Line #78 Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith


1	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/220px_clark_ashton_smith_1912_2.jpg]]
2	%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
3
4	-> ''Tell me many tales, but let them be of things that are past the lore of legend and of which there are no myths in our world or any world adjoining.''
5	-->-- '''Clark Ashton Smith''', ''To the Daemon''
6
7	Clark Ashton Smith (January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961) was an American writer of {{horror}}, {{fantasy}} and ScienceFiction. He is most notable for being one of the founders of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos along with Creator/HPLovecraft, Creator/RobertEHoward and others. Smith's early works were influenced by Creator/TheBrothersGrimm, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and William Beckford's ''Literature/{{Vathek}}'', while his early {{poetry}} caught the attention of George Sterling, who helped him publish ''The Star-Treader and Other Poems'', his first collection of poetry, and also introduced him to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, who became another important influence. Smith's 1920 poem ''The Hashish Eater, or The Apocalypse of Evil'' prompted H. P. Lovecraft to send him a fan letter, which was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and correspondence between the two. Lovecraft would pay homage to his friend in ''Literature/TheWhispererInDarkness'', which makes reference to an ancient [[{{Atlantis}} Atlantean]] high priest named [[{{Tuckerization}} Klarkash-Ton]].
8
9	Like Lovecraft's, Clark's stories were often inspired by the nightmares he suffered in his youth. However, Smith's stories tend to focus less on the CosmicHorrorStory and more on the pure exoticism of the setting. Some Mythos entities recur between them, such as the god Tsathoggua, but these entities tend to be less malevolent in Smith's portrayal than in Lovecraft's. While Smith is best known for his prose stories, he personally considered them secondary to his poetry (sometimes going as far as calling them "quasi-hackwork"), and the vast majority were written to help him raise funds for his ailing parents in the period from 1929 to 1934. After their deaths, as well as those of his friends Lovecraft and Howard, Smith's prose output dwindled dramatically, and he returned to poetry and began sculpting (usually small soft rock sculptures of strange beings).
10
11	Sexuality plays a strong role in many of Smith's works and female characters are a lot stronger and more prominent than in Lovecraft. Unlike Howard, sorcerers in Smith [[LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards tend to have the upper hand against swordsmen]], and Smith has many sorcerer protagonists, both good and evil. And finally, Smith was not as much a racist or a xenophobe as Lovecraft, which can be seen best in stories like ''The Great God Awto'' and ''A Star-Change'', although reading his Zothique stories shows he was still very much a man of his time. Smith was very fond of PurpleProse and one often needs to have a thesaurus handy to fully appreciate the meaning of some of his descriptions.
12
13	Smith was fond of playing with tropes and deconstructing pulp traditions, and his stories occasionally feature BlackComedy. The classic ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' module ''TabletopGame/CastleAmber'' draws inspiration from his stories set in his fictional Averoigne setting.
14
15	Smith had four main settings for his Weird Fiction. In chronological order:
16	* Hyperborea, a MedievalPrehistory JungleOpera LostWorld that existed in TheTimeOfMyths before being covered by Arctic ice. The stories trace the [[JustBeforeTheEnd decline]] of Hyperborean civilization, and the abandoning of its capital city, Commoriom, for the more southerly Uzuldaroum, leaving the old capital a GhostCity. In addition to its semi-[[{{magocracy}} magocratic]] human civilization, Hyperborea is also home to a race of three-toed, cave-dwelling [[BeastMan beast men]] called voormis, whose once-reasonably-complex society is also declining sharply. The setting has a number of JerkassGods, most prominently Tsathoggua, the Sleeper of N'Kai, who rules the voormis as their patron. Tsathoggua is probably Smith's most iconic character and contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos.
17	* Poseidonis, an archipelago consisting of the [[JustBeforeTheEnd last unsunken remnants]] of {{Atlantis}} in a more UsefulNotes/AncientGreece-derived SwordAndSandal setting. Probably the least-celebrated and least-discussed of the four.
18	* Averoigne, a FictionalProvince in the south of France, [[LandOfOneCity dominated]] by the city of Vyones and its majestic cathedral. A [[DarkFantasy Dark]] LowFantasy world plagued by [[WickedWitch witches]] and sinister magic. Although the Averoigne stories are largely set in [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy the Middle Ages]], Smith traces the region's history back to Roman times and the (fictional) Gallic tribe of the Averones. The Averoigne story "The Maker of Gargoyles" is probably Smith's most influential work of all, as it was the story that [[TropeMaker invented]] the idea of a [[OurGargoylesRock gargoyle as a monster, and not simply an architectural fluourish]].
19	* Zothique, a DesertPunk supercontinent and borderline DeathWorld that exists in the Earth's distant and grim future. These stories are part of the [[JustBeforeTheEnd Dying Earth]] genre, a fairly popular one at the time. Despite their futuristic setting, the Zothique stories are strictly SwordAndSorcery rather than science fiction, with [[TheMagicComesBack magic having returned]] in [[CrapsackWorld the worst possible way]]. Most of the world is a barren wasteland dotted with [[GhostCity empty cities]], and the last remaining human settlments are haunted by {{necromancer}}s, [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier ghouls]], ancient {{curse}}s, and frightful JerkassGods, although [[DarkIsNotEvil dark is not always evil]].
20
21	!!Works by Clark Ashton Smith with their own trope pages include:
22
23	* "Literature/TheCharnelGod"
24	* "Literature/{{The Ghoul\|1934}}"
25	* "Literature/TheGhoulAndTheSeraph"
26	* "Literature/TheNamelessOffspring"
27
28	----
29	!!Tropes found in Clark Ashton Smith's works:
30	* ActionGirl: Vixeela in ''The Theft of Thirty-Nine Girdles''.
31	* ActionHero: Subverted. Most protagonists favor spellcraft and or cunning. The few that rely on weapons tend to die faster.
32	* AffablyEvil: Smith's creations in ''The Seven Geases'' employ the same cultured, if often circuitous, language as the human beings that populate Hyperborea in great quantities, even if their motivations are every bit as alien as those in Lovecraft.
33	* AfterTheEnd: The setting of the ''Zothique'' stories is the last surviving continent on Earth, all the others having long since sunk beneath the oceans. The last remnants of humanity persist in scattered city-states or barbarian tribes, the land is dotted with ancient ruins, and even the sun is dimming.
34	* AlienInvasion: In ''The Metamorphosis of Earth''.
35	* AlienSky: Suns of unusual color and non-standard numbers appear repeatedly.
36	* AmbiguousEnding: ''Morthylla'', the last and most oblique Zothique short story, has a circular, ambiguous ending involving a man who kills himself, but 'forgets' that he has died. A meeting in graveyard, a debauched party… the customary business of the last continent is all here.
37	* AnachronismStew: Smith mentions that the Hyperborea stories occur "in the last centuries before the onset of the Great Ice Age", possibly meaning the last long interglacial period, the Eemian Interglacial (130,000-70,000 BP). The mention of mammals common to this epoch, such as sabre-tooth cats, aurochs, and mammoths, further places the period as the recent Pleistocene, before the start of human civilisation. However, in ''Ubbo-Sathla'', Smith gives a different period in history for Hyperborea: the Miocene, approximately twenty-three million years past, which concluded in a glacial advance. A ''Tyrannosaurus'' and an ''Archaeopteryx'' appear in ''The Seven Geases'' alongside mentions of sabre-tooth cats and mammoths.
38	* AnyoneCanDie: And they often do. In ''The Dark Eidolon'', nobody makes it out alive. The Zothique and Hyperborea stories in general typically end with high body counts.
39	* ApatheticCitizens: In ''The Dark Eidolon'', when the beggar boy Narthos is trampled almost to death by horses, people pass by and do nothing; this sets in motion the entire revenge plot.
40	* ApothecaryAlligator: In "The Return of the Sorcerer":
41	-->There were tables strewn with archaic instruments of doubtful use, with astrological charts, with skulls and alembics and crystals, with censers such as are used in the Catholic Church, and volumes bound in worm-eaten leather with verdigris-mottled clasps. In one corner stood the skeleton of a large ape; in another, a human skeleton; and overhead a stuffed crocodile was suspended.
42	* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: What happens to someone who steps into the Singing Flame:
43	-->''Any attempt to describe the experience would be foredoomed to futility, since it seemed that a whole range of new senses had been opened up in me, together with corresponding thought-symbols for which there are no words in human speech. I was no longer Philip Hastane, but a larger, stronger and freer entity, differing as much from my former self as the personality developed beneath the influence of hashish or kava would differ.''
44	* {{Atlantis}}: One of Smith's main cycles of stories is set in Poseidonis, the last isle of foundering Atlantis.
45	* AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever: ''The Colossus of Ylourgne.'' A story about an undead giant made of hundreds of corpses.
46	* AuthorAvatar:
47	** The recurring character Philip Hastane is in many ways an analog of his creator. He lives in a cabin in Auburn, California, writes wrote poetry and weird fiction, and is associated with a large number of artists and dilettantes whom he met through letters and conferences.
48	** The protagonist of ''Morthylla'', Valzain, can also be seen as one. He is a young poet for whom earthly pleasures no longer have any meaning, and restlessness afflicts him. His dreams taunt him with a beautiful and unreal world: “Do such dreams have any source, outside the earth-born brain itself? I would give much to find that source, if it exists. In the meanwhile there is nothing for me but despair.” It is easy to imagine the aging Clark Ashton Smith, a poet for nearly forty years, pondering such questions.
49	* AuthorVocabularyCalendar: Smith easily surpasses even Lovecraft in this field. Some choice favourites include: "abdominous" (big-bellied), "alembic" (a type of vessel used in chemistry), "antemundane" (unearthly), "austral" (southern), "argentry" (silver), "coeval" (of the same age), "gnomon" (the pin on a sundial), "levin" (lightning bolt), "fulvous" (tawny), "lich" (a corpse, not the fantasy undead monster), "nenuphar" (water lily), "vespertine" (pertaining to the evening), "cerulean" (of a deep blue; azure), chalcedony (a type of quartz), "dolorous" (mournful, sorrowful), "eidolon" (unreal or spectral form, image), "empery" (dominion, sovereignty) etc. as well as some of Lovecraft's staples (eldritch, cyclopean, gibbous, ululation...).
50	%%* TheBadGuyWins: "The Dark Eidolon", "The Maze of Maal Dweb", and most depressingly "Xeethra", just to name a few.
51	%%* BarbarianHero: Subverted.
52	%%* BeneathTheEarth
53	%%* BestServedCold
54	* BetterLivingThroughEvil: The EvilSorcerer Namirrha's backstory in ''The Dark Eidolon''. He learns BlackMagic for his revenge plot, but attains such an opulent lifestyle through it that even his evil PatronGod suggests that he simply enjoy what he has.
55	* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: In ''The Isle of the Torturers'', king Fulbra manages to escape a grisly death by the hand of the torturers by having Ildrac remove the ring that protects him from the Silver Death.
56	* BigScrewedUpFamily: One of Smith's more notable contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos is the idea that the various {{Eldritch Abomination}}s are all related to each other in some way or another like a classical pantheon, rather than a bunch of random, unrelated extradimensional aliens. For instance, Hastur is supposedly Cthulhu's half-brother. And he's married to Shub Niggurath and therefore, presumably the father of at least some of her enigmatic Thousand Young. "The Door To Saturn" features a brief appearance by Tsathoggua's grouchy (but comparatively benign) uncle, with the [[TheUnpronouncable unpronouncable-even-by-Mythos-standards]] name of Hzioulquoigmnzhah.
57	* BlackComedy: Hyperborea in particular, though a good many of Smith's stories weren't above poking fun at the sillier aspects of Cosmic Horror tropes.
58	* BlobMonster: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" features one lurking in the ruins of Commorriom. "The Testament of Athammaus" is about a HumanoidAbomination's SlowTransformation into such a monster - possibly the very same one.
59	* BodyHorror: In "The Seed from the Sepulchre", there is a horrific man-to-plant transformation.
60	* BodyOfBodies: "The Colossus of Ylourgne" features a giant zombie created out of hundreds of corpses by a mad necromancer in the Middle Ages to serve as a sort of undead HumongousMecha.
61	%%* BuriedAlive: In ''The Second Internment''.
62	* BriarPatching: In ''The Isle of the Torturers'', king Fulbra, tied to the breaking wheel, uses this to convince his torturer to remove from him the ring that keeps the Siver Death dormant, thus uleashing the plague [[TakingYouWithMe upon him and his tormentors]].
63	* BurnTheWitch: In "The Door To Saturn", Eibon is a heretical worshiper of Tsathoggua, fleeing persecution by a more powerful church.
64	* CannibalTribe: The hero of ''The Symposium of the Gorgon'' runs afoul of a cannibal tribe who proceeds to worship him as a god.
65	%%* CelibateHero
66	* CerebusSyndrome: ''The Ice-Demon'', ''The White Sybil'' and ''The Coming of the White Worm'' mini-cycle differs from the rest of the Hyperborea series: humourless and seeming to imitate Smith’s two other fantasy worlds, Averoigne and Zothique.
67	* ChainOfDeals: ''The Seven Geases'' is essentially the magical version of this.
68	* CharmPerson: Part of the repertory of every self-respecting evil female caster.
69	%%* ChasedByAngryNatives
70	* ClarkesThirdLaw: Maal Dweb rules over all the kings of Xiccarph through the power of his knowledge. Likely the knowledge is scientific, and Smith describes Maal Dweb’s extraterrestrial travel, genetic experiments, and advanced mechanics (the animated iron statues that serve him may be robots). But from the view of the people of Xiccarph and the readers, Maal Dweb is a wielder of magic.
71	%%* ColdBloodedTorture
72	%%* CometOfDoom
73	* ContinuityNod: In ''The Colossus of Ylourgne'', Gaspard du Nord, while climbing up into Vyones Cathedral, hides behind a gargoyle with features identical to the lustful stone carving that tormented the city over a hundred and fifty years ago in ''The Maker of Gargoyles''.
74	* CosmicHorrorStory: Mostly parodied. The eldritch horrors tend to be much more willing to interact with humans, and either have a petty cruel streak to their torment, or are rather laid back and affable.
75	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: One Zothique story has the villain devoured by the very same plants he used to dispose of his enemies as a garden.
76	%%* {{Curse}}: In ''The Witchcraft of Ulua''.
77	%%* DarkestAfrica
78	%%* DeadAllAlong
79	%%* DeadManWriting
80	* DecadentCourt: All of them. Zothique especially is full of crumbling cities ruled by mad or aging nobles that when not backstabbing each other or performing some flavor of curse or plague, they're having orgies and drugging themselves into oblivion to forget the decrepit state of the world.
81	* DealWithTheDevil: In ''Xeethra''. Played with in that the demon manages to twist Xeethra's wish of seeing his kingdom's old glory for a day, only to be consumed by loss and regret with the vivid memories. The pain is so strong that when he asks if the demon will take his soul, he decides living is a far worse fate for him and leaves without anything in return.
82	* DeathByMaterialism: In ''The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan''. Avoosl Wuthoqquan’s avaricious pursuit of two magical gems leads him into the lair of a Tsathoggua-esque monster with a snide sense of humour.
83	* DeathSeeker: In ''The Empire of the Necromancers'', two necromancers raise the kingdom of Cincor from the dead and enslave the shambling corpses, letting them shuffle about in forgetful imitations of their former lives. But the strength of longing for true death proves too powerful for the former living of Cincor, and the first and last rulers of the royal family awaken to plot revenge against the sorcerers who cheated them of death’s release.
84	* DirectLineToTheAuthor: Smith frames ''The Coming of the White Worm'' as Chapter IX of the fictitious Book of Eibon, from a translation by Gaspard du Nord, the hero of the Averoigne tale ''The Colossus of Ylourgne''. This device explains the complexity of the story’s diction, Byzantine even considering the author’s usual style.
85	%%* DisposingOfABody
86	* DisproportionateRetribution: ''The Dark Eidolon'' is all about this. A beggar boy who was trampled by a prince of Ummaus and left in the street by ApatheticCitizens becomes a powerful sorcerer specifically to destroy the entire city.
87	* DownerEnding: Toyed with a lot. Sometimes we get a simple TheBadGuyWins downer; sometimes an EverybodyDiesEnding, where the villains go down as well; and sometimes a straight happy ending.
88	%%* DraggedOffToHell: Inverted [[spoiler:in ''The Devotee of Evil''.]] Averted [[spoiler:in ''Xeethra'' to the surprise of the main character. It's still a DownerEnding though.]]
89	%%* DropDeadGorgeous
90	* {{Druid}}: A bunch of Gaulish druids appear in ''The Holiness of Azédarac'', which is partially set in 475 CE; they are depicted as savage practitioners of HumanSacrifice.
91	%%* DueToTheDead
92	%%* DyingAlone
93	%%* EgomaniacHunter: The main character in ''The Seven Geases''.
94	* ElaborateUndergroundBase: The underground city complex of Ravormos, where Vulthoom and its worshippers dwell under the surface of Mars.
95	* EldritchAbomination: Typical for the Hyperborea setting. Rabilar Voos encounters many under the thrall of seven geases, Knygathin Zhaum gradually turns into one, Satampras Zeiros and Tirouv Oumpalios run into one in Tsathoggua's temple.
96	%%* EmptyPilesOfClothing: In ''The Weaver in the Vault''.
97	%%* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt
98	* EnemyMine: In "The Door To Saturn". Morghi is a priest of [[TheMarvelousDeer Yhoundeh]] investigating the possible heresy of his political rival, Eibon. Once they get to Saturn, however, neither their rivalry or their religious differences really matter, and they're forced to work together to survive.
99	%%* EverythingsSparklyWithJewelry
100	* EvenEvilHasStandards: In ''The Dark Eidolon'', the archdemon Thasaidon, Lord of the Seven Hells, refuses to help the sorcerer Namirrha in his plan for vengeance. This may be because all the people who would be killed by the plan are evil, and therefore unwitting servants of Thasaidon.
101	* EvilIsDeathlyCold: ''The Coming of the White Worm'' and ''The Ice Demon'' bring the reader toward the eventual doom of Hyperborea beneath the advancing glaciers. Eventually, as the White Sybil augured, the glacier of Polarion destroys Hyperborea and leaves behind the land we know as Greenland.
102	%%* EvilOverlord: Maal Dweb, Malygris...
103	%%** Nearly all of whom are also {{Sorcerous Overlord}}s too. Maal Dweb especially.
104	* EvilSorcerer: Most villains are. Zothique is full of them. A few - most notably Eibon - are arguably {{villain protagonist}}s.
105	* EvilVersusEvil: Every single character in ''The Dark Eidolon'' is evil, especially the DecadentCourt of Ummaus and the EvilSorcerer seeking revenge on them.
106	%%* EyeOfNewt
107	* ExactWords: In ''The Voyage of King Euvoran'' Geol's oracle foretells that Euvoran will slay a gazolba and the end of his journey to far eastern islands. He never says that he will come back.
108	* FateWorseThanDeath: In ''The Isle of the Torturers'', Smith’s prose delights in the viciousness of the torments inflicted on Fulbra and his companions. Smith presents death as a blessed relief, with existence as the torture. Beneath its gruesome veneer, ''The Isle of the Torturers'' makes death a pleasant prospect: the ultimate escape from pain.
109	* FauxDeath: Played for horror in ''The Second Internment'', as the people in question revive in much more dangerous circumstances than they started in.
110	%%* ForcedTransformation: In ''The Maze of Maal Dweb'', the hero is turned into a deformed ape creature for his efforts.
111	%%* FunctionalMagic
112	* TheFuture: The tales of Zothique, the last continent on Earth, take place in an unimaginably far future haunted by demons and ghosts.
113	* GardenOfEvil: In "The Garden of Adompha" The King and his evil sorcerer have one such garden walled off in the palace for their own private use, wherein they graft human organs to the plants. Well until the King decides to kill his companion and bury him in the selfsame garden. It doesn't end well..
114	%%* GeniusLoci: In ''Genius Loci''.
115	* GhostCity: Zothique has only crypts, mummified rulers, and the hollow remains of metropolises. Few living cities exist, and 'the sands of Zothique are full of lost tombs and cities'.
116	* GhostMemory: In ''Xeethra'', Xeethra partakes of one of those dark red fruits and is overcome with strange feelings and memories, soon forgetting who he was, soon coming to believe that he was "King Amero, who had newly come to the throne, [and] would rule as his fathers had ruled over all the kingdom of Calyz by the orient sea".
117	* GlamourFailure: Caused by the application of holy water in ''The End of the Story''.
118	* GodOfEvil: Thasaidon, Lord of Evil, as his name suggests, is Zothique's equivalent of the Devil.
119	%%* GoingNative
120	%%* GoneHorriblyRight
121	* GrimUpNorth: In ''The Ice Demon'', and more extradimensionally also ''The Coming of the White Worm'' and ''The Light from the Pole''.
122	* HarmlessVillain: Azédarac mostly serves a comic purpose. He rants ridiculously with a froth of demonic names bubbling from his lips, but he seems more like a low-level office bureaucrat who’s afraid his manager will discover he has started embezzling from the company picnic fund. Compare him to the sorcerer Nathaire in ''The Colossus of Ylourgne'', whom Smith portrays with maximum menace and minimum irony.
123	* HellishHorse: In ''The Dark Eidolon'', trampled as a child by a horse, Namirrha plots his vengeance with a horse theme. There are the ghostly steeds which thunder back and forth all night to terrorise Zotulla and there are the very impressive "macrocosmic stallions of Thamogorgos" which overrun the entire city, crushing its towers beneath their hooves.
124	%%* HeroicSacrifice
125	%%* {{Hologram}}: Used by the villains in ''Vulthoom'' and ''The Immortals of Mercury''.
126	* HopeSpot: The final geas upon Rabilar Vooz tasks him with seeking out the "Outer World", or "go back outside". [[spoiler: Unfortunately, one of the spider-web bridges he has to cross was weakened by an EldritchAbomination that passed before him, and he plummets to his doom.]]
127	* HumanoidAbomination: Knygathin Zhaum in "The Testament of Athammaus" is a criminal who turns out to be a descendant of Tsathoggua, and has an appearance that suggests something snake-like and amorphous about his body. After being decapitated twice, he spontaneously revived himself, becoming more monstrous than before. After the third decapitation, well, suffice to say [[OneWingedAngel the "humanoid" part of this trope no longer applies]].
128	%%* HumanoidAliens
129	%%* HumanSacrifice
130	* ILoveTheDead: The sorcerers Mmatmuor and Sodosma in ''The Empire of the Necromancers'' raise royal corpses in a devastated palace to serve them; including empresses "they took for their lemans and made to serve their necrophilic lust".
131	* ImAHumanitarian: The priests of Mordiggian claim the bodies of every one who dies in the city of Zul-Bha-Sair to be devoured by the god. It is said that the priests themselves feed on the dead.
132	* {{Irony}}: Smith was very fond of ironic plot twists, {{bathos}}, [[KarmicTwistEnding Karmic Twist Endings]], and other playful touches to keep his stories fun.
133	* JustBeforeTheEnd: Zothique is the last doomed land, the death rattle of the planet Earth. It is an "End of History" scenario; its end is the world's end, and nothing will come after.
134	* KarmaHoudini: The titular villain from ''The Holiness of Azédarac''. A malevolent sorcerer who has infiltrated the church and risen to the post of bishop is discovered while dabbling in the dark arts by a monk send to investigate the rumors about him. He manages not only to prevent the truth from coming out by [[TrappedInThePast having the monk whisked seven centuries back in time]], but manages to be canonized as a saint after his death (which is strongly implied to [[FakingTheDead have been faked]]). According to his notes, Smith planned to [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty give him his comeuppance]] in the sequel ''The Doom of Azédarac'', but he never got around to writing that.
135	* KissOfDeath: Most notably the non-vampiric one in ''The Kiss of Zoraida'', courtesy of [[spoiler:deadly poison on Zoraida's lips.]]
136	* KissOfTheVampire: Nycea from ''The End of the story'', is a Lamia, "an ancient vampire" , who drains her lovers of their live and vigor with her kisses, before devouring them.
137	* LadyLand: A surprisingly proto-feminist version in ''The Root of Ampoi''.
138	%%* TheLegionsOfHell
139	%%* LibationForTheDead: A non-symbolic version in ''The Death of Ilalotha''.
140	%%* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards
141	* LivingShadow: The EldritchAbomination summoned in ''The Double Shadow'' takes the form of a second shadow that follows the caster about, starting a little way away from their normal shadow and getting gradually closer. It's not good news for the caster when the two eventually touch.
142	* LoveableRogue: In "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros", the title character and his accomplice, Tirouv Ompallios, are a pair of master thieves who take pride in their work. Zeiros specifically mentions one job in which they had to silently pick the lock to an adamantine chest containing "all the medallions of an early dynasty of Hyperborean kings", and even though the stolen medallions were to hot to get a good deal on with any fences, he's still very proud of the "glorious feat" of the heist. In the story itself, they make the mistake of biting off a lot more than they can chew, but still retain our sympathy.
143	%%* LovePotion: In ''The Mandrakes'' and ''The Mother of Toads''.
144	%%* MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter: Subverted in ''The Dark Age''.
145	* MagicMirror:
146	** "The Enchantress of Sylaire". The title character has a mirror that reflects reality as it really is, ignoring all illusions and enchantments.
147	** "The Colossus of Ylourgne". The magician Gaspard du Nord has a mirror that allows him to see distant scenes and places.
148	%%* MagicWand: Used by Maal Dweb in ''The Flower Women''.
149	%%* ManEatingPlant
150	* TheMarvelousDeer: The Hyperborean deity Yhoundeh is referred to an an elk goddess, but we don't learn much else about her. In "The Door To Saturn", her church are pretty powerful, and their tolerance for religious heterodoxy seems reliant mostly on the opportunism and political scheming of the clergy.
151	* TheMiddleAges: The Averoigne stories take place in a fictional medieval French province
152	* MindControlMusic: The prodigious green flame in ''The City of the Singing Flame'', an eerie and alluring presence whose music draws alien creatures who prostrate themselves before the flame before immolating themselves in its fire.
153	* MuckMonster: Abhoth and its spawn, appearing in "The Seven Geases".
154	-->For the gray mass quobbed and quivered, and swelled perpetually; and from it, in manifold fission, were spawned the anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. There were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with fishes' fins; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous, that grew in size as they departed from the neighborhood of Abhoth.
155	* MummiesAtTheDinnerTable: In ''Necromancy in Naat'', [[spoiler:the hero]] spends a lot of time talking sweet nothings to his zombified girlfriend who had been [[spoiler:turned into an undead servant of the necromancers]]. The girlfriend actually talks back, to a very limited degree.
156	* NakedFirstImpression: The eponymous character in ''The Enchantress of Sylaire'' is first seen bathing in a forest pool by the hero.
157	* {{Necromancer}}: Show up quite frequently in the tales.
158	** Nathaire in ''The Colossus of Ylourgne'', who raises his evil minions from the dead and ultimately builds a colossus made of corpses to transfer his mind into.
159	** Abnon-Tha and his apprentices Narghai and Vemba-Tsith from ''The Charnel God'', who disobey the rules of the priests of Mordiggian to raise a recently-deceased young woman in order for Abnon-Tha to use as he pleases.
160	** Mmatmuor and Sodosma from ''The Empire of the Necromancers'', who, as the title suggests, raise the corpses littering a fallen empire so that they may rule over them as emperors.
161	* {{Necromantic}}:
162	** ''The Last Incantation'' plays with this: the ancient necromancer ''thinks'' the lover he resurrected was brought back wrong somehow, as she's somehow less beautiful than he remembers, but as it turns out, the spell went off without a hitch. ''He'' has just grown too old and twisted to love her the way he did when he was young.
163	** There's also ''The Chain of Aforgomon''. Calaspa ''could'' have had his beloved's body reanimated or her spirit called back by magic easily enough... but that wasn't good enough, was it? He just ''had'' to actually ''turn back time'' for an hour to when she was still alive...yeah. That didn't end so well.
164	* {{Nephewism}}: The orphaned goatherd Xeethra in the story of the same name lives with his uncle.
165	%%* NoGuyWantsAnAmazon: Played straight and subverted in ''The Root Of Ampoi''.
166	* NoSell: In ''The Double Shadow'', the EldritchAbomination that Avyctes summons passes straight through magical barriers and can't even be perceived by his familiars.
167	%%* OminousFog
168	* OnlySaneMan: Ironically, the GodOfEvil Thasaidon espouses the most moral stance in ''The Dark Eidolon'' and shows a degree of wisdom the mortal characters lack: he warns that it is irrational to taken revenge on a person whose transgressions against you are what is responsible for making you powerful in the first place. But rationality is a weak force in Zothique.
169	%%* OurDemonsAreDifferent
170	* OurGargoylesRock: The Averoigne story "The Maker of Gargoyles" is considered to be the TropeMaker, inventing the idea that gargoyle statues might actually come to life and cause trouble.
171	* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: As in Lovecraft's works, they're a separate species of corpse-eating humanoids with canine muzzles and claws. However, they're no more malicious than anyone else, and some of them are [[DarkIsNotEvil surprisingly good people]].
172	* OurLichesAreDifferent: Smith uses the antiquated term "lich" in its classical meaning of "corpse". It is used to qualify either a usual dead body, a reanimated corpse like a zombie, or an undead sorcerer (''The Stairs in the Crypt'')
173	* OurVampiresAreDifferent:
174	** In ''A Rendezvous in Averoigne'', the Sieur du Malinbois and his chatelaine have most usual traits of the classical vampire: evil yet alluring, sleeping in coffins by day and destroyed when pierced by a stake.
175	** In ''The End of the Story'', Nycea is a Lamia, who drains her lovers of their life and vigor with her kisses before devouring them.
176	* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: In ''The Enchantress of Sylaire'', Malachie has been a victim of a ForcedTransformation by having been given the waters of an enchanted pool. (This cause of lycanthropy is actually more consistent with medieval litterature than the modern depictions)
177	%%* OurZombiesAreDifferent
178	* {{Patricide}}: In ''The Dark Eidolon'', Prince Zotulla murders his own father with an adder to get the throne.
179	* PhlebotinumDuJour: Rays can do anything.
180	%%* PirateBooty: In ''The Master of the Crabs''.
181	%%* PlanetaryRomance
182	* PlantAliens: The eponymous aliens in ''The Flower-Women'' are unusual creatures, half woman and half flower; as well as the blossoms of the planet Lophai in ''The Demon of the Flower''.
183	* PlotTriggeringDeath: ''The Death of Ilalotha'' opens with the funeral observances of Ilalotha, lady-in-waiting to the queen of Tasuun.
184	* PortalDoor: In ''The Door to Saturn'', from his tower in far northern Mhu Thulan, the sorcerer Eibon escapes through a panel that takes him to the planet Cykranosh (or Saturn, as it's known on Earth).
185	%%* PrideBeforeAFall
186	* PurpleProse: Makes Lovecraft look like Creator/ErnestHemingway...
187	%%* {{Qurac}}: The Arabian Nights version.
188	%%* RayGun
189	* ReligionOfEvil: Smith featured corrupt, cruel, false or merely ineffectual and pompous authorities of orthodox religion in numerous stories.
190	* RevengeBeforeReason: The sorcerer Namirrha ignores the warnings of [[OnlySaneMan Thasaidon]] as he plots against the king who slighted him as a youth and set him on the road of necromancy. But Namirrha should have paid attention to Thasaidon’s advice; in Zothique vengeance has an uncanny way of changing into irony.
191	%%* RingOfPower
192	* RunningGag: In ''The Seven Geases'', when Ralibar Vooz interrupts the magical ceremony of the wizard Ezdagor, the enraged magician casts a geas on him to send him deep under Mount Voormithadreth to the lair of Tsathoggua. Tsathoggua has no use for the hunter, so he sends him to spider-god Atlach-Nacha. Who sends him to the inhuman sorcerer Haon-Dor. Who sends him to… Ralibar Vooz’s wanderings deeper and deeper into the subterranean realms beneath the Eiglophian Mountains and his encounters with foul gods and lost races resemble not so much a story as a amusement park dark ride.
193	* {{Satan}}: In ''Schizoid Creator'', a psychiatrist tries to cure Satan, under the belief that Satan and God are just two sides of a split personality. This theory turns out to be [[spoiler:true]].
194	%%* SceneryPorn: Quite a bit.
195	%%* ScienceMarchesOn
196	* ShaggyDogStory:
197	** ''The Seven Geases''. Nobody wants the victim and he ends up dying in an accident.
198	** ''The Voyage of King Euvoran'': The king leaves his kingdom in the quest of the bird gazolba, loses half his fleet and crew to vampires, escapes captivity and being taxidermified by talking, giant birds, then the rest of his fleet in a storm; and in the end, after finally having killed the bird he looked for, ends up stranded in a far isle until his last day.
199	* SinisterMinister:
200	** The titular villain in ''The Holiness of Azédarac'' is a Christian bishop who secretly serves some sort of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.
201	** One of the main characters of "The Door To Saturn" is a self-serving priest of an [[TheMarvelousDeer elk goddess]] who tortures heretics.
202	* SolarCPR: In ''Phoenix'', the sun is resurrected with a bomb that ignites the elements.
203	* SolarSystemNeighbors:
204	** "The Immortals of Mercury": The titular "Oumnis" SpaceElves live in vast underground colonies to avoid the deadly sun. The surface is inhabited by savage, tribal LizardFolk. Neither group wants anything to do with humans: the Oumnis prefer to [[HiddenElfVillage hide their existence]] from humans; the reptilians, to [[HumanSacrifice sacrifice them]].
205	** In the Hyperborean Cycle of short stories, Saturn is known as Cykranosh and is the home of at least one EldritchAbomination. It's [[ArtisticLicenseSpace habitable to human visitors]] in "The Door to Saturn", with an ashy surface, liquid metal lakes, and highly diverse inhabitants; the visitors end up living with a race of friendly, toad-like aliens.
206	%%* SpaceMadness: In ''The Master of the Asteroid''.
207	%%* StarfishAliens
208	* SummoningRitual: Shown onscreen in ''The Double Shadow''. The wizard Avyctes is an expert at summoning every kind of spirit and demon. So when he discovers a summoning spell from a hitherto-unknown [[{{Precursors}} precursor race]], he casts it the first chance he gets. This despite the fact that the spell (a) doesn't say ''what'' it summons, and (b) doesn't come with a matching BanishingRitual. It doesn't end well.
209	%%* SummonMagic
210	* SupervillainLair: Vulthoom has the underground city of Ravormos, while Maal Dweb has his elaborate labyrinth.
211	* TakenForGranite: Maal Dweb has the habit of having women look at a mirror 'whose sudden radiance turns the flesh to a stone that is fairer than marble and no less eternal'.
212	%%* TakingYouWithMe
213	* TheTimeOfMyths: Where the Hyperborea and Poseidonis stories take place.
214	* TimeTravel: In ''The Holiness of Azédarac'', the eponymous villain uses his magic to send the monk who can expose his activities backwards in time seven hundred years to 475 C.E.
215	%%* TogetherInDeath
216	* TortureTechnician: There is a whole island population well versed in torture, led by the depraved King Ildrac in ''The Isle of the Torturers''.
217	* ToServeMan: The god of Zul-Bha-Sair is Mordiggian to whom "it is the law and the custom" that all who die in the city be given to his priests and offered to him as food.
218	%%* TheUndead
219	* UndeadLaborers:
220	** In ''The Double Shadow'' Avyctes uses mummies and liches as his household staff.
221	** The necromancers in ''The Empire of the Necromancers'' reanimate the population of a city to serve as their slaves.
222	%%* UnholyMatrimony
223	* UniqueMomentRuined: In the short story "The Chain of Aforgomon", a man invokes a TimeMaster demon to see his [[TheLostLenore dead beloved]] again, which causes him to relive their happiest hour together. This time, however, they have an argument that permanently mars that perfect moment.
224	* UnPerson: A victim of Aforgomon in ''The Chain of Aforgomon'' literally ceases to exist, all knowledge, memory, and record of them fading from existence.
225	* UnreliableExpositor: Most of the Hyperborea stories tell us that the city of Commorriom was abandoned because of the prophecy of the White Sibyl. "The Testament of Athammaus", however, claims that this is a myth, and the city was really abandoned because of the murderer Knygnathin Zhaum, who would [[ResurrectedMurderer come back to life]] in an even more monstrous form every time they tried to execute him.
226	* UnwantedRevival: ''The Empire of the Necromancers'' gives us the viewpoint of a corpse raised by the necromancers as their slave. It turns out that the dead preferred oblivion.
227	%%* VainSorceress
228	%%* TheVamp
229	* VictoryIsBoring: Affects Maal Dweb.
230	-->'''Maal Dweb:''' I suffer from the frightful curse of omnipotence. In all Xiccarph, and in the five outer planets of the triple suns, there is no one, there is nothing, to dispute my domination. Therefore my ennui has become intolerable. There is but one remedy for this boredom of mine, the abnegation, at least for a while, of that all too certain power from which it springs. Therefore, I, Maal Dweb, the ruler of six worlds and all their moons, shall go forth alone, unheralded, and without other equipment than that which any fledgling sorcerer might possess. In this way, perhaps I shall recover the lost charm of incertitude, the foregone enchantment of peril. Adventures that I have not foreseen will be mine, and the future will wear the alluring veil of the mysterious. It remains, however, to select the field of my adventurings.
231	%%* VillainProtagonist: Repeatedly.
232	%%* WickedWitch: In ''The Mother of Toads''.
233	%%* WomanScorned: Ilalotha in ''The Death of Ilalotha''.
234	* YellowPeril: The inhabitants of Uccastrog are described in this way in ''The Isle of the Torturers''.
235	-->''They wore fantastic turbans of blood-red, and were clad in closely fitting robes of vulturine black. Their faces and hands were yellow as saffron; their small and slaty eyes were set obliquely beneath lashless lids; and their thin lips, which smiled eternally, were crooked. as the blades of scimitars. [...] Their speech was no less alien than their aspect; it was full of sharp and hissing sounds; and neither the king nor his slaves could comprehend it.''

Context Creator / ClarkAshtonSmith