends the rest of his life there, adding news of Zhothaqquah to his reputation as a divine messenger. Back in Mhu Thulan, his disappearance is understood as a magical victory over Morghi. Worship of his patron revives as the rival cult declines.

Sources: [1]

The magician and the attributed book

Ubbo-Sathla introduces the Book of Eibon through a much later reader, Paul Tregardis. Its surviving French version is said to derive from a lost Greek manuscript and ultimately from a Hyperborean original. The book preserves the story of another magician, Zon Mezzamalech, whose pursuit of primordial knowledge ends in disappearance.

The name Eibon thus works in two complementary registers: a character whose adventures can be narrated directly, and a remote authority whose writing reaches later investigators. These roles connect Smith's Hyperborea with the broader library of forbidden texts used by Lovecraft and his correspondents.

Sources: [2], [3]