Hyperborea

Hyperborea
Type	Continent
Inhabitants	Hyperboreans Voormis Tsathoggua and his Formless Spawn
First appearance	CIRCLE: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros"
Appearances	HPL: The Mound (unnamed) At the Mountains of Madness "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" CIRCLE: "The Testament of Athammaus" "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" "The Door to Saturn" "The Ice-Demon" "The Seven Geases" "The White Sybil" "The Dark Eidolon" "The Coming of the White Worm" EXP: "The Scroll of Morloc" "The Acolyte of the Flame" "The Flame in the Ice" "The Crisis on Infinite Betties"

Hyperborea is a fictional prehistoric land created by Clark Ashton Smith as a setting for the Hyperborean Cycle of stories which intersect with the Cthulhu Mythos. The name, meaning "Beyond the North Wind", is taken from Greek mythology, where it appears as a land far to the north. In Smith's fiction, it is more or less identifiable with the island of Greenland, though in his stories, set in the Pleistocene epoch, it is mostly ice-free.

Millennia later, the name of Hyperborea was given to the northernmost kingdom of the Hyborian Age in what later became Europe. There is no connection between the two Hyperboreas aside from their shared northern latitude.

Locations

Mhu Thulan

Mhu Thulan is a province in northern Hyperborea, famous for its sorcerers like Eibon and Zon Mezzamalech. (CIRCLE: "Ubbo-Sathla").

Polarion

Polarion is a region in northern Hyperborea, separated from the rest of the realm by a mountain range. It is home to the White Sybil. (CIRCLE: "The White Sybil")

Eiglophian mountains

The Eiglophian mountains, mentioned in Smith's "The Seven Geases", are a terrifying range of ebon peaks, said to be "glassy-walled", and are believed to be honeycombed with hidden tunnels. The Eiglophian mountains cross the middle of the Hyperborean continent, with one range stretching to the south and another to the east.

Mount Voormithadreth

Mount Voormithadreth, the tallest peak in the Eiglophian mountains, is a four-coned extinct volcano. Its exterior is inhabited by the Voormis; beneath it is the dwelling place of various horrors, including the toad-god Tsathoggua and the spider-god Atlach-Nacha.

Y'qaa

The gray-litten cavern of Y'qaa the entrance to which is below Voormithadreth, is the dwelling place of the enigmatic Ubbo-Sathla, and possibly also Abhoth, the Source of Uncleanliness. It is in fact an interdimensional hub connected to multiple worlds, and indirectly connected with the Cavern of Archetypes. Atlach-Nacha originated here.

Cavern of Archetypes

The cavern of the Archetypes is a vast cavern inhabited by the spectral archetypes of all life on this earth. Nug and Yeb reside here.

Commoriom

Commoriom was the first seat of power in Hyperborea, established by the pre-human migrants from the south. In its heyday, Commoriom was a grand city, built of marble and granite and marked by a skyline of altitudinous spires.

Legend has it that the populace fled Commoriom when the White Sybil of Polarion foretold of its destruction. However, Athammaus, headsman of Commoriom, disputes this claim, and attributes the abandonment to the increasingly loathsome depredations of the horrid outlaw Knygathin Zhaum. (CIRCLE: "The Testament of Athammaus")

Uzuldaroum

Uzuldaroum became the capital of Hyperborea after the populace left Commoriom, according to Smith's "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros". The city lies a day's journey from the former capital. It was the last population center in Hyperborea before glaciers overwhelmed the continent.

In H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, the city of the Elder Things is called "a Palaeogaean megalopolis compared with which the fabled...Commoriom and Uzuldaroum...are recent things of today--not even of yesterday".