Hello everyone and welcome to the tenth week of our Dream Cycle Book Club. In this thread we’ll be discussing Lovecraft’s epic novella The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.
This week’s reading is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Written in 1927. This is another novella of Lovecraft, weighing in at 104 pages in my copy of his fiction. I’m aware that 100 pages of Lovecraft’s often verbose prose can be trying. Thankfully, Lovecraft actually separated this story into parts, which allows for easy splitting up of the reading. Our reading for this week is parts I-III, with parts IV and V covered next week. The text is available in PDF format courtesy of the Arkham Archivist here. Audio is provided by the talented HorrorBabble here
Image Credit Jian Guo
The third “chapter” concerns Randolph Carter travelling to the land of Oriab, scaling Ngranek to witness the sculpture of the god, and his capture by Night-gaunts.
Carter is transported back to Dylath-Leen by the cats, where he warns any who will listen of the slavers from the moon. when a ship bound for Oriab arrives, he discusses with the captain, who says that many tall tales abound of the god face and that he is not certain if any living person has seen it.
They travel by sea and canal to the port city of Baharna, on the short of the great lake Yath. There Carter finds in a tavern a supposed carving of the god face, many generations old. He doubts the veracity of the carving and sets off, despite more warnings of doom.
He travels to the far end of the lake via zebra and camps in forgotten ruins, despite warnings not to camp there. In the night he believes he is disturbed by some winged insect. He wakes up to find his zebra completely drained of blood and many shiny trinkets missing. He carries on and meets lava gatherers, who harvest lava from the now dormant volcano that is Ngranek. They had a member of their group kidnapped by night-gaunts and are heading home. Randolph mentions his interaction and they seem uneasy, saying that it was not night-gaunts. They warn him against travelling further but he ignores them and trades for another zebra.
He travels for several days and then begins scaling Ngranek. He notes the precipitous drop and the thinness of the air, which he blames for the lava gatherers’ “fantasies” of night-gaunts. He climbs higher and higher, reaching the dangerous face which looks out onto fields of lava and untamed deserts. Eventually he spots the colossal, polished carven face of a god, blazing in the red light of the sunset. Carter is simultaneously awe-struck and relieved. He does not need to search the entire Dreamlands for people that look like this carven face. Travellers matching this description often travel from the north to the city of Celephaïs.
In this moment of revelation, he feels his scimitar being snatched from him, and is dragged from the cliff by silent wings into a cave in the side of Ngranek. Carter has been caught by the night-gaunts.
A short chapter with not that much to delve into. Though morbid curiosity is a common trope of Lovecraft’s characters, I can’t help but be a bit annoyed of Carter constantly coming across obstacles and somehow being convinced to delve deeper as a result. Certainly makes for a good RPG character but maybe not an actual person. I struggle to find many references apart from the mention of Zar and the Southern Sea which links again to The White Ship. I’m very excited to see what becomes of Carter in the hands of the Night-gaunts.