The Valley of the Worms

This post is brought to you by Bearshirt #5 The Beacon House and Other Stories by G. W. Thomas. This collection of tales about a young were-bear includes “Hunter’s Moon”, a giant worm story. Arthan finds a family he knows slain, and blames a werewolf in the area. Only after meeting the wolf does he learn that something far more sinister than a band of lycanthropes is at hand. Reluctantly joining Trusk the wolf, the young man searches for what really killed his friends. The answer comes by the light of the full Hunter’s Moon. This story was offered as a free story but now is included in this collection.

Giant worms in fantastic fiction long predate Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), though Shai-Hulud is certainly the most famous. Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, the great triumvirate of Weird Tales, were using creepy worm monsters when Frank Herbert was dealing with pimples. Robert E. Howard’s “The Valley of the Worm” (Weird Tales, February 1934) is a Sword & Sorcery masterpiece, and one that does not feature Conan the Cimmerian but James Allison, remembering his past lives.

Our hero, Niord, takes on a great prehistoric terror:

Out of the temple the monstrous dweller in the darkness had come, and I, who had expected a horror yet cast in some terrestrial mold, looked on the spawn of nightmare. From what subterranean hell it crawled in the long ago I know not, nor what black age it represented. But it was not a beast, as humanity knows beasts. I call it a worm for lack of a better term. There is no earthly language which has a name for it. I can only say that it looked somewhat more like a worm than it did an octopus, a serpent or a dinosaur.

It was white and pulpy, and drew its quaking bulk along the ground, wormfashion. But it had wide flat tentacles, and fleshy feelers, and other adjuncts the use of which I am unable to explain. And it had a long proboscis which it curled and uncurled like an elephant’s trunk. Its forty eyes, set in a horrific circle, were composed of thousands of facets of as many scintillant colors which changed and altered in never-ending transmutation. But through all interplay of hue and glint, they retained their evil intelligence— intelligence there was behind those flickering facets, not human nor yet bestial, but a night-born demoniac intelligence such as men in dreams vaguely sense throbbing titanically in the black gulfs outside our material universe. In size the monster was mountainous; its bulk would have dwarfed a mastodon.

H. P. Lovecraft did not write any specific worm tales but he does drop some lovely hints in several stories. Only a few months after REH’s worm, HPL and his friend, E. Hoffman Price, had “Through the Gate of the Silver Key” (Weird Tales, July 1934): “There were hideous struggles with the bleached viscous Dholes in the primal tunnels that honeycombed the planet.” In “The Haunter in the Dark” (Weird Tales, December 1936), Lovecraft parodies his friend Robert Bloch with a writer named Robert Blake who writes a story called “The Burrower Beneath”. While neither Lovecraft or Bloch wrote any such tale, its suggestion certainly had an effect on later writers.

Clark Ashton Smith had his contribution to worms and S&S later with “The Coming of the White Worm” (Stirring Science Stories, April 1941), not published in Weird Tales and whose title certainly reflects the older classic, The Lair of the White Worm (1911). In fact, all of these authors owe a debt to Stoker and his final novel. Rlim Shaikorth is wormy but also more human than the previous monsters.

At sight of this entity, the pulses of Evagh were stilled for an instant by terror; and, following quickly upon the terror, his gorge rose within him through excess of loathing. In all the world there was naught that could be likened for its foulness to Rlim Shaikorth. Something he had of the semblance of a fat white worm; but his bulk was beyond that of the sea-elephant. His half-coiled tail was thick as the middle folds of his body; and his front reared upward from the dais in the form of a white round disk, and upon it were imprinted vaguely the lineaments of a visage belonging neither to beast of the earth nor ocean-creature. And amid the visage a mouth curved uncleanly from side to side of the disk, opening and shutting incessantly on a pale and tongueless and toothless maw.

The eye-sockets of Rlim Shaikorth were close together between his shallow nostrils; and the sockets were eyeless, but in them appeared from moment to moment globules of a blood-colored matter having the form of eyeballs; and ever the globules broke and dripped down before the dais. And from the ice floor of the dome there ascended two masses like stalagmites, purple and dark as frozen gore, which had been made by the ceaseless dripping of the globules.

 “Black Abyss” (King Kull, 1967) was another fragment that got worms and Mythos mostly from Lin Carter. Robert E. Howard’s fragment has Kull and Brule looking into a mysterious crack in the wall. Carter takes it from there to an underground cavern with cultists worshipping a great worm god.

All these Pulp tales had their effect on Sword & Sorcery comics as the 1970s came along. Some adapted the original tales, while others were inspired by them.

“The Lurker Beneath the Earth” (Kull the Conqueror #6, January 1973) was written by Gerry Conway. A mad librarian offers Kull a map of an underground city where great wealth lies. Only after worm monsters attack the palace does Kull take his army below, along with a new friend, Zarkus, who saves Kull’s life when they encounter a giant worm. Feels similar to the Howard/Carter tale “Black Abyss” but wasn’t based on that tale.

“The Valley of the Worm” was adapted for Supernatural Thrillers #3, April 1973 by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. In my opinion, the best Sword & Sorcery comic of the 1970s.  The story appeared in another form in Bloodstar (1979) by John Poscik and Richard Corben, which tells the same but in a post-apocalyptic setting. Corben’s art is eye-catching as usual.

“The Beast From the Abyss” (Savage Sword of Conan #2, October 1974) was taken from “Black Abyss” by Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter adapted by Steve Engelhart. Kull and Brule discover an underground temple where secret cultists worship of giant worm. Chakyin makes it look slug-like. The piece was inked by a number of veterans, including Neal Adams, Russ Heath, Dick Giordano and Alan Weiss, who got a collective credit as “Crusty Bunkers”.

“The Blood Red Eye of Truth” Conan the Barbarian #126, November 1980 was written by J. M. deMatteis. Conan is hired to enter a ruined temple to retrieve a red stone. It turns out it is the eye of a worm monster. The man who hires him tries to kill him rather than pay, part of a trope I call “Sword & Sorcery Break & Enter”.

Conan: Death Covered in Gold #3, November 1999) was written by Roy Thomas. This three-parter has an underground cavern filled with undead and worm monsters.

Conan: Songs of the Dead #5, November 2006) was written by Joe R. Lansdale. This five-parter saves the worm for the final segment. Another underground complex with living dead and a really cool worm by Tim Truman.

Conan: The Serpent War #4, March 2020) Written by Vanesa Del Rey, the worms just keep getting bigger and bigger. Conan, Solomon Kane, Red Agnes and Moonknight cross time to fight Serpent Men and one Dune-sized worm. The mini-series also reprinted the 1973 Gil Kane story.

Conclusion

I had to make a decision on this one. Was I going to include the slugs in with the worms? Slugs are mollucs, so a crawler but not a worm. And I also admit many of these worms are more dragon than earthworm. That is because the old word for dragon was wurm, especially one without wings. I hope I narrowed the field enough. And I still think Frank Herbert holds top spot for giant worms. Look at Ig Guara’s art. That’s a spice-eater!

One last giant worm needs mentioning here. The Purple Worm from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gave Fantasy fans the chance to match wits and swords with these gigantic slitherers, whether in a Robert E. Howard mode or a Frank Herbert one. It first appeared in the game when it was still Chainmail (1971), so it is an old one. Only one question: why are they purple?

Sword & Sorcery from RAGE m a c h i n e