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The Lair of the Star-Spawn is a short story written by August Derleth and Mark Schorer on August 1932 and published in Weird Tales. It is notable as the first story to reference the Tcho-Tcho people and the entity Lloigor.
Synopsis[]
Eric Marsh is part of a scientific expedition led by famed explorer and scholar Geoffrey Hawks to Burma, c. 1902, in search of the legendary city of Alaozar, to be found in the Lake of Dread on the Plateau of Sung. The natives are reluctant to provide guides, due to fear of the "Tcho-Tcho People" said to live there.
When Marsh doubles back to retrieve a forgotten compass, the party is attacked by "a horde of little men, the tallest of them no more than four feet, with singularly small eyes set deep in dome-like, hairless heads." He can only watch as his colleagues are slaughtered by the people identified as the Tcho-Tcho.
Marsh decides that civilization is closer in front of him than behind, so he continues onward, taking the food and water left behind by the attackers. (The Tcho-Tchos took all the tools, leaving Marsh unable to bury the dead.) He comes upon "the walls and parapets of a city...rising alone in the plateau"--the "long-lost city of Alaozar." Later, in the night, he sees "a faint white line, flame-like, wavering up" from the city "toward the distant stars." As he watches, he is struck from behind and blacks out.
He wakes up, bandaged, in a bed in Alaozor. He's greeted by Dr. Fo-Lan, a Chinese scientist who was thought to have died three years earlier. Instead Fo-Lan has been a slave of the Tcho-Tchos, forced to help them unleash an awful terror upon the world. Fo-Lan tells Marsh that the two of them can now thwart the Tcho Tchos' sinister plans.
Fo-Lan leads him down a secret passage, where they watch the Tcho-Tchos bow down to their leader, the priest E-Poh ("he is seven thousand years old," says Fo-Lan), and the tentacled monster that lurks in the shadows, which Fo-Lan informs him is named Lloigor. Fo-Lan asks Marsh to watch his body while he astrally projects to get help. This goes off without a hitch. Once back in flesh, Fo-Lan informs him that he must convince E-Poh to open the gates to Zhar and Lloigor, at which time "the Star Warriors" can come and save them.
Fo-Lan goes to E-Poh and tells him that Zhar says the Tcho-Tchos must summon Lloigor and Zhar from the city, while he and Marsh go out onto the plateau and do a ritual of their own. Despite displaying incredulity that Zhar would communicate with Fo-Lan and not him, E-Poh is willing but sends four Tcho-Tchos to accompany them. They ride out onto the plateau, and Fo-Lan and Marsh promptly kill the four Tcho-Tchos. Giant, flaming humanoid figures bearing tube-like weapons descend from the sky and destroy the city of Alaozar. Satisfied, Fo-Lan and Marsh return to civilization.
Characters[]
Geoffrey Hawks: A "famed explorer and scholar". He sets off from New York City on an expedition to Burma and is killed three months later.
Eric Marsh: A "student and assistant to Geoffrey Hawks", he reappears a month after the massacre of the rest of the party.
Doctor Fo-Lan: A Chinese "philosopher and scientist...once far-famed among the scholars of the world." He was thought to have been murdered in Peiping c. 1889, but emerges alive in Burma three years later.
E-Poh: The leader of the Tcho-Tcho, said to be 7,000 years old. He is "slightly taller than the others...disfigured by a hump on his back, and incredibly old."
Publication History[]
"The Lair of the Star-Spawn" did not appear in book form until 1966, when it was included in Derleth's Arkham House collection Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People. It was later featured in Robert M. Price's Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (Fedogan & Bremer, 1992; Del Rey, 2002), as well as in In Lovecraft's Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August Derleth (Mycroft & Moran, 1998).