I know that each of the Ancient Ones dwells in one of the Other Worlds in the game.

Can you match each of the AOs to his/her/its homeworld?

Like, for instance, I know that Cthulhu resides in in Ryleh and reckon that the Plateau of Leng is Atlach-Nacha's habitat.

What about the rest? Can you make an educated guess based on the AO's worshippers' dimensional symbol? So, if Dark young are hexagon monsters, does that mean that Shub-Niggurath lives in the Abyss?

I know that the dual-color Other World encounters that pit you against an Ancient One-each takes place in the AO's homeworld. I just don't remember which is which.

The 'homes' depicted in Arkham Horror are not entirely accurate. Hastur is more associated with Carcosa, for example, but Carcosa was not available when CotDP was released. Also, Yog Sothoth really does not have a home plane - he has the cool abode 'between the spheres', in the green swirly thing between the otherworlds.- or in the LiTaS box.

I dare not share more than this in public lest terrible consequences befall me, as I am not in a completely spherical environment atm...If you are really interested in this, I recommend Daniel Harms excellent encyclopedia of the Mythos, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana. But be warned! - it has a hefty sanity loss....

Also, on a tangent from your actual question, but not all "Other Worlds" are actually other worlds. R'lyeh, for example, is somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the Plateau of Leng is in Antarctica.

The dimensional symbols are not assigned consistently among monsters from a single place, and if I'm not too much mistaken, there are a number of places certain monsters may have come from. There were Elder Things at Leng in Mountains of Madness, but they've showed up in other places in other stories, too. Where they originally hail from is anybody's guess (AFAIK.) To make a consistent "mapping" would probably require far too many different dimensional symbols to be manageable by other game mechanics (ie: too many symbols and each Mythos card would only move a small fraction of the total - many of which may not be on the board at that time.)

Well, thats not entirely accurate - Leng is also part of the Dreamlands (hence it is next to it on the board and there is an encounter that has you wandering over there), but it also has earthly locations so its exact location is unclear. Given the nature of these places it is possible, even likely, that they exist in more than one place at a time, or move about. Cthulhus sunken island is somehow not quite part of our dimension, too, as evidenced by its architecture. In my view, 'place' is less useful for locating them than 'state of mind' is.

dj2.0 said:

I think the point was more that R'lyeh can be reached by boat, as opposed to portal. Though you are right, nothing in Lovecrafts worlds is 100% physical.

The Dreamlands could probably be said to contain bits of everyplace since they are ... you know.... The Dreamlands. Unknown Cadath is somewhere in the Dreamlands. I believe Yuggoth is Pluto. The Abyss is a kind of composite of several places including, but not necessarily limited to, the subteranian sea beneath Antarctica or indeed several subteranian locations on earth, and several areas in The Dreamlands. The City of the Great Race I don't believe is a single location either as The Great Race exists simultaneously in the past and the future of earth and probably several other times and locations throughout the universe.

As for which ancient ones go where I can only add for sure that Nyarlathotep and Azathoth both have a presence in The Dreamlands. I think technically Azathoth is everywhere since he is the center of the universe though.

Recall the dual-color OW cards from Dark Pharaoh.

It never made sense to me that Shub-Niggurath was found in Yuggoth. When Dunwich Horror was released, it introduced Lost Carcosa (Hastur's home world).

By sheer coincidence, Shub's dual-color card is Yellow/Blue, just like Lost Carcosa! So, whenever I draw the Yellow/Blue OW card, it activates in Lost Carcosa instead of Yuggoth, and you fight Hastur instead of Shub.

Actually, I designed a replacement encounter in Strange Eons and pasted it over the official one. But including Hastur has the additional unexpected consequence of having an AO who attacks sanity to counter Ithaqua's stamina attack.

Veet said:

I'm pretty sure it's specifically referring to the Yithian city (Wikipedia tells me it's called The Lost City of Pnakotus) that the protagonist of The Shadow Out of Time is stuck in.

It never made sense to me that Shub-Niggurath was found in Yuggoth.

I guess it is referring to the fact that the Mi-Go worshipp Shub? But I do like your Hastur/Carcosa idea.

I'm not well-versed in Lovecraft and all that Mythos lore, which is why I was asking; still, I think there's some reasoning behind the dimensional symbols for the monsters in the game. There are no gates with the moon symbol because all moon monsters originate directly from Arkham(Cultists, Maniacs, all the standard undead), which is why I thought some AOs' homeplanes could be traced by their non-humanoid worshippers and the dual-colored mini-battle encounters.But there are mismatches which may indicate that some of the other worlds overlap. For instance, if Atlach Nacha is present in the Plateau of Leng, its worshippers, the Leng spiders should have the diamond symbol, but they don't. Guess it's just an arbitrary design choice.

Isn't there an otherworld encounter that has the investigator encounter the Yithians in their future bodies though? Also logic follows that there should be at least 3 such cities, one on Yith, the one in Australia that they inhabited in the past and one they have not yet built.

Brine said:

But the Mi-go are circles (Yuggoth) and all of Shuib's offspring are hex (Abyss) so there is a disconnect there. There's also a slight disconnect with running into Ithiqua in Leng, the leng that is currently covered in ice is in the antarctic circle while Ithiqua is banished to the arctic.

zealot12 said:

Well, they do generally attempt to match them up, but it's an imperfect process, mainly because there are fewer symbols than dimensions. So, for example, R'lyeh has a plus sign, and sealing it banishes the Deep Ones and Priests of Dagon and so on, but Carcosa is the other plus-sign gate, so its High Priests get lumped in there too.

Aren't Plateau of Leng, The Abyss, Unknown Kadath, and The Underworld all subsections of The Dreamlands anyway?

According to the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, the Plateau of Leng is near Kadath in the Cold Waste. Reports in different stories place it in Asia, Antarctica, Burma, and the Dreamlands.

The same source lists Kadath as lying beyond Leng in the Dreamlands, or on a mountain chain in the Antarctic.

I don't know about the Abyss or the Underworld

Well I just finished reading Dream Quest, and Carter had to travel north in the Dreamlands, past the Plateau of Leng, to get to Unknown Kadath.

At one point he found himself in the dreamlands's Underworld, and later as he fled Leng he found the ruins of Sarkomand, which marks the Great Abyss.

I'm sure of all the ones I posted before, except for The Abyss. That could be a generic name.

Tibs said:

I'm not sure about the Abyss either, but you'll notice that the other four are all part of the Dreamlands, at least in the game, because the Hypnos guardian gives a +1 bonus to encounters in those four other worlds.

Tibs said:

Great tale, the Dream-quest of the unknown Kadath . Btw, have you read even the end of Carter's cycle? I mean, Through the gates of the Silver Key , written with E. Hoffman-Price.

No, I just finished "The Silver Key" so I'll have to look into the other stories.

Tibs said:

Ah, ok :-) Anyway, The Silver Key is probably the tale I like the most :-)

I wonder how long Pickman, the ghouls, and the night-gaunts waited for Carter to come back out of Kadath? I know the night-gaunts weren't going to get bored, but those poor ghouls...?