Editing Dream Cycle (section)

==Description==
The Dreamlands are divided into four regions:

* The '''West''' contains the ''Steps of Deeper Slumber'' (descended via the "Cavern of Flame") and the Enchanted Woods, by which many enter the Dreamlands. Other points of interest include the port of Dylath-Leen, one of the Dreamlands' largest cities; the town of [[Ulthar]], "where no man may kill a cat";<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cu.aspx|title="The Cats of Ulthar" by H. P. Lovecraft|website=www.hplovecraft.com|access-date=2021-06-28|archive-date=2021-03-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305154849/https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cu.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref> the coastal jungle city of Hlanith; and the desert trading capital Illarnek. Here lies the fabled ''Land of Mnar'', whose gray stones are etched with signs and where rise the ruins of the great [[The Doom that Came to Sarnath|Sarnath]].
* The '''South''', home of the isle of Oriab and the areas known as the Fantastic Realms (described in "The White Ship").
* The '''East''', home of [[Celephaïs]], a city dreamt into being by its monarch Kuranes, greatest of all recorded dreamers, and the dangerous Forbidden Lands.
* The '''North''', location of the feared [[Plateau of Leng]], home of man-eating spiders and the [[satyr]]-like "Men of Leng".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/h.aspx|title="The Hound" by H. P. Lovecraft|website=www.hplovecraft.com|access-date=2021-06-28|archive-date=2021-01-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210112045957/https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/h.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref>

Other locales include the Underworld, a subterranean region underneath the Dreamlands inhabited by various monsters; the [[Moon]], accessible via a ship and inhabited by toad-like "moon-beasts" allied with [[Nyarlathotep]]; and Kadath, a huge castle atop a mountain and the domain of the "Great Ones", the gods of Earth's Dreamland.

Evidently all dreamers see the Dreamlands slightly differently, as Atal, High Priest of Ulthar, mentions that everyone has their own dreamland. In the same sentence he says the Dreamlands that many know is a "general land of vision".<ref>{{Cite web|title="The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H. P. Lovecraft|url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dq.aspx|access-date=2021-01-22|website=www.hplovecraft.com|archive-date=2021-01-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124191156/https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dq.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref>

The Dreamlands are described in ''[[Hypnos (short story)|Hypnos]]'' as beyond anything conceivable to humans, and in which only imaginative men can dream of:<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title="Hypnos" by H. P. Lovecraft |url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hy.aspx |access-date=2025-01-06 |website=www.hplovecraft.com}}</ref>{{quote|Of our studies it is impossible to speak, since they held so slight a connexion with anything of the world as living men conceive it. They were of that vaster and more appalling universe of dim entity and consciousness which lies deeper than matter, time, and space, and whose existence we suspect only in certain forms of sleep—those rare dreams beyond dreams which come never to common men, and but once or twice in the lifetime of imaginative men.}}Continuing on, the Dreamlands are described as limitless and beyond all thought and entity:{{quote|There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others. Viscous obstacles were clawed through in rapid succession, and at length I felt that we had been borne to realms of greater remoteness than any we had previously known.}}