While Game of Thrones is known and loved for its elaborate political machinations and warring families, hiding beyond the realms of men lays a terrifying world of dark sorcery and inevitable prophecy. George R.R. Martin has crafted one of the greatest dark fantasy series in the history of the genre, even if many people don’t consider it as such. That’s a testament to his relatively sparse use of the supernatural. Even with dragons and an undead army in play, the world still seems very grounded in reality most of the time. That slowly changed, though. “With each book that I write, the level of magic rises a little,” Martin told the New York Times in 2011. “It’s a gradual introduction. I suppose it’s like the crab in the pot. You put a crab in hot water, he’ll jump right out. But you put him in cold water and you gradually heat it up — the hot water is fantasy and magic, and the crab is the audience.” But don’t expect armies of wizards hurling fireballs to turn up any time soon. Martin’s take is definitely dark fantasy rather than Lord of the Rings high fantasy or Harry Potter contemporary fantasy. And one of his biggest influences for that darkness is H.P. Lovecraft, the pioneering horror writer who created the Cthulu Mythos, a shared fictional universe full of death cults, demon gods, and cosmic evils too vast for the human mind to even comprehend. Lovecraft’s many short stories and novellas set in this growing world of darkest horror was a stunning new take on the genre, especially considering that The Call of Cthulu came out in 1928. Martin is no casual fan of Lovecraft. He regularly cites the writer as one of his earliest reading obsessions. He’s visited Lovecraft’s grave in Rhode Island, and even wrote some elaborate fan fiction back in 2011 pitting Jaime Lannister against Cthulu in a deathmatch. When George sat down to speak with Stephen King, their conversation kept leading back to Lovecraft’s influence on both of their writing. So it should be no surprise that there’s all manner of Lovecraftian influence noticable in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, from simple name drops to parallel mythologies. Leng, Ib, K’Dath, and Sarnath are all locations in both Martin and Lovecraft’s worlds. The Black Goat is a cult god from Qorth whose name references Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young featured in multiple Cthulu Mythos stories. And Dagon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands is named after Dagon, one of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones. The further you examine the dark supernatural underbelly of the Iron Islands, the more you’ll find H.P. Lovecraft influencing Martin’s dark fantasy.

The Drowned God, Mythos: No mythology in Westeros carries as many nods to Lovecraft as the Drowned God of the Iron Islands. A clear reference to Lovecraft’s most famous Great Old One Cthulu, both gods live at the bottom of the ocean and wage elemental war against a competing air deity — Cthulu against Hastur and The Drowned God against The Storm God (although it’s worth noting this take on Cthulu Mythos was added by Lovecraft publisher August Derleth). Even the most common refrain from the religion of the Drowned God, “What is dead may never die but rises again harder and stronger,” is a play on a passage from Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu where the Necronomicon reads, “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even death may die.” Various tales of mermaids, merlings, and selkies are told on Iron Islands and beyond, and these stories may carry a dark truth that mirrors a tale told in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth. In that novella, Lovecraft slowly reveals a town under the control of a race of humanoid sea creatures known as the Deep Ones. They mate with the women of the town, and while their spawn maintains a human appearance through youth they slowly begin to develop rubbery complexions and bulging, unblinking eyes. Eventually they complete their transformation into Deep Ones and disappear into the sea, never to be seen again … until it is time to mate.

Across all the lands of Game of Thrones, there are legends of similar creatures with the same name: The Deep Ones. Described in The World of Ice and Fire as a “misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women,” legends point to the Deep Ones as responsible for a series of oily black stones sculptures found on far reaching coasts. One such stone is the Seastone Chair of the Iron Islands, which led Ironborn maester Theron to suggest the Deep Ones are the spawn of some greater entity that may have provided the basis for the Drowned God religion. But to what purpose? Perhaps it was so the Iron Islanders would wage war against the Storm King’s followers for them — the Children of the Forest. History shows they did, with the Grey King of the Iron Isles being famous for battling the Children and building “a longship from the hard pale wood of Ygg, a demon tree who fed on human flesh,” which is undoubtedly a weirwood tree. Tales of the initial war between the Children and the First Men tell of people being fed to weirwood trees to harness dark magical powers, and some speculate that Jojen Reed suffers this fate in George R.R. Martin’s books, with his remains ground into a paste and fed to Bran Stark as he transforms into the Three-Eyed Raven. One last interesting connection regarding the Reeds. Their house words seem to spell out the major battles being waged in Westeros across history. “I swear it by earth and water. I swear it by bronze and iron. I swear it by ice and fire.” George R.R. Martin is in the middle of telling us A Song of Ice and Fire now. Bronze and Iron represents the First Men with their bronze weapons against the Andals with iron. Earth and water … the Children against the Drowned God?

The Doom: The Doom of Valyria nearly mirrors the name of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Doom That Came To Sarnath.” As if to confirm the nod, Martin also makes the original Valyrians shepherds just like the Sarnathians. But here the story begins to split as the Valyrians tap into ancient magics found in the ruins of their new home. One septon claimed, “They practiced blood magic and other dark arts as well, delving deep into the earth for secrets best left buried and twisting the flesh of beasts and men to fashion monstrous and unnatural chimeras.” Bloodmages harnessed the power of the Fourteen Flames, a chain of volcanoes surrounding Valyria. Deep underground they discovered wyverns, and one “chimera” that may have come out of their experiments are the dragons they controlled and conquered the world with. But as we’ll discuss later, advanced civilizations wielding dark magic tend to self destruct sooner or later, and the Doom saw the Fourteen Flames erupt and wipe out the entire Valyrian freehold, obliterating most life and leaving nothing but a smoldering heap of rubble infested with dark horrors that rarely allow visitors to escape. It sounds better to die there. In Martin’s latest book, Fire And Blood, he tells the tale of fourteen year old Princess Aerea, who attempted to ride Aegon the Conqueror’s massive dragon Balerion the Black Dread. Balerion flew her back to Valyria and when they returned a year later Aerea was burning to the touch with smoke emitting from every orifice on her body. In the following days her skin darkened and cracked as if being cooked above a spit and her eyes melted from their sockets. When they put her in cold water, dozens of wormlike creatures burst from her skin, finally releasing her from her agony. So we’d say the horrors of the Doom are well feared for a reason. Blood Magic: George R.R. Martin’s books certainly do more than just borrow names and themes cooked up by H.P. Lovecraft and other Cthulu Mythos authors. But it keeps the same feel as the supernatural elements of Lovecraft: magic tends to be unpredictable and soaked in blood. Magic involves meddling with ancient forces beyond any comprehension. “I don’t want to go down the route of having magic schools and classes where, if you say these six words, something will reliably happen,” Martin told Russian outlet Meduza back in 2017. “Magic doesn’t work that way. Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. And perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand.” It’s still unclear where magic comes from in the world of Game of Thrones, but some of the mechanisms are well known by those who wield it. Most powers are channeled through elements — fire, ice, air, earth, water. And if there is some pantheon of elemental deities behind this, they thirst for blood. The bigger the sacrifice, the better. HBO’s Game of Thrones series kept things relegated largely to the power of royal blood, but the books point to the wider power of elemental sacrifice practiced across the lands.