The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

H. P. Lovecraft wrote the horror novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, likely starting it in the autumn of 1926 and finishing a draft on January 22, 1927. He never revised or published it while alive. It was released after his death by Arkham House in 1943. This story is the longest in his Dream Cycle and also the longest Lovecraft work where Randolph Carter serves as the main character. Along with his 1927 novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it stands as a major piece from that period of Lovecraft's writing. The tale mixes horror and fantasy into an epic journey that shows the vastness and wonder of human dreaming.

Ballantine Books currently publishes it in an anthology that also includes "The Silver Key" and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key." The corrected version, edited by S. T. Joshi, appears in Arkham House's At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels and in Penguin Classics' The Dreams in the Witch-House and Other Weird Stories.

The plot follows Randolph Carter, who in his dreams sees a magnificent city but cannot reach it. After the third vision, he prays to the dream gods to show him where it is, but the city then disappears from his dreams entirely. Undeterred, Carter decides to ask the gods in person at Kadath, the mountain where they live. In a dream, he consults priests at a temple bordering the Dreamlands. They tell him no one knows Kadath's location and warn him of great danger if he continues, suggesting the gods stopped his visions on purpose.

Carter's knowledge of Dreamlands customs and languages makes his quest less risky than it would be for an amateur, but he still must seek help from dangerous entities. The Zoogs, predatory rodents, direct him to Ulthar to find the priest Atal. In the cat-filled city of Ulthar, Atal mentions a huge carving of the gods' faces on a mountainside. Carter realizes the gods' mortal descendants will share those features and likely live near Kadath. While seeking passage there, turbaned slavers kidnap him, take him to the moon, and deliver him to horrible moon-beasts who serve the malevolent god Nyarlathotep. The cats of Ulthar, his allies, rescue him and return him to a port city.

After a long journey, Carter finds the carving and recognizes the gods' faces in traders who dock at Celephaïs. Before he can act, faceless winged creatures called nightgaunts capture him and leave him to die in the underworld. Friendly ghouls, including his friend Richard Pickman, help him return to the surface by sneaking through the terrible city of the man-eating Gugs. After helping the cats repel a Zoog sneak attack, Carter buys passage to Celephaïs and learns from sailors that the traders come from Inganok, a cold, dark land without cats.

Carter meets Celephaïs' king, his friend Kuranes, who became a permanent Dreamlands resident after dying in the waking world. Longing for home, Kuranes has dreamed parts of his kingdom to resemble his native Cornwall. He knows the Dreamlands' dangers but cannot persuade Carter to give up. Pretending to want work in its quarries, Carter boards a ship for Inganok. As they near it, he spots a nameless island from which strange howls come. At a breathtaking summit near a quarry, a merchant he met earlier captures him. Monstrous birds fly them over the Plateau of Leng, a vast tableland populated by Pan-like horned humanoids.

Carter is brought to a monastery inhabited by the dreaded High Priest Not to Be Described. There, he learns the Men of Leng are the slavers who captured him, wearing turbans to hide their horns. He also learns the nightgaunts do not serve Nyarlathotep, as commonly thought, but Nodens, and even Earth's gods fear them. Carter recoils in horror as he realizes the masked high priest's true identity. He flees through maze-like corridors in pitch-black darkness until he finds the exit.

After rescuing several ghouls from the Men of Leng, Carter and the ghoul reinforcements attack a moon-beast outpost on the nameless rock. In a nearby city, he gets a flock of nightgaunts to transport himself and the ghouls to the gods' castle on Kadath. After a long flight, he arrives at Kadath but finds it empty. A great procession led by a pharaoh-like man arrives. The pharaoh reveals himself as Nyarlathotep and tells Carter the city of his dreams is actually childhood memories of his home city, Boston. The gods of Earth saw Carter's dream city and made it their home, abandoning Kadath and their duties.

Impressed with Carter's resolve, Nyarlathotep grants him passage to the city to recall the gods, but Carter realizes too late that the mocking Nyarlathotep has tricked him. The directions lead not to the city but to the court of Azathoth at the universe's center. Believing himself doomed, Carter suddenly remembers he is in a dream and wakes. Nyarlathotep broods over his defeat within Kadath's halls, mocking in anger the "mild gods of earth" whom he has snatched back from the sunset city.

Lovecraft included elements and characters from earlier stories in Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, many influenced by Lord Dunsany, though they are not always consistent. Randolph Carter can enter the Dreamlands, an alternate dimension accessed through dreams. He appears in other Lovecraft stories: "The Statement of Randolph Carter," "The Unnamable," "The Silver Key," and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key."