THE DEMON HEAD

The secrets of Ras al Ghul

By Dennis E. Power

 

PART ONE: MY NAME IS LEGION

 

 

KATHULOS, LORD OF THE DARK FACE

 

 

There exists a singular connection between a possessed man from the Catskill mountains, an Atlantean Sorcerer who died in 1926, a mummified Atlantean Sorcerer who was destroyed in 1923, a Mongol who tried to subvert the United States political process in the mid-twenties and the ruler of a subterranean Neolithic civilization. Bizarre as it seems one individual is connected to all of these various persons.

 

Matthew Baugh, a well regarded researcher in Woldnewtonry, has long speculated that the Atlantean Sorcerer Baal-Seepa from Arthur Conan Doyle's The Maracot Deep and the mummified Atlantean sorcerer Kathulos from Robert E. Howard's Skull-Face were one and the same person. He believed that Kathulos coffin had washed ashore after the Maracot Deep incident as the Atlanteans expelled the mummy's case from their city in a last act of freedom from the evil one. Baugh has recounted this theory in his piece, The Best of Adversaries which is a fictional sequel to Taverel Manor. Although fictional the piece does contain some elements of truth.

 

However, there is some discrepancy in dating these cases wherein Stephen Costigan fought against Kathulos.

 

In The Best of Adversaries Baugh states that "The only story Costigan knows is that a sealed sarcophagus was found drifting in the Atlantic far from any shore. A passing ship picked up the box and found Kathulos sealed inside.  "But several years ago,". "That would be around '26, the year of the Maracot deep sea expedition."

 

This would place the events of Skull-Face several years after the events The Maracot Deep, that is, several years after 1926. Yet since Skull-Face was first published in 1929, the incident had to have taken place prior to this year. While it is possible that in the space of three years Kathulos had been revived and built up a following among the many diverse native populations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and also established a solid organization in London, it does border on the incredible even with the power of supreme mesmerism. It seems more likely that this took many years, perhaps a decade. John Gordon's statements that he was sent to investigate the rise of dissent among the native populations of Africa after the war ended seems to indicate that the incidents in Skull Face took place not too distant from the end of WWI.

 

Matthew Baugh also makes a case for an earlier date for the events of Skull-Face in his earlier article Agent In The Shadows: The Life And Career Of Cliff Marsland.  In this well written article Matthew Baugh makes the argument that The Shadow's operative called Cliff Marsland in The Shadow novels was also the man called Stephen Costigan in the Robert E. Howard stories Skull-Face and Taverel Manor. In Agent in the Shadows Baugh places the events of Skull-Face as taking place in 1921 and the events of Taverel Manor as having taken place in 1923.  These seem to be appropriate dates for the events to have actually occurred. [1]

 

Yet these dates of 1921 and 1923 for the occurrence of Skull-Face would seem to rule out the speculation that Baal-Seepa was in fact the same entity as Kathulos. Yet why would a well-regarded researcher such as Matthew Baugh make this claim despite consciously knowing that it could not be true. Sometimes a researcher "knows" something to be truthful despite contrary evidence. I think that Matthew Baugh was correct and Baal-Seepa and Kathulos were the same entity despite the apparent chronological discrepancy. Having reviewed a first draft of this essay Mr. Baugh felt compelled to state, “I no longer believe that Kathulos and Baal-Seepa are the same entity. The discrepancies you mention are very telling.  I had assumed that Kathulos had assumed control of an existing branch of the Si Fan with African, Middle Eastern and Asian members rather than forge his own alliances, but three years is a very short time. Breaking Kathulos of the Maracot Deep timeline helps to make Cliff/Steve's personal timeline make more sense. I have come to believe that Baal-Seepa is one of the many manifestations of Nyarlothotep.  The descriptions he gives of his role in historical events are eerily similar to those of the Crawling Chaos' own involvement.  The title "Lord of the Dark (could mean obscured) Face" is also very similar to Nyarlothotep's titles "Black Man" and "Faceless God."  All of these traits also apply to Flagg from Stephen King's stories and I suspect that both Flagg and Baal-Seeps are both manifestations of the shape-shifting outer god.  If there is a connection between the two I now believe that Baal-Seepa would have been a sort of behind the scenes patron of Kathulos who was using him.  Kathulos wanted power after all, Baal-Seepa wanted chaos and death in the human world.” [2] We hope to prove that Baugh was correct in his first assumption and close to the truth in this latest speculation.

 

Kathulos was a Sorcerer in Ancient Atlantis but this seems to be the second Atlantis that existed prior to 24,000 BC.[3] In order to stave off death Kathulos had his body and the bodies of his servants, the Masters of Atlantis, subjected to an immortality treatment that in effect made them into living mummies. He was in hibernation until circa 1905 when his casket was dislodged from its undersea resting place by falling debris from the ship Clan Munroe which sank off the coast of South Africa in 1905.[4]

 

Although Kathulos felt at home in Africa, since Atlantis had had colonies on this continent as demonstrated in the works of Burroughs, Howard and Saunders,[5] he was also drawn to Egypt because many of Ancient Egypt's cultural borrowings from Atlantis. Kathulos became fascinated with the culture and history of ancient Egypt as he studied its science hoping to find a cure for his condition of mummification. When he discovered that this was a futile endeavor no matter if he used either ancient Egyptian or modern science, Kathulos decided to use what remained of his power to establish a new version of the Atlantean Empire of his past in the modern world. The ruling class of Atlantis during Kathulos’ epoch were apparently dark-skinned but as he would tell Costigan they were not African natives but rather the Old Race. [6]  Kathulos wished to use the "native" populations to overthrow Western Civilization, because the ancestors of the Europeans had defied Kathulos' people.

 

Using his power of mesmerism Kathulos forged a new organization out of two existing ones. The Cult of the Scorpion King which was based in Egypt and the criminal organization known as Scorpia. The Cult of the Scorpion King’s adherents had syncretizied the Scorpion King to be an incarnation of Anubis, whom in their mythology ate the soul of the goddess Serket "She who causes the throat to breath". Serket was an Egyptian scorpion-goddess, and an early tutelary deity of the Egyptian monarchs. She was one of the goddesses who guarded the canopic jars containing the viscera of the deceased. From this association she came to be a tutelary goddess of the dead. The Cult of the Scorpion King believed that the Scorpion King would return to resurrect the golden age of Egypt. To these cultists, since Kathulos was a living mummy he embodied the combination of Anubis and the Scorpion King. [7]

 

At the same time that he was seizing control of the Cult of the Scorpion King, Kathulos also took over the secret organization known as Scorpia. This was an organization that had begun in the 1500's as an organization of pirates [8]. Although Scorpia was believed to have been destroyed in 1612 by the mysterious, possibly immortal man known as the Phantom or the Ghost Who Walks. The Phantom had killed Scorpia's leader Brunel de Gottschalk in mortal combat. The Phantom had then destroyed Scorpia's castle by blowing up its gunpowder room and so destroyed the stronghold from which they had carried out their campaigns of terror. However Scorpia had survived and it established strongholds in East Africa in the early 1800s, a stronghold in the Suez in 1818 and one in China circa 1898.[9] Kathulos made the current leader of the Scorpia, Baron Sojin into his loyal follower. It was the far-flung connections of Scorpia that brought Kathulos his Middle Eastern and Asian followers. It also brought him to the attention of the Si-Fan organization and the Council of Seven.

 

The Si Fan was an international confederation composed of many Eastern societies such as the Thuggees of India, the Assassins of Syria, The Sublime Order of the White Peacock, The Dacoits of Burma, Druze of Syria and others. Noting Kathulos' swift success in gaining control of the Cult of the Scorpion and the Scorpia organization, the Council of Seven suggested an alliance, giving Kathulos the certain impression that a negative response would not be considered. Kathulos allied with the Si-Fan because it suited his purpose and he believed that he could eventually take over the organization. However the members of the Council of the Seven proved to be immune to his mesmeric power. Kathulos knew that one of these members would oppose his plans to take over the Si-Fan for he had ambitions to do that as well. This man was called Shan Ming Fu, who would become more famous under his nome de guerre, Dr. Fu Manchu.

 

When meeting with the representatives of Si-Fan he had also the met the allies of Fu Manchu. Among these was a man of middle age who was an advisor to the Wali of the Assassins. Kathulos realized that there was a strong connection between this man and Fu Manchu. Yet even odder he felt that there was a very strong connection between this man and himself, an inexplicable bond that felt as if he were gazing into a mirror. Taking this man's hand in a gesture of goodwill set off a psychic explosion in Kathulos. This psychic explosion was also reflected in the eyes of the Assassin's advisor, who used the name Rashiel[10]

 

Kathulos proved his worth to the Si-Fan by creating an elixir derived from a combination of the drugs that the Si-Fan used, the venom of the Black Scorpion and the juice of the Black lotus and other chemicals Kathulos only knew. The drug was so powerful that one dose eliminated addiction to any other drug including opium, heroin and alcohol. It imparted to the taker a great vitality and sense of well being, it also increased the adrenal levels imparting increased strength and speed. There was a price however, the drug was highly addictive and constant use of the drug would burn out the metabolism of the user. Kathulos had devised a cure for the super drug but it killed nine out ten who tried it.

 

Kathulos began to cultivate the name The Scorpion as his code name among the Si-Fan yet he also became known by another name, the Black Mandarin. In many ways the use of the term Black Mandarin was to recognize Kathulos efforts at broadening the effective uses of the black scorpion venom and the black lotus juice. [11] It was also a title of respect bestowed upon this mastermind who was supposed to have originated in Africa and yet who was able to gain the respect of many differing peoples including the xenophobic Chinese.[12] It was also an effort to avoid using the term The Scorpion in regards to Kathulos, for doing so was offensive to one of the two most powerful men on the Council of Seven, Fo-Hi, who was Fu Manchu's ally. Fo-Hi used the venom of the black scorpion quite a bit in his schemes and the golden scorpion became the token of identification for his followers.

 

Kathulos was content to work slowly to achieve the culmination of his plans. He extended his influence to America. He found that the Si-Fan had been concentrating on the European theater and so America was nearly an untapped resource. Working slowly he began to foster and inflame the existing resentments of the descendants of Africans in the Americas and also to make alliances among the smaller but still valuable Asian and Middle Eastern populations in America.

 

Between 1911 and 1914 Fu Manchu spearheaded the Si-Fan's plans for the collapse of the West and rise of the East, with Europe and England being the key focal points of these plans. The plan failed. This three year operation was so costly a failure that it brought about the break-up of the Si-Fan.[13] Before Kathulos could seize the advantage of the break of the Si-Fan however Fu Manchu and Fo Hi quickly moved to fill the power vacuum and formed a new organization led by the Order of the Sublime White Peacock. Because of Fu Manchu's early failures, Fo Hi was titular head of this organization. In essence however The Order of the Sublime White Peacock continued with Fu Manchu's earlier plans.

 

Kathulos however was able to gather followers from tongs, triads and other organizations  and folded them into an organization that was an important component of the Si-Fan yet large enough to be nearly autonomous from it. This organization was known as the Tong known as the Brotherhood of the Lotus or the Chang Li.[14]

 

In 1915, Fo-Hi's organization in England was forced to evacuate as the forces of the British Secret Service, Scotland Yard and the Surete converged upon it.The delicate plans of Fo-Hi and Fu Manchu were uncovered and Fo-Hi was forced to destroy most of their work rather than let it fall into the hands of the Western Powers. Fo-Hi sacrificed himself lest he be made to talk.[15] With Fo-Hi dead, Fu Manchu in disgrace and the Si-Fan disbanded, Kathulos, using the title of the Black Mandarin, seized control of the former Si-Fan operations in Europe and Asia, uniting them under the Chang Li. To alleviate the factions still loyal to Fu Manchu and Fo-Hi Kathulos allowed Fu Manchu free rein to carry out plans in Asia and he posted Fo-Hi's daughter, Madame de Medici, to be the Chang Li representative in England.[16] Although to assuage the Asian males who would not countenance having a woman in a position of power, despite the long reign of the Dowager Empress, the titular head of the Chang Li in London remained Zani Chada who had the position prior to Fo-Hi. Chanda was a long time resident London and one of the wealthiest men in the Limehouse district. Kathulos spent much of the time traveling and organizing his network of operations.

 

In 1916 Zani Chada's son became involved in a murder and the kidnapping of a socialite. In a bizarre twist Zani Chada kidnapped the son of Inspector Red Kerry of Scotland Yard to prevent his son from going to jail. For his part in the kidnapping of Kerry's son, Zani Chada went to jail.[17] Madame de Medici continued to live at Zani Chada's townhouse and operated more openly as the Chang Li representative in London. It was during this time that Madame de Medici also functioned as a spy for the Central Powers during the Great War. This was at Kathulos direction as a means of destabilizing the West. She also retrieved an object stolen from China by a British officer who had been stationed in China. Madame Medici mesmerized a young man named Rene Deacon into performing the actual robbery for her.[18] Curiously, this object may have been stolen and retrieved once before.[19]

 

In 1917 Fu Manchu's activities led to Scotland Yard's crackdown on his operations in the Middle East.[20] Fu Manchu was forced to submit to the authority of Kathulos. Kathulos recognized that Fu Manchu was a scientific genius that could be utilized for his own purposes and ordered Fu Manchu sequestered in the Forbidden City.[21]

 

In late 1920 one of Kathulos’ American operations was exposed by the dogged efforts of a member of the United States Secret Service. The most troubling aspect of this was that the exposure put the United States Secret Service onto Kathulos personally. Kathulos fled to England but was pursued by the American Agent, Raymond M'Cabe.

 

Raymond M'Cabe was fatally shot as he attempted to strangle the mummified body of Kathulos. Yet it suited Kathulos purposes to make it seems as though M'Cabe had killed the Black Mandarin. This would cease the Secret Service's investigation of his activities. Kathulos assumed personal control of the London operation. This did not sit well with Fo-Hi's daughter, so Madame de Medici left England. It appeared as though she had left because the private detective Paul Harley had revealed Madame de Medici's connection to the Black Mandarin. [22]

 

In order to teach her humility, Kathulos forced her half sister, Fo-Hi's other daughter to act as his servant. Madame Medici's sister Zarmi had been an agent for Fu Manchu. In 1914 when Fu Manchu had been forced to flee from England, this agent had been left behind. Fu Manchu believed her to be dead. To avoid capture Zarmi had injected herself with f. katalepsis and contorted her face so that it appeared as though she had been strangled.[23]

 

It was fortunate for Zarmi that an autopsy was not performed and that the member of the Tong who collected her body recognized the symptoms of f. kataplesis.[24] Kathulos administered the antidote to her on the condition that she would serve him. In this capacity she learned that her mother's people worshipped the same god as had Kathulos’ people.[25] Zarmi became more loyal to Kathulos than had her sister when she realized that behind Kathulos’ plans laid the desire to unite the world and then hand it over to their mutual god.  Zarmi's mother's people were the descendants of pirates; European and Pacific pirates had shared an island named Ral and intermarried with the native population. This had originally been one of the further outposts of Scorpia. While in Kathulos' service Zarmi used the name Zuleika.[26]

 

Since the mysterious Black Mandarin was believed to be dead, Kathulos once again began using his previous title of The Scorpion. This was a move calculated to make the authorities believe that Fo-Hi may have not died, it also served to unite the still loyal followers of Fo-hi with Kathulos followers in the Cult of the Scorpion King, Scorpia and the groups of rebels in Africa loyal to the Way of the Scorpion.[27] Kathulos began preparations that would ignite Africa, the Middle East and Asia in a concerted rebellion against European Imperialism. One minor miscalculation in one of his rather minor plans made the years of careful preparation all for naught.

 

Some of Kathulos’ plans entailed using Caucasians of European or American origins. Most of these agents were paid well, their cooperation bought or coerced. Often mesmerism was suitably employed. Yet in certain cases where it was necessary to completely bind the servant to Kathulos and yet ultimately dispose of him, Kathulo's highly addictive elixir was used. One of Kathulos’ agents discovered one of Kathulos enemies was a frequent visitor to Yun Shatu's Temple of Dreams, he was a morphine and opium addict. Although this young American was not aware of it, he and a man known only as the Dark Eagle had caused Kathulos a set back in 1918 in the in the French village of Esternay.[28] The Dark Eagle and his companion had stopped the massacre of the townspeople by the Germans. The Germans had been inflamed into a killer frenzy by two of Kathulos’ Senegalese agents. Posing as servants they were actually practitioners of the Dark Juju. Having worked dark spells and given the German magic potions to inflame their bloodlust. The two Senegalese agents had been exposed and killed by the Dark Eagle[29].

 

The young World War I veteran was using the name Stephen Costigan. Costigan was an American living in the Limehouse district of London. He was also a drug addict, having become addicted while recovering from war wounds.[30]

 

Kathulos offered the young American a cure for his addiction through the use of an Egyptian wine with life giving properties. The Egyptian wine not only freed him of the addiction but it made him more vital, made him physically sound and increased his strength.

 

The price of freedom from dope was to work for a mysterious benefactor who gave him assignments from behind a lacquered screen. His first assignment was to study all he could about a Major Morely. Costigan was then told he would be impersonating him. Yet even when it became obvious to the young American that he had traded one addiction for another, one form of slavery for an even more insidious form of slavery, Kathulos was surprised to find that the man still possessed a sense of right and wrong and a moral compass that could not be swayed.

 

While waiting for the signal to travel to Calais and begin his impersonation, Costigan encountered an intruder in his benefactor's house. The intruder was taking aim at a man dressed as if he were a leper. Costigan believed that the leper was his benefactor. He jumped on the intruder and knocked him unconscious. The leper fled.

 

Costigan was informed that this man he had knocked unconscious was John Gordon, the Master's greatest foe. He had heard of John Gordon, heard that he was connected to Scotland Yard in some fashion. Thinking it best he escorted John Gordon to the outside door and told him to make himself scarce. Just as Denis Nayland Smith had made it his business, his goal in life to stop the machinations of Fu Manchu, Smith's protégé John Gordon had made it his goal to stop Kathulos the Scorpion. Kathulos on the other hand considered Gordon to be nothing more than an amusing threat.

 

After learning in the papers that the man was supposed to impersonate had been found dead Costigan wished to be free of his service to The Master.

 

He met with the man behind the screen once again. Costigan told the man that he believed that since Costigan had saved his life as he had saved Costigan's their obligations to each other were ended. However Costigan was informed that he was to be a slave for the rest of his life. He met his benefactor face to face, his benefactor was a tall gaunt man with skin so withered and so thin that it looked like yellow parchment stretched over bone. His face resembled a skull, so thin was the flesh over bone.

 

Costigan was ordered to go to the house of Sir Haldred Frenton and kill him. Costigan refused and his benefactor laughed. While Costigan's addiction to dope had been ended, he was addicted to the drug that had cured him. Costigan refused but before agreeing to carry out the task he experienced pain in every cell of his being. He drank the elixir and waited for the signal to leave. He did not plan to go through with the murder but rather warn Sir Harold and John Gordon.

 

A dancing girl who had become infatuated with him told Costigan that his master's name was Kathulos and he was from Egypt. The girl, Zuleika, slipped Costigan a flask that contained an extra dose of the elixir. Kathulos had failed to realize that Zuleika's loyalty to him could be swayed by a basic human emotion, lust. Upon seeing "Stephen Costigan" Zuleika had desired him to the point of convincing herself she was in love with him. To this end she aided him in his efforts against Kathulos. Kathulos also believed that there might be a degree of rebellion in this related to his treatment of her father and her half sister. [31]

 

Costigan left Kathulos' house and pretended to carry out his mission to kill Harold Frenton. Once at Frenton's house however Costigan joined forces with John Gordon rather than being forced to murder at Kathulos bidding. From Gordon Costigan learned that Kathulos the Egyptian was even more dangerous than Costigan had believed. As a member of the British Secret Service, Gordon had been assigned to investigate unrest that had been seething among the natives of Africa since the end of the Great War. This unrest could be traced to the leader of a Scorpion cult in North Africa, a skull faced man. According to Gordon Kathulos' plan was nothing less than the overthrow of the white race. He wanted a black empire with him as the leader, to this end he had created a monstrous conspiracy composed of the black, the brown and the yellow. He had somehow managed to get blood enemies unite with him and work together in cooperation.[32]

 

Gordon and Costigan learned that Kathulos was a master of Mesmerism and his hypnotic powers were how he probably gathered his forces.  Further investigation uncovered another startling revelation. Years ago a German scientist classifying the sea life off the coast of Senegal discovered a case floating in the water. Brought aboard the scientist's ship it was found to discover a mummy, of a most unusual kind. Gordon's friend believed it had originated from Atlantis and risen from the sea. Once the ship reached Lagos, the German scientist was found dead and the mummy had disappeared. Gordon believed that Kathulos was using the legend of the living mummy to unite the tribes. Costigan examined photos taken of the Mummy by the German scientist and discovered that the face in the photos was indeed that of Kathulos. Incredible as it seemed, Kathulos was a living mummy.

 

Gordon and Costigan eventually invaded Kathulos' lair. When all Kathulos’ carefully laid plans seemed to be unraveling Kathulos had the great fortune to capture both Gordon and Costigan. Gordon was to be sacrificed by his African voodoo worshippers and Kathulos planned to experiment on Costigan. Kathulos believed that Costigan had somehow resisted the overpowering addiction to his narcotic and he wanted to see why. He was unaware that Zuleika, overcome with lust for Costigan had secretly given him a couple vials of the narcotic.

 

Kathulos admitted to being from Atlantis. He claimed that he was not the only one… "The ancient masters lie under the green seas, in their lacquered cases, dead as men reckon death, but only sleeping." Costigan was held in a steel cage that not even his elixir enhanced strength could break. Kathulos planned to make Costigan experience the full effect of withdrawal from the elixir and when death was near at hand to administer his cure for the elixir. The cure either killed or cured. It in fact killed nine out ten who tried it.

 

Yet Gordon had escaped from his captors, he entered the laboratory and shot Kathulos point blank in the chest. He freed Costigan and gave him the vial of the elixir cure.  As Gordon and Costigan escaped police raids began to arrest Kathulos followers and uncover his stashes of weapons and drugs. One of his more fanatical followers had ignited Kathulos main store of armaments, which were in tunnels beneath Kathulos’ main residence. It was believed that Kathulos perished in the explosion.

 

Gordon and Costigan had to fight their way past hordes of angry followers of Kathulos, into the tunnels that led from Kathulos hideout inside a walled up and abandoned warehouse and back onto the London streets. They were barely out of the tunnel when the warehouse exploded.[33]

 

Among the papers of Robert E. Howard was a story fragment entitled Taverel Manor. This was a sequel to Skull-Face completed by Richard Lupoff in 1977. In this tale John Gordon was asked to look into the disappearance of Sir Haldred Taverel by some family friends, Marjory and Harry Harper. Marjory had been engaged to the missing Haldred. Gordon asked Stephen Costigan to accompany him. In the course of their investigation they discovered that the Taverel Manor was being used as a smuggler's point, its proximity to the coast being a exemplary for this purpose. Confronting a smuggler they discovered he was a Malay. The Harpers received a telegram requesting that they come up to the Manor and meet with Gordon. Gordon had not sent such a note. The note was a ploy, designed to bring them to Manor so that they could be eliminated.

 

Gordon and Costigan discovered that the Manor's servants also served another Master, The Master, Kathulos whom they had believed was dead. John Gordon and Costigan soon discovered that Kathulos was still around. Kathulos was however in severely reduced circumstances. Most of Kathulos organization was been scattered or taken over by the resurgent Chang Li under Huan Tsung Chao a.k.a. John Ki, Fu Manchu's chief of staff. [34] Kathulos had been reduced to using an obscure manor on the English coast as a smuggler's point.

 

 John Gordon was struck by a lightning bolt and killed during this case. The implication was that Kathulos had directed the lightning bolt to kill Gordon. After Costigan carried Gordon's body into Tavernel Manor he was spoken to by Zuleika via radio. She revealed that she was a captive of Kathulos and if Costigan wished her to be free he would have to once again serve Kathulos. She gave him directions that he had to follow immediately if he were to see her again. It was also revealed to "Costigan" that Zuleika was still in Kathulos power. Using Zuleika, and the zombified (drugged) members of the Harper family as bait Kathulos lured Costigan out of England into France

 

Costigan made his way to Calais without even informing Scotland Yard of the death of Gordon.

 

In Calais he was taken to Kathulos' Temple of Silence. He challenged Kathulos to personal combat to win the freedom of Zuleika. Kathulos accepted but told Costigan because of his advanced age, Costigan would fight his champion. Costigan was forced to fight unarmed against a bizarre sea creature that Kathulos claimed was hybrid of lamprey and squid.

 

After killing the creature and climbing out of the pool of water, Costigan had to overcome Marjory Harper, her brother Harry and his fiancée Joan before he could confront Kathulos face to face. Costigan snapped Kathulos neck like a dry twig. The power that Kathulos held over his followers ended with his death.[35]

 

Zuleika blamed her apparent willingness to aid Kathulos one moment and then aiding Costigan as being due to Kathulos having enslaved her by heroin addiction. This however was probably a fabrication.

 

For her part, Zuelika soon discovered that her infatuation with Costigan was purely physical and that it rapidly waned. She made it appear as though die hard adherents of The Scorpion had killed her.  In fact she did connect with members of Scorpia and returned to the island of her birth Ral, where she assumed the duties of the high priestess of the Octopus cult.[36]

 

Costigan used Clifford Marsland, a variation on his birth name of Cliff Morris and returned to America, despondent over the loss of his love. He entered New York Society as an up and coming investor. He had never expected to love another woman the way he had Zuleika but it happened. By early 1924 he was engaged to Arlene Griscom, daughter of the theater magnate Howard Griscom.  Sadly, Cliff's luck went bad on him again. Arlene's younger brother was a weak individual who fought with his father constantly. After one such fight he had fallen in with a bad crowd and had been talked into helping commit a robbery.

 

The young man confessed to Cliff and told him that he feared going to prison. Cliff agreed that he would never survive in Sing Sing and decided to confess to the robbery himself.  He was sentenced to eight years. During his imprisonment, he contacted his boyhood friend Robert E. Howard. He refused to let Howard tell his family that he was still alive, but did give him permission to publish the story of his encounter with Kathulos, so long as Howard disguised the names and had it published as fiction.[37]

 

In 1925 London was once again terrorized by a skull faced fiend who committed the most atrocious murders. In prison Marsland wondered briefly if Kathulos had returned yet these murders were later revealed to have been the work of a madman known as Anton Phibes.

 

Yet Marsland was more right than he knew.

 

In 1921 after Kathulos had his house blown up around him he and Zuleika fled London to Calais. Outside of Calais they happened upon an automobile accident. Ordinarily Kathulos would have let nature take its course yet in this instance he felt a momentary twinge of searing pain, and so aided the trapped motorist in his burning vehicle. At first Kathulos believed that this unaccustomed empathy derived from his recent near incineration. Kathulos and Zuleika dragged the badly burned man from the wreckage. As Kathulos touched the charred flesh of the motorist he had the same sense of déjà vu, of a psychic explosion that he had felt when taking the hand of the Assassin's advisor, the mysterious Rashiel. 

 

Kathulos had been this man thousands of years ago, at least in his personal timeline. Kathulos was not merely an Atlantean Sorcerer who had lived in a mummified state for hundreds of thousand of years but was more; much more. Kathulos realized he had lived a thousand lifetimes and a thousand lives. He could not recall them all but he could remember some of the more memorable. As a being of energy he was nearly immortal yet in the energy state the sensations he experienced paled by far to those of creatures of flesh. Just as the tree from which humanity had evolved had many branch species, some more successful than others, his kind were a less successful branch of the evolution of humanity to Omni.[38]

 

Although nearly immortal they were however limited in how they sensed the physical universe. While they were not bound by the strictures of space/time and could exist simultaneously in various timelines or moments in time in throughout the history of the Universe, they were unable to "feel" anything. They had learned that they could bind themselves to material beings of flesh and so experience all that a material being could experience.

 

There were two methods of binding to a physical form. The first method was to co-exist with the living creature as a sort of benign parasite, experiencing the sensations of a body but second hand. The second method was direct possession usurping the body. Unless the energy being took over the body of an infant it stood the chance of losing the memory of its self until it were freed of the body and returned to the energy state. Once the energy being had attached itself to a body of flesh the only way to leave it was through the physical death of the host.[39]

 

Many of Kathulos' fellow energy beings had objected to any form of attachment to corporeal beings. They believed that obliterating or melding with an existing personality was murder. They also believed that inhabiting the bodies of infants was also a form of murder since it prevented the personality of the child to develop. They even believed that that the benign parasitic method was wrong because the host could become aware of this symbiosis and so be unduly influenced by the energy symbiont.

 

These energy beings believed that they should abstain from corporeal life and spend their existence contemplating the intricacies of their own innate senses such as the ability to experience non-linear time. They also felt a measure of responsibility to keep their fellow energy beings from murdering other beings. They discovered a planet which had an element which could caused their energy forms to experience an instability, it caused them to remain in a static state and radiate heat, in such a state they were not mobile, could not change quantum states (thus were unable to move through time and space). In essence this could imprison those energy beings that they considered murderers. They decided that the murderous ones should be imprisoned in the area of this planet where the peculiar element was located. The battle to subdue the murdering energy beings caused a rift to develop in the time/space continuum near the planet. This threatened to destabilize and engulf the planet so after the murderous energy beings had been imprisoned most of the energy beings took up existence in the instability melding their energies with the instability to prevent it from growing. Although their purpose was to keep the instability from engulfing the class M planet, they discovered that they could use it to enhance their senses. As they also concentrated on expanding their senses their combined energies formed a stable wormhole that reached into the gamma quadrant.

 

The humanoid population on Bajor became a special project for the energy beings living inside the worm hole, they became known as the Prophets to the Bajorians and the murdering energy beings became known as the pah-wraiths.[40]

 

A few of the murdering energy beings, the pah-wraiths, escaped from imprisonment and so a few of the energy beings that felt that came to be called the Prophets remained outside the group to pursue them.

 

Kathulos remembered being pursued throughout time and space by one of the Prophets. In many life times he had eluded him; in many life times they had confronted each other. When Kathulos had met Rashiel, the Assassin's advisor Kathulos knew him to be his future self. Kathulos had an unforeseen mental exchange with his future self and from Rashiel. Kathulos learned that from Rashiel’s future knowledge, in essence the Prophet would win, since that future self of Rashiel was so bound to his current physical form that when that physical form died, he would die.

 

Kathulos realized that his pursuer had also nearly won back in ancient Atlantis when it had convinced Kathulos to create and endure the process that would make him into a living mummy. The idea had been to preserve the body so that physical death would not force Kathulos to find another body. The process had not only made the body virtually immortal, Kathulos believed that even decapitation and dismemberment would not kill the body only incineration. Yet even incineration was uncertain, he had long believed that this process had so combined the body and spirit that he could not exist once this body was destroyed.  Kathulos had not wished to spend the rest of eternity forever bound to a pile of ashes. Thus he had been unwilling to destroy himself. The mummification process had also destroyed the sensory capabilities of the body so in essence was little more capable of feeling anything than if he had been in his energy form. Unable to bear what he had wrought upon himself he had used various techniques to hide his memories of his past. When Kathulos had met his future self he realized that he would eventually be freed of the mummified body.

 

Touching his future self had unlocked many of Kathulos locked memories. He no longer feared death but he had to discover a way in which he could extract himself from this body in such a fashion that his energy form would not only be freed but stronger than before. He could then confront his eternal pursuer and destroy him.

 

So when Kathulos touched the severely burned Anton Phibes, Kathulos remembered having been Anton Phibes and so aided this past self to the best of his ability. Kathulos believed that he could change the course of his own personal destiny despite the Rashiel's belief that in trying to circumvent it, Kathulos would merely be fulfilling it. According to his memories of Anton Phibes, Anton Phibes had eventually died of his burns. Yet according to Rashiel’s memories of the incident Anton Phibes had perished or vanished in Egypt. Kathulos believed that in this dissonance of memories lie a divergence in timelines that he could use for his own salvation.

 

He and Zuleika gave Phibes immediate medical attention and as per Phibes request hurried to London to see about his wife. By the time that Kathulos and Zuleika had gotten to the hospital where Victoria Phibes was being operated upon she had died. Kathulos injected the corpse with a preservative that prevented corruption of the corpse. He had hope that he could resurrect Victoria Phibes and so change the course of his past life and in doing so start to unravel the threads of his ultimate destiny.

 

Kathulos and Zuleika stayed with the hideously burned and crippled Phibes for two years. Kathulos did so because caring for Phibes brought back more of his lost memories. In his lifetime Phibes had gained great deal of arcane knowledge. He was a genius in the realms of music and mechanics. He believed that by using music combined with Egyptian magical lore he could restore Victoria to life, possibly restore himself to health and free Kathulos from his mummified body without immolation. He claimed that he could build an organ that would strike the proper set of notes that would affect the music of the spheres at the moment that they were in harmonic convergence. If this musical piece was performed as they traveled down the River of Life all who were in the environs of the organ would be made whole and immortal. 

 

Zuleika helped Phibes to build the devices that Phibes believed necessary to undertake this process. Kathulos spent the next two years surreptitiously making contacts among his shattered organization, doing so without alerting either the forces of the law or the criminal forces that would also have moved against him for his magnificent failure. 

 

When he revisited Anton Phibes in 1923 he discovered that Phibes had spent most of the last two years indulging in bizarre fantasy world. He devised various death devices with which to torture and kill his wife's physicians. He had not made any progress towards creating the organ he needed to affect the music of the spheres. Disgusted, Kathulos left Anton Phibes to his revenge.

 

With Zuleika at Kathulos’ side he began to once again form his small smuggling operation into a first class operation which he hoped would allow him to take over the newly reformed Si-Fan. The Si-Fan was operating as the S Group under the mysterious figure known as Mandarin K. Kathulos believed that the Mandarin was a stooge or ally of Fu Manchu.[41] He further believed that the K after the title of Mandarin was so that some of Kathulos' still loyal followers would believe that Mandarin K was Kathulos operating under another name.

Kathulos planned, when the time was correct, to kill the Mandarin K and assume the name.

 

His plans however were once again defeated by "Stephen Costigan" At least he had the satisfaction of having killed John Gordon as recorded in "Taverel Manor" by Robert E. Howard

 

It is recorded in "Taverel Manor" that Stephen Costigan broke Kathulos neck and tossed his body aside. This much is true. Costigan had also torn out the delicate tissues of Kathulos neck and destroyed his larynx, leaving Kathulos unable to speak.

 

Since Zuleika had gone off with Costigan, Kathulos returned to the sanctuary of Anton Phibes mansion. Although Phibes' genius was able to construct a device that allowed Kathulos to speak, he spent most of his time dreaming of revenge and living in a world of fantasy. Phibes passed each night in a surreal nightclub with an automated orchestra of his own creation. Phibes did construct the organ but played odd anachronistic music upon it.[42] Contact with Phibes had also awakened some of their shared earlier life experiences. In a couple of their most evil incarnations they had been a crooner named Johnny Favorite [43] a Hollywood talent agent, and a book editor named Rorshak.

 

As Phibes slipped ever more into his fantasy world and as he became physically weaker. Kathulos realized that Phibes would be incapable of accomplishing the disruption of their personal histories. Kathulos began to fear that as Rashiel, the Assassin's advisor had believed, their destiny seemed immutable. Phibes also realized that he was dying and would never achieve his well planned vengeance. He made Kathulos promise to do this for him. Kathulos at first demurred but then he realized that this might be the way to thwart his destiny. Instead of being Kathulos the Egyptian he would become Anton Phibes. To make certain that this new plan would become fact he smothered the sleeping Phibes. He used sophisticated prosthetic makeup to look like Phibes.

 

Taking on the Phibes identity Kathulos acquired an assistant, a young woman who had been badly treated by physicians. A dancer she had been squired by a physician. When she became pregnant, the doctor refused to marry her. When she persisted in this he had her committed. While under the care of a friend of her physician lover, her baby was aborted and she was rendered mute, lest she tell anyone of this crime. Her physician lover was one of the men on Phibes’ death list.

 

Kathulos carried out Dr. Phibes series of fiendish murders with Vulnavia's aid in 1925. He had also learned that one of the reasons Phibes had been so lax in pursing the project to revive them was because the River of Life only appeared every 2000 years during a certain conjunction of stars. This would not occur until 1928.

 

After successfully carrying out Dr. Phibes' revenge,[44] Kathulos placed himself into a suspended animation for three years in a secret chamber under Dr. Phibes house. The film's account of Phibes filling his veins with embalming fluid is also exaggerated.

 

When Kathulos/Phibes awoke in late 1927, prompted by Vulnavia, he rose from the subterranean chamber to what he believed would be the first floor of Dr. Phibes’ mansion. The building had been razed. Dr. Phibes’ papyrus document detailing the location of the River of Life had been taken from his safe. In the film The Return of Dr. Phibes Phibes immediately knew that Darius Biederbeck had stolen the papyrus and it seemed from the way he spoke as if Biederbeck and he were old enemies. Yet as the film progressed it was soon demonstrated that Biederbeck was wholly ignorant of Phibes existence. What probably occurred was that Kathulos/Phibes did find the house destroyed and all of Phibes’ worldly possessions, except for those in the underground lair, having been sold at auction. Phibes located the papyrus after a couple months search.

 

Vulnavia and he stole it from Biederbeck's home, killing Bierderbeck's bodyguard by first drugging him with the poisoned fangs of a clockwork snake and then by driving a snake shaped pin through his skull from ear to ear.

 

The film shows Phibes and Vulnavia taking passage to Egypt on the same ocean liner that also took Biederbeck and his party. However it is more likely that Phibes and Vulnavia's voyage to Egypt preceded Biederbeck's party by about a week. However Biederbeck's partner in the Egyptian dig, Dr. Ambrose was also a passenger on the same ocean liner that Phibes and Vulnavia had embarked. While snooping around in the hold, Dr Ambrose stumbled onto the chamber that contained Phibes' preserved wife Victoria. Phibes/Kathulos strangled Dr. Ambrose and threw his body overboard.[45]

 

When Biederbeck and his party arrived in Egypt they were unaware of the murder of Dr. Ambrose. Dr. Ambrose was supposed to have gotten the excavation/survey parties started. Although the film shows Biederbeck angry because the enthusiastic archaeologists had gone off on their own rather than sit and wait for instructions, the diary of Diana Trowbridge, Biederbeck's fiancee, tells another story. Biederbeck was angry because everyone was still sitting around rather than excavating.

 

Phibes and Vulnavia had set up a camp inside the ruins detailed in the papyrus. The film’s depiction of Vulnavia's altering the Egyptian wall paintings into an art deco style was fictional. Kathulos would not have desecrated the walls in such a manner.

 

When the Biederbeck’s group of archaeologists began to explore the ruins Kathulos/Phibes tried to warn them off by having a desert eagle kill one of them. Yet they continued to excavate the ruins and opened a chamber that contained a golden sarcophagus. Kathulos/Phibes had concealed Victoria Phibes’ body inside this sarcophagus. Kathulos/Phibes had been in another section of the ruins working on more discouragement devices when this theft occurred.

 

Kathulos/Phibes could not resist using a death devise that would provide a clue to his real identity. Vulnavia lured one of the young archaeologists to her tent, which was set some distance from the archaeologists' camp. She had him sit on a chair shaped like a golden scorpion. As she danced the tail of the scorpion moved and pinned the young man to the chair as golden pincers closed upon his hands. Held tightly in the chair, the Archaeologist set upon by several live scorpions. The scorpions stung him to death.

 

As the body of the archaeologist was discovered and taken care of the next morning, Kathulos/Phibes stole back the sarcophagus. He discovered that Biederbeck had found the hidden serpent tongue key hidden in the sarcophagus. This key opened the bronze gates barring the entrance to the River of Life. Bierderbeck knew what the key would open and intended to use it for his own benefit. Furious Kathulos/Phibes set about to destroy the entire party of archaeologists.

 

Using a sandstorm as cover, Kathulos/Phibes turned the bed of one of the archaeologists into a giant press which crushed his body to paste but left his head intact.

 

The oldest man in the group was told to take Biederbeck's fiancee to safety. Phibes abducted the fiancee and turned the older man's car into a death trap. When the car's ignition was turned a sandblasting device that Phibes had installed blasted sand directly into the older archaeologist's face stripping it to the bone in seconds.

 

Kathulos/Phibes offered to exchange Biederbeck's fiancee for the key. Biederbeck had been searching for the River of Life for years. Biederbeck had extended his life by means of an Elixir that he had somehow acquired. Biederbeck had taken the last three drops enroute to Egypt. He was desperate to find a means of extending his life because he had finally after centuries of life he had found a woman that he loved very deeply.

 

Unable to free Diana from Kathulos/Phibes’ death trap Biederbeck handed over the key, choosing love over life at the end. Phibes opened the gates and began to float down the river on his raft. Kathulos/Phibes played the organ, standing on the raft that also contained Victoria Phibes’ coffin. After freeing Diana Biederbeck had hurried back to the gates only to find them shut once again. His elixir wore off and he aged rapidly, although this rapid aging could have been more for dramatic purposes in the film than what actually occurred, from the diary of Diana Trowbridge it seems that Bierderbeck lived ten more years before dying of rapid aging.

 

Phibes sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" as he floated out of sight.[46]

 

The papyrus that Phibes possessed was a second-hand translation of an even older document. The conjunction of stars did indeed tell of a river would signal the flooding certain caverns, however this was a warning to stay out of these caverns during this time period rather than a set of instructions on how to get into the caverns.[47] In Phibes’ papyrus the phrase The River of Life was a mistranslation of The River of Fire. As Kathulos/Phibes soon discovered the river he floated on turned into rapids which poured into a short spillway where it churned into a channel of molten rock and hot mud. The raft, coffin and Kathulos/Phibes were immolated.

 

Although this trip was a failure in the sense that the River of Life did not exist and Kathulos was not cured of his mummified state, in one sense it was a success since the River of Fire however did free Kathulos from his imprisonment in the mummified body.  He was once again an energy form. Kathulos thought about his time in Atlantis and remembered that he had ruled another version of Atlantis under the name of Baal-Seepa until his enemy, his pursuer had once again thwarted his schemes there. He recalled that his enemy had striven to save a portion of these people when the island had sunk. Intrigued by this he sought out the area and discovered that there was a thriving community in the ocean rift where the island had sunken. He also sensed the presence of his enemy among them. He felt that with his many years of experience, most of his knowledge and all of his powers now available to him, this would be a good time to confront his enemy and finally destroy him.

 

In 1926 an undersea expedition was mounted to explore what would become known as the Maracot Trench. Professor Maracot had designed a diving bell that would carry a small crew of men to the ocean floor. He believed, contrary to the prevalent view, that the pressure of the ocean depths actually decreased the deeper one went. Therefore a vessel did not need thick walls to withstand crushing pressures nor would the pressures affect the crew as they traveled up and down the depths. His reasoning was based on the delicate body structures of many deep sea fish and other marine life. If the pressures were as great as science believed then the fish would have been crushed to jelly.

 

Upon reaching the target area of their research, Professor Maracot, his assistant Cyrus Headly and engineer Bill Scanlan were lowered from the steamship Stratford. Shortly after being lowered to a depth of 1800 feet their diving vehicle was attacked by large marine animal much like a giant crayfish. It snapped their lifelines, severing them from the ship. They quickly sealed their airline as they fell deeper into the trench. As their air was giving out they noted with detached interest that they had landed among the ruins of an ancient city. The inscriptions on the walls were in Phoenician. Just as they were nearly out of their oxygen supply they saw people outside the window of their vehicle, men dressed in transparent suits and a breathing apparatus of some type.

 

They were given three of the suits that allowed them to breathe underwater. They were then taken to a city enclosed in a glass bubble.

 

They would learn that this city was a remnant of an above ground island civilization of advanced science and learning called Atlantis. They watched a short historical film of the rise and fall of Atlantis. They later learned that this film was a recorded memory.

 

The Atlanteans had grown powerful on their island, rich with grain, wood and minerals. Trade with less developed countries had eventually turned into imperialism. As Atlantis grew rich and powerful, its citizens felt that manual labor was beneath them and so imported laborers by force. The slaves did all of the manual labor. As Atlantis grew ever more rapacious with conquest its citizenry became ever more corrupt, giving over to violence and depravity as symbolized by the dark gods they worshipped and by the bloody games they had for entertainment. A few people strove to bring back the golden age of a moral and upright society, among them was Warda, a mysterious scientist with arts and knowledge far beyond his humble background. He knew that the island was doomed to perish in massive volcanic eruption. Rather than flee or warn the island as a whole, Warda gathered a few followers and built a citadel that would withstand the devastation. He believed that the fire and flood would cleanse the island and expunge its sins from the world.

 

It was through his mysterious science that the sunken city survived.

 

The Atlanteans were a dark and swarthy people and they had a subservient ethnic group composed of light skinned and fair haired people. These were the descendants of Greek captives. The Atlanteans had been able to maintain the machines that provided them with energy and air but the need to keep the population small and the constant quest for food and resources had kept their scientific advances to a minimum. They were dependent on the devices that their ancestors had built. Maracot estimated it had been eight thousand years since this island had sunk.[48]

 

After a month of being in the sunken city Maracot's party was allowed to accompany some of the citizens on a trip outside of the city. They discovered to their horror the steamship upon which they had traveled had sunk with all hands. The engineer Bill Scanlan was able to rig up a radio receiver but he could not build a transmitter with the available technology.

 

They wrote a missive telling the world that they were alive and giving their location. They had it sealed in one of the plastic balls that the Atlanteans manufactured. They knew it was a long shot that someone would find it. Yet someone did almost immediately. A ship was dispatched to rescue them and contacted them by radio when it was in position.  The three men and a young woman from the sunken city were lifted to the surface by means of a lowered wire attached to the plastic bubbles in which they rode. The young woman was Mona, a young lady with whom Headly had become romantically involved.

 

Upon their return to civilization they told their tale of the sunken city. Among the incidents that they related was one which has since been discounted as hallucinatory. This was their meeting with the being they named the Lord of the Dark Face. 

 

Shortly before they left "Atlantis" Professor Maracot, Cyrus Headly and and Hanlon had gone exploring in the ruins of the ancient city that lay outside of the dome.

 

As part of their preparations prior to leaving, the three surface dwellers explored the parts of the sunken city not protected by the dome. Learning of this the being formerly known as Kathulos, now once again using the name Baal-Seepa went out to the unprotected part of the sunken city. When the party of the three surface dwellers entered the ruins of a temple dedicated to the Atlanteans version of the god named Baal, who was a big proponent of human sacrifice, Baal-Seepa made his presence known. To the surface dwellers he appeared like a tall man of at least seven feet in height wearing a black tight fitting outfit. He leaned up against a pillar watching them. Although the surface dwellers wore the Atlantean version of diving suits to explore the ocean covered ruins, it appeared as though Baal-Seepa needed not to wear one. He was unaffected by the water to the point that he could clearly speak to Professor Maracot and his party.

 

He told them that he was Baal-Seepa. He was an aether breathing being and did not need to breathe air. He said that he usually lived in the surface world but that people intruding into his temple had called to him. He said he had lived on the Earth for some twelve thousand years. His long life had made him bitter, so bitter that when he could do injury to mortals he would. He used his powers to accomplish this task.

 

"I have powers and they are not small ones. I can sway the minds of men. I am the master of the mob. Where evil has been planned there have I been. I was with the Huns when they laid half of Europe in ruins. I was with the Saracens when under the name of religion they put the sword to all who had gainsayed them. I was out on Bartholomew's night. I lay behind the slave trade. It was my whisper which burned ten thousand old crones whom the fools called witches. I was the tall dark man who led the mob in Paris when the streets swam in blood. Rare times those but they have been even better of late in Russia." [49]

 

Baal-Seepa claimed he had nearly forgotten about this city of water rats until Maracot's intrusion had awakened him. It was time to end the existence of this city. He handed Maracot an envelope, telling Maracot to give it to the leader of the city.

 

Baal-Seepa told Maracot and his companions that the citizens of the sunken city had to die since they were the followers of the man who had defied him. This was the scientist who had designed the wondrous dome and machines that had saved Atlantis. The man's name was Warda. Baal-Seepa claimed Warda still visited the Earth but as a spirit. To Baal-Seepa's delight his enemy seemed to not recall his past lives or recognize him. He could then destroy Warda and this city without interference.

 

After delivering his message Baal-Seepa's eyes flashed. He became blurry and indistinct, before the eyes of the astonished surface then as a dark mass he swirled up through the water of the temple[50]

 

Once his energy form had been freed of the mummy body Kathulos had taken over the body of one of the citizens of the submerged city, exerting all of his willpower to maintain his own personality. Since he was once again in the city he had once nearly controlled and nearly destroyed, he assumed his former name of Baal-Seepa. He learned that his enemy was a member of a scientific expedition that had accidentally stumbled upon this sunken city. This expedition was leaving shortly, returning to surface. Before they did however Baal-Seepa needed to destroy his enemy and the people that his enemy has saved from his wrath.

 

Baal-Seepa, like Kathulos had amazing powers of mesmerism, in this new form he was even stronger than he had been as Kathulos due to damage that the body of Kathulos had suffered during the mummification process. He used these increased mesmeric powers to make it appear as though he was not in one of the diving suit when he in fact was in one. His turning to mist before the eyes of Professor Maracot and the others was also another illusion.

 

The message that Professor Maracot gave to the leader of the Atlanteans commanded the citizens of the sunken city to meet in the great amphitheater and await Baal-Saapa's arrival.

 

Scanlan and Headly wished to confront Baal-Seepa with the Atlanteans at the appointed hour but Professor Maracot demurred, believing they could do nothing against such an entity. He went to his study to dwell on what course of action could possibly taken. When the summoning bell sounded, Scanlan and Headly were prepared to go to the amphitheater without Doctor Maracot but he astounded them by not only agreeing that they had to confront Baal-Seepa but he actually led the way with a vigor they had not previously seen.

 

Baal-Seepa made his way back to the sunken city. When the appointed hour came he appeared before the assembled citizenry of the city. He planned to strike Manda, the leader of the city of Atlantis and this would be a signal for the citizens of Atlantis to go on a killing frenzy amongst themselves. He realized that there was a good chance that the deaths would include the three surface dwellers and possibly his borrowed body.

 

When Baal-Seepa appeared before the people, Manda, the leader of the Atlanteans prostrated himself before Baal-Seepa begging for his people to be spared. Yet as he was about to strike, the surface dweller named Maracot stopped him.

 

Doctor Maracot jumped on to the dais and stood before Baal-Seepa.

 

He said to the entity "Your time has come. You have over stayed it. Go down! Go down into the Hell that has been waiting for you so long. You are a prince of darkness. Go where the darkness is."[51]

 

Baal-Seepa took issue with this statement and demanded how Maracot dared to speak to him when he could blast him where he stood.

 

Maracot replied, "Unhappy being. It is I who have the power and the will to blast you where you stand. "

 

Maracot argued that good was always stronger than evil and that an angel would always beat the devil. He ended his dialogue by commanding Baal-Seepa go down to Hell where he belonged.

 

Baal-Seepa suddenly recognized Maracot as Warda. His ancient enemy, Warda had appeared in this time and place to stop him. Warda had successfully hidden in Maracot until that moment. Although it appeared to the Atlanteans and to Scanlan and Headly that Maracot merely stopped Baal-Seepa with words, by telling him to go to hell, to go into the darkness he belonged, this was not the case. What transpired was an immense psychic battle waged across time and space. 

 

Warda had outmaneuvered Baal-Seepa and attacked him on several fronts simultaneously, as Maracot confronted Baal-Seepa on Earth in 1926 A.D. he reinforced himself by connecting himself to form in 1901 which was an energy form which battled the energy form most recently known Baal-Seepa. Maracot and the energy form of Warda also mentally connected with their previous incarnation known as Benjamin Sisko who battled the pah-wraith currently in possession of Gul Dukat in 2375. [52] These three combined with the warrior Mika-El who battled the King-Warrior who called himself the Morning Star and was also known as L'mur-Kathulos 399,099 B.C.[53] Warda linked with two more of his incarnations, as Kull he fought Thulsa Doom in 18, 000 B.C.[54] and as Conan the Hyborean he fought Thulsa Doom in 10,000 B.C.[55] Thus linked Warda was able to focus the killing energy directly into Baal-Saapa. Just as Thulsa Doom in 18,000 B.C. collapsed into corruption so did Baal-Seepa in 1926.

 

After Baal-Seepa had died Maracot told the others that while alone in his study he had prayed hard for a solution. Suddenly a tall bearded man had appeared before him and laid his hands upon Maracot's forehead and vanished. Maracot believed that the spirit had imparted something of himself to Marcot.

 

Maracot and the others left the city of Atlantis shortly after this.

 

The battle across times and space culminated in 1901 near the star of Algol.[56]

 

In the winter of 1900-1901 the New York State Psychopathic hospital received a patient named Jake Slater. Like many patients Slater wore a strait jacket and raved of vengeance. Yet threats of vengeance were directed towards a blazing entity of light that only he could see. Slater also claimed he would burn his way through any obstacle to achieve his vengeance. Slater had been remanded to the Institution after having beaten one of his neighbors to death. Since this had been done while Slater suffered from a blackout brought on by excessive liquor consumption he was judged insane. His lunatic ramblings aside, to most of the staff, Joe Slater was nothing more than a backwoods drunkard who had become berserk while in the midst of a whisky binge.

 

However one young intern felt an immediate bond between Joe Slater and himself. This was surprising in a way since the young intern in question had a very elitist, snobbish view of society. He considered Joe Slater and the people of the Catskill mountain community, from where Slater came, in this regard "corresponding "exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the South, laws and morality are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of native American people."[57]

 

Joe Slater had visions that he related to the young intern in chaotic but cosmic word-pictures. These visions were filled with gorgeous imagery and glittering realms of supernal radiance and vistas of outer space. The young intern could not believe that a man such a Joe Slater, a man who could neither read nor write, who had the "stolid imagination of a Catskill degenerate" could be the source of such wondrous visions. Rather he believed that Joe Slater was possessed by a lost soul from the dream realm. The Intern speculated that the trapped dream soul was trying to communicate with the outside world. "Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior body was desperately struggling to speak things which the simple and halting tongue of dullness could not utter?"[58]

 

The intern's attempts to communicate with the dream soul inhabiting Joe Slater met with frustration. He became desperate when Joe Slater's health took a turn for the worse and Slater began dying.

 

The intern had long believed that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves or radiant energy, like heat, light and electricity. This belief had led him to construct a device to transmit or receive which he had done during his college career. He had tested the device on a fellow student but to no effect. The intern retrieved and repaired this device and tested it upon Joe Slater.

 

The intern connected the device to his head and Joe Slater's head. Joe Slater died as the intern was tuning the instrument. The intern had a great sensation of music and light. A voice spoke to him telling him that Joe Slater was dead. The voice filled the interns mind.

 

"I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and

I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter."

 

"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence - you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name of Algol, the Demon-Star It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Demon-Star.

 

"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my only friend on this planet - the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again - perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away." [59]

 

The intern's superiors refused to believe the reality of what the intern had experienced. Instead they believed that he had suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of overwork. They sent him on a six month paid leave.

 

Yet the intern believed what he had experienced was true. "yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased witness, another pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Serviss:

 

"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye." [60]

 

In 1901 as the two energy beings battled with one another the star Algol flared briefly brighter as the energy being formerly known as Kathulos and Baal-Seepa was stripped of its energy and dissipated. Forcibly linked to his other selves the combined deaths diminished the Lord of the Dark Face until there was only a spark of life left.

 

It found the strength with its last bit of energy to once more bond with a physical body. He knew that this would be his last incarnation; he knew that once this cage of flesh was dead, his essence would also be extinguished

<> 
<>DEMON'S HEAD

 

RAS AL-GHUL

 

 

The being who had been known as Kathulos, Anton Phibes, Baal-Seepa, Gul Dukat, Lucifer, Tsoos-Ah and a thousand other names and lives, found refuge on Earth in the body of a young man in North Africa in 1312. Most of his memories were gone; he knew he had been nearly a god, that his enemy had defeated him near the star Algol. He also knew he had been so devastated by the assault of his enemy that this mortal shell would be his final resting place, that once the life was extinguished from this mortal body, he too would perish.

 

Most of his great ambition had been burned out of him but an ember of it still smoldered.

 

He chose a name appropriate to the area, Rashid. His thirst for power manifested in a more sedate manner, in the conventional sense of social advancement. He became a physician and an alchemist. He fell in love with a woman and he may have been content to live out his life as a mortal had not fate intervened. The son of a Sultan took a fancy to Rashid's wife and ordered her to join his harem. When she refused because of her marriage to Rashid, he seemed to accept her decision but looked for any excuse to end this marriage. Rashid the Physician treated a man suffering from a severe whipping and a sword cut. The man healed rapidly but Rashid felt that it was due more to the man's constitution rather than Rashid's skills. The man was a wanted criminal, he had tried to kill the Sultan's son. Instead of having Rashid arrested the Sultan's son tried to have Rashid murdered. Although Rashid escaped assassination, the Sultan's son tried to take his wife anyway. She threw herself out of a window rather than be dishonored.

 

Rashid attempted to enter the palace and kill the Sultan and his son. For his efforts Rashid was sentenced to be buried in a pit along with the man whose life he had saved.

 

A long harrowing three days followed in which Rashid and the other man burrowed their way out of the pit and to freedom.

 

Rashid the Physician was no more, he took for his name the Arabic name for the star where he had suffered his great defeat and become mortal. The star was Algol, the Arabic for it was Ras al Ghul, the Demon Head.

 

Together Ras al Ghul and Shoeya gathered many like minded men and led a rebellion against the Sultan. They woun in a long, brutal bloody battle in which Ras was severly injured and nearly killed. Shoeya was actually Iwaldi, one of the Nine. [61] Shoeya gave Ras a dose of the elixir without consulting the others, he knew that Ras Al-Ghul would never submit to being a Servant of the Nine, yet felt gratitude to the man. The elixir saved Ras' life and extended his youth. Yet he was told he could never receive another dose. Shoeya then disappeared from Ras Al-Ghul's life, lest Ras become so desperate for the elixir that he resort to torturing his friend.

 

At having been given a chance at a means of extending his life in this mortal shell, Ras devoted his time to discovering a means of replicating the elixir. Using his own blood as a base Ras tried to replicate the formula. He finally distilled a version of from his blood that was effective at first. It slowed his aging but lost its effectiveness over time. It may have been abandoned vials of this version of the elixir which Biederbeck (from The Return of Dr. Phibes) had somehow come to possess.

 

Seeking to extend his life, Ras traveled the world. He journeyed to various lamaseries in Tibet. One of these lamaseries told of a land of great magic and wonder. He traveled through a mountain pass, through a narrow tunnel carven into a mountain and exited in beautiful valley. In striving to find Shangra-La, Ras al Ghul discovered K'un-L'un.

 

He had dim recollections of the Elder Gods or powerful beings similar to them who had the ability to create small universes in a null space of the Universe. K'un-L'un was such a mini-universe.

 

Whoever had created this universe they had a great enthusiasm for Asian cultures without worrying too much about historical accuracy or cultural integrity. Elements of Chinese, Tibetian and Japanese cultures were present in an odd mélange. There were even living Chinese dragons. One twist was an intelligent species of plant named H'yulthri , which did not seem to be part of the original creator’s designs, the Dragons and H'yulthri preyed on the human population.

 

Ras al Ghul was mistaken for a reincarnation of Genghis Khan by the human population, a misbelief that Ras encouraged. He used this mistaken belief to incite the human population to use new tactics and strategies against their war with the plants and dragons. This allowed the humans to regain much of what they had lost and deal with the plants and dragons from a position of strength. Ras began to examine the old ruins that had been overrun by the plant and dragons. He discovered various pieces ancient technology including a device that led to unfinished universe. He discovered that when the blood of a human being was mingled with that of a dragon, the mixture created a highly toxic, caustic chemical that Ras believed would regenerate and rejuvenate, if the caustic elements could be neutralized to a great degree.

 

Ras learned of the Highlander Immortals and rightly deduced their connection to the planet, although he had no knowledge of the electro-magnetic field,[62] he believed it was a form of magic connected to what would later be called ley lines. He usually referred to them by the Chinese description as the "dragon current", or lung-mei, which existed in two forms: the yin, or negative, current represented by the white tiger, and the yang, or positive, current, represented by the blue dragon. These lines of magnetic force were key ingredients to the creation of what would be known as his lazarus bath. Using a form of the elixir derived from his blood, mixed with an alchemical potion of poisons and acids, Dragon blood and human blood placed on the dragon lines, Ras Al-Ghul developed a method to not only extend his life but also rejuvenate himself.

 

Ras did not stay in K’un L’un but for a few years, finding the small area rather stifling, although he would return several times over the next few centuries Ras returned to the outside world.

 

Because Ras Al-Ghul had achieved a form of immortality on his own and because he had great wealth, he was contacted by Iwaldi with an opportunity to join the ranks of the Nine, first as servant but with the promise to move into the ranks of the Nine when one of the Nine retired or died. As Iwaldi had believed Ras al-Ghul did not wish to be subservient to anyone and rejected the offer.

 

Once his goal of immortality was assured, Ras Al-Ghul turned his mind to other matters. He sought wealth and power. He achieved this over the course a century or more. In the early 16th century, he discovered the lost city of Yolgan. The name of which reminded him of Algol. The city was ruled by a cult of priests who worshipped the mummified body of a horned man-beast. Oddly enough this mummified effigy twigged something in Ras Al-Ghul's lost memories but he could not fathom what it was.[63] Ras gained control of the priesthood which also gave him access to great wealth in the mountain mines of Yolgan which were rich with gold and silver ore. One of his innovations to the faith of Yolgan was the idea that Erlik Khan, the God of the Underworld had won a cosmic battle and so he was the god of the Night skies as well as the underworld. To symbolize this he adopted a star symbol as the symbol of his priesthood, upon learning that a certain family in Yolgan possessed a star shaped skin blemish, he made the women of this family his hereditary high priestesses.

 

Mount Erlik provided Ras Al-Ghul with a constant source of wealth that had only three minor inconvenient interruptions. In the 1860's a hideously deformed man whose face resembled a skull even more so than did Kathulos. A description of this man was as thus, "His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears." [64]

 

The man had run across the lost city of Yolgan as part of a campaign against the Emir of Afghanistan he carried out as a commission for the Shah of Perisa. He had learned of the Cult of Mokanna. Mokanna or "The Veiled," was the founder of an Arabic sect in the eighth century. He wore a veil to conceal his face, which had been greatly disfigured in battle. He gave out that he had been Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses and the incarnation of Allah. When the sultan Mahadi marched against him, he poisoned all his followers at a banquet, and then threw himself into a cask containing a burning acid, which entirely destroyed him. Or he either poisoned himself and his family, or set fire to the place, and calling on his women and all who would ascend heavenward with him, to follow his example, cast himself with them into the flames, and perished. A cult that believed Mokanna would eventually return had risen around his legend.

 

Using this cult and his experience at conjuration and ventriloquism this man with the death's head face and strange yellow eyes claimed to be the incarnation of Mokanna and gathered adherents to march on the Emir of Afghanistan. He heard of a legend of a city, rich with gold ruled by the Lord of the Dead. He convinced a small segment of the ruling priests that he was the incarnation of Erlik Khan. He was awarded a harem of beauteous women. From Yolgan the golden eyed man dispatched a jihad against the Emir of Afghanistan. He only ruled the city for a few months before a coup nearly cost him his life. It was his survival from this encounter that he realized that he was not as other men. The coup had come about because his covetousness of some women, the girls and wives of some of his adherents quickly eroded the belief of these adherents.

 

Even though his rule of his city was only a few months long, it left a great impression on him, and he came to call himself Erik as a derivation of Erlik. The death skull faced young man with the blazing yellow eyes would eventually wind up in Paris where he lived under the Paris Opera house. He was known as the Ghost of the Opera. He apparently perished in 1881.[65]

 

In the 1890s an American adventurer named Francis Xavier Gordon visited Yolgan. He killed Erlik Khan’s high priest Yogok and led a group of Turkomen to loot the caves.[66]

 

Another more serious interruption of Ras’ finances from Yolgan took place in the 1920's which was related to the incident in the 1860s.

 

Once financial wealth was assured Ras Al-Ghul's worked on long range plans; to secure his wealth and to bring about a orderly civilization where people were free from want and need.  Ras Al-Ghul did not have a master plan to rule the world with himself as its head, the glimmers of memory that he had indicated that this was a fool's path for it made the putative leader a target. As he viewed it he was engaged in a long chess match wherein he could use such would-be world leaders as pawns. He did not have an ultimate plan but was guided by his sense of how things should be. He often felt as if some important aspect of his life, some guiding force that would shape his destiny had been forgotten.[67] Because of some of the residual feelings from his previous incarnations that had shaped his personality in this incarnation, he leaned towards making the Asian and African regions as the instruments and ultimate recipients of the benefits of this envision civilization.

 

Ras Al-Ghul suffered many reversals of his plans starting in the 1700's and continuing through the 1800s due to Western Imperialism. The European powers made great industrial and technological strides and used this to “colonize” the African and Asian continents, wreaking havoc with Ras’ carefully wrought plans. He began using his wealth and power to counter Western Imperialism but did so carefully so that he would not become a personal target for the Western powers or the Nine. Through various guises he befriended, sponsored, backed, supported and influenced several groups and individuals in Africa, The Middle East and Asia who shared some of his financial and political goals.

 

Ras Al-Ghul had also come to realize that the drive for Western Imperialism was being directed by a secret cabal working behind the scenes. He believed that this cabal was the Nine. Although The Nine and Ras Al-Ghul often had similar goals they were at odds over which groups of people they wished to achieve them, so they found themselves in direct opposition in some cases. As a means of both protecting himself and also to further his political goals Ras Al-Ghul reformed the League of Assassins. The League of Assassins helped him to achieve some of his political and socials goals through elimination of people who stood in opposition to Ras’ policies or by making allies by eliminating the enemies of others. Through the League of Assassins he also established a connection with the Thuggee devotees of Kali.

 

Iwaldi interceded with the Nine so that Ras Al-Ghul would not be eliminated. Iwaldi was intrigued by Ras Al-Ghul's form of the elixir via the lazarus baths for not only did it confer immortality but it also rejuvenated the body to a youthful state. However the price of temporary madness was considered too risky. The Nine feared that it would combine with the residue of their elixir which on occasion caused a period of insanity and create a permanent madness in the recepient. Iwaldi would later find a scientist who could create a variation of the Nine's elixir that would restore youth as well as slowing the aging process as seen in The Mad Goblin.

 

Through proxies Ras Al-Ghul ruled the Assassins of Syria and some Thuggee cults of Kali. It was through the Thuggee cults and also through his association with Iwaldi that he learned of the existence of the Capelleans and Eridaneans. He discovered conflicting stories of their origins. All accounts agreed to their alien origin, to their secret agenda to bring a utopian civilization to Earth and of their war of elimination against one another. There was evidence that they had arrived as early as 858 A. D. and built up a great network of front organizations that hid their alien origins yet the constant secret warfare had decimated the true Capellean and Eridanean populations so that most of the leaders and soldiers were adoptees. There were also hints however that the Nine had early learned of the existence of the Capelleans and Eridaneans and had used their existence as a cover for their own secret organizations, in other words many organizations which claimed to be or believed themselves to be of Capellean or Eridanean origin, were in fact begun or co-opted by the Nine. The Nine scoffed at the Capelleans and Eridaneans promise of a thousand years of life; this was a blink of and eye to the Nine and their servants.

 

Ras Al-Ghul believed that the story of the Capelleans and Eridaneans' earlier arrival was true but also believed that their influence was overstated. There was however one organization which seemed to be mainly Capellean in organization and alliance but which the Nine had also begun to influence. Based in the Indian subcontinent was a group called the Nine Unknown which was comprised of three Capellean Old Ones, that is three of the original marooned aliens, three members of a Tibetian lamasary, probably the Rache Churan, that had in its possession ancient scrolls filled with arcane knowledge, two members of the Thuggee cult of Kali-Thatos,[68] and Shaumbim, one of the Nine, an ancient Mongolian. This group had possession of schematics of advanced technology from an ancient vanished civilization and the memories and experiences of the Capelleans who were engineers. They attempted to reverse-engineer advanced technology with 18th and 19th technology.

 

Ras Al-Ghul also learned of an Eridanean sponsored group of Nine individuals that worked to oppose the Nine Unknown. Ras Al-Ghul had his agents from the Thuggee's infiltrate the Nine Unknown with the intent of stealing the high technology should any be actually created. His agents successfully "turned" Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand. He stole certain of the plans and with Ras Al-Ghul's silent aid, they began to assembled two atomic powered submarines using Nineteenth century technology.

 

Yet the Nine, that is the Immortal Nine were even wilier than Ras Al-Ghul had believed but then they had centuries to hone their guile. They turned one of Ras Al-Ghul's thugees and had him murder the children of a Capellean agent, a Capellean agent with a brilliant intellect, a vindictive streak and great tenacity. The Thuggee left a trail that led directly to Prince Dakkar, making it appear as though he were an Eridanean agent. The Capellean agent, Professor James Moriarty followed the trail of his children's killer. Professor James Moriarty infiltrated Dakkar's organization, led a revolt once the submersibles were finished, crippled one and stole the other. He then embarked on a career as Captain Nemo following the Capellean tenet of eliminated war. He attempted to do this by eliminating the warships and ships that carried cargoes that could be considered war materiel.[69]

 

Ras Al-Ghul was, at times, forced to use the institutions of European imperialism to further his own goals. Through his involvement in Western trade in Asia, specifically in the tea and opium exchange, Ras al-Ghul became acquainted with many institutions, organizations and people in Asia. Through his various business dealings and through the organizations that he had involvement and to a certain extent directed, he came in contact with Burmese Dacoits, Asian Triads, Chinese Tongs and a scattering of secret societies in mainland China. He realized that he could organize these into a confederation that would allow him to indirectly oppose the plans of the Nine and yet do so in a more focused manner.

 

At first there was only a loose confederation of the various groups encouraged by Ras Al-Ghul through proxies to work together for mutual benefit. Together they gained wealth and influence and they slowly began to affect the political and social climate of the East. Ras Al-Ghul encouraged tradition and adherence to old ways as an opposition to the West's thirst to modernize yet he was canny enough to know that modernization was necessary for the East to compete with the West. He kept his eyes out for people who could blend traditionalism with modernization.

 

In one such case he found the man whom was his first choice to be his heir.

 

The man who Ras Al-Ghul’s first choice to be his heir was Shan Ming Fu, to the world at large he would later become known as Fu Manchu, The Devil Doctor.

 

Ras Al-Ghul became involved in the lucrative opium and tea trade. Although his agents had encouraged the Chinese Emperor to ban opium from entering China, seeing the devastation that unregulated and cheap opium had wrought on the people of China; he also knew that the Chinese addicts would need a supply of opium to wean themselves from the drug lest a social revolution occur that would put China into an upheaval. To this end, he made the acquaintance of a couple of opium/tea traders who were if not Sinophiles, at least had some positive feeling for the Chinese people. One of these traders was Dirk Struan. [70]

 

Struan was a Scotsman who had been in the Chinese trade since 1810 and had risen from a cabin boy to the master of his own vessel to head of the one of the largest trading companies involved in the Chinese trade. He was tall, strongly built and had arresting emerald green eyes. He was also known to deal more fairly with the Chinese than other of the traders and he had a penchant for taking Asian mistresses.

 

It was a little kept secret that he also had a few offspring from such pairings. Although he generally did not formally acknowledge such offspring in any legal or formal manner, he did provide financial support and felt paternal at times towards them.

 

One of Struan's daughters was Ling Jui Hai, who after having been rescued from cultists by Sir William Clayton had seduced him. Having found herself pregnant she chose a man in his late twenties named Shan who was both the scion of a Manchu family and a member of Mandarin class. Ling Ju Hai seduced Shan and convinced him of her love for him and further convinced him that her prayers had created a miracle, she was bearing his child.

Shan was pleased that when Ling Jui Hai delivered that she gave him not one but two sons. The boys were quite fortunately predominately Asian in appearance but both possessed Ling Ju Hai’s striking green eyes.

 

Ling Ju Hai was one of those individuals that Ras Al-Ghul was looking for who saw the merits in both tradition and modernization. She made certain that her two sons were well educated by western standards. They were encouraged by their mother to get as much Western education as possible without losing their Eastern values. Ling Ju Hai was not alone in these sentiments. This was the essence of the Self Strengthening Movement which would influence Chinese culture during the next decade.[71] Shan Ming Fu was educated at the western Universities of Heidelberg, the  Sorbonne and Edinburgh and Shan Lan Fo was educated at the western Universities of Edinburgh, Christ College and Harvard. Although a pragmatist, she an idealistic vision of a strong, modernized China competing and winning against the Western Powers.

 

It was while the Shan brothers were at the University of Edinburgh that they were approached by a member of one of the Tongs, a tong to which Ras Al-Ghul had connections. This was person was also an agent of Ras Al Ghul. The agent convinced the idealistic young men that the rumors of the Tong’s criminality were western propaganda. All the Tong wished was for China to compete in the modern world; compete and ultimately win out. Since this philosophy echoed the one promulgated by their mother, they were amenable and became members of this Tong.

 

The two brothers studied much the same disciplines at their respective colleges but differed greatly when it came to their ultimate career choices. Shan Ming Fu chose to serve the people of China through its government system and Shan Lan Fo chose to serve the people of China through science and medicine. He became a noted physician in Peking but was also took and taught western science and medicine to the outlying areas of the Chinese Empire. He was also a naturalist and explorer, a proto-archaeologist interested in tracing China’s past history of greatness. These explorations often took him outside of the Empire into areas once ruled by China or connected to China through lore and legend.

 

A faction within The Sublime Order of the White Peacock agreed that their efforts and the efforts of other groups in China alone could not hold back the ever encroaching tide of western imperialism much less turn the tide. It was decided to begin negotiations with other organizations who not only had a reason to turn back western imperialism but were also willing to do what ever measures need to accomplish this task.

 

Over the next two years after careful negotiations seven groups from throughout the East formed an organization which would be known as the Si-Fan. Shan Ming Fu observed the creation of the Si-Fan with some curiosity. There was an underlying pattern in the creation of the Si-Fan. Although many of the most astute minds in the East were among the members of the organizations that comprised that Si-Fan, no one seemed to realize that they were being encouraged and guided into creating the Council of Seven.

 

Through diligent, painstaking and careful research, Shan Ming Fu was able to discern who had been doing the manipulating. The manipulator was Rashiel, the advisor to the Wadi of the Assassins. Rather than being angered or frightened by Shan Ming Fu's discovery of his role in the creation of the Si-Fan, Rashiel or Ras Al Ghul, was quite pleased.

 

Ras Al Ghul slowly began to take Shan Ming Fu into his confidence, as the early confederation of the Si-Fan began to take shape. One of the Si-Fan's long range plans to end Western dominance began with a strong China as one of its immediate goals. They influenced the imperial family to hold onto and reclaim lost provinces whenever possible. These policies were probably necessary for China's resurgence however the core structure of Chinese society and culture was weak and decentralized from the corruption and weakness of the Imperial family under the Dowager Empress and so was unable to implement them in a constructive fashion. While the Chinese members of the Si-Fan probably recognized this factor, they ignored it out of blind loyalty to the Imperial house. Following these policies without a modern army or a centralized command structure to enforce their Imperial claims would prove disastrous. These led to the conflicts that China would have in Annam and Korea.

 

As Rashiel, Ras al-Ghul, groomed Shan Ming Fu to be his successor because the Lazarus baths kept him young but made him sterile. There was always the fear in Ras al-Ghul's mind that the lazarus bath's would fail him one day and he would die and his "empire" would unravel with all his work yet undone. Yet Shan Ming Fu continued to age while Ras al-Ghul remained young because Shan Ming Fu refused to avail himself of the life extension method that Ras al-Ghul knew about because each had a price that Shan Ming Fu was not willing to pay. Shan Ming Fu refused to use the lazarus baths because of the real possibility of permanent insanity and sterility. He refused to join either the Capelleans/Eridaneans or Nine because of their requirement of absolute allegiance and subservience to them. Shan Ming Fu insisted upon trying to discover his own version of the Elixir of Life and be beholden to no one.

 

One of the first missions that Shan Ming Fu performed for Ras al-Ghul was to teach the man known as Muhammad Ahmad some of the techniques that Shan Ming Fu had learned at Rache Churan. With these techniques in hand Muhammed Ahmad was able to garner a great following which he used to foment revolt against the British in Sudan. The revolt went even better than Ras al-Ghul had hoped for Muhammed Ahmad proved to be a military genius. However Muhammed Ahmad declared himself the Anointed One and formed the jihad into a cult of the personality with himself at the center. He created an Islamic state that not only threatened the colonial powers but even fellow Muslims that did not believe as the Mahdi dictated. In 1885, Shan Ming Fu was sent to dispatch the Mahdi. The official story is that the Mahdi died of typhus.

 

Shan Ming Fu was pegged as one of the scapegoats of the Boxer Rebellion. To keep his protégé safe from harm, Ras al-Ghul provided him with missions outside of China or on China's frontiers. In 1901 he was sent to Japan to meet with members of the Genoyosha or Black Dragon Society. This was a society promoting Pan-Asianism and curtailing the power of the Western Nations especially Russia. The society was very wealthy being funded through Ryochei Uchida, a criminal overlord. Shan Ming Fu arranged for financial aid for the revolutionary movements in China and also arranged for joint actions to be taken against Russian incursions in Manchuria.

 

In 1902 when Shan Ming Fu traveled to the plateau of Sung in Burma he came across another form of immortality, yet one which nearly snapped even his strong willed mind. A dwarfish group of people were ruled by a priestly caste who claimed to be immortal. The high priest was E-poh, a man who claimed to be some seven thousand years old.

 

Shan Ming Fu's mission to Burma was a moderate success. His efforts not only brought some of the Tcho-Tcho as loyal minions of the Si-Fan but also stopped the world from being devoured by two alien monstrosities. 

 

The deaths of their deities left the Tcho-Tcho people devastated as the purpose of their culture evaporated in an instant. They split into many different groups. Some stalwarts remained behind, worshipping the dead husks of their gods, some traveled to live with their fellow Tcho-Tcho on the plateau of Leng, in the Andaman Isles, Malaysia and Tibet. Others emigrated to the United States and still others became loyal followers of Shan Ming Fu, although in the texts about Fu Manchu these deadly warriors from Burma were often confused with the dacoits, the murderous cult of thieves from Burma.

 

Shan Ming Fu's mentor Rashiel was immensely intrigued by Shan Ming Fu's tale of these malevolent beings from outer space, although he admitted to Shan Ming Fu he was not certain why this story struck a chord with him.

 

The Empress' displeasure with the Si-Fan machinations of the Boxer Rebellion centered upon Shan Ming Fu. Fu's family was killed as they fled from unrest in Honan. After Fu returned from Burma he was scheduled to be executed but the Si-Fan managed to have this sentenced remanded to exile. Fu was exiled on the island of Hainan. He was severely beaten and nearly died, his back was broken and his neck injured. He developed a brace that would straighten his back as it healed. This cast gave him the appearance of hunchback.

 

Fu was smuggled out of Hainan in 1905. He traveled first to Hanoi and then to Paris. He established an organization dubbed criminal by the Surete. To them the Paris police he was known as Hanoi Shan.

 

When Shan Ming Fu was crippled by the wrath of the Empress, Ras felt that he would need to find another heir. However Fu Manchu's tenacity to overcome his injury, his renewed devotion to the goals of the Si-Fan and willingness to carry out the policies of the Si-fan made Ras continue to support his chosen successor.

 

Ras noticed that after the death of Shan Ming Fu's family, his experiences in Burma and his betrayal and crippling by the Empress he had served with such devotion, that Fu became more ruthless. He passionately motivated towards the goal of united China and a Pan-Asia free of European control and would do almost anything to accomplish this goal.

 

During this period between 1906 and 1908 when Shan Ming Fu was residing in Paris and laying the groundwork for several major plans, a rival force arose to challenge the power of the Si-Fan. A mysterious figure from Africa named the Scorpion began uniting various dissident African native populations, many of whom were blood enemies under a revived cult named the Way of the Scorpion. He also revived the Scorpion King cult in Egypt and allied with and then assumed the leadership of the criminal organization Scorpia. His goal seemed to be to make the Africa and Middle Eastern peoples pre-eminent just as The Si-Fan wished to make the Eastern nations pre-eminent.

 

Attempts to eliminate The Scorpion brought retaliatory strikes against the Si-Fan. Rashiel did not believe that the Si-Fan yet had either the unity or strength to carry out a war against a strong rival and still carry out its war against the western powers.

 

The Si Fan proposed an alliance with the Scorpion yet Rashiel warned against making him a member of the Si-Fan. The Scorpion refused ally with the Si-Fan but wished to join the Si-Fan as a member organization and be given a seat on the Council of Seven.  However he was not offered a seat. He proposed a non-interference pact; the S-Fan would not interfere with his plans in Africa and Egypt and he would not interfere in their plans in Asia. Regarding the Middle East they would apprise each other of their plans for the region and either work together or work out any possible conflicts.

 

As the advisor to the Wadi of the Assassins, Rashiel was present during the meetings with Kathulos, The Scorpion. Although Kathulos kept himself hooded and masked to maintain his anonymity, Rashiel felt through some uncanny sense that he knew Kathulos. This feeling grew stronger the longer he was in Kathulos presence. When the negotiations were finished and hands were shaken on the agreements, even through Kathulos' glove Rashiel could feel thin stick-like fingers and had a sense of dried flesh. Beyond that when their chi or prana intersected through the medium of touch, a psychic explosion occurred in both of their minds and forgotten memories were unleashed.

 

Prior to meeting Kathulos Ras had known he had been immortal, he had known that he was not of the Earth, that he had been a free spirit with the ability to change bodies as humans change clothing and he had known that a great battle with his greatest enemy had left him crippled and all too mortal.

 

Ras had not remembered any of his former lives and the mortal shell in which he was imprisoned was too limited to retain all of the memories that Kathulos touch had unleashed.

 

Ras realized that the touch had also given Kathulos some measure of foresight as to his own destruction and it also in a manner that Ras did not understand unlocked more of Kathulos memories than Ras possessed.

 

Unfortunately Ras was not able to retain many solid memories of his past lives including those of Kathulos. He had the distinct feeling that Kathulos’ arrogance, more so than any other of the previous incarnations, had led to the final battle with the enemy and so to Ras' imprisonment in a mortal body from which he could not escape. Because Ras was doomed to die because of the actions of Kathulos, Ras hated his former self and considered Kathulos his enemy.

 

Yet while Kathulos existed, Ras felt that his own destiny was on a fixed path. Unfortunately it was not simply a matter of having Kathulos destroyed. Although Ras did not know the exact circumstances of Kathulos destruction, he was certain that Kathulos had caused his own destruction. While Ras was less than thrilled at his own limited life span, he also feared to thwart Kathulos destiny lest the outcome of the final battle be changed and threaten Ras' existence. 

 

Ras felt that he needed to aid Kathulos efforts and plans because they would eventually lead to Kathulos destruction and so free Ras from the chains of destiny.

 

From Kathulos Ras also learned the reason for his need to rule from behind the scenes. He learned his true purpose in wishing to unite humanity. He also learned that he was indeed part of something immeasurably larger than himself.

 

Although it seemed as though Kathulos and perhaps a few of his other incarnations had let their personal ambition for power override their primary mission, their purpose was something far beyond the petty quest for the temporal power of a king or emperor. The being known as Kathulos and Ras belonged was the servitor of the Great Old Ones. More specifically they were the servitors of Cthulhu and his sons Zoth-Ommog, Ghatanothoa and Ythogtha.

 

Their primary mission was to prepare the Earth, gather enough mortal worshippers to awaken Cthulhu, Zoth-Ommog, Ghatanothoa and Ythogtha.

 

Ras knew by Fu's reaction to the existence of Lloigor and Zhar that he would not aid Ras in carrying out his primary mission. If Fu knew about Ras' mission he would try to thwart it.

 

Ras still felt paternal towards Fu and hoped that one day he could be swayed to the worship of the Great Old Ones. Ras also realized that there was a good chance that his primary mission would not be accomplished in his limited life time and now understood his deep desire for an heir to carry on his work.

 

Although he stopped regarding Fu as his eventual heir Ras thought that Fu might be able to supply him with an heir. He also believed that Fu would prove useful in uniting the people centered in the area where Cthulhu, Zoth-Ommog, Ghatanothoa and Ythogtha were buried. Once united these people could be turned to the worship of the Great Old Ones and provide the necessary energy to awaken them. It would not even necessary to have them worship Cthulhu, Zoth-Ommog, Ghatanothoa and Ythogtha under their true names for Ras and his organization could create false cults that would provide worship to these beings guiding their awakening through psychic energy channeled through symbolic worship.

 

In his guise as Rashiel the advisor to the Wadi of the Assassins, Ras al Ghul sponsored and guided Fu Manchu's rise through the ranks of the Si-Fan. In 1910, although Fu Manchu was not yet the President of the Si-Fan he was able to plan and direct its main operations.

 

In 1911 Fu Manchu initiated the Si-Fan's plan to bring the war against the Western powers to the Western Powers' homelands.

 

Ras Al Ghul devoted his time during the teens and twenties studying individuals he felt certain were past incarnations of his. He also became a devoted student of the Cthulhu mythos. So entrenched was he in these researches that he failed to see that Kathulos had taken advantage of his distraction to loot some of Ras al-Ghul's wealth, although indirectly.

 

One of the few things that Kathulos learned about Ras al-Ghul from their brief encounter in 1910 was the location of the city of Yolgan, one of Ras' sources of wealth. Kathulos realized that the mummified body of Erlik Khan was one of his earlier bodies from an earlier life. Visiting Yolgan he learned of an earlier usurpation of Ras' wealth and power by a yellow eyed death skull faced man. Intrigued by this description that was similar to his, Kathulos used the criminal resources at his disposal to learn more about this skull faced personage. These investigations led him to the story of the Opera Ghost, named Erik.

 

Kathulos further learned that after the incident of the Paris Opera House in 1881 Erik had died of a broken heart and that his bones had been found underneath the Opera House.[72] The unusual skeleton was taken to the National Academy of Science. Kathulos examined the skeleton and understood that Erik the magician had conjured one last trick. The skeleton was a true human skeleton but it did not appear to be Erik’s. Erik had some how shaped the bones into a malformed state and used them to fake his own death.

 

Armed with the knowledge that Erik had survived after 1881 Kathulos had his agents search for clues to his whereabouts. In 1891 the Paris Opera house had experienced a series of murders also attributed to the Opera Ghost. This time the object of the Opera Ghost's affection was Irene Adler. With the aid of a violinist named Sigerson, Adler had exposed the secret of this particular Phantom, who was believed to be Edouard LaFosse, a young man who had suffered a horrific injury.

 

Yet Kathulos did not believe the Phantom or Opera Ghost of 1891 was this Edouard LaFosse but rather another incident perpetrated by Erik. The descriptions of the Phantoms from 1880 and 1891 were nearly identical.[73]

 

Further research revealed another Phantom sighting in 1909, however the physical description of this Phantom differed drastically from the previous two sightings. This Phantom did indeed have what appeared to be facial deformities caused by severe injuries and he had a full head of hair. More importantly there were not any killings the Phantom merely threatened two men. The first man he threaten to harm was Paul D'Arnot of the French Navy because D'Arnot had asked Christine to marry him and leave the theatre. The Phantom had threatened the second man Jean C. Tarzan because he defended D'Arnot. Yet the situation was resolved quickly and peacefully.[74]

 

Kathulos further learned that this Phantom had become part of a group of adventurers known as Les Hommes Mysterieux in about 1913 [75]

 

The whereabouts of Erik were discovered when Kathulos' agents investigated the rumor of a new leader among the Siberian Cossacks. These cossacks were part of the Russian Empire’s expansionist incursions into China. The leader was called Koshchei the Deathless because of his resemblance to that legendary Russian character and because he was reputed to be immortal and could not be killed.[76] Although Erik was aiding Kathulos’ plans by disrupting the plans of the Si-Fan in China, Kathulos had another proposition for him and contacted him. Erik was stunned when he looked upon Kathulos, believing that Kathulos was related to him. Kathulos encouraged this belief but quickly disavowed Erik of the notion that Kathulos had been his real father.

 

Kathulos learned that Erik's mother, Arlette Chauvelin had raped by a monster prior to his birth. Kathulos was however imprisoned beneath the ocean in 1829 and furthermore was incapable of committing rape or even procreating[77]

As Kathulos wished Erik returned to the city of Yolgan and once again took up the identity of Erlik Khan. In doing so he was reliving one of his fondest memories, gaining wealth and aiding Kathulos in a larger cause that would bring order to the world. In 1916 when Kathulos assumed leadership of the remnants of the Si-Fan as the Black Mandarin he kept his base of operations in the United States and England, although he personally spent most of his time in the United States.

 

In late 1919, Ras al-Ghul and a group of his followers stormed the city of Yolgan and drove Erik from it. Erik fled to the United States where he became Kathulos representative in New York City. When Kathulos left for England in 1920 Erik assumed control of the United States operation under the name Erlik Khan.

 

When Kathulos was apparently destroyed in 1921 Erlik used the existing organization to forge various criminal organizations into one organization with the purpose of creating a new empire. All who opposed him died or worse were put into a cataleptic state by an insidious drug, Kathulos version of f. katalepsis.

 

One of the additions that Lupoff made to the unfinished manuscript of Taverel Manor was in giving Harry Harper's fiancee the last name of Joan La Tour and filling in her background. In doing so he connected her to two other Howard stories, Lord of the Dead and Names in the Black Book. Both of these tales contain a hero that resembles Stephen Costigan and a villain who resembles Kathulos. The hero is named Stephen Harrison and the villain is Erlik Khan. The Zuleika like damsel in distress is Joan La Tour.

 

In this introduction to Skull-Face Lupoff makes the speculation that Erlik Khan was either Kathulos or a minion of Skull Face. Steve Harrison while being very similar to Stephen Costigan in physical appearance and attitude was probably not the same person as Stephen Costigan. Harrison was a career police detective very familiar with the Chinatown of a great metropolitan city in the United States. There is some dispute among Howard scholars whether this was New York or San Francisco.

 

Erlik Khan is depicted as tall and gaunt. However he claims to be from Mongolia, direct descendent of Genghis Khan. He had originally come from a lamasary in Mongol from which he planned to rebuild the Mongol Empire. However he was opposed by some fools and had to escape with his life. He came to America and forged all the secret societies into one with the purpose of creating a new empire. All who opposed him died or worse. The entire Yat Soy tong was put into a cataleptic state by an insidious drug.[78]

 

While Erlik Khan is described as tall and gaunt he was not described as having the mummified flesh of Kathulos.

 

Erlik Khan's attempt to create an empire in America ended when he fell with a fatal sword blow to the head and his headquarters engulfed in flames. [79]

 

A year later members of various criminal organizations were being murdered, at each murder was left the page of out of a book, written in a foreign language. It was Joan La Tour who pointed out to Steve Harrison that the pages were from the Book of Erlik Khan. Erlik Khan returned. He was rebuilding his empire with a vengeance. His plan to create a political machine to rule the city through a figurehead, a white man. Yet as before his plans were ruined. This time he fell with a knife through his heart and his headquarters demolished by a bomb.[80]

 

Erlik Khan also has a role in another Robert E. Howard Story, The Daughter of Elrik Khan. The Elrik Khan in this particular story is the mummified effigy of a god named Elrik Khan. In what is now Afghanistan, there like Mount Elrik Khan. Around the mountain is the hidden city of Yolgan. Yolgan is shunned by many of the other cities as a city of devil worshippers. Legend had it that Yolgan had been built by a cult of devil worshippers who had been driven away from their distant homeland. The main character of this tale is Francis X Gordon, formerly of El Paso, Texas. An adventurer well known through out the Middle East, Gordon is known as El Borak. The priestly caste that ruled Yolgan was made up of the descendants of Mongols but even widely traveled Gordon had ever seen architecture like the shrines and temples of Yolgan. It was pure unadulterated devil worship.  It also revealed that Mount Erlik Khan was honeycombed with many tunnels. [81]

 

There actually is a Mongolian god named Erlik Khan, he is the god of the underworld, of the dead. He is often depicted as having horns. The origins of the being worshipped by Mongols is also in fact related to the being known as Kathulos, since Erlik Khan was one of his incarnations.

 

From 1996-1999 there occurred several incidents which caused the scientific community to re-evaluate their perceptions of the structure of the Earth. While excavating a mass grave in Bosnia, United Nations Security Forces under United States command discovered a network of tunnels which went on for miles, a planetary labyrinth. Geological capillaries stretched for thousands of miles.[82] They also discovered that these tunnels were inhabited by creatures out of myth and legend. The first soldiers to discover the tunnel dwellers were savagely killed and eaten. The creatures were humanoid for the most part but with more body hair, digits that ended in talons and with a variety of horn-like protrusions, most commonly from the skull. They were believed to the source of the demonic legends. A tight lid of secrecy was clamped on the existence of the subterranean world and its dwellers.

 

It was believed at first that the Homo Hadalis as they were called were an evolutionary offshoot of Homo Erectus as was Homo Sapiens. It was soon discovered however that the background radiation under the tunnel would gradually transform people from the surface into the grotesque shape of a homo hadalis. Homo Hadalis were Homo Sapiens who had been living underground for thousands of years. In addition to the warping of their physical form the radiation also caused some beneficial changes, the hadals were stronger, had strong recuperative and regenerative capabilities. Certain members also possessed certain psionic powers such as telepathy and telekinesis.

 

The various cultures of the hadals throughout the world wide subterranean complex lived in a similar crude neolithic hierarchy. They also all claimed to be ruled by one person, the person they called Lucifer or Satan. Although the United Nations tried to establish a presence in the subterranean world, due to the real danger of mutation and the savage attacks on solider/explorers, the United Nations placed the subterranean world off limits for exploration and exploitation.  However certain corporations wished to benefit from the mineral and chemical wealth to be had from the subterranean world. A mercenary team with the mission to exterminate the hadals was sent to the underground world. They disappeared without trace.  Word about the exploration and attempted genocide did leak out and noted author Jeff Long published the account in the form of a fiction, called The Descent. Although most of the events of the novel are fictional exaggerations, Long seems to have been correct when he asserted that the leader of the hadals was also a surface dweller and that he had the power to move from body to body by psionically transplanting his personality from body to body. [83]

 

Erlik Khan may have been the original hadal form of this being who called himself Satan or Lucifer. It may have been this mummified hadal body which was worshipped as an effigy in the lost city of Yolgan.[84]

 

Erlik Khan's attempt to create an empire in America ended when he fell with a fatal sword blow to the head and his headquarters engulfed in flames.[85]

 

A year later members of various criminal organizations were being murdered, at each murder was left the page of out of a book, written in a foreign language. It was Joan La Tour who pointed out to Steve Harrison that the pages were from the Book of Erlik Khan. Erlik Khan returned. He was rebuilding his empire with a vengeance. His plan to create a political machine to rule the city through a figure head, a white man. Yet as before his plans were ruined. This time he fell with a knife through his heart and his headquarters demolished by a bomb.[86]

 

In part because Ras was distracted by resurgent memories and the need to reassess his future plans, he was not directly involved in Fu Manchu's 1911-1913 plans. He also needed to balance his interests against those of Kathulos. Although most of the Si-Fan did not realize it and certainly Fu Manchu did not realize it, Fu's plans in 1911 and 1912 failed in part because of the efforts of Kathulos and his organization. Kathulos fed crucial bits of information to the authorities, enough to be set Inspector Weymouth and Dennis Nayland Smith on the right path to throw a wrench into the works of Fu Manchu's plans but too little to be detected or traced back to Kathulos.

 

Ras felt certain that Kathulos would attempt to take control of the Si-Fan but was uncertain how it all played out. Ras therefore hung back and let Kathulos have near free reign to do as he would with the organization Ras had created.

 

In addition to sabotaging Fu Manchu's operations through 1911 Kathulos encouraged and then revealed the perfidy of the Council of Seven member who was codenamed Yen-Sun-Yat. This increased the instability of Si-Fan but Fu Manchu was able to use the removal of Yen-Sun-Yat from the council to put on his own man, code named Ki-Ming as Yen Sun Yat's replacement. Ki-Ming had established Si-Fan dominance over all Asian connected crime during the period when Fu Manchu was doing the same in Paris. He was assisted by Fu Manchu's friend and colleague, Fo-Hi who used the name Ho-Pin. Ki-Ming was known to the westerners as Mr. King, a mispronunciation of his alias.[87] He was also known under the aliases of John Ki and Sam Pak. His family name seems to have been Huan.[88]

 

In The Hand of Fu Manchu, Dr. Petrie was kidnapped and drugged. He was taken before an old Chinese Mandarin who spoke to him in French. This French speaking Mandarin told Dr. Petrie that a schism existed in the Si-Fan and that Dr. Fu Manchu was operating on his own. The Si-Fan planned to deal with Dr. Fu Manchu with extreme prejudice. Dr. Petrie was then once again drugged and released near his apartment.

 

Dennis Nayland Smith was suspicious of the meeting between Petrie and this Mandarin, he immediately suspected that the Mandarin was telling a lie. Inspector Smith's suspicions were seemingly proven correct when Dr. Petrie responded to a post hypnotic suggestion and tried to shoot Dennis Nayland Smith.

 

However Smith was not entirely correct and given the fact that Dr. Petrie had been repeatedly drugged and hypnotized the fact that his account is incomplete is entirely understandable.

 

The French speaking Mandarin that Petrie first encountered was not Ki-Ming as Smith supposed. Petrie had actually never seen the Mandarin but talked to him through a screen. This mandarin was the man codenamed Yen-Sun-Yat whom Fu Manchu had stated was dead. This was wishful thinking on Fu Manchu's part, Yen Sun Yat was under a sentence of death by the Fu Manchu faction of the Si-Fan just as Fu Manchu was under a sentence of death by the Yen Sun Yat faction.

 

There was actually no trickery involved in this meeting despite Dennis Nayland Smith's suspicions. Yen Sun Yat apparently told Petrie this information about Fu Manchu to gain western allies. Yet after Petrie was released from the hands of Yen Sun Yat he was drugged and taken before Ki-Ming who hypnotized him and planted deep post hypnotic suggestions in him. Petrie's confusion conflated the two meetings into one.

 

Petrie witnessed the trial of Fu Manchu before the Si-Fan but could not understand the proceedings. He saw that Fu Manchu had convinced many of the members of the correctness of his path and Petrie witnessed one of Fu Manchu's most audacious acts. This was to put forth is own daughter as the incarnation of the Lady of the Si-Fan.

 

Finally, there is a persistent tradition through-out the Far East that such a woman will one day rule over the known peoples. I was assured some years ago, by a very learned pundit, that a princess of incalculably ancient lineage, residing in some secret monastery in Tartary or Tibet, was to be the future empress of the world. I believe this tradition, or the extensive group who seek to keep it alive and potent, to be what is called the Si-Fan!"

 

I was past greater amazement; but- "This lady can be no longer young, then?" I asked. "On the contrary, Petrie, she remains always young and beautiful by means of a continuous series of reincarnations; also she thus conserves the collated wisdom of many ages. In short, she is the archetype of Lamaism. The real secret of Lama celibacy is the existence of this immaculate ruler, of whom the Grand Lama is merely a high priest. She has, as attendants, maidens of good family, selected for their personal charms, and rendered dumb in order that they may never report what they see and hear." [89]

 

It was when the other members of the Si-Fan council discovered that the woman whom Fu Manchu claimed to be the reincarnated, immortal Empress of the Si-Fan was in fact his own daughter that the alliance of the Council of Seven broke apart. This was seen, quite correctly, as Fu Manchu's blatant attempt to rule the Si-Fan by placing his daughter as the titular ruler of the Si-Fan.[90] The Si-Fan remained shattered for many years.

 

Fu Manchu had demonstrated the seeming triumph of his faction over that of Sen Yat Sun when he entered the room where the meeting of the Si-Fan was taking place. "Fu-Manchu was greeted by a universal raising of hands, but in complete silence. He also wore a cap surmounted by a coral ball, and this he placed upon one of the black cushions set before a golden stool. Then, resting heavily upon his stick, he began to speak--in French!" [91]

 

This action demonstrated to the members present that Sen Yat Sun had been ousted from power and that Fu Manchu was assuming his place, with the approval of the Lady of the Si-Fan. Sen Yat Sun had fled England and returned to his home base in Annam where he was known as Sun Ah Poy.

 

The police raid upon the Si-Fan meeting had interrupted the Lady of the Si-Fan's giving Fu Manchu leadership of the Council of Seven. The shrill police whistles broke the spell of illusion and hypnotism that Fu Manchu had created. In the aftermath of the police raid many members of the Si-Fan realized that they had been duped. They were extremely displeased with Dr. Fu Manchu. It was not merely to escape police scrutiny but also to evade the Sen Yat Sun faction and the other factions of the Si-Fan that he had angered that Dr. Fu Manchu and his group hid in the secret chapel underneath Sir Lionel Barton's estate as described in the latter part of The Hand of Fu Manchu. While regrouping his plans from Dr. Fu Manchu also planned to fake his own death on the yacht S.Y. Chanak-Kampo."

 

The failure of Fu Manchu's plans in 1914 and his apparent death brought disgrace upon Ki-Ming and he stepped down from leadership. Ki-Ming still had influence enough to have Fo-Hi named as head of the Order of the Sublime White Peacock and placed in charge of European operations and Fo-Hi continued to carry out Fu Manchu's policies. Yet Fo-Hi had a rival in Kathulos. Kathulos, had grown in power and influence among the various organizations comprising the Si-Fan but taking advantage of the growing disenchantment with Fu Manchu and the deep dissension within the Si-Fan. His research and expanding the potency and capabilities of the on the black lotus juice, scorpion venom and other obscure chemical research made him seem much more suitable a leader than Fu Manchu.

 

Before Kathulos could seize the advantage however Fu Manchu and Fo Hi quickly moved to fill the power vacuum and formed a new organization led by the Order of the Sublime White Peacock. Because of Fu Manchu's early failures, Fo Hi was titular head of this organization. In essence however The Order of the Sublime White Peacock continued with Fu Manchu's earlier plans.

 

Kathulos however was able to gather followers from tongs, triads and other organizations  and folded them into the allied yet separate organization known as the Chang Li.

 

When Fo-Hi died in 1915 Kathulos was able to seize control of both organizations.

 

Ras and Fu Manchu concentrated their efforts in the Middle East during the late 1914 to early 1917. Although Ras al-Ghul was primarily concerned with his occult studies during this period, he did take interest in developments outside of the Far East. By 1914 China had thrown off the corrupt Manchu dynasty and was uniting under a republican government. Japan had shown its strength by defeating one of the major powers in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Ras al Ghul’s plans in the Far East seemed to be finally pulling together. The Ottoman Empire had also made the first steps towards a republican state by deposing the Sultan. Ras al-Ghul had originally supported democratization not so much out of political conviction but rather because he believed that democratic governments or at least with some form of popular based government seemed to advance more rapidly in terms of technology. They also seemed oddly enough to create homogenous cultures. It was this latter that especially intrigued Ras, since he wished to turn the cultures to Cthulhu worship.

 

The political change in the Ottoman Empire had destabilized the Balkan region. The European powers as exemplified by Greece tried to take advantage of the less powerful Ottoman Empire by annexing territories. To counter this Ras supported various nationalistic groups throughout the Balkan region, believing that once they had become independent and sorted out their differences that they would eventually form a Balkan federation.

 

However Ras al-Ghul miscalculated to what lengths some of these nationalists were willing to go. The assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg Empire and the entangling alliances of Europe brought about the Great War.

 

It seemed, at first, that such powers such as Great Britain and France would relinquish their holdings in the Middle East for support against the Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. However when the fighting had ended, neither Britain or France were in a great hurry to leave. Their ever increasing thirst for petroleum was a contributing factor in their deciding that the region had to be protected until it was ready for independence.

 

Even Ras al Ghul was aghast at the immense number of casualties during the war. He was surprised at the brutalities of the weapons used; poison gas, barbed wire, flame throwers etc. In their efforts to murder one another the Europeans had also torn up a good part of the Earth. The Great Pandemic that followed the Great War was almost as if the Earth was retaliating against mankind for the injury to it. 

 

Fu Manchu's failed plan in 1917[92] left him in disgrace. Ras al-Ghul was able to mitigate the sentence for failure to exile to Peking rather than death.

 

From Peking Fu Manchu worked to remove Kathulos from power but in the end it was Kathulos own arrogance that displaced him as the head of the Order of the Sublime White/ Chang Li alliance. Ras encouraged Fu Manchu to also work more diligently on his longevity serum since, unlike Ras, Fu Manchu was not getting any younger.

 

Once Kathulos had seized control of various remnants of the Si-Fan, Ras al Ghul was forced to use all his skills of diplomacy to keep the various groups from collapsing into internecine war while his earlier self worked his way towards his own destruction. During this time he had traveled to the East to acquaint himself first hand with various areas of Cthluhu worship. He traveled to the Plateau of Sung, Bal-Sagoth, Ral, Carcosa, Yian. Ponape, many uncharted locations in the Sahara and Gobi deserts and many uncharted isles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.



End of Part One

In the second part of this article, tentatively called Son of the Demon, we will explore Ras al Ghul's search for a new heir, having decided that Fu Manchu was not a suitable candidate after all. He chose as his possible heirs two men whose strength and integrity he admired. He strove to persuade Daniel Rand and Bruce Wayne to turn their talents to his purposes, his attempts to do so brought him into deadly conflict with the men he so admired.

 

 


[1] Baugh's article is spot on I believe so far as his assessment of the background of Steven Costigan (actually Cliff Marsland) but I disagree with his assessment that John Gordon was actually Denis Nayland Smith. I believe that Mark Brown's original statement that John Gordon was a protégé of Denis Nayland Smith, as stated in The Magnificent Gordons is the most likely case. While it is true as Baugh states "The physical descriptions of the two men are virtually identical, as are their speech patterns, personal mannerisms. This, plus the fact that they possess the same "roving commission" which gives them the authority to command whatever police, military, espionage or other British government assistance they deem necessary"  Robert E. Howard was contacted by Cliff Marsland in the mid-twenties. Marsland "refused to let Howard tell his family that he was still alive, but did give him permission to publish the story of his encounter with Kathulos, so long as Howard disguised the names and had it published as fiction.  Howard agreed and wrote the story as SKULL FACE.  He changed Cliff's name to Stephen Costigan after "Sailor" Steve Costigan, a boxer and sailor he admired.  Nayland Smith's name he changed to John Gordon, though most of the rest of the names and events mentioned in the account are true." In writing the story Howard noticed the similarities between the Kathulos and thought to be fictional Fu Manchu from stories by Sax Rohmer. To capture this market niche, Howard tailored Marsland's tale to be similar to the Rohmer stories, to this end he deliberately wrote Gordon to be closely resemble Nayland Smith. He did this for two reasons. Marsland had not given Howard a detailed description of John Gordon beyond a scant account of his background. Marsland knew that Gordon had been a member of the British Secret Service attached to a special department, which investigated possible supernal threats to the security of Britain and its colonies. Many of the agents serving in this branch of the BSS had cover identities that they were members of the Diogenes Club. Despite Gordon's death Marsland did not want to compromise any ongoing operation of the Diogenes Club and so did not mention these details to Robert E. Howard. The second reason that Howard's depiction of John Gordon was a doppelganger of Nayland Smith was part of his effort to fictionalize Marsland's account, he did not realize that Nayland Smith was a real person. I do agree with Matthew Baugh in his belief that there was a unknown section of Taverel Hall which Lupoff had not been privy and so is missing from his completion of Howard's fragment. It was during this coda that Marsland made the acquaintance of Nayland Smith and the tragic death of Zuleika occurred.

 

[2] Personal correspondence February 28, 2003.

 

[3] The first Atlantis flourished circa 400, 00 years B.C and was destroyed circa 100,000 B.C. and a second island Empire was founded by the survivors of the first. The second Atlantean Empire was also destroyed circa 24,000 B.C. The first nation of Atlantis was founded by survivors from the civilization of Lemuria. These included Barsoomians who had come to Earth in the company of La, the daughter of Tario of Lothar. More information on these stranded Barsoomians can be seen in the article La, Immortal Priestess of Issus. The second Atlantis was depicted in The Black Star by Lin Carter.

 

[4] Shipwrecks around South Africa < http://www.gpswaypoints.co.za/WPT_shipwrecks.htm>

[5] In several books of the Tarzan series, Son of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar among them, Edgar Rice Burroughs claimed that Opar was an outpost of lost Atlantis. Recent archaeological studies, used by Philip Jose Farmer in Hadon of Opar and Flight to Opar demonstrated that Opar was a part of a civilization based on an island empire in the vanished Inner Sea of Africa. Burroughs was correct however since the Khokorsa empire was founded by survivors of Atlantis. Solomon Kane also encountered lost colonies of Atlantis in Africa as recounted by Robert E. Howard, Charles R. Saunders accounts of the Hyborian age warrior Imaro also demonstrate an African-Atlantean connection.

 

[6]  The Old Race to which Kathulos belonged was quite possibly a race which also claimed to the First Born race of another planet. That is the black skinned Barsoomians who had arrived circa 400, 000 B.C.  as is explained in the article La, Immortal Priestess of Issus

 

[7] The Cult of the Scorpion King seems to have based their religious tenets on the legends surrounding the Scorpion King and his golden scorpion bracelet. More accurate information and the artifact itself was discovered by Egyptologist Evelyn O'Connell in 1935. This is detailed in the film The Mummy Returns

 

[8] Scorpia may well have been an offshoot of the Cult of the Scorpion, although with few of the religious elements still in place. Although Scorpia is said to have its origins as an organization back in the 1500’s as a pirate band it may go back further than that. They seem to have originally been a group of Cult of Scorpion adherents who refused to convert to Islam and fled from Egypt. They maintained a small enclave in Northern Africa funded by piracy. As time passed and the original members died off, often replaced by outsiders, the religious elements and true origins of the organization became less pronounced as piracy became their primary vocation.  In a bizarre coincidence that demonstrates the odd synchronicity between the motifs of skull, scorpion and octopus, Sir Christopher Standish/ Walker the sole survivor of a pirate raid, washed up on a remote Bangalla beach, saved by pygmies,  Upon finding body of pirate who killed his father, swore oath of the skull that he and his descendents would fight pirates and evildoers. The dead pirate had been the leader of the Scorpia. Christopher Standish/Walker was the 1st Phantom whose adventures were depicted by Lee Falk. Although Walker’s origins occurred in Africa in an area Falk called Bangalla, the first Phantom strips were depicted as taking place in Bengali, an island in the vicinity of Java/Sumatra. At the time Falk did not have complete information on the Walker family and may have misinterpreted Phantoms’ fights against various south sea island strong holds, each confusingly enough called Scorpia Island. One of these Scorpia south sea island strongholds was the center of worship for a winged octopus cult.

 

[9] Part of the Pirate society Scorpia's history was revealed by Lee Falk's graphic history of the mystery man known as The Phantom. This particular strip first appeared in 1957. Our information was taken from the novelization of the strip by Basil Copper which appeared in The Scorpia Menace, Avon Books 1973

 

[10] Rashiel was one of the Angels of Destruction, he had dominion over whirlwinds and earthquakes

 

[11]  Although my conclusions differ in many ways from Rick Lai's original theory about the Black Mandarin in his article The Brotherhood of the Lotus, Nemesis Incorporated, No.28 Dec. 1988 and expanded in his Partners In Crime: Fu Manchu And Carl Peterson , I found bother invaluable for their depth of research not only about the Black Mandarin but also about the various Si-Fan related organizations such as the Chang Li but most especially for establishing the timeline of the Si-Fan related organizations which I have adapted for my revision of his theories.

 

[12] Kathulos fostered the false notion that the ancient Egyptian civilization had been founded by the Chinese and that its Pharonic class had been Chinese. Fu Manchu would later also foster a connection between the Chinese and the Egyptians.

 

[13] These plans and their failures are recounted in The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, The Hand of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer and also Ten Years Beyond Baker Street by Cay Van Ash.

 

[14] In Partners in Crime:

[15] Fo-Hi's operation and its failed attempt to continue Fu Manchu's plans were depicted in The Yellow Claw London: Methuen, 1915 and The Golden Scorpion London: Methuen, 1919 both by Sax Rohmer

 

[16] Madame De Medici appeared in the Sax Rohmer stories The Key to the Temple of Heaven and The Black Mandarin. Her relationship to Fo-Hi was established in Rick Lai's article The Brotherhood of the Lotus, Nemesis No. 28, December 1988. Her genealogy was expanded upon in The Dynasty of Fu Manchu by Win Eckert.

 

[17]  This was depicted in Kerry's Kid Detective Story Magazine. April 8, 1922

 

[18]  This Madame de Medici adventure was depicted in "The Key to the Temple of Heaven", Tales of Chinatown, 1922. The Key to the Temple of Heaven was first published as The Red Eye of Vishnu in The Storyteller in January 1917. According to Rohmer he altered Red Eye of Vishnu and Indian references were changed to Chinese and it was relocated to Chinatown for Tales of Chinatown. Published in 1922. The situations and names described in the Key to the Temple of Heaven are probably the more accurate of the two versions but Rohmer had substantially changed the events for legal reasons. Therefore the date of occurrence was probably in 1916.

 

[19]  it is uncertain where they Key to the Temple of Heaven was the same object as retrieved by Chon Wang and Roy O'Bannon as depicted in Shanghai Knights

 

[20] As depicted in The Fires of Fu Manchu. Cay Van Ash. New York: Harper & Row, 1987

 

[21] As revealed by Rick Lai in The Brotherhood of the Lotus and expanded upon in his Partners In Crime: Fu Manchu And Carl Peterson

 

[22]  M'Cabe's pursuit of the Black Mandarin and Madame de Medici's flight from England were depicted in the Black Mandarin, Collier's. November 4 to November 18, 1922

 

[23] Zarmi was a loyal follower of Fu Manchu who was apparently brutally strangled at the close of the adventure that Rohmer called The Hand of Fu Manchu. Her relationship to Fo-Hi was first established by Rick Lai in The Sirens of the Si-Fan Nemesis No. 20, August 1985. He also established that she had faked her death.

 

[24] F. Katalepsis was the drug used by Fu Manchu and other members of the Brotherhood of the Lotus to cause a person to fall into a cataleptic state resembling death

 

[25] This God was a Octopus with wings, often a description of the Elder Being Cthulhu, who sleeps in the sunken city R'lyeh in the Pacific, possibly not a great deal of distance from the Island of Ral.

 

[26] Let me address a possible issue of contention, some may doubt that Zarmi could have been Zuleika. Zuleika is described as a Circassian and the Circassians are a Caucasian people from the Southern Caucases Mountains.  The women had a reputation for great beauty and were often captured as slaved by the Ottomans.  While Zuleika would seem exotic to Cliff/Steve, she would not resemble an Asian or Eurasian woman. However according to Howard’s own text, Zuleika was described thusly, “As for the girl herself, every intonation, every movement proclaimed the Orient. She was a fragrant breath from the East. From her mid-night black hair, piled high above her alabaster forehead, to her little feet encased in high heeled slippers, she portrayed the highest ideal of Asiatic loveliness."

 

Howard undoubtedly also knew that that Circassians were predominately Causcasian people and so may have called Zuleika a Circassian to allay any hint of race mixing. He may have also been influenced by some earlier racial thinking about Circassians and wanted to make a racial point. A white girl of the purest white background imprisoned by the forces of an Egyptian/African villain.

 

Circassian beauties, or"Moss-haired Girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacyof racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. Racial theories of the mid-19th century held that the people living in the Circassian mountains near the Black Sea were examples of the "purest stock" of the Caucasian race.Legend had it that the Circassians produced the world's most beautiful white women, who were consequently in great demand for the harems of Turkish sultans.

 

[27]  The Way of the Scorpion was a little known rebel group that arose in Africa in the middle to late 1800's among Central African's displaced by European colonization. Many of the displaced were from assorted tribes and a were united by a underground organization begun by an American educated native of unknown antecedents. His organization elevated the Scorpion, a common animal in Central Africa to totemic status. "The Way of the Scorpion is silent and deadly. Wait patiently and strike with deadly accuracy. Poison your enemies as they have poisoned the soul of our land." For more information please see Andre Selous, Black Poison: The Scorpion Killers of Darkest Africa, Capetown Press, 1933

 

[28] This incident was mentioned passing in Mobsmen on the Spot by Walter Gibson 04/01/32

 

[29] Kathulos believed that the Dark Eagle was working for the Russian Imperial family. In this he was correct since the Dark Eagle was Kent Allard, who would later be known as the Shadow.

[30] Although the story calls him a hashish addict, it is far more likely he was addicted to morphine or heroin.

 

[31]  Zuleika or Zamri's father was Fo Hi and her half sister was Madame de Medici as mentioned earlier.

 

[32] Howard, Skull-Face Chapter 14

 

[33]  This is a synopsis of the storyline and action of Skull-Face in Robert E. Howard, Skull-Face Weird Tales, 1929 re-issued by Berkley Medallion Books, 1978

 

[34]  See Lai, Brotherhood of the Lotus and also Partners in Crime: Fu Manchu and Carl Peterson

 

[35]  Robert E. Howard and Richard Lupoff, "Taverel Manor" Skull-Face, Berkley Medallion Books, 1978

 

[36] She would marry an American and together they would try to create a ruthless monopoly of the aviation business by using Doc Savage's organization as a cover. In The Feathered Octopus, Doc Savage magazine, September 1937 she was using the name Lo Lar. For a detailed discussion of her heritage please see Lai, Sirens of the Si-Fan.

 

[37]  These revelations about Cliff Marsland, the Shadow's agent were first revealed in Agent In The Shadows: The Life And Career Of Cliff Marsland

 

[38]  The Omni are non-corporeal beings of pure thought who have the ability to manipulate time, space and matter, seemingly at whim. Although they are not bound by the strictures of time or space, the original Omni evolved from Earth born humanity in a time period in the distant future and so have a vested interest in maintaining the timeline in which they evolved. Despite their great powers however they were unable to prevent the timeline from fracturing and are unable to mend the fractured timelines. They feel compelled to take actions that they believe will ensure their eventual evolution; these include creating pocket universes, interfering with history, creating divergent time streams, manipulating the evolution of various humanoid species. They are also responsible for “seeding the universe” with the human genome, allowing for cross species fertilization among many of the sentient humanoid species. Such beings as the Organians, The Q, The Dowd, the Great Old Ones, the Elder Gods, The Beings can all be considered Omni although it is unknown if they are actually true Omni evolved from Earth born humanity, members of species that represent branches of evolution towards Omnihood or other humanoid species such as vulcanoids which have also achieved Omnihood.

 

[39] This is generally true although some cultures did develop methods of exorcism which could drive the energy parasite from a host but in many cases the original personality had been destroyed.

 

[40] The Prophets a.k.a. The wormhole aliens and the pah-wraiths were portrayed in several episodes of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

 

[41]  In Partners in Crime: Fu Manchu and Carl Peterson, Rick Lai revealed that Mandarin K was not even of Chinese descent, he was in reality Fu Manchu's partner, Carl Peterson.

 

[42]  Dr. Phibes penchant for music ahead of his time is demonstrated several times in the Dr. Phibes films. For example the Orchestra or Dr. Phibes plays Elmer's Tune, (1938) All I Do is Dream of You, (1934) One for my baby and one more for the road (1943) and Somewhere over the Rainbow (1938)

 

[43]  For more information see Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

 

[44]  The film The Abominable Dr. Phibes shows Phibes being thwarted at the end. In the film Dr. Vesalius performed an operation which removed a key which had been implanted next to his heart. The boy had been locked in place on a table over which was a long spiraling tube of glass from which acid would pour. In the nick of time Dr. Vesalius had opened the lock and saved his son. Vulnavia on the other hand had been splattered and killed by the acid. However Dr. Phibes was not so easily thwarted. The key that had been implanted in the boy's chest did not fit the lock and Dr. Vesalius was forced to watch his son die a horrible death. Vulnavia was not killed and eluded capture.

 

[45] In the film version Dr. Ambrose is found inside a giant champagne bottle. This however was just one of the bizarre, campy additions of the film and had no bearing in reality.

 

[46] The tune "Somewhere over the Rainbow was composed by Harold Arlen in 1938 for the motion picture musical The Wizard of Oz. Anton Phibes of course remembered it from his past lives (which took place in the future) but there is a good chance that he was also the unacknowledged composer of it as speculated by Rick Lai. "Arlen said that the song came to Harold literally out of the blue one day while he and his wife Anya were headed to a movie at Grauman's Chinese Theater. As they were driving along Sunset Boulevard, the broad, long-lined melody suddenly came to him. He jotted it down in the car on one of his jotting papers, which he was known to carry around with him in case struck with an idea. Of the breakthrough, Harold said, "It was as if the Lord said, 'Well, here it is, now stop worrying about it!'" Phibes sang the song when vast cosmic forces were coming into play in the River of Life in an Egyptian temple. Perhaps these cosmic forces opened a telepathic doorway into the future and sent a message to Arlen"  Rick Lai private email

 

[47] The original papyrus was found in 1996 by adventurer Lara Croft during her trip to Egypt in that year.

[48]  This Atlantis so described in The Maracot Deep is probably the third such nation so named. The first Atlantis flourished circa 400, 00 years B.C and was destroyed circa 100,000 B.C. and a second island Empire was founded by the survivors of the first. The second Atlantean Empire was also destroyed circa 24,000 B.C. . Professor Maracot determined by the number of mummified leaders of the Atlantean cities that the island had sunk approximately 9,000 years before the arrival of his exploration party. However other telling clues are that the primary language among the inhabitants was Phoenician and that they had an underclass who spoke Classical Greek prompts us to move this date up to about 3,500 B.C. at the earliest. The island had probably been settled by both Phoenican and Greek colonists. The description of the war between the two was the clash over the colonization. Baal-Seepa had used his arcane knowledge and mesmeric powers to help the Phoenicians emerge victorious. Baal-Seepa, the Lord of the Dark Face had been instrumental in causing the corruption and destruction of the First Atlantis.  A version of this earlier event is recounted in The Ship From Atlantis, Chapter 4, by H. Warner Munn.

 

[49]  A. Conan Doyle, The Maracot Deep, Chapter VII.

 

[50]  Although this particular version of these events is from Baal-Seepas's perspective, they were also published in a less biased version in A. Conan Doyle's The Maracot Deep

 

[51] Doyle, The Maracot Deep, Chapter VII

 

[52] As seen in the Deep Space Nine episode "What you Leave Behind"

 

[53] Although L'mur Kathulos is referred to in Lovecraft's Whisperer in Darkness, little is known of him. He was an earlier incarnation of Kathulos in Lemuria. L'Mur-Kathulos went down in defeat from the forces of Mika-El in a war during the Great Cataclysm, he would  lead the refugees from his kingdoms away from Mika-El and the worship of the God Most High.  Believing it was better to rule a kingdom in exile than not serve a master, L'Mur Kathulos led his people down into the bowels of the Earth. They discovered the subterranean cavern system. His people eventually began to evolve into what would later be called hadals. They developed a variety of body shapes and sizes but they commonly had horns, hoofed feet and were quite hairy. They need fresh human specimens to keep the gene pool viable. Since protein was a premium in the subterranean world, the would also eat many of their captives. L'Mur Kathulos lived among the subterranean who became known as the Teff-Hellani. When they so numerous that they overwhelmed the tunnel system, he lead the back to the surface. A Great War ensued. The leader of the humans believed that the Teff-Hellani posed a threat to the world and needed to be wiped out. He created five great ships which could first destroy the Teff-Hellani with aerial bombardment and then these ships could leave the earth to establish colonies on other worlds. The bombardment destroyed the caverns where the Teff-Hellani had emerged and flooded them with water. However the Teff-Hellani had built their own ship and in a surprise move destroyed four of the great ships. The bombardments destroyed the island home called by some Atlantis, the second of that name in 24,000 B.C. Although the sources differ greatly, this Atlantis seems to be the same one described by Lin Carter in The Black Star, By E. E. Smith in Triplanetary and by Wallace West in the Lords of Atlantis. The Teff-Hellani ship then fled from the Earth. Tsoo-Ahs gave pursuit. The two ships ended up one hundred thousand light years from Earth. Each of them found a planet they called home and began their own civilizations. These two interplanetary civilizations were later discovered by Aarn Munro and the crew of the Spaceship Sunbeam as recounted in The Mightest Machine by John W. Campbell. Beyond his initial incarnation as the leader who led the Teff-Hellani off of Earth, the pah-wraith seems not to have incarnated among the extra-galactic Teff-Hellani again. However he did continue to occasionally return to the remaining hadal when he would recall them. One of his last such incarnations among the hadal was in the 1990s as seen in The Descent by Jeff Long.

 

[54]  This is depicted in Howard and Carter, "Riders Beyond the Sunset", King Kull Lancer. In "Delcartes Cat" Thulsa Doom for a while assumed the guise of a good sorcerer named Katholos.

 

[55]  As seen in the film Conan The Barbarian, Universal Pictures 1982

 

[56] As seen in Lovecraft, Beyond the Walls of Sleep

 

[57]H.P. Lovecraft, Ibid

 

[58]  Lovecraft, Ibid

 

[59]  Lovecraft Ibid

 

[60]  Lovecraft, Ibid

 

[61]  The Nine are a group of people from the Old Stone Age who had stumbled onto a elixir which extended their life spans tremendously they aged one year per 300 years. The also conferred the elixir upon others who would serve them loyally. They wer brought to the public attention by Philip Jose Farmer in the novels A Feast Unknown, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin. The Nine had many political, financial and religious goals and often pulled the strings behind historical events. For a fuller explanation of why this is so, please see Triple Tarzan Tangle, Tarzans in the Valley of Gold.

 

[62] For a further explanation of the true story behind the Highlander Immortals please see Aliens Among Us: The Preservers, Highland Laddie Gone: The Saga of Connor MacLeod, Eternal Shard of Time: Flint the Immortal

 

[63] As explained above this was probably one of his earlier hadal incarnations.

 

[64] The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux., pg.11

 

[65] For more details please see Leroux, Gaston, The Phantom of the Opera,

 

[66]  As recounted in The Daughter of Erlik Khan

 

[67] Daughter of the Demon: The Hidden Ras Al-Ghul by Talia, Gale Weathers ed., Siegel and Schuster Publications, New York, 1999. The title of this book is a bit misleading because it was not an authorized book written by Ras Al-Ghul's daughter but rather a volume of excerpts and fragments from Talia's diaries. These were bound together and burned but some of the text survived. Editor Weathers found enough of these to shape a narrative history of Talia and her father, although critics state that the fragments were often taken out of context to create the illusion of a narrative.

 

[68] This was a syncretic cult devoted to a deity that was on first glance a combination of the Hindu goddess of death and the Greek god of death. Ras Al_Ghul believed that the Thanatos aspect had been added by Greek soldiers from Alexander's army who had been captured and left for dead in a obscure valley off the main path of Alexander's route of conquest. Most had been killed as sacrifices for a version of Kali, which had wings on her back, but a few had saved their lives by proving their usefulness to the ruling priests eventually converted to the main religion. One of them had been a priest of Athena and saw the correspondences between the depiction of Thanatos as winged, with a sword and carrying a torch. He became part of the priest of this Kali cult. One odd aspect of this Kali cult was that the eight armed Kali was also portrayed as having a slightly bulbous head, thin long arms which reminded the Greek of an octopus. The formerly Greek priest theorized that as Kali would devour time she had also devoured death, hence absorbing Thantos

 

[69] The connection between James Moriarty and the Thuggee cult and the murder of his children by a Thugee cultist was first theorized in The Secret History of Captain Nemo by Rick Lai.

 

[70] Dirk Struan's career is depicted in Tai-Pan by James Clavell

 

[71] Hooker, Richard  Ch'ing China: Self Strengthening http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHING/SELF.HTM

 

[72] This was the account of Erik’s demise as given by Gaston Leroux in The Phantom of the Opera.

 

[73]  The 1891 incident of the Paris Opera House was recounted in Meyer, Nicholas The Canary Trainer, W. W. Norton Company, 1993. Win Eckert has labeled the incident a copycat incident of some sort in his Original Wold Newton Universe Crossover Chronology Part IV.  A copycat incident of some sort is an apt description. The Canary Trainer used the events of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera as the basis of this story despite the obvious time differential. One might think it was to "cash in" on the popularity of the piece especially in the light of musical play by Lloyd-Webber. However fault may not lie with Meyer or even with Watson but ultimately with Holmes.

 

Despite the seeming identical events The Canary Trainer was an entirely different incident from The Phantom of the Opera with altogether with different people involved. The true object of the Phantom's affection in The Canary Trainer was not Christine Daae. Christine Daae had married the Comte de Chagny in 1880 shortly after the events of The Phantom of the Opera and retired from the stage. The real subject of the Phantom's affection in The Canary Trainer was Irene Adler.

 

Erik survived the flooding of his underground lair but did not, as recounted in The Phantom of the Opera die of a broken heart. Once Christine was married and out of sight his madness passed. He continued to haunt the Opera House, silently and continued working on his opera Don Juan Triumphant.

 

Yet when Irene came to the Paris Opera House to perform Carmen Erik was entranced, enthralled at her voice and her beauty. He once again became obsessively attracted to a woman as he had been to Christine Daae. Irene Adler however was not naive as Christine had been was immediately suspicious when contacted by the "Angel". She also knew about the history of the Opera and the story of the first Opera Ghost. She enlisted Holmes to help her find and stop the Phantom.

 

Erik did murder people and did use the some of the same tricks as he had in Phantom of the Opera but the people he killed and the exact manner in which he for doing so were different than portrayed in The Canary Trainer. Rather than eliminating rivals, he was using a sort of cruel blackmail against Irene... unless you become mine, this person will die...

 

Sherlock Holmes deduced that the identity of the Phantom was of Edouard LaFosse, whom he believed had survived a cave in during construction of part of the Opera House. LaFosse's face had been damaged in the cave in, hence the mask. Yet Holmes admitted that this theory could be wrong from information that the Phantom had slipped in conversation about his childhood.

 

The Phantom  conversed with Holmes knowing Sherlock Holmes' identity. Erik was not only a brilliant musician but a magician and an accomplished thief. Erik established a false trail and implicated Edouard LaFosse, hoping to throw Holmes completely off the track but he only partially succeeded.

 

Erik was seemingly buried in a landslide underneath the Paris Opera at the end of the The Canary Trainer

 

The duplication of the storylines and the duplication of various characters in The Canary Trainer and The Phantom of the Opera probably were created by Sherlock Holmes. As seen in the beginning of The Canary Trainer, he orally recounted this story to Watson in 1912. Leroux's account of the 1880 events had just come out in 1911. Holmes deliberately blended the two accounts together, wanting to recount his encounter with the Phantom but unwilling to disclose all of the particulars even to his best friend.

 

Although the relationship between Holmes and Irene Adler was portrayed as platonic and distant in the The Canary Trainer it probably was not so in real life. In A Scandal in Bohemia there was an attraction between Holmes and Adler but she was committed to Mr. Norton and so could not act upon it. Yet Norton had died and  although they had met by accident in Paris, probably just as described in The Canary Trainer as they worked closely together on the Opera Ghost case, their attraction and romantic feelings deepened. This time both were free. Some will say that it was very uncharacteristic for Sherlock Holmes to be romantically involved with Irene Adler given he was presented as almost misogynistic and never involved in a romantic situation in the Canon. If you want to take the Canon as literally true in every aspect then read no further.

 

At the outset of The Canary Trainer Holmes described a great sense of freedom at having shed his created image of Sherlock Holmes. His supposed death allowed him to be someone else rather than the "character" of Sherlock Holmes he had so carefully created in the past decade. Along with this freedom Holmes also felt much less inhibited than he would have ordinarily. It was during this unguarded time period that he allowed himself to fall truly in love with Irene Adler. Irene was a shrewd judge of character and knew that she had to seize the moment lest it be lost forever. This led to their romantic vacation in Montenegro and the birth of twin boys, John Hamish Adler and Scott Adler

 

[74]  The 1909 Phantom was recounted in Manoukian and Roucher, Le Monstre, Dark Horse Comics 1998 Although Christine Daae was once again seen as the damsel in distress in 1909 she would have been at least forty -six and the Christine depicted here is in her early twenties.. This Christine is probably Christine De Chagny, Christine Daae's daughter. The Phantom is shown with a full head of hair and severe facial scarring something that Erik did not have. This Phantom also did not commit any murders, he only attacked those who he perceived as a threat to Christine's career as a singer, Paul D'Arnot and Tarzan.  So who is the Phantom of 1909?

 

The Phantom of 1909 was Edouard LaFosse. What you say? I thought that I had disproved the existence of Edouard LaFosse in the previous entry. No, I merely said that the Phantom of 1891 was not Edouard LaFosse not that Edouard LaFosse did not exist. Edouard LaFosse was indeed trapped in a cave-in in 1889 as stated in The Canary Trainer, he was nursed to health by Erik who delighted in having another deformed person as his companion. Despite his friendship for young Edouard LaFosse this did not stop Erik from implicating him in the murders that occurred in 1891, setting him up as a decoy or possible patsy if necessary. Erik was successful enough that Holmes believed that LaFosse was the Phantom of 1891.

 

After Erik was rescued from the landslide depicted at the end of The Canary Trainer, he discovered that his manuscript of Don Juan Triumphant had been destroyed. Devastated by this he could no longer bear to dwell near the Opera House and after residing in his underground chamber for nearly twenty years he left it and left Paris.

Edouard LaFosse however, because of his facial deformities could not bear to go out among the public and so remained living under the Paris Opera House, using the sewers for the necessary trips to the outside world for supplies. He 'haunted" the Opera House but was an admirer rather and an obsessed fan until Christine De Chagny arrived on the scene. Her voice was glorious to him and when it seemed that she would get married and leave the theatre, he went through a period of trauma in which he acted uncharacteristically violently, yet no one was killed. This version ended happier than the other two incidents since this Christine refused to marry Paul or to leave the theatre. She also agreed to study voice under the Phantom.

 

[75]  As mentioned in Moore and O'Neill, The League of Extraordinary Men, Volume 2, No, 2, America's Best Comics 2002, This Phantom was also probably LaFosse

 

[76] Koschei resembled the grim reaper and he was a symbol of death and magic in Russian mythology. See the Koshchei entry at the Encyclopedia Mythica for more information.

 

[77] As Jean-Marc Lofficier of the French Wold Newton site states in the Gods and Monsters section of the Tangled Web: Genealogies of the Members of the French Wold Newton Families, "The Chauvelin Dynasty was studied by other scholars, but we are only interested in one offspring, Arlette, who had the misfortune of being raped by the Frankenstein Monster (whose name was Gouroull, as discovered by Jean-Claude Carrière) and gave birth to a disfigured son, Erik, who grew up to become the renowned Phantom of the Opera (whose life was researched by Gaston Leroux in his eponymous book)". Frankenstein's Monster had survived his supposed end as portrayed in Frankenstein by Mary Shelly and entered a polar opening in the Arctic. He had traveled through the interior of the earth and emerged in 1819 as recounted in "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole" by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop was originally published in New Dimensions 7; it is reprinted in Eternal Lovecraft, Jim Turner, ed., 1998. In 1819 he exited the interior world at the Antarctic. He more than likely returned to Europe with one of the Antarctic voyages in the early 1800s, possibly with the 1827-1828 Arthur Gordon Pym expedition to the Antarctic, told by Edgar Allan Poe in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (most recently reprinted in the anthology The Antarktos Cycle, Chaosium, 1999).

 

Given his unique parentage, Erik's longevity, his strength, his resistance to injury and even his appearance are perhaps now more understandable.

[78] Although this is not directly stated this is probably the same drug, F Katalepsis that the Si-Fan and Chang Li also use

 

[79] As depicted in "Lord of the Dead" Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard, Berkley, 1978

 

[80] Robert E. Howard, "Names in the Black Book", Super-Detective Stories, 1934

 

[81]  Robert E. Howard, "The Daughter of Erlik Khan", The Lost Valley of Iskander, Ace Books, 1986

 

[82]  The main body of geologists accepted the new information of the subterranean system, although in fact this was first proven in 1863 by the expedition of Professor Lidenbrock, although since the accounted was edited by Jules Verne most counted this account as pure fiction. Even after the revelations of Lidenbrock and the Hadals, most geologists still have the view of the physical structure of the Earth being like an apple, a thin crust which is the skin, the main bulk of the apple which is magma the white part and the area containg the seeds, the core. They accept that the structure now has holes through it as if eaten by a worm but still continue to maintain the apple model. However the structure is more like that of an onion with many layers. This was first demonstrated by the voyage of the original Frankenstein Monster as he traveled through the successive layer/worlds of the interior earth as later related by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop in Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole first published in New Dimensions 7, New York: Harper & Row, 1977. The Monster's account was verified by the voyage of Abner Perry and David Innes in 1903 from their account of the journey of the Iron Mole. Innes and Perry however also suffered from credibility because their trip was popularized by Edgar Rice Burroughs in At the Earth Core, All-Story Weekly April, 1914.

 

[83] Most of the known information about the Hadals and their subterranean tunnel system is derived from the only published account, Jeff Long, The Descent, Crown 1999. The actions of the novel is highly exaggerated to the point of being almost entirely fiction but the his structure of the earth, some of the information about the Hadal physiologoy and social structure and the true nature of the being who called himself  Satan/Lucifer seems to be sound.

 

[84] Note similarity of Yolgan Algol and Ras Al Ghul

 

[85] As depicted in "Lord of the Dead" Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard, Berkley, 1978

 

[86] Robert E. Howard, "Names in the Black Book", Super-Detective Stories, 1934

 

[87]  Mr. King was a legendary figure in the Limehouse district.. He was a Chinese gentleman of unknown origin. According to some of Sax Rohmer's accounts, Mr. King was the partial inspiration for Fu Manchu. After Fu Manchu had disappeared in 1914 and was presumed dead Sax Rohmer wrote a novel with a mysterious Mr. King as the villain. The identity of Mr. King was never revealed although it was hinted. Rohmer seems to have suspected that the rumors of Fu Manchu's demise were greatly exaggerated. Rohmer also based the novel on an incident that had occurred circa 1910 despite setting the novel in 1915. Rohmer also seems to have some inkling of the connection between Mr. King and Fu Manchu and Ho-Pin and Fo-Hi.

 

[88]  This was established by Rick Lai in The Brotherhood of the Lotus and also in Partners in Crime.

 

[89] Rohmer, The Hand of Fu Manchu, Chapter IV

 

[90] It is unknown what would have been the reaction among the Si-Fan if they had known about one of Rashiel and Fu Manchu's operations in 1901. Rashiel was used the existing legend the reborn queen to unify the Si-Fan, not realizing that there was truth in the legend. They uncovered the information that Leo Vincey and Ludwig Horace Holly had learned the whereabouts of the reincarnated Ayesha. This was in a lamsary in Turkestan. They had sent a couple of their men to neutralize the situation, to prevent it from becoming general knowledge that the Queen had been reincarnated and  also to prevent the Queen from gaining power. Their agents had first fomented a civil war between Ayesha's temple and the Khania of Khaloon. When that failed to accomplish their goal. They had poisoned Leo Vincey. After Vincey had died, Ayesha had committed suicide by immolating herself. This tale of the reincarnated Ayesha was told by Ludwig Holly to H. Rider Haggard, although Holly did not know about Rashiel and Shan Ming Fu's agent. See Haggard, H. Rider Ayesha: The Return of She, for more details.

 

[91]  Rohmer, The Hand of Fu Manchu, Chapter XXXII

 

[92] The Fires of Fu Manchu by Cay Van Ash