Carcosa (Art by Amamidori)
Carcosa, also known as Alagadda, is a mystical extra-dimensional city which serves as the abode of Hastur himself who is known as the King in Yellow. When the light of Carcosa's star shines in another planet's night sky, Hastur's power on that planet grows stronger. Carcosa seeks ever to expand by absorbing cities and societies from other worlds and fuel Hastur's apotheosis.
Description[]
Carcosa is described as having a yellow sky dotted with an indeterminate amount black stars corresponding to no known or hypothesized constellations. It has two pitch-black suns, visible only as a pale yellow outline, which provide a modicum of heat and light. Looking into them is safe for the eyes, but risks headaches, nausea, bad dreams, or the attention of Hastur.
Carcosa is an unimaginably vast patchwork of the cities that it has subsumed across the Material Plane over the eons; each individual piece is called a nexus. The buildings themselves seem to have been carved from a single seamless material utilizing impossible architecture with inhabitants themselves routinely breaking the laws of gravity, such as by climbing upside-down staircases. Black, white, yellow, and red are the only colors that are seen in Carcosa and the city is described by Hellboy, who once ventured there, as having the odor of dried flowers with a hint of mold or something that has the scent of an old library.
Overview[]
Individuals visiting the city have trouble estimating time and space while inside of it, although curiously those with a history of lucid dreaming have shown far greater self-control and attention to detail. It is also shown that it becomes eerily easy for anyone to become addicted into entering the city, and most of those who do manage to make it out of Carcosa have a lot of difficulty in explaining what they experienced. An example of this is when a FBC doctor, experienced with both hallucinogenics and lucid dreaming, was sent in to properly examine the city, the agents that were sent with him quickly succumb to the decadent pleasures that the city has to offer, but the doctor avoids them and was able to soldier on.
It is shown that there is a universal translation of languages within Carcosa, as although the other agents of the FBC hear the inhabitants speaking English, the doctor could hear them speaking in his own native language being Spanish. Written words, however, do not translate quite as easily as it seems the native script of Carcosa is quite alien, and there are a fair amount of words that do not have an equivalent in human language.