Remove ads

Examples of Post-Apocalyptic Cosmic Horror Settings?

Mazeka

Mazeka

You must be joking
Location
United States
What are some examples in fiction of post-apocalyptic cosmic horror settings?

By that, I don't mean post-apoc settings with the odd cosmic horror element, I mean post-apoc settings with cosmic horror being a direct and major factor in influencing the setting.

"Lovecraft Lite" examples are allowed.
 
Destiny is pretty post-post-apocolyptic, and you don't have to peel back the edges very far before you're drowning in cosmic horror.

I say post-post-apocolyptic because while humanity's golden age was violently ended by a malevolent and somewhat omnipotent sentient axiom that predates time, that happened a good couple centuries ago, and human civilization has gotten somewhat back on it's feet. Though said evil self-enforcing cosmic law is coming back around this November, so who knows, we might be going back to post-apocolyptic.

Given the above statements I feel no need to elaborate on Destiny's elements of cosmic horror.

While we're on the subject of Bungo, their earlier games Pathways Into Darkness, Marathon, and Durandal don't even hide that they're cosmic horror.
 
Arguably the Heinlein time travel story By His Bootstraps. Much of it is set tens of thousands of years in the future after humanity has had its spirit crushed by long term exposure to the "High Ones", alien occupiers whose simple presence is extremely traumatizing to humans. The protagonist views one via time machine at one point, and is not only driven off in terror at the image and the mental aura the thing produces but his hair turns white; that seems pretty cosmic-horrory to me.
 
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha might count; there's quite a few old civilizations that blew themselves up in the backstory, and some of the things they left behind would seem to fit the bill.

Perhaps Grand Central Arena, which is in similar straits.

Wheel of Time is built around the fact that numerous other civilizations have risen, thrived, and gone under, at least one directly due to the influence of the primary villain who is of that sort.

40K definitely counts.

AI War 2 might count: it has the fallen civilizations and the... whatever it is that the AI is fighting which, considering the things the AI considers actual assets in the Extragalactic War, is definitely some kind of cosmic horror.

Grim Dawn, arguably. You live among the ruins of civilization, dealing with the scrappy survivors of eldritch abomination attacks... on the other hand, you're special enough that if you level and gear yourself just right, you can beat the monsters' faces in.
 
I... think Caves of Qud, if we're including games? I'm not actually 100% up on the setting fluff involved, but it's definitely post-apoc and there's strong cosmic horror things going on, via (sentient) fungal infections, highly entropic beings, and the whole glimmer mechanic, just off the top of my head. It's not really a huge foreground thing relative to... everything else going on with the game... and I'm not sure how involved it was with actual establishment of the setting and its fall from dizzing heights, but I definitely get a pretty strong background hum of it.

Similarly, Tales of Maj'Eyal fits pretty well, it's just high fantasy themed, doesn't actually riff particularly hard on the post-apoc aspect despite it very much being part of the lore... and you can also actively murder many of the cosmic horrors floating around the setting, heh. It has a very not lovecraft feel overall, but the general set pieces requested are very there.
 
Eclipse Phase comes to mind, from what little I can remember of it. Earth was destroyed by a Singularity event gone very wrong, humanity is scraping up a living in the solar system in transhuman robot bodies. The "cosmic horrors" take the form of:
  • Various human-built AIs gone mad (during the apocalypse, they were seen destructively uploading masses of people - either killing them and creating a copy as prisoner, or kidnapping them, depending on your concept of identity - for unknown purposes).
  • Aliens from outside the solar system who implicitly could wipe out what's left of transhumanity if they wished, and are utterly uncommunicative and opaque in their priorities.
  • The throwing into question of self-identity, in a world where the self can be copied, modified, overwritten, or tinkered with at will. Transhumans can even operate on themselves if they so wish. If you meet your own copy, how do you respond? If you learn someone has a copy of you from a week ago and is torturing them, how do you respond? If you learn that your mind was surreptitiously and subtly tweaked with a few years ago, purposefully steering you down paths and life choices you might no otherwise have chosen, how do you deal with that? What is the self? Does it really exist?
 
Last edited:
I'd say the setting of the third Rebuild-Evangelion movie fits this description. All of the desolation in the landscape was caused by the effects of Near-Third Impact, which saw probably around 90 percent of cell based life die.

This music video actually gives a good view of how devastated the land is.
 
A Study In Emerald is an interesting case of this. It's basically a Sherlock Holmes novel in a world where lovecraftian beings conquered the planet with ease a century ago, and in the new status quo, humans have to deal with it and live as second-class citizens. Tho I guess it's more post-post-apocalyptic than anything; the takeover was long enough ago that civilization is fully up and running again.
 
Bloodborne probably counts, though it's arguable if it's "post-apocalyptic" or "currently apocalyptic"; either way, Yharnam's pretty buggered. Definitely post-apocalyptic for Ailing Loran and the like in the chalice dungeons, mind.
 
Warframe definitely counts. As you progress through the main story quests you get more and more hints of what's out there. What's watching. What is no longer chained.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top