The Doom That Came to Sarnath

The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft (1920) is a fantasy short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It is written in a mythic/fantasy style and is associated with his Dream Cycle. It was first published in The Scot, a Scottish amateur fiction magazine, in June 1920.

Plot:

According to the tale, more than 10,000 years ago, a race of shepherd people colonized the banks of the river Ai, in a land called Mnar, forming the cities of Thraa, Ilarnek, and Kadatheron (not to be confused with Kadath), which rose to great intellectual and mercantile prowess.

Craving more land, a group of these hardy people migrated to the shores of a lonely and vast lake at the heart of Mnar, founding the city of Sarnath.

But the settlers were not alone. Not far from Sarnath was the ancient grey-stone city of Ib, inhabited by a queer race who had descended from the moon. Lovecraft described them as "in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it.... They had bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without voices."These beings worshipped a strange god known as Bokrug, the Great Water Lizard, although it was more their physical form that caused the people of Sarnath to despise them.

The citizens of Sarnath killed all the creatures inhabiting Ib, destroyed the city, and took their idol as a trophy, placing it in Sarnath's main temple. The next night, the idol mysteriously vanished, and Taran-Ish, the high-priest of Sarnath, was found dead. Before dying, he had scrawled a single word onto the empty altar: "DOOM".