Master of the Monolith

[REH Black (online text)]: An entity that formerly appeared on the top of the Black Stone outside Stregoicavar (formerly Xuthltan) in Hungary, on every Midsummer Night when summoned by its worshippers with chants and wild rituals of flagellation and slaughter.

Appearance

It was a huge monstrous toad-like thing, with a bloated, repulsive and unstable outline. Its huge, blinking eyes reflected lust, abysmal greed, obscene cruelty and monstrous evil. Its eyes "mirrored all the unholy things and vile secrets that sleep in the cities under the sea, and that skulk from the light of day in the blackness of primordial caverns." It leered and blinked down on its bestial worshippers, who groveled in abhorrent abasement before it. The monstrosity sucked in its breath, lustfully and slobberingly, when offered a fresh new victim.

Cultists

The original inhabitants of Xuthltan were a short, squat race, with low brows and broad, dull faces. Some had Slavic and Magyar features, but those features were degraded as from a mixture of some baser, alien strain. They were in the habit of making stealthy raids on the lowlands and stealing girls and children. The high priest work the mask of a wolf and a whipped a naked dancing priestess during the Midsummer ritual, before killing an infant and than offering a living girl to the Master.

Death

In 1526, Selim Bahadur led a Turkish raid on Xuthltan. In a lost, grim black cavern high in the hills, the horrified Turks hemmed a monstrous, bloated, wallowing toad-like being and slew it with flame and ancient steel blessed in old times by Muhammad, and with incantations that were old when Arabia was young. The monstrosity died with cataclysmic, earth-shaking death-howls, after slaying a half-score of the Turks.

Now the Master of the Monolith is made fast in Hell with his nauseous horde, freed only for an hour on the most weird night of the year. Too-curious people who ventured to visit the Black Stone on Midsummer Night have died raving mad because of something they saw there.

Written References

Selim Bahadur left a written account of the slaying of the Master, along with a gold carving of the Master that Selim had taken from the slain high priest. These items were later buried with Count Boris Vladinoff by an explosion at the Battle of Schomvaal, and recovered in modern times by the Black Stone narrator.

Van Junzt wrote of the Black Stone, but it is not clear if he mentioned the Master of the Monolith.

After a visit to Stregoicavar, Justin Geoffrey was inspired to write the weird and fantastic poem, The People of the Monolith.

Related Information

Possibly related to: Fire of Asshurbanipal, Guardian of the; hoofed thing; Toad.

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