Ketrick, although he possesses a documented pure Anglo-Saxon lineage, appears to have slightly Mongolian-looking eyes and an odd lisp that O'Donnel finds distasteful.
Initially the group discusses anthropology but begin to talk about Conrad's collection of books, which includes a copy of Von Junzt's Nameless Cults.
The others are skeptical but Conrad brings up a flint mallet found recently in the Welsh hills which is "obviously of no ordinary Neolithic make" – it is too small but still heavy, with odd shape and balance.
O'Donnel finds himself in earlier incarnation, when his name was Aryara and he was a member of the Sword People, one of the Aryan tribes involved in conquering Britain from the Picts.
O'Donnel/Aryara wakes up at a critical moment, in a forest wearing deer skins and seeing five mutilated bodies lying on the ground – and realizing to his horror that these were his companions in hunting party, whose sleep he was supposed to safeguard.
Their hair was snaky and stringy, their faces broad and square, with flat noses, hideously slanted eyes, a thin gash for a mouth, and pointed ears.
At one point, the character Tavrel notes Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" as one of the "three master horror-tales" alongside Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Machen's "Black Seal".
He later mentions, however, the historical existence of cults dedicated to "nameless and ghastly gods and entities as Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Tsathoggua, Gol-goroth, and the like".