R’lyeh Text

R’lyeh Text

Angkor Wat version: Middle Khmer, English trans. by Lon Dara. Author unknown, c. 15,000 BCE
The most significant work in the possession of the Kingsport Cult, the R’lyeh Text describes Cthulhu, his minions, and his rites of worship.

Sanity Loss: 1D6
Cthulhu Mythos: +5/+10%
Mythos Rating: +45%
Study: 54 weeks

Description
Widely considered to be mankind’s oldest existing book, the R’lyeh Text is written in a lost language that resembles ideograms. The “original” version consisted of 228 wooden strips and nine stone tablets held in a chest fashioned from the wood of an extinct species of tree. It was first discovered in China towards the end of the Han Dynasty, and entered the West through Constantinople during the Arab-Byzantine Wars. (During a prolonged stay in seventh-century Damascus, thirteen wooden strips were pilfered from the chest by thieves. It is rumored these found their way into the hands of Abd Al-Azrad, and thence into the Kitab al-Azif.) This original(?) text is known among scholars as the “Chinese recension,” although the ideograms have no real correspondence to any existing Asian language.

In the late third century BCE, a Latin translation of the R’lyeh Text was produced anonymously. Composed of 200 scrolls bound in silver, the text incorporates previously unknown Persian translations; themselves supposedly derived from Babylonian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. This Latin translation was the basis of most subsequent Western translations, including the eighteenth-century German Liyuhh “adaption and analysis”—which also incorporates images from the Chinese recension—and Lord Rochester’s notoriously flawed English edition.

The R’lyeh Text in White Leviathan
The version of the R’lyeh Text obtained by Captain Isaiah Tuttle at Angkor Wat in 1756 is a heretofore unknown translation, a copy of the Chinese recension translated into Middle Khmer from an earlier Sanskrit-inflected Old Khmer dialect. Consisting of three delicate palm-leaf manuscripts stored in a yellow lacquered box, the text is accompanied by numerus diagrams carved into wooden plates. The box contains a fourth manuscript written by the unknown translator, which includes helpful notes on pronouncing the ideograms. This Middle Khmer text was rendered into English by Lon Dara, a Cambodian monk with ties to the Lloigor Cult. While the original remains with Abner Ezekiel Hoag, both Isaiah Tuttle and Return-to-Dust Whicher own handwritten copies. Only Sixth Degree Perfecti may read the R’lyeh Text.

Contents
The R’lyeh Text is the great ur-text of Cthulhu, and describes his war with the Outer Gods, his imprisonment on earth, his spawning of terrestrial Y’thogthim, and his plans for eventual release. Almost every history, narrative, spell, and incantation regarding Cthulhu is derived from the R’lyeh Text, including the Black Book Codices and the Necronomicon itself. Most important to the Kingsport Cult, however, are the sections describing Cthulhu’s final archon K’th-oan-esh-el, and his dismemberment at the hands of the K’th-thyalei. In this regard, the R’lyeh Text represents the origins of the Dagon myth.

Spells
Awaken the Dreamer (Contact Deity: Cthulhu), Breath of the Deep, Create Mist of R’lyeh, Speak with God-Child (Contact Star-Spawn of Cthulhu), Speak with Sea Children (Contact Deep Ones), Wave of Oblivion.

White Leviathan > Books & Grimoires
[Back to Books and Grimoires—Introduction | White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Black Book Codices (Cthaat Aquadingen)]

Author: A. Buell Ruch (incorporating material by Joan C. Stanley and Eddy C. Bertin.)
Last Modified: 19 August 2023
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
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