At The Mountains of Madness
At The Mountains of Madness details the disastrous results of an arctic expedition in 1930. The researchers discover remains of the lost civilization of the "Elder Things" and writes the manuscript to urge others to not return to the relic city.
Dyer's Folly
The story begins from the perspective of Geologist William Dyer, who is writing to prevent an upcoming return expedition to the arctic. To dissuade, he details his experience of the destination. He discusses their discovery of 14 unknown prehistoric creatures, and that they were unable to be identified as either plant or animal. The main expedition soon loses contact with Professor Lake's party, the leader of a smaller advance group. The main group arrives at Lake's camp to discover it is ruined and destroyed, and that most of the men and dogs are slaughtered violently. Upon closer examination, they find that the better-preserved specimens of the unknown creatures have been taken, and that some of the bodies left in the destruction had been carefully dissected and examined.
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Lake's Camp, Pre-Disaster
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The Missing and the Mountain
The Mountain-City
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Dyer's group discover one person unaccounted for, and assume that he must have gone mad and slaughtered everyone before fleeing to the nearby mountain. They take an airplane to the mountain and discover it is actually the outer walls of a vast unknown city, similar to one described in the Necronomicon. Dyer discovers the story of the "Elder Ones" who built the city, how they came to our world at the time the moon formed, and how they built the city with the help of "Shoggoths," which were creatures created to do any task, assume any form, and reflect any thought. It is hinted that all life evolved from the cellular remains of shoggoths.
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The Shoggoth
Dyer learns of the civilization's downfall at the hands of the newly-independent shoggoths. The Elder ones learned of a great evil hidden in the mountain and, upon Antarctica becoming uninhabitable, soon migrated deep into the sea. Exploring deeper into the city, they discover the body of their missing comrade, and his dog, and find a tunnel filled with evidence of Elder Ones dying in a struggle, and numerous six foot tall blind penguins milling around, presumably as a food source. Further into the tunnel, they are confronted by a thick, bubbling, oily mass - A Shoggoth. The creature is described as having no form, and possessing numerous "eyes" that bubble to the surface and shift and disappear. Dyer's assistant looks back, and sees something that causes him to lose his sanity, implied to be the "Great Evil" spoken of earlier. Dyer concludes that the Elder Thing specimens found earlier slaughtered the men and dogs out of scientific curiosity, and that the Shoggoth remained fed on penguins from an ancient time. He concludes his testament with an urging to the next research party - stay away from the site.
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Artist's Rendition of a Shoggoth
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