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>>49313360
Old Ones are what was left after God the Creator killed all of his kin and tore out their hearts with which to build creation, and stole their ribs to build a cage, with which to shield creation from what remained of them when he was done.

Hateful, decaying, gibbering corpse gods with empty, swirling darkness where their hearts should be, gnashing teeth and lashing tongues in place of ribs, they whisper through the bars that ward them, speaking of madness, of twisted flesh and intoxicating power, if only somebody would turn the key.

Every star in the night sky is the eye of an old and thrice-cursed god, and every single one would devour Creation in an instant, just to satisfy the void within itself for a fraction of a moment.

>>49313621
Now this. I like this a lot. A lot.

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>>49313621

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Bumping with another "Monstress" old one.

>>49313360
>>49314450

source?

>>49313360

Gods exist on two levels:

You have the mortal gods, which are the gods that most people tend to typically know and prey to. In a way they are like the Deva from Hindu mythology although their powers are vastly toned down and most mortals can reincarnate as a god or become very powerful spirits akin to these gods

Then you have the Outer Gods. These gods do not communicate typically with mortals and are more like the embodiment of aspects with some being more animal like then others. Only very few actually take interest with mortals and mortal gods and typically only react when called upon. Think like U-DO from Xenosaga that doesn't directly communicate with beings but can affect changes depending upon circumstanc

>>49314518
Google "Monstress Comic"

>>49314518
Not only is google image search your best friend, but I also already said its name. It's a comic called "Monstress." That being said, its a pretty nice read, and you should check it out.

>>49314569
Damn, beat me to it.

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>>49314564

>>49313360
extreamly powerfull but at the same time not all that interested with reality, they just are, and always will be. Probobly is a bad idea to even talk about them because they might just take notice. More or less forgoten gods

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This guy with the serial number filed off

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>>49313360
They are what happens when the children of creator gods surpassed and took control of creation.

Imagine if Lucifer and his kin succeeded at their rebellion, and rewrote the Book in their image.

Picture all existence like an infinitely long sheet of music, with as many separate bars and lines as it is long.

The First Ones were able to change notes and manipulate the music of the universe in any which way, but in doing so there was chaos. Eventually the Last of the First changed the music in such a way that now the First Ones listen enraptured to the music he created.

With this steadying of the music of the universe, creation itself became finally possible, at least until the First Ones either leave their stupor or get bored and start fiddling with the fabric of reality for the fuck of it.

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They're super batteries.

>>49314518
http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Monstress

>>49314841
thank you

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>>49313360
There is only one Cosmic Horror in my setting

It started with children. They began escaping from their homes and families, gathering at night,lighting torches and looking at up the sky,then returning to their houses when dawn came like nothing happened, only to do the same thing next evening.
Some of the parents have locked their children in fright,but most of them either didn't knew of this or thought it was mostly harmless

Eventually the children grew up,their late escapades have stopped.
Yet few of them remained, making a bizzare cult around a being they call "starman"

They gather at night and listen to the sounds of the sky. They claim it's singing to them, a tune they cannot understand yet adore it so much.

Some of the most devoted followers believe they understand the language of their patron. They say he promises them absolute enlightenment that would almost "blow their minds"


I hope somebody on /tg/ will get this

>>49313360
The strongest of them you don't get to see under any circumstance. The lesser ones are following an agenda of some sort. Typically high politics i.e. "Tul'go, you're a day behind on that report and it's pushing the third moon out of orbit. What's going on there?". There can be outliers but they have to be either insignificant or notably more powerful than everything else.

>>49314895
>I hope somebody on /tg/ will get this
Well, he'd like to come and meet us, but he think he'll blow our minds. Understandable precaution.

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>>49313360
There are no gods, humanity is the result of leftover waste that were a result of the old ones inscrutable actions. The old ones are cosmic horrors that exist in ways and places the human mind cannot grasp.

Foolish cult members attempt to vie for the attentions of uncaring entities who view them as pests at best, the same way we view insects. We ignore them until they irritate us. What they think as communion with their dark gods is only their minds desperate attempt to hold some semblance of perception of time and reality or their consciousness will tear itself apart. Their constant attempts to appease and summon these extradimensional entities is unspeakably contemptuous. What insignificant powers they are able to glean are perverse beyond their understanding.

We are doomed to reel through the void of space for as long as humanity exists. There is no hope.

I don't have anything creative or new, apart from the fact that they're cosmic horrors that happen to be vulnerable to being killed, even if doing so is nearly impossible.

Instead of making them alien squidmonsters, I decided to take a more angular approach, inspired by impossible geometry. i.e. refracting light at angles that shouldn't occur and the classic colors that don't actually exist.

I guess similar to big daddy Kozilek from Magic?

>>49313360
"Old ones", as in, powerful entities driving men mad, are actually fairly young Godlike entities in the grand scheme of the universe, being humans having reached Apotheosis. They took the place of now-dead, older deities in watching over the inner workings of the universe. Some of them, those tasked with overseeing the process of death, eventually went mad with sorrow and grief at the sheer torment the souls of the dead endured while being "processed" by the universe, and now seek to undo it all. So now, they are actively trying to sabotage Reality, using the full extent of their godhood and their knowledge of the laws of the cosmos to do so.

Closest thing to eldritch Old Ones in my setting are the Dark Elementals. But most of them lack a lot of the things that would make them really "Lovecraftian".

Sure, some may be writhing masses of things that aren't really tentacles but aren't comparable to much else, or otherwise have an odd number of eyes or mouths, but most Dark Elementals were crafted by human mages and their imaginations.

Really, only the natural Elementals come very close to Lovecraft. They're not really sapient things; they're moving confluxes of raw Darkness; that is, History, Culture, Belief, Lies, Trickery, Imagination, Creativity, stuff like that (And of course, absorb Light, which is representative of the opposite of all those things; Basically, everywhere the Dark is Romantic, the Light is Rationalist). So they don't really care about Humans or Orcs or Elves because there's nothing there to care... from? They're far more comparable to hurricanes and tornadoes than dragons or Gobbo raids.

That said, there really isn't anything much more frightening than a natural Dark Elemental. Most of them fold through the fourth dimension, and so you'd need to understand non-elucidian geometry to really grasp their form. It's not insanity inducing, unless you're really weak-willed, but it's definitely headache inducing if you're not MENSA-level or too stupid to understand why that would be wrong otherwise. The only things that hunt Elementals are sapient species (if one is encroaching on a large city) and Giants, who simply need that massive amount of meat to fuel the magic that lets them grow to be twelve stories tall.


There is a unique species of Dark Elemental, however, that is quite creepy and nobody has quite figured out what they're up to. The Observers don't have mouths, don't eat, don't sleep, and are only rarely even seen moving beyond turning their head to look at you. They have a single, giant eye in place of a face, and really don't do anything but blink and stare at people.

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>>49313360
I took the "all three" approach. The setting itself is a relatively contained safe sphere of reality that was hidden away and allowed to start fresh with mindwhiped gods, because the rest of reality had become a swirling cosmic hell caught in a state of pure unending war. There are creatures that could easily destroy the sanctum of this pocket universe with a thought but are either unaware of it, apathetic towards it's existence, too insane or stupid to do it, or enjoy the thought more than the execution. Some are old deities, some are just living mortals, some exist as conceptualized creatures that still somehow hold sway in a very real, physical way.

Smaller fry old ones have slipped through the cracks though into the pocket reality, including a massive black "dragon" that was obsessed with causing suffering and claiming the throne as a god of death, one of the settings gods has been hollowed out and made into the puppet of one of them, a few smaller fry tried to rule not-japan before the not-japanese exploded themselves to contain them, one of them is essentially the Ur-Vampire, and the first human was a very powerful witch from this outer hell who spontaneously birthed twins to seed their new world. Humans are the tyrranids.

>>49313360
They were once masters of their own plane, one full of impossible colors and life that behaved contrary to any known laws of nature. Yet, despite the realms chaotic appearance, there was a strange sort of order to it, and the Old Ones ruled over the universe, and all that resided in it for longer than you or I can possibly comprehend.
And it was good.
And, as with all good things, it came to an end. The entire universe began to stretch, filling what was once a warm and bright and loud universe with more and more nothing until the something in the universe was like a single grain of sand against an endless black ocean. The Old Ones waited in the darkness, the only living things left. They grew bitter, and cold, and spiteful. They sat in that darkness and they waited.
And, in their endless battle against the encroaching nothing, one of them managed to tear a hole into our universe.

>>49315752
Any interesting stories of your PC's interacting with them?

>>49315951
They whisper into our universe, gathering followers, telling them of the darkness at the end of time, gathering power for the time that they will push their way through the tear and take their place as the lords of this universe.

>>49314895
If you're going to aim for cleverness and subtlety, try to avoid directly posting song lyrics with anachronistic slang.

>>49314895
Was this song about a cosmic horror the whole time?

>>49315839
Who created the pocket reality?

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The left overs of an ancient eleven kingdom, twisted and consumed by their magics. There were 8 who ascended to godhood, creating soldiers as twisted and malignant as themselves to wage war on eachother and assert dominion over the world.

Now, eons have passed and one has awakened and hell follows with him, bubbling up from the bowls of the earth seeking to end life.

I enjoy Lovecraftian horror and themes and I like the idea of High elves being the bad guys for once.

>>49313360
My Old Ones are usually my players' characters from the previous campaign

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>>49316135
One of the setting's... I guess, inner haven's (haven't really thought of a name for the pocket reality, but everything outside is called the "outer hell") deities sort of accidentally did it. As part of the deal, he drastically weakened himself to create it, blank all the gods within it to a state of childlike and early valar-like spirits, then lock the only gate out. He's a TN deity who's whole job is essentially now relegated to watching a door and quietly trying to clean up anything that slips through.

Technically the space was empty save for himself, the gate, the spirits, and a field of white flowers in a spectral realm until the material world "fell" into existence.

>>49316029
Not really; I haven't had an opportunity to drop much in the way of big stuff.

Elementals, especially Natural Elementals, of any type are extremely, extremely dangerous. And most of them are basically unkillable too.

Fire Elementals: Giant columns of fire anywhere from a meter wide and the height of a castle wall to over a kilometer wide and tall enough to plausibly be considered "in space". Usually "die" through dispersing into smaller Elementals and assorted wildfires.

Water Elementals: Formed out of water randomly forming runes on a molecular level that are stable. They're usually shapeshifters, but lack the intellect to really do much shapeshifting beyond really fast evolution. In water, usually form Giant Squid that hunt Blue Dragons. If they happen to form on land or in the shallows, they like to form more mammalian or reptilian attributes and basically become T-rexes or other megafauna. Water governs animal cells as a whole, so anything that isn't a plant, fungi or bacterium is fair game. Oozes can be considered Water Elementals, of a sort.

Earth Elementals: Probably the least threatening, unless you happen to hate giant fucking trees. Of course, megaflora does attract Green Dragons, which like to step on things like houses and people. Still, just kind of redwoods or Morrowind style mushrooms.

Air Elementals: Usually fuck off to space. If not, they're the mother of all tornadoes. Once managed to hurl a dwarven (surface) fortress so far south it ended up across the goddamn ocean it Kitan with the cat-folk. Obviously, the dwarves died.

Spirit Elementals: You know those Evil Mists in Dwarf Fortress that Husk people? Imagine that, but potentially as big around as New York City. Also likes to fuck off to space, though.

Light Elementals: The most humanoid of the bunch in form, not so much in mind. Think Eliezer Yudkowsky writing Kyuubey as a giant Dr. Manhattan. Alternatively, can form a sort of crystal out of photons, cuz fuck science, magic.

>>49316288
Now that sounds pretty damn friggin neat. I might steal a few of those.

>>49316288
It's worth noting that these are natural phenomena, not "races". They don't have any sort of intelligence. When I say an Air Elemental "Fucked off to space" it doesn't mean that it got the idea that stars were far out, man; it means that the random forces of nature and magic driving it's existence meant that the path of least resistance was up.

I try to make sure that not only does Physics keep a firm grasp on the mundane in my fantasies, Magic has a specific and curtailed effect too. Fire Magic, for example, controls temperature, rather than any sort of raw elemental fire. Ice Bolt and Fire Bolt are from the same school of magic, the major difference being whether casting too much burns your hand from the absorbed heat (Ice bolt) or gives you frostbite because you expended all the thermal energy in your fingers to use as seed energy for your firebolt.

Earth Magic deals with almost all solids, and thus can kinetically control ice. It's also associated with plant life, since magic has something of a memetic component to it as well (fuck that quantum physics shit I'm a writer not a God). Same with water; Mercury is Water's thing, but so are camels and horses and healing magic for people. Air Magic deals with any gas. So a skilled healer usually draws mostly from water, a good bit from Earth, and a little bit of air for Asthma and such.

Spirit is the magic that deals with Sapience, Emotion, Death, and the other ephemeral things that don't technically exist but really do. Psychology magic. Also necromancy.

Light Magic is photons, electrons, and knowledge. The ancient ruins that dot the landscape and are filled with terminator robots and laser guns were made by people who would have been considered light mages in the modern lexicon.

Dark Magic gets a bad rap, but tends to be about summoning things, remembering things, Artifact making, and being plotty and tricksy. It can easily be used by goodly players without even becoming edgelords.

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>>49315661
I personally don't want to get lumped in with this other guy.

>>49314895

Yeah, I got it once I saw the stars in the top right.

All supernatural beings are the result of meme magic, when the human group subconscious makes manifest what we're all thinking about.

So old ones are things like the feeling that something is watching you, or the fear of slow death by starvation, etc. They are largely unaware of individual humans

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Three kinds of ancient shit: the Auld (primordial chaos beings--think Egyptian mythology), the Elder Ones (your more bread-and-butter Lovecraft deal), and the Elsethings (surreal, extradimensional entities which vary wildly from one to another, and no one really knows where they came from).

The Auld are ruled by beings that feebleminded mortals (humans) call “Chaos Lords”, since they can’t truly grasp their true existence. They predate the more conventional gods, and are actually quite pissed at said gods. Why? Because one day, the Lords and their creations were minding their own non-Euclidean business when the pantheon just sort of…began to exist. No explanation. And then, they had the gall to declare the Chaos Lords abominations, and hunted them and their creatures ruthlessly. The Lords now live in exile, constantly planning against the gods and the universe(s) they’ve created. The Auld themselves are thousands, maybe millions, of different races and species, from humanoids to single-celled organisms. Thing is, they have a universal hate-on for anything the gods (they call them “New Ones”, because they’re new to them) had a hand in making. So they torment the creations of the “New Ones” however they can.

The Elder Ones don’t need much introduction. Sanity-breaking entities from outside normal reality with various agendas that is almost always bad for civilization at large. They emphatically DO NOT play well with each other; part of why the setting is so mucked up is because the Elder Ones are constantly going at each other’s throats behind the scenes, and it spills over into the material world. The Elder Ones laugh at the so-called “Gods”, thinking of them as mere children that don’t understand divinity. That or they haven’t noticed them yet.

(continued)

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>>49316830

The Elsethings are just plain fuckin’ weird. Each of them are different, and there’s no real pattern to their existences. Some humanoid Elsethings have been known to live passably “normal” lives, even intermarrying with regular races, but as a general rule of them, they fly in the face of the laws of magic and science combined. Their powers don’t correspond to known spells, they can defy physical laws on a whim, they sometimes have totally nonsensical and impossible anatomies…they’re like walking mindscrews. Some people theorize that they’re the “leftovers” from a previous universe, or some kind of castoff from the gods’ magic working in the material world—like space-time’s inflammatory response. Ultimately, though, the Elsethings are a mystery that has yet to be solved.

>>49313621
Dammit HP have you and tesla been messing with time travel again, go back to your century

>>49315078
I like it! Espescially this bit:
>What they think as communion with their dark gods is only their minds desperate attempt to hold some semblance of perception of time and reality or their consciousness will tear itself apart
Very UNromantic. Nice

>>49314837
From my point of view the Jedi are evil

Beyond human understanding, but not beyond comprehension.

The Infernal Gods, corrupt and insane, and the Abyssal Gods, their existence shattered and warped.

I like them to be enigmatic and unexplained. And when I say that, I mean actually fucking unexplained, not just unexplained to everyone bar the player-characters.

>>49316288
>>49316473
I look forward to storytimes about a that guy getting squished by a "dropped" branch for being a pyromaniac.

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>>49315839
>humans are the tyranids

Holy shit. I love it.

buh, all these "cosmic horror" lovecraft(-lite) things, how is this for a change: the old ones are the lands on which you live, the cycles of nature since time immemorial. they take form sometimes, but most of the time they talk to wise men. they aren't unfathomable, they are just really, really old. they are actually rather nice, like your grandparents. there are some new ones that sprung up around cycles humans made, like harvest festivals and things, and large scale ancient structures.

>>49316954
"You're squashed by a massive boulder as you hack at the giant mushroom."

"The fuck, a boulder?!"

"Well, actually, on closer examination, it's a massive fungal spore. It turns out, you weren't just failing to hurt the Elemental, you were actually jacking it off. You just got killed by way of Mushroom Moneyshot."

"Fuck your magical realm bullshit, man."

"You're the one who was jacking off the giant mushroom."

>>49315185
I'm quite curious; what ideas do you have for Old Ones in a setting?

>>49317461

>Can you do better

This is not an argument.

>>49313360
The old ones are an idea, word, or virus. Nothing so compact as a single being.

The old ones are planes of being that ebb, flow, shred, and coalesce. That's their resilience.

>>49317799
Right, that was a question!

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>>49317100
looking back on this post, it may just be completely incoherent. basically, they are a kind of animism based on cycles and locations, and a few new old ones have been made by people creating new cycles and places. the cycle ones are local, too. there isn't a big jack frost, there are a bunch of tiny winter guys that take care of one place each. they are pretty benevolent and actually care about humans. they also have a sort of trade magic that works mostly off of colors (i.e. you give me color A, I give you B colored magic). they aren't quite gods in the D&D sense. More like a more specific druid faith/warlock patron. pic related, M. Rosyrain, old one of spring in the starting village, he trades white for rose.

>>49313360

Remember that one Lovecraft story that basically implied that the North Star was some kind of Great Old One?

Yeah...

I like my Old Ones beatable.

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>>49318016

I bet you still have less than 45% Cthulhu Mythos, lightweight.

>>49318016
Those ain't no Old Ones then, they're just daemons that got a little too full of themselves (and possible soul juice)

>>49313360
Cosmic horrors and fairies. Only one of them is a god so far.

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>>49318016
>>49318100

If it has sourcebook stats, we can kill it.

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>>49318016
>>49318091
>>49318100
>>49318144

>>49318182
Gaichu was mistaken.

If you can kill it, it's not a God. Just an unreliable source.

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I like to go with things outside the settings reality
or for my personal setting some form of mortal that has attained a power above the gods while retaining physical form

Most Cosmic Entities have a form created to contain their power think Galactus normal guy gets remade into a being of pure energy that just looks like a huge dude with a big helmet. If you manage to attain that kind of power and retain your original form it is unable to contain the power and begins rapidly mutating which usually leaves the individual insane

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>>49318144
Beatable and killable are not the same thing. As Cthulhu from his "Call of" series' stats do make killing quite impossible.

Best mortals should hope for in dealing with Old Ones is either relatively immediate death or maybe locking it back behind whatever cosmic door it was stuck behind before the party fucked with it.

>>49318331

That's why "The Dunwich Horror" always stood out to me. It's one of a scant few stories in which the heroes pretty much defeat (?) the Great Old One involved . I always imagined that story as a CoC game (with either very lucky players or a very unlucky Keeper).

>>49318331
The fun of Old One is that it would seem not even 'death' could defeat them. Or that death could actually be a means of accelerating their plan.

I like to think beings so far beyond our comprehension could be forever trying to die but be incapable of it. They're forced to exist and thus inflict atrocities upon other beings hoping for something to enact finality to their existence.

Only to be remanifested yet again because death is not something their existence may allow for.

>>49318410
>CoC
Path of exile has ruined this acronym for me... discussing cthulhu and seeing it, I think Cast on Crit. Playing PoE, I think Call of Cthulhu... My brain is fucking messed...

>>49318410
It helps that in the Dunwich Horror, the horror is a souped-up shoggoth, rather than something like a Mask of Narly.

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>>49318484

I read that as "Mask of Gnarly" and all I can think of is Nyarlathotep as a beach bum.

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>>49318442
>death is not something their existence may allow for.

This is the idea I can get behind. That something so frail and three dimensional as humans, even with infernal magics, help from so called "Gods", or the atomic bomb could even hope to do more than temporarily inconvenience an Old One is generally laughable.

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Some worship them as gods because man has a tendency to want to worship anything bigger than him. Some despise them as demons because man has a tendency to hate what is different from him. Some fear them as horrors because man has a tendency to fear what he doesn't understand.

What they exactly are is up for debate. What isn't up for debate is that they are immense, powerful, incomprehensible, could accidentally wipe out the human race without even realizing it, and wouldn't care one way or they other if they did realize it.

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>>49313621
Damn son

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The Old Ones are the only "true deities" leftover from the death of the first reality. Modern deities are little more than powerful spirits by comparison. It is said that they destroyed the first creation in a war of spite and jealousy, for God withheld his name, a word of great power which it is said is hidden in the myriad mysteries of creation and that grants true enlightenment to its speaker, from them, his children, and waged war across the universe, spilling the blood of their brother-sister gods. It is unknown through what madness they rended the first creation into the twisting sea of the multiverse, but perhaps that is better than the knowing of it, but they are all that is left of the Old World. they are twisted corpse-gods, gibbering and rending and eating what they please and spreading madness by way of the sword. they will have their desire, for their want is the blade which shattered divine unity. Fear the Old Gods, for in their black ambition only madness and death lies.

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>>49313621
dam son

>>49318928
This sounded much more profound in my head. Then again, I did cut it down a lot.

>>49314785
>The skies in days of old were a neverending torrent of light, day and night had no difference. Then the Old Ones came. They consumed whole worlds, the mass they had gained becoming unstable, and collapsing into a black nothingness. Their bodiless digestion of the sky and all the other worlds swept the universe, turning the night black. The remaining lights are the final dregs of the Old Ones' cosmic appetite. And they're disappearing, every year I see less and less.

>>49313360
they are called old BC they come from a previous world cycle.

they are the hungry ghosts of gods that fail the upward climb to transcendence

Man, I thought I was being really clever with the pantheon of ancient gods I was building for my campaign just because they weren't all "lol Cthulhu" knockoffs. Now I feel like a fucking tool, some of the ideas in this thread are fucking brilliant.

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>>49313621
It's like if Lovecraft banged Kirkbride.

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Goodnight /tg/. This thread lasted much longer and did better than I expected. Stay awesome guys. I'll give my old ones in the morning when I can think straight.

>>49319076
>old ones are black holes
Kinda meh. Too easy, but could be portrayed in a compelling way. Part of the problem with ideas like this is that the player cast never actually interacts with the real situation.

How the cast learns about the nature of the universe, and how much they do actually learn, and how they piece together what they do learn is even more important than what is actually going on beyond their pathetic monkey brains.

>An Old One directly says to a Monkeigh, "I die"
>Monkey hero believes he's being told to die by some loud voice inside its head.
>Old One is pleading in the only way it can.
Understanding the context of words is as important as the words themselves. And players should never be able to understand the proper context of what's going on.

>>49319296
This provides an interesting point, how much self awareness do Old Ones have?

Can a being which effectively is its own micro-universe really understand itself as anything but "Everything"?

Ancient unthinking, ever hungry beasts doing their damnedest to consume all they can are neat, but part of the Otherness of the Old Ones is that either their very comprehension of existence is entirely different from our own, or at least different enough to be not just disconcerting but also fueled by desires entirely inhuman

>>49319354
An old one can be the quilt our universe is sown onto.

Our creator is the one with needle and thread, and the old one is the quilt upon which we're grafted.

So the old one is intrinsically closer to every living being within it, being our universe, then our Creator is. But we are to revere the creator and fear the Universe.

Perhaps the old one feels the creation upon its hide is akin to a puss filled boil and does everything an otherwise 2d dimensional blanket can do to excise it. Twisting, folding, bending, etc in order to encourage it to pop. And it's been doing that for a millenia or longer than anything that's currently in existance.

And what also, if the creator is in fact another old one that was undergoing the same problem and through its struggle, has contacted another old one or spewed its boil upon a neighbor.

What if our Creator is another's Old One and vice versa?

Feels kinda Disc Worldy when I write it out, but I was thinking of a series of blankets strung up flat as far as the eye can see on multiple racks. Or rather several rows of clothes lines, with cosmic animal hides being tanned all next to eachother.

>>49319457

Like a cosmic trickledown effect, this whole 'life' plague keeps spreading from one to another, mostly due to attempts to remove life kebab from themselves.

>>49319499
But then who was first kebab?

I had two old ones.

1 were from a setting based in earth where god flooded the world not because "Wow people suck" but because humans had great magical power, which is dandy until they discovered the spell "Enslave" which did exactly that, and had no run out timer.

So the free will so precious to good went to shit as humanity ended up being reduced to 8 lords of hedonistic vices and armys of slaves who no longer had a concious thought that wasnt to serve their masters.

The so called apocalypse truely only killed 7 people, Noah who was one of the lords who spammed the spell out of fear repented and was allowed to build his ark and spread humanity.

The reason hell is layered is because without a body malice is actual toxic to the soul, so when hell was created (at this point only to quarintine the dead souls from these monsters) they immediatly sunk deep into the foulest reaches into a toxic pit of hate that has warped their visages too horrible for people to understand.

Devils look the way they do soley because their bodies are warped by the presence of hate humans have.

>>49319510
No one would likely know, as these Old Ones might only barely have a concept of others like themselves existing, it's more they finally found a way to lose some of this really inconvenient life growing all over them and so they just sorta tossed it off, where 'off' is for something that is its own universe is a thought they've never cared about for each Old One is a multitude in and of itself.

>>49314895
>They gather at night and listen to the sounds of the sky

Eh, that's just the spiders of Mars.

The Ancient Gods are what creation is built upon. Like a plain white piece of paper that has been drawn upon time and time again, underneath all the crude materials still exists the ceaseless emptiness, now fragmented and warped by the mere act of building reality. To call an Ancient God "alive" is laughable, for they are neither living nor dead. Even to say they hate what has happened to them is incorrect: they neither hate nor love. They adapt, they rebuild themselves to return all that is back into the nothingness it was spawned from, but they do not do so out of malice. Much like an insect act only out of instinct to survive, so too do the Ancient Gods.

>>49319596
>>49319572
Old ones expand and grow as a defense against life. If there is finite space for an old one to inhabit, it has long ago filled every unit of it. What we would call clashes between old ones is in fact, the fabric of the same singular being rubbing up against itself with impossible pressures as it curls and bends in another dimension trying to constantly escape the life that has sprung up upon it. It bears no ill will, and likely has no singular cognitive thought that could be discernible by lesser minds, but if it did, the word would 'escape'.

>>49315951
>>49316029
So it's basically fantasy gods plus the Big Crunch theory?

>>49320478
Big Freeze, sorry.

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Lets say you homebrewed a race of cosmic horrors that exist outside of your universe. Constantly eager to pour in and start with the genocide because they exist to kill, satiating their constant unending bloodlust and solely that.

In what way would you attempt to make their actions plausible for something inherently alien all without unintentionally making their reasons seem tangible by us humansno.

I've crafted a couple reasons but I wanna see what you guys can come up with.

>>49319267
I've started reading monstress
>Humanity Fuck Yeah!
>Humanity Fuck You!
>Sexy Inquisition
>Eldritch horrors
>Nyalarthotep?
>Nyan cats?
So far pretty good.

>>49320651

The soul emits an unusual energy, quite unlike anything else in the entire universe. This energy cannot power anything, it can't be harvested and it is generally only good for powering the consciousness of meat shells, which is worthless to cosmic entities. However, there is one thing that the soul can do that no other form of energy can.

In large enough numbers, souls can tear holes in the void.

Now when people think of "the void", they think of an already existing area of nothingness. But to those who can comprehend it even the blank vacuum of everything can be torn, and doing so can seem almost enticing to those who understand what doing so will create. After all, what happens when you put a hole inside a hole?

>>49317910
Nah I like the insinuated living planet old gods rather than your elaboration.

>>49313360
Old ones in my setting are cthulloid in nature, meaning looking at them with mortal eyes is fatal, and trying to commune with them directly is a recipe for insanity.

But they really do care about their people. They really do.

Their priests and priestesses are chosen by the old ones at ages around 4, because around that time, of course Mr. M'fjso can grab the moon and fit under my bed, he's Mr. M'fjso!

People who try to fuck with these chosen ones die horrible, horrible deaths. As in, plural deaths. At once. Forever.

>>49320651
>Some in-universe character says
Death is a mere byproduct of Them being in our realm. We have Mass and that generates a gravitational field, sort of. They have something that produces something that isn't gravity, sort of. The important thing is that you'll experience the worst case of vertigo just by looking at them. Get too close, and you'll get pulverized by the kinetic-analogue energy they generate.
They're attracted to movement just like we can get bored by a wall. So be boring and they won't follow you around. Occasionally there's a weirdo that likes staring at walls. If a weird one takes a shine to you, run. Maybe throw things at it. That's all I can advise.

>read Monstress
>get to the end of what's on that site
>no new content since four months ago
Uh
It's not dead is it?

>>49313621
This is cliche kirkbride bullshit.

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>>49320905
No, book 7 comes out in October, there isn't any more out yet.

I just like making them like how nature is. They just don't care about you, or anything. Life goes on. Why would they care about what's going on in your life when they saw a fucking meteor wipe out all dinosaur life... But then life found a way, and continued on. They've seen entire continents crack in half, they've seen entire races get genocided out of existence, they've seen every single bit of pain and suffering and death and anguish in all of history.

It just so happens that humans are the first things to develop a stange quirk that makes then care about all that stuff.

>>49320651
The most humorous answer would be that they only noticed humanity, and our world/universe/realm in general because humans started messing with something they didn't quite understand at first that sent out very real ripples into the cosmic horrors' home universe.

They did not appreciate the intrusion as whatever it is the humans are doing, entirely unknowing on their part, causes them no small degree of pain and this results in anger, much much anger.

Think how large ships make noises that disrupt whale communication, but instead of just stopping them from communicating, whatever we were doing was very annoying, but not necessarily life threatening to them. They don't care, they want it to stop. They want all that terrible noise to stop.

Since the humans aren't stopping themselves, the horrors will stop them.

>>49313360
I like 'em to start as just another one of whatever weak player race is available. They live an amazing life where they became powerful and eventually came to understand some sanity shattering truth about the nature of the universe- starting their "apotheosis." Then they slowly become some cosmic horror. I like 'em to be killable by someone who is like they were, and probably end up replacing them.

>>49321150
It sounds decent, but it reminds of what little plot Space Raiders had so much that I just can't take it seriously.

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>>49320770
>>49320853
>>49321150
Thanks, I like these suggestions.

My idea was essentially that these cosmic horrors all originated from one elder being, occupying dark space doing fuck nothing but chillin'. One of the other forces of the universe are these celestial beings that are currently constructing the multiverse, a small crew of these dudes end up stumbling upon this black void and think it's a good idea to start constructing. As they begin the procedure, the creation of existence itself, the primordial horror awakens and finds these beings usurping it's once quiet and empty home. Without second thought, it attacks one of the celestials and shreds it into cosmic nothing, others take notice and in panic, try to fend it off to no avail. Instead of stopping, they decide to try and finish the ritual in hope the explosion of creation will kill it. Just barely completing it. everything goes the way they want, the explosion takes what constitutes as their life but only harms the creature enough to just drive it away.

It takes refuge within' a dimension conjoined with the one before and decided to rest and heal it's wounds. And as it slept, for the first time it dreamt strongly of one emotion -- anger. Soon it boiled to rage, and as this happened over the eons, it's dreams gave spawn to creations that soon found a home within' this cramped dimension space and they too developed a society all on the basis of one damning thing. Whether it is some sort quasi-hivemind or naturally instilled in every creature imposed upon the elder horror itself, one things for certain: They want to kill every living creature within' the multiverse. Utilizing the craziest end-tier technology and eldritch magicks the feat seems quite feasible. Drawing together their forces for a dark crusade against celestial creation.

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>>49319076
I liked it, but it isn't quite like that.

Not made of fire, air, water, earth, mana or light, they do consume bits and pieces of reality and repurpose them for their won ends, but that's because they can't interact with it otherwise. Whatever the shape of their agent or avatar, it never has eyes, for light and stars aren't relevant besides their toxicity, sources of venom to be transfigurated.

The current Creation is one of many in the void, meant by them to be conquered and rewrotten until it becomes a new Leviathan.

>>49313360
>cosmic horrors

This, with varying levels of human comprehensible motives and intellect. My setting has 9 elements, each of which had corresponding elemental beings. This includes the four classical elements of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water as well as some alternate elements. The oldest and most powerful of the elementals are referred to as "Titans" and believed by men to "rule" their elements.

One of the alternate elements is "Void", which is basically space/time. Shamans, druids, and other primal elementalists don't even believe that Void should be classified as an element or that there are Void elementals, however certain wizards and priests know they are wrong. They speak of Aeons, Fates, and Dooms as living thinking beings. They even claim there are titans of Void who encompass all of space and time, and are utterly beyond human comprehension.

>>49323386
So Lovecraft versions of something like DnD primordials? Or are they more of a conceptual nature?

>>49313360
Not really, gods are as powerful as the quality and quantity of their worshipers
Gods that are no longer venerated simply go lethargic. They might get a little too vindictive and willing to screw over the people who left them to fade away, but that's it.
So they might act like Old Gods if given the chance but they are nothing close to it. At least to the idea most have of "Old Gods"

Then there is the matter of the creatures that arise when you "inject" too much belief into a mere mortal which, while much weaker than any god, are untouchable to them and pretty Lovecraftnian

>>49323386
what are the other elements?

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>>49313360

Cosmic horrors or old gods are my favourite interpretation. In setting I have been mulling over, they are mostly creatures "out of system" - guests and visitors from outside the universe - which makes them incredibly powerful, since they are not governed by forces of creation, entropy or physical laws. They are more powerful than gods in that aspect, untouchable without their consent.

Not malevolent by default, but their touch usually spells catastrophe and maddening due to revelation of insignificance. Curious, sympathetic, mischievous... Thankfully, contacts are incredibly rare.

Not really that big 'horrors' if you think of it. But the setting is not really horror-setting, anyway, so I don't need hardcore existential horror.

Long ago a literary drop out read some Lovecraft and wrote a shitty summation of their shitty universes' grand mythology and thought it was really clever. It wasn't, and the spooky part is that he doesn't know! Niggers

>>49318331
Cthulu was a small fry though. If humans advanced significantly, they could take him.

Trying to kill Nyarls is a different thing.

>>49313360
I used the name "Old Ones" to refer to an ancient civilisation, of which pretty much nothing is know, aside from them leaving behind some ruins, mostly in the frozen north, and them possessing powerful magic.

The eldritch entities of the setting are the Gods of the Outer Void, aka. the Outer Gods (or the True Gods as their followers call them), who are just Lovecraft's Outer Gods. I generally follow the notion that eldritch gods should not directly interact with the world (except Nyarlathotep, but he's a special case for a number of reasons). The only time it happened in my setting was when some poor bastards briefly caught the attention of not-Azatoth, and his gaze incinerated all life within a thousand miles, leaving a desert of radioactive ash. Their worshipers, however, and minor eldritch beings, are a major threat in the setting. Said worshipers have their own views of the gods, which are heavily colored by being viewed through the lense of mortal perception. For example, they believe the above-mengioned creation of a thousand mile wide zone of death (centered on their former capital) was divine punishment for their hubris, while in reality it was like you blinking and the movement of air caused by your eyelashes sending some bacteria flying.

>Hah! Pathetic adventurers, you truly think you understand my masters above? That they are simply overgrown monsters that act out of needless malice? How utterly pedestrian! I have touched their minds as they have touched mine, and I have seen the truth beyond the veil! They are not interlopers outside creation, they are the first of God's attempts to bring life to the void, the neglected children of a disgraceful deity!

>Oh ho, you think I lie, priest? Do not your own texts say that in the beginning of creation your God banished ancient evils to create the world and heavens? Have you never wondered where those evils came from in the first place? Tell me this, oh pious one, what sort of benevolent god would cast away his own children simply because they did not measure up to his own standards? And though they seek to destroy our reality, it is impossible to fault them for their hatred towards we who replaced them in their father's eyes! I have always believed that humanity is a disease, a blight upon the universe, and now I finally understand why! We were never meant to be, our existence is only meant to be a continued mockery towards the offspring of a god who despises his firstborn!

>>49324628
Cthuls is definitely one of the least out there of the Old Ones, but here's the neat question:
If after managing to down Cthulhu he returns to slumber in Ryloth, if Ryloth is destroyed/otherwise disrupted and he cannot return to slumber, is he awakened forever? Cause that seems like the more likely result of humans advancing and trying to fight him.

Agreed though that Nyarlathotep is in a whole other league, along with my best buddy Hastur.

When the gods created the universe, they did so poorly and haphazardly; the unsteady and amateurish hands of childish gods makes for sloppy results. The very basis of existence was flawed. Eventually, this flaw was expressed as Corruption, the breaking down of life and mind. The Corruption seeped into existence slowly but surely, and now permeats the land and threatens to wipe out everything.

The God that mankind follows was originally simply one of many. As Corruption festered in his brothers and sisters, he was forced to bind and banish all of them until he was the only one left. You might find an Old God in a secluded glade that has managed to resist the Corruption, but by and large they have all fallen to madness and hunger.

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>>49313621
Wew

>>49321022
NICE.

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>>49325677

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>>49313360
Something I found fun for a long-running campaign was the notion that our equivalent of Old Ones were totally misunderstood by those trying to worship/awaken them.

All of the texts and legends of these beings link them to great cataclysms and rifts in the fabric of reality, of madness and widespread carnage. What they fail to recognise is that each time they appear, the world doesn't end. Always, somehow, it is averted. By the Old Ones.

Because the Old Ones are not trying to end the world. They are dragged, kicking and screaming, out of blissful rest after aeons of existence, into a world that simply wants to use them as tools for their own selfish agendas. They possess terrible power, but they don't want to use it, until such time that one of them has to reach out and find someone psychically receptive enough (and ideally someone who can be functionally insane) to throw a spanner in the works.

They don't make a 'champion', they don't really care for the wellbeing of those they throw into the fray, so long as it works.

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>>49313621
Fantastic. I am definitely stealing the "every star in the night sky is an eye" bit, as it can be worked into astrology. They move around all the time, and if you can figure out what they're looking at you might be able to tell prophecies... or go mad from staring into the eyes of the gods for too long. Probably both.

>>49326032
Only if you happen to look at them as they look back at you, Old Ones definitely have better than 20/20 vision

>>49325582
If termites broke your bed, would you be unable to sleep forever? You'd probably just sleep on the floor (or a couch or chair), and call the exterminator the next morning.
Cthulhu is sleeping in R'lyeh because when the stars are not right, he literally can not live. That's going to happen regardless of whether his city is intact or not, but he'd probably muh rather sleep in his house in R'lyeh than on the ocean floor.

>>49313621
What was the retard thinking when doing this sort of shit?

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The closest thing to a divine being in my setting is a substance that's essentially Metroid's Phazon.

>>49326125
Is more the idea of precluding his return. Since he specifically returns to Ryloth, if there's no Ryloth he cannot return there.

I have a blockbuster copy of Hot Fuzz that I didn't return on time, now that there is no Blockbuster, it can never be returned.
If when something is banished it goes to a specific place, and that place no longer exists, it therefore can't be sent to a nonexistent place, so it'd stay around.

>>49326347
>Is more the idea of precluding his return. Since he specifically returns to Ryloth, if there's no Ryloth he cannot return there.

"I am so tired it's unbelievable, I just want to sleep for like two or three aeo-WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY FUCKING HOUSE?!"

>>49326382
basically, is less the idea that humans broke his bed, and more that they managed to vaporize his entire house. With no such place to return to, figure he'd be a bit steamed behind the tentacles.

>>49324790
To elaborate on that, because I didn't really go into the gods themselves. I'm basing them on the Lovecraftian Outer Gods, although one particular intrepertion of them that might not be entirely "canon". They're also generally not refered in-setting by their "true" names.

There are many creatures living in the void outside the universe, some of which are so powerful they're worshiped as gods by some mortals. The "true" Outer Gods, however, are being that not only embody, but literally are universal forces (this differs from "mundane" gods, who merely embody a concept, and generally have a relatively narrow "domain").

In the beginning, or rather before the beginning as time didn't exist yet, there was the Dreamer (Azatoth). Everything that exists is merely his dream. At first the dream was a roiling chaotic mass of primal enegry and matter, but eventually two forces coalesced out of it: Yog-Sothot (referred in-setting primarily as the Keeper of the Gates), who is space and time, and Shub-Niggurath (referred in-setting primarily as the Allmother or the Mother of Chaos), who is matter and life. For the interaction of these two forces, all other things were created. The universe is Yog-Sothot, or rather one part of it, and all life is Shub-Niggurath (you can think every living being as a cell in its body, or more accurately an atom making up a cell).

Nyarlathotep (aka. the Herald or the Messenger) is an exception, though. Nobody knows where he came from, but he apparently was there even before Yog and Shub existed and time began.

The Outer Gods are indifferent to mortals, just as you're indifferent to the individual molecules that make up your body. However, because all that exists is connected to them, mortals may in some circumstances call on their power. Their interaction with mortals is best described as "reflexive" or "subconcious", and generally results in bad things happening, because you really shouldn't be poking the space-time continuum.

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>>49326604
Nyarly is clearly just Azatoth doing some lucid dreaming.

>>49320971
Fuck off
Kirkbridian lore might be cliche but it works so well when done right

>>49326653
He probably is, or at least the part of Azatoth's subconciousness that's having the dream. It's probably not entirely lucid, but rather that Azatoth's dream-ego is a completely separate being with a mind of its own.
Like, when you're having a non-lucid dream where you do stuff, you can't conciously control what you do in the dream despite the decisions you make in the dream seeming like your own. Now imagine the dream-version of you actually being a fully concious person with a mind of its own, rather than just being a viewpoint character in some random stuff your subconciousness projects to your mind (except he's still also that, at the same time). That's what Nyarlathotep is (maybe). He's (possibly) the "main(viewpoint character" in the dream Azatoth is having.

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>>49318091
>>49318100
>>49318144
>>49318182
I don't believe in no-win scenarios.

>>49327360

So what, you're pinned against the wall and your course of action is to hold a knife to the GM's throat and force him to let you win?

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>>49327522

>>49320684
>cat calls himself a nekomancer
>you think it's a joke
>turns out it's an actual thing, just not as impressive as the cat was implying.
seriously, need more of this comic. Buying the next issue as soon as it comes out.

>>49327668
That two tailed cat is very clearly based on the Nekomata, it is just that it is probably not as impressive in universe

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>>49327360
Isn't that my line?

>>49328437
No, because I'm you.

>>49328572
ugh time-travel, always a headache.

>>49318282
So are the other guys egging it on or what?

>>49325582
>Hastur
I beg to differ good sir

>>49314841
>http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Monstress
thank you so much, may you get a blowjob/cunnilingus tomorrow for your kindness

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>>49330768
Hastur's the only one who's got his own play about him inside his own story.

>>49313360
I haven't fully fleshed out the idea yet, but the gist of it is this:

They don't just exist outside of the universe, they are each like a universe unto themselves. Because the universe itself is an Old One that is stuck in an incomplete form, like a baby chick unable to break open its egg. There are countless Old Ones, but only a few have any interest in the anomalous one unable to be born. Of those that do, some want to put it out of its misery, some want to help it break its shell, and some wish to observe or interact with the completely alien phenomena that are going on inside of it. None of these things are particularly good for any of the beings within.

>>49325841
>Fab worshipping goat people
Now that's an original concept if I've ever heard one.

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My Elder gods aren't beings, they're civilizations. Although at this point they've combined into hivemind type deals, so beings would still be correct. Various societies (currently 5) that developed past a Type III civilization billions of years ago. They're constantly warring with each other due to a need to expand and consume. Whenever they take a microsecond to stop fighting so hard they create mini universes, they check up on how the other societies are advancing. If any other society develops past Type II, or accidentally discovers inter-dimensional travel, they wipe it out because they already have enough competition. Knowledge and worship of these gods either come from an inherent feeling of cosmic horror and something larger than yourself, or a small sliver of a god passes in their dimension.

Basically Galactus meets Anti-Spirals from Gurren Lagann. I never saw Gurren Lagann before making this lore, I swear

>>49313360
I like to think them as nicer gods than what everyone got now.

They are more powerful and if they wanted anything malicious they would simply do it. It's less than stepping on an ant as one would imply.

It would be like seeing a lit lighter while rowing across a lake at night, its noteworthy and you might wonder how it got there. But its hardly that unique, there being several other fires on this lake, some actually more bigger and impressive and really you could kill the fire with simply going to close to it.

No the new gods are the real dicks, they are the tiny things that flock around the lighter and play tug of war with it, lighting stuff for fun and profit or try to keep it alive in some silly reason.

>>49313360
In my fantasy setting, they are all three.

Dimensional horrors out of space, born out of a hatred for the ever-expanding universe. They are beings from before time began and are formless spawns that glide through the aether.

The gravity and weight of existence tears away at them, sometimes causing their putrescence to shed off onto planets, and over billions of years, after millennia's of dilution of their genes, seemingly ordinary life sprouts from their surfaces.

They despise their offspring and roam the universe, world after world, galaxy after galaxy, aiming to bring apocalypse to the those they've given birth to, held back only by the construct of "time".

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They're tired.
They're deeply, unbelievably tired gods who have been forced and tortured by one mad king after another to draw from within themselves and bequeath power absolute unto that which would drink from the god.
And now they're tired. They've been abused and tortured and awakened over and over and over again, and each time they're forced to dive a little a deeper and draw a little more to satisfy those who summon them.
Chained, bound and tortured, they yearn for freedom or an end.
Those are the elder gods of my world.

>>49321022
Where cani get this for free?

>>49326240
"tough luck faggots I'm turning you into SCIENCE"

>>49313621
>God the Creator killed all of his kin and tore out their hearts with which to build creation,
>Hateful, decaying, gibbering corpse gods with empty, swirling darkness where their hearts should be,
>and every single one would devour Creation in an instant, just to satisfy the void within itself

I... now want a game with helping old ones return to sanity as a price for granting them access to their hearts and letting them live in the creation created from them.

Never thought i'd think of cthulhu as sympathetic.

>>49327668
Yeah, I found a copy of Book 3 when I was browsing the last dregs of my local Hastings (R.I.P.) a few days ago. The art caught my eye, and I've never had a better browsing session, and figured I might as well spread the word.

>>49333729
Seriously? Did you even read the thread?

>>49318484
It's the child of a human and Yog-Sothoth.

>>49333859
To live in a world that is made of living gods... Such a thing would be astounding.

>>49313360
I go partially by DnD standards but with some interesting twist. The multiverses are separated by pockets of space known as The Far Realm, here ancient and unfathomable being writhe and squirm, feasting on the knowledge of countless civilizations. These Beings would be considered greater than any god, if it were not for the fact that they cannot penetrate our reality. They constantly await at the fringes of universes, spending thousands of years probing for tears and other small entry ways. To us these small tears are the size of a doorway, to them, they are microscopic. So you can understand why probing for them takes so long. Once one is found The Far being will leak little bits of madness, whispers, or even technology from the future or past which compromises civilization. They spread their influence, until their followers gain enough power, enough to sacrifice 684,190 humanoids in one moment.

Once this is done, the multiverse loses its barrier, and is susceptible to the full horror of the creature.

There are some rumors in my setting that there are benevolent Far Beings, those simply interested in the cultures of all possible realities. Through great time and observance, once these far Beings accumulate enough knowledge they can choose to rupture. Causing the birth of a new universe, a big bang of sorts. Yeah its retarded but its mine.

>>49313360
old divine beings that did too much fucking around and spent too much power directly on thing sin the material world and subsequently got downgraded and had to conserve their remaining strength, going into their slumber. kind of like what happened to morgoth.

>>49331226
A old crazy man beat him with loads of C4, I'm sure it's not that bad

>>49334574
I remember Old Man Henderson. Did you know he was a world class figure skater?

I really like Exalted's Yozi. Posting one of my favorite pieces on them (from Ink Monkeys)

Metagaos devours everything.
Those who approach the swamp that is Metagaos first discern that he eats light, for the light of the Green Sun grows dim at his borders. Likewise, they observe that he eats color, for his enfoliaged flanks are a tangle of gray. Upon entering the trackless maze of the swamp, one sees that many of his plants bear the contorted marks of other life: a branch may have the scaly form of an amphelisia’s limb, or a knotted trunk may reveal the frozen face of a long-lost demon of the Second Circle. For Metagaos also devours independence and identity, assimilating lesser creatures into his body and self.

There are places within Metagaos that bear the marks of his hunger on the fabric of space—where a single step covers many miles of distance, or where all paths lead in but one direction because every other course has been devoured. And an hour’s passage in other places is as a day elsewhere, because he has gnawed there at the bones of Time. And then there are the places where, in his rapacity, Metagaos has chewed holes in himself. Silver sand spills in from these gaps, mixing with the swamp’s stagnant water to create vast murky tracts of quicksand. Even the great beasts of the demon realm find it difficult to wrest themselves free from these traps.
(1/2)

>>49335202
Metagaos himself is not the only one here who hungers. Many of his vegetative creatures share his appetites, and they feed on one another and on unwary travelers with equal glee. Some are swifter than serpents and stronger than tigers. Others are as stealthy as shadows despite their impossibly brilliant plumage. They rarely devour their victims’ lives, preferring to steal their victims’ strengths for themselves. Those they feed on become, step by step, like unto ghosts: colorless, gaunt and faceless, drifting like shadows through the trackless gloom. As to those who pass through Metagaos and survive, it would be better if they had not. For in devouring their health, he riddles them with disease—and his ailments are so numerous that not even the demon physicians know them all. His vegetable plagues spread where these travelers pass, devouring victims from within, transforming colonies of demons and hell-beasts into tangled, tortured groves of the not-quite-dead. Thus does the All-Hunger Blossom spread across the layers of the Demon City.

Few of Metagaos’ peers enter his mazy ways. Even Adorjan seldom joins him, despite his silence. For she seeks silence for its solace, and there is no solace, no serenity, in Metagaos. He has devoured that too.
(2/2)

>>49323386
Really close to what I posted further up.

Though I don't know what titans should end up being in my setting. They can't be too powerful; one of the overarching plots is the world is being cultivated by one particular individual from a type 2-verging-on-3 civilization called the YHWH and I don't think he'd be very down with anything that reminds him of the First Instance world, where the Deciever from Islamic myth showed up and ended up fusing everyone's soul into a entity on par with his whole civilization.

I think Elementals are plot devices enough.

>>49325841
I actually really like this idea. It's not that the Old Ones are evil, far beyond comprehension maybe but not actually evil, they just enjoy watching the little colored slime molds wiggle around in its pond.

They watch it and 'sit' there with worry about how these various bacterium as far as they're concerned keep trying to end all bacterium in their pond and they sit there trying to mull over how to stop that without rippling the pond too much so they can't see anything.

When some unfortunate cultist makes contact with a portion of their consciousness they only see countless death and hunger because they're getting contact with the worries of the Old One itself, and such worries are so far beyond mortal comprehension to shatter the mind into oblivion.

When the Old One is partially summoned into reality by one of these slimes, it's actually doing so just before the cultist slimes actually do something terrible and lo and behold, it killed all the cultist slimes and every bit of slime within 7 leagues, just to be safe. it keeps the rest of the pond going.

I like my Old Ones like I like my women, completely incomprehensible

>>49336178
So you like your Old Ones to be women?

>>49336232
Are you assuming their gender?

>>49313360
cynical, multinational business leaders with massive in-house SFX teams to bamboozle the hapless investigators.

>>49336255
No, just making a logical leap with the previous anon's post.

>>49313360
Old gods from previous cycles of existence, they exist in the void between planes and when a plane dies they devour any souls unlucky enough to be there.
Many try to force their way into current pantheons, often causing calamities to weaken reality enough for them to slide in.

>>49336322
Fair enough, but no, Gender doesn't really work as a concept for creatures like them

>>49335716
I just imagined how freaked out i'd be if suddenly I could hear the chanting of bacteria on my desk. trying to summon me to annihilate their world.

God, cosmic horror is much scarier from that perspective. With you as the destroyer of incomprehensible knowledge.

>>49336517
You have successfully turned a sexist joke into a Old One gender sensitivity dialogue.

Good job anon!

Is it bad that I like to give humanity a chance to defeat cosmic horrors? Its my guilty pleasure.

Cosmic horrors are for the most part notoriously indifferent, for the most part time seems to be a passing inevitability. They believe they'll live forever, outlasting any force that'd dare oppose them, and most of the time they're right. No one wishes to stop them, their daunting size and horrific being paralyzes their enemies with fear.

Sometimes I just like characters that say "fuck you" to them, those that aren't afraid of death, of madness, or the inevitability. And this is the weakness of eldritch beings, once they face something that isn't afraid of them they panic. They become vulnerable. Then a battle with them just becomes a Universe wide raid burn, just grilling those fuckers until they die or run with their tails ducked away.

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>>49336623

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>>49336524
Basically this, but even more insignificant, yeah, like the slimemolds growing on the sides of the tank are 'sentient'

>>49316886
Well, then you are lost!

>>49313360
In the setting that I've been mulling over, Old Ones are basically any of the various beings called Outsiders that spawn in the Void outside of Creation all on their own, and range from the level of Azathoth like-beings to minor imps.

In the setting, the Creator-Of-All was the first and by far the most powerful of these, and created the multiverse. However, he had absolutely no interest in ruling, just creating, so with every multiverse he all creates an Overgod (think Ao of DnD) called a Warden to oversee the fate of world and to kick out any interlopers before he fucks off to make a new multiverse.

However, as worlds age, two things happen. One, multiverses grow and expand, letting off more and more light into the void which is irresistible to Outsiders. Some of them just want to look at it up close, some want to play with it or use it as a model for their own (minor) creations. Some are just really fucking HUNGRY. Regardless, their entrance and presence causes problems, and its the Wardens job to kick them back out. However, the second thing that happens is that Wardens lose power as they age, and are effectively just authority figures about 1/3 of the way through the worlds life.

As such, the Creator leaves the power to channel energy from the Void to be claimed by a single mortal of each world that manages to reach Apotheosis, turning him/her into a Guardian who then must guard the world for the rest of its natural life.

Any campaign would (in the very late end of the story) consist of PCs trying to figure out what the fuck is going on when Outsiders slowly start appearing on/in the world(s), why the Warden isn't kicking them out and patching the holes, and why the Guardian (who they would think already exists) isn't killing them off and keeping them out in the first place if I had anyone to play with.

>>49335716
I went with similar idea, except the Old Ones don't care about mortals even that much. They're utterly indifferent, and any attempts to summon and tap into their power only works because the Old Ones are intrinsically connected to the very nature of the universe. Their followers might believe that their holy duty is to cast down the false gods and remake the world in the image of its true masters, while most people who are aware of their existence see them as ravening horrors seeking to devour the world, but in actuality the Old Ones care as much about the mortals and their struggles as you care about two bacteria fighting each other.

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>>49313360
I like the big super spooks and all, but I like my old ones to be some happy carefree bastard dicking around in the woods, like Tom Bombadil or or insane like Rolf.

>>49324417
>Tohuvabohu
MY FUCKIN NIGGA
Jewish mythological concepts a best

>>49313360
Currently the campaign is set in the far realm, in the world created by the backwash of two Old Ones- one who is essentially order personified, the other of whom is a force of entropy bigger than a universe.
They're strong, incomprehensibly so, and don't appear to think in conventional ways, as much as anyone understands the idea of them thinking at all. However they also appear to be in love, or at least something like it, and metaphors for their love are why the world exists in the first place.

>>49338169
>but in actuality the Old Ones care as much about the mortals and their struggles as you care about two bacteria fighting each other.
Do you imply that there are scientist types who like to observe humans?

>>49341559
I for one welcome our scientifically minded cosmological horror overlords.

>>49326240
Eldritch Horror Norse Mythology
Its enjoyable when well done

>>49336707
For a certain definition of "defeat?" Sure. We might be mere insects to a cosmic horror, but just look at how humans interact with insects. We might exterminate them if they try to infest our home, but if we come across a huge anthill or beehive in the woods we sure as hell aren't going to fuck with it.

>>49341559
Probably. I mean, Nyarlathotep already is pretty much a kid torching ants with a magnifying glass, except he instead hands them nukes for shits and giggles. Wouldn't be too much of a stretch for one to be interested in mortals in the same way a microbiologist is interested in bacteria.

There is one non-Lovecraft created Outer God who'se thing is that it sees all that occurs in the universe/multiverse, and who mostly comes off as a cheap knockoff of Yog-Sothot (who sees and knows all things that have ever happened or will/could happen). Maybe portraying it like that would give it some identity of its own.

>>49317799 (checked)

t. molyneux

>>49313621
Too comprehensible.

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>>49334066
And to you I present... Shinto. Or a lot of animistic religions actually.

Everything has its own god. Everything should be honored for it to serve its purpose well. That rock has a god. Pray to it when you split it for the ore it holds. That tree has a god. Pray to appease it so that its wood will not rot. That pot has a god; it has held many things and yet was untouched by them. This sword has a god and it is thirsty.

A god in this world cannot be killed, only... Re-assigned. Those that step beyond their bounds are set to rights by priests and by their elder brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers. All things exist in harmony, for everyone performs the task for which they were made and meant for.

>>49346673
>All things exist in harmony, for everyone performs the task for which they were made and meant for.
Shit, I'm not a weeb but that sounds pretty nice.

its not really eldrich horros but, i always liked the idea of outer dimensional/existance beings, be passive, like when you sit your ass and see you favorite TV show, curious but mayve opinionated but offhands with it

mavye fans of your adventures if you are playing a light hearthed game?

>>49346696
It's a common theme in East Asian mythology. From Tengriism, to Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy, to Japanese Shintoism and probably in Korea too; the idea of everything having a place in the world and acting according to it, for the betterment of all, as well as everything operating by certain specific laws. In a way, it laid the foundation for a scientific worldview, not seeing things as simply the whims of the gods, but prescribed by inviolable codes.

The 'old one' archetype IMC - weird eldritch horror - is actually among the newest powers. Hubristic empire ruled by cabals of sorcerers; greatest theurge tried to turn himself into a god by encouraging followers to worship him in ever-more extreme ways (cutting out their tongues, eyes, driving themselves insane through sleep deprivation and hallucinogen use, etc), culminating in a great ritual which was supposed to grant him godhood at last; betrayed by one member of the cabal who succeeded in imprisoning the newly created abomination. Unfortunately it was then trapped on the material plane and its corrupting influence cast a pall over most of the continent; crops turned to eyes and teeth, people revelled in their grossest impulses, beloved family pets became squamous and/or tentacled, etc.

The Empire naturally fell apart with most of its heartlands turning into nightmare land. Small successor states sprang up, carrying on the Empire's traditions of slavery-fuelled arcane oligarchy, but without the Empire's infrastructure slave rebellions soon kicked off, spurred by a new monotheistic creed (worshipping a god they called Chalcus) promoting freedom, civilization, etc. A couple of hundred years on their descendants have settled most of the still-inhabitable world.

Previously, the old (small o) gods were remote and of dubious ontological validity - there was never proof of their existence, and they had no immortal servants. The asuras (encompassing all standard D&D extraplanar beings) organised themselves into courts along their own lines (classical elements, sun, moon, shadow, stars, etc), cared nothing for the mortals' gods, and took little interest in mortal affairs.

>>49347466


Now, thanks to the PCs having fucked up in a few entertaining ways, they've contributed to the birth of a new Court of asuras (the Boundless Court) founded on the ideal of a neverending expansion of consciousness blowing past all limits of sanity, morality, and reality, and tied instrinsically to the warping influence of the imprisoned child-god. One result has been a general shift of the asura Courts' attention to the material plane. A few pioneers have begun aligning themselves with mortal beliefs, with the first 'angel' of Chalcus having already declared itself from among the Sun Court's asuras.