History Literature / TheDreamQuestOfUnknownKadath

[[quoteright:333:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dream_quest.jpg]]

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* TheChessmaster: Though he starts the travel by himself as a sort of foreign explorer, Carter acquires allies from different factions of creatures a la UsefulNotes/HernanCortes, befriending some of them, helping others against their enemies, and occasionally pulling double games on the nastiest ones.

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Randolph Carter manages to trick Nyarlathotep.

* AntiEscapismAesop: Played in several ways, including commented on, and ultimately played straight and defied at once. Carter is implied to have become a Dreamlands traveler in first place due to the boredom he feels towards his life in the real world, just like his friend Kuranes, who in turn warns him about the perils of abandoning his life to live in his dreams. Nonetheless, Carter is so focused on finding a particularly beautiful location of the dream-world that he barely thinks about his real life, and only when strongly reminded. At the end of the story, however, [[spoiler:he discovers that the place he was looking for was actually his own world all along -- specifically, it's Boston, where he was born -- and the realization helps him to come to terms with his quest and wake up from the dream in time to escape Nyarlathotep's death trap.]] The conclusion given is both simple and optimistic: the reality is superior to the dreams, but it is not merely because it is real (and thus, dreams are not bad for being less real), it is because ''it's his home town''. Viewed from a particular perspective and with love and cherished memories, it is ''just that awesome''.

* BigDamnHeroes: The cats come in time to rescue Carter in the moon. Later, Carter himself leads a force to save three friendly ghouls who were captured by the same moon-beasts in Sarkomand. Finally, it's implied that Nodens and the intelligent violet gas S’ngac have a hand in helping Carter [[spoiler:to escape Nyarlathotep's trap.]]
* TheBlank: The Nightgaunts.

* CatsAreMagic: As well as a thoroughly wise, supernaturally gifted and relatively benevolent race. They even can fly between the Earth and the moon, which they usually do at night. They worship Bast and aid the hero in his quest. The only thing the Earth-cats fear are the cats from Saturn, who are even more powerful than they, but are in league with the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.

* ContinuityNod: '''Tons''' of them.

* DeusExitMachina: Carter’s allied army of Night-Gaunts and ghouls is sucked away by a divine wind when they reach Kadath, so he is forced to venture on it [[InTheEndYouAreOnYourOwn alone as in the story's beginning.]]

* IAmAHumanitarian: The inhuman shipmen are revealed to devour the black slaves they trade their ruby stones for. Carter finds this out in a creepy IAteWhat moment (averted, he throws it out).

* BadassBeard: Carter is mentioned to have grown one, but he is forced to shave it in order to disguise himself as a ghoul.

* GoingNative: Richard Pickman is now a ghoul himself, having ditched clothes and even adopted somehow their physical traits, hinting that he was one of the {{changeling}}s he'd depicted in his artwork. Later, Carter himself has to disguise himself like one in order to deceive the man-eating gugs.

* GoingNative: Richard Pickman is now a ghoul himself, having ditched clothes and even adopted somehow their physical traits. Later, Carter himself has to disguise himself like one in order to deceive the man-eating gugs.

* BountyHunter: The black shipmen kidnap Carter in order to sell him to Nyarlathotep in exchange for favors, as it seems Gnarly is after him in order to impede his quest.

%% * EldritchLocation: The Dreamlands. %% Zero Context Example

%% * HitchhikerHeroes: Randolph Carter himself. %% Zero Context Example

%% * HumanoidAbomination: Nyarlathotep. %% Zero Context Example

%% * JerkassGods: Nyarlathotep is a dick [[spoiler: [[LaserGuidedKarma who gets what's coming to him.]]]] %% Zero Context Example

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep plots to send Carter to Azathoth under the fake destination of the city built by Randolph’s memories of youth, but his PurpleProse-filled description of those, meant to charm Carter, ends up giving Randolph the strength he needs to recreate them in the void Nyarlat was trying to throw him into, using them to wake up and return to his real world.]]

* OurGargoylesRock: The sculpted mountains of Inquanok are revealed to be basically [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Evangelion]]-sized gargoyles which come to life every time someone tries to cross the pass.

%%* RuleOfThree: Carter has visions of his sunset city for three days, and when he knows he has to go to Kadath we're told it has been visited by only three men (two were DrivenToMadness and the third one is Atal, now an elderly priest in Ulthar).

* UnderwaterRuins: One, it's seen in the travel to Baharna. The city is apparently inhabited, but Carter gets to see a sacrificed man tied to a pillar, so he deduces the ruins must be populated by some kind of creatures, and not by precisely friendly ones.

* VaginaDentata: The gugs's mouth.

* EldritchLocation: The Dreamlands, naturally.

* HitchhikerHeroes: Randolph Carter himself.

* HumanoidAbomination: Nyarlathotep.

* JerkassGods: Nyarlathotep is a dick [[spoiler: [[LaserGuidedKarma who gets what's coming to him.]]]]

* WhereItAllBegan: Subverted. After a long, perilous journey, Carter returns to the enchanted forest where he started the quest, but it's not the very end of the story. In fact, that's kind of the midpoint.

* JerkassGods: Nyarlathotep is a dick [[spoiler: who gets what's coming to him.]]

** Lampshaded by Carter himself, who overhears the ghouls from several miles long and reminds himself that the Underworld has special laws about things like air and sound.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Averted. Carter speaks in fantasy languages when travelling the Dreamlands so much that he is relieved to encounter Pickman as they are both American and can speak in their own language.

* AntiEscapismAesop: Played in several ways, including commented, and ultimately played straight and defied at once. Carter is implied to have become a Dreamlands traveller in first place due to the boredom he feels towards his life in the real world, just like his friend Kuranes, who in turn warns him about the perils of abandoning his life to live in his dreams. Nonetheless, Carter is so focused on finding a particularly beautiful location of the dream-world that he barely thinks about his real life, and only when strongly reminded. At the end of the story, however, [[spoiler:he discovers that the place he was looking for was actually his own world all along -- specifically, it's Boston, where he was born -- and the realization helps him to come to terms with his quest and wake up from the dream in time to escape Nyarlathotep's death trap.]] The conclusion given is both simple and optimistic: the reality is superior to the dreams, but it is not merely because it is real (and thus, dreams are not bad only for being less real), it is because ''it's his home town''. Viewed in a particular perspective and with love and cherished memories, it is ''just that awesome''.
* AntiHero: Randolph Carter ''wishes'' to reach Kadath, and he takes a no-prisoners approach in his quest. He deceives people into releasing information, considers taking demi-gods hostage to blackmail the Earth Gods, and generally has no qualms about what he does. On the other hand, he is strongly loyal to the true friends he makes -- the cats of Ulthar[[note]]he repays their kindness by warning them of an upcoming raid by the Zoogs, although the Zoogs have also been his allies[[/note]] and the ghouls[[note]]to the point of derailing his own quest when he realizes some of his ghoul guides were captured by the moon people[[/note]] -- is also much more benign than many of the foes he finds, and has a sense of gratitude and compassion. Even after he gets old Atal shitfaced drunk on moonwine he helps him lie down to sleep and arranges his beard decorously.

* AstralProjection: In a sense. The main character is not himself in the Dreamlands, but just his dream self, what means that he can snap out of the story as an emergency backdoor simply by waking up. He considers doing this as a shortcut at one point but decides against it because he might forget important information. [[spoiler:He does do it at the end to escape Nyarlathotep's trap.]]

* AuthorAppeal: The village of Ulthar features a large population of cats, which are consecrated by the villagers, and Carter later enlists the help of an army of those animals. Lovecraft was a notorious cat lover.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: The leader of the moon-beasts does a rather epic LastStand in the Sarkomand island, felling several ghouls before being killed.

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: The cat race is in gratitude with Carter for his sympathy towards them, especially [[AndroclesLion after he helps a kitten who happens to be the grandson of a cat general.]] Their loyalty and care for him are both awesome and heartwrenching.

* BigDamnHeroes: The cats come in time to rescue Carter in the moon. Later, Carter himself leads a force to save three friendly ghouls who were captured by the same moon-beasts in Sarkomand. Finally, it's implied that Nodens and the intelligent violet gas S’ngac have a hand in aiding Carter [[spoiler:to escape Nyarlathotep's trap.]]

* BountyHunter: The black shipmen kidnap Carter in order to sell him to Nyarlathotep in exchange for favors, as Gnarly is after him in order to impede his quest.

* ChekhovsGun: Carter is presented with moon wine by the zoogs, and he later uses it to bribe Atal (read: to get him shitfaced) in exchange for more information about the places of the gods, specifically the mount Ngranek in Oriab island.
* ChromosomeCasting: Characteristical to Lovecraft, there is zero female characters in this story.

* ContrivedCoincidence: It's hard to pin down what is contrived in the dream-world and what is not, but it happens that Carter comes over the zoogs discussing their plans to attack the cats in his second journey through the fungus forest. Being the KindheartedCatLover he is, Randolph is fast in warning them of the menace.

* DarkIsNotEvil: The ghouls are necrophague creatures and quite creepy in appearance, but they are explicitly described as very respectful and helpful, at least towards their friends. The Night-Gaunts, although never stop being creepy to Carter, are also shown to be loyal allies. If you know a certain password, they will be very helpful, hold you respectfully as they fly, and won't tickle you to make you keep still.

* HappyPlace: As Kuranes's body died and thus he cannot wake up from the dream world anymore, he dream-built a copy of his town and Cornwall in Celephais in order to cope with his nostalgy.

* HeelFaceTurn: The Night-Gaunts's first apparition is to abduct and creep out Carter. However, he later finds out that they have a pact with his friend Pickman and his ghouls, as well that they serve Nodens[[note]]An actual Celtic god of healing[[/note]] and not Nyarlathotep as thought, so he recruits them for his side.
* HeroesPreferSwords: Carter goes usually unarmed, but he mentions to carry a scimitar with him when ascending the Ngranek, just in case. However, it gets stolen by a Night-Gaunt.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Atal returns from ''The Cats of Ulthar'' and ''The Other Gods'' and talks Carter from those and his own quest with Barzai, as well as Richard Pickman from ''Pickman’s Model''. Kuranes from ''Celephais'' appears as well.

* IfItSwimsItFlies: The sinister ships in which Carter is captured leave the water and fly towards the moon in their travel, though it is mentioned as due the natural course of their route and not because the ships are special themselves (they still might be, however).
* ImprobableWeaponUser: The three ghouls who escort Carter in his travel underground back to the forest carry a big tombstone in order to use as a tool and weapon, and they actually strike a ghast into a pulp with it.

* JerkassGods: Nyarlathotep is a dick. [[spoiler: who gets what's coming to him.]]
* KindHeartedCatLover: Randolph Carter is described as loving small black kittens more than anything in the world. This works to his advantage when he gets kidnapped by aliens. That kitten turns up later as a young lieutenant in the cat army that rescues Carter from the moon beasts. He tries to follow Carter then, but his grandfather won't discharge him; but it's strongly implied that he is the black cat in Carter's home at the very end of the story.

* MotherOfAThousandYoung: The mother of the shantak birds, which is kept in the darkness of a vault in Inganok. It spawned her entire race and has apparently DreamWeaver powers.

* {{Nephilim}}: It's recounted that the gods of Kadath often mate with villagers from around the city, so they all carry divine blood. Interestingly, according to Carter, their blood would manifest in form of their general appearance, {{Cloudcuckoolander}} personalities and "much higher thoughts than any man," not in special powers of any kind.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: As Nyarlathotep puts, [[spoiler:the Earthly Gods abandoned Kadath to inhabit the shining city which Carter dreamt of, and by doing so the natural order was altered. Nyarlathotep sends Carter supposedly to convince the gods to return to Kadath in order to get the balance back.]] However, it's revealed that [[spoiler:it is all a ruse to send him to his bane and that Nyarlathotep was controlling the Earthly Gods all the time.]]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep plots to send Carter to Azathoth under the fake destination of the city build by Randolph’s memories of youth, but his PurpleProse-filled description of those, meant to charm Carter, ends up giving Randolph the strength he needs to recreate them in the void Nyarlat was trying to throw him, using them to wake up and return to his real world.]]

* OhCrap: Carter and the three ghouls have one at the top of the gugs' stairway, as they heard something is thrashing the gug they have killed and left behind.
* OurGargoylesRock: The sculpted mountains of Inquanok are revealed to be basically [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Evangelion]]-sized gargoyles which come to live every time someone tries to cross the pass.

* RichBoredom: King Kuranes of Celephais is bored in his throne and would rather return to his past life.
* RuleOfThree: Carter has visions of his sunset city for three days, and when he knows he has to go to Kadath we're told it has been visited by only three men (two were DrivenToMadness and the third one is Atal, now an elderly priest in Ulthar).

* SlaveMooks: The inhuman shipmen are revealed to be slaves for the moon toads.

* WasItReallyWorthIt: Kuranes states to Carter that he would gladly give his immortal throne in Celephais for returning to his home and past life, and warns him to think twice before continuing with his quest for the sunset city.

* WhatMeasureIsANonCute: Randolph Carter is perfectly fine for the cats to eat the zoogs that have been following him, because he likes cats a lot better... and because the zoogs have been threatening to [[EatsBabies eat the kittens]].

* IdentityAmnesia: Carter believes himself to have lived in his sunset city at some forgotten time, but it is not clear whether it is true ([[spoiler: It is.]] or just an idle dream of his.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: The swarthy shipmen who come to Dylath-Leen to trade rubies are described as such by sailors due to their conspicuous costumes and [[TheNeedless lack of shipping supplies]], and are later revealed [spoilers]to be effectively non-human.[/spoilers]

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Averted. Carter speaks in fantasy languages when travellling the Dreamlands so much that he is relieved to encounter Pickman as they are both American and can speak in their own language.
* AmbiguouslyHuman: The swarthy shipmen who come to Dylath-Leen to trade rubies are described as such by sailors due to their conspicuous costumes and [[TheNeedless lack of shipping supplies]], and are later revealed s/to be effectively non-human./s

* AmbiguouslyHuman: The swarthy shipmen who come to Dylath-Leen to trade rubies are described as such by sailors due to their conspicuous costumes and [[TheNeedless lack of shipping supplies]], and are late revealed to be effectively non-human.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Averted. Carter speaks in fantasy languages when travellling the Dreamlands, so much that he is relieved of encountering Pickman as they are both American and can speak in their own language.

Uncelebrated writer and illustrious dreamer Randolph Carter dreams three times of a majestic sunset city, but each time he is abruptly snatched away before he can see it up close. When he prays to the gods of dream to reveal the whereabouts of the phantasmal city, they do not answer, and his dreams of the city stop altogether. Undaunted, Carter decides to use all his talents in the dream-world to find the legendary city of Kadath, where the wiser Earth Gods live, in order to ask them for the location of his beloved sunset city. He initiates a quest through the depths of the Dreamlands, finding the weirdest things and meeting the strangest friends and foes.

* AntiHero: Randolph Carter ''wishes'' to reach Kadath, and he takes a no-prisoners approach in his quest. He deceives people into releasing information, plans to take demi-gods hostage to blackmail the Earth Gods, and generally has no qualms about what he does. On the other hand, he is strongly loyal to the true friends he makes -- the cats of Ulthar[[note]]he repays their kindness by warning them of an upcoming raid by the Zoogs, although the Zoogs have also been his allies[[/note]] and the ghouls[[note]]to the point of derailing his own quest when he realizes some of his ghoul guides were captured and being held at the nameless rock[[/note]] -- is also much more benign than many of the foes he finds, and has a sense of gratitude and compassion.

* IdentityAmnesia: Carter believes himself to have lived in Kadath at some forgotten time, but it is not clear whether it is true or just an idle dream of his.

* JerkassGods: Nyarlathotep is a dick. See the ending of ''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath''.

* LethalLavaLand: Mount Ngranek is said to be an inactive volcano (it was active at the time the Gods were), and people from around it have built mining camps on it, though not too high in the mountain, as it is a ForbiddenZone.

* {{Lunarians}}: The dreamworlds’s moon is inhabited and features seas and fields just like the Earth. The main race there is some kind of evil toad people.

** The carved face on Ngranek.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: As Nyarlathotep puts, [[spoiler:the Earthly Gods abandoned Kadath to inhabit the shining city which Carter dreamt with, which was no other thing than the representation of Carter's youth memories, and by doing so the natural order was altered. Nyarlathotep sends Carter supposedly to convince the gods to return to Kadath in order to get the balance back.]] However, it's revealed that [[spoiler:it is all a ruse to send him to his bane and that Nyarlathotep was controlling the Earthly Gods all the time.]]

* OhCrap: Carter and the three ghouls have one at the top of the gugs's stairway, as they heard something is thrashing the gug they have killed and left behind.

* AntiEscapismAesop: Played in several ways, including commented, and ultimately played straight and defied at once. Carter is implied to have become a Dreamlands traveller in first place due to the boredom he feels towards his life in the real world, just like his friend Kuranes, who in turn warns him about the perils of abandoning his life to live in his dreams. Nonetheless, Carter is so focused on finding a particularly beautiful location of the dream-world that he barely thinks about his real life, and only when strongly reminded. At the end of the story, however, [[spoiler:he discovers that the place he was looking for was actually his own world all along, and the realization helps him to come to terms with his quest and wake up from the dream in time to escape Nyarlathotep's death trap.]] The conclusion given is both simple and optimistic: the reality is superior to the dreams, but it is not because is real (and thus, dreams are not bad only for being less real), it is because the real world is actually more awesome than any dream.
* AntiHero: Randolph Carter ''wishes'' to reach Kadath, and he takes a no-prisoners approach in his quest. He deceives people into releasing information, turns against a race which had previously helped him for no other reason that his personal likings, plans to take demi-gods hostage to blackmail the Earth Gods, and generally has no qualms about what he does. On the other hand, he is strongly loyal to the true friends he makes, is also much more benign than many of the foes he finds, and has a sense of gratitude and compassion.

* AstralProjection: In a sense. The main character is not himself in the Dreamlands, but just his dream self, what means that he can snap out of the story as an emergency backdoor simply by waking up. [[spoiler:Which he does at the end to escape Nyarlathotep's trap.]]

* BigDamnHeroes: The cats come in time to rescue Carter in the moon. Later, Carter himself leads a force to save three friendly ghouls who were captured by the same moon-beasts in Sarkomand. Finally, it's implied that Nodens and S’ngac have a hand in aiding Carter [[spoiler:to escape Nyarlathotep's trap.]]

* BottomlessPit: There is one in the Leng monastery, and the oriental merchant who sells Carter to the great priest is swiftly thrown into it when Randolph sees his chance to escape.

* CatsAreMean: Their ruthlessness during the battle in the moon shocks even the cat-loving Carter, who watches how the felines completely wreck his former captors. In a straighter example, the big cats from Saturn ''are'' explicitly evil and are friends with the bad guys.

* DreamWalker: Carter is an experienced dreamer, so the dream-worlds are more like a {{RPG}} videogame for him.

* HeroOfAnotherStory: Atal returns from ''The Cats of Ulthar'' and ''The Other Gods'' and talks Carter from those and its own quest with Barzai, as well as Richard Pickman from ''Pickman’s Model''. Kuranes from ''Celephais'' appears as well.

* IAmAHumanitarian: The inhuman shipmen are revealed to devour the black slaves they trade their ruby stones for. Carter finds this out in a creepy IAteWhat moment.

* TheLostWoods: The first place in the quest is a dark forest, infested with fungus and zoogs.

* PortTown: More or less every city Carter visits is a bucolic port town with dark streets and mysterious taverns.

* RuleOfThree: Carter has visions of Kadath for three days, and the universe where the city is built is said to have been visited by only three men (two were DrivenToMadness and the third one is Kuranes).
* SceneryPorn: The story could be alternatively titled ''Scenery Porn: The Novella''. Kadath itself stands out; even before reaching the city, Carter had lush dreams about its beautiful landscape.

* TheStrategist: Pickman proves to be a brilliant military commander at the battle of the Sarkomand rock island, as well as Carter, who also leads a part of the ghoul force.

* UnderwaterRuins: One it's seen in the travel to Baharna. The city is apparently inhabited, but Carter gets to see a sacrificed man tied to a pillar, so he deduces the ruins must be populated by some kind of creatures, and not by precisely friendly ones.
* TheUnfettered: The antiheroic Carter is distinctively willing to do anything in order to find his beloved city. One of his first plans would involve abducting one of the demi-gods of Kadath in order to use him as a hostage.

* WasItReallyWorthIt: Kuranes states to Carter that he would gladly give his immortal throne in Celephais for returning to his home and past life, and warns him to think twice before continuing with his quest for Kadath.

* WhereItAllBegan: Subverted. After a long, perilous journey, Carter returns to the fungus forest where he started the quest, but it's not the very end of the story.

* LethalLavaLand: Mount Ngranek is said to be an inactive volcano (it was active at the time the Gods were), and people from around it have built mining camps on it, though not too high in the mountain, as it is a ForbiddenPlace.

* DarkIsNotEvil: The ghouls are necrophague creatures and quite creepy in appearance, but they are explicitly described as very respectful and helpful, at least towards their friends. The Night-Gaunts, although never stop being creepy to Carter, are also shown to be loyal allies.

* GratuitousAnimalSidekick: The black kitten who follows Carter does so basically just because, or at least because he likes him and is liked in return.

* HeelFaceTurn: The Night-Gaunts's first apparition is to abduct and creep out Carter. However, he later finds out that they have a pact with his friend Pickman and his ghouls, as well that they serve Nodens and not Nyarlathotep as thought, so he recruits them for his side.

* HeroOfAnotherStory: Atal returns from ''The Other Gods'' and talks Carter from those and its own quest with Barzai, as well as Richard Pickman from ''Pickman’s Model''. Kuranes from ''Celephais'' appears as well.

* {{Nephilim}}: It's recounted that the gods of Kadath often mate with villagers from around the city, so they all carry divine blood. Interestingly, according to Carter, their blood would manifest in form of {{Cloudcuckoolander}} personalities and "much higher thoughts than any man," not in special powers of any kind.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: As Nyarlathotep puts, [[spoiler:the Earthly Gods abandoned Kadath to inhabit the shining city which Carter dreamt with, which was no other thing than the representation of Carter's youth memories, and by doing so the natural order was altered. Nyarlathotep sends Carter to convince the gods to return to Kadath in order to get the balance back.]] However, it's revealed that [[spoiler:it is all a ruse to send him to his bane and that Nyarlathotep was controlling the Earthly Gods all the time.]]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep plots to send Carter to Azathot under the fake destination of the city build by Randolph’s memories of youth, but his PurpleProse-filled description of those, meant to charm Carter, ends up giving Randolph the strength he needs to recreate them in the void Nyarlat was trying to throw him, using them to wake up and return to his real world.]]

* CatsAreMagic: As well as a thoroughly wise, supernaturally gifted and relatively benevolent race. They even can fly between the Earth and the moon, which they usually do at night.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: The black shipmen who come to Dylath-Leen to trade rubies are described as such by sailors due to their conspicuous costumes and [[TheNeedless lack of shipping supplies]], and are late revealed to be effectively non-human.

* RageAgainstTheHeavens: Carter starts a quest to visit Kadath despite the Gods's will to impede him from doing it.

* ShiningCity: Kadath, as seen and described by Carter.

An unpublished novella by Creator/HPLovecraft, '''''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath''''' is both the longest of his stories and a massive {{Crossover}} between the characters and locations of his Dream Cycle. Although not a specially well known work of his, it has been called one of Lovecraft's greatest and most epic pieces of writing, as well as one of the most uncharacteristically optimist ones, and is a wonderful example of how even a man who lived in a world of nightmares could conceive tales of awesomeness and hope.