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| + | #REDIRECT [[Other Side]] |
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| − | '''Sheol''' (alternate spellings: ''She'ol''), "the castle", "the crypt", "the catacombs", "the endless tombs", "the vault"
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| − | Origin: "[[The Outsider (fiction)]]" by [[H.P. Lovecraft]], where the nameless location was called only "the castle"
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| − | <!--gap for TOC-->
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| − | ==In the Mythos==
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| − | <blockquote>
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| − | Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft....
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| − | I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief; nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by stone.
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| − | I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself; or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of something mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle. To me there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strowed some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations. I fantastically associated these things with every-day events, and thought them more natural than the coloured pictures of living beings which I found in many of the mouldy books. From such books I learned all that I know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in all those years — not even my own; for although I had read of speech, I had never thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of, for there were no mirrors in the castle....
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| − | <br>— [[H.P. Lovecraft]], "[[The Outsider (fiction)]]"
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| − | </blockquote>
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| − | <blockquote>
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| − | ...Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled an universe of terror and decay to excite our jaded sensibilities. It was a secret room, far, far underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the lines of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.... Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, life-like bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and with headstones snatched from the oldest churchyards of the world. Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the fresh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Statues and paintings there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St. John and myself. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnamable drawings which it was rumoured Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, and wood-wind, on which St. John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodaemoniacal ghastliness; whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity....
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| − | <br>— [[H.P. Lovecraft]], "[[The Hound (fiction)]]"
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| − | </blockquote>
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| − | A strange, vast, antique, and perhaps immaterial labyrinth of unclear location connected to certain aged graveyards and cellars of Earth as well as other and far stranger worlds, perhaps in a material location in the [[Hollow Earth]], or a metaphysical or astral location in the [[Dreamlands]] or the [[Other Side]], taking the form of a vast, dim cavern full of crumbling masonry, damp and winding passages and catacombs lined with mouldy books and scrolls, slimy and cobwebbed crypts, antique and greasy candles, piles of bones and mummified corpses, and indistinct brown hangings and carpets, and rotting and ramshackle furniture of fantastical, worn, and aged design, constructed from the wood of long-plundered caskets and sheets of roughly-stitched leather of suspicious origin, as well as various objects that were almost certainly plundered from both the [[Daylands|Waking World]] and the [[Dreamlands]]. Though typically found vacant and empty save for spiders, rats, and other vermin, the macabre, shocking, and tasteless decor suggests the morbid and mocking hand of [[Ghoul]]s in its construction, or at least in its habitation and furnishing, likely facilitated by the location's connection to cemeteries, catacombs, and nightmarish caverns in various worlds. There is likewise evidence of occasional visits an habitation by beings of a still more alien nature in the presence of unspeakable artifacts constructed or abandoned there, as well as the remnants of the unspeakable rites of [[Human Cultist]]s and wizards and their familiars and imps at various points in the castle's ancient and mysterious history.
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| − | One of the building's high "towers" connects through the cavern ceiling to a certain aged churchyard in "[[Lovecraft Country]]", while other towers may connect to other cemeteries and other subterranean places, while outside of the building's walls and across a putrid moat, the caverns, filled with strange subterranean vegetation and fungi, fields of twisted and jagged stalagmites, and other outlandish landscape, connect through tunnels to subterranean locations on several worlds, most notably the [[Vale of Pnath]].
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| − | ==Heresies and Controversies==
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| − | <!-- Optional. This is a good place to include non-canon and controversial aspects of the Location's mythos. Suggested Alternative Theories include: Derleth's elemental scheme; pseudo-science interpretation; "fanon" interpretations; unofficial humorous or eccentric takes on the mythos like Lovecraft's family tree; identification with "Real Life" mythological, religious, folklore, natural, and historical phenomena; rumor and speculation contribute some flexibility and ambiguity to the mythos. -->
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| − | * Alternative_theory. ([[source]])
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| − | ==Keeper Notes==
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| − | <!-- Optional. Suggestions for using this deity in the CoC RPG, and in fan-fiction. -->
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| − | ==Associated Mythos Elements==
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| − | * location: [[Other Side]], [[Hollow Earth]], [[Dreamlands]]
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| − | * tome: ''[[Cultes des Goules]]''
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| − | * tome: ''[[Ghoul's Manuscript]]''
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| − | * cult: [[Cult of Mordiggian]]
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| − | * deity: [[Mordiggian]], The Worm That Doth Corrupt
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| − | * race: [[Ghoul]]s
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| − | * race: [[Crawling One]]s
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| − | ==References==
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| − | * fiction: "[[The Outsider (fiction)]]"
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| − | [[Category:Mythos:Locations]][[Category:Mythos:Locations:Hollow Earth]][[Category:Mythos:Locations:Dreamlands]]
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