The Hound

Lore & Background

The story opens with an unnamed narrator preparing to commit suicide. He and his friend St. John are grave robbers who keep a morbid museum in their basement. They learn of an old grave in a Holland cemetery holding a legendary tomb raider, said to have stolen a 'potent thing from a mighty sepulchre.' They exhume the coffin and find a jade amulet mentioned in the forbidden Necronomicon. After taking the amulet, they hear the baying of a hound. St. John is later killed by a mysterious creature. The narrator tries to return the amulet but it is stolen; he eventually finds the skeleton holding it, hears it howl, and decides to kill himself with a revolver.

Reader's Guide

The Hound is not a companion character in Planescape: Torment. There is no recruitable orc companion named 'The Hound' in the game. The claim that he is encountered in the Slums as an early companion is false. The race 'Orc' is incorrect for any major companion in the game.

Did You Know?

• The amulet is described as the 'ghastly soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.'
• Lovecraft later dismissed the story as 'a dead dog' and 'a piece of junk.'
• The story was inspired by Lovecraft's visit to Flatbush Reformed Church in Brooklyn, where he chipped a piece from a gravestone.