Underworld

The Underworld (Lovecraft's Dreamlands "Hollow Earth" setting, including "Vaults of Zin", "Vale of Pnath", "City of the Gugs", "Cemetery of the Gugs", etc.) first appears in H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction).

In the Mythos

The Night-Gaunts bore Randolph Carter breathless into that cliffside cavern and through monstrous labyrinths beyond.... Soon they were plunging hideously downward through inconceivable abysses in a whirling, giddying, sickening rush of dank, tomb-like air; and Carter felt they were shooting into the ultimate vortex of shrieking and daemonic madness. He screamed again and again, but whenever he did so the black paws tickled him with greater subtlety. Then he saw a sort of grey phosphorescence about, and guessed they were coming even to that inner world of subterrene horror of which dim legends tell, and which is litten only by the pale death-fire wherewith reeks the ghoulish air and the primal mists of the pits at earth's core.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)

The Underworld is H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands "Hollow Earth" setting, a vast cavern complex beneath the Dreamlands, including the Vale of Pnath, Vaults of Zin, City of the Gugs, Cemetery of the Gugs, and other subterranean locations, with entrances opening in multiple locations in the Dreamlands, and also into the Waking World. The Underworld is home to a variety of strange beings, most notably including the Ghouls, Ghasts, Gugs, Nightgaunts, and Bholes. The Underworld is dimly lit by a grey natural phosphorescence, the "death-fires".

Peaks of Thok

An austere and impassive granite edifice of cliffs in the Underworld twilight beneath Mount Ingranek on the Isle of Oriab. The Peaks of Thok are haunted by the Nightgaunts, who guard the Underworld in the name of Nodens, Lord of the Abyss, and carry wayward Dreamers who stray too close to Mount Ingranek into the Vale of Pnath in the Underworld below.

Crag of the Ghouls

The Crag of the Ghouls is one of the highest of the Peaks of Thok; Caverns on the Crag open into the Tunnels of the Ghouls, and Ghouls toss refuse from the cliffs into the Vale of Pnath below; one can locate the Crag in the dark by the clattering of the well-gnawed, dry bones cast off by the Ghouls, and those conversant with ghouls might, with luck and diplomacy, call to these creatures to let down a rope ladder allowing an escape from the Vale. The climb up to the cliffs where the lowest entrance to the Tunnels of the Ghouls can be found is high over the Vale, a climb that seems to take hours in the darkness of the Underworld.

Vale of Pnath

The lightless Vale of Pnath, where crawl and burrow the enormous bholes, which no man has seen and which are known only by dim rumour from the rustling they make amongst mountains of bones, and the slimy touch they have when they wriggle past one; it is fairly likely that the Vale was the spot into which all the Ghouls of the waking world and Dreamlands alike cast the refuse of their feastings.

Tunnels of the Ghouls

The Tunnels of the Ghouls honeycomb the Peaks of Thok at the Crag of the Ghouls, and are home to those creatures, who live in burrows there among the loot of the Waking World's tombs and graves, including bones, gravestones, coffins, rags, and corpses, which the Ghouls make into feasts whatever can be gnawed, or into their furniture and decorations if they can, or simply cast into the Vale of Pnath below if they have no other use for it.

• The Tunnels of the Ghouls open onto Midian, a paradise city of the Ghouls. (YSDC)

Vaults of Zin

The Vaults of Zin is a huge cavern complex in the Underworld. It lies near the cemetery of the Gugs and opens onto a large cave that is the mouth of vaults of Zin, and the vindictive Ghasts are always on watch there for those denizens of the upper abyss, for the Vaults of Zin border both on the surface world above, and on the Cemetery of the Gugs, where a single gigantic Gug corpse can feed a community of Ghasts for a year; the Ghasts otherwise eat Ghouls, and even each other. On the Plateau of Leng, a well in the heart of an ancient domed temple-monastery dedicated to Nyarlathotep opens onto the Vaults, and is where the temple's sacrifices are disposed of, feeding the Ghasts.

City of the Gugs

"City of Gugs", Paul Prof Herbert

The gigantic, hairy Gugs once dwelt in the Enchanted Wood where they raised rings of standing stones for sacrifice to Nyarlathotep and captured and ate hapless Dreamers, until the Gugs were banished to the Underworld for some nameless offense against the gods. Now the Gugs dwell in a gigantic cavern of the Underworld, where they have built huge, windowless towers of black basalt into the frightful City of the Gugs, and feast only on the filthy and loathsome Ghasts, while dreaming of the day when the Gugs might be released from the Underworld and taste the flesh of mortal men once again. The Tower of Koth in the center of the city is the mightiest of the Gugs' towers, with a spiral staircase inside which leads all the way up to the surface of the Dreamlands in the Enchanted Wood, through a heavy stone trapdoor inset with a large iron ring.

Cemetery of the Gugs

A barren, empty place in open twilight between the Vaults of Zin and the looming round towers of the City of the Gugs stands the Cemetery of the Gugs: a forest of vast, lichened monoliths reaching nearly as high as the eye could see and forming the modest gravestones of the Gugs. Travelers in the Cemetery should beware, for the Ghasts lurk in the Cemetery, where they will dig up the corpses of Gugs to eat, for a single Gug can feed a Ghat community for a year, though the voracious Ghats would not hesitate to make a snack of a careless Dreamer.

Great Abyss

The Great Abyss is a realm that lies below the ruins of Sarkomand, and is possibly a massive cavern that joins with all parts of the underworld. It connects with the upper Dreamlands by a stairway in Sarkomand. The Abyss is ruled by the god Nodens, who is served by the Nightgaunts. Nodens' influence seems limited in the underworld and does not appear to extend much beyond the Abyss itself, except perhaps to Mount Ngranek on the isle of Oriab, whose upper slopes are guarded by his Nightgaunts.

Associated Mythos Elements

• setting: Hollow Earth
• setting: Dreamlands
• location: Midian
• race: Gug
• race: Ghast
• race: Ghoul
• race: Nightgaunt
• race: Bhole

References

• fiction: H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)