R'lyeh
“When people ask me about the underwater city where a monster lives, I get so frustrated because I lived through the ordeal of being put into restraints whenever I would tell anyone that the monster will devour them and take their souls, and wipe humanity off the face of the earth. But people still ask me about the city under the sea as if they can just go visit it. I dunno, I could have just been high or something.”
R'lyeh is an underwater city in the ocean. Its exact location is unknown, and when the oceans overtake the world due to the catastrophic destruction of all lands for the wrath of Cthulhu, any survivors will be subjected to Waterworld and will have to deal with Dennis Hopper – if they aren't eaten by aquatic creatures almost the size of Cthulhu himself first.
The city is said to have been constructed on a star billions of light years away and when Cthulhu was cast out of the kingdom of the Old Ones, they threw it out along with him and all his tentacles. It had a foundation and several tall buildings that none of the Old Ones could actually use, they just liked the way the buildings looked. But there are reports that the city was actually built by Cthulhu after he found himself deep-sixed in an ocean on Earth. At this point it is still unknown but the signals the city's radio station sends out every high tide on the coasts of Siberia suggests that Cthulhu is waiting to rise, start some shit, and stomp the shit out of everyone who gets in his way.
The city consists of structures that use the surrounding water as a way to make them stable, but they have the potential to float back to the surface should the water become unpredictable, and running a vacuum cleaner is absolutely out of the question. There was also the NOAA to deal with, and that insidious lot passed some stupid law that prevented the city of R'lyeh from having its own water tower. This was a devastating blow to the blowfish. But the citizens have ostensibly found a way around that. Another feature of the city was the water slide. When it was erected, it had only one slide. So everyone fought over it, until two more were added. Now only three citizens who could run underwater the fastest can really enjoy the slides.
The ominous castle in the city where Cthulhu slept was almost an exact replica of Dracula's Castle. R'lyeh was also the first underwater kingdom to boast a water fountain that didn't use saltwater, although nobody wanted to know where it was getting its water from. The usual events of R'lyeh are long centuries of nothing but silent water ambience and some minor drama now and then. But rumor has it that once Cthulhu is finally fully awake, and not stumbling around drunk, he will cause the city to rise as he unleashes hell on the surface and feasts on the land people.
It's No Coincidence That R'leyh & Soggy Nightmares Are Interchangeable[edit | edit source]
While R'lyehians are generally bugged-eyed freaks who live underwater for no apparent reason, they do keep their distance from their lord and master whom they refer to as The Great One. Out of respect or fear, it would seem that it doesn't matter as long as they can swim around and act like crazy wet people. They never got into the philosophical side of their religion as it was too deep. Even though they themselves were deep enough to comprehend the depth of their whole existence.
Yet it wasn't just the crazies who inhabited R'lyeh who belonged to the cult of Cthulhu, the Great One. There are roughly a billion other people from around the world, both in the ocean and on land, who have studied this doomsday gospel. The scripture is very hard to understand or pronounce, but one phrase is often repeated among devoted followers: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. ("In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.") The unbelievers are quick to point out that even Cthulhu's own worshipers say he is dead. But of course that is until he comes back to life and proceeds to unleash hell on earth and stomp everyone getting in his way.
Deep Religion, Baptisms Unnecessary[edit | edit source]
In R'lyeh the dwellers amid the seaweed and algae are so fierce in their dark desires to see the stompings that they mutated themselves into apparitions that resemble a kind of soggy orc. Better known as Shaggoths or Shoggoths. Still they are quite hilarious and easy to tease and mock. It wasn't long before the dialect of R'lyeh was mocked too. Shaggoths were misnamed as Soggy Goths by land people, further enraging the citizens of R'lyeh. When they tried to speak to the land people about their making fun of them, the land people could hear only glub glub glub and air bubbles that sounded more like a pop than actual words. Suddenly the scripture of Cthulhu was starting to make more sense. It sounded more like Cthulhu was saying, "Get me the fuck outta here; really, I can't breathe in the ocean!"
The land people gave R'lyeh unexpected fame, but it wasn't a really good fame. It was a ridiculous fame, and a bad omen type fame. The doomsday prophecy was tied up with it. Because of this Cthulhu started to become the thing of nightmares and terrorize the feeble-minded into a state of anxiety and fear. These poor souls were afraid of their own shadows while everyone else just tried to not lose their minds. But R'lyeh lies in the bottom of the ocean as some unnerving location where something waits to rise and smash everything, and everyone. Of course the same thing can be said about Death Valley, too. So there's that.