Echoes of The Woman in Blue

In Arkham Files: The Locked Room, Diana returns to the team's initial encounters with the unknown cybercriminal they dubbed Azathoth.

Warning for minor spoilers for The Woman in Blue, The Mirror, and Arkham Files.

Over the past several months, Agent Tricia Wiese has developed a profile of the arch-villain. He's believed to be an erudite intellectual who combines a deep knowledge of art with expertise in computer programming and code-making. He's known to be fascinated with the world created by Lovecraft. He's displayed a mastery of complex astronomical devices and Latin. He exhibits a malicious delight in manipulating others while showing off his own ability to control any situation. And he likes puzzles.

Azathoth first appeared on the scene in The Woman in Blue. During that story, he imprisoned Neal and Peter inside a mansion filled with traps and horror sequences, some of which had strong similarities to Lovecraft's stories. The house of horror they called it. As part of the strategy to manipulate Azathoth, Diana and her committee, the Arkham Round Table, frequently refer to incidents from that ordeal. They take elements used by Azathoth and twist them, presenting an alternative universe where Azathoths's creations acquire a different significance.

Diana began the process in her first story, Visions from Beyond, by introducing starfish-shaped artifacts. In the house of horror, Azathoth revealed himself in a holographic image as a huge starfish-like monster emerging from a chaotic ocean of bioluminescent creatures. The starfish is frequently mentioned in Lovecraft's works. Several Cthulhu Mythos creatures possess starfish-like characteristics. Elder Things are the most famous. A Lovecraft creation, they're an extraterrestrial race with starfish-shaped appendages at both ends of their bodies. In Arkham Files, soapstone starfish have been found at several crime scenes. The objects all mysteriously vanished from the evidence vault in a poof. The starfish which Peter discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb is the only one so far that is stable.

In The Queen's Jewels, Neal created a series of documentary paintings based on their experiences in the house. Two of them were entered into an art competition at a sci-fi convention in The Mirror where they attracted the attention of Alistair Chapman, a creative director at a special effects studio. For a brief period, he was suspected of either being Azathoth or acting in league with him. Although Chapman was cleared of any involvement, a lingering suspicion remains that Azathoth is aware of the paintings.

Neal's drawings in The Locked Room are a response to the incident at the convention. In his dream of Abydos, Neal descends a staircase that leads to an ocean. It's similar to the holographic image in the house of horror. At the convention, Chapman touched on the similarity between Neal and an artist in one of Lovecraft's short stories, "The Haunter of the Dark." Azathoth had hacked the email systems of two movie studios to promote making a movie of the short story. In The Locked Room, Neal is thrown into a vision by one of his drawings. Did the drawing produce the effect or was there some other force at work? Do the drawings depict dreamworlds or extraterrestrial worlds? The answers await in The Locked Room.

The armillary sphere in the Nautical Shop is also inspired by the house of horror. Armillary spheres were used by Azathoth in a puzzle that Peter and Neal were required to solve. These globes surrounded by a framework of hoops and rings were used to depict the celestial sphere, ecliptic, and other celestial features. Their pedigree is an ancient one, with early versions existing in Ancient Greece and China. During the Renaissance armillary spheres became complex mechanical devices. For someone fascinated by puzzles like Azathoth, the Arkham Round Table assumes they're an irresistible lure. Mozzie took the lead in designing a mystery around the armillary sphere that should keep Azathoth guessing for a long time to come.

The Locked Room on Archive of Our Own
The Locked Room on FanFiction