Oriab

Last updated November 15, 2019

Oriab (or Isle of Oriab) is a fictional location in H. P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands. It is a large island in the Southern Sea and is lush and fertile. Its most prominent landmark is the tall, snow-capped mountain Ngranek. It is home to the magah birds that nest in its resin trees.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird fiction and horror fiction. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, he spent most of his life there, and his fiction was primarily set against a New England backdrop. Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor, and he subsisted in progressively strained circumstances in his last years. He died of cancer at the age of 46.

Locations

Baharna

Baharna is a major seaport on the northern coast of Oriab. It has "wharves of... porphyry, and the city rises in great stone terraces behind them, having streets of steps that are frequently arched over by buildings, and bridges between buildings." (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft.) A pair of lighthouses named Thon and Thal guide ships to its harbor.

Porphyry is a textural term for an igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz dispersed in a fine-grained silicate rich, generally aphanitic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts. In its non-geologic, traditional use, the term porphyry refers to the purple-red form of this stone, valued for its appearance.

Baharna is known for both its pottery and for the curious figurines that its artists carve from the lava of Ngranek. The people of Baharna ride zebras in place of horses.

Lava is molten rock generated by geothermal energy and expelled through fractures in planetary crust or in an eruption, usually at temperatures from 700 to 1,200 °C. The structures resulting from subsequent solidification and cooling are also sometimes described as lava. The molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites, though such material located below the crust is referred to by other terms.

Zebras are several species of African equids united by their distinctive black-and-white striped coats. Their stripes come in different patterns, unique to each individual. They are generally social animals that live in small harems to large herds. Unlike their closest relatives, horses and donkeys, zebras have never been truly domesticated.

Ngranek

Ngranek (or Mount Ngranek) is a towering extinct volcano, and is two-days ride by zebra from Baharna. Lava gatherers frequent its slopes, but none climb too high for fear of the dreaded Nightgaunts.

A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.

Caves in Ngranek connect with tunnels that stretch to the lower reaches of the Dreamlands. Nightgaunts regularly use these passageways to travel to and from the underworld.

The gods of earth, the Great Ones, once dwelt on the pinnacle of Ngranek, but now reside at Kadath. The gods have marked their prior residence here, with a gigantic likeness of their image carved into the far side of the mountain. That part of Ngranek is hard to reach because it faces sheer, jagged cliffs and a lava-filled ravine. Rumors hint that men who once lived there angered the gods, but what fate befell them after that is unknown.

Lake of Yath

Yath is a large inland lake that lies just to the south of Baharna. Beside the lake are rolling hills and small villages, whose residents dwell in modest stone houses, and tend groves of fragrant resin trees. A road leading to Ngranek lies along Yath. An underground canal, with granite gates, connects Yath with Baharna and passes under the entire city.

The ruins of an ancient city, whose name and history long forgotten, lie on the shores of Yath opposite from Baharna. These ruins are shunned, most likely because of the nocturnal bloodsucking creatures, known as wamps, that dwell there.

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References

Lovecraft, Howard P. (1985) [1926]. "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". In S.T. Joshi (ed.). At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (7th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-038-6. Definitive version from original manuscripts.

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