Illustration by Kevin O'Neill
"Allan and the Sundered Veil" is a horror-fantasy short story written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, set in their League of Extraordinary Gentlemen universe. It features the character Allan Quatermain, from the works of H. Rider Haggard, joining forces with three other heroes: John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series, Randolph Carter from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (who is depicted here as John Carter's grandnephew), and the Time Traveler from H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. It also features the spatial anomaly from Jorge Luis Borges' story "The Aleph".
Despite being a prose story, "Allan and the Sundered Veil" was published in Moore and O'Neill's graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I, where it serves as a prequel to the comic's narrative.
Synopsis[]
Three years after faking his own death to escape his fame, the British adventurer Allan Quatermain visits the dilapidated castle of his friend, Lady Ragnall, to partake of the taduki drug, which allows one to experience visions of past lives. As soon as Quatermain inhales it, however, he finds himself (or, more properly, his astral self) falling into a cosmic abyss, and transported to a strange realm made out of fluid shapes and colours. Gradually, the environment solidifies into an alien landscape of polypous vegetation under a starless sky. Quatermain sees two men sitting by a fire and asks for information, but finds that the two are just as lost as him, and came from different points in time.
The younger man is Randolph Carter, from the twentieth century: an experienced dreamer who admits to having ventured into a part of the Dreamlands completely unknown to him. The other man is his granduncle, John Carter, sill dressed in his American Civil War uniform, who recounts how he was standing at the entrance of a cave in the 19th century, staring at the planet Mars in the sky when his astral projection took place and he was transported to this mysterious land.
Suddenly, the three men notice the approach of large, menacing, centipede-like creatures with gelatinous flesh and a dozen eyes. John Carter takes up his sword while Quatermain grabs a burning stick from the fire, and Randolph admits to not being much of a fighter. Before the fight starts, however, the monsters are startled by the approach of a metallic vehicle piloted by a man who introduces himself as "the Time Traveler". He urges the others to jump onboard, as the creatures won't stay frightened for long.
The Time Traveler takes Quatermain and the Carters to a distant future, at the location where London once was, to the interior of a sphinx that he has turned into his base of operations, its entrance activated by a trapezohedron. He explains that he was looking for them, hoping to recruit their help to fight against a threat to all of spacetime. Somehow the fabric of reality has been ruptured, and a mighty race of eldritch beings from another universe are pouring through.
Quatermain points to a group of white ape-like creatures approaching them, which the Time Traveler recognizes as his old enemies, the Morlocks, also known as the Mi-Go or Abominable Snowmen. These creatures have allied themselves with the extracosmic invaders, and intend to destroy the time machine. Arming themselves with tools (except for John Carter, who still has his sword), the four battle against the Morlocks and escape inside the machine to a temporal abyss, where they collide with an enormous object that the Time Traveler identifies as an Aleph, a phenomenon that shows them images of their pasts and futures.
While Quatermain watches scenes from his forthcoming adventures with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, his companions are absorbed by their own visions. Randolph Carter gazes into his beloved hometown of Arkham and starts disappearing, as his astral self returns to his own body, who is waking up from the dream. Soon afterwards, John Carter also vanishes, transported eagerly to Mars, as his future reveals glorious battles under the Martian moons, and the beautiful princess who would love him.
Quatermain is taken aback by the two Carters vanishing, but the Time Traveler is not surprised. As he explains to Quatermain, the Time Traveler is the only one whose body is there physically. The others were corporified consciousness, traveling far from where their physical bodies remained, just like Quatermain's body is still in Lady Ragnall's library. When Quatermain also vanishes, the Time Traveler peers into the Aleph and is horrified to see that the adventurer's body has awakened, but is possessed by one of the extracosmic beings.
These creatures that are invading reality are identified as the Lloigor, a.k.a. the Great Old Ones. They are the individual components or avatars of an "idea-colony" named Yuggoth: a concept variously identified as a planet, a god, or a state of mind. Despite being aspects of Yuggoth, each Lloigor has its own name and distinct characteristics, as well as an elemental servitor race. The one possessing Quatermain is Ithaqqa, lord of the wind-walkers or Wendigo.
Quatermain's disembodied consciousness sees his own body, animated by Ithaqqa, attacking Lady Ragnall and her maid Marisa. He enters his body and fights against the entity. Lady Ragnall dies in shock, but Marisa sees Quatermain's efforts to restrain himself and understands what is happening. She pricks her own hand and uses the blood to draw an ancient talisman while uttering the incantations that she knows can repel the Great Old Ones. Ithaqqa leaves Quatermain's body and returns to its extracosmic domains. As Marisa leaves the castle, Quatermain never consumes taduki again, but seeks refuge in opium instead. The story ends at the point he is found by Mina Murray in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.