Vathek

[aher]

The Hyperborea of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea is inspired ... by the weird and fantastic fiction of Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft...
-- AS&SH Volume VI Hyperborea Gazetteer, p. 178

Vathek is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford in 1782 and published in 1786. The reason I'm posting about it here in the AS&SH sub-board is that Vathek was a source of inspiration for both Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft:

• Clark Ashton Smith wrote a short story entitled "The Third Episode of Vathek."
  
• H.P. Lovecraft wrote a 480-word fragment of a short story entitled "Azathoth" (read it here). Lovecraft described his plans for "Azatoth" as a "weird Eastern tale in the 18th century manner" and as a "weird Vathek-like novel" (reference).
  

Roughly speaking, a Gothic novel is a mashup of a romance and a horror story. IMHO, Vathek is a mashup of two legends which were well established by the time Beckford wrote Vathek:

• Don Juan - The character Don Juan is portrayed as a wealthy, seductive libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Don Juan's sinful ways lead to eternal d**nation. I easily found 14 versions of the Don Juan legend published prior to Vathek, the earliest being Tirso de Molina's play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (1630). In Vathek, the title character builds 5 palaces, to gratify each of his 5 senses. One of these palaces is a harem to satisfy his "somatosensory" sense. He also seduces an emir's daughter, who is betrothed to another man--a big no, no. Mozart's Don Giovanni premiered in 1787, a year after Vathek was published, and like Vathek, the Don Juan in this operetic version is swallowed into hell in the end.
  
• Faust - The first published version of this legend was Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587). I remember writing a paper on Christopher Marlowe's play "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus" (1604) for college English Lit. I also read excerpts of Goethe's Faust (1808) in high school German class. This version differs from the others (and Vathek, which preceded it by 20 years), in that the title character is redeemed by the grace of God in the end. In all of these tales, the title character makes a pact with the devil not only to indulge in all the pleasures of the world, but also to gain all the secret knowledge in the world. Typically, the devil agrees to serve Faust for a term of 24 years, after which Faust's soul will be eternally d**ned. In many versions, the Devil helps Faust seduce a beautiful and innocent girl, whose life is ultimately destroyed. And we see this same subplot with the emir's daughter in Vathek.

In Vathek, it is the title character's lust for knowledge, particularly secret knowlege, rather than simply a lust for carnal delight, that primarily drives the plot forward and ultimately d**ns the title character. Vathek ignores the numerous warnings he receives to halt his pursuit of forebidden knowledge. He purchases sabres with glowing ciphers on them, and when he has them deciphered they read:

Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant, and to undertake that which surpasses his power.

So what can an AS&SH gamer get out of this book? Lots:

• There are a lot of secrets listed in the Hyperborea Gazetteer, and this book can give the sinister referee some ideas what to do if his players start looking for answers.
  
• Weird monsters: Jinn, Efreet, and the arch-demon Eblis.
  
• Weird places, particularly Hades.
  
• Interesting characters to fuel ideas for NPCs.
  
• Supernatural powers. For example, Vathek himself has a supernatural ability we'd call "the evil eye": "one glance of his flashing eye can make the wretch on whom it was fixed instantly fall backwards and sometimes expire." There is a 3E SRD writeup for the evil eye which might be useful if you wanted to translate this into game terms:

Evil Eye (Su): Three times per day, a sea hag can cast its dire gaze upon any single creature within 30 feet. The target must succeed on a DC 13 Will save or be dazed for three days, although remove curse or dispel evil can restore sanity sooner. In addition, an affected creature must succeed on a DC 13 Fortitude save or die from fright. Creatures with immunity to fear effects are not affected by the sea hag’s evil eye. The save DCs are Charisma-based.
--SRD:Sea Hag

Where would one fit a Vathek-like campaign into the AS&SH micro-setting?

Racial remnants of past migrations may endure in small numbers: Angles, Saxons, Moors, Greeks, Romans, Lapps, and Yakuts, to name a few.
-- AS&SH Volume VI Hyperborea Gazetteer, p. 196

So making Vathek a Moor is one possibility. Another possibility would be Ixia, although these strike me as being more like Gypsies/Roma; however, having migrated from Iran through Egypt and eventually to Hyperborrea, they might be familiar with the background elements.

What other background materials would be useful? William Beckford was clearly an Orientalist author. Good sources of background materials might include the following:

• Beckford loosely based the main character on Abu Jaffar Harun Al-Wathiq ibn Mutasim (816 - 847), a caliph who embraced the philosophy of Mu'tazila, which roughly says everything, including the religious mysteries, is amenable to human reason. Al-Wathiq was therefore a great patron to scholars. He also fought wars against the Turks, who in AS&SH terms would be the Yakuts.
  
• Reading short selections from the Kitāb alf laylah wa-laylah
  
• Reading an overview of Alchemy
  
• You might also find some musical inspiration in the symphonic poem Vathek (1913) by the Portugese composer Luís Maria da Costa de Freitas Branco, which was inspired by the novel. You can hear parts 1, 2 and 3 on YouTube. The real Al-Wathiq was an accomplished musician.

Finally, you can get Vathek for free from Project Gutenberg!!!

[blackadder23]

What an excellent suggestion! I'm going to read this tonight.

[Ghul]

aher, do you have The Collected Fantasies, Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter? In the appendices, Scott Connors and Ron Hilger discuss Vathek at length, citing (among other notables) a preserved letter that HPL sent to CAS regarding his suggestion/request that CAS complete Beckford's unfinished work. Smith obliged, and sent it first to HPL for review, and that letter is also preserved. Also, in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp in 1953, Smith said he first read Vathek when he was 15, and that it was one of his "chief literary influences."

[blackadder23]

I've already decided that I'm stealing the "five palaces, with one to please each sense" thing. That's just too cool to pass up. ;D

[kesher]

It's an awesome novel, truly phantasmagoric...

[aher]

Feb 5, 2013 12:02:30 GMT -6 Ghul said:

aher, do you have The Collected Fantasies, Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter?

I don't have it. Thank you very much for suggesting it! The information in the appendices sounds great--I love reading about these sorts of connections!

Incidentally, Ghul, on the Wikipedia page about the word "ghoul" it notes that

The term was first used in English literature in 1786, in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek, which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.

Did that have anything to do with your choice of screen name??? (Just curious.)

I just looked up the exact reference: "Dives and Dismal Goules thronged into her memory..." (Beckford Vathek p. 91 ). There is a footnote to "Goules" which reads:

Goules. Goul or Ghul in Arabic signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses; hence it became the appellative of that species of monster which was supposed to haunt forests, cemetaries, and other lonely places, and believed not only to tear into pieces the living but to dig up and devour the dead.

[Ghul]

When I was a young man, my favorite Batman villain was Ra's al Ghul, and so it became a player character that I created back in the early 90's, a necromancer, of course.

So, about 20 years ago, I began to research the meaning a bit more, and learned some of what you cite above, the desert-dwelling grave-robbing, shape-shifter of Arabic folklore, but different sources show different interpretations of the term.

For the "ghul" in AS&SH, as presented in the Vol. IV: Bestiary, , I was mostly inspired by the CAS story, The Ghoul, which is remarkable to me. Very short, but powerful. Of course, CAS shows his fondness for Vathek here, too, as the opening line is:

"During the reign of the Caliph Vathek, a young man of good repute and family, named Noureddin Hassan, was hauled before the Cadi Alimed ben Becar at Bussorah."

As you can no doubt discern, there is play on words here, too, with Beckford's name. CAS was brilliantly creative, and his wit and sense of humor are astonishingly clever. He also showed great deference to those writers who had a profound impact on him.