He adamantly refuses to tell a soul what he saw. Both escape, having luck and wits on their side and fly the plane to safety.Īs they are high above the plateau of the eldritch city, Danforth looks beyond the city itself and sees something that causes him to go completely mad. A bubbling mass of protoplasm with eyes continuously appearing and disappearing. Here, they see huge, six-foot-tall, blind penguins wandering around, and bodies of Elder Things who died in a savage struggle. The two relate it to the region described in the murals, and they stride onward. As the narration nears its peak, the pair is nearing a huge entrance. The two discover traces of the Elder Things, including the corpses of Gedney and the missing dog from the advance camp. It was the seven preserved Elder Things who returned to life, killed the crew, and fled into the city. The last of the murals explain when Antarctica became uninhabitable, the Elder Things moved to a large, subterranean ocean.ĭyer and Danforth realize that it wasn’t Gedney the one who killed Lake’s group. Lastly, the murals point out that some terrible evil, unknown in name, is located in a larger range beyond the city. This fact is obvious in their murals becoming more and more primitive as history goes onward. Their main objective became survival instead of knowledge. Their whole race devolved from god-like creators to primitive gatherers because of this conflict. How their civilization degraded after the Shoggoths rebelled against their masters. The murals reflect the whole passage of time for the Elder Things. These include the wars between the Elder Things and the Star Spawn of Cthulhu, the Cthulhi, and the Mi-Go race who arrived after the Old Ones did. They created all life (by accident, from the residue of their creations the Shoggoth.)Īs Dyer and Danforth explore, they find more fragments and the histories of races beyond mankind’s comprehension. These creatures could take any form and reflect any thought. For the building of their cities, they genetically engineered creatures named Shoggoths. As the murals explain, the Elder Things came to Earth when the Moon got separated from the planet. From hieroglyphic murals covering the walls of these structures, they learn the history of the Elder Things (or Old Ones). The two land the plane and begin exploring. The shape of buildings was completely paradoxical, with cubes, cones and weird geometric shapes that should not be. The mountain range is, in fact, the outer range of a huge, abandoned city with alien architecture. They discover something both fantastic and horrifying. Dyer and a student of his, Danforth, fly an airplane over the mountains.

At the mountains of madness summary