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Episode 486 - In the Court of the Dragon (Patreon)

Published:
2020-02-06 15:05:30
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

All hail The King in Yellow! We're kicking off this month with a super-sized episode on In the Court of the Dragon, and we're joined by special guest Robin D. Laws!

Check out Robin's new RPG The Yellow King at Pelgrane Press! And have a listen to Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff!

Special thanks to our wonderful reader, Wyatt S. Gray!

Here are some photos of The Court of the Dragon in Paris.

Next up: The Demoiselle D'ys 

Comments

Anonymous

Elements of this story really made me think of Carnival of Souls. The man with the pale face and black suit that no one else can see, the dissonant organ music in the church and the dream like state of the main character. Carnival of Souls isn’t a “good” movie but I couldn’t help to see what seems like influence of this story on the plot. I’ve always liked that movie, it has an eerie feel to it despite the low budget.

Anonymous

Speaking of music, the Album by Blue Oyster Cult called ""Agents of Fortune " has a song (,E.T.I Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) which namechecks four books. I'm in fairy rings and tower beds. "Don't report this," three men said. Books by blameless and by the dead. King in yellow, the queen in red. I never been able to figure out the "The Blameless by The Dead (Necronomicon) King in Yellow and Queen in Red (Through the Looking Glass) are all books that lead to both madness and insight. Chambers lone work of inspiration was thought to be channeled by outside forces, either ET or ED.

Anonymous
>>32165301

Great shout out to BOC! I always liked that song. I have the ET Live album, with the two dobermans on the cover. It is one of my all time favorite albums. I only just now realized that the lyric is "Don't Report This," I thought it was "Lonely Porpoise"!

Anonymous

I always loved the imagery from the play, what little of it we're given. Black stars have always been delightfully evocative. They look neat, yet so vaguely *wrong.* It's also just a cool phrase. One piece of imagery that I feel hasn't gotten enough traction, though, is how the laws of perspective seem utterly askew in that realm--few things are as unsettling as looking across a lake at a city, only to realize its towers are rising BEHIND the moons.

Anonymous
>>32179221

Also hold up. While I won't contend that the majority of Chambers' work was dreck, Robin is wrong that all of his comedic science mysteries sucked. You gents covered "The Harbor Master," and that tale was legitimately good. Funny, even! "Believe it or not, as you will," he said, angrily; "one thing I know, and that is this: the harbor-master has taken to hanging around my cove, and he is attracted by my nurse! I won't have it! I'll blow his fishy gills out of his head if I ever get a shot at him! I don't care whether it's homicide or not—anyway, it's a new kind of murder and it attracts me!"

Anonymous

Ugh, Patreon ate another one of my posts. The King In Yellow has been used at least a couple of times in more recent stories. Karl Edward Wagner used a thinly-veiled version of it in one of his Kane stories - Dark Muse, from his Night Winds anthology. In it Kane helps an edgy poet hook up with a dark goddess to get the ultimate inspiration. Said poet writes a play, and stages it a few weeks later. The story ends: ...the first horrified tales were spreading across the city— tales of what had awaited the frightened guards when they at last broke down the locked doors of that now silent audience hall. So some serious King in Yellow inspiration there. A more direct homage is in the story Cold War, Yellow Fever by Pete Rawlik, in the World War Cthulhu anthology (which I highly recommend). It is set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. An anti-Casto Cuban had a bunch of copies of the King in Yellow printed and shipped to a Cuban city. The city soon went silent. Planes flying overhead saw bodies in the streets. A radio transmission began to come from the city - The Yellow Sine. Soon the city and the area around literally began turning yellow. And it's growing. A joint US-Russian-Cuban team is sent in to stop it, if they can.

Anonymous
>>32187307

Yes, Wagner also did a King in Yellow reference in one of his more famous short stories - The River of Nights Dreaming, which was adapted for TV one time. He must have been a fan.

Anonymous

When talking about yellow in past Chambers episodes, did orpiment come up? I recently read a book about historical pigments (yes, I'm very cool!), and orpiment is the basis of the pigment “king's yellow”. It's arsenic-based, extremely toxic, and reacts chemically with lead and copper pigments, drastically changing their color. To black. On top of that, the name “king's yellow” apparently (apocryphally?) comes from Arabic alchemy, which calls orpiment and its sister mineral realgar (also arsenic, more orange) “two kings”. A decadent gold-yellow pigment that poisons the artist and sours the art? I'd love to know if there's anything in that, or if I'm just hanging out in the conspiracy basement, connecting “Arabic alchemy” to “Necronomicon” with red yarn. As a quick citation, the book I got this from is Chromatopia: An Illustrated History of Color by David Coles.

Anonymous
>>32194782

I was actually thinking about the potential of yellow ink being poison aspect when listening to this episode. At first, I was thinking that the effects of reading the play (particularly the second half) induced a madness that reminded me of schizophrenia. I had a friend who had schizophrenia, and the symptoms he experienced were like what the narrator experienced in this episode. My friend experienced hallucinations that were predominantly audio based, but occasionally had a visual component as well. Reading your comment made me consider the idea that the King in Yellow might be a reference to a chemical in how the book is made. I know this is a bit of a long shot, so bear with me. Since the madness doesn't set in until the person starts reading second act, the ink (or some other part of how the book is made) includes in a binary poison, with the two parts being contained in separate sections of the play. Much the same way that the novel House of Leaves benefits from have strict layout requirements, the same could have been done for the King in Yellow play. My thought is that the poison is transferred by touching the skin, and the two parts of the play were printed in different books. Assuming that the reader referenced the last few pages of part 1 to remember how it ended, it's not a stretch to see how the madness be associated with starting as soon as they began reading part 2.

Steve

I would strongly suggest reading Robin's New Tales of the Yellow Sign. It is so very good: https://www.atomicovermindstore.com/products/new-tales-of-the-yellow-sign.

Anonymous

As a follow up to Chad's "Terminator" analogy....so in "The Yellow Sign" the hearse driver is described as a "plump white grave worm" who was so soft that in their altercation Thomas could actually pull off his finger, but now in this story the white faced organist is iron framed... kind of like the difference between the T-1000 and the first Terminator? :)

Anonymous
>>32219426

They both worked in churches. Maybe this tale is set shortly after he was possessed by the Yellow Sign, and the titular tale of that mark is several months later after he's had time to rot?

Anonymous

I love how with Chambers you only get bits and pieces of the contents of the play. I'm left going "Oh my god, what is it? What's in the play? It must be so horrible!!! I have to know!!" However, I know that whatever Chambers had written, if he'd expanded on it, would be disappointing. It's the not knowing that I find so scary and wonderful. I suffer from chronic insomnia, so I love stories where severe lack of sleep is involved because things can get scary as fuck.

Anonymous

I was gifted this book a few years back by brother (knowing I'm a big H.P.L fan), who also turned me on to this podcast shortly after. I very much enjoyed the 1st 4 stories then was surprised when the other stories were not of the same vein. I will admit the last 2 stories in the book ,'The Street of Our Lady of the Fields' and 'Rue Barrée' where not my cup of tea and not knowing Chamber was mainly a write of romance I was waiting for a twist, eg the object of the heroes affection is vampire! Alas nothing of this nature happens. As the boys say one of this stories seems to be a satire of the Paris art student scene at the time, which unless i imagine you are learned in art history is not at all entertaining. However, 'The Demoiselle d'Ys' & 'The Street of the First Shell' (middle of the book) were great stories. Though not Strange Fiction I would still consider them Horror. 'The Demoiselle d'Ys' is a fairly standard ghost story but Chambers gives it that great eerie feeling that the Hero has wandered out of the bounds of his world. Lost on a seemingly endless moor he comes upon a large house and is offered shelter for the night. My memory is a little blurry but I remember loving the atmosphere of this story. The lady of the house shows off her hawks or something(?) I think the hero spends a few days there then one day just awakes in the middle of a moor, no sign of the house. 'The Street of the First Shell' is a war story of the pairs siege of 1870 but chamber really captures that disorientation and confusing of battle. The story has a almost Lynchian/Kafkaesque dream like flow and the hero moves around the town is search of food and is forced to join the fight. I guess what I'm saying is Chamber could real set an atmosphere.

Anonymous

It’s a tribute to Wyatt’s fantastic reading that when I started listening, I was certain that you had covered the story before. It was only when I got a bit further in that I realised I was remembering *reading* the story a few years back. Apparently, Wyatt has embodied my internal reading voice perfectly.

Scott Morrison

Many thanks for the new episode! I have a question unrelated to the story, now that I'm catching up on your archives. You've mentioned that you don't cover works by living authors, and I was wondering why that is.

Scott Morrison

Many thanks for the new episode! I have a question unrelated to the story, now that I'm catching up on your archives. You've mentioned that you don't cover works by living authors, and I was wondering why that is.

Anonymous

Unrelated to the tale, but Edward E. French has just released a full reading of "It's a Good Life." Worth remembering if and when you gents do Evil Kid Month...

Anonymous
>>32225506

Horror is so much better when the real meat and potatoes of it is left to your imagination. Because like Han Solo and rewards, I can imagine quite a lot. I think the King in Yellow is one of the coolest components of the Mythos, in large part because it is so undefined. It is like playdoh, anyone can take it and use it and make what they want. So long as you keep it ominously vague and threatening, it will deliver a really spooky payoff. Btw. I used to suffer from insomnia too. I had a really hard time falling asleep. Though once I did, I was ok. I have found that meditating before going to bed helps me greatly. Plus some basic classical conditioning, like never read or watch tv in bed. That conditions your body to be awake when you are in bed. Basically, don't go in your bedroom except to sleep. So you teach your body that bedtime is sleeping time.

Anonymous

Yay! My two of my Patreon Pals together! Two great tastes that taste great together! My theory is that these stories are all connected by place, not always in time. In "The Yellow Sign" the artist comments on the church next door that had been sold. He mentions an organist specifically: "Then, too, there was a fiend in human shape, an organist, who reeled off some of the grand old hymns with an interpretation of his own, and I longed for the blood of a creature who could play the doxology with an amendment of minor chords which one hears only in a quartet of very young undergraduates. " The man in the churchyard across the way who looked like a Coffin Worm, could have been the protagonist from "In The Court Of The Dragon" Another running theme is the chain of corrupting influences that can spread throughout culture, specifically from the arts and the behavior of artists. Goethe's Color Theory--of yellow having two, mutually exclusive aspects fits the stories very well as Chambers makes Hali an inverse of nature, black stars, a moon dripping the sea spray from the ocean and hanging in front of the castle. Music and writing corrupts, love and innocence are unprotected. The Artist in "The Yellow Sign" speaks about his great love in the yellow sunlight of the Breton Forrest, but prepares to treat Tessie very shabbily.

Anonymous

By coincidence--OR WAS IT?--in my belated listen to "Ken and Robin" I happened to hear the episode where they talked about the Chambers painting on the same day I heard this HP Podcraft episode. And then later that day I was telling my girlfriend about the painting, as she's a Chambers fan, and she said SHE HAD SCROLLED PAST SOMEONE ELSE'S POST ABOUT IT that same day! Anyway, "Court of the Dragon" is a good creepy story that I hadn't really known until I decided to put on free audio versions on YouTube of all the "King in Yellow"-themed Chambers stories as background inspiration when helping make decorations for last summer's Carcosa-themed Eldritch Ball at NecronomiCon Providence. Which ball featured some Carcosan cocktails designed by Robin D. Laws, just to bring it all together.

Anonymous

There's a performance space in Worcester, MA called the Bull Mansion that has been bought by a developer who's planning to turn the upper floors into a Gigeresque sci-fi cafe, which is cool, but the main reason I bring it up here is that the ground floor will have a stage-magic-themed family restaurant, so the good people of central Massachusetts will have the opportunity to feel the creeping dread that their brunches will be interrupted by is-this-your-card shenanigans.

Anonymous

What is your YouTube channel? I’m big into YouTube. I mostly enjoy watching play-throughs of Indie horror games! One of my favorites is Chris from CJU Games. Also, in a more general genre, my son-in-law has a channel that deals with gaming called “Rocketsloth”. Very interesting for someone who is older & really doesn’t play! I like the different ways of playing & the history of the games.

Anonymous

...I always read everyone’s comments when I can. I feel they’re so very interesting! I love all of the diversity! I always crave to learn more, especially in the realms of what interests me & even those areas I’m just learning of. You are all amazing to me!

Ilker Yucel

I often listen back to past episodes, and with your coverage of In the Court of the Dragon, I had to listen to The Repairer of Reputations and The Yellow Sign. It's always strange how memory plays tricks on us, for it was said that you weren't going to cover the other stories... and now, here we are with marvelous coverage of a third of the four primary stories in the collection - four that actually have to do with The King in Yellow, while the others are... just stories by Chambers with little connection to the monstrous play. In any case, in my mind as I'd read the stories, I'd always connected In the Court of the Dragon with The Yellow Sign, for the latter story begins with the line, "When I first saw the watchman his back was toward me. I looked at him indifferently until he went into the church," and then later makes mention of the courtyard of the church. I suppose I'd always presumed that it "could" be the same church in the two stories, especially as the mysterious and demonic character in both stories seems to lurk and linger in and about the church. I think my presumption was further compounded by the reference to Castaigne in The Yellow Sign, so there did seem to be some kind of loose continuity there... could there not be among these three stories, and I wonder if in a re-reading of The Mask, if more will be found. Of course, I know now that The Yellow Sign and In the Court of the Dragon take place in different locales, but it's still an interesting thematic piece of imagery. I know the next episode you've said will be The Demoiselle d'Ys, but I would love if you covered The Mask at some point, just to complete the cycle proper and finally put the madness of The King in Yellow to rest (plus, it does begin with that excerpt that Mr. Laws referenced, "I wear no mask." "No mask? No mask!"). Also, are there any plans to cover Robert W. Chambers' The Maker of Moons? Like The King in Yellow, it was a collection - with the title story being the weird tale, the rest being more of his closet dramas and shopgirl romances. It's currently on my "must read" list, and being one of Chambers' few weird tales, I was just curious if it was on your radar. Also, have either of you seen the new adaptation of The Colour Out of Space by Richard Stanley and starring Nicolas Cage? I've seen it, and... while I wasn't "impressed," I was surprised that it was better than I'd anticipated... complete with Stanley's plans to create a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations, and the way he's already begun to weave the stories together in a rather clever way (I think, anyway). Would love to hear your thoughts on the movie. =) Ad last question... have either of you ever listened to Blue Öyster Cult's Imaginos album released in 1988? The band has often referenced Lovecraft and other weird fiction in the lyrics (often collaborating with sci-fi authors like Michael Moorcock and John Shirley), and Imaginos was basically an epic weird fiction concept album envisioned by the band's manager Sandy Pearlman; the album has a long and strange history, but there are numerous thematic and lyrical references to Lovecraft and The King in Yellow... again, just an interesting topic for you guys. =)

Anonymous
>>32405667

There has been some discussion of the new Color out of Space film over in the Community area (scroll up to the top and you will see Post, My Membership, and Community). I saw it a few weeks ago and liked it. Like you said, it was better than I expected. I have the Imaginos album, and I love it. It is probably my favorite BOC album, after ET Live. I love the Starry Wisdom reference in I Am The One You Warned Me Of, and The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Wisseria (love that title!) always makes me think of Herbert West. In The Presence Of Another World sounds like it is talking about one of the Mythos deities. I saw them in concert once decades ago, and they were really good. They still tour! I highly recommend that anyone reading who likes Rock to go see them if they come around.

witchhousemedia
>>32241981

Hi Scott. We just like reading and discussing these things, and don't want to be perceived as a "review" show. We're both creative and know how hard it is to put stuff out there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes the timing just isn't right. We want to be able to say whatever we want, and (for the most part) would prefer not to comment on the work of people who are still around.