Dacia, The. A ship targeted for attack by the German submarine U-29 during World War I in June of 1917. The ship never appeared and was saved from destruction.
The Temple, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dagon. Fish god worshipped by the Caaninites. Subject of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, along with Hydra and Great Cthulhu. It is speculated that Dagon and Hydra are the father and mother of the race of Deep Ones. The only concrete description is given as Dagon being vast, polyphemus-like, and loathsome, with great scaly arms and a hideous head. Dagon has a generally human outline with webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, and glassy, bulging eyes. Dagon's size is depicted as gigantic; on the Monolith of Dagon, it is depicted as the size of a whale.
Dagon, H.P. Lovecraft.
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The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft
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Dansforth. Member of the ill-fated Miskatonic University Expedition. Along with Professor Dyer, Dansforth discovered the Plateau of Leng and the lost city of the Old Ones. During his initial exploration of the location, he and Dyer barely escaped the clutches of a Shoggoth with their lives. They refused to tell anyone what they found, swearing each other to secrecy to protect the human race from what they had found. Upon their return flight from the lost city to the east over the Mountains of Madness, Dansforth witnessed something behind him that drove him totally insane. Up till his death, Dansforth refused to speak of what he saw, though due to his altitude (he was flying over the Mountains of Madness) and the direction in which he was looking (to the east), one can safely assume that his vision had something to do with the cursed mountains of Kadath in the Cold Waste.
At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
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Dark Mountain. Mountain in Vermont near where the Mi-Go have built an outpost. The Mi-Go mine an ore found here that is not found anywhere else in the universe.
The Whisperer In Darkness, H.P. Lovecraft
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Davis, Dr. A doctor living and practicing in Peck Valley in the 1880s. After George Birch’s escape from the receiving tomb on April 15th, 1881, Dr. Davis was called to the cemetery lodge by the lodge-keeper named Armington to treat his wounds. After dressing the leg wounds, Dr. Davis went to the receiving tomb to see what could have created so much damage to Birch’s legs. Upon his return, he made Birch swear he would never tell a soul what had really happened. For Dr. Davis found that, upon Birch’s successful bid to escape the crypt, his feet had fallen through the casket of Asaph Sawyer, and Sawyer’s spirit had exacted his revenge on Birch’s legs for Birch cutting Asaph’s feet at the ankles to fit into a smaller, cast aside coffin.
In The Vault, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Deep Ones, The. A race of immortal
amphibians who live in cities dotting the floor of the earth’s oceans. The Deep Ones
are described as being predominantly green-gray with white bellies. Their skin is shiny
and slippery, with a scaly ridge down their back. Their forms vaguely suggest anthropoids
with the head of a fish with prodigious, bulging eyes that never close. Palpating gills
line the sides of their necks, and their long paws are webbed. The Deep Ones hop
irregularly when on dry land, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. They are able
to use very articulate speech with their croaking, baying voices. Their voices are used to
convey expressions and emotions that their faces cannot. The Deep Ones tend to shy away
from the human race, not from fear, but from wishing not to get entangled in the paltry
doing of humans. Still, the Deep Ones have been spotted from time to time, some attribute
the legends of so-called mermaid to sightings of Deep Ones. As stated earlier, the
Deep Ones are immortal, the only thing that can kill them being acts of violence. The Deep
Ones will not approach anyone or anything that is marked with the sign of the Old Ones,
described as resembling a swastika.
The first recorded encounter by modern man between humans and the
Deep Ones dates back to just after the War of 1812, though it can be assumed that such
encounters have been occurring since the beginning of mankind. A group of islanders from
the South Seas discovered by Captain Obed Marsh worshipped and sacrificed t the creatures
on a small volcanic islet near their home. After a time, the Deep Ones began to interbreed
with the islanders. All this was done by the islanders in exchange for a limitless supply
of fish and strange jewelry made of gold. Such interbreeding offered the humans
immortality, though they quickly acquired what was later to be called "the Innsmouth
look." Further on in life, the humans would acquire all the looks and traits of the
Deep Ones. The Deep Ones worship Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, and there is some
inference that they worship the Great Old One Cthulhu, as well.
Two cities are currently identified belonging to the Deep Ones,
though only one is known by name. The unnamed city is in the South Seas, and the second,
Y’ha-nthlei, is off the Innsmouth Harbour at the base of Devil’s Reef. It was
Captain Marsh who made contact with this second city during the 1840s. Up until February
1928, the human population maintained close ties with the city, conducting sacrifices and
interbreeding with the Deep Ones there.
The Deep Ones seem especially fond of trinkets such as glass beads
and common metals found in abundance on the earth’s surface. Such trinkets and metal
are considered common during the sacrifices made to them. What happens to the humans
sacrificed to the Deep Ones is not known. Once a sacrifice cycle has begun, the Deep Ones
look very darkly on those who break it. In 1846, Captain Marsh and thirty-two others were
arrested while conducting sacrifices from Devil’s Reef and were held for a couple of
weeks. The Deep Ones attacked Innsmouth because of the lack of sacrifices, killing or
carrying off over half its population.
Deep Ones are able to communicate with humans. Those who do tell
that there are enough Deep Ones below the surface of earth’s oceans to completely
wipe out humanity, if they had a mind to. The Deep Ones are content at this time to
coexist in secrecy with mankind, as long as mankind keeps its distance.
Dagon, H.P. Lovecraft.
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The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft
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Delapores, Alfred. Son of the unnamed narrator of The Rats In The Wall. At the age of 23, Alfred was sent to England as an aviation officer during the war (1917). There, he met and befriended Captain Edward Norrys of the Royal Flying Corps. Through Norrys, Alfred learned of the strange history behind the Exham Priory and related them to his father. In 1918, Alfred suffered an unspecified injury which left him a maimed invalid. Alfred later died in 1921.
The Rats In The Walls, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Derby, Edward Pickman. Prolific poet
and writer living in Arkham, Massachusetts up until the late 1920s. Edward was described
as retaining a deceptive aspect of boyishness, even in his later years. Blond and
blue-eyed, Derby had the fresh complexion of a child. He continuously tried to raise a
mustache with barely discernible results. His voice was soft and light, and his
unexercised life gave him a juvenile chubbiness rather than the paunchiness of middle age.
Derby was of good height with handsome features hindered only by his shyness which held
him to seclusion and bookishness.
Considered a phenomenal child scholar by many, Derby began rhyming
verse at the age of seven. At the age of sixteen, Derby entered Miskatonic University and
majored in English and French literature. At eighteen, he published a collection of his
lyrics under the collective title Azathoth and Other Horrors, which created a real
sensation in numerous circles. Derby remained a close correspondent of the Baudelairean
poet Justin Geoffrey (The People of the Monolith) until his untimely death in a
madhouse in 1926. During his time at Miskatonic, Derby studied from the obscure and arcane
volumes housed in the university’s library. His own personal library continued to
grow as he worked to add such volumes to it. Derby graduated from Miskatonic three years
after he entered at the age of nineteen.
By the age of twenty-five, Derby was a fairly well-known poet and
fantasist. After his mother’s death when he was thirty-four, Derby contracted a
psychological illness that a trip through Europe was able to cure. Upon his return to
Arkham, he began to mingle with the college set. It was when he was thirty-eight that he
met his wife, Asenath Waite of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. A little after two months after
the meeting the two were married and moved into a house at the end of High Street called
Crowningshield.
Immediately, close friends noticed a definite change in Edward,
and not exactly for the good. During the following two years, Derby became more and more
like his wife, even coming to look like her at times. During his third year of marriage,
Edward hinted to his close friend Daniel Upton that something was not right. It was in
August of the third year of marriage that Upton received a call from the marshal of
Chesunook, Maine, asking him to pick up his friend and take him home. Derby had been found
wandering in the forest and was on the edge of lunacy. On the way back to Arkham, Edward
described to Upton his wife’s power to change bodies with him. He described how
Asenath would often leave his mind in her body locked in the library in Crowningshield
while she would take his body to the most horrific of places. If Asenath’s powers
failed at any time during this transference, Edward would find himself in some terrible,
unknown place in the midst of insane rituals. In addition, Edward stated that it
wasn’t Asenath in her body at all, but the mind of her father, Ephraim Waite.
Mid-October of the same year, Edward paid Upton a visit and told
him that Asenath had left to New York. Actually, Edward killed her in a weak, unguarded
moment by crushing her skull with a candlestick (holder). At first, Edward believed that
killing his wife’s body with the spirit of her father in it would protect himself
from his power. Just before Christmas he discovered Ephraim was still reaching out to him
from beyond the grave. By mid-January, Ephraim succeeded in conduct the transference
permanently, casting Edward’s mind into Asenath’s rotting corpse. Edward died on
Daniel Upton’s doorstep after warning him of Ephraim’s success.
Two nights after the change, Daniel Upton shot Edward’s body
six times in the head with a hand revolver in an attempt to destroy Ephraim’s spirit.
It is not clear if Upton succeeded.
The Thing On The Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Desrochers, Mr. A French-Canadian boarder at the Witch-House in Arkham, Massachusetts. Desrochers lived in the room directly below Walter Gilman's and often heard the padding of muffled feet in Gilman's room.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Devil's Hop Yard. A bleak, blasted hillside outside Dunwich, Mass., where no tree, shrub, or grass-blade will grow.
The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dexter, Doctor. A doctor in Providence, Rhode Island, who took part in the investigation into the death of Robert Blake. Dexter was superstitious and, after reviewing Blake’s diary and exploring the Free-Will Church, found and threw the Shining Trapezohedron into the channel of Narragansett Bay. Additionally, it is believed that he took the forbidden tomes found in the rear of the church—a Latin version of the Necronomicon, the Liber Ivonis, the Cultes des Goules, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten, the De Vermis Mysteriis, along with copies of the Pnakotic Manuscript and the Book of Dzyan—and added them to his personal library.
The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dombrowski, Landlord. Landlord of the Witch-House located in Arkham, Massachusetts. It is assumed that he lived on one of the lower levels of the house. After Walter Gilman's death, Dombrowski forsook his lease on Witch-House and moved his own family and the older tenants of the house to a less foreboding set of quarters on Walnut Street. As soon as he did, the Witch-House fell into ruin and was ultimately torn down after a gale destroyed its upper levels.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dombrowski, Mrs. Wife of the landlord of Witch-House just prior to Walter Gilman's death. One day while cleaning Gilman's room she discovered a small statuette that Gilman had brought back with him from one of his interdimensional excursions with Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin. No description of the woman really exists except that she waddled when she walked, thus probably being a rather large woman in girth.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Donovan, Mr. A member of the crew of the ill-fated Emma. On March 22nd, the Emma was sunk for trying to move into the area of R’lyeh by the ship Alert. The crew of the Emma was able to board and kill the Alert’s crew and then went on to find R’lyeh. Donovan was one of eight crewmembers to survive the attack by the Alert. Unfortunately, Cthulhu killed Donovan with a sweep of its flabby claw upon its release from its dark chamber.
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Douglas, J.B. (Captain). Captain of the brig Arkham and sea-party commander of the ill-fated Miskatonic University Expedition to the Antarctic in 1930-31.
At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
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Doyle, Mayor. Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island in 1876. Mayor Doyle was called upon to do something about the Starry Wisdom sect practicing in the Free-Will Church on Federal Hill after six persons disappear there that year.
The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dream Landscape. Painting done by Ardois-Bonnot in 1925-26 and hung in a spring salon in Paris in 1926. The painting is the result of influence by Cthulhu when R’lyeh rose from the floor of the ocean in early 1925.
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Drowne, Doctor. The pastor of the 4th Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island in 1944. In a sermon on December 19, 1844, he warned his congregation of the evil of the newly established Starry Wisdom sect practicing at the Free-Will Church atop Federal Hill and headed by Professor Enoch Bowen.
The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dunwich, Massachusetts. One finds the town in north central Massachusetts after taking the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corner. The village is huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain. The village is ancient and horrid by all accounts given. First impressions makes one wonder at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighboring region. Most the houses are deserted and falling into ruin. The broken-steepled church houses the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. Since the horror that came to Dunwich in 1928, all the signboards pointing toward the village have been taken down. Dunwich is mainly peopled by descendants of two families: the Whateleys and the Bishop. Most the rest of the population have created a race unto themselves with degeneracy and inbreeding. Since its founding, Dunwich has always harbored an evil air. One wonders what the place is like three quarters of a century after the coming of the horror.
The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Dyer, Professor William. Professor of
geology at Miskatonic University and commander of the ill-fated Miskatonic University
Expedition to the Antarctic in 1930-31. Professor Dyer, along with a colleague named
Dansforth, discovered the fabled Plateau of Leng and the lost city of the Old Ones while
investigating the destruction of the Lake subexpedition at the base of the Mountains of
Madness. Dyer and Dansforth explored the city and discovered the history of the Old Ones,
ultimately encountering a cursed Shoggoth and barely escaping with their lives. The two
swore silence of the event to each other in hopes of sparing human civilization from the
horrors they discovered, but Dyer made his discoveries public when the Starkweather-Moore
Expedition began preparation to continue on where the Miskatonic University Expedition
left off. Professor Dyer also published a bulletin about his discoveries.
Additionally, Professor Dyer was a participant of the Miskatonic
expedition into the western Australian outback in search of the city of the Great Race of
Yith in 1935. With the others, the group discovered over 1250 blocks of varying stages of
wear and disintegration, proving the existence of the city over fifty millions into the
past.
At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
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The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.
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