20 replies to this topic

[Keith J Taylor]

Ahhh ... I'm interested to see, above, from godzilladude, the fragment about "Dagon Manor" which is inhabited by a reclusive, misanthropic fellow named "Tavarel". That ties in with the "Taverel" who forms part of the group in Conrad's study in "The Children of the Night". I'd guess they were an old west country family who go back at least to the fourteenth century. People spelled their surnames in varied and whimsical ways back then. I expect that the "Taferal" family with whom Solomon Kane was friendly were the same clan. He had a regard for old "Sir Hildred", and he rescued Marylin Taferal from the demon city of Negari in "The Moon of Skulls". Helen Tavrel in "The Isle of Pirates' Doom", probably a seventeenth-century woman, provides another spelling variant still. I'd think there were two main branches of the family, one in Devon, the other in Cornwall.

H.P. Lovecraft used "Dagon" as the name of -- apparently -- a fishlike entity and made it part of his Cthulhu Mythos, didn't he? The original Dagon was a Philistine deity, and a god of crop fertility, not the sea. The Israelites viewed him with disgust, naturally.

And I see the "Tavarel" of the fragment has a single servant, an unpleasant fellow called "Ketric", which makes me think of the partly-inhuman character Ketrick in "Children", who was related to "the Cetrics of Sussex". The manservant may not have carried the hellish blood of "The Children of the Night", but he appears to have been a nasty piece of work in his own right. He reminds both Conrad and Kirowan of "some foul bird of prey", anyhow. Bad enough.