Dread Carcosa
Like the dark shadow of Malperdys, less a refuge and more a place of exile. But in both places, people can become predators.
This pocket universe is inhabited by an ancient entity so old it has lost its name. The entity exists solely to spread the Carcosan Reality Meme to other regions.
When most organisations discover an infestation of the Carcosan Reality Meme, they work to exterminate it. In past cases, the Meme has become so widespread that the entire reality has had to be Finalised.
Environment
Carcosa is a pocket universe with particular rules. No plants grow there but there is breathable atmosphere. It doesn’t matter what you breathe, you can breathe here. The air tastes slightly acrid, like there are acidic chemicals in the atmosphere. Normal combustion will not work in this atmosphere, but items which carry their own ignition will work. There are no fires on Carcosa.
The environment of Carcosa has an anagathic effect, prolonging life indefinitely, though time plainly passes. The individual who spends time here will slowly transform, however, into a rugose, tentacled withered thing. When the transformation is complete, they will slither off to join the biomass of the King in Yellow.
Geography
The Lake of Hali
Stagnant, blackened waters that reflect things that are not there, their surfaces rippling even when no wind stirs. The waters are heavy, denser than one would expect and any who enter are quickly submerged in their icy embrace.
The Pallid wastes
A desolate, ashen expanse where yellow sand drifts in lifeless dunes, and the sky bleeds an eternal, sickly twilight. There is no water here and all the unwary traveller can expect is to find the bleached and gnawed bones of their predecessors. With investigation, it becomes clear that the sands are powdered bone, the last remains of the population of the once-garden world of Carcosa.
The Dagger Spires
Beyond the Pallid Wastes, colossal, jagged rock formations, each appearing to be the fossilized remains of something vast and long-dead.
The Black Suns
Several spheres hanging in the sky which, despite their dark appearance, seem to infuse Carcosa with the yellow light.
The City
Carcosa rises close to the shores of the Lake of Hali, its dark spires clawing at the heavy, yellowed sky, their jagged silhouettes blurred by the ever-present, drifting mists. The city is silent, but never still. Its stone avenues stretch endlessly, lined with empty palaces and windowless towers, their facades worn smooth by centuries of wind and entropy. Where there are windows, there is no glass - only rows of vacant, black sockets, gaping like the skulls of the long-dead, drinking in the pale light of dying stars. The streets are paved in cold basalt, unmarked by cartwheel or footprint, yet something has passed here.
The city is deserted, but it is not uninhabited. Figures move through the fog, half-seen, unhurried and unerring, as though drawn forward by something unseen. They do not speak. They do not stray. Their faces are blank, or blurred, or shifting - expressions forming and unforming, as if struggling to remember themselves. Some still wear the tattered remnants of robes, uniforms, gowns, or armor, but none of it matters now. They are all on the road to their transformation. Slowly, inevitably, they lose shape, lose thought, lose name - skin paling, eyes darkening, limbs becoming too long, or too thin, or too wrong. Some stumble, pressing hands to the stone as if trying to cling to something real, but the city never stops them. It only takes.
They do not resist, not truly. The pull of Carcosa is gentle, its embrace irrevocable. They are not yet unwholesome, but they are no longer whole. The buildings watch with their vacant skull-windows, witnessing every step of the change. Some who walk the streets are close now - flesh turning translucid, limbs just hollow siphons, shadows no longer cast - while others still cling to the last vestiges of identity, though soon they too will fade. None of them belong here, not originally, but Carcosa remembers them, even as they forget themselves. And when they are no longer what they once were, Carcosa will have made them into something else.
The Black Causeway
A road of obsidian slabs, leading to nowhere and everywhere, worn smooth by the feet of those who have walked it before you. To enter the city, you have to walk on these stones.
The Empty Basilica
A massive temple with no doors, its interior bereft of furniture or decoration, since long looted. Stairs lead to towers and ramparts, but these steps were not made for humans.
The Adumbrate Gate
An archway of shifting stone, its interior filled with a yellow mist that resists entry, leading to Pit of Apostates in the land of Hyperborea. Anyone who has begun their tranformation to the native life form will not be able to pass.
The Whispering Vaults
Ancient tombs carved into the side of a hill, their entrances sealed with faceless statues, humming with subsonic vibrations. The Vaults represent the last resting places of the nobility of Carcosa, before the King in Yellow.
The Hanged Gardens
A terrace of dying flora, where the vines bear fruit shaped like screaming human faces, and the drying roots hang suspended in the air. The stink of rotted flesh permeates the air. Were these plants in the form of people, or people who have been transformed into plants.
The Observatory of Faded Stars
A ruined spire, filled with telescopes pointed at stars that no longer exist, their light still reaching despite their death.
The Palace of the Unnamed King
A cyclopean fortress standing half-sunk in a moat of quicksilver, its halls echoing with conversations long since ended.
The Faceless Forum
A grand, ruined amphitheater where, on a conjunction of the black suns, figures in tattered robes gather, though none have faces nor seem aware of their own presence. Beneath these robes, they are the half-transformed, still bearing the vestiges of their original form but also irrevocably changed into something wretched, with multiple tentacular siphons.