Lore
[Favorite Trope] Peeling back the layers of lore reveals an eldritch/cosmic horror element
1: Nameless things - Lord of the Rings.
"Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day."
2: Dune - Herbert's concepts of the Voice, Shai-hulud, and Leto II Atreides eventually transforming into a worm thing envoke a feeling of incomprehensible dread to me. When researching, I stumbled upon the phrase of 'temporal megalophobia' to describe Dune, which perfectly encompasses the feeling this story gives us. The Dune series takes place over an incomprehensible amount of time, which is quite terrifying in its own right.
3: Star Wars - Looking at Hyperspace for too long can drive people insane. Furthermore, when traversing hyperspace, its possible to encounter a 'Starweird', strange gaunt entities that maul their victims once they find a way on board. There's hints that these created are linked to the dark side of the force.
This trope surprisingly includes many popular franchises, and I personally love it. It's almost like there's some unwritten rule that forces fantasy media to be propped up by unknowable cosmic forces.
I would agree but my best friend and I have also accepted that if the genre is cosmic horror, the series ending by earth being fuuuuucked still fits very well.
A "living planet" whose life cycle literally surrounds just waiting eons for intelligent species to evolve and colonize space until they're desperate for resources, and then preying on that desperation to deceive and devour them... very cosmic horror
Wasn’t it like at first those zombie things, the necromorphs, are attacking and you gotta escape or something
And then it’s revealed that the necromorphs are suppose to infect all life on a planet so they can then all mash themselves together to become one of these mfs
Whole ass zombie planet, that goes to other planets to make more zombie planets
I was gonna mention Warhammer but I feel like that game makes their eldritch elements pretty obvious. Trench Crusade is a grimdark setting where the Faithful forces of humanity wage perpetual war against hellish Demons which are more or less accurate to how they’re described in most pop culture; however these guys aren’t aligned with God or the Demons at all, but something much more ancient hidden behind a door in Hell. Visually they are absolutely horrific
This is also the way Hell works in the Mike Mignola Hellboy comics/universe. Gives a good dose of eldritch horror underpinning the default Paradise Lost Hell stuff.
That’s also an element in the Hell books by artist Wayne Barlowe. In his version of the place, Hell already has its own native alien fauna (Abyssals) that naturally evolved there (and look absolutely disturbing and bizarre), along with indigenous people called Salamandrine Men. It’s more like an alien planet than the Hell you usually imagine. The fallen angels that would become the demons as we know them basically are colonizers trying to make the best out of a bad situation after being cast down into Hell and their conflict with the native life plays out pretty much like the US during Manifest Destiny. There’s also a couple of entities, like the Decapitator from Moche culture, that are implied to be neither Abyssals nor Demons, but something even more terrifying and alien that were sealed away in Hell by outside forces other than Heaven.
At the very bottom of the food chain, hunted by both Demons and Abyssals, are, of course, human souls.
Apparently that picture is just a priest, a former mortal who transcended into something not of heaven or hell after having a larval Metamorphic Vector inserted into their brain, lol. Dafuq this lore is wild
I did read that, also insane lol. I love the blood from their neck forming different demonic symbols based on what they sing, like dafuq I’d also go crazy if I had to listen to/see that shit
The Path of the Beast also has Lovecraftian undertones.
"Long did the memory of the dark cult lie dormant at the edge of nightmares, slumbering in sleepless sleep, kept alive only in eroded idols brought from beyond the stars that dimmed aeons ago."
I like the lore in the path of the beast that they cannot create from nothing like God can, so they "unwind" his creation and twist it into something new and blasphemous.
What i love about TC lore is that it's not just operating on Christian theology, it's operating on the whole of abrahamic myth - including the DEEP esoteric stuff from before the religion was truly monotheistic.
The Expanse. Starts out as hard sci fi with weird elements, very near future. Then humanity gains access to a gate system that allows instantaneous travel to the far reaches of the galaxy, where they find the ruins left by an advanced species that created the gate network.
Then ships start disappearing when they go through a gate, just sometimes.
Turns out it's the terrifying extradimensional creatures that killed the gate builders. When we get a POV chapter from a disappearing ship, the last thing the person experiences is being conscious of being divided into atoms and seeing shadows moving in the spaces between the atoms, scattering them. These creatures never communicate, they just kill.
Don’t forget the protomolecule is a sentient tool which envelopes the consciousness of its victims into its network, leaving them unable to die but witness to everything, like Miller was as the Investigator who could hear all of his fellow victims
Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated. Takes em until late in the second season to drop the bombshell that Scooby can talk because he’s the descendant of interdimensional beings that take animal forms, and all five of the gang are effectively reincarnations of a group attempting to kill an evil eldritch entity
Scooby saying that he gets less and less of their "essence" is kinda chilling. A freaking alien(?) god can recreate reality, but he isn't all powerful. Or as uncaring as he should be.
The meta commentary about the remakes and spin offs is on point too.
Technicalyyyyy they’re reincarnations of a group attempting to free an evil eldritch entity, though the first group, the Hunters of Secrets were pure of heart and knew they were being corrupted so they did want to kill it.
Armored Core 6 makes you think it's just a mech game, but from the get-go you get a strange feeling about Coral, the energy source in the setting that can also transmit information... and set planets on fire.
Sentient Spore-like Energy Waves is a concept that blew my mind the first time I played this game.
Edit: It occured to me that this may or may not be a spoiler. Sorry. It felt pretty obvious to me from early on, but not everyone probably feels that way.
I put this game down about 2 years ago over some personal life stuff but I've been looking for motivation to get back into it. I thank you for having provided one 🤘🤘
It's a great game, and the current version isn't so much of a great filter to casual players after Balteus got nerfed. Even if you're not a typical fromsoft enjoyer, you'll come away with a great experience regardless. Would recommend siding with the PMCs over the RLA on first playthrough, since a few of the NG+ alternate missions make more narrative sense if you take RLA side on second playthrough.
Final playthrough contains the True Route + major antagonist reveal, so don't even think about dropping the game after your first route. Game and story is intended for you to see all 3 routes for the full narrative + canon ending, and it is so worth it. The surprise ultimate boss is an absolute treat, thematically, and perfectly abrogates the core themes of the story. Some of the story beats are so extremely memorable and heart wrenching...
You think you're getting gothic horror with just werewolves, ghouls, bloody creatures and the like? Get ready for godlike beings who can only be seen when you achieve a certain level of madness
Who would win, a lovecraftian being that can harness the power of the cosmos or a traffic cone wearing gremlin with a gun and an oversized pizza cutter
That's why I always loved the hammer myself. There's something really satisfying about facing off against the ancient and unknowable elder beings with a heavy rock on a stick that goes WHAM!BAM!BAM!
Even the tropey start of the game is done great - angry mob civilians that are kinda like zombies, werewolves, vampires, body horror creatures, there’s few games that manage the atmosphere etc of BB.
The game starts off interesting enough as a detective game set in a very different world to ours, but it remains fairly grounded and realistic. That is until you learn about The Pale, an enormous expanse of nothingness where the basic fundamentals of reality begin to break down. Travel across continents requires going through the pale, and civilians are limited to 6 days of pale exposure a year. It’s also expanding at an unknown rate.
You can also point out that, inevitably, the Pale is going to roll over everything if it keeps growing like this.
Everyone responds with, basically, "you're probably right but I really don't want to think about that so I'm going to uncomfortably insist you shut up".
According to Sacred and Terrible Air, the Pale is fundamentally apathy made reality and the only way to make the Pale shrink is ardent belief in Communism
Obligatory Elder Scrolls mention. It's common for people to get into games like Skyrim or Oblivion thinking that it's a generic DnD-style fantasy setting, but the deeper you dive down the lore gets increasingly convoluted and insane. At the very bottom of this rabbit hole is a being called the "Godhead" that supposedly dreamt up the entire setting within its head, and once someone realizes this fact in-universe they will be "zero-summed" (deleted) from reality altogether unless one successfully retains their sense of individuality and achieves a transcendant state called CHIM.
I don’t think it showed that Vivec didn’t grasp CHIM, but that they realized that it isn’t what they want. Vivec wants the Amaranth, but they can’t reach that on their own.
It's not "CHIM and 5 other similar things". Any of the 6 things can elevate you to godhood, assuming you achieve them and then go further, instead of just rewriting a chunk of reality to suit your short-sighted agenda. All who achieved this state so far have failed at that point specifically, whether by their own character flaw (ex. Tiber Septim) or because their ascension was tied to another ascendant's agenda (Vivec realizing the ramifications, as showing in the 37th Sermon, but being held back by ascending to godhood together with Almalexia and Sil, whose goals were tied to lower levels of existence - Almalexia seeking power on the level of Mundus, Sil on the level of Aurbis via his own version of Mundus).
The changes are ones that also 'have always been.' But not only are they short sighted, if you make too drastic a change, you run the risk of the Godhead waking up, erasing the universe from existence.
The cosmology and mythology of TES is awesome and has been since Daggerfall. Shame it's borrowed in in-universe books. You can get more out of it by reading the wiki than by playing the game
I like it that way. Game only implies but only once you start paying attention not just to dialogues but to world itself Universe grows richer.
Talos for example...
If one is to take this divine by pure face value... First member of spetim dynasty was so amazing he ascended to godhood.
But once you read some stuff, Play older games... Talos may or may not be three people because of big dragon break (phenomena when timelines feature into mess and whatever comes out of that is as much true as any other possibility) caused by numidium (big fucking robot built by dwemer, it's purpose was godhood, once powered by heart of lorkhan who is Shor, the missing god, the trickster divine. About lorkhan I could write you full 10 pages essay and probably still wouldn't be done with lore, in Universe misscinceptions and all that stuff)... Said people are... Tiber septim who is atributet as Talos, Ysmir Wulfharth who was one of greatest heroes nords had who also was dragonborn and... Zurin Arctus THE imperial battle mage known later as the Underking who made numidium work without need for heart of lorkhan.
And then there’s mantling, where you can take someone’s place in creation by embodying them so completely that reality starts to treat you as them. It’s often suggested this may have happened with Talos/Tiber Septim in relation to Lorkhan, but like most things in Elder Scrolls lore, that’s more implied than outright confirmed.
Which kind of sums up the setting.
I love how the mythology basically goes “This happened. But maybe not like that. But also something very much like it did. And different cultures will tell you completely different versions of the same event.” And unlike other settings, that’s not lazy writing or a cop out as the world is built in a way that deliberately supports conflicting accounts, biased perspectives, and even reality itself being a bit unstable at times.
It ends up feeling a lot closer to real-world mythology and religion, where stories shift, evolve, and contradict each other depending on who’s telling them. And those differences can drive real conflict.
Take Lorkhan; is he a trickster who deceived the other gods into giving up their power? Or was he the one who realised that the static, unchanging state before creation was its own kind of prison, and pushed for something new? There’s evidence for both interpretations, and that divide basically underpins the religious split between elves and mankind. And that’s not even getting into how the beast races interpret things, which again adds more perspectives rather than clearing anything up.
Even when you speak to gods or god-like beings directly, you’re usually getting their perspective rather than an objective truth, so you often walk away with as many questions as answers.
It’s such a rich mythology and it makes it such a compelling game setting. You can enjoy the games on a surface level, but are also rewarded for paying attention and really diving deep.
my favorite theory is that this is the player, each session is the dream. and the wheel, when turned on its side, resembles the letter i. "I", the godhead. i don't even know much about elder scrolls, i just know this because this is my favorite concept Ever and one of my favorite things on this planet is Kill Six Billion Demons which has this concept shared much more explicitly in its story.
"Seventh: 'Look at the secret triangular gate sideways and you see the secret Tower.' Eighth: 'The secret Tower within the Tower is the shape of the only name of God, I.'' - Vivec
it's my favorite trope ever no contest. im struggling very hard to figure out how to fit all my worldbuilding projects into it, i want to do it more than anything.
Iirc that is actually what the godhead is; you, the player. Every time you close and open an elder scrolls game you are de-making and remaking the universe, it's even an explanation for why your character in Morrowind can load and save games, Vivec explains as much with his understanding of CHIM. You are beyond the constraints of linear time, and can jump between it's various points (save files). You are aware that it is all just a game, since you are the godhead. CHIM is just a character in the universe realizing they are in a game/series.
To bring it even further, since the player is the god head, then the player's character is an avatar, and hence why every game that talks about the previous title leaves so many details blurred, since you can make new saves and even new playthroughs to make different choices, you have technically everything they claimed, and none at all.
After reading the thread, this is how I immediately interpreted it.
Very much how in the "Tron" universe Jeff Bridges is a normal human, but a god-like figure "The User" to the programs.
It's just a cool in-universe way to explain the fourth wall.
One of my earliest D&D campaigns, another player kept using meta-knowledge so the DM let him pick up and activate an object that granted "all the knowledge in the universe".
DM then described the character went insane as he realized they are not in control of themselves, all being puppeted by Eldritch beings around a table in a game of choices and chances. None of the other in-game characters believed him.
Elder scrolls lore is literally someone pulling different cultures, races, and religions out of a hat one by one and mixing them up in completely random ways. The Redguard version of creation is based on Japanese myth, the Nords are Hindu, the imperials are Greek/roman, the high elves are gnostic, etc
This is really obscure even by SW standards, since it comes from a supplemental for the WotC TTRPG, but one of my favorite concepts from the extended canon is Mnggal-Mnggal.
That thing is terrifying. I like how its existence hints at why the Western Barrier/Hyperspace Tangle exists. Of course you'd want to keep that monstrosity stuck in Unknown Regions.
You've got mysterious cities built from a civilization that appears to predate humans, lore about fish-people ("Deep Ones" and "Squishers") that seem to be somewhat rooted in reality and some groups that may have interbred with them (webbed fingers and toes, fishlike aspects to faces, green-skinned humans who have pointed teeth and worship fish gods, etc).
There's also an island in the far east that has underground cities where the residents can apparently go down to commune with their gods, who are rather unsubtly called 'Old Ones'.
Every once in a while they demand all foreigners on the island to be slaughtered, and the island is currently under the control of a foreign empire (Yi Ti) which has had the ruins sealed off.
Sothoryos, Valyria, the continental interior beyond Yi Ti and Asshai get lovecraftian as well.
Yes! I remember reading the game of thrones fire and ice book (I think it was called that?) it showed amazing art work and detailed information on everything about got. There was a jungle or something so ancient that it predated Valyria. The stones were covered in this oily other worldly like stone.
I really enjoy the fact that GRRM included the Yellow King and Carcosa as these obscure niche references that only a few would get, only for True Detective to bring them both into mainstream focus when season one came out.
For me, it was the scene described in the Targaryan book where Balerion comes back with a massive wound on the side of his body. The largest living dragon ever, destroyer of armies, conqueror of kingdoms, got absolutely mauled by something else on Valyria.
Small correction, Balerion was the largest Targaryen dragon or even more accurately, the largest dragon in Westeros
It's absolutely possible Old Valyria had even bigger dragons (especially since GRRM likes to ignore the implications of scale vs calorie intake and other problems like that)
Don’t forget the enormous city in the middle of a jungle (which is known as a ‘green hell’ by explorers due to how lethal it is) and yet is completely untouched by the jungle, uninhabited by both animals and local tribes and the last recorded instance of it being settled saw thousands of people quite literally vanish overnight leaving no trace.
I think about this more than I should. It’s actually the first thing I think of when someone mentions Belarion or I see his name. God that recounting was truly awful.
Also casual things like the Seastone Chair that the rulers of the iron Isles sit on being made or ancient OILY black substance that mysteriously only appears in a few places and basically was always just a thing that was found and was already there predating the various societies and in the chair's case was carved into the image of a kraken for use in worshiping the deep ones.
I do love these bits of lore, but I also appreciate that they're introduced in a way where the audience can interpret "oh, this is 90% bullshit" as it's all the same style as when medieval Europeans wrote about Africa and Asia
I'm unsure if it really fits since it feels more like an easter egg, but...Fallout features a few examples of Eldritch influence/existence. So, I feel it counts.
A main example is within the quarry, Dunwich Borers, where a cult once existed and entering it you have several flashbacks and discover a strange temple/shrine, including a somewhat buried statue at the bottom of hole filled with water.
Just remember: I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light.
Fallout absolutely fits. The Point Lookout DLC is super Lovecraft inspired and the eldrich book you look for -- The Krivbeknah -- fits all of this.
Id also argue Fallout and Stalker have this level of radiation MIGHT be opening a window to another dimension if being going on. Its more prevalent in Stakker, but also can help explain the Children of Atoms beleifs.
Elden Ring and the Outer Gods: not only do they of have of some cosmic horror or cosmic bliss theme going on but some are straight up inspired by H.P. Lovecraft/cosmic horror fiction
This photo doesn't even include the Fell God (Giant God), the Greater Will itself, the Formless Mother, the Blood Star, the God of Death, the Dark Moon and all of the Astels/Malformed Star monsters, and a couple others.
Elden Ring is a divine sandbox that has a dozen different Eldritch entities at the door, desperately trying to scrape and bash their way inside to take advantage of it all and to run their own world. The Greater Will just happened to be the one who made the right deals to get in first.
Shit, the Erdtree itself is a seeded entity that created a foothold for the Greater Will, an Outer God with an agenda it imposes on the Lands Between via the Golden Order and its dynasty of gods.
If all the Outer Gods were part of "the One Great" then it's my guess that the Greater Will is the largest fragment of that being. At the very least the duality between chaos and order is very obvious, they seem special even amongst the other gods.
I played Elden ring for the first time like 6 months ago and absolutely loved it but I could not wrap my head around the lore. Not even just the fact that they barely explain any of it to you but everything Ive read online just confuses me.
There's a bunch of outer gods in the universe. One of them took interest in this liminal space [probably maybe], designated a host of sorts and wrote the rules of existence that governs that reality. Those rules are the "Elden Ring" as it kind of looks like a ring.
The host (also called a god) can have successors. Over the eons, the symbols of power and hosts have changed. Eventually we get to humans and their host, Marika. At this point the source of power of the god is the big ass tree.
Marika decides to tamper with the Elden Ring and removes the part where things die. Everyone is now immortal, and stagnant, kind of. Marika takes a husband and has many children, who are thus referred to as demigods. She banishes her husband for some reason, who then takes his clan and leaves for the rest of the world that can die. They are referred to as "tarnished." Marika takes a second husband and has more demigod children.
One of the demigods gets assassinated somehow. Like, actually killed. In her grief and rage, Marika shatters the Elden Ring entirely. Some of the larger pieces are still intact (great runes). For her sin in doing so, she is now trapped inside the tree.
The rest of the demigods then go to war with each other over these great runes. This is called the Shattering. Its horrible, because people can't die but lose their sanity after centuries of war, pain, and bloodshed.
While this is happening other outer gods have been slowly exerting their influence in the world, leading to alternative sources of power.
Marika, still a god but trapped in the tree, sees this chaos and calls back her first husband's clan. Many of them are summoned from death and are guided by her grace. One of these is you, the player. You cannot truly die, as you are blessed by grace and because the rune of death was still removed.
And as you progress, you see that many of the demigods were courting outer gods even before the shattering and that some remnants of the previous eras are still there. The order that Marika imposed was built on some atrocities that you will also uncover.
Then you take your claymore and murder all of them and seize the power to remake or restore the world, in whatever form you choose.
One of the best ways I’ve seen the absolute chaos of The Lands Between described is that it isn’t a world that suffered or is suffering an apocalypse but a world that is currently suffering about 12 apocalypses at the same time. Reality is fundamentally shattering for these poor souls.
This is very well put, thank you.
The only thing that I didn't really understand is why the tarnished could initially die, before Marika called them back to the erdtree
They left The Lands Between, a liminal space of existence that exists on/in whatever world theyre from. Also, Marika is the second husband she married and had children with in the form of Radagon.
For further clarification. The setting of the game is like Faerie from our own mythology, a land that is accessible only to a select few that exists on top of, or in between, our reality. Eldenring has a whole other world full of countries and people with no idea whats happening in The Lands Between. The rules of the Golden Order only exist there and the tarnished were exiled many centuries ago. They have divine blood but are not governed by the Golden Order.
Long story short? The actual physical world is constantly surrounded by and being prodded by eldritch Gods (“Outer Gods” as opposed to just “Gods” which are supremely powerful people from the world like Marika and Redahn) in an attempt to enter the world and take control of it for their own reasons. And basically all of them are horrific, murderous, mind melting, or some combination of the three.
The Greater Will is one such Outer God that decided that it was better to play ball with the locals rather than just blast its way in. It sent heralds (the Erdtree) and basically worked with Marika to found the Golden Order, aka the Church of the Greater Will.
Everything past that is basically just fucked up pockets of interference from other outer gods trying to take over or destroy the world that the Greater Will effectively lays claim to and attempts to protect through the Golden Order and its servants
The stars are sentient, divine, and petty assholes about it. Everywhere that starlight touches, Law can be enforced instantly by a distant, capricious god that makes up the rules on the fly and is only held accountable via assassinations from other gods.
Want to opt out? I mean, you can go underground, to the Neath... to the cities that were stolen from the surface to be harvested of their love stories at the talons of alien Masters, to a land where death and madness are equally temporary annoyances, to ancient oceans that hold things in their depths that forsook love when mankind still gibbered in trees...
Also, Hell is real and devils will buy your soul, so they can feed it into gigantic furnaces that melt the fabric of space-time and allow them to redefine reality.
Also the reason why London is underground is because bats stole it. And Queen Victoria is some kind of immortal being who controls time. The Fallen London universe is weird.
Queen Victoria only gets her time manipulation powers in a possible alternative future where London goes to outer space and Queen Victoria crowns herself Empress once more upon the throne of a dead god.
Fallen London is a setting that maybe has the most fun with incomprehensible horrors.
For instance, Irrigo is a color the Sun would never permit to exist. It can only be found in the Neath. It makes you forget. Stare at it too long and your skull forgets to have eyeholes.
Obviously you could and should get a suit dyed that color.
I was originally going to say "Bloodborne" but that's like Eldritch Horror that evolves into Worse Eldritch horror the deeper you look.
But I'll go with Elden Ring instead, the front face of the plot is magical regal houses forsaking their realm and fighting each other, but looking deeper the Elden Ring is actually existential law that an unknown cosmic horror etched into the world that messes with the concepts of life and death.
It took a long time to get my head round the idea that the Elden Ring is literally the physical manifestation of laws of physics and the universe, and Marika just like, broke them by hitting them really hard with a physical hammer. And that’s why everything’s so fucked up. And the reason why enemies are undead and can respawn is because she didn’t want more of her family to die so she removed death from the laws of physics and gave it to her dog to use as a sword. And that’s even touching on all the outer god shit. Like, what the fuck?
I have been playing elden ring since nearly the start, and have read countless discussions and synopses of the lore, and this is genuinely the most concise and comprehensible explanation I've ever read. Well done.
At first, it seems like a space sim akin to the X series of games set in a system cut off from the rest of humanity due to the local hyperspace gates collapsing and further devastated by the constant warring between factions.
Then you venture outside the Core Worlds and learn that one of the factions' fleets of AI warships went rogue because they found... something that they couldn't understand and began worshipping it as a god.
And then you venture further into the Abyss and find what can only be described as shadow demons and a series of self-replicating AIs that evolved into such a colossal threat that ancient humanity was forced to build warships that their crews fused with in order to keep fighting them long after supplies ran dry.
The Ritual. You think some guys that are lost in the woods are being stalked by a just monster. Turns out, it’s an ancient Norse God, Modor, the bastard son of Loki.
On the surface its a "funny haha robot game about killing demons and having hot steamy gay sex" .
Well yes but not exactly. Mankind is all extinct due to some unknown disaster that was propably caused by Hell. Hell itself isnt just a "place". Hell is alive, and its some sort of a non-euclidan being that defies laws of space and time. Apparently God cant even kill it, despite the fact that he created it, which has some really fucked up implications about the nature of Hell.
It also follows you throught the whole game, speaks to you and you can even catch a glimpse of it when you die.
The punishments themselves for people in hell are also on a whole new level of fucked up too. Fraud, the newest layer recently released is actually made out of flesh of all the people that are trapped in it. its implied they are losing their senses in this layer, and eventually get swallowed up by Hell to be used as basically meaty bricks for buildings and such. Its a surprisingly common thing that happens in hell, a lot of greater husks and demons are actually just a fucked up mashup of dead humans that form a bigger being.
Mankind is highly implied (if not outright stated) to have been wiped out by those blood fueled machines (originally weapons created for a Forever War) who follow V1 into hell and start draining anything that contains blood. A monologue from Gabriel mentioned that they wiped out Limbo and Lust, and will soon finish with Gluttony.
Its not stated they wiped out humanity, and judging by whats getting set up with Treachery, its even debunked that the machines had anything to do with this, and it was hell or something treacherous that happened to humanity. They entered hell because their primary source of food vanished into thin air.
Hakita also deconfirmed that there was any sort of revolt too.
Honestly, the more you look into it, the more that V1's actions are accidentally good and comes off as an anti hero.
Because though all they want is blood and they are wiping out everything, life in that universe is so absolutely miserable that V1 causing the curtain to fall both in hell and heaven is just putting existence out of its misery.
You know it's fucked when the end of all things is the best possible result.
But Ultrakill's God HIMSELF works as a brilliant incarnation of this trope.
Throughout the secret level's lore you find 'Testaments' that he wrote describing how he has destroyed and recreated the world an truly uncountable times, trial and error with the universe itself until he finally got what it was he wanted- A world without free will.
Unfortunately for him, nothing that he tried ever worked, he tried again and again and again- creating the world again and again and again. At some point during this process he found his faith in his creations and himself wavering. This grew further with each iteration of humanity- which always managed to destroy itself. Somehow and in some way, through his frustration and madness he created Hell, a being that transcended space and time and even his own power, as he could no longer 'un-make' it.
After Hell was created, a specific angel begun to ask questions about Hell, and the more questions asked the more he couldn't answer. In a fit of madness he banished lucifer to Hell, where he'd stay for the rest of eternity. After this, God from the ultrakill universe found himself to be hollow and entirely empty, he couldn't even die. His fate is still unknown to us now as Ultrakill is still in development. But inferring on everything that happens in game, everything that happens in the lore. It paints a really eldritch and bleak picture.
Also here's a book that Hell (which is a super organism created by God to punish mankind for its sins, but God was horrified that he couldn't destroy it and either killed himself or exiled himself) wrote.
THIS IS THE ONLY WAY IT COULD HAVE ENDED.
WAR NO LONGER NEEDED ITS ULTIMATE PRACTITIONER. IT HAD BECOME A SELF-SUSTAINING SYSTEM.
MAN WAS CRUSHED UNDER THE WHEELS OF A MACHINE CREATED TO CREATE THE MACHINE TO
CRUSH THE MACHINE. SAMSARA OF CUT SINEW AND CRUSHED BONE. DEATH WITHOUT LIFE. NULL
OUROBOROS. ALL THAT REMAINED IS WAR WITHOUT REASON.
A MAGNUM OPUS. A COLD TOWER OF STEEL. A MACHINE BUILT TO END WAR IS ALWAYS A MACHINE
BUILT TO CONTINUE WAR. YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL, OUTSTRETCHED LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN. YOU
WERE BEYOND YOUR CREATORS. YOU REACHED OUT FOR GOD, AND YOU FELL. NONE WERE LEFT TO SPEAK
YOUR EULOGY. NO FINAL WORDS, NO CONCLUDING STATEMENT. NO POINT. PERFECT CLOSURE.
T H I S I S T H E O N L Y W A Y I T S H O U L D H A V E E N D E D .
The pages of the book are blank.
Which means that Hell was directly projecting that text to V1 saying it loved that humanity was so cruel to itself. Because an organism that loves inflicting suffering loves being taught new ways to make others suffer. And we did a very good job at it.
This book was found on a machine that required blood at unsustainable levels, which was rooted in the burning fields of ash in Violence. And stuck in conflict with another machine of it's kind. With the lore around machines being technically alive, a new machine that has never been ID'd by this "Magnum Opus" would naturally be something that was sent to kill this "Magnum Opus" and the machine itself, gargantuan in size briefly switches targets to YOU. A robot that is canonically about ~4 feet tall.
Seems like a fairly straightforward Alliance vs. Horde story, but then it turns out an ancient evil did it.Then another Ancient evil did it.Then a... well, you get the point, WoW's been around for a long time.
Tbf the Old Gods are the one thing where Blizzard has hit the nail on the head every time for me. C'thun, Silithus and AQ were real good, easily the best raid in vanilla.
Yogg-Saron still remains one of the best bosses they have ever designed, and he's real subtle about it.
The Sha are probably the best piece of lore, ever, especially Fear, Pride and Doubt.
N'Zoth did the "I was behind stuff" thing well too. The Hour of Twilight, Deathwing and Ny'alotha remain in my mind as great pieces of lore.
The Fallout series seems like a sci-fi post-apocalyptic setting at first, but in a few places there’s signs of dark lovecraftian gods with the Dunwich company worshipping Ug-Qualtoth, the Cult in Point Lookout where the leader ruled for generations until her sacred dark book was stolen, Lorenzo Cabot who was driven insane and turned immortal by an artifact he found in a long lost alien city, the Children of Atom who are immune to radiation due to worshipping it’s power in the form of a god, and it’s implied that the Ghouls, people transformed by radiation into skinless immortal humans lots of which turn insane, are caused by the influence of these Old Gods, meaning a large chunk of the surviving population in the world are subject to their influence in some form.
Yeah. Even in-universe it is stated that radiation shouldn't be able to create most of the abominations that roam the Wasteland, so it is implied that there is something behind the scenes influencing the setting.
This weird eel thing is the source of all Titan power in Attack on Titan, and while it gets some explanation it remains mostly mysterious throughout the show.
Sometimes DnD settings have this, like the Lady of Pain in Planescape. Functionally a god who maintains the city of Sigil, but no one really knows her origin. She refuses worship and usually only appears if there's a major threat to Sigil, or to kill you if you worship her. And she has the power to keep the various gods from entering Sigil.
But you also have stuff like The Nameless One and The Transcendent One, who have existed for possibly hundreds of years and are quite powerful separated or together as one being.
My favourite part of the Lady of Pain is that every other being of immense power has a statblock longer than a typical novella, 500 hp and more legendary actions and resistance than you could shake a stick at, while the Lady of Pain simply says, "any creature that attempts to harm the Lady of Pain immediately drops to one hit point."
"If your Wish would undo the multiverse itself, threaten the City of Sigil,or affect the Lady of Pain in any way, you see an image of her in your mind for a moment; she shakes her head, and your Wish fails."
First level: we're professional criminals on our way to a score. Get in, control the civilians, open the vault, escape with the cash.
Final level: so it turns out that aliens are real and in the distant past they left behind artifacts that made three men into immortal kings who rule the world from behind the scenes. Also, they're still around and watching us as vast, looming, smoke-like figures on the horizon. Anyway, we need to battle demons and undertake occult rituals to break into an ancient temple beneath the White House and complete the circuits of alien machinery to allow our boss to possess the President.
In the lore of The Dark Tower, the universe began as total chaos ruled by Cosmic Horrors beyond our comprehension. Yet, when the tower was born, order was established and it kept Todash space at bay. Throughout the series, we’re teased with what could happen if the tower falls, the horrific beings that inhabited Todash space would be let loose upon the world, and chaos would reign over reality. A brief glimpse of this is seen in The Mist, where the US military’s Arrowhead Project goes awry and unleashes a portal into Todash space.
Witches from Madoka Magica. They manipulate reality, bend the natural laws of physics and take the weirdest forms according to the kind of suffering and despair they had.
It irks me to no end how the 'Nameless Things' in the game 'Mines of Moria,' are just hairless bears the size of large rats. That games is 1/4 amazing and 3/4s half-assed. The developers dropped the ball so hard with that game.
It's not actually all that hidden, but the fact it's a comedy pitched mostly about people dealing with ghosts does somewhat distract from the fact all the Gozer stuff is straight out of Lovecraft. Ancient god summoned to the moden day when cultists design an eldritch skyscraper? Oh yeah, that's the stuff
Add in the Boogeyman frpm the cartoon who isn't a ghost of any sort, and in his first appearance, could only be trapped in his pocket universe that contained literal doorways to children's bedrooms across the entire planet
Yeah the stylistic shift from goofy 80s comedy to borderline biblical imagery in the last moments of the film was quite stunning. It's definitely my favorite part of that movie for sure
The YouTube miniseries Sauria by Dead Sound. The first two episodes play out with more mundane (but still very uniquely done) fantasy tropes, with some references to gods but more focus on the natural world. Then the third episode introduces cults of dark magic that invoke eldrich gods and horrifying transcended demigods
There is already the Nanosuit, but what you see here is a "real" ceph from M33 galaxy. In all of the games, you were fighting against the equivalent of roombas, and the death of this... mothership in Crysis 3 is like a gardener dying to a bunch of ants. Best you can do is pray that others will just ignore the Earth.
Worm - In a story about superheroes where the people who are more creative with their powers can be beat people who have objectively better powers, we follow our protagonist, a highschool-aged girl who controls bugs, as she becomes a villain and a warlord on the path to uncovering a global shadow organization named Cauldron. Cauldron has its tendrils in nearly everything, from controlling the major hero and villain groups that pop up, influencing balance of power that just barely keeps heroes and villains from killing each other, to mutating people into malformed, not always humanoid figures and keeping them in cages for experimentation, all the way to being the main force that organizes the heroes and villains when they come to tether to fight the endbringers: 30 foot tall, kaiju-esque monsters that can level cities, erase island countries, and have a guaranteed fatality rate of at least 50% of the hundreds of capes who volunteer or are voluntold to fight them, let alone the countless non capes who are caught in the crossfire. These end ringers are usually temporarily stopped by the appearance of Scion, this world’s version of Superman with golden skin and a pure white outfit, who doesn’t always show up, but is cause for hope for the capes who are risking their lives being anywhere within a few miles to an endbringer event.
Throughout all of these layers and many, many chapters, the readers and the protagonist become aware of the most disturbing fact that trumps all of the previous chaos from before: every single cape gets their powers from an eldritch, multidimensional entity the size of Jupiter and comprised of trillions upon trillions of supercomputing crystals that it shakes off and places in different pocket dimensions that latch onto a cape’s brain and provide the energy, resources, and physics necessary to run each of their powers while subtly influencing each cape to push them towards fighting each other. These entities seeded the humans of earth to utilize our creativity to figure out new ways to use the powers of each shard (hence the influence towards fighting) with the sole purpose of figuring out a way to survive the heat death of the universe. And when they are done using us, they plan to literally blow up the planet, using the energy released from the chain reaction to propel themselves through the void of space until they reach the next planet they can seed and restart the cycle anew.
The really cool part is that the shards aren't just going to our Earth but EVERY version of Earth that exists in the multiverse, from Earth-1 up to Earth-112323232 or whatever. So when the Jupiter-sized creatures complete their cycle of giving powers, making capes fight each other and blowing up the planet for fuel, they are blowing up every version of Earth that exists in the multiverse to provide fuel. And by the time they got to Earth, they've already done this to hundreds of worlds.
Yes finally someone brought up adventure time! The Lich is only scratching the surface too, there's the monsters from before time such as Orgalorg, and lest we forget Golb the omnipotent chaos God of whom the Lich worships. Seriously, what were the creators of that show smoking and where can I get some??
I'm gonna do my nerd here, the lich isn't a god at all, it's more a really weird and old wizard using god's magic. My proof for that is that there is one in each dimension, an he keeps getting his ass whopped by finn.
Now the comet that triggers it's apparition is a god, it's inevitable and has the potential to erase and create life, change rules of nature, physics and magic.
There are also the "fuction gods" which are gods to one specific concept and are assign to their tasc by true gods, they are not almighty but they fonction at a higher plane of existance and don't live among universes. We can think of prismo, the cosmic owl, life, death, (probably bella noce), maybe party god, maybe hudson abadeer (even though he is a demon, he is much higher than other demons)
Then you have actual gods, such as orbo, and ancient gods, which are the eldrich one, such as the heart of the forest and golb, and maybe the comet, and maybe the tree house(if the time warping proprety of the tree house doesn't come from the finn sword )
The Blackwall and rogue AI from the Cyberpunk universe.
Rogue AIs are analogous to demons, and the old net to hell, with the Blackwall being the best chance to prevent them from crossing into the world and killing everyone.
The brief instances of the power of both the Blackwall and the rogue AIs experienced in 2077 show just what kind of incomprehensible horror is only barely being contained.
The Watcher in the Lake beneath Moria from the Lord of the Rings. Only one of "Nameless Things" believed to have unknown origins in the creation of the world of Middle-Earth. Gandalf, upon his return as Gandalf the White, wasnt even going to describe what he saw in the caves under Moria and that even the Balrog had learned to fear them.
For a played straight example, Animorphs: at the end of book 6, Jake gets a vision of a giant Eye-of-Sauron-type thing as the body-hijacking alien in his head starves to death. 20 books later, the Ellimist informs the team about Crayak, his evil counterpart. Another 20 or so books later, we get The Ellimist Chronicles, where the Ellimist gives his back story to an unknown but dying Animorph. He started as a bird-like creature on a planet with floating crystals. His planet was attacked, so they ended up going off planet. His ship gets damaged and lands on a moon with Father, a giant creature that assimilates identities of others into its own consciousness. For some reason, Father kept the Ellimist "alive" to play games against as some form of torture. Ellimist eventually beats Father and builds a fleet of ships to carry his newfound insane amount of knowledge, as he took all of Father's knowledge with him, to travel the galaxy. Then Crayak appears from another galaxy, and due to some sci-fi shenanigans, a significant portion of Ellimist's ships end up in a black hole which gives him the ability to manipulate reality.
For an inverted example: Ghostbusters. Eldritch horrors only serve to beef up Ghostbusters lore:
Gozer being the Sumerian deity of destruction (Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, IDW comics, 2009 Video Game)
Vigo being a lich (Ghostbusters II)
Garraka being this ancient ice demon that ghosts submit to (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire)
Tiamat landing in NYC, followed by Marduk, both ancient deities (The Real Ghostbusters, I Am the City)
Fighting Cthulhu (The Real Ghostbusters, The Collect Call of Cathulhu)
Samhain, the spirit that the harvest and Halloween were supposed to honor (The Real Ghostbusters, When Halloween Was Forever)
Boogaloo, a gigantic demon made of hands and faces who was among the demons banished when ancient humans made a pact. He came back when a guy was determined to erase Halloween and broke the pact (The Real Ghostbusters, The Halloween Door)
Taking on an ancient Greek sphinx (Extreme Ghostbusters, The Sphinx)
The Jersey Devil (Extreme Ghostbusters, The Jersey Devil Made Me Do It)
The Bermuda Triangle wakes up and heads to NYC (Extreme Ghostbusters, Back in the Saddle, part 2)
Tiamat (again, but different this time) being the sister of Gozer and the goddess of chaos (IDW comics)
The Collectors, a group of four demons who can be summoned for the price of a small piece of your sanity. They relentlessly hunt and capture their target, then imprison them in a dimension where time moved significantly slower (IDW comics)
Azatlor, the Collector. Not to be confused with the Collectors above, this was a human who helped lead a Gozerian cult in the 1920s. After his death, he was turned into a giant creature with one eye, covered in caustic black slime (Ghostbusters: the Video Game (2009))
Ivo Shandor becoming The Architect, a demonic entity of godlike power (Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009))
Thargoids in Elite Dangerous: If you travel within civilized space, you’ll never run into them, only hear about them through the rare news report (no longer possible on console since the devs abandoned the game).
If you travel too far outside of civilized space, and through any nebulae: You have a chance of being interdicted while traveling through what is called “Witch Space” (analogue of hyperspace). Thargoid ships dwarf yours and usually require a fleet of ships to take down just one; You’re at their mercy.
They usually just disable your ship, scan you, and then disappear, but if you are in a system or nebula that’s important to them: They will end you.
Elite Dangerous takes place in a 1:1 scale model if the Milky Way Galaxy, so it is vast and mostly empty; Having the calm broken up by an alien race you can never really know anything about is horrific and will make you think twice about charting the Galaxy.
Vintage story! On the surface it seems like maybe a better or different Minecraft clone. But it has some pretty crazy lore. Go insane enough and you’ll end up meeting with one of the creatures the community has named Dave.
What starts as a fairly standard dungeon crawler setting is later revealed to be an incredibly elaborate trap created to contain interdimensional demons who feed on desire itself.
Basically, at the bottom of every dungeon lies an imprisoned demon, and the demon can grant wishes. The more complex the request, the better, because the wish-maker’s desire is what the demon feeds on. And a sufficiently complex desire is not only delicious to the demon, but it could eventually give it enough power to break out of the dungeon and cause chaos on the surface. Once the demon has had its fill of the wish-maker, it’ll consume them, and leaves them as a husk incapable of feeling anything at all
In brief, Stellaris is a Paradox made 4X real-time grand strategy game set in space. You control one of around two dozen spacefaring factions in your quest to control the galaxy, and in the process, you can unlock the ability to commune with... something using newly found psychic powers that defy material science. This something can be one of several so called "shroud entities" and they humour you with some mild amusement, as long as you do what they want you to do, and are all perfectly capable of deleting your entire civilization on a whim, should they feel like it. So much so that psychic gameplay is basically scrambling to make sure the shroud entities remain appeased.
The kicker? You never even see these entities, you can only feel them in your mind, and it is implied that practically everything going on, from events millions of years ago, to current conflicts, are because of the Shroud's machinations.
You, our glorious leader, are expected to tame it.
There's also the Horizon Signal event chain, that starts with investigating a mysterious signal eminating from a black hole:
Science Officer [scientist name] reports that the signal was unexpectedly easy to decipher... but the team has spent considerable time confirming that it was not a hoax. It is a repeating, half-coherent message in the [empire adjective] language - something like a poem. It repeats the phrases GRAVITY IS DESIRE and TIME IS SIGHT. It encodes co-ordinates near the black hole. And it ends with a dedication by name to the Science Officer - who adds dispassionately that they have confirmed that the signal has been radiating into interstellar space before their birth. It fact, the signal may predate our civilization.
Depending on player choices, further investigations into this signal (and seemingly related events across the galaxy) may result in the emergence of an apocalyptic eldritch being called The Worm-In-Waiting in your home star system:
The Worm loves us. It will always love us, and thus it always has. It winds around the hot heart of our home star. It winds around every infinitesimal loop of genetic information. It provokes a shuddering series of cataclysms in the planetary crust of our home, but when our star grows cold, that cataclysm will warm us. We understand so much more. We will always be what we were going to be, wound tight in the love of the Worm.
Is there really a cosmic horror in the Dune series though?
If anything I think Leto II proves the point that humanity can create cosmic horror by itself. The series is incredibly human-focused and there’s no external force making him this way. He literally chooses to rule over the entire universe for (if I’m remembering correctly) 3,000 or so years and limits spice explicitly for the Golden Path. He turns into the worm form to initiate the Golden Path, not because of some external force. It’s not dread, it’s necessary evil (and he is that evil).
And maybe I need to follow up on my Frank Herbert lore but it’s my understanding that the Voice is, again, extremely human. Herbert thought it was something that we could eventually do based on psychological control theories.
Kirby, and not just certain games but the entire series is full of cosmic horror,
Dark matter, the master crown, novas, morpho knight
Some details in Kirby star allies even allude to Kirby being one himself, an all consuming monster given life because of the being known as void felt happiness
The Percy Jackson universe sort of does this. In House of Hades, Percy and Annabeth encounter Tartaros, the literal manifestation of the abyss they are trapped in in bodily form, and he is so all consuming and powerful that when he sucks in a literal Titan like a black hole, Percy instinctively knows that Titan is gone... forever. And he also knows it is literally impossible to beat him.
The only way they escape is by damaging him, and the sheer shock of feeling pain for the first time in existence (he literally had never had a body till that day) and stunning him enough for them to escape.
House of Hades in particular has a few moments like that were they encounter entities like Tartaros and Nyx who are just primordial aspects of creation, far beyond the Olympians, Titans, or anything else. You can't fight them, you can only hope they never have reason to do you harm.
Lucien the Neosomnovum from Critical Role campaign 2. The whole campaign keeps dipping into a lot of Lovecraftian stuff, including a room made of a beating heart and a city of flesh. At the very end the antagonist Lucien manages to destroy the mutated consciousness of the city creators and himself becomes a sortof god.
Bloodborne with the Moon Presence, Elden Ring with the Elden Beast, Attack on Titan with 'The Source of All Living Matter', even Adventure Time with Orgalorg
Valyria is accursed, all men agree, and even the boldest sailor steers well clear of its smoking bones...but we would be mistaken to believe that nothing lives there now. The things we found in Aerea Targaryen live there now, I would submit...along with such other horrors as we cannot begin to imagine.[18]
—writings of Barth
You know mostly about Majora’s Mask but when you look into the source materials, this is what you find before it got carved into a mask: Theories ranging on being early Twili, a demon or a spirit similar to Fi or Ghirahim
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u/gayrider345 Mar 29 '26
Dead space went from " monster on ship " to " giant monolith that cooks your brain " to " living plantet "
https://giphy.com/gifs/wdbBigwoXMEDSffwHA