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Eldritch and Cosmic Horror

I have to admit to a combination of fascination, and repulsion to this genre. I like the concept--that there are things out there that we do not know of, that we cannot (as yet) know of, and that will drive us mad if we were to even attempt to understand them as we are now, but I have to admit, most of the cosmic horror works I've read give me some pretty nasty nightmares.

I have always wondered, however, how the horrors see us. Not the big horrors, like Cthulhu or Dagon, but the lesser horrors--the servants of the Old Ones, perhaps. How do the Deep Ones see us, who have built our entire civilization around something that is effectively impossible for them to replicate on any kind of large scale (you can't light fires under water). How would other beings see us? Is there, somewhere, a race that views humans as cosmic horrors, and cowers in fear at our technology and our science, that marvels and shudders at the thought that, even though we all look alike, we can still change what we can do so readily? How must we appear to a race that relies upon genetic engineering, psionics, or other concepts in the place of our own technology? Are we simply so alien as to be incomprehensible, or are we something that clearly could be understood...if only they could withstand the madness caused by the attempt?

Are we, somehow, as alien to the cosmic horrors (or at least their servants) as they are to us? And if so...how will that end?
 
Partizan said:
I have to admit to a combination of fascination, and repulsion to this genre. I like the concept--that there are things out there that we do not know of, that we cannot (as yet) know of, and that will drive us mad if we were to even attempt to understand them as we are now, but I have to admit, most of the cosmic horror works I've read give me some pretty nasty nightmares.

I have always wondered, however, how the horrors see us. Not the big horrors, like Cthulhu or Dagon, but the lesser horrors--the servants of the Old Ones, perhaps. How do the Deep Ones see us, who have built our entire civilization around something that is effectively impossible for them to replicate on any kind of large scale (you can't light fires under water). How would other beings see us? Is there, somewhere, a race that views humans as cosmic horrors, and cowers in fear at our technology and our science, that marvels and shudders at the thought that, even though we all look alike, we can still change what we can do so readily? How must we appear to a race that relies upon genetic engineering, psionics, or other concepts in the place of our own technology? Are we simply so alien as to be incomprehensible, or are we something that clearly could be understood...if only they could withstand the madness caused by the attempt?

Are we, somehow, as alien to the cosmic horrors (or at least their servants) as they are to us? And if so...how will that end?
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Well the elder thing from Mountains of Madness appear to see men as curious beasts suitable for dissection or a quick snack. The migo understand us well enough to pretend to be us and to subvert willing locals to their side. Though the short story "Things" by Peter Watts is a good example of cosmic horror where man is the monster. Link below.

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy
 
Partizan said:
I have to admit to a combination of fascination, and repulsion to this genre. I like the concept--that there are things out there that we do not know of, that we cannot (as yet) know of, and that will drive us mad if we were to even attempt to understand them as we are now, but I have to admit, most of the cosmic horror works I've read give me some pretty nasty nightmares.

I have always wondered, however, how the horrors see us. Not the big horrors, like Cthulhu or Dagon, but the lesser horrors--the servants of the Old Ones, perhaps. How do the Deep Ones see us, who have built our entire civilization around something that is effectively impossible for them to replicate on any kind of large scale (you can't light fires under water). How would other beings see us? Is there, somewhere, a race that views humans as cosmic horrors, and cowers in fear at our technology and our science, that marvels and shudders at the thought that, even though we all look alike, we can still change what we can do so readily? How must we appear to a race that relies upon genetic engineering, psionics, or other concepts in the place of our own technology? Are we simply so alien as to be incomprehensible, or are we something that clearly could be understood...if only they could withstand the madness caused by the attempt?

Are we, somehow, as alien to the cosmic horrors (or at least their servants) as they are to us? And if so...how will that end?
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Going with lovecraft's canon, unlikely. Every sentient species besides the ghouls is either technologically superior to us or doesn't require artificial tools in the first place. The majority of human machines are obsolete when you've got biologically-based utility fog blob monsters.

That said, I could totally imagine a few surviving Elder Things deliberately downteching to comparatively safer primitive modern levels after their shoggoth revolted.
 
Bassoe said:
Going with lovecraft's canon, unlikely.
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Except that one of Nyarlathotep's unspeakable forms is . . . just some guy. Kind of a creepy guy, maybe, but still a guy. That implies something would be terrified of us.

There's a Stephen King short story called "I Am The Doorway" that has that idea included.
 
A few of my pals and me have started thinking of GMing a roleplaying campaign in a pseudo-Lovecraftian style. We want to start kind of innocent, problem-of-the-week like, but then, after some time, issue a big boom that would change the world forever.

Basically, some people in the ancient time had managed to figure out how to work with Eldritch magic. Some of it is horrifying and mind bending, some is relatively safe for humans, but one can easily lead into the other.
Eventually, they figured out that the pages of the tome of knowledge had accumulated so much eldritch... Ehm... Stuff (still working out proper worldbuilding) that if left unprotected, they would rip a tear in space time and rock the entire world, releasing and bringing all kinds of things from other dimension. Some of them might be benevolent, but still barely comprehensible. Some might be malevolent, like the Invincible Reptile of SCP fame. While some would be indifferent, causing irreversible damage on both mind and body because they might simply be in the way.

And so they locked up the book in enchantments and protection of a cover, and kept it safeguarded for many generations, until one caretaker decided that it would be better if it was simply scattered across the planet, with a warning and an instruction included with the protective cover, that it serves to protect the world, and vague instructions of how to find the other pages, in case the power is ever truly needed.

And so for the first half of the game, the main characters find the cover, and go across the entire world searching for pages for one reason or the other. Comedy, drama, horror, action, whatever rocks the boat would happen along the way.

But the problem is, the cover's enchantments ran out, and were never renewed. And so once they collect all the pages, it all goes awry, as the world turns for the worse as a wave of something runs through the entire world, as expected by the ones before, crossing many beams and dimensions along the way. And with that the players would be stuck in an alien world, trying to survive and figure out whether the world is rebuildable in any way.

So, question. Is this in any way Lovecraftian, and what other ideas would you have for this concept?
 
I would add the players becoming alien, too, and having to figure out their new needs. And what will they feed the cat?
 
I have no idea if this is Lovecraftian, although I'm tempted to say probably not, since it would be more in the nature of the Sealed Evil In A Rusty Can than anything else. As for ideas...

First off, split the Big Book of Magic (aka the BBM) into several books instead of individual pages. Since the BBM would, presumably, be the ultimate book of eldritch knowledge, its authors would have effectively compiled their own sub-versions anyway, since they had to write down their own research and discoveries. Splitting the BBM into several volumes takes care of this, and also cuts down the potential quest leads into something a lot more manageable--say cut the list of leads down from hundreds to, at most, twenty-something (I'd lean more towards 10-12, myself, but that's up to you). This lets you create more original quests for each adventure, and makes the situation more believable later on.

Secondly, I'd take a long, careful look at having the society or whatnot realize on their own how dangerous the stuff in their BBM was--if, as you say, some of it is dangerously mind-bending, you'd very quickly end up with a society full of crazy people who are too nuts to know what a threat they have created. Standard procedure, in this case, is to have the society overcome by its (less-crazy) enemies, who split their knowledge into something more safely manageable, and then conceal it so that it will remain hidden. For obvious reasons, these enemies, when they are still around, will be very reluctant to surrender their volumes, even when the fate of the world is clearly at stake. This has the advantage of letting your players undertake relatively major quests to get some of the volumes, and gives the whole thing a much more epic feel, as well as making the whole thing much less glaringly linear.

An alternative might be to have the original BBM be completely safe, except for a long list of warnings saying, essentially, "don't do X, it's dangerous, and will probably drive you crazy," and then have subsequent generations of users/wardens do their own research, and write their own volumes off of what they've discovered since...discoveries that have become increasingly deranged and maddening as time has gone on. By now, perhaps, the contents of the latest volumes are so dangerous that even their existence poses a direct threat to the world...and, because of their authors' efforts, destroying them may be effectively impossible. The "vague instructions" are actually rituals created by each author to track the next volume (the first was created to let subsequent students learn more about magic...while the later rituals were possibly created because the authors were increasingly aware that something was going very, very wrong). As the books proceed, the rituals become more and more dangerous, insane, and possibly even depraved, making the party's efforts to save the world possibly a threat even without the darkest and the most twisted tomes of lore.

Alternatively, you could make the magics involved universally benign...if they're used and recorded individually. It's only when the knowledge is combined that they become a problem...but somebody has discovered these magics, and is trying to combine them in hopes of making the world a better place. Only catch is that, as they combine the pages, they are steadily losing sanity, and becoming more and more evil...and they don't necessarily realize that, yet.

As for the first half...while you could do the monster-of-the-week, it might make more sense in terms of your narrative, if you could sit down, and plan things out so that the monsters all had something to do with each other, and with the ultimate quest. Perhaps the first monsters are actually pages of the last volume, come to life due to the sheer power and the evil contained within its pages? With every monster your players defeat, another page is restored...so that, all of the sudden, the players discover that all of the monsters they have been defeating have just made things worse, and that now they need to complete the whole chain of discovery to stop the last volume's holder from using that final volume to breath death, damnation, and ruination to all the nations of the Earth? Or perhaps the people you save early on in the quest have some vital knowledge or abilities to lend their aid to your players later on? The actual link is up to you, but if you can make the early monsters link together into a coherent(ish) storyline, it will make the whole campaign flow more smoothly, and make the player immersion significantly easier. Even if you never get past the early stages of the campaign, experience tells me that this makes a big difference.





Anyway, those are the only ideas I have at the moment. Let me know if you want me to think on this some more.
 
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Partizan said:
I have no idea if this is Lovecraftian, although I'm tempted to say probably not, since it would be more in the nature of the Sealed Evil In A Rusty Can than anything else. As for ideas...

First off, split the Big Book of Magic (aka the BBM) into several books instead of individual pages. Since the BBM would, presumably, be the ultimate book of eldritch knowledge, its authors would have effectively compiled their own sub-versions anyway, since they had to write down their own research and discoveries. Splitting the BBM into several volumes takes care of this, and also cuts down the potential quest leads into something a lot more manageable--say cut the list of leads down from hundreds to, at most, twenty-something (I'd lean more towards 10-12, myself, but that's up to you). This lets you create more original quests for each adventure, and makes the situation more believable later on.

Secondly, I'd take a long, careful look at having the society or whatnot realize on their own how dangerous the stuff in their BBM was--if, as you say, some of it is dangerously mind-bending, you'd very quickly end up with a society full of crazy people who are too nuts to know what a threat they have created. Standard procedure, in this case, is to have the society overcome by its (less-crazy) enemies, who split their knowledge into something more safely manageable, and then conceal it so that it will remain hidden. For obvious reasons, these enemies, when they are still around, will be very reluctant to surrender their volumes, even when the fate of the world is clearly at stake. This has the advantage of letting your players undertake relatively major quests to get some of the volumes, and gives the whole thing a much more epic feel, as well as making the whole thing much less glaringly linear.

An alternative might be to have the original BBM be completely safe, except for a long list of warnings saying, essentially, "don't do X, it's dangerous, and will probably drive you crazy," and then have subsequent generations of users/wardens do their own research, and write their own volumes off of what they've discovered since...discoveries that have become increasingly deranged and maddening as time has gone on. By now, perhaps, the contents of the latest volumes are so dangerous that even their existence poses a direct threat to the world...and, because of their authors' efforts, destroying them may be effectively impossible. The "vague instructions" are actually rituals created by each author to track the next volume (the first was created to let subsequent students learn more about magic...while the later rituals were possibly created because the authors were increasingly aware that something was going very, very wrong). As the books proceed, the rituals become more and more dangerous, insane, and possibly even depraved, making the party's efforts to save the world possibly a threat even without the darkest and the most twisted tomes of lore.

Alternatively, you could make the magics involved universally benign...if they're used and recorded individually. It's only when the knowledge is combined that they become a problem...but somebody has discovered these magics, and is trying to combine them in hopes of making the world a better place. Only catch is that, as they combine the pages, they are steadily losing sanity, and becoming more and more evil...and they don't necessarily realize that, yet.

As for the first half...while you could do the monster-of-the-week, it might make more sense in terms of your narrative, if you could sit down, and plan things out so that the monsters all had something to do with each other, and with the ultimate quest. Perhaps the first monsters are actually pages of the last volume, come to life due to the sheer power and the evil contained within its pages? With every monster your players defeat, another page is restored...so that, all of the sudden, the players discover that all of the monsters they have been defeating have just made things worse, and that now they need to complete the whole chain of discovery to stop the last volume's holder from using that final volume to breath death, damnation, and ruination to all the nations of the Earth? Or perhaps the people you save early on in the quest have some vital knowledge or abilities to lend their aid to your players later on? The actual link is up to you, but if you can make the early monsters link together into a coherent(ish) storyline, it will make the whole campaign flow more smoothly, and make the player immersion significantly easier. Even if you never get past the early stages of the campaign, experience tells me that this makes a big difference.





Anyway, those are the only ideas I have at the moment. Let me know if you want me to think on this some more.
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Thank you very, very much for all of your suggestions. Even this is enough to think over for a while. I don't really have anything else to say about this beyond "extremely useful" right now, but if you find anything else to poke into that would be interesting to use, we would be very glad if you could.
 
For making the afterwards setting, I recommend reading Alice in Wonderland (for the logic that functions perfectly, but only if you ignore all common sense and laws of physics), listening to Welcome to Night Vale (my link was to a picture of the narrator's cat, and Khoshekh is relatively normal for WtNV) and then staying up for about three days straight (that's when the black imps start appearing in the corners of your vision).
 
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GuesssWho said:
For making the afterwards setting, I recommend reading Alice in Wonderland (for the logic that functions perfectly, but only if you ignore all common sense and laws of physics), listening to Welcome to Night Vale (my link was to a picture of the narrator's cat, and Khoshekh is relatively normal for WtNV) and then staying up for about three days (that's when the black imps start appearing in the corners of your vision).
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So, kinda like this?
 
Yeah, pretty much :D

I'm the kind of person who would jump at the chance to give my D&D characters all the grafts ever, so . . .
 
Reposting.

...


Imagine a lawn with a garden.

In one corner of the lawn, nestled under some bushes, is a colony of tiny, tiny black ants (like the itty bitty ones you find in your kitchen sometimes), Homo sapiens sapiens. They don't usually wander far from their nest, and often get lost or killed by other things when they do. There are probably other black ant nests around the lawn, but they're too far away to be reached.

Here and there across the grounds are some colonies of larger, red ants. MiGo, Elder Things, etc. They're big enough to step right over or on a black ant, and their size and toughness lets them range much further from their colonies. Some of them raid the black ant nest for food once in a while. The black ants can sort of fend off a handful of red ants, but not when they attack in any serious numbers.

A rabbit named Cthulhu is digging a warren under the garden. He doesn't care one way or the other about ants, but his burrow will sometimes intersect with their nests. If he hits one of the red ant nests, the red ants will bite and sting him until he goes away, though they'll take massive losses before he does. If he hits the black ant nest, it will be totally collapsed, and the black ants (whos jaws can't get through his fur/skin) will die out without any way of even slowing him down.

The garden has a hired caretaker/gardener named Yog-Sothoth. Does his daily rounds, watering the plants, mowing the lawn (which sucks up ants accidentally), pruning the bushes, etc. If the ants get too numerous, he'll spray them. If the rabbit starts eating the flowers, he'll put out traps for it. Otherwise, the animals are beneath his notice.

The garden is owned by this rich guy named Azathoth. He rarely even comes back here, and just sits on his deck chair in the lawn and sips lemonade when he does. He's thinking about maybe getting rid of the garden and putting a pool there instead.

Azathoth has a six year old son named Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep isn't a bad kid, he's just at that age when being cruel to animals is fascinating to children. He burns ants with his magnifying glass, grabs workers from different nests and makes them fight, chases the rabbit when he sees it, etc. Yog-Sothoth is sometimes annoyed by his antics, but he's the owner's kid so whatever.
 
Ok. One thing I've realized is you can have eldritch horror without cosmic horror. Hell, you can just have the magic aspect and let it linger. Maybe there's a cult or monsters but they don't have to exist to justify the intersection of normal life and scary weird strange and poorly understand changes.

Yes, horror puberty. Because Lovecraft was scared of sex and I am too.

Oh and as a byline I find Magical Girl burst to be a solid model for an eldritch magic system if you reckon it. Magic is conceptual and any use of it risks it overcharging and building up to a burst which can range from bunny ears to glass cracking in your presence to a desperate loneliness or a profound urge to stab people in the soul.

Combat and systems work towards investigating a monster of the week and confronting it so I wouldn't use this for major things.
 
I think a good angle for cosmic horror is the reveal that the world has always been this way. There isn't some alien intrusion or demonic awakening happening, the protagonist just has been lucky enough not to see any of the horrible things in the world before. And then they start to realize the darker truths behind things in their previous lives. Once you've seen it you start seeing it everywhere because you know what to look for. And that they can't tell anyone what's wrong.

That's how I imagine Lovecraftian insanity working. To use a weird example from my own experience, I once read a disturbing horror story than decided to play something light and fun. Only to immediately realize the romantic subplot of that was a direct reference to that story. That, cranked up to eleven.
 
Avian Overlord said:
I think a good angle for cosmic horror is the reveal that the world has always been this way. There isn't some alien intrusion or demonic awakening happening, the protagonist just has been lucky enough not to see any of the horrible things in the world before. And then they start to realize the darker truths behind things in their previous lives. Once you've seen it you start seeing it everywhere because you know what to look for. And that they can't tell anyone what's wrong.

That's how I imagine Lovecraftian insanity working. To use a weird example from my own experience, I once read a disturbing horror story then decided to play something light and fun. Only to immediately realize the romantic subplot of that was a direct reference to that story. That, cranked up to eleven.
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Trust me, I've seen some weird-ass coincidences in my life. At least if Lovecraft was right there would be an explanation for them.

I think you'd like SCP-1193. To quote the author: We are somehow wrong about the nature of everything that surrounds us. The world of conventional objects which the being with the arm describes is not subject to the conventional and comprehensible laws we believe it to be. Its dream-logic about ovens and cakes and casts and invulnerability is the way the world works, not a deluded fantasy by a buried giant. The Foundation's attempts to rigorously study it are futile, because reason itself is a bizarre delusion. This is the most horrible answer, and what I'm trying to get at.
 
Bassoe said:
Going with lovecraft's canon, unlikely. Every sentient species besides the ghouls is either technologically superior to us or doesn't require artificial tools in the first place. The majority of human machines are obsolete when you've got biologically-based utility fog blob monsters.

That said, I could totally imagine a few surviving Elder Things deliberately downteching to comparatively safer primitive modern levels after their shoggoth revolted.
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Something to keep in mind is that in Lovecraft's stories, for obvious reasons, the only aliens we get to see are the ones capable of traveling to Earth. If they didn't have that superior capability, they would have no way of ever getting to be in the stories.

Other species that are mentioned but never seen, like the Jovian insectoids, might well be on humanity's level. But because of that, we can't reach them and they can't reach us.
 
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Leila Hann said:
Something to keep in mind is that in Lovecraft's stories, for obvious reasons, the only aliens we get to see are the ones capable of traveling to Earth. If they didn't have that superior capability, they would have no way of ever getting to be in the stories.

Other species that are mentioned but never seen, like the Jovian insectoids, might well be on humanity's level. But because of that, we can't reach them and they can't reach us.
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Well, some aliens have supposedly been brought to Earth as slaves or servants of the more powerful ones which control the means of travel. This kind of thing happens in fantasy all the time - a powerful being opens a portal and brings through their household servants, or army, or even livestock. Or a magical experimenter opens a portal and brings through something random.
 
sunandshadow said:
Well, some aliens have supposedly been brought to Earth as slaves or servants of the more powerful ones which control the means of travel. This kind of thing happens in fantasy all the time - a powerful being opens a portal and brings through their household servants, or army, or even livestock. Or a magical experimenter opens a portal and brings through something random.
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The secret origin of Squirrels.
 
I tend to write cosmic/eldritch horror in the format of Inevitability and Conceptual Cessation with a hefty helping of xenofiction.

The Void Will Come. It may take a while but it is only a matter of time. It's coming. It's already here. It has been here for aeons. It's hungry and relentless. It doesn't understand why you fight and it doesn't really care. It wants your existence and there is nothing to do but run. The concepts that sustain your existence are its food and the Void is ravanous. You might be able to ward it off for a time. But eventually. Your defenses will slip. The necessary components for your wards consumed at the roots as Creation crumbles into the Null. The only escape is to flee Elsewhere or Cease and become Null. Suddenly You are the horror invading a Creation in your mad bid to flee the encroaching Not. You vastly outclass the locals. They aren't using their resources to the fullest extent needed to delay the Void. It's coming. You Know This. You take what the locals have. They try to stop you but cannot. You are simply above them and their paltry needs are below the necessity of keeping Creation's light burning for just a little longer.

And then the Void comes again. You aren't prepared. You cannot be. You know this and so does It. The locals, having learned a fragment of what you know retrace your footsteps. Perpetuating the cycle anew. But you. You've run for so very long. You might have lasted dozens of cycles. But eventually. You will grow weary. Tired. You don't want to run anymore. You know by now you cannot truly flee. So you let the Void come. It takes you and you become It. The food is running away again. You give chase.
 
My favorite modern example of eldritch horror, that I've personally read, is the There Is No Antimemetics Division series of short stories on the SCP wiki. (here). It really gets to the core of what I think is the meat of this genre: the unknowable. The things mankind cannot or was not meant to know. Basically, it boils down to ideas, knowledge, information. That which is outside our frame of reference, or cannot be known, will always be something to fear, since we can't do anything against it but pray. You don't need tentacles, or writhing masses of flesh, just the unknowable.

A good example of this in the real world is the set of real numbers: there are more real numbers between 1 and 2 than there are possible arrangements of atoms in the universe, or even finitely long descriptions, or definitions. Since every number that can be uniquely defined or described is paired with that definition or description, there are only finitely many numbers that can be uniquely defined. The infinitely vast majority of the real numbers between 1 and 2 will never be defined or written down, and indeed cannot be uniquely defined. And yet, it's trivially easy to describe them collectively, as a group. In fact, I did just that. They are but tiny fractions of the unknowable that lurks between the everyday, overlooked by everyone, because to peer closer is mathematically impossible. The set of real numbers was thought up by humans, and yet, within it we find numbers we cannot think. Where else do such unthinkable, unknowable ideas live within the knowable?

It probably sounds really retarded when I just say it like that, but I really do like it when writers use this abstractly eldritch horror, where the the thing that goes bump in the night isn't a tentacled monstrosity you can hit with a boat, or a writhing mass of flesh(that resembles mammalian flesh, might I add), but something more abstract, and less physical. Like an idea, or a number, or a memory. Those things are defined by our awareness of them, which is why having an idea that can't be remembered, or a number that can't be written down, is all the more unnatural, and therefore horrifying.
 
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Short story I'm working on now is interesting as a genre experiment. Its thematically cosmic horror, but the depicted events themselves are not only non-supernatural, they're completely mundane.
 
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