R'lyeh Text

“	He opened the magazine against the meaningless text, partially concealing the lines which had begun to take on an uncanny atmosphere of eldritch age beneath my eyes, and there beneath Paul Tuttle’s hand lay the first page of a story so obviously belonging to this unbelievable mythology that I could not repress a start of astonishment. The title, only partly covered by his hand, was "The Call of Cthulhu", by H. P. Lovecraft. But Tuttle did not linger over the first page; he turned well into the heart of the story before he paused and presented to my gaze the identical unreadable line that lay beside the crabbed script of Amos Tuttle in the incredibly rare R’lyeh Text upon which the magazine reposed. And there, only a paragraph below, appeared what purported to be a translation of the utterly unknown language of the Text: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".	„
	~ AWD: "The Return of Hastur"

The R'lyeh Text is a fictional grimoire created by August Derleth. It first appeared in his short story "The Return of Hastur" and was later featured in many other works of the expanded Cthulhu Mythos, including Lin Carter's Xothic Legend Cycle.

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Written by author or authors unknown, the R'lyeh Text contains information on Cthulhu, Ghatanothoa, Zoth-Ommog, Cyäegha and other Great Old Ones.

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In August Derleth's short story "The Return of Hastur", Amos Tuttle paid a hundred thousand dollars for a copy of the R'lyeh Text that came from "the dark interior of Asia". The book was bound in human skin.
In Lin Carter's short stories "Behind the Mask" and "The Strange Doom of Enos Harker", a translation of the R'lyeh Text was produced by Bryant Hoskins based on the aforementioned Tuttle copy, and kept in the library of Miskatonic University.
In Brian Lumley's short story "Lord of the Worms", Julian Carstairs has a copy that he keeps in his library at The Barrows.
In Robert M. Price's short story "Down in Limbo", a copy is known to have been held by the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities. It was translated by a scholar named Jacob Maitland, who was so disturbed by what he learned from it that he destroyed both the original and the translation. It is unknown whether copies remain extant in other scholarly institutions.
In James Ambuehl's short story "The Advent of Uvhash", a book titled The R'lyeh Text: Fragmentary Transcriptions is referenced, indicating that in Ambuehl's continuations, at least sections of the original writing remain in existence.
In the Demonbane series by Nitroplus, the R'lyeh Text takes the form of a human girl and was located in Innsmouth, where she was guarded by Dagon and the Deep Ones. She was eventually retrieved by the Black Lodge, who used her as one of the key components for their ritual to summon Cthulhu.
The R'lyeh Text appears in the Fate franchise by Type-Moon, most notably being featured in the Fate/Zero anime. Although the original translation was in Chinese, it was later translated into Italian as Prelati's Spellbook. Gilles de Rais owns this copy and can use it to summon extra-dimensional sea demons, including the Gigantic Horror. (an avatar of Cthulhu)
The R'lyeh Text (also known as the Book of R'lyeh) appears in The Adventures of the X-Men #4 "When the Dweller Awakes" by Marvel Comics, when the N'Garai leader Kierrok attempted to use it to awaken the Dweller-in-Darkness, an offspring of Cthulhu who laid dormant beneath the ground of Salem Center. The book was destroyed after Erich Zann recited a counterspell that banished both the Dweller and all of the N'Garai to an alternate dimension, at the cost of banishing himself as well.
The R'lyeh Text (also known as the Codex of R'lyeh) appears in the Shadow Hearts video game series by Sacnoth, as one of the Three Ancient Tomes hidden in the Pope's secret library at Vatican City. It was stolen by Albert Simon, who intended to use it for a ritual to summon an Outer God to destroy the Earth and recreate it into a new perfect world.

R'lyeh Text

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Known Copies[]

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