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Description

Rising above the flat Antarctic plateau, as a titanic pitch-black wall of hard ancient slate and dark limestone, the Miskatonic Mountains are the world’s highest - and most isolated peaks. Ever since being first discovered by the ill-fated Antarctic expedition of its namesake university, the Miskatonic Mountains have inspired unceasing curiosity, incredulity, awe and terror in equal measure. The mountains have been variously referred to as “inexplicable” and “impossible” - owing to its bizarre geological setting, its frustrating, seemingly impossible long-lived weather systems and unthinkably old artificial structures. However, in popular circles it is known by a much different descriptor: The Mountains of Madness.

More akin to the mountains of the Moon than anywhere on Earth, the Miskatonic Mountains are a world apart- one of antipodal extremes. Containing the tallest mountains and the deepest caves, young, growing mountains and ancient strata, of mundane animals and otherworldly ruins. It has driven it's initial discoverers to madness, but is still the object of intense curiosity- it explorers as famed and lauded as astronauts, expeditions launched every year while other parts of Antarctica have one scarcely every decade. After fifty years of exploration- the mountains have revealed many of her secrets- from fossils rewriting natural history as we know it, cave fauna hidden from the Antarctic ice for millions of years to enigmatic technology salvaged from the ruins- but it still holds vast multitudes more. Its dark and ruinous plateau is thought to be the seat of the ancient primordial "Elder Thing" civilization which sculpted the mountains to their own image. Ever since the Starkweather-Moore expedition the plateau has been locked in impenetrable storms. Some whisper that they awoke some terrible thing in the Cyclopean City, or in the icy plains around. Others think that they got lost in that dead city, and that the storms are but a natural cycle.

The planned International Miskatonic Expedition, if it finally breeches the endless storms, may provide closure on their fates and of the nature of the Cyclopean City.
-American Exploration Magazine, Fold-out map, Spring Issue 1981

Description

Rising above the flat Antarctic plateau, as a titanic pitch-black wall of hard ancient slate and dark limestone, the Miskatonic Mountains are the world’s highest - and most isolated peaks. Ever since being first discovered by the ill-fated Antarctic expedition of its namesake university, the Miskatonic Mountains have inspired unceasing curiosity, incredulity, awe and terror in equal measure. The mountains have been variously referred to as “inexplicable” and “impossible” - owing to its bizarre geological setting, its frustrating, seemingly impossible long-lived weather systems and unthinkably old artificial structures. However, in popular circles it is known by a much different descriptor: The Mountains of Madness.

More akin to the mountains of the Moon than anywhere on Earth, the Miskatonic Mountains are a world apart- one of antipodal extremes. Containing the tallest mountains and the deepest caves, young, growing mountains and ancient strata, of mundane animals and otherworldly ruins. It has driven it's initial discoverers to madness, but is still the object of intense curiosity- it explorers as famed and lauded as astronauts, expeditions launched every year while other parts of Antarctica have one scarcely every decade. After fifty years of exploration- the mountains have revealed many of her secrets- from fossils rewriting natural history as we know it, cave fauna hidden from the Antarctic ice for millions of years to enigmatic technology salvaged from the ruins- but it still holds vast multitudes more. Its dark and ruinous plateau is thought to be the seat of the ancient primordial "Elder Thing" civilization which sculpted the mountains to their own image. Ever since the Starkweather-Moore expedition the plateau has been locked in impenetrable storms. Some whisper that they awoke some terrible thing in the Cyclopean City, or in the icy plains around. Others think that they got lost in that dead city, and that the storms are but a natural cycle.

The planned International Miskatonic Expedition, if it finally breeches the endless storms, may provide closure on their fates and of the nature of the Cyclopean City.
-American Exploration Magazine, Fold-out map, Spring Issue 1981