WilloftheWest

The Outsider is a bit of a mind bender, though we should come to expect that in our dream stories. A common occurrence in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle are the seamless transitions between dreaming and waking worlds, which leave the reader pondering on what part is dream and what part is reality.

Our narrator is seemingly the sole denizen of an ancient castle, surrounded by a dense tall forest which blocks most natural light. Indeed, our narrator takes to watching candles for comfort. He is undersocialised as he does not recall ever interacting with anyone, though he remarks that there must be servants who have cared for him. He can read and believes that he can speak, though he never had a teacher and has never had a reason to speak.

One day he commits to climbing the treacherous tallest tower in his castle. Though he may fall in the process, it would be worth it for him to have caught a single glimpse at the moon. Reaching the top of the tower, the narrator climbs through a trapdoor and finds that he is not at some precipitous height on the tower of a castle, but stood in a churchyard. Off in the distance, he sees an uncannily familiar castle.

In the castle he sees people reveling. He wishes to join them and so climbs through a window. The guests flee in panic and the narrator looks around for the monster from which they escape. Stood within a frame is some terrible unspeakable monstrosity. The narrator nearly swoons and reaches out, accidentally touching the monster. He then flees in fear and finds the way back to the comfort of his “castle” is forever closed. He finds a new life roaming with the ghouls of this land, forever haunted by the memory of touching the cold glass of a mirror when he reached out to the monster.

Of course this story is up for interpretation as to what is dream or if in fact all of it is a dream. Having read the Dream Cycle before, I believe that the monster may in fact be a ghoul who once lived in this castle. We will see in this week’s story that ghouls have some way of accessing the dreamworld, which for some reason encompasses the land of the dead. My interpretation of the tale is that the ghoul retreated into the dreamlands, where he was comforted by a dream simulacrum of the castle in which he lived before his ghoulification.

I don't think it's particularly helpful or even healthy to speculate about abuse in every conceivable scenario. The guy's a whisky aficionado who goes on frequent trips to distilleries and has uploaded and average of a whisky related video every other day for several years. You can see by the thumbnails a story of him growing a wall of whisky over the years. That factor alone is difficult to live with if you're not on the same wavelength as that person. It's not, however, an issue that would require you to burn bridges after separation.

It’s not a stunt. Some people just make better friends than partners. If there was no animosity during the break up, there’s no reason they can’t remain friends.

The Hound is another Lovecraftian tale of cruel and unusual retribution, obsession with death, and lashings of the supernatural. Two grave robbers have created a secret museum of artifacts stolen from the graves of their victims. They are intrigued by the legend of the grave of a centuries old man, a "ghoul" who delighted in grave robbing as they do, and who met his end after one such robbery. The pair seek the treasure of that final robbery.

The two travel to Holland and uncover the coffin, while being haunted by some distant baying of a great hound. They are somewhat unnerved by the baying as legend speaks of the old grave robber meeting his end by such a hound. Still, they carry on. With the pristine skeleton of the ill-fated grave robber, they find a carved jade amulet of a winged lupine creature, described as a "sphinx with a semi-canine face". The pair recognise this amulet as an artifact described in the Necronomicon as some icon associated with the cannibal cult of Leng in Central Asia. They steal the amulet and retreat back to England, haunted by the sea winds which they fancy sounds like the baying of a hound.

The leader of the pair, St John, soon meets his poetic end as he is mauled to death by some great hound. Fearing the same fate, the narrator dashes back to Holland with the amulet, intent on returning it to its former resting place. He is foiled by thieves stealing the amulet from his room, while continuously haunted by the baying of the hound. During one night of particularly loud baying, a mass murder occurs in the same city. In a thieves' den a family is torn to shreds by some unknown beast.

The narrator returns to the graveyard without the amulet, in a desparate attempt to somehow atone for his sin. He notes the baying quieting and eventually ceasing as he reaches the grave of the old grave robber. He digs at the frozen ground only to find the earth suspiciously loose. Opening the coffin, he is confronted by the creature which bays. Rather than the clean skeleton that he previously encountered, the skeleton is soiled with flesh and hair, and cloaked in bats. It's canines are distinctly more fanglike, and it stares sentiently at the narrator with phosphorescent eye sockets. As the narrator notices that in its claw is clasped the amulet of jade, the skeleton's jaw yawns open and unleashes that same haunting baying as if of a hound.

Certain of his fate, the narrator shoots himself to avoid experiencing the horrible dismemberment of the Hound.

The Hound is only tangentially related to the Dreamlands in its mention of Leng, which is a location existing simultaneously on Earth and within the Dreamlands; it is referenced in the fiction as a place where realities converge and is therefore possibly one of many physical bridges between Earth and the Dreamlands.

Also of note is the mention of Abdul Alhazred and his infamous tome the Necronomicon. It was often my interpretation that this tome is very rare and surprisingly few complete copies exist, especially of the 16th century John Dee translation. Indeed, in The Dunwich Horror, the sorceror Wilbur Whateley risks his life in order to steal a complete copy from the library of the Miskatonic University. I find it odd that seemingly any pair of delinquents can obtain and study the volume. It could possibly be argued that it's an artifact recovered from one of their adventures. Admittedly I'm no expert on this topic, but my naive assumption would be that some leather bound tome such as the Necronomicon would be soon eaten away in a grave.

Finally, I'm fascinated by the vampiric creature that is the ancient grave robber. It's interesting to see Lovecraft's interpretation of traditional horror entities and how they fit within the Mythos. I'm left with some questions on the nature of this vampirism. Notably, we do not see the curse passed on to the victims of the creature, yet the creature itself was ostensibly transformed after a similar attack. Also of note is that the amulet remained with the grave robber, rather than being retrieved by his killer. I'm also interested how the amulet found its way into the possession of a Dutch grave robber from an inaccesible plateau in Central Asia (though we see in later tales that Leng is prone to moving and difficult to locate). I think it's plausible to conjecture that the construction of this amulet is part of some ritual communicated by some outer god. The purpose is that in death, the bearer finds unrest whenever the amulet is not in their possession. Thus it may be a item intended to bestow a poetic curse on would be grave robbers.

What the Moon Brings, while short, is very evocative. Indeed, the image for this week's post was inspired by the short story.

The story's protagonist despises and fears the moon, for he finds that under the light of the moon familiar scenes become warped and strange. One summer evening, the garden in which the protagonist wanders becomes haunted with a yellow light from the moon.

What interests me here is how the protagonist anthropomorphises the moon, the flowers of the garden, and the crystal stream that flows through the garden. He characterises the moon as a malevolent force, using words such as hateful and describing the stream as "moon-cursed". One by one lotus blossoms drop into and are carried away by this stream, and the protagonist states that these blossoms "[stare] back with the sinister resignation of calm, dead faces".

The protagonist follows the lotus blossoms, beckoned on by their whispering. Oddly, the protagonist does not encounter the boundary of the garden as he should; he instead finds new and unfamiliar vistas stretching before him. Before long the stream itself becomes a river and wends through marshland before joining a vast sea. The protagonist laments at the lack of a net, which he would use to save the lotus blossoms from their fate. He looks out to sea and seas a sunken city, which he knows to be the final destination of all dead things.

The protagonist spies a black condor, that he wishes to ask about the fate of dead friends. He watches as the condor lands on a black reef. He is struck by insurmountable fear as the tide ebbs low, revealing the reef to be the crown of some colossal creature, whose head shines in the moonlight and whose hooves paw at oozes miles below. Fearing the gaze of this creature, the protagonist casts himself to his doom into the stinking sea, where sea-worms feast on the flesh of the dead.

I believe it's an uncontroversial interpretation that the entire tale is a dream. The protagonist assigns human traits to the moon (which hates and curses) and the lotus blossoms (which beckon him to follow them down the stream). Familiar sights are missing, replaced by entirely new and alien vistas. The protagonist finds a cyclopean sunken city which draws to it the worlds dead, and a colossal basalt crowned monstrosity lies in the waters; its gaze is terrifying to even speculate.

I see in this story the seeds of many ideas which have grown to maturity 4 years later in The Call of Cthulhu. Of course there are the obvious parallels between the sunken city and the city of R'lyeh, and the basalt-crowned eikon with Cthulhu himself. There is also the common theme of death; the dead are drawn to the sunken city in What the Moon Brings while in The Call of Chtulhu, it is suggested, through the use of Abdul Al Hazred's famous couplet, that Cthulhu has some manner of dominion over death. Another similarity is in the use of dream to affect people. This story is evidently some manner of nightmare, while in The Call of Chtulhu, many artists of the mid 1920s are simultaneously haunted by maddening dreams of sunken cities and Dread Cthulhu. There are two more minor comparisons to make. The first is in the use of flowers. In What the Moon Brings the protagonist describes the time of year as a "spectral summer of narcotic flowers"; following these flower blossoms leads the protagonist to the sunken charnel pit of the worlds dead, and their perfume-conquering stench. In the penultimate paragraph of The Call of Cthulhu, the protagonist notes that "even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me". Finally, there is the fixation with the moon. An association between Cthulhu and the moon is seen in part III of The Call of Cthulhu. Upon discovering Cthulhu, one of the first words used is "lunacy". Lovecraft, being deliberate in his use of language and aware of the origins of the words he chose, made the decision to use a word for madness etymologically linked to the moon. A more concrete link is seen after Cthulhu reconstitutes himself while the Alert attempts to escape his retribution. The steamer is assailed by a great storm which conjures images of otherworldly voyages. One such image is that of "hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again to the pit".

I'm sure some will agree that it's incredibly interesting to see the early experimentation with ideas that later form the basis of some of Lovecraft's most loved famous stories.

I need a HD train suplex.

It's also important in forms of play that you wouldn't readily associate with sex, such as horror roleplaying. It's far more interesting to have a fully cognizant cultist willingly gestating some Mythos entity, rather implied non-consent being the driver of the "horror." In fact, I think that's a good rule of thumb for any manner of body horror: enthusiastic consent is definitely more mysterious and scary than being subjected to horror through force or dubious consent.

It's hard for me to draw much out of Azathoth, as in my tome of Lovecraft stories it measures in at about a page. What interests me most about this story is that Lovecraft had intended to write a dream novel, 5 years before his novella The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. It's interesting to me, to see these early experiments with the germ of a story which eventually develops into my favourite of Lovecraft's tales.

The interesting idea that I found in this short tale is how the dream explorer (Randolph Carter?) enters the world of dream. Rather than descending the 70 steps of light slumber, passing the guardians at the cavern of flame, and descending further on the 700 steps of deeper slumber, the protagonist of this short tale finds the path to projecting his dreaming consciousness by intense study of the stars. Over many years, he comes to recognise patterns in the sailing of stars in the night sky. These patterns reveal secret vistas, hidden in plain sight, and bridges to the dream world in the skies.

Which is your favourite way in which the dreamlands have been reached in Lovecraft's writings? Though Unknown Kadath is my favourite tale, this interpretation of celestial bridges more readily inspires my imagination than descending the 700 steps.

Of this week's reading, Hypnos definitely offers more for the reader to digest. It is another tale of hubris, similar to the stories of last week, and has an ambiguous ending which leaves room for speculation.

The story is a first hand account of a friendless sculptor who becomes fast friends with a man he meets at the train station. Little is actually revealed about this friend other than his striking "Olympian" features which compel our protagonist to sculpt him in the daytime.

At night, the two friends seek knowledge beyond the scope of the physical world and so they venture into Dream for their answers. The nameless friend acts almost as a guide, always some length ahead of the sculptor as they delve deeper into their dream studies. They soon turn to discussing blasphemous philosophy while in the waking world, and the narrator becomes afraid of the friends intent, to use newfound knowledge to gain control over the waking universe.

One night while adventuring in Dream, the sculptor is hindered by an obstacle which his friend seemingly didn't encounter. The sculptor wakes while the friend journeys on. Whatever the friend sees, he is incredibly frightened, to the point that his hair turns white and he is seen to age rapidly. The two friends agree to eschew sleep as much as possible.

The two friends take to raucous partying and abuse of drugs in order to remain awake, and the friend of Olympian features becomes fixated with a certain constellation. The sculptor eventually sells off all of his work to fund their habits. One winter night, when the sculptor has no more art to sell, his friend drifts into sleep. From the constellation to which the friend has become obsessed, a strange light that offers no illumination creeps into their squalid apartment and bathes the sleeping friend.

The friend seemingly awakes and acts as though screaming in torture, though no sound is produced. The sculptor peers into the source of the light and views something maddening that he dares not repeat. He collapses into a fit of screaming which summons the neighbours and police. These people reveal that he has always lived alone and that he has not sold all of his sculptures. In the place of his sleeping friend is a marble statue of a man with those Olympian proportions, though the neighbours remark on its similarities to his own face. At the base of the statue is written the name 'ΥΠΝΟΣ.

This story leads me to ask many questions. Did his friend actually exist in the physical world? Was this friend an embodiment of Hypnos, or simply a man that drew the ire of Hypnos for abusing dream? Was the entire friendship and fate of the friend some allegorical illusion witnessed by the sculptor, who deeply desired that which the friend desired?

I have my own assumptions for all these questions, though I feel like many ambiguous stories, there may not be a canonical interpretation. Given the peculiar nature of the Dreamlands, the answer could be some combination of mutually-contradictory answers.

I found HorrorBabble while looking for a horror narrator to fall asleep to. I really enjoy their work.

To motivations for the people of Sarnath targetting the people of Ib, there's definitely plenty of xenophobia mixed in there, which Lovecraft probably considered a good enough reason. He writes "with their marvelling was mixed hate, for they thought it not meet that beings of such aspect should walk about the world of men at dusk." I find it peculiar that the humans were relatively late settlers of this land yet they consider the world under the sole dominion of men.

The next sentence offers another reason. "Nor did they like the strange sculptures upon the grey monoliths of Ib, for those sculptures were terrible with great antiquity." Evidence of art and culture from another sentient species, especially antique arts, would challenge Sarnath's world view of men being the masters of the world. Guided by their pride and hatred, I can see them as willing to raze a city so that they can live in a comfortable ignorance.

I think the Doom may be motivated by another peeve of people with more "traditionalist" views. After an initial boom in productivity, over the course of a millennium the people of Sarnath became decadent and eventually grew ignorant of the looming threat of revenge by the people of Ib. It could serve as an allegory that the people of Ib waited until the people of Sarnath had long grown complacent, before they attacked. I could potentially see it as some racist allegory about constant vigilance against the threat of resurgence from a conquered "lesser" folk.

I really enjoyed the stories from this week. I find that Lovecraft provides just enough details to provide a definitive sequence of events while leaving room for speculation on the details. It's definitely much richer than the writings of the previous week.

I absolutely love Lancer memes. They always come across like the rants of a corporate shill.

Though still a tragic tale, The Other Gods is more of a story of hubris and gaining more than what you bargained for. The gods of Earth - which are regarded as in some way weaker than and protected by the Outer Gods - attempt to live secluded from humanity atop the peaks of mountains. They are chased to higher and higher peaks by inquisitive humans until they make their final refuge atop Unknown Kadath, a mountain thankfully unknown to the humans.

The gods grow homesick for their mountain ranges of the past, and so make journeys to these old peaks atop clouds, which the learned among the humans come to associate with the passing of the gods.

Our main protagonist for this story is one of these learned men, Barzai the Wise, who in his familiarity with many books of ancient lore, has grown arrogant and accepting of the title "half god", perhaps a title coined by himself. He seeks some form of mastery over earth's gods by forcing them to reveal themselves to him during one of their journeys to the nearby peak of Hatheg-Kla. Despite the protests of the common folk, who have a healthy fear of the Earth gods, Barzai makes a voyage to Hatheg-Kla together with his disciple, the young priest Atal of Ulthar.

As they climb the mountain on a cloudy night, Barzai powers on ahead of Atal. Atal soon loses sight of Barzai, but hears him gloating from the mists. He shouts about hearing the singing of Earth's gods and seeing the shadows of them dancing in the moonlight. He declares himself a prophet and greater than the gods who "fear the coming of Barzai the Wise".

Soon Barzai's luck takes a foul turn. The moon blackens, an eclipse not predicted in any of the astronomical tomes that Barzai has referenced. Barzai soon finds that the icy cap of the peak extends endlessly into the void, and that he finds himself being drawn upwards into the black heavens rather than back down to the Earth.

Finally, Barzai scream in fear that he has encountered "the other gods... that guard the feeble gods of earth!" His disciple Atal is urged to escape and that is the last we see or hear of Barzai.

When the clouds pass, a search party is dispatched to find Barzai the Wise, but no sign of his body is found atop Hatheg-Kla. Instead, they find a cyclopean symbol, fifty cubits wide, carved into the mountain as if by the chisel of a giant. His former disciple Atal thereafter refuses to pray for the soul of his former mentor, and the people of the nearby settlements learn to fear the vapours of the gods.

In this story we find a second reference to Polaris, as Barzai is said to be familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts, which reside in Olathoë. The priest Atal comes from the town of Ulthar, and in fact Barzai was an advisor to the villagers of Ulthar when they passed the law against killing cats, following the events of The Cats of Ulthar. Furthermore, he is aware of lore regarding cats which he then teaches to Atal. Together with The Quest of Iranon, we are beginning to formulate a continuum of the Dreamlands, and a timeline dissociated with the timeline of Earth. Dreamers can perceivably live many ages in dream while only sleeping for a night, and lands of ancient dreamers are proven to exist alongside relatively modern dream locations. We will see in a later story how dreamers may in fact interact with other dreamers long dead in the waking world.