![]() ![]() Eventually, as Antarctica became uninhabitable even for the Old Ones, they migrated into a large, subterranean ocean.Īs the two progress further into the city, they are ultimately drawn to a massive, ominous entrance which is the opening of a tunnel which they believe leads into the subterranean region described in the murals. The murals also allude to some unnamed evil in an even larger mountain range just past their city which even they fear greatly. As more resources are applied to maintaining order, the etchings become haphazard and primitive. Uncannily, the images also reflect a degradation in the order of this civilization, as the Shoggoths gain independence. As more buildings are explored, a fantastic vista opens of the history of races beyond the scope of man's understanding, including the Old Ones' conflicts with the Cthulhi and the Mi-Go who arrived on Earth sometime after the Old Ones themselves. They built their cities with the help of " Shoggoths", organisms created to perform any task, assume any form, and reflect any thought. By exploring these fantastic structures, the men are able to learn the history of the Elder Things or Old Ones, by interpreting their magnificent hieroglyphic murals: The Old Ones first came to Earth shortly after the Moon was pulled loose from the planet and were the creators of life. Dyer decides to close off the area from which they took their samples.ĭyer and a student named Danforth fly an airplane over the mountains, which they soon realize are the outer wall of a huge, abandoned stone city of cubes and cones, utterly alien to any human architecture. They discover that the better-preserved life forms have vanished and that some form of experiment has been done, though they are only able to speculate on the subject and the possibility that it is the missing man and dog. Near the camp, they find six star-shaped snow mounds, and a damaged Elder One buried under each. ![]() The camp is devastated and both the men and the dogs slaughtered, with only one of each missing. When the main expedition loses contact with this party, Dyer and the rest of his colleagues travel to their camp to investigate. Because of their resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, they are dubbed the "Elder Ones". Their highly-evolved features are problematic: their stratum location puts them at a point on the geologic time scale much too early for such features to have naturally evolved yet. Six of the specimens seem to be badly damaged, the others uncannily pristine. The group that discovered and crossed the mountains found the remains of fourteen ancient life forms, completely unknown to science and unidentifiable as either plants or animals, after discovering an underground cave while boring for ice cores. On a previous expedition there, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, led by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalaya. ![]() He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. The story is written in the first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University. A non sequitur mass-market paperback cover, and the current cover used for the Del Rey Books publication. ![]()
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