Raiders of the Lost Novel: Finale and End Credits

The Lost Novel is revealed!

By now, the novel's plot should be somewhat apparent from the previous series of posts. In just a bit, we'll get to the actual story and how it all (sort of) comes together. But before that, let's go on a couple of tangents.

Indiana Jones 4

In the late nineties and early two-thousands, there started to be serious talk about making another Indiana Jones movie. When I first heard this, I honestly thought that Shambhala might play a role in the plot. Why did I think that?

Well, for one thing, it is obvious that George Lucas has been fascinated with East Asian cultures for a long time, including Tibet. That's not surprising for someone who grew up in Northern California during the postwar years. Entire books have been written about Asian influences on Star Wars, so I won't go into too much detail, but, in brief:

The "Force" was largely based on Eastern metaphysical concepts (which are also present in other cultures, for example, Native American). The Jedi themselves are based on the Japanese Samurai warriors as showcased by the films of Akira Kurosawa—one of the major filmmaking influences on George Lucas. Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress is considered to be the prototype for Star Wars, and Toshiro Mifune was seriously considered for the role of Obi Wan Kenobi.

When Lucas started making Star Wars films again in the late 1990s, Asian influences were once again front-and-center. He named Anakin's love interest (and Luke & Leia's mother) Padme, the Sanskrit word for lotus. The word Padme is, of course, part of the Tibetan Buddhist mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum. Padme's iconic costume in The Phantom Menace is lifted almost directly from Asian culture, specifically the marriage outfit worn by khalkha Mongolian women:

There were other clues as well. One of the rejected ideas for an earlier Indiana Jones film involved Indiana Jones traveling to the Orient and discovering the Garden of Immortal Peaches (!!!). The script was tentatively entitled Indiana Jones and the Monkey King. You can read more about it here:

Indiana Jones and the Monkey King (Indiana Jones Wiki)

This Indiana Jones Story Would’ve Sent Indy to a Haunted House (Collider)

Many ideas from previous scripts were recycled in subsequent movies. For example, much of Temple of Doom was lifted straight out of rejected or cut scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, including the scenes in Shanghai (complete with running behind a rolling gong) and the plane ride to Nepal where the pilots parachuted out of the plane—the slalom on Mt. Humol was originally supposed to be how Indy arrived at Marion's bar¹.

Additionally, much of the rest of the plot of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was lifted pretty much directly from the 1939 film Gunga Din. Another adventure film was released by Frank Capra just two years earlier which did quite wall at the box office called Lost Horizon.

Furthermore, the late 1990's was when the cause of Tibetan independence reached the apex of its popularity, becoming a cause celebre among the Hollywood elite. The Dalai Lama became something of a rock-star celebrity around this time. Tibet was seemingly everywhere in the pop culture, buoyed by high-profile Tibetan Buddhists like Richard Gere, and suddenly everyone seemed to have a rinpoche or two somewhere in their entourage offering spiritual guidance. "Free Tibet" bumper stickers popped up on cars from coast to coast (now, sadly, hard to find). Dreadlocked, wool-hat wearing Gen-Xers headed to meditation centers all over the country grasping copies of the latest book by Chögyam Trungpa.

Melissa Matheson—the screenwriter of E.T., and Harrison Ford's wife at the time—personally visited with the H.H. the Dalai Lama and subsequently wrote a biopic about his life entitled Kundun, which was released in 1997. Ford himself lent his voice to a documentary film entitled Mustang: The Hidden Kingdom in 1994 about a remote mountain kingdom in the Himalayas.

And there were other films as well. In 1997—the same year as Kundun—the film version of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's memoir, Seven Years in Tibet was released starring Brad Pitt. The film featured an epic score from composer John Williams featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Can you not tell me that this would have been the perfect soundtrack for an Indiana Jones movie set in Tibet²? In fact, many times while I was writing the book, I listened to it for inspiration:

Hmmm, let's see...Harrison Ford narrating a film about a hidden kingdom in the Himalayas. Ford's wife writing a movie about the Dalai Lama. Tibetan freedom becoming a pet cause among Hollywood’s elite. Tibetan monks becoming celebrities and opening up retreats and meditation centers on the West Coast. Films about Tibet doing good business at the box office. George Lucas's long-standing fascination with Buddhism and the Far East. Using classic adventure films like Lost Horizon as inspiration.

I mean, come on, in retrospect it was obvious, wasn't it? Well, it seemed so to me at the time, anyway.

Of course, we all know what happened. The fourth Indiana Jones movie, entitled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, came out in 2008 and had nothing whatsoever to do with Asia or Tibet.

Instead, it seemed to be based on the writings of Erich von Däniken, and revolved around ancient aliens in Central America. I'm guessing Lucas probably read Chariots of the Gods? back when it came out in 1968 and had the idea in his head ever since. Maybe the popularity of all those Ancient Aliens TV shows which took over the History Channel also influenced Lucas's decision.

The titular crystal skulls refer to skulls that were supposedly found ancient Mayan and Aztec temples and were thought to be evidence of advanced—possibly alien—technology, as the technology to carve such skulls out of solid crystal was not possessed by ancient Mesoamericans. It was thought that these skulls had some sort of magical powers. I myself can recall encountering them in books and being utterly fascinated by them (much of my 1990s was spent in the occult section of used bookshops where most of the books had been published decades earlier).

The skulls have long since been debunked. Technology has become advanced enough to determine approximately when, where and how these skulls were created, and it wasn't thousands of years ago in ancient Mayan temples by an extraterrestrial civilization. Rather, they were carved with relatively modern technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, probably in Germany.

The truth behind the crystal skulls (Heritage Daily)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was set in the early days of the Cold War to accommodate Ford's advancing age. It featured Cate Blanchett as a Russian secret agent sporting a Betty Page hairdo and evoking some serious dominatrix vibes (complete with riding crop). Supporting cast included Shia LaBeouf as Indiana Jones's son “Mutt” (I don't think that's giving anything away, even if you haven't seen the movie), Ray Winstone, John Hurt, and featured the return of Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood.

It ushered the phase "nuking the fridge" into our collective vocabulary as perhaps its most memorable contribution, and included perhaps the most cringe-inducing scene in Spielberg's entire catalog when Shia LaBeouf swings from the trees like Tarzan with a troop of obviously CGI monkeys (you can even hear the “yell”).

Steven, Steven, Steven...what happened?

Of course, I can't help but think Lucas and Spielberg would have been far better off had they instead sent Indiana Jones off to find Shambhala like I thought they were going to do in my speculative imagination. But at least my story was safe. Or so I thought.

But it turned out that Shambhala was about to intersect with Hollywood, only in a very different way and with a different movie star.

The Explorer's Guild

I had been working on this project for several years, starting in the 1990s. Much of what you have read in the past series of posts was the result of a lot of research compiled during that time. The more I developed it, the more I became convinced that someone else was going to come up with a similar story. So, you can imagine my surprise in 2015 when I came across a book on the bookshelf entitled The Explorers Guild: A Passage to Shambhala. What?!!

Even more surprising was one of the names on the cover: Kevin Costner. Yes, the movie star Kevin Costner.—The Untouchables, The Bodyguard, JFK, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, Black or White, Open Range, Yellowstone—that Kevin Costner³. The lead author credited was Jon Baird, with illustrations by Rick Ross.

That’s right, illustrations. The book is an unusual hybrid of novel and graphic novel. The text is interspersed between graphic story panels which move the plot forward, with oil paintings bookending each of five "Books" into which the story is divided. The physical book itself is lovingly crafted and designed, with pages deliberately yellowed to give a feeling of antiquity and various notes and illustrations dropped into the margins. It has a beautifully illustrated cover and weighs in at a whopping 770 pages.

Despite its title, The Explorers Guild: A Passage to Shambhala is a very different book than the one I was planning. Rather than being set during the Second World War with Nazis as antagonists (again, with Raiders of the Lost Ark being the inspiration), the book is a deliberate and reverent homage to the genre of literary fiction known as Lost World or, more commonly, as late-Victorian adventure fiction.

The quintessential authors here are Rudyard Kipling (who wrote the poem on which Gunga Din was based), and H. Ridder Haggard. But the list of novelists in the genre is long and distinguished, from Robert Louis Stevenson, to Joseph Conrad, to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Arthur Conan-Doyle, to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, to H. G. Wells, to Jules Verne and many others. This passage from near the end of Book One should capture some of the feel:

History has its uses, I cannot doubt, and I will not debate them here. I would only suggest these uses have their limits. I might even argue—as it has been my experience—that in order to get at the truth in any one matter, one must look past the written lines of History, to the blank spaces in between. Certainly this is where we'll find continuing record of John Ogden and his men. It is where, very soon, we'll run across the orphan Barnes and Mr. Sloane, and the vanished actress Evelyn Harrow and the black-robed men of the Novitiate. It is where, beneath the polar ice and in the Mongolian deserts, on the wastes of Tierra Del Fuego and on the summits of Nepal, we will discover the secrets of a hidden City and the origins of the Great War. And it is where, when we're quite ready, we will penetrate the deeper mysteries of the Explorers Guild and the Three Jackals...But this road is for you, gentle reader, to discover. (pp. 97-98)

The titular Explorers Guild is a loose premise around which the novel is based, although it plays a fairly minor role in the plot. The conceit does, however, allow for an omniscient narrator in the form of "series curator" E.W. Blake, to set up a frame story as a narrative device, interspersed with excerpts from various letters and journals and occasional explanatory monologues from the characters. The book opens with an unnamed explorer in the Arctic encountering a shaft of light and falling through the ice in 1912.

From there, we fast-forward to 1917 and meet the Fifth Dragoon Guards—the roughest, toughest unit in the entire British Raj—under the command of Major John Ogden who, in keeping with the genre, is the fiercest, smartest, toughest, bravest, and most competent officer in the British army. The troop has taken the citadel at Al Shar in Mesopotamia from the Turks during the First World War. Young corporal James Buchan (probably a nod to John Buchan) is dispatched from Bombay to deliver an urgent message to Ogden at the citadel. Buchan is our way into the narrative, and Book One has a distinctly Heart of Darkness feel as Buchan seeks out the Colonel Kurtz-like Ogden and his merry band of super-soldiers, all of whom are suitably colorful—including a wise-cracking teenage Cockney (Renton), a hulking Irish giant (Mulcairn), an Indian Sikh sage (Subadar Priddish), and a hard-drinking, fist-fighting Scotsman (Pensette).

Buchan's message is from Major Ogden's sister and concerns their brother Arthur Ogden, whom we saw in the opening panels. Arthur is a member of the Explorer's Guild in New York (the Ogdens are Anglo-American), which is implied to be a sort of international drinking club for aristocrats who are really blowing smoke up each other's arses by heading to exotic locales and returning with fish stories about cities they've never actually visited and adventures they never really had. When their ruse is humiliatingly exposed one evening by the British ambassador—and Arthur’s cousin— Arthur resolves to show up his cousin by traveling to the Arctic and establishing a hoax of his own. Instead, he makes a discovery under the ice and comes back barely alive.

To help his brother, Ogden deserts from Ceylon Company with his fiercely loyal dragoons and Buchan in tow. They make for the Syrian coast and grab a ship and pick up a bunch of explorers who all seem to have acquired the same mysterious ailment after encountering similar shafts of light all over the world. En route off Cape Verde, a group of black-robed monks scuttles their ship, but Ogden and company are swiftly rescued by Evelyn Harrow, a former Hollywood ingenue ("Her affairs with prominent men are many and simultaneous." p. 200) who has abandoned her silent film career in order to seek out the city of Shambhala after a mystical experience with occultists in Paris years earlier (including Rudolf Steiner). Harrow has her very own vessel, and is apparently working for a mysterious benefactor named Sloane.

From there they sail to Tierra Del Fuego to pick up a boy named Bertram Barnes from an orphanage run by the same black-robed monks (like many of the plot points, it's unclear how they know where to go or what to seek out, or perhaps I'm just missing something). They rescue young Barnes from a burning building, and Mr. Sloane—the chief antagonist of the piece—reveals himself. Sloane, of course, has a backstory with Ogden and his men. It is revealed that he betrayed Ceylon Company in the Punjab. We are led to believe that the orphan Barnes is somehow the key to finding Shambhala. Barnes and Harrow develop a maternal relationship.

In New York City they attend a public lecture given by the Explorers Guild outlining the previous attempts to locate Shambhala (“The Search for Shambhala, or, A Smattering of Facts and Surmise touching upon this Search”). Meanwhile, at the Club, Lord Pomeroy, the Commander of Ceylon Company and the Viceroy of India, who dispatched Buchan on his original mission, surreptitiously recruits a reluctant Buchan to act as a spy (which most of Ogden's crew suspect he is anyway).

According to the Guild, Shambhala was sought out by a Romanian general named Count Selescu on orders from Czar Alexander II before the Czar's assassination. Selescu was advised by a French abbot named Sourire. After their expedition to the Taklamakan Desert, Selescu’s movements remain obscure, but the Abbot returned to Selescu's Castle on the Black Sea from Mongolia in 1883 and founded the black-robed Novitiate order that's been following them the entire time. He has also seemingly raised the general's only son. Around this same time, all references to Shambhala are erased from history and all sightings of the city by explorers are suppressed or discredited.

Meanwhile, John Ogden heads upstate to Lavinia—the Ogdens’ ancestral estate—which is now occupied by Ogden's sister Frances and his sick brother, Arthur. Ogden's sister informs him that only Sloane—whom Ogden had previously known as Durov—can save their brother. Sloane, for his part, appears to have no knowledge of his previous identity nor any memory whatsoever of the Ogdens (including his betrayal or the fact that he and Frances were once engaged).

So Ogden and Sloan become reluctant allies and commandeer a dirigible, because, why not? (this part seems lifted from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which also featured Shambhala). Shot down over Romania by biplanes, they make their way to the Castle Feritiva. Here they meet the Abbot, who is immersed in water because he has grown literally as large as an entire island (!!!). The “human island” is attended to by a host of physicians and communicates though a series of copper tubes (“[H]is speaking parts…sunk from view some years ago, beaneath what is still technically his shoulder-line. But they’ve fixed a length of stovepipe over his upturned face so he can be fed, and in between feedings he’s able to converse.” p. 551). At the castle they receive information from the Abbot about how to find Shambhala. Meanwhile, Sloane attempts to read Barnes’s memory using a giant steampunk mind-reading contraption (!!!). Yes, you read that right—the book starts to get rather bizarre after this point.

From there Ogden, Harrow, Sloan and company march all the way back to Al Shar in Mesopotamia—where the story began—and discover a portal (not sure how) into a vast series of underground rivers which connect all the cities of the world: (“All about the East, in the places where they retail no end of nonsense, you hears stories of the lost rivers that ran between the capitals of the ancient world." p. 584). In some books, this discovery would be the climax of the story; however, none of this is depicted as particularly strange or remarkable by anyone (perhaps because underground cities and a hollow earth are staples of the genre).

For some reason, there is a steampunk submersible near the entrance (which they dub the “Black Joke”). After figuring out how to work the controls, they head down the river and—after a series of battles—arrive at an underground city called Gryzha (!!) filled with outcasts from the surface world. While they resupply, Ogden and Priddish are detained by the authorities, but manage to escape when Renton causes a riot by giving one of the city's merchants a U.S. dollar bill (!!!). Meanwhile, Mulcairn is killed by a band of Gurkha mercenaries who are after his horse, while Renton has managed to secure a map of the tunnels.

Eventually they arrive at their destination thanks to the map, where they disembark and march further down the tunnels to a hollowed out mountain where they mount a pack of elephants to climb up to a monastery where they are captured once again and...honestly, after this point I'm not even sure what's going on, or why, which keeps me from spoiling the ending because I'm not sure what happened myself. By Book Five, when the lost city is finally discovered, so many amazing things have happened that it's basically anticlimactic. In the end, Sloane and Barnes' true identities are revealed and the narrative is swiftly wrapped up, but it left me with just as many questions as answers. As John Ogden reflects in Book Five:

"Mm. All seems a bit of a dream, doesn't it?... And not much logic or connection to it, but only a dream-logic. From my brother's note and his stories out of the north, to the delusions of these hermits and outcasts, and the riddle of this boy, and lately these men who are islands and the others living on these rivers under our feet?...All tending to what? There's some golden city floating over this mountain, I suppose? We bring Arthur in and he springs forth, whole again, out of his box...? The future remains as closed to me as it ever was, Mr. Priddish, and I am not sure the past is any less a mystery." (p. 710)

Which pretty well sums it up.

From the reviews I've read, the book seems to be quite polarizing, with some people really loving it and others hating it for the exact same reasons—from its deliberately anachronistic writing style to its Tintinesque illustrations. If those sorts of things are right up your alley, gentle reader, then I suggest you give it a try.

One of the most intriguing parts of the story to me was the idea that "Shambhala" is not just a particular lost city in the Himalayas, but reappears in locations all over the globe allowing it to become a stand-in for the archetypal lost city sought by explorers throughout the ages. In other words, Shambhala is not just a Buddhist myth but a universal myth that has arisen in every culture for thousands of years symbolizing that which is forbidden and unknowable. I thought that was a brilliant stroke, as illustrated by this snippet of dialogue:

"There has only even been the one that we know of. It's just that its location is never fixed for very long."

"You don't mean to say..."

"Yes. It moves. The city has been shifting location for as long as we've recorded history and likely, for far longer than that."

"Then these can't be the first sightings."

"They're not. The Greeks saw the same thing and called it Hyperborea. It was Aztlán to the Aztecs, Olmolungring to the Bón mystics, El Dorado to the Spanish, Uttarakuru to the Indians, Tirnanog to the Celts. The Tibetans only give us our most recent and accurate record, so we adopt their name." (pp. 439-440)

In the book, the lost city appears as a pillar of light in specific times and in specific places and vanishes leaving behind a figure-8 symbol representing an ourobouros (not sure why they chose this symbol, as it has no connection to Shambhala or lost cities generally). What the city actually is, what it's like, and why it exists at all are left unexplained, perhaps in keeping with the nature of the story. It sort of feels a bit like the Nexus from Star Trek: Generations. All we really know is that, like Vegas, what happens in Shambhala needs to stay in Shambhala.

The other idea which I thought was intriguing was the idea that the Explorers Guild was really just a social club for old bluffers whose exploits were often exaggerated if not fabricated. Arthur himself informs us when he heads into the Arctic that he is planning to stage a hoax to save the Guild's reputation (as well as his own).

That seamless melding of fact and fable—of truth and fiction, to the point where you can't tell which is which—would have made an intriguing premise if it were seriously followed through⁴. A clever author could keep readers guessing about what is real and what is imaginary or embellished throughout the text, with perhaps the classic unreliable narrator not even sure himself (or herself) which parts of the story are real and which are invented. “Dream logic” and magical realism could be selectively used within a similiar framing narrative to convey this sense of unreliability. Plus, this concept would accurately reflect how the real age of exploration unfolded, with actual lost cities like Troy, Xanadu, and Macchu Picchu being sought out alongside mythical fantasies like Atlantis, El Dorado, Zerzura and the Lost City of the Kalahari. During this era, plenty of tall tales were spun and many explorers left never to be seen again.

Ultimately, in my opinion, The Explorers Guild suffers mostly from overambition—the convoluted plot seems like it’s merely a contrivance to cram every conceivable convention of the Lost World genre into one, giant adventure salad (Dragoons! Sepoys! Horses! Pashas! Harem Girls! Explosions! Deserts! Oceans! Mountains! The Arctic! Movie Stars! Royalty! Occultists! Mystics! Airships! Strange Machines! Hidden Castles! Secret Societies! Underground Cities! Gurkhas! Elephants! A Submarine!!!!) but how well it all holds together is another matter. This book is reminiscent of Tintin, or the Scrooge McDuck comics I read as a kid, and even books in the magical realism genre like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Princess Bride.

It's a lovely and ambitious book in many ways, but it’s a very different book that the one I was planning to write.

Dénouement

Finally, at long last, we come the plot of the novel. And, truth be told, it’s guaranteed to be a letdown, as I had not worked out the plot fully. However, since we've made it this far, I might as well tell you about some of the ideas I had and the direction I was going in.

One of the hardest choices for me to make was, since so many of the characters and events in the story are based on real people and events, how much did I want to take from obviously unreliable sources like The Spear of Destiny or The Morning of the Magicians? In other words, exactly how true to life did I want the story to be?

Was I writing a realistic account of Tibetan exploration that just happened to be driven by people who genuinely believed in the occult (as we've already documented), or was I writing a story where those things actually existed? Put another way, there is a narrative difference between having the major characters believe in things like Shambhala and other fantastic elements, and having those things actually being real in the story. That would affect my entire approach to the novel.

In the end, I leaned towards using some of the fantastic elements, since ultimately the story would have to be fictionalized anyway, even if I wanted to stick as close to real people and events as practically possible. That brings us to the thorny issue of chronology. The actual German expedition to Tibet took place from 1938-39, while the American one took place from 1942-43. How to reconcile these?

The 1941-43 timeframe would put us during Wallace's term as Vice President. However, this would make the German route through India impossible, but they would probably have to take a different route anyway for the narrative to work. To me, it makes the most sense to have the Americans travel via the Indian route with the help of the British. Adding intrigue is this article I ran across many years ago about Nazi sympathizers in India: Hitler's secret Indian army (BBC News). I immediately thought that it would make a good obstacle for the Americans if the Germans were able to use their secret agents in India to sabotage the mission.

So that means that the Germans will have to take an alternate route to Tibet rather than the one they actually took. One concept I worked on for a long time was having the Germans go through Central Asia following in the footsteps of Sven Hedin. Germany and the Soviet Union were still not at war in early 1941. However, on June 20, Germany did invade the Soviet Union, so the timing was awfully tight. One possibility was that Schäfer would be surprised by the invasion (as indeed he would be) and have to escape Russian authorities who would pursue them as they traveled across Central Asia.

However, reading this years later, it makes more sense to me to have the Germans go through China, especially since Schäfer was already familiar with the route from his trips with Dolan (this route was also initially considered for the American mission). Plus, the lack of a central government in China would make it easier for them to move unimpeded. However, after the war started, the Germans were allied with the Japanese, so both the Kuomintang and the Communists would never allow the Germans to move freely through their territory.

So that puts us back in the original timeframe of the real German expedition in 1938-1939, albeit via a different route than the one they actually took. That moves the parallel American expedition to before both Wallace's term as Vice President and the United States' entry into World War Two (as well as the expedition's actual timeframe). Chronology is hard! I could just portray Wallace as Vice President before 1941, but I don't like to get too far off historical truth if I don't have to.

Wallace did, however, commission the earlier expedition to Central Asia led by Nicholas Roerich in 1935-36 while he was Secretary of Agriculture, which he served as up until 1940 (and we know that Roerich really was looking for Shambhala!). Although not as prestigious a position as Vice President, it's good enough for the story, I think. And I don't think changing the chronology changes the details all that much. You can just transpose certain details from the German expedition onto the American one to push it slightly earlier, since it followed pretty much the exact same route.

In the end, I concluded that the 1938-1939 timeframe—on the eve of the War—was the right one. So we have our German expedition sailing to Shanghai and going west through China, and the Americans flying to New Delhi and going north through India. Sounds good enough to me. Complicating this slightly is that fact that the United States didn’t enter the war until 1941, so the OSS doesn’t exist before that. But, I guess we'll have to take some liberties—it is fiction, after all.

Another element I toyed with when looking at the year 1941 was the flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland—an act that has baffled historians (he apparently felt he could negotiate a peace treaty single-handedly). This timeframe allowed me to inject Hess's mission into the plot. I forget in which sources I read it, but supposedly the only item British officials found on his person was a bunch of Tibetan herbs! Hess was a former student of Karl Haushofer, and according to Wikipedia, he claimed that he was compelled to undertake the mission by supernatural forces. Although the timeframe doesn't work, I feel like I might be able to fake it and include this in the narrative anyway—it's just too good to not include!

During these posts, I discovered elements that I was unaware of previously or had forgotten like Gleb Bokii and Roerich’s spying for the Soviets. Thus, even without the diversion through the Soviet Union, I feel like some of those elements could be harnessed, with certain elements in the Soviet government also seeking the city using Roerich as a spy (unbeknownst to the Americans). This would add some intrigue to the plot.

One very conscious thing I wanted to portray were certain dyads. For example, I liked the contrast between Wallace and Himmler as the expediters of the missions engaging in a sort of "war before the war" on opposing sides. It’s a strange (but true) symmetry: Wallace was christened "Galahad" by Roerich, while Himmler was obsessed with the Knights of the Round Table and even had a replica set up in his castle for his imagined order of "black knights." And, as we've seen, both men had a longstanding interest in esoteric and occult topics. The "good" and "evil" contrast here is just so obvious, buoyed by that fact that these characters are totally real.

The other dyad I wanted to set up was the contrast between Edmund Kiß (the name looks more sinister that way) and Nicholas Roerich as the "true believers" on either side. Originally, I has not planned to include either of them, except as minor side characters, since neither of them went on the actual expeditions. However, on reflection, I feel they play an important role in the narrative.

You see, after reading so much about these men (Schäfer, Dolan, Tolstoy) over the years, I got a really good feel for their personalities and who they were. So it was very important to me to portray them as complex, three-dimensional characters and not as stereotypes or pantomime villains—not even the Nazis (as they usually are). To do that, however, I felt like I needed to create some distance between them and the main plot. I couldn't have them be "true believers" and also make them sympathetic. So I decided to include Kiss and Roerich—the crank and the mystic—to play those "stock" roles permitting the other characters to be more realistic. Plus, it allowed the readers to share in the main characters' skepticism in a way that they couldn't if those characters totally believed in what they were doing. Hopefully that makes sense.

So, finally, with all that out of the way, let's wrap this up.

---

Haupstrumführer Dr. Ernst Schäfer is summoned for an audience with Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, in Berlin. Schäfer is the head of the Thibetinstitut in Munich and a renowned explorer and experienced mountaineer who has been on several previous expeditions to Tibet. On the night train from Munich, Schäfer attempts to strangle another passenger, but is restrained.

In Berlin, at SS headquarters, Himmler tells Schäfer that he is to lead an expedition to Tibet to seek out the mysterious hidden kingdom of Shambhala, which Himmler believes is the source of the Aryan race and contains knowledge that will help Germany win the coming war. Schäfer meets with Karl Haushofer, who has heard many stories of the mysterious hidden kingdom during his time in the Orient. Haushofer—a member of the Thule Society—claims that he has contacts in Japan that will allow them to find it. Accompanying the expedition will be the odious Edmund Kiss, a fanatical Nazi and believer in the World Ice Theory whom the rest of the team regard as a crank and a spy for Himmler.

While assembling his team, Schäfer meets with various high-ranking Nazis and occultists in Berlin, including a colony of Tibetan monks, the oddball Weisthor, and the mysterious "Man with Green Gloves." He is wined and dined by high-ranking Nazi officials including Rudolf Hess, and is personally invited to the castle Wewelsburg where Himmler conducts his dark rituals. Although Schäfer is secretly repulsed by what he sees, his ambition forces him to ignore his misgivings. Succeeding will make him Germany's greatest scientist.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace—a former member of the Theosophical Society—receives an urgent message from his estranged "guru," the Russian painter and mystic Nicholas Roerich. Roerich warns "Galahad" that the Nazis have mounted a full-scale expedition to seek out the hidden kingdom of Shambhala in Tibet. If they find it, according to Roerich, the knowledge contained therein will make the forces of evil unstoppable. The coming war will be waged on the spiritual—as well as the temporal—plane, he tells him.

Wallace is put in touch with Ilya Tolstoy, the grandson of the famed novelist, who now lives in America. “Can you do it,” asks Wallace? Tolstoy realizes he can't complete the mission alone, so he seeks out Brooke Dolan at the local bar. Dolan, scion of a wealthy family, is the most experienced and knowledgeable explorer in the entire OSS. He has already been to Tibet multiple times. But he is on the verge of being sacked due to his drinking and his wife has left him. The mission gives him the chance to do the only thing he is good at, the only thing that keeps him sane—adventure.

Meanwhile, elements in Moscow, including Stalin’s chief of police—who is obsessed with the occult—become aware of the mission and desire to see the hidden kingdom’s secrets brought into the service of Communism. They use their contacts to learn about the mission—possibly including Roerich himself—and plot their own mission from a secret base in Central Asia.

The Germans take a steamer to Shanghai after a diversion to Japan. From there they will head through China—a lawless land of brigands, bandits and warlords. Meanwhile, in India, agents loyal to Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian "government in exile" attempt to sabotage the American mission and make sure it doesn’t leave New Delhi.

Tolstoy and Dolan escape and take the railroad north to Darjeeling and the estate of Roerich at the foot of the Himalayas. From there, along with Roerich—who claims to have been inside the hidden kingdom—they make their way over Natu-La pass into the treacherous interior of the Tibetan plateau, braving brutal weather and constant storms. Their supplies are running low. Meanwhile, the Germans are running out of money to bribe the local warlords and find themselves in hot water. If they can make if through the land of the fearsome Ngoloks—who skin people alive—they just might have a chance...

Tolstoy and Dolan arrive in the Holy City, but the harsh journey has taken its toll on the elderly Roerich, who succumbs. They are welcomed by the British mission headed by Hugh Richardson. They seek out a monk in Lhasa, Lobsang Rampa, who says he has been to the hidden kingdom and can guide them. But Schäfer and the Nazis have made it safely across the land of the Ngoloks and arrive in the holy city just in time for the New Year celebrations.

Schäfer and Dolan have their long-awaited reunion. They once were the best of friends, but now are the bitterest of enemies, for Schäfer blames Dolan for abandoning him in Tibet all those years ago. Violence is forbidden during the festivities, and leaving would insult their hosts. During their stay, they meet with several high-ranking government officials including the boy-king Dalai Lama, and Dolan falls for the beautiful daughter of a Tibetan nobleman.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Rudolf Hess flies a solo plane and parachutes into Scotland. He has been having uncontrollable dreams sent to him by supernatural forces telling him that he must stop Himmler's mission for the future of humanity. And he has compelling evidence that convinces his interrogators that the mission to find Shambhala is real and urgent. Back in America, Wallace must convince the President, who wants nothing to do with the coming war…

Finally, at the close of the New Year festivities, both expeditions head out into the vast frontier of Tibet, forging a reluctant truce to seek out and find Shambhala once and for all. But the Soviets are closing in as well. As they race toward the blank spot on the map where the city supposedly exists, what will happen when—and if—they find it? And who will gain the power of the ultimate secret of Shambhala?

Well, why are you asking me? After all, I'm not even sure myself what happens. But I do have some ideas ;-)

So whaddya think sirs? Is this something I should keep running with? Is this something anyone would read? I don't know. But even if it never happens, I had a lot of fun writing this series of posts.

~MUSIC CUE~

~FADE TO BLACK~

~ROLL END CREDITS~

1. The mine car chase was also originally supposed to be at the ending of Raiders.

2. There's even a slight Nazi villian "flourish," for example, at 0:34 and 3:25. Was Williams deliberately referencing Harrer's membership in the SS? If so, that would be interesting, as it caused a controversy when that fact came to light around the time of the film's release.

3. Coincidentally, both Costner and Ford have landed in the Yellowstone franchise developed by Taylor Sheridan. Costner is also a close associate and collaborator of Lawrence Kasdan who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark.

4. Of course, it's entirely possible that the stories we are reading in the Explorer's Guild are, in fact, fictitious, and this was included as a deliberate wink to that notion.