Lothar

LOTHAR:    an ancient city in the SouthEast hemisphere nestled within a hidden valley adjacent to the mountains of Torquas and a small forest.  Accessed upon foot by an inconspicuous tunnel next to a forest, here the 1,000 survivors of Barsoom’s ancient auburn-haired, fair-skinned race still subsist.  They are rule by Tario, a cruel and tyrannical despot..   The Lotharians worship an ageless, giant banth (TMM IX) and are protected by a force of illusionary bowmen.

"Helium is over eight thousand haads from Lothar, while Ptarth lies nine thousand five hundred haads north-east of Helium. . . After considerable parleying he consented to admit them to the city, and a moment later the wheel-like gate rolled back within its niche, and Thuvia and Carthoris entered the city of Lothar.  All about them were evidences of fabulous wealth. The facades of the buildings fronting upon the avenue within the wall were richly carven, and about the windows and doors were ofttimes set foot-wide borders of precious stones, intricate mosaics, or tablets of beaten gold bearing bas-reliefs depicting what may have been bits of the history of this forgotten people.” 

"There are no women in Lothar. The last of the Lotharian females perished ages since, upon that cruel and terrible journey across the muddy plains that fringed the half-dried seas, when the green hordes scourged us across the world to this our last hiding-place—our impregnable fortress of Lothar.  Scarce twenty thousand men of all the countless millions of our race lived to reach Lothar. Among us were no women and no children. All these had perished by the way.” (TMM VI)

‘Poor Lothar,” he said. "It is indeed a city of ghosts. There are scarce a thousand of us left, who once were numbered in the millions. Our great city is peopled by the creatures of our own imaginings. For our own needs we do not take the trouble to materialize these peoples of our brain, yet they are apparent to us. . .

"Brave men, they—ah, but the glory of Lothar has faded! See their weapons. They (sailors/ thans) alone bore arms, for they crossed the five seas to strange places where dangers were. With their passing passed the martial spirit of the Lotharians, leaving, as the ages rolled by, a race of spineless cowards.  We hated war, and so we trained not our youth in warlike ways. Thus followed our undoing, for when the seas dried and the green hordes encroached upon us we could do naught but flee. But we remembered the seafaring bowmen of the days of our glory—it is the memory of these which we hurl upon our enemies. . .  

"There are others among us who insist that none of us is real. That we could not have existed all these ages without material food and water had we ourselves been material. Although I am a realist, I rather incline toward this belief myself. It seems well and sensibly based upon the belief that our ancient forbears developed before their extinction such wondrous mentalities that some of the stronger minds among them lived after the death of their bodies—that we are but the deathless minds of individuals long dead.”   (TMM IX)

 Arwork is from
Michael Whelan