Cosmic Horror and Concepts of Religion

[King Tharassian]

I recently had an interesting thought while reading The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I don't know if it has been posited before, but I decided to see what people think.

What if Cosmic Horrors were actually worshipped? As in not by isolated cults or shadowy groups of shut-ins wearing black robes because that's How Things Are Done. I mean actual organized religion, along the lines of modern concepts of a unified church. Like if Nyarlathotep or Cthulhu was an actual deity in some openly-existing group, or like the Great Ones from Bloodborne.

What would they actually believe? What would they preach? What would allow such a faith to organize at all?

The closest I've come is a concept of a religion based not around gods that they believe care, but gods that they know are apathetic, and so aim to simultaneously appease them and try to bring them around to caring for their worshippers through devotion and prayer.

But what say you, SV?

 

[mulazer]

Are'nt most deities already eldritch beings. They tend to operate on cosmlogical timescales to fulfill goals utterly beyond human comprehension and an appearance that destroys mortals in body and mind.

The only difference between them and Cthulhu is that they seem to care about humanity to a certain degree.

 

[Boreas Anemos]

Worshiping a deity that is clearly apathetic makes little sense from purely human perspective. Each belief system (even those that do not have any deities) provides the followers with some ultimate goal (something to strive for: salvation, enlightenment, release from cycle of rebirth, promise of eternal rest) or just some structure to the universe.

An apathetic deity would either have to promise something like that: "After you die, if you lived a good life, you shall join our Lord in His eternal slumber. If you lived a life of evil, you shall be devoured by the guardians that protect His peace" or "Our Lord does not care, but this is what He told us about the world and our place in it". Alternatively, deity's prophets would have to paint it as less apathetic than it actually is. After all, a prophet is kind of like a marketing person in regard to word they are preaching - and not all religions consider lying in good cause a sin.

I'm skipping all the "moral compass, organisation of society, rituals" part, as it is secondary to "why would I worship this one". While a religion that is already spread or is important part of identity, it has to take root first - and for that, it has to be somehow attractive to followers or people of power. It has to give them something they lack. Early Christianity would have remained just another sect of Judaism if not for some rulers that took interest in it and made it a state religion as a political move.

 

[Benwise]

Ooh, this is interesting.
Now, whilst the entities of the Mythos tend to be deeply alien and basically inimical to humanity that does not need mean they never care about humans I think. It just means that if they do, they will express it in a manner that is basically alien and deeply inimical to humanity.
A Lovecraftian Cosmos is a vast, chaotic mad place that is utterly apathetic to humanity, but the invidual inhuman superbeings need not be as apathetic.

Worshiping a deity that is clearly apathetic makes little sense from purely human perspective. Each belief system (even those that do not have any deities) provides the followers with some ultimate goal (something to strive for: salvation, enlightenment, release from cycle of rebirth, promise of eternal rest) or just some structure to the universe.

An apathetic deity would either have to promise something like that: "After you die, if you lived a good life, you shall join our Lord in His eternal slumber. If you lived a life of evil, you shall be devoured by the guardians that protect His peace" or "Our Lord does not care, but this is what He told us about the world and our place in it". Alternatively, deity's prophets would have to paint it as less apathetic than it actually is. After all, a prophet is kind of like a marketing person in regard to word they are preaching - and not all religions consider lying in good cause a sin.

I'm skipping all the "moral compass, organisation of society, rituals" part, as it is secondary to "why would I worship this one". While a religion that is already spread or is important part of identity, it has to take root first - and for that, it has to be somehow attractive to followers or people of power. It has to give them something they lack. Early Christianity would have remained just another sect of Judaism if not for some rulers that took interest in it and made it a state religion as a political move.

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Well, first thing is that the worshippers need not necessarily know if an entity is utterly apathetic to their offerings. A major religion devoting centuries of worship and terrible sacrificies to their Dread God only to be incidentally wiped out by that very same entity simply passing by without it ever caring or even noticing them is pretty cosmic-horrory.

But there IS something to gain by consorting with eldritch entities. How else do you think all these darned sorcerers earn their powers? And nothing is better advertising than a miracle. Sure, devoting yourself to The Ocean of Glittering Eyes might eventually turn you into a humanoid puddle that whose self is slowly subsumed a hive-consciousness of uncountable alien minds, but until then you will be enlightened about so many things. And when you are zealous enough you might even believe it to be something of an afterlife.

EDIT: But yeah, the religion is going to have a pretty sanitized public image, you are right about that. All the more fun when intrepid investigators slowly discover that the familiar kindly priest secretly endorses ritual cannibalism.

 

[King Tharassian]

Are'nt most deities already eldritch beings. They tend to operate on cosmlogical timescales to fulfill goals utterly beyond human comprehension and an appearance that destroys mortals in body and mind.

The only difference between them and Cthulhu is that they seem to care about humanity to a certain degree.

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That's certainly one interpretation, but don't let certain people hear that.

Worshiping a deity that is clearly apathetic makes little sense from purely human perspective. Each belief system (even those that do not have any deities) provides the followers with some ultimate goal (something to strive for: salvation, enlightenment, release from cycle of rebirth, promise of eternal rest) or just some structure to the universe.

An apathetic deity would either have to promise something like that: "After you die, if you lived a good life, you shall join our Lord in His eternal slumber. If you lived a life of evil, you shall be devoured by the guardians that protect His peace" or "Our Lord does not care, but this is what He told us about the world and our place in it". Alternatively, deity's prophets would have to paint it as less apathetic than it actually is. After all, a prophet is kind of like a marketing person in regard to word they are preaching - and not all religions consider lying in good cause a sin.

I'm skipping all the "moral compass, organisation of society, rituals" part, as it is secondary to "why would I worship this one". While a religion that is already spread or is important part of identity, it has to take root first - and for that, it has to be somehow attractive to followers or people of power. It has to give them something they lack. Early Christianity would have remained just another sect of Judaism if not for some rulers that took interest in it and made it a state religion as a political move.

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All good points.

Ooh, this is interesting.
Now, whilst the entities of the Mythos tend to be deeply alien and basically inimical to humanity that does not need mean they never care about humans I think. It just means that if they do, they will express it in a manner that is basically alien and deeply inimical to humanity.
A Lovecraftian Cosmos is a vast, chaotic mad place that is utterly apathetic to humanity, but the invidual inhuman superbeings need not be as apathetic.


Well, first thing is that the worshippers need not necessarily know if an entity is utterly apathetic to their offerings. A major religion devoting centuries of worship and terrible sacrificies to their Dread God only to be incidentally wiped out by that very same entity simply passing by without it ever caring or even noticing them is pretty cosmic-horrory.

But there IS something to gain by consorting with eldritch entities. How else do you think all these darned sorcerers earn their powers? And nothing is better advertising than a miracle. Sure, devoting yourself to The Ocean of Glittering Eyes might eventually turn you into a humanoid puddle that whose self is slowly subsumed a hive-consciousness of uncountable alien minds, but until then you will be enlightened about so many things. And when you are zealous enough you might even believe it to be something of an afterlife.

EDIT: But yeah, the religion is going to have a pretty sanitized public image, you are right about that. All the more fun when intrepid investigators slowly discover that the familiar kindly priest secretly endorses ritual cannibalism.

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But then, how would those eldritch beings actually care about their subjects? Would it be open? Displayed? And more importantly, would the religion be open about its blatant mystery-cult enlightenment-hunting tendencies, or hide it behind other concepts?

Also, should I go all out and turn this into a concept-building thread as opposed to just a discussion one?

 

[Benwise]

But then, how would those eldritch beings actually care about their subjects? Would it be open? Displayed? And more importantly, would the religion be open about its blatant mystery-cult enlightenment-hunting tendencies, or hide it behind other concepts?

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As a general rule it depends on the nature of each god. For example the aforementioned Ocean of Glittering Eyes being an infectious hive-consciousness would not really care. However using strange rituals it is possible for its devotees to psychically connect with it and gain just a microscopic sliver of its nigh-omniscient knowledge. Sure the ocean gains another mind in the end, but really it already knew it was gonna happen for aeons, nothing of note.

The religion would center around knowledge; whether it be scientific or philosophical, trivial or relevant, ancient or recent, spiritual or materialistic, it would all be held sacrosant along with its pursuit. Each invidual devotee would be expected to gain as much knowledge as they possibly could, and religious ceremonies would mostly devoted to either sharing this knowledge with other devotees or trying to get contact with the god with the aid of the priests.

The religion would have a rigid pyramid hierarchy of priesthood, the higher up you are the greater your achievements in contacting the god are. In the public sphere and among the lowest rungs of the religious populace the perception would just be that it is a religion that favours the pursuit of science and knowing how to be virtuous. It would have a lot of secular members, that take part because of the communal sharing of knowledge, consider the rituals to be effective mediation and think the occasional mention about the most enlightened joining the god of knowledge is a metaphor to contributing to the knowledge base of mankind. The strange nature of the religion would be more obvious as you climbed the ranks and you became more effective in reaching the Ocean, the rituals would be more elaborate and the knowledge would be oh so much stranger. The priests themselves would have various motivations, whether it be to use the knowledge gained for their own pursuits, simply being addicted to grasping at all-knowledge or genuinely valuing the knowledge gained and wanting to share it.

If, on the other hand the god in question is the Past-Yet-Present Monarch, born from the stars, first Ruler of Humanity from fifty millennium ago, who still holds the crown despite being interred not-living into along with the First City somewhere in Africa, who cares simply because he demands fealty, and thus inspires fanatical loyalty by sending visages to anyone who knows and understands his personal name.
He will rebuild his utopia on the promised day where he marches again, casting all who resist aside like leafs before a firestorm, and all his loyal subjects who serve his glory will be content, and even if they may still suffer by misfortune they will be blissful because they will bask in his divine presence. And those other, they will suffer from bereft his divine presence, and all will be freed from death and be deathless in his Earthly Paradise. Only through sacrifice can you prove your devotion.

So yeah, depends on the diety.

 

[King Tharassian]

As a general rule it depends on the nature of each god. For example the aforementioned Ocean of Glittering Eyes being an infectious hive-consciousness would not really care. However using strange rituals it is possible for its devotees to psychically connect with it and gain just a microscopic sliver of its nigh-omniscient knowledge. Sure the ocean gains another mind in the end, but really it already knew it was gonna happen for aeons, nothing of note.

The religion would center around knowledge; whether it be scientific or philosophical, trivial or relevant, ancient or recent, spiritual or materialistic, it would all be held sacrosant along with its pursuit. Each invidual devotee would be expected to gain as much knowledge as they possibly could, and religious ceremonies would mostly devoted to either sharing this knowledge with other devotees or trying to get contact with the god with the aid of the priests.

The religion would have a rigid pyramid hierarchy of priesthood, the higher up you are the greater your achievements in contacting the god are. In the public sphere and among the lowest rungs of the religious populace the perception would just be that it is a religion that favours the pursuit of science and knowing how to be virtuous. It would have a lot of secular members, that take part because of the communal sharing of knowledge, consider the rituals to be effective mediation and think the occasional mention about the most enlightened joining the god of knowledge is a metaphor to contributing to the knowledge base of mankind. The strange nature of the religion would be more obvious as you climbed the ranks and you became more effective in reaching the Ocean, the rituals would be more elaborate and the knowledge would be oh so much stranger. The priests themselves would have various motivations, whether it be to use the knowledge gained for their own pursuits, simply being addicted to grasping at all-knowledge or genuinely valuing the knowledge gained and wanting to share it.

If, on the other hand the god in question is the Past-Yet-Present Monarch, born from the stars, first Ruler of Humanity from fifty millennium ago, who still holds the crown despite being interred not-living into along with the First City somewhere in Africa, who cares simply because he demands fealty, and thus inspires fanatical loyalty by sending visages to anyone who knows and understands his personal name.
He will rebuild his utopia on the promised day where he marches again, casting all who resist aside like leafs before a firestorm, and all his loyal subjects who serve his glory and be content, and even if they may still suffer by misfortune they will be blissful because they will bask in his divine presence. And those other, they will suffer from bereft his divine presence, and all will be freed from death and be deathless in his Earthly Paradise. Only through sacrifice can you prove your devotion.

So yeah, depends on the diety.

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Okay, are you setting this up on the fly, or are you like me and have built some of this beforehand? :lol

That's pretty in depth, and actually makes me want to turn this thread into an actual worldbuilding thing where we try to make this into A Thing...

 

[Benwise]

Okay, are you setting this up on the fly, or are you like me and have built some of this beforehand? :lol

That's pretty in depth, and actually makes me want to turn this thread into an actual worldbuilding thing where we try to make this into A Thing...

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I'm setting it up on the fly. I'm up for worldbuilding, it's fun.

 

[King Tharassian]

I'm setting it up on the fly. I'm up for worlbuilding, it's fun.

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I'll give it a little bit, and then see what other people think. But that's pretty impressive.

 

[Boreas Anemos]

I'll give it a little bit, and then see what other people think. But that's pretty impressive.

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I like the idea. I'll give it some thought when I'm more conscious, but despite reservations I expressed in my first post here, I believe one can imagine some valid cults of this kind.

Main question I would have: are we operating in our vision of the world (like, Old Gods cults growing as religions alongside abrahamic faiths, pagan religions, eastern doctrines) or something more abstract (we have humans with human mentality and perhaps broad strokes of history, and build cults/religions here)?

 

[King Tharassian]

I like the idea. I'll give it some thought when I'm more conscious, but despite reservations I expressed in my first post here, I believe one can imagine some valid cults of this kind.

Main question I would have: are we operating in our vision of the world (like, Old Gods cults growing as religions alongside abrahamic faiths, pagan religions, eastern doctrines) or something more abstract (we have humans with human mentality and perhaps broad strokes of history, and build cults/religions here)?

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I would be happy to do either. Seeing what would happen in our world, and where, could be interesting, and a new setting could be just as fascinating (though more work).

 

[Benwise]

I like the idea. I'll give it some thought when I'm more conscious, but despite reservations I expressed in my first post here, I believe one can imagine some valid cults of this kind.

Main question I would have: are we operating in our vision of the world (like, Old Gods cults growing as religions alongside abrahamic faiths, pagan religions, eastern doctrines) or something more abstract (we have humans with human mentality and perhaps broad strokes of history, and build cults/religions here)?

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I had similar thoughts actually. The former would provide a lot of material to work with and makes the world an easier place to fill out, giving it a familiar background that makes the strange stand out a lot more. It is a setting about a familiar world that has been affected by being located in a strange and dangerous cosmos, and people deal with that in whatever way they can.

The latter makes the Old God religions front-and-center, and makes it more believable that they are major religions without the world feeling cluttered. But it also raised a lot of questions about what the hell the world actually looks like considering that one of the most important forces shaping humanity has been completely altered. And all religions secretly being spearheaded by people devoted to horrible alien super beings is pretty amazingly dystopic (Pro or con? You decide). Depending on how much influence the Elder Faiths have it can become a world where The Lovecraftian Cosmos has effectively devoured human society, the comforting lies are no longer made just to deny that the universe is completely insane, they now prevent you from seeing that human society is just as mad as the world outside.

tl;dr: The former setting is about how human society is affected by an insane universe and people dealing with that, the latter setting is about how human society is an reflection of an insane universe and how people deal with that.

 

[King Tharassian]

I had similar thoughts actually. The former would provide a lot of material to work with and makes the world an easier place to fill out, giving it a familiar background that makes the strange stand out a lot more. It is a setting about a familiar world that has been affected by being located in a strange and dangerous cosmos, and people deal with that in whatever way they can.

The latter makes the Old God religions front-and-center, and makes it more believable that they are major religions without the world feeling cluttered. But it also raised a lot of questions about what the hell the world actually looks like considering that one of the most important forces shaping humanity has been completely altered. And all religions secretly being spearheaded by people devoted to horrible alien super beings is pretty amazingly dystopic (Pro or con? You decide). Depending on how much influence the Elder Faiths have it can become a world where The Lovecraftian Cosmos has effectively devoured human society, the comforting lies are no longer made just to deny that the universe is completely insane, they now prevent you from seeing that human society is just as mad as the world outside.

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Is it just me, or is that a good concept for a complete worldbuilding project, instead of just religions?

Heck, if we do either, I might just try and use the result in a Quest if you all didn't mind.

You want to do this?

 

[Benwise]

Is it just me, or is that a good concept for a complete worldbuilding project, instead of just religions?

Heck, if we do either, I might just try and use the result in a Quest if you all didn't mind.

You want to do this?

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Sure, it will be fun.

 

[King Tharassian]

Sure, it will be fun.

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So I'll send a PM, and then we'll begin a new thread when we have a basic idea of how to start?

 

[Mistborn]

Is it just me, or is that a good concept for a complete worldbuilding project, instead of just religions?

Heck, if we do either, I might just try and use the result in a Quest if you all didn't mind.

You want to do this?

Click to shrink...

Something similar has been attempted before. Though in that case it was less about the gods in and of themselves but rather how those entities could embody/convey the "forbidden knowledge" which drives men mad. Or in other words what sort of mind-consuming beliefs would cause seemingly ordinary people to depart from the path of common understanding and swear oaths to the eldritch beyond.

 

[King Tharassian]

Something similar has been attempted before. Though in that case it was less about the gods in and of themselves but rather how those entities could embody/convey the "forbidden knowledge" which drives men mad. Or in other words what sort of mind-consuming beliefs would cause seemingly ordinary people to depart from the path of common understanding and swear oaths to the eldritch beyond.

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I interpreted this as an opportunity to understand both, really. But thank you for informing me! I'll have to look at that...

 

[Bassoe]

We know that gods exist and that they don't care about or even notice humanity. Despite that, they may prove useful to us as demonstrable examples that something greater than ourselves can exist if nothing else. We know that they exist. Because of that, we know what we call magic exists and is at least theoretically usable because the gods demonstrate it in use.

Therefore we must create and/or turn ourselves into something greater than ourselves with the intention of being able to survive in a world with gods or even contend on something approaching equal terms.

...but human flesh was too frail, too paltry to hold the terrific essence that was Khosatral Khel...

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Long ago, and ancient scientist/wizard was working on creating the ultimate life form, for his frail body was unable to support the extremely powerful magics that he used for much longer. Anything he designed was unable to meet his standards, so he turned to the best creator this side of reality - Mother Nature. He designed a creature in his basement, something that looks like a toothless Sarlacc Pit from star wars, and gave it simple instructions: Evolve. Now, the creature itself was immobile, and it's purpose wasn't to evolve itself. It evolved something else.

The Wizard created a horde of small creatures, each closely resembling a small squirrel/dog, and gave them slightly more complicated instructions. Go out into the world, and survive. The squogs would eat nearly any animal, and had an excellent memory. The real special thing about them was their ability to record the genetic information of any animal they ate. So, after that, the Magician cast a spell, and the animals were teleported to random locations across the globe, and left to fend for themselves for awhile. Then the Magician cast another spell and put himself into stasis, so that he would only be awoken when a suitable body was made.

The pit creature was therefore responsible for the squogs, and kept track of every move they made. It couldn't control them, or affect them really, but it always knew where they were. After a few years the second part of the spell the magician cast, the creatures were teleported back, dead or alive. They fed themselves to the pit creature, where it used the recorded genetics and memories to design new creatures. They were slightly larger, about a foot more there were ten times as many of them this generation as there were the last generation. The creatures now armed with new adaptations, were sent back out into the world.

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Plot twist - the game starts with the PCs waking up with amnesia, no prior records of their existence, only barely human appearances and bizarre abilities inspired by real biology. Even if they don't realize it yet, they're the "perfected" creatures. The final boss of the campaign is the wizard awakening, bodyjacking the most powerful of the PCs (whoever had the highest stats, now boosted by a ridiculous amount of magical ability) then trying to kill the remaining PCs as redundant.

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I always thought an interesting idea for the future of humanity in the Lovecraft mythos was the idea that the ... well, Lovecraftian qualities of Lovecraft aliens were a product of our smallness as much as anything, so to a later species in the same position as ours a successful humanity would fit in pretty well with the "incomprehensible eldritch thing that psychologically disturbs you just by existing" bestiary.

I mean, imagine what a successful transhumanist far-future humanity might look like. Immensely ancient and intelligent immortal software entities inhabiting bodies of cold gleaming diamond and amorphous utility-fog, living in the cold void of space, ripping up entire worlds as raw materials for their vast constructions, withdrawing into fantasy worlds of almost unimaginable wonder and horror when they find the real universe too boring. Now imagine that from the perspective of your typical kinda xenophobic-neurotic Lovecraft protagonist.

I like the idea of a sort of parallel to Mountain of Madness with a later intelligent species exploring the remains of such a far-future humanity, seeing records of a history kind of paralleling the Elder Things, with Cthulhu waking up and then a war between him and his star-spawn and this posthuman civilization, and conflicts between the posthumans and their AI creations paralleling the history with the Shuggoths.

An idea I have is at the end the explorers go into one of the oldest human constructs and find some fossilized human remains, and at first they're puzzled at what these animal bones are doing in the ruins of the "Void Dwellers", but then they see how big the braincase of the skull is, notice the similarity of the remains to the shape that seems to emerge with an odd semi-stability out of the amorphous utility fog bodies used by the Void Dwellers, put two and two together, and deduce that the "Void Dwellers", for all their power and alienness, may have originally started out as beings similar to themselves.

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BEST QUALITIES: It used to be that the typical Halloween witch was simply a very old, human woman, but over time, she evolved into something clearly stranger than that, with a pond-scum complexion, elongated facial features and gnarled, knobbly joints. These qualities are by no means new, but hearken more to the oldest portrayals of figures like Baba Yaga and Jenny Greenteeth, mythical "hags" so ancient and so powerful that they're no longer human at all, if they ever truly were to begin with. I'll admit, I used to completely overlook witches as if they were the dullest of the Halloween mascots, but my appreciation for them has really skyrocketed in recent years.

FURTHER POTENTIAL: admittedly, even the gnarliest and weirdest looking Halloween witches are often still passed off as "just really old," sometimes even if they occupy a series where no other human being ever looks that peculiar. It's obvious, though, that breathing in the fumes of all those bubbling, magical brews must just carry a lot of creepy side effects. The green skin comes first. Then you've got the extremities growing a bit faster than the rest of you. Warts come next, and by the time a witch is living far beyond a normal human life expectancy, her body has begun to age in ways the natural human life span doesn't normally permit. Think of witches as "mutated" by their own magic - which they obviously are - and they suddenly seem a whole lot more compelling than just a bunch of very scary grandmas.

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BEST QUALITIES: Like witches, mad scientists are often assumed to be completely human, just weird and old. Also like witches, however, they're portrayed with exaggerated, inhuman features just often enough that this sometimes simply can't be the case. Most commonly, a mad scientist has an enlarged head, implying a brain far larger and more powerful than that of a normal human. Do they pursue science because of this advanced mind, or is there something more at work?

FURTHER POTENTIAL: I really, really want to think of mad scientists as monsters themselves, and I don't see why I can't. There are all sorts of ways we could rationalize it; in many classic narratives, an otherwise normal researcher stumbles upon a chemical or even mathematical formula that somehow boosts their intelligence far beyond natural, human capacity, losing their grasp on conventional logic or morality and turning towards more twisted research. Isn't that just as much a transformation into a "monster" as any other? It's almost a mental lycanthropy, a mind turning into some other, inhuman thing under abnormal conditions and wreaking its own form of havoc on the countryside. A were-genius.

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Think of it like the premise of wizardry in early sword and sorcery fiction.

Basically imagine a mashup of fanatical Singularitarianism, Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age sorcerers who're deliberately setting out to discard their humanity in favor of superhuman power, /tg/'s ethical discussion on Eldritch Savants and Green Antarctica's Cold Islander dogma about everything, people included merely being the sum of their component parts.

In reaction to the presence of uncaring "gods", powerful enough to be existentially dangerous on a specieswide level, become fanatically obsessed with secularism, trying to treat everything no matter how blatantly supernatural as merely a part of science we don't yet understand, yet need to learn regardless of the cost in lives, humanity, sanity or some combination of the above.

....

Alternately, something like a mashup of BuenaKai and the Ebola-Chan cultists. People believing or at least hoping that the monsters had understandable goals, were being sent as divine punishment rather than just randomly, and that they could be directed against the enemies of the cult/warded away via rituals. None of this actually works, but it makes the cultists feel better thinking that if they have sufficient faith it'll be their enemies suffering rather than them.

 

[King Tharassian]

We know that gods exist and that they don't care about or even notice humanity. Despite that, they may prove useful to us as demonstrable examples that something greater than ourselves can exist if nothing else. We know that they exist. Because of that, we know what we call magic exists and is at least theoretically usable because the gods demonstrate it in use.

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A strong start. This concept is one that I've seen, but it lands itself beautifully to the concept of cosmic horror.

Therefore we must create and/or turn ourselves into something greater than ourselves with the intention of being able to survive in a world with gods or even contend on something approaching equal terms... Basically imagine a mashup of fanatical Singularitarianism, Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age sorcerers who're deliberately setting out to discard their humanity in favor of superhuman power, /tg/'s ethical discussion on Eldritch Savants and Green Antarctica's Cold Islander dogma about everything, people included merely being the sum of their component parts.

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So basically a belief centered on the concept that in order to succeed, we must ascend to a plane of existence higher than our own or evolve beyond our current state? Using the influence of such powers to find ways of surviving and overcoming peril even to the point of abandoning what we consider humanity?

And my Eru, that concept is terrifying and yet... So very appropriate given the mythos it exists in. And it raises an interesting moral conundrum about how far is too far, as well as the difficulty of knowing when and if someone is being truthful, telling a lie they genuinely believe, or lying outright, and how that decision and distinction could affect everything else in a world like this.

In reaction to the presence of uncaring "gods", powerful enough to be existentially dangerous on a specieswide level, become fanatically obsessed with secularism, trying to treat everything no matter how blatantly supernatural as merely a part of science we don't yet understand, yet need to learn regardless of the cost in lives, humanity, sanity or some combination of the above.

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And that... Yeah.... I can see this being a thing far too easily for my own comfort. The appearance of beings like the Great Old Ones (or god forbid the Elder Gods) would lead to the development of bizarre cultural phenomena across the world. I can definitely see a pseudo-objectivist hypersecularism arising, but I could also see people latching onto such beings as gods or heralds, so either path is entirely possible. At least, I think so.

 

[Bassoe]

So basically a belief centered on the concept that in order to succeed, we must ascend to a plane of existence higher than our own or evolve beyond our current state? Using the influence of such powers to find ways of surviving and overcoming peril even to the point of abandoning what we consider humanity?

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Sort of. I can think of three sects, all of which are their own unique varieties of crazy.

Survivalists

"And is that so important?" he said bitterly, feeling his voice thicken. "Such a big deal? To talk some machines into taking you along to the stars with them, like pets getting a ride in the car? Make sure they leave the windows open a crack for you when they park the spaceship!"
She started to blaze angrily at him, then struggled visibly to bring herself under control. "That's the wrong analogy," she said at last, in a dangerously calm voice. "Don't think of us as dogs on a joyride. Think of us instead as rats on an ocean-liner, or as cockroaches on an airplane, or even as insect larva in the corner of a shipping crate. It doesn't matter why they want us to go, or even if they know we're along for the ride, just as long as we go. Whatever their motives are for going where they're going, we have agendas of our own. Just by taking us along, they're going to help us extend our biological range to environments we never could have reached otherwise—yes, just like rats reaching New Zealand by stowing away on sailing ships. It didn't matter that the rats didn't build the ships themselves, or decide where the ships were going—all that counts in an environmental sense is that they got there, to a place they never could have reached on their own. Bucky Bug has promised to leave small colonizing teams behind on every habitable planet we reach. It amuses him in a fond, patronizing kind of way. He thinks it's cute." She stared levelly at him. "But why he's doing it doesn't matter. Pigs were spread to every continent in the world because humans wanted to eat them—bad for the individual pigs, but very good in the long run for the species as a whole, which extended its range explosively and multiplied its biomass exponentially. And like rats or cockroaches, once humans get into an environment, it's hard to get rid of them. Whatever motives the AIs have for doing what they're doing, they'll help spread humanity throughout the stars, whether they realize they're doing it or not."
"Is that the best destiny you can think of for the human race?" he said. "To be cockroaches scuttling behind the walls in some machine paradise?"
This time, she did blaze at him. "Goddamnit, Charlie, we don't have time for that bullshit! We can't afford dignity and pride and all the rest of those luxuries! This is species survival we're talking about here!" She'd squirmed around to face him, in her urgency. He tried to say something, even he wasn't sure what it would have been, but she overrode him. "We've got to get the human race off Earth! Any way we can. We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket anymore.

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Humanity must adapt to survive. Become, to quote the /tg/ discussion I previously linked, "the cockroaches of the new world, too resilient and numerous to wipe out". Spread everywhere throughout the universe, redesigning themselves to fill all niches so if even one colony survives, something does.

Monsters associated with them include Farms, tardigrade-style extremophile Anthropomundus and cybermen.

....

Supremacists

Asked in a 2011 New Yorker profile whether the kinds of life extension technologies he was investing in might exacerbate already grotesque levels of social inequality, Thiel's response offered a glimpse into the ethical simple-mindedness of his techno-libertarianism: "Probably the most extreme form of inequality," he said, "is between people who are alive and people who are dead."

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Humanity must adapt to become the new dominant species. The gods demonstrate that things are possible possible, we just have to figure out how they do them and reverse-engineer said capabilities into us. Specifically, us personally. Screw everyone else, the more powerful they become, the more of a potential threat they'd pose to us.

Monsters associated with them include comparatively conventional bioengineered and/or cyborg superhumans which have an unfortunate tendency towards master race complexes*, lovecraftian/howardian sorcerer-kings, wendigos and various artificially created monsters with magically transferred human minds.

....

Caretaken

Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Dr. Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.

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A benevolent, caring god doesn't exist. Yet. We're working on correcting that oversight.

Monsters associated with them include Artificial Superintelligences, Master Computers, Seed AIs, etc. At least that's the intention.

* To an extent, deliberately cultivated. Easier to live with yourself while using people as lab rats, occult sacrifices, snacks, raw materials or some combination of the above if you don't think of them as people.

 

[King Tharassian]

Survivalists
Humanity must adapt to survive. Become, to quote the /tg/ discussion I previously linked, "the cockroaches of the new world, too resilient and numerous to wipe out". Spread everywhere throughout the universe, redesigning themselves to fill all niches so if even one colony survives, something does.

Monsters associated with them include Farms, tardigrade-style extremophile Anthropomundus and cybermen.

Click to shrink...

This seems the most true to the concepts of classic cosmic horror. The utter pointlessness of our existence and insignificance of life as it exists on our level really shines through.

Supremacists
Humanity must adapt to become the new dominant species. The gods demonstrate that things are possible possible, we just have to figure out how they do them and reverse-engineer said capabilities into us. Specifically, us personally. Screw everyone else, the more powerful they become, the more of a potential threat they'd pose to us.

Monsters associated with them include comparatively conventional bioengineered and/or cyborg superhumans which have an unfortunate tendency towards master race complexes*, lovecraftian/howardian sorcerer-kings, wendigos and various artificially created monsters with magically transferred human minds.

Click to shrink...

And here we have something that is far too apropos for what I would call comfort. The concept of supremacism and advancement at the expense of others was prominent in Lovecraft's works (for reasons obvious to those who know their lore on the subject), so this seems very on-the-nose. It fits, but it's not a comfortable coincidence.

Caretaken
A benevolent, caring god doesn't exist. Yet. We're working on correcting that oversight.

Monsters associated with them include Artificial Superintelligences, Master Computers, Seed AIs, etc. At least that's the intention.

* To an extent, deliberately cultivated. Easier to live with yourself while using people as lab rats, occult sacrifices, snacks, raw materials or some combination of the above if you don't think of them as people.

Click to shrink...

And here we have something that could be a tragic result of a series of problems. The basic idea almost seems anti-nihilist ("The world is pointless, but how we act isn't"), but I could easily see this coming from a group that just kept saying "it's for a good cause" over and over, tempted onward by knowledge or power or simple naivete. It's a possibility that is both intriguing and possibly more terrible than the other two, simply by virtue of the fact that it has those within it acting towards their fellow man in the same way as those things that come from beyond the stars.

 

[Avernus]

Worshiping a deity that is clearly apathetic makes little sense from purely human perspective. Each belief system (even those that do not have any deities) provides the followers with some ultimate goal (something to strive for: salvation, enlightenment, release from cycle of rebirth, promise of eternal rest) or just some structure to the universe.

An apathetic deity would either have to promise something like that: "After you die, if you lived a good life, you shall join our Lord in His eternal slumber. If you lived a life of evil, you shall be devoured by the guardians that protect His peace" or "Our Lord does not care, but this is what He told us about the world and our place in it". Alternatively, deity's prophets would have to paint it as less apathetic than it actually is. After all, a prophet is kind of like a marketing person in regard to word they are preaching - and not all religions consider lying in good cause a sin.

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Another possibility is that the god really is apathetic, but has features that can be taken advantage of.

For example "Souls do not exist; when humans die, they perish forever. However, by taking in a tiny fragment of the Dread One into yourself, your essence will be preserved within his unknowing and uncaring form for eternity. Only by becoming an immortal parasite within the vastness of the Dread One can we cheat death."

Of course, the for-public-consumption version would probably pretty that up a bit...

 

[Bassoe]

This seems the most true to the concepts of classic cosmic horror. The utter pointlessness of our existence and insignificance of life as it exists on our level really shines through.

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Basically they're my views, that civilization must survive and spread into independently viable decentralized nodes throughout as much territory as it can adapt to occupy, exaggerated to 40k levels and in a world where magical abilities make it arguably practical. Much easier to colonize the Dreamlands or XK-Masada or send undead astronauts whose only life-support requirements are being kept cold to prevent decomposition than everything we have to deal with, being inconvenienced by hard-scifi laws of physics.

And here we have something that is far too apropos for what I would call comfort. The concept of supremacism and advancement at the expense of others was prominent in Lovecraft's works (for reasons obvious to those who know their lore on the subject), so this seems very on-the-nose. It fits, but it's not a comfortable coincidence.

Click to shrink...

That is entirely deliberate. The Supremacists are basically a mashup of lovecraftian sorcerers, Khan Noonien Singh and silicon valley neoreactionaries with a bit of sith thrown in for origin story* and how they generally interact with one another.

Historically, they had a kind of vampire nobility setup going on. A few Supremacists would rule a bunch of human serfs, occasionally taking a few victims as lab rats/sacrifices/snacks/etc, while defending most of their territory and herd from other lovecraftian monsters. Typically their minds had became so warped by their self-modifications that they genuinely couldn't comprehend why this arrangement wasn't considered preferable to open predation.

Similar to human nobility in reality, once weaponry capable of killing them spread, they rapidly lost power. They since regained some of it via miscellaneous conspiracies and political manipulation, trading scraps of occult power for favors.

And here we have something that could be a tragic result of a series of problems. The basic idea almost seems anti-nihilist ("The world is pointless, but how we act isn't"), but I could easily see this coming from a group that just kept saying "it's for a good cause" over and over, tempted onward by knowledge or power or simple naivete. It's a possibility that is both intriguing and possibly more terrible than the other two, simply by virtue of the fact that it has those within it acting towards their fellow man in the same way as those things that come from beyond the stars.

Click to shrink...

Basically the Caretaken are what would happen if Roko's Basilisk was taken entirely seriously as an actual religion, with all the schismatic branches, heresies and reinterpretations that judaism has had in reality. The idea that there are no caring, emphatic gods worthy of worship, so we'll build one. They predate computers and AI, having tried using everything from tulpas cultivated within the living brain tissue of their followers to monasteries full of monks tending to multi-generational rock gardens. They even have a concept of the afterlife, attempting to save DNA samples and as much information about their personalities as possible for a grateful future superintelligence's ease in resurrecting them.

* The first Supremacists were probably Survivalists who upon having acquired some degree of technological and/or occult power, decided that rather than trying to use it to benefit civilization as a whole, they could use it for self-improvement and rule over everyone else.

 

[Bassoe]

I imagine that perhaps one of the many splinter factions among the Caretaken believe one or more nonhuman species have already succeeded in their goal. Specifically, any species which does possess a god which cares for them. Dagon as a creation of the Deep Ones or Leila Hann's "cthulhu is an infromorph which can be ran temporarily by any of its spawn" theory.

What they can do with said assumption ranges from treating it as proof that their ideology can theoretically work to going full cargo cultist, pretending to be Deep Ones or Star Spawn in the hope that they can fool an already-existing artificially created deity programmed to care for its creators into recognizing them as such rather than just human mimickers.

 

[Vindictus]

This time, she did blaze at him. "Goddamnit, Charlie, we don't have time for that bullshit! We can't afford dignity and pride and all the rest of those luxuries! This is species survival we're talking about here!" She'd squirmed around to face him, in her urgency. He tried to say something, even he wasn't sure what it would have been, but she overrode him. "We've got to get the human race off Earth! Any way we can. We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket anymore.

Click to shrink...

You know, I've never really understood this angle of treating the number of humans going up as a moral good, much less people who treat it as the ultimate moral good.

Talks about the importance of increasing the galactic human biomass feel like I'm peering into the mind of a confused Zerg who was accidentally born into a human body.