"All who die in Zul-Bha-Sair are the property of Mordiggian."
—The taverner
"The Charnel God" is a Short Story by Clark Ashton Smith that originally appeared in the March 1934 edition of Weird Tales and that was first collected in Genius Loci and Other Tales in October of 1948. As one of the tales of the Zothique cycle, it succeeds "The Witchcraft of Ulua" and precedes "The Tomb-Spawn" in terms of publication date. "The Charnel God" is the last story Smith completed to feature ghouls, but also the first story in the Sword and Sorcery genre to feature them, preceding The Hour of the Dragon by just over a year. A part of the premise, namely that the third cataleptic seizure of a young bride results in a coma that gets mistaken for death, is recycled from Smith's non-Zothique story "The Nameless Offspring".
Phariom and his wife Elaith are political refugees from Xylac on their way to Yoros. They make it to Zul-Bha-Sair, where they hope to recuperate before continuing their journey. It doesn't cross their minds that the metropolis houses the temple of the ancient deity Mordiggian. Mordiggian leaves the living to themselves, but any corpse found within Zul-Bha-Sair's borders is his to consume, be it native or foreign. Elaith suffers cataleptic seizures and is left comatose after another attack induced by stress. She is declared dead and Phariom is powerless when the priests of Mordiggian forcefully claim the body. With no one to turn to, he resolves to enter the temple at night and improvise. Meanwhile, a woman named Arctela has been murdered by the necromancer Abnon-Tha in a bid to take her from her fiancé Alos. Abnon-Tha's plan is to enter the temple at night, reclaim Arctela's corpse, and enchant it to be his obedient undead lover. With him are his students Narghai and Vemba-Tsith. Fate has it that Elaith and Arctela are stored next to each other and upon seeing her, Vemba-Tsith wants to try to enchant Elaith's corpse for himself. Phariom witnesses the trio taking away the women and follows them, but stays hidden until Elaith's awakening, which coincides with Arctela's resurrection, necessitates action. Outnumbered, his and Elaith's chances of escape are slim when suddenly Mordiggian shows up. He consumes Arctela as per his divine demand and has his priests maul the three necromancers to death. One priest informs Elaith and Phariom that they are free to leave, because one isn't a corpse and the other not a corpse-snatcher. The couple doesn't need to be told twice.
One of Smith's most lauded works, "The Charnel God" owes some of its fame to the introduction of Mordiggian. Although the Zothique cycle is separate from the Cthulhu Mythos, Mordiggian was incorporated in the latter as a Great Old One by Call of Cthulhu. Likewise, in settings inspired by the game ghouls often are the deity's followers as per their role as Mordiggian's priests in "The Charnel God".
"The Charnel God" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Mordiggian and his priests follow a binary principle: corpses in Zul-Bha-Sair are theirs and the living are none of their concern unless they infringe on the aforementioned claim on corpses. To ensure they get their corpses, doctors and other officials are expected to report any death immediately so that the priests can promptly fetch the body. For one, this means that loved ones do not get time to grieve with the body unless they come to Mordiggian's temple, where the bodies are stashed until early rot anyway. Nobody does this because it's unsettling and dehumanizing. For two, it means that any murder investigation is hampered by the inability to look for clues on the body. And for three, it means that there's a relatively high risk of people getting erroneously declared dead. In such a case, the affected are free to leave when they wake up. It's unclear if Mordiggian can tell whether or not someone is truly dead, but his priests certainly can't. Furthermore, while the priests don't lift a finger themselves against anyone but corpse-snatchers, they are perfectly willing to make deals with murders if they get more corpses out of it. Because despite their involvement in the deal, one human killing another human is still the business of the living and that's none of their concern.
- Buried Alive: Elaith suffers cataleptic seizures and one leaves her comatose in Zul-Bha-Sair. A doctor called to her aid believes her to be dead and informs the priests of Mordiggian, who immediately come to fetch the corpse despite the attempts of Phariom, Elaith's husband, to explain an error has been made. Elaith is carried off to the temple of Mordiggian and laid with the other corpses to ripen. Phariom goes after his wife because he fears that if he doesn't rescue her timely, she might wake up to charnel surroundings and perish of fright anyway. Fortunately, Elaith awakens just as Phariom reaches her and the both of them are let go because Mordiggian does not lay claim on the living.
- Damsel in Distress: Elaith's entire purpose to the story is to fall comatose, be mistaken for dead, get taken to Mordiggian's temple unjustly, awaken at a dramatic moment, and be rescued by her husband. She's never even fully lucid during the events of the story, starting out comatose and ending hanging onto her husband for support as they leave the temple.
- Delicious Distraction: The necromancer Abnon-Tha kills people left and right to pay the priests of Mordiggian for the privilege of experimenting with the corpses they have in storage. That is the immediate benefit he gets from the murders. The second benefit is that he knows exactly when the priests and Mordiggian have enough corpses to eat themselves silly and their security is therefore weakened. He plans for such a night to be when he'll steal Arctela's corpse for his own pleasure. Ultimately, the only flaw in his plan is that he expected Mordiggian not to be a real and ever-watching god.
- Devoured by the Horde: What exactly the priests do to those who so much as try to take off with a corpse that belongs to Mordiggian is pointedly left to the imagination, but certain wording such as that they "fell with a bestial ferocity on Vemba-Tsith" coupled with the fact that the priests are ghouls leads to the conclusion that the penalty is being eaten alive by the lot of them.
- Due to the Dead: When someone dies in Zul-Bha-Sair, regardless if they're native or not, the priests of Mordiggian come to claim the corpse for the temple. There, it is stored and left to rot just a little bit before it is consumed, and perhaps before put to other uses, by Mordiggian and his priests. Although the people of Zul-Bha-Sair accept this system as an inescapable condition of living in the metropolis, they also believe it saves them from "corruption and the worm" and it means they don't have to concern themselves with erecting graveyards and mausoleums.
- Eldritch Abomination: Mordiggian makes his entrance as a colossal shadow without a body that casts it. He then changes shape into something that's never solid or set, comparable to fire or fantastic swirling energy, but at least can be perceived. The shape starts out as a bulk of blinding darkness that drains the liveliness out of its surroundings. Then it becomes akin to a "worm-shapen column" with coiling tendrils and briefly takes the semblance of a demonic giant without eyes or limbs before the shape spreads out across the room like smoky fire.
- Energy Beings: The god Mordiggian is a constantly shifting mass likened to the "vortical energies of dark eons." In mortal terms, Mordiggian's form may be perceived to behave like a very peculiar fire.
- Evil Plan: After having learned much from his experiments in Mordiggian's temple in Zul-Bha-Sair, the necromancer Abnon-Tha is keen to move on to Tasuun, an empire famous for the number and antiquity of its mummies. But he also wants to take something with him that he can't have in Zul-Bha-Sair: the beautiful Arctela. She's nobility and he's not and on top of that she's engaged. So his plan is to kill many people and thus provide Mordiggian and his priests with plenty of corpses to gorge themselves asleep on. With that scenario set, the next step is to murder Arctela, let her body be taken to Mordiggian's temple, and resurrect it there while the god and priests are sedated before fleeing to Tasuun. The resurrection, incidentally, does not restore Arctela's self, but Abnon-Tha does not care for her beyond her beauty and is perfectly satisfied with an obedient husk. The plan succeeds just until the fleeing part, because Mordiggian knows full-well what goes on in his temple.
- Evil Sorcerer: Abnon-Tha is a highly accomplished necromancer who does whatever benefits him regardless of the cost to others. In order to get access to the corpses in Mordiggian's temple on which he can experiment his spells away from prying and judging eyes, he made a deal with the priests to get them more corpses in return. How many people he killed to keep his end of the bargain is unknown, but it is suggested to be a lot. On top of that, when he falls for the noblewoman Arctela, he is only concerned about her beauty and not about her as a person. Because she's unattainable alive, he's fine murdering her and resurrecting her body as his mindless and obedient undead lover. And for little more than to be spiteful, his exact plan includes killing Arctela's fiancé too.
- Faux Death: Elaith falls into a coma due to a cataleptic attack and is deemed dead. Inconveniently, she and her husband are within the borders of Zul-Bha-Sair when she does. Corpses in Zul-Bha-Sair automatically become the property of the god Mordiggian to feast on and so Elaith is taken to the god's temple despite her husband's attempts to clarify her condition. She awakens well before she gets eaten
- Freudian Trio: Abnon-Tha is a master necromancer with a history of dealings with Mordiggian's priests. Despite the whispers going around just how bad of an idea it is to take as much as a single corpse from the deity, Abnon-Tha, the Ego, believes that he can pull it off. His greatest supporter is his student Vemba-Tsith, the Id, who upon seeing Elaith's corpse wants to take her for himself as Abnon-Tha intends to with Arctela's corpse. Unlike his master, he does not have a plan to repay the taking of a corpse by donating another, and overall his impromptu desire endangers the entire operation. After some nagging, though, Abnon-Tha gives him the go-ahead. Another student of the necromancer, Narghai, is the Superego. He believes the whole scheme to be a bad idea, but is convinced to go along with it by the others.
- God of the Dead: The god of Zul-Bha-Sair, Mordiggian, is all the metropolis has for final rites. If someone dies, the corpse is Mordiggian's to devour. This claim is absolute; rich and poor, native and foreigner, natural death and murder, and all other variables do not matter. A corpse in Zul-Bha-Sair belongs to Mordiggian and anyone who makes a genuine effort to bereft him of so much as one is dealt with by the priests living in his temple, who are ghouls and appear to punish the offender by devouring them alive.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The blonde Elaith and the raven-haired Arctela seemingly perish on the same day, though while Arctela is truly dead, Elaith is merely in a catalepsy-induced coma. Phariom comes across Arctela's corpse when it's on transport to Mordiggian's temple while he is on his way to save Elaith from there. The parallels and differences between the two women momentarily capture his musings, the verdict being that Arctela's beauty, "warm and voluptuous," differs from the "blond pureness" of Elaith "as tropic lilies differ from narcissi."
- Malevolent Masked Men: The priests of Mordiggian wear their silver skull masks at all times and the rest of their forms goes hidden in flowing purple robes and fingerless gloves. It is said that this is because no one may gaze on those who've beheld Mordiggian, but that might be a little white public relations lie to keep the fact that they are ghouls a secret. Like their god, the priests live by one simple rule: the living aren't any of their business, but as soon as someone dies in Zul-Bha-Sair, the corpse is theirs and Mordiggian's to devour. They don't harm grieving loved ones that much if they try to stop them, but a painful death awaits any who tries to take a corpse from the god's temple.
- Meaningful Name: "Mordiggian", a name carried by a death god, contains the "mor" sound found in the Latin "mors" ("death") and "morī" ("dying"). It also sounds like a corruption of "mortician", which Mordiggian more or less is.
- Necromancer: Abnon-Tha is a master necromancer who's gotten so bold in his dealings that even the priests of Mordiggian lend him corpses to experiment on as long as he doesn't take them from the temple in the process. In return, he puts his magic to use killing as many people as wise so that Mordiggian and the priests have no shortage of food. Aside from death spells, Abnon-Tha's magical arsenal also includes a spell to resurrect the body without the spirit. He overplays his hand when he murders the noblewoman Arctela with the intent to resurrect her in Mordiggian's temple and take her away, aiming to repay the corpse with another. Because all corpses belong to Mordiggian, that's not a trade in the god's eyes and so he sics his priests on both Abnon-Tha and his two students.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are humanoid beings comparable to jackals and hyenas; they have a crouching posture, their faces are half anthropomorphic and half canine, their fingers end in curving talons, their spiky teeth are longer than coffin nails, and while they can talk human languages, the growls and laughter of the jackal and the hyena come more natural to them. Ghouls are capable of near-unmatched speed and enjoy immortality. One clan has become the priests of the deity Mordiggian and inhabit his temple in Zul-Bha-Sair, which they only leave upon news of a death in order to bring the corpse to their god. In their profession as priests, they wear silver masks shaped like human skulls, flowing purple robes, and fingerless gloves. It is said that the priests are shrouded so in order that no one gazes on them that have seen Mordiggian, but this may be a lie to conceal the fact that the priests are ghouls and keep the human population compliant. It is rumored and likely that Mordiggian, who consumes corpses, shares his food with his priests. Corpses brought to the temple are generally not eaten immediately, but set aside until they're just a little rotten. A rumor regarding this treatment is that the corpses are put to use in dark rites and other ill practices before Mordiggian claims them. This may or may not be true, but it is true that in return for many more corpses, the priests made a deal with the necromancer Abnon-Tha that he could experiment with their stash as long as he never removed a single corpse from temple grounds.
- The Outsider Befriends the Best: No one in Zul-Bha-Sair dares enter the temple of Mordiggian and, with the possible exception of Abnon-Tha, no one has ever seen the priests without their masks, gloves, and robes. This is either because the priests have beholden Mordiggian and now are not to be gazed on themselves or because people might be more difficult about Mordiggian's reign if they knew for certain he employs ghouls. Even Abnon-Tha is skeptical Mordiggian even exists. Phariom and Elaith, outsiders to Zul-Bha-Sair, not only get to see the priests unmasked and ungloved, but also get to see Mordiggian after Elaith is mistakenly claimed for dead when she's merely in a coma. Both are free to go despite what they were witness to.
- Simple, yet Opulent: The gown Arctela, daughter of Quaos, a high noble and magistrate of Zul-Bha-Sair, wears when she dies is "simple" but made of "some rare exotic stuff."
- Surpassed the Teacher: Abnon-Tha and his student Vemba-Tsith concurrently begin resurrection spells on respectively Arctela and Elaith. However, Elaith isn't actually dead and she awakens from her coma before Arctela's resurrection is complete. This causes the two necromancers to believe that Vemba-Tsith's spell-casting is more potent than Abnon-Tha. Despite Abnon-Tha's usual sickening self-centration, he compliments his student's accomplishment.
- Uncertain Doom: Abnon-Tha intends to murder his romantic rival Alos to exchange his corpse for Arctela's and hopefully appease Mordiggian. He's already cast the necessary spells by the time he himself perishes, but he implies that it's not an instant death. As a result, it's uncertain if Abnon-Tha's own death extinguishes the spells or if Alos will truly die by tomorrow.
- Voodoo Zombie: Abnon-Tha desires the noblewoman Arctela for himself, but has zero chance at wooing her because on one hand, he isn't anyone of note himself, and on the other, she's already happily engaged. Because he's not interested in her as a person and only wants her for her beauty, his scheme is to murder her with a spell that doesn't mar her physique and then resurrect Arctela's body for him to claim as his undead lover, mute and submissive "like a fair and soulless automaton." He gets his wish for about ten minutes before his doings are uncovered and Arctela's corporal form destroyed. Abnon-Tha's student, Vemba-Tsith, similarly wants to claim Elaith for his own pleasure, but it doesn't work out because Elaith isn't dead, merely in coma.
- Waking Up at the Morgue: When someone dies in Zul-Bha-Sair, the priests of Mordiggian claim the corpse for the temple. Bodies are left in storage until the early signs of rot before they're consumed by the god. Elaith, who is in a catalepsy-induced coma, is mistaken for dead and brought over to the temple. Phariom, her husband, fears that if she were to wake up in a charnel environment, she'd die of shock anyway, and sets out to save her.
