An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

He first visits the land of the zoogs, “furtive and secretive” creatures who live in burrows or in the trunks of trees. They do not know where Kadath is, but one elderly zoog has heard that a copy of the “inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts” is at Ulthar and that it tells much about the gods. So Carter makes his way to Ulthar, beyond the river Skai, where the friendly cats cluster about him. Carter seeks the patriarch Atal, who long ago had ascended Mt. Hatheg-Kla in the company of Barzai the Wise, in order to look upon the gods; only Atal had come down. Carter drugs Atal with the zoogs’ moon-wine, so that Atal becomes talkative: he tells Carter of a great image of the gods (called the Great Ones or the gods of earth) carved on Mt. Ngranek, on the isle of Oriab; if Carter were to see this image, and then look for similar images among the races of dreamland, he would probably find the gods. The gods, after all, were fond of marrying the daughters of men and producing offspring who had divine blood in their veins and divine features on their countenances.

At Atal’s urging, Carter joins a caravan bound for Dylath-Leen, a great city on the Southern Sea. Arriving there, he hears that ships from Baharna, a city on Oriab, came occasionally to trade at Dylath-Leen. These ships had an unsavory reputation, for they would merely exchange enormous rubies for hordes of black slaves. Presently such a ship comes into the harbor, and Carter speaks to one of the merchants on it; but the merchant plies Carter with drugged wine, and he is taken aboard the ship as a prisoner. Carter suspects that the ship is in league with the Other Gods, who under the aegis of the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep protect the mild gods of earth. The ship sails between the Basalt Pillars of the West, and then leaps into the air and lands on the moon, eventually docking at a peculiar city on a “leprous-looking coast”; on the shore are huge grayish-white toadlike creatures moving cargo and slaves off the ships. Other creatures, turbaned and approximately human in outline, are also seen. Two of the toad-creatures seize Carter and take him to a dungeon, and later he is led in a procession, surrounded by both the toads and the almost-human entities. Suddenly Carter hears the yell of a cat, and he realizes that the moon is where all cats come at night. Carter, knowing the cats’ language, utters a cry for help; and there ensues a battle between the cats on one side and the toad-creatures and almost-humans on the other side. The cats prevail and then make a gigantic leap back to earth, Carter safely carried along in their midst.

Carter finds himself back at Dylath-Leen and this time boards a ship for the isle of Oriab. Reaching the port of Baharna, Carter undertakes the arduous ascent of Mt. Ngranek; finally attaining the farther side of it, he is astounded at the enormous face carved thereon. But mingled with his awe is recognition, for Carter knows that he has seen likenesses of that face in the taverns of the seaport Celephaïs, ruled by King Kuranes. Carter knows he must head there, but before he can climb down the mountain he is plucked by hideous winged creatures with no faces—the night-gaunts. They bear him beyond the Peaks of Thok and leave him in the vale of Pnath, “where crawl and burrow the enormous bholes.” Carter is, however, aware that bholes are terrified of ghouls, and he has had dealings in the past with ghouls—specifically with one ghoul named Richard Upton Pickman, who used to be a man. Carter summons the ghouls, who lower an enormous rope ladder up which he climbs to the top of a crag. The ghouls take

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Carter to Pickman, who “had become a ghoul of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world.” Carter outlines his plan to get to the enchanted wood and thence to Celephaïs, but Pickman tells him that to do so he will have to pass through the kingdom of the gugs, “hairy and gigantic,” and their enemies, the ghasts. Pickman gives Carter a handful of ghouls to accompany him to the gugs’ kingdom and has Carter disguise himself as a ghoul.