Night-gaunts

In his dreams, Randolph Carter sees a majestic city, but is unable to approach it. In dream, Carter consults priests in a temple that borders the Dreamlands. They warn him of great danger should he continue with his quest to reach the city and suggest that the gods purposefully stopped his visions. The Zoogs, a race of predatory rodents, direct him to Ulthar to find the priest Atal. In the cat-laden city of Ulthar, Atal mentions a huge mountainside carving of the gods’ features. Carter is kidnapped by turbaned slavers, who take him to the moon and deliver him to horrible moon-beasts, the servants of malevolent god Nyarlathotep. The cats of Ulthar, Carter’s allies, rescue him and return him to a port city. Carter finds the carving, recognizing the visage of the gods in traders who dock at Celephaïs. Before he can act on his knowledge, faceless, winged creatures called nightgaunts capture him and leave him to die in the underworld. Friendly ghouls, including Carter’s friend Richard Pickman, assist him in returning to the surface by sneaking through the terrible city of the man-eating Gugs. Carter meets Celephaïs’ king, his friend Kuranes, who became a permanent resident of the Dreamlands upon his death in the waking world. Longing for home, he has dreamed parts of his kingdom to resemble his native Cornwall. Kuranes knows the pitfalls of the Dreamlands well but fails to dissuade Carter from his quest. Carter boards a ship bound for Inganok. As they draw near, Carter spots a nameless island from which he hears strange howls. Carter is captured by a merchant he had previously encountered. Monstrous birds fly them over the Plateau of Leng, a vast tableland populated by Pan-like horned humanoid beings. Carter is brought to a monastery inhabited by the dreaded High Priest Not to Be Described. He learns that the Men of Leng are the slavers who captured him, and had worn turbans to conceal their horns. He also learns that the nightgaunts do not serve Nyarlathotep, as is commonly supposed, but Nodens, and that even Earth’s gods fear them. Carter recoils in horror as he realizes the masked high-priest’s true identity. Carter flees. After rescuing several ghouls from Men of Leng, Carter and ghoul reinforcements attack a moon-beast outpost on the nameless rock. He obtains the services of a flock of nightgaunts to transport himself and the ghouls to the gods’ castle on Kadath, but finds it empty. A great procession led by a pharaoh-like man, Nyarlathotep, arrives and tells Carter that the city of his dreams is the childhood memories of his home city of Boston. The gods of earth have seen the city of Carter’s dreams and made it their home, abandoning Kadath and their responsibilities. Nyarlathotep grants Carter passage, but Carter realizes too late that the mocking Nyarlathotep has tricked him, and he is being taken to the court of Azathoth at the center of the universe. At first believing he is doomed, Carter suddenly remembers that he is in a dream and wakes. Nyarlathotep broods over his defeat within the halls of Kadath, mocking in anger the “mild gods of earth” whom he has snatched back from the sunset city.