Oriab
Oriab (AKA "Isle of Oriab") first appeared in H.P. Lovecraft's "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)".
Isle of Oriab
An island located in the Southern Sea, Oriab is a small but thriving civilization. Its major city is Baharna in the north, the rest of the residents mostly live in hamlets or villages dotting the coast, generally concentrated on the northern end of the island.
Geography
Southern Sea
The illimitable Southern Sea with all its curious secrets, which is the way to the Isle of Oriab. See Southern Sea.
Accursed Valley
The Accursed Valley is a blasted land below the southern slope of Mount Ngranak, a difficult terrain of lava and desolate crags and the bleak mountain face, pierced by curious cracks and caves, bleaker and wilder than those seaward lands than the rest of the isle.
Mount Ngranek
Mount Ngranek is one of Oriab's most notable and famous features: a great image is reported by travellers as carved on the solid rock of the mountain Ngranek, and hints that it may be a likeness which earth's gods once wrought of their own features in the days when they danced by moonlight on that mountain; the features of that image are very strange, so that one might easily recognise them, and that they are sure signs of the authentic race of the gods. The mountain is honeycombed with onyx mines used by local stone-carvers and masons, as well as passages that allegedly lead deep into the Underworld.
Lake Yath
The inland lake of Yath beyond Baharna, connected to the harbor by an underground canal and barred by mighty onyx gates; on the farther shore are the vast clay-brick ruins of a primal city whose name is not remembered. A path along the lake's shore leads from Baharna to Mount Ngranek.
Cities
Baharna
Oriab is a very great isle, and its port of Baharna a mighty city; the wharves of Baharna are of porphyry, and the city rises in great stone terraces behind them, having streets of steps that are frequently arched over by buildings and the bridges between buildings. There is a great canal which goes under the whole city in a tunnel with granite gates and leads to the inland lake of Yath, on whose farther shore are the vast clay-brick ruins of a primal city whose name is not remembered. At evening the twin beacons Thon and Thal gleam a welcome at the mouth of the harbor, and in all the million windows of Baharna's terraces mellow lights of that steep and climbing seaport become a glittering constellation hung between the stars of heaven and the reflections of those stars in the still harbour. Quarters may be found in an ancient tavern opening on an alley of steps in the original part of the town, which is built of brick and resembles the ruins of Yath's farther shore.
Nameless Ruins
A vast, ancient, and forbidding clay-brick ruin of a primal city whose name is not remembered stand on the far side of Lake Yath from Baharna.
Heresies and Controversies
- Andahad: a small, second city, added by Chaosium, and described as the furthest southern outpost of the known Dreamlands.
- Tyrhhia: The nameless clay-brick ruins on the shore of Lake Yath, given a name, and connected to Yath-Li. (Brian Lumley?)
Associated Mythos Elements
- setting: Dreamlands
References
- fiction: H.P. Lovecraft, "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)"
- sourcebook: H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands
