Randolph Carter

• Name — Randolph Carter • Series — Dream Cycle • First — "The Statement of Randolph Carter" • Last — "Out of the Aeons" • Creator — H. P. Lovecraft • Portrayer — * Darryl Tyler (1987) • Mark Kinsey Stephenson (1988; 1993) • Art Kitching (1998) • Mad Martian (2005) • Daniel Hill (2009) • Greig Johnson (2016) • Voice — Bronson Pinchot • Alias — * Swami Sunand Chandraputra • Zkauba • Occupation — Writer Ex-soldier • Relatives — * Ernest K. Aspinwall (distant cousin) • Sir Randolph Carter (ancestor) • Nationality — American

• Title — Date Written — Form — Notes • "The Statement of Randolph Carter" — 1919 — Short story • "The Unnamable" — 1923 — Short story • The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath — 1926–1927 — Novella • "The Silver Key" — 1926 — Short story • The Case of Charles Dexter Ward — 1927 — Novella — Mentioned only • "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" — 1933 — Short story — Co-written with E. Hoffmann Price • "Out of the Aeons" — 1933 — Short story — Co-written with Hazel Heald

Carter shares many of Lovecraft's personal traits:. He is an uncelebrated author whose writings are seldom noticed. A melancholy figure, Carter is a quiet contemplative dreamer with a sensitive disposition, prone to fainting during times of emotional stress. He can also be courageous, with enough strength of mind and character to face and foil the horrific creatures of the Dreamlands, as described in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. • Illustration — H. P. Lovecraft, the creator of Randolph Carter He is an antiquarian and one-time student of the fictional Miskatonic University. He grew up in and around Boston. At the age of nine, he underwent a mysterious experience at his great-uncle Christopher's farm and thereafter exhibited a gift of prophecy. He is the descendant of Sir Randolph Carter, who had studied magic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Sir Randolph had then emigrated to America and his son Edmund Carter later had to flee the Salem witch-trials. Carter also had an ancestor involved in one of the Crusades, who was captured by the Muslims and learned "wild secrets" from them. Carter served in the French Foreign Legion during the First World War, and was badly wounded in fighting near Belloy-en-Santerre in 1916, presumably during the Battle of the Somme in which the Legion participated. Poet Alan Seeger perished there in the Foreign Legion on the first day of the Somme, and Lovecraft may well have had Seeger in mind; Lovecraft penned a poem to Seeger's memory in 1918. "The Statement of Randolph Carter" is narrated in flashback by Carter while being interrogated by the police, who suspect him of murdering Harley Warren. Carter and his friend Harley Warren investigate a mysterious crypt in an ancient abandoned cemetery. The story was a nearly verbatim recording of one of Lovecraft's nightmares, with but minor changes like the name "Lovecraft" to "Carter". In "The Unnamable", "Carter" (presumably Randolph Carter) and his friend Joel Manton are attacked by the titular monster in an 18th-century cemetery. Here, "Carter" is not given a first name and described as an author of weird fiction., but an oblique reference to the incident is found in "The Silver Key". During the course of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, one of Lovecraft's longest stories, Carter searches for several months for the lost city of his dreams. The story reveals Carter's familiarity with much of Lovecraft's fictional universe. He is also shown to possess considerable knowledge of the politics and geography of the dream world and has allies there. After an elaborate odyssey, Carter awakens in his Boston apartment with only a fleeting impression of the dream world he left behind, though he now knows what the lost city actually is. The short story "The Silver Key" finds Carter entering middle age and losing his "key to the gate of dreams." "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," written in collaboration with Lovecraft admirer E. Hoffmann Price, details Carter's adventures in another dimension.The investigation into Carter's disappearance takes place four years later, in 1932. "Out of the Aeons" by Lovecraft and Hazel Heald (published as a work by Heald alone) features a brief 1931 appearance by Carter, while trapped in the alien body. He visits a museum exhibiting an ancient mummy from a long-forgotten civilization and recognizes some of the writing on the scroll that accompanies it.

• Randolph Carter appears in the Caliber ComicsThe Statement of Randolph Carter by Steven Philip Jones and Christopher Jones. • Randolph Carter is portrayed as a member of the Miskatonic Project]in the graphic novel, The Miskatonic Project: Bride of Dagon. It is revealed that Carter is the anonymous narrator of Lovecraft's "The Festival". • Sara Bardi's webcomic Lovely Lovecraft has Carter serving as the King of Ilek-Vad (as in Through the Gate of the Silver Key), while young Howard Lovecraft and his mother move into Carter's old house in Arkham. Howard discovers Carter's books and later meets Carter and other familiar characters in the Dreamlands. • In Hans Rodionoff's comic Lovecraft, Randolph Carter is the name Lovecraft uses while traveling in Arkham and battling the Old Ones. He tells his wife, "They can't know my Christian name here." • In the fifth issue of the comic American Virgin, a gravestone in the Glade of Eden Cemetery in Miami is marked Randolph Carter. • Randolph Carter is the protagonist in Charles Cutting's Kadath, which started as a webcomic for The Illustrated Ape magazine. Sloth Comics issued a print version of the completed story in 2015 • In Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, Randolph Carter is said to be the great-nephew of John Carter. • In the Oct. 1979 issue of Heavy Metal, Randolph Carter appears in The Thing, a six-page picture version of 'The Statement of Randolph Carter" using the original text. • In I.N.J. Culbard's Lovecraft, in the story At The Mountains of Madness, the book A War Come Near written by Randolph Carter appears.

• Carter appears three times in the Lovecraft-themed musical parody A Shoggoth on the Roof, including in the opening number. • In the parody RPG Pokéthulhu, the main protagonist is a young boy named Randy Carter.

• In Chaosium's collectible card game MYTHOS and its MYTHOS: Dreamlands expansion, Randolph Carter appears as an ally card. • In Lovecraft Letter, a version of Love Letter including special insanity cards, he is the sane version of the "King" card of the original game. • Randolph Carter is the name of a dog in the Black Cyc game Cthulhu. • In Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., Randolph Carter is featured as a member of the S.T.E.A.M. strike force. • In Persona 2: Eternal Punishments additional scenario (PSP Remake), Randolph Carter is a character who grants access to Kadath Mandala for the party, requesting that they retrieve the fragment of his soul stolen by Nyarlathotep. • Randolph Carter appears in the Liar-soft visual novel, Sekien no Inganock: What a Beautiful People, as a side character. He later reappears in Hikari no Valusia: What a Beautiful Hopes. • In Fantasy Flight Games Dream-Eaters cycle of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, Carter is a recurring NPC that guides the investigators in the waking world. • One "Gentleman Who Travels Through Time and Space" appears in Fate/Grand Order is heavily implied to be Randolph Carter, citing his ancestry based in Salem, and being knowledgeable about Outer Gods.

• A radio adaptation of "The Statement of Randolph Carter" by Macabre Fantasy Radio Theater was performed live in 2012. • Randolph Carter was played by Terry Edward Moore in the Imagination Theatre radio series Kincaid, the StrangeSeeker.

This list is based in the An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. • The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: here Carter is, presumably, twenty years old. (See The Silver Key section). • "The Statement of Randolph Carter": here Carter's age is unspecified, but the events are set after The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. • "The Unnamable": This story occurs not long after The Statement of Randolph Carter. • "The Silver Key": here Carter is thirty, but is transformed into a nine-year-old boy. Then, at fifty-four, he finds the Silver Key. • "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" takes place after "The Silver Key". An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia doesn't mention anything about the chronology of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" or "Out of the Aeons". Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi used the chronology Lovecraft gives in "The Silver Key" in which the events in "The Statement of Randolph Carter" took place when Carter was in his late forties. Joshi states that it explains why he was called a "bundle of nerves" in that story, as it implies that Carter suffers Post-traumatic stress disorder from the War.

section Lovecraft's character may have been based on a real-life Randolph Carter, who was a Scholar at Christ's College, in the University of Cambridge, from 1892 to 1895. Carter took his Part I Tripos in Oriental Studies (Arabic), and his Part II in Egyptology. While at Cambridge, he was an acquaintance of Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough. Carter's whereabouts after Cambridge are unclear, but, like his fictional namesake, he may have used the French Foreign Legion as a route into exploring the North African deserts. College records do not indicate whether Carter was a US or British citizen.