Miskatonic Arcihves

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An encyclopedia of strange fiction, its creators, places and mythos. Follow the sources; draw your own conclusions.

Tagged: Submerged cities

Places

R’lyeh

R’lyeh is the submerged Pacific city associated with Cthulhu and its waiting hosts. The Call of Cthulhu reveals it through dreams, cult testimony and a brief, disastrous landing on an exposed portion of its immense, disorienting architecture.

5 min read · 867 words

Themes & context

Sea and submerged worlds

The sea in Lovecraft’s fiction can conceal a civilization, interrupt communication, carry a dream voyage or expose human knowledge as a narrow surface view. Its functions differ between stories. The submerged city in The Temple, R’lyeh in The Call of Cthulhu, the ancient seas reconstructed in At the Mountains of Madness and the navigable horizons of The Dream-Quest should be compared without treating them as a single mapped kingdom.

5 min read · 899 words

Literature

The Temple

The Temple presents the final manuscript of a German submarine commander whose disabled vessel reaches an ancient city on the Atlantic floor. His account combines technical observation, murderous authoritarianism and increasingly desperate explanations of events he cannot control. A small ivory head connects the submarine’s earlier voyage with a mysterious temple, but the manuscript ends before its writer enters the building.

7 min read · 1,404 words