Kalumesh

Kalumesh
Name	Kalumesh
Aliases	Sunken Land of Kalumesh, Sunken City of Kalumesh, Drowned Land of Ancient Kalumesh, Long-Forgotten Kalumesh, Lost Kalumesh, Doomed Kalumesh
Characteristics
Demonym	Kalumeshis
Location Details
Reality	Earth-616
Galaxy	Milky Way
Star System	Sol
Planet	Earth
Country	United Kingdom
State	England
Province	Cornwall (England)
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Gardner Fox, P. Craig Russell
First	Marvel Premiere #7 (December, 1972)
First	Marvel Premiere #7 (December, 1972)

History

Origins and early years

Kalumesh is an ancient land that once existed above sea level, possibly as part of the large island now known as Great Britain. It was inhabited by pale-skinned humans, but their specific origins and ethnicity have never been established.

The only known human settlement in the land Kalumesh was a city with towers, spires and domes (possibly also known as Kalumesh), where the sacrifices were made. Little else has been revealed about the day-to-day life of the people of Kalumesh. The "Elder Ones who represent good" seemingly protected Kalumesh and its people, and possibly dwelt among them.

Cult of Dagoth

At some point, Kalumesh came under the control of a cult that worshiped the sea demon called Dagoth who himself served another, mightier evil entity, Shuma-Gorath. Led by a high priestess, the cultists made living human sacrifices to Dagoth who, in turn, acted as a priest who made sacrifices to Shuma-Gorath.

The wickedness of the cult caused Kalumesh to be accursed by the "Elder Ones who represent good" who abandoned the land to the evil cult. What part these beings played in what then happened to Kalumesh has never been clearly established.

Destruction

At some point after being accursed, Kalumesh suffered a disaster that caused it to sink beneath the sea. According to the ancestral memories retained by a reincarnation of the High Priestess, its towers quaked and tumbled into the sea as "the monstrous waves rose upward and smote Kalumesh and its evil city." All of the people who served and/or worshiped Dagoth, including the High Priestess, were helpless to save themselves as they were caught by the freezing water that paralyzed their muscles and their wills to live, drowning them beneath the smothering waves. Dagoth himself was also caught by the cataclysm, trapped for a time by falling marble columns, but he survived and later escaped.

The ruins of the city ended up on the seafloor about seven miles off the coast of what is now the county of Cornwall in England.

Although all of the humans living in Kalumesh at the time of its sinking are believed to have died, the Cult of Dagoth was apparently re-established at a later date, presumably by Dagoth. Those cultists may have built (or named) the Tower of Dagoth that still exists in present-day Cornwall. The soul of the High Priestess who drowned with Kalumesh has been reincarnated many times.

19th Century

An eccentric German author named Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt wrote about "the sunken land of Kalumesh" and why it sank in his book on the occult, Nameless Cults (or Nameless Cults in English).

Modern Age

Among the people of Cornwall was a legend that said that Dagoth himself inhabited the deep waters in which sunken Kalumesh laid, and could attack anyone who entered those depths. The last long-term owner of Witch House in Cornwall, Jedediah Gordon, had an interest in sunken Kalumesh and possessed a copy of Nameless Cults. The young woman who Jedediah employed as his housekeeper was Blondine, the most recent reincarnation of the long-dead High Priestess of the Cult of Dagoth.

Shuma-Gorath's awakening

As the time for the awakening of Shuma-Gorath approached, Jedediah died and his nephew, Henry Gordon, inherited his entire estate, including Witch House. Investigating his inheritance, Henry went to Witch House where he met Blondine who suggested that the reason why everyone for miles around feared and shunned Witch House could be found in the books in his uncle's study. After choosing Nameless Cults as the first book to read, Henry, who had previously heard of the sunken land of Kalumesh, read what von Junzt had written and thereby learned why Kalumesh sank and about how its people had worshipped Dagoth and Shuma-Gorath. Later that night, after finding a strange large jewel (the Starstone) on the beach close to the Tower of Dagoth, Henry began to wonder if his Uncle Jed might have been a worshipper of the cult whose wickedness destroyed Kalumesh.

The next morning, Henry, who had come to believe that his uncle had actually been after lost treasure in Kalumesh, convinced Blondine to help him hunt for it and the two of them went out in a boat to go scuba diving in search of Kalumesh. They eventually spotted the spires and domes of the sunken city but were then confronted by Dagoth and had to be rescued by Doctor Strange who transported them back to Witch House.

That night, Dagoth was able to remotely command the sleeping mind of Blondine and compel her to activate the Starstone in order to release a shadow trapped within it. Once freed and brought to life, that darkness obeyed Dagoth's will and quickly spread throughout the area, casting an ebon enchantment on the three occupants of Witch House and the residents of the nearby little town of Penmallow that compelled them all to obey a call to walk into the sea to sunken Kalumesh where they were to offer themselves as living sacrifices to Shuma-Gorath. However, before anyone died, Strange was freed from his demon-induced stupor, enabling him to free everyone else who had also been entranced by the darkness. Strange subsequently battled Dagoth beneath the sea and banished him to an extra-dimensional other-world, supposedly to never again be seen in the lands of Earth.

Death of Doctor Strange

Years later, Doctor Strange was murdered, and with him fell the Barrier, the mystic protection surrounding Earth that protected the planet from other-dimensional threats, a master spell that was maintained by the presence of a Sorcerer Supreme, to fall. Dagoth was one of the beings who immediately took advantage of the fall of the barrier. Calling due archaic blood debts from the old families who still remembered their allegiance to him, he raised the sunken city of Kalumesh from the seafloor off the coast of Cornwall, so that he could have a place of power to which to flee from the Three Mothers. As the British Navy was strongly considering shelling Kalumesh, the city was attacked by the Three Mothers who slaughtered many (or all) of its non-human inhabitants before capturing their prey, Dagoth.

Some refugees ended up joining the populace of the Shrouded Bazaar.

Later, the United Kingdom government entered into an agreement with Aggamon, lord of the Purple Dimension, to have the alien refugees of Kalumesh to be deported to Aggamon's realm, a portion of the Purple Dimension located in the Gobi Desert. They were sent from a Cornwall refugee camp through a portal to Aggamon's. Clea was outraged and stormed the camp, before Strange decided to take the Kalumeshi refugees in at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Strange and Clea went to the Gobi to retrieve the refugees already enslaved by Aggamon, managing to have Aggamon release them without further violence save for Aggamon's murdering of a refugee to set an example.

Facts

People

At least in the ancient past, the people of Kalumesh were light-skinned humans. None of those who worshiped Dagoth survived (Blondine was the reincarnation of their high priestess).

Residents

Formerly:

• Dagoth (deceased)
• Kalumeshis ("aliens"; possibly fishmen)
• Unnamed high priestess (deceased)
• Possibly the "Elder Ones who represent good" (left)

Notes

• Kalumesh was created in "The Shadows of the Starstone!" (Marvel Premiere #7; (March, 1973), written by Gardner Fox and penciled by Craig Russell.
• As a sunken city of ancient times, related to elder deities, Kalumesh is presumably inspired by Atlantis, Lemuria, and the Cthulhu Mythos' sunken cities, such as R'lyeh.
• No dates are given on Kalumesh's backstory, but the cataclysm destroying it could be another consequence of the Great Cataclysm, given this a common trope in the stories of Robert E. Howard, credited for concept featured in Marvel Premiere #7
  • The fact that the sinking of Kalumesh was considered to be remarkable enough to deserve its own story strongly suggests that the disaster did not take place at the same time as the world-wide Great Cataclysm.
  • Additionally, since what are now the British Isles on modern-day Earth-616 were the mountains of western Cimmeria before the Post-Hyborian Cataclysm flooded their lower elevations c. 9500 B.C., it seems unlikely that Kalumesh could have been sunk beneath the sea at a time when Cornwall was still a mountaintop.
• No information has ever been provided about the extent and the precise location of Kalumesh. It has never been revealed if Kalumesh was originally an island or if it was part of the landmass that is now the island of Great Britain. And, while it is known to be located seven miles from the current coast of Cornwall, this is not very informative since, aside from its connection to the rest of Great Britain to the east, the county of Cornwall is otherwise entirely surrounded by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, with the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the north and west.
• In Marvel Premiere #7, the city ruled by Dagoth was never named and was only mentioned in a single reference to "Kalumesh and its evil city." The city was also constructed out of stone, including marble. It was also described as "the spires and domes of long-forgotten Kalumesh", possibly hinting that the city was named as such. However, in the current Death of Doctor Strange series, the "City of Kalumesh" has been mentioned several times, and has been depicted as seemingly being composed of a crystalline material.

See Also

• 4 appearance(s) of Kalumesh
• 1 minor appearance(s) of Kalumesh
• 4 mention(s) of Kalumesh
• 2 image(s) of Kalumesh