What you can draw on
Lovecraft and his circle wrote in public. Everything below can be read for free, and anything in it is yours to build on here.
This world takes only material first published before 1931. That line is not arbitrary: it is the point where the early Mythos is unambiguously free for anyone to use, and it keeps Shared Myth clear of anyone's estate.
The texts
- Dagon
H. P. Lovecraft · 1919
The first note of the whole thing: a sunken monolith, carvings that are not human work, and something rising from the sea.
Australian archive. The same page also holds later stories that this world does not accept.
- The Cats of Ulthar
H. P. Lovecraft · 1920
A folktale voice, a town with one strange law, and quiet retribution. The gentler register of the Mythos.
- The Festival
H. P. Lovecraft · 1925
Kingsport, the Necronomicon named outright, and an old town keeping an older appointment.
- The Colour Out of Space
H. P. Lovecraft · 1927
The blasted heath west of Arkham, and a thing with no anatomy at all, only an effect on everything it touches.
- Pickman's Model
H. P. Lovecraft · 1927
Ghouls, the tunnels under Boston's North End, and the reveal that the painting was done from life.
- The Call of Cthulhu
H. P. Lovecraft · 1928
Cthulhu, R'lyeh, the cult, the shared dream, and the documentary structure most Mythos fiction still borrows.
- The Dunwich Horror
H. P. Lovecraft · 1929
Dunwich and the Whateleys, Yog-Sothoth, Miskatonic's copy of the Necronomicon, and scholars who fight back.
- The King in Yellow
Robert W. Chambers · 1895
Carcosa, Hastur, the Yellow Sign, and a play that ruins whoever finishes it. The richest non-Lovecraft supply of names.
- Can Such Things Be?
Ambrose Bierce · 1893
Where Carcosa and Hali came from before Chambers took them, plus an invisible predator in a colour no eye holds.
- The Great God Pan
Arthur Machen · 1894
Horror as a leak from something older under ordinary respectable life. Lovecraft said openly that he was working from this.
- The House of Souls
Arthur Machen · 1906
Holds The White People: a girl's diary, the Little People, and the Aklo letters. The best model in English for occult voice.
- The Willows
Algernon Blackwood · 1907
A landscape as the antagonist, and beings that notice you only by accident. Lovecraft called it the finest weird tale in English.
- The Gods of Pegāna
Lord Dunsany · 1905
An invented pantheon written in its own scripture voice: how to build a myth cycle out of nothing.
Outside this world
These are famous, and they are the most common reason an entry is declined here. They were published too late to be free, so nothing from them can enter the canon.
The Whisperer in Darkness · August 1931
Mi-Go, Yuggoth and the brain cylinders. It misses the line by months.
The Shadow over Innsmouth · 1936
The Deep Ones, Y'ha-nthlei and the Innsmouth look.
At the Mountains of Madness · 1936
The Elder Things, the shoggoths and the Antarctic city.
The Shadow Out of Time · 1936
The Great Race of Yith and the flying polyps.
The Shunned House · disputed
Printed in 1928 but never distributed; it reached readers in 1937. Treat it as outside until a steward rules.
Already in the canon
Sealed here, and binding on anything written next. Build on them freely; contradicting one needs a very good reason and a steward's ruling.
Before you quote anything
- Anything of Lovecraft's written after 1930 is out, however famous. If a name is not in a text above, it is not canon here.
- Project Gutenberg's texts are set from the original pulp printings. The corrected Arkham House texts read differently and carry their own editorial rights.
- Names like Cthulhu and the Necronomicon are free. Game and publisher branding built on them is not, so write the world, not the brands.
That is the whole library. Pick an open thread and write into it.