Dagon, War of Worlds

Previous episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre have all been adaptations of a single classic Lovecraft story. As the series expanded, we knew we wanted to adapt some of HPL’s shorter works, and yet still provide full feature-length episodes of audio drama. “Dagon” was on the list of favorite and often-requested stories, but being only five pages long, and having only one character and no real plot, we realized we’d need to rework it substantially to make it fit the Dark Adventure line. Written in 1917, “Dagon” was one of HPL’s stories which was directly inspired by a dream. It was also one of his first returns to writing fiction after a nine-year hiatus. This brief story foreshadowed the theme of great undersea horrors that would reappear in his greater works “The Call of Cthulhu and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.

Lovecraft incorporated elements from “Dagon” into “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” We had already done a Dark Adventure episode of that story, but the tale ends with many questions unanswered. Old Zadok Allen hints that the Deep Ones have a master plan for world domination, and that they are in league with Shoggoths. He also says that the old Kanaky islanders knew of certain symbols that could drive Deep Ones away. The town has been raided and no one really knows what has become of the Marsh family and the other members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. And in the closing lines, the protagonist Robert Olmstead declares his intention to bust his cousin out of the insane asylum and join the Deep Ones in Y’ha-nthlei. We saw an opportunity to pick up where Innsmouth left off, incorporate “Dagon”—and maybe even more than that—and create an exciting new adventure unlike anything our audience has ever heard.