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At the Moutains of Madness Synopsis
Since this is a huge novella sized story, I'm am going to eschew my nomral lenthy and detailed synopsis in lieu of a quick and dirty synopsis.
The narrator and a team of experts in various fields leave Mistonic University on a expedition to the Antarctic. They reach the continent and head inland. After several months of exploring and drilling, the majority of the contingent goes up ahead into the continent while a smaller group stays behind.
The leader of the contingent that goes ahead, Lake, discovers a huge mountain chain. Bigger than the Himalayas by a couple of miles. With odd cube rocks on the slopes. Lake lands the planes at the base of this huge unknown mountain chanin and starts drilling.
Some of the men discover a pocket under the ground where an old cave is. In this are bones of tons of animals with various degrees of scarring. There are also some corpses of this amazing creature, a star shaped (Radially, not vertically), tentacled thing.
Lake takes the 13 specimens of these Star Creatures back to his camp to begin scientific work on them. They are ancient, millions of years old each. He begins to dissect one and makes severl importnat discoveries before a major snow storm moves in.
The smaller group left behind does not hear from Lake's expedition. Again. They head to the camp and discover mutilated corpes, missing star bodies, a missing camp member, a missing dog, lots of missing equipment and more. The smaller expedition starts packing what is left and buries the remains of the bodies.
Two members, Danbury and the narrator take the plane over the Mountains to see what is there while the remaining men pack up the camp.
They see an ancient, worn city on a huge plateau four miles above sea level. The area has been glaciated. They land and explore and discover art that shows the history and culture of the star beings.
After investigating the star beings in the art, including their origins, their war with the servants of Cthulhu aeons ago, their arrival from space, their genetic manipulation of the Shoggoth and more, the two continue deeper into the heart of the city.
A underwater city supposedly existed at the bottom of an underground sea as the last vestige ofthe star beings. The two decide to descend to see what they can see.
After a while, they come across the equipment from camp including the slegdes packing with the stolen equipment and the carefully killed and stored bodies of the missing dog and person. The star beings that awakened and left the camp are nowhere to be found. The two delve deeper.
They notice that the art has changed serious as they get closeo the lake and then they come across four bodies of the star things, recently killed. A mist begisn to form from the lake and a creature changes them back up the inclines and they realize that it is a Shoggoth that is chasing them, and that the Shoggoth must have killed all of the star beings and taken over this last city.
They barely escape and Danbury looks back to see one last unknown horror as they fly away. They leave, never to return and swear that they shall keep others from coming back to Antartica.
Obviously the story is amazingly more detailed than that, but thats the basic gist.
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