Miskatonic Arcihves

Explore the encyclopedia

An encyclopedia of strange fiction, its creators, places and mythos. Follow the sources; draw your own conclusions.

Tagged: Sarnath

Entities & creatures

Bokrug

Bokrug is the great water-lizard represented by the sea-green image worshipped in Ib. In The Doom That Came to Sarnath, the image is stolen as a trophy, disappears after a priest’s terrifying death, and survives the destruction of the conquering city. Its eventual worship throughout Mnar reverses the humans’ claim to have defeated the older god.

3 min read · 570 words

Places

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

Authors

Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany created invented gods, travelers, cities and remote landscapes in prose whose rhythm could make a new mythology feel ancient. His fiction and drama helped shape the imaginative possibilities Lovecraft associated with dream, beauty and cosmic scale. The influence is substantial, but Dunsany’s worlds retain their own identities and literary purposes.

5 min read · 1,000 words

Places

Sarnath

Sarnath is the wealthy human city beside the still lake of Mnar whose inhabitants destroy Ib and celebrate the massacre for a millennium. The Doom That Came to Sarnath describes its trade, architecture, religion and imperial power before showing the terror that precedes its disappearance. Its splendor and its violence are inseparable parts of the same history.

4 min read · 815 words

Literature

The Doom That Came to Sarnath

The Doom That Came to Sarnath recounts the rise and disappearance of a human city built beside the older settlement of Ib. Its founders destroy their nonhuman neighbors and celebrate that extermination for a thousand years. On the great anniversary, signs from the lake and reports from the royal banquet overturn the city’s confidence in its permanent supremacy.

6 min read · 1,055 words

Places

The Nameless City

The nameless city is an immensely ancient settlement in the Arabian desert whose low architecture and underground records preserve the history of a nonhuman civilization. An unnamed explorer discovers that the reptilian figures in its art are not merely symbolic representations of human inhabitants. The city’s ruins, passages and luminous abyss turn archaeology into a confrontation with a past that has not become safely extinct.

5 min read · 1,050 words

Literature

The Nameless City

An explorer enters an unnamed ruin in the Arabian desert and follows an underground route into the history of its reptilian builders. He repeatedly mistakes evidence of a nonhuman civilization for the symbolism of a human one. The Nameless City combines archaeological discovery, immense antiquity and a final encounter that turns recurring desert winds into something alive and hostile.

7 min read · 1,339 words

Literature

The Quest of Iranon

The Quest of Iranon follows a seemingly ageless singer searching for the beautiful city where he believes he was born a prince. Practical townspeople reject his calling, pleasure-seekers briefly reward it, and a childhood companion ages and dies beside him. The final encounter makes the existence of the remembered city inseparable from the belief that has sustained his identity.

5 min read · 1,037 words