Toward the end of Visions from Beyond, Neal visits the infamous Plateau of Leng, a creation of H.P. Lovecraft. The location appeared in many of his stories. In the novella At the Mountains of Madness, it was a region of Antarctica. Other stories placed it in Central Asia or in the Dreamlands, a region accessible only in sleep.
Warning for minor spoilers for The Dreamer, The Mirror, and Visions from Beyond.
Neal had referenced the Plateau of Leng during The Dreamer when he compared Neal and Peter's trek down Lynx Mountain during a snowstorm to the dreaded region. At the time he even joked about how it would be a good scene for Diana's stories. He didn't expect she would take him up on it. I suspect he's going to be much more careful about his suggestions to Diana in the future.
In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft describes the monastery on the plateau as well as its lonely inhabitant, the "High Priest Not To Be Described." Diana blended those elements with her own ideas.
The Plateau of Leng mashes the real world with that of dreamlands. It is a place where fantasy, archaeology, and science fiction coexist. The monastery has some similarities to the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the setting for a confrontation between Neal and Matthew Keller in The Mirror. The texts carved on the walls of the monastery are suggestive of the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt. The Pyramid Texts were intended for the pharaoh's use to help guide him to the heavens. They also contained spells for summoning help from the gods.
The glyphs on the monastery walls appear to be the same as the tadpole script on the mysterious starfish carvings. Could the writing serve a similar function? Neal and Peter continue their investigations in the next story, The Locked Room.
Arkham Files: Visions from Beyond on Archive of Our Own
Arkham Files: Visions from Beyond on FanFiction
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