Sarkomand

A city older than humanity

The frescoes in Leng’s monastery show Sarkomand as a flourishing seaport and capital of the almost-human people. Gardens, columned streets, temples and carved buildings stood between the cliffs and basalt wharves. Six gates crowned with sphinxes opened routes toward a central plaza. By Carter’s time the city is ruined, and its age is described in terms extending far before humanity.

Sources: [1]

The frescoes constitute an internal historical record, while the ruins provide Carter with a place he can directly inspect. The two forms of evidence align when he recognizes the monumental pair of lions. The story does not give a documented sequence of Sarkomand’s rulers or a complete account of its abandonment. Its former splendor is reconstructed from selected images and surviving architecture.

The lions and the Great Abyss

Two colossal winged lions of diorite stand at the central plaza, guarding the top of a subterranean stair. Their heads rise about twenty feet, and the figures remain intact amid the surrounding destruction. They are the distinctive landmark by which Carter can identify the city after his flight through Leng’s underground passages.

The stair leads from the Dreamlands into the Great Abyss and toward the regions inhabited by ghouls. This makes Sarkomand a junction between sea travel, the plateau above and the underworld below. Pickman had previously named it as one possible way for Carter to leave the abyss, although Carter chose the riskier route through the gugs’ city and the Tower of Koth instead.

The visible lions are architectural guardians. The practical danger at the gateway includes the night-gaunts associated with such approaches, but Carter by this stage knows a password through his connection with Pickman. The same portal can be terrifying to an uninformed traveler and usable by someone with the relevant relationship and knowledge.

Sources: [1]

Escape from Leng

After pushing his captor into the monastery’s pit, Carter flees with a lamp through the painted corridors. When the light fails, he gropes through passages and eventually slides down a steep burrow. He emerges through an arched opening in a basalt cliff above the ruins. The old streets, broken pillars and winged lions reveal where the escape has taken him.

His first precaution is to barricade the opening against pursuit. Escape does not immediately solve his problem: he has no boat, no secure route over Leng and no wish to repeat the dangerous underworld journey. The geography presents several theoretical connections, but each requires transport, knowledge or allies he does not yet have.

Sources: [1]

The prisoners beside the black galley

Carter then notices a greenish fire near the harbor and discovers moon-beasts with their servants beside a black galley. They are torturing three captive ghouls. Recognizing the voices, he realizes these are the same guides who helped him escape the gugs. The ghouls had subsequently been seeking Sarkomand as their route home.

The narrative does not show their capture. Carter suspects that inquiries made along their route drew hostile attention, but that explanation remains his inference. What he can see is sufficient to change his immediate purpose. Instead of concentrating solely on his own escape, he descends toward the ghouls’ country to bring assistance.

The decision makes the city a turning point in the quest’s ethics of reciprocity. Carter owes his life to creatures whom another story might present only as graveyard horrors. Recognizing that obligation prompts action even while he is still stranded far from his own goal.

Sources: [1]

Alliance, expedition and the return

With ghoul assistance and night-gaunt support, Carter participates in the conflict against the moon-beasts. Sarkomand’s harbor and its access to the lower world allow the allies to assemble and move against the enemy’s nearby island base. The campaign involves ships as well as flying creatures, bringing the maritime and subterranean routes into one operation.

After costly fighting, the allies return to the ruined quays. Pickman has the wounded transported rather than following an older ghoul practice of consuming them. Night-gaunt sentries wait among the broken monuments, and the surviving force camps in the city while further mounts are summoned.

Carter then explains the remaining obstacles between him and Kadath. His aid to the ghouls gives him a claim on their support, while his observations about shantaks and night-gaunts supply a workable means of crossing the guarded north. Sarkomand becomes the place where debts of friendship, military assistance and accumulated geographical knowledge converge.

Sources: [1]