Rächer der Verdammten by Robert E. Howard

It has helped keep his work in the public eye for six decades since his death, but it has also obscured the astonishing breadth of his imagination, his talent for mastering a variety of genres and his ability to weave his magic in both prose and poetry. While he is widely regarded as the ‘father of Sword and Sorcery’ and the creator of Conan the Barbarian, this reputation has been something of a double-edged sword. The creator of Conan the Cimmerian, Kull of Atlantis, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, ‘El Borak,’ Sailor Steve Costigan and many other memorable characters, Howard (known as REH to his millions of fans), in a career that spanned barely 12 years, wrote well over a hundred stories for the pulp magazines of his day. The Worm itself as a mere leftover of the Old Ones may be a Great Old One itself, and is definitely of a class with a lot of ' Great Old Ones' in the extended Cthulhu Mythos.Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) ranks among the greatest writers of action and adventure stories.

The monstrous intelligent ape-like Worm worshippers, and their pipes, are reminiscent of the traditional Mythos eerie piping usually associated with Azathoth. In a final battle which is said to be the origin of all later myths and half remembered stories of dragonslaying, Niord battles the white Worm to the death. In previous battlegrounds on the way they have seen the green slime which is The Worm's blood as well as warriors smashed to pulp by it, so it is clearly gargantuan. After killing a serpentine dinosaur blocking their way, Niord and his surviving band go down into the valley which is home to the ape-men and their cult worshipping The Worm. Niord leads a tribe of possibly Picts, and after several savage battles against other tribes encounters eerie piping, the sounds being made by ape-men musicians who are the slave-servants of a preternatural monstrosity - The Worm. Through undisclosed means, a modern day (1930s) man by the name of James Allison is recounting a race-memory of his ancestor Niord, and Niord's battle against a leftover of the Old Ones named The Worm. While it does not namecheck any specific Mythos entities or books, it features a monstrous and extremely powerful 'cosmic horror' referred to as The Worm, a creature white squamous and gigantic monster that 'looked somewhat more like a worm than it did an octopus, a serpent or a dinosaur.'

'The Valley of the Worm' is a short story by Robert E.

Rächer der Verdammten by Robert E. Howard