The Valley of the Worm

"The Valley of the Worm" is a short story by Robert E. Howard, first published in the February 1934 edition of pulp magazine Weird Tales Title: "The Valley of the Worm" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. It forms part of his Mythos-related James Allison cycle.
While the story does not namecheck any specific Mythos entities or books, it features a monstrous and extremely powerful "cosmic horror" referred to as The Worm, a white, squamous, and gigantic monster that "looked somewhat more like a worm than it did an octopus, a serpent or a dinosaur."
== Synopsis==
Through undisclosed means, a modern day (1930s) man by the name of James Allison is recounting a race-memory of his ancestor Niord, and Niord's battle against a leftover of the Old Ones named The Worm. Niord leads a tribe of men, possibly Picts, and after several savage battles against other tribes encounters eerie piping, the sounds being made by ape-men musicians who are the slave-servants of a preternatural monstrosity - The Worm. After killing a serpentine dinosaur blocking their way, Niord and his surviving band go down into the valley which is home to the ape-men and their cult worshipping The Worm. In previous battlegrounds on the way they have seen the green slime which is The Worm's blood as well as warriors smashed to pulp by it, so it is clearly gargantuan.
In a final battle which is said to be the origin of all later myths and half remembered stories of dragonslaying, Niord battles the white Worm to the death.
==Behind the Mythos==
The monstrous intelligent ape-like Worm worshippers, and their pipes, are reminiscent of the traditional Mythos eerie piping usually associated with Azathoth. The Worm itself as a mere leftover of the Old Ones may be a Great Old One itself, and is definitely of a class with a lot of "Great Old Ones" in the extended Cthulhu Mythos.
==Publication History==
Since its first appearance in Weird Tales, "The Valley of the Worm" has been extensively reprinted, and has been translated into German, French Hungarian, Portuguese, Croatian, and Italian .
==Gallery==
The valley of the worm.jpg
Dolina_grozny.jpg
The_valley_of_the_worm_comic.jpg
The_valley_of_the_worm_2.jpg
The_valley_of_the_worm_original.jpg
==References==
Category:Robert E. Howard works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Mythos-Adjacent Works
Category:James Allison Cycle