The Crawling Reptiles of the Nameless City
raceLacerta palaeogaea—Outside all established categories
An ancient reptilian race whose mummified remains, richly robed and adorned, lie enshrined in glass-fronted cases within an underground gallery beneath the ruined nameless city, their painted history depicting them as sacred totem-figures allegorically standing for the city's own people. A still-living remnant of the race, transformed into a nightmare horde of cursing, half-transparent devils, later erupted from a lightless abyss to attack an intruding explorer before retreating and sealing the way behind them.
Beneath the nameless city, an explorer found a long underground passage lined with glass-fronted wooden cases, coffin-like in shape and size, containing mummified creatures of the reptile kind, their body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but conforming to no known biological category — colossally protuberant of forehead, horned, noseless, and alligator-jawed, yet no larger than a small man, with foreleg 'feet' curiously like human hands. Most were gorgeously enrobed and laden with gold, jewels, and ornaments of unknown metals, and the explorer judged them a paleogean species that had lived when the city itself was alive.
These crawling creatures held first place among the wild frescoes covering the walls and ceiling of the underground hall, painted in cities and gardens fashioned to their own scale; the explorer came to believe their pictured history was allegorical, the reptiles standing for the city's own people much as the she-wolf stood for Rome or a totem-beast for an Indian tribe. Later frescoes showed emaciated priests, depicted as robed reptiles, cursing the upper air and all who breathed it, while the forms of the people — always rendered as the sacred reptiles — appeared to waste away even as their spirits, shown hovering above the moonlit ruins, grew in proportion.
At the climax of the exploration, a rising moan and a gathering gale from the depths heralded the race's return: a nightmare horde of rushing, hate-distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half-transparent devils — the crawling reptiles of the nameless city, a race no man might mistake — poured past the explorer amid ghastly cursing and snarling in a strange tongue, the same race remembered as having once torn a man to pieces. They vanished back into the luminous abyss, and the great brazen door clanged shut behind the last of them, sealing the way to the outer world.
Fate — Their mummified remains lie enshrined in cases within an underground gallery beneath the city, yet a living remnant of the race erupted from the abyss beyond a brazen gate to attack an intruder before retreating and sealing the door behind them.
Haunts
Sources
Every fact above traces back to the text.
“They were of the reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often nothing of which either the naturalist or the paleontologist ever heard.”
The Nameless City (1921)
“The forms of the people—always represented by the sacred reptiles—appeared to be gradually wasting away, though their spirits as shown hovering above the ruins by moonlight gained in proportion.”
The Nameless City (1921)
“a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate-distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half-transparent devils of a race no man might mistake—the crawling reptiles of the nameless city”
The Nameless City (1921)