YMMV / The Tower of the Elephant

• Complete Monster: Yara is one of the earliest and one of the most sadistic evil sorcerers Conan has ever fought. A bane upon the land for the torments he inflicts upon man and nation, once transforming a prince into a spider which he squashed underneath his foot, Yara secludes himself in the terrifying Tower of the Elephant to guard the tower's evil secret. The source of Yara's power and the tower's namesake is a benevolent Eldritch Abomination named Yag-Kosha who sought nothing but peace, whom Yara first apprenticed himself to in hopes of knowledge before enslaving Yag-Kosha and subjecting him to three straight centuries of unspeakable tortures. The evidence of all the manifold horrors Yara has inflicted upon Yag-Kosha is a sight enough to move even the Barbarian to deep sadness and pity.
• Fanfic Fuel: Taurus's backstory is rife with this. Just look at the Eye of Newt entry on the main page for the details.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The story prominently features a killer plant called the Black Lotus. This story was sixty years before Magic: The Gathering would create the ridiculously overpowered and expensive Black Lotus, probably about as deadly in a game of Magic as Howard's lotus.
• The Woobie: Yag-kosha is probably the closest one can come to making an Eldritch Abomination one of these. The sheer hell that Yara put him through alone is more than enough to qualify for the title, and such was Yara's cruelty that Yag-kosha was not even allowed to die to escape his torment. And that's not even getting into his status as the possible Last of His Kind. Being based on Earth's majestic and threatened species will do that.

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