Ib
Ib is the ancient grey stone city destroyed by the founders of Sarnath. Its voiceless green inhabitants worship Bokrug and preserve a culture older than the arriving humans understand. The story gives the conquerors an elaborate later civilization while leaving Ib known through a few records, its discarded monuments and the terrifying resemblance of the figures seen at Sarnath’s final feast.
3 min read · 601 words
Antiquity and uncertain origins
The Doom That Came to Sarnath places Ib beside Mnar’s still lake before the arrival of human shepherd peoples. It describes the city as being as old as the lake itself.
Sources: [1]
Brick cylinders from Kadatheron claim that the city, lake and inhabitants descended together from the moon in mist. The narrator expressly leaves room for uncertainty about that origin. It is an ancient report embedded in the story, not a scene narrated from direct observation.
The relative scarcity of information is also acknowledged. Humans arrived late and know little of the much older forms of life. The absence of a complete history is part of Ib’s portrayal.
The inhabitants
The surviving description gives the beings green coloring, bulging eyes, soft protruding lips, unusual ears and no voice. Their bodies are vulnerable to ordinary stones and weapons, a weakness that encourages rather than restrains the human settlers’ aggression.
They are not identified as Deep Ones. Their lake setting, green appearance and nonhuman form do not establish a shared species with the oceanic people of The Shadow over Innsmouth.
The narrator repeatedly describes them through ugliness and disgust, while the plot reveals the humans as the exterminators. Those two elements should both remain visible in an account of the story’s treatment of difference.
Sources: [1]
Monuments, worship and fire
Ib contains grey monoliths bearing ancient carvings. The stone is unlike anything found in Mnar or nearby regions, leaving the conquerors puzzled by the labor required to bring it there.
The inhabitants worship a sea-green stone likeness of Bokrug, the great water-lizard, and dance before it under a gibbous moon. Papyrus records from Ilarnek say that they discovered fire and began using it ceremonially.
The texts give no translation of the sculptures or inventory of civic institutions. A chronology of dynasties, a written language or a named priesthood would require another identified source rather than elaboration of these few details.
Sources: [1]
The human attack
Sarnath’s settlers build near Ib because of local mineral wealth. Fascination at the older beings turns to hatred, sharpened by the belief that such creatures should no longer occupy a world humans regard as their own.
Young warriors kill the inhabitants with ordinary weapons. They avoid touching the dead and use long spears to push the bodies into the lake. They then remove the monoliths in the same way, erasing the visible city.
Only Bokrug’s image is taken back as a trophy. The destruction is therefore both the killing of a people and an attack on the material remains through which their presence might continue to challenge the new settlement.
Sources: [1]
The return of a suppressed image
At Sarnath’s thousandth victory festival, witnesses report green voiceless beings in the banquet hall where the royal company had been. Their features repeat the description of Ib’s inhabitants, and the flames on their platters recall the older people’s ceremonial use of fire.
The account does not state whether the dead have returned bodily or the guests have changed form. What is explicit is the reappearance of a people the city has spent centuries mocking as defeated.
Ib is not described as rebuilt after Sarnath vanishes. The surviving object is the image of Bokrug, which is taken to Ilarnek and worshipped more widely. The older culture returns through resemblance, memory and its god’s image, without a complete restoration of the lost settlement.
Sources: [1]
References
- The Doom That Came to Sarnath — original text
The fictional narrative is evidence for what the story says, not proof of events in the real world.
At a glance
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
Beside the lake of Mnar, near the later Sarnath
Voiceless green nonhuman beings
Bokrug
Moon descent in the cylinders of Kadatheron; qualified by the narrator
Population killed and monuments thrown into the lake