R'lyeh is a sunken city located deep under the Pacific Ocean and is where the Great Old One Cthulhu is interred. R'lyeh's bizarre architecture is characterized by its non-Euclidean geometry.
Description[]
The city is described as a panorama of "vast angles and stone surfaces..too great to belong to anything right and proper for this Earth, and impious with horrible images and disturbing hieroglyphs." The geometry of R'lyeh is "abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours." The strange architecture of the city makes navigation on foot disorienting and treacherous; surfaces that appear flat may actually be tilted, and angles of masonry that appear convex at first glance may actually be concave.
Despite being a city or a realm that houses horrors that exists beyond the basic concepts of the universe, R'lyeh is said to be precisely located at 47°9'S 126°43'W in the southern Pacific Ocean. This location can be found at the Pacific oceanic pole of inaccessibility (48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W), the point in the ocean farthest from any land. Some coordinates place the city approximately 5100 nautical miles (5900 statute miles or 9500 kilometers), or about ten days journey for a fast ship, from the real island of Pohnpei (Ponape).
History[]
Origins[]
Before the Age of Man, when the gods warred against the Old Ones, Dagon first dug the great pits of R'lyeh deep beneath the depths of the southern Pacific Ocean. And from the foundations, gargantuan Deep Ones would construct R'lyeh in order to prepare it for Cthulhu's arrival from the stars during the primordial epoch of the Earth. When the stars were aligned, it paved way for Cthulhu to harmlessly traverse towards the Earth with R'lyeh acting as a conduit.
In fact, it is said that there was once a continental mass that laid in the center of the Pacific which was two-thirds the size of Australia. Cthulhu had his great and hideous palace built there as a way to establish the dominance of the Old Ones over the Earth and where light from the gods cannot reach. It is said that the darkness which emanated from R'lyeh was said to be so terrible that it even repelled the angels themselves.
Battle of the Powers[]
From R'lyeh, Cthulhu would breed and unleash "unspeakable horror" that turned the landmass into a nightmarish hellscape fitting for Cthulhu's image and whims. It was not just the Cthulhi, but also creatures like Deep Ones and other eldritch abominations associated with the Slumbering God roamed and haunted the non-Euclidean halls of R'lyeh. It was from R'lyeh that the second host of Ogdru Hem would congregate, several of them at least, as others would be stationed within their own abode around the Earth.
When Cthulhu and the second host of Ogdru Hem waged war against the gods and most of the Heavenly Host, Cthulhu was violently struck by a combined assault from the heads of the Divine Council that being Zeus, Odin, Ra, and Indra. When the stars were misaligned, it took effect on Cthulhu as well given that he was tied with the temporal cosmic energies used by R'lyeh to aid him in passing through the barriers of the physical planes. As a result, he entered a forced deep slumber in his own fortress. Afterward, it is said that Zeus and Poseidon leveled and flooded the entire continent of which R'lyeh stood upon, sinking it beneath the Pacific and removing Cthulhu's stain from the Earth forever.
Call of Cthulhu[]
R'lyeh's existence came to light for certain mad tribal groups worshipping Cthulhu and his ilk. It is sometimes referred to in the ritualistic phrase "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which roughly translates to "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." When R'lyeh rises, the only portion of the city that emerges is a single "hideous monolith-crowned citadel" in which Cthulhu is entombed. The human onlookers are awed by the sheer immensity of the city and by the frightening suggestiveness of the gargantuan statues and bas-reliefs.