Eldritch Abomination/Literature: Difference between revisions

* Another proto-example: William Hope Hodgson's ''[[The Night Land]]'', as well as ''[[The House On the Borderland]]'', have quite a few of these, and his descriptions of the [[Eldritch Location|places]] and [[Time Abyss|times]] where such ''things'' would exist helped shape the [[Cosmic Horror Story]].

* Arthur Machen, who, along with Chambers and Hodgson, was a major influence on Lovecraft, is best-known today for ''[[The Great God Pan (Literature)|The Great God Pan]]'', where a group of intellectuals manage to create a [[Half-Human Hybrid]] by impregnating a woman with the seed of the eponymous Greek god. Unfortunately for them, the cosmos is quite different from what they believe, and "Pan" is ''also'' the Greek word for "all"...Making this an obvious influence over Lovecraft's ''The Dunwich Horror''.

* Algernon Blackwood's [http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/blackwood/stories/willows.htm "The Willows"], which was [http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern10.htm spoken of highly by Lovecraft himself], features an encounter with something so alien that, even by the end, you'll have little idea what they were aside from the notion of complete otherness.

* [[Jim Butcher]]'s ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' has the Outsiders, beings that exist beyond 'The Outer Gates', or basically the limits of known reality. They can only be summoned by mortal magic and are considered so dangerous that not only is summoning them forbidden under the Laws of Magic, but a member of the Senior Council (The Gatekeeper) has the full time duty of monitoring any possible incursions.

** The creatures in the todash darkness from ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' series.

** The abominations from ''[[The Mist]]''.

** There's also [[Clock Roaches|the Langoliers]].

** Another fine King creation: in the short story "Home Delivery", a thing best described as a gigantic ball of crawling worms decides to camp over the South Pole's hole in the ozone layer...and causes a worldwide [[Zombie Apocalypse]] just by being there.

** Rawhead Rex is an abomination that personifies the male sex drive as a living and malicious organism.

** Worshipping and appeasing such a thing is the true purpose of {{spoiler|the degenerate, immortal cannibals in ''[[The Midnight Meat Train]]''}}.

** Also, ''Fate/Zero'' has a Caster hero who's basically a guy with the Necronomicon summoning different Eldritch Abominations.

** ORT, the Ultimate Being of planet Mercury, is mentioned in ''[[Tsukihime]]''. Its raw power is considered far greater than that of any [[Our Vampires Are Different|Dead Apostle]].

*** The [[Nasuverse]] is almost a [[Cosmic Horror Story]] if you delve into the [[Backstory]]. Gaia herself is almost exactly the same type of being as ORT. The main difference is that the reality she creates happens to be one where humans evolved and can survive in. She has also not yet created her Ultimate Being, Type Earth, and it is not clear that she can, especially considering that her Blue Marble is the only planet to bear life which tries to exerts its own reality against her own. (It would be interesting to see what Type Earth's reality would be like; probably similar to what Arcueid can do on Earth.)

*** The father of all vampires, Type Moon Brunestud, ''was'' the same type of being as ORT and could reject reality and substitute his own like ORT, but doesn't exactly fit as an [[Eldritch Abomination]] since he was [[Humanoid Abomination|quite humanoid and pretty]]. Also, [[All the Myriad Ways|Zelretch]] [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|killed him.]] Apparently by dropping him into a reality where his home (''the fucking Moon'') [[Colony Drop|fell on his head]].

* The Ancient Enemy from [[Dean Koontz]]'s ''[[Phantoms]]'' is a massive, lake-size mass of black sludge, older than the dinosaurs, and consumes other life forms as sustenance, and is able to perfectly mimic any creature it consumes. It can create small "probes" or "phantoms", imitating consumed life forms, to go forth and hunt more prey, obeying the orders of its "hive mind". In addition, the creature absorbs the mental capacity and memories of those it consumes, so its mind grows more powerful, intelligent, and self-aware over time. Besides being able to mimic real animals and people, the creature can also form phantoms based on mental images from its victims; it takes sadistic delight in creating phantoms in the shape of religious demons and monsters to terrorize its victims before killing them. The creature also apparently likes to think of itself as [[The Devil]]. It even has human cultists.

** Another Koontz example is the extraterrestrial known as "the Giver" in ''Winter Moon''. Its method of interstellar travel is completely incomprehensible (it seems to have torn a hole in reality), [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form]], and it literally [[Blue and Orange Morality|does not understand the existence of death]].

* ''[[Skulduggery Pleasant (Literature)|Skulduggery Pleasant]]'' has the Faceless Ones, so named because they cannot be looked upon in their true forms without driving the observer mad and can only manifest by possessing humans, [[Body Horror|melting all features from their faces in the process]]. They are the former rulers of this reality, before their slaves, the Ancients (the first mages), managed to find a weapon capable of driving them into another reality. They are described as being so evil and sadistic that even their own shadows were afraid of them. A creature cobbled together from several monster parts including the torso of a Faceless One's host took a small army of mages to kill. When they finally appear, Valkyrie gets only a passing glance at one and is temporarily driven into a catatonic state by its impossible geometry and biology. Skulduggery explains that if they successfully return, they will wipe out half of humanity and then work the other half to death, before destroying the Earth.

* In ''[[The Power of Five]]'', the main antagonists are the Old Ones, godlike creatures clearly inspired by Lovecraft that used to rule Earth before the humans defeated them ten thousand years ago and sealed them in another universe. {{spoiler|The Nazca Lines were created as the seal, and the animal shapes drawn into the Earth were actually representative of each of the Old Ones, the familiar animals being the closest approximation the human mind could come to the Old Ones' horrifying appearance.}}

*** The mention of [[Combat Tentacles|tentacles]] and the associated imagery does ''not'' help...

*** Her home planet: a place in the Maw where plants eat animals which also happens to be the location of Force purgatory. Useful for something that sustains itself by ''eating force-sensitive souls''.

** The 2010 Unknown Regions RPG supplement also added the [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mnggal-Mnggal Mnggal-Mnggal] into Star Wars' growing list of EAs. It's a formless black goo that takes over a host and devours them. It wants to consume all worlds in existence, which would be bad enough...but it delights in tormenting sentient beings even more than it does taking them over. Doesn't sound too bad by the standards of alien horrors in Star Wars...until you learn that the reason the Unknown Regions have been cut off from the rest of the galaxy since time immemorial is that the [[Precursors|Celestials]] thought that the Mnggal-Mnggal was too much for ''them'' to deal with!

* In [[Barbara Hambly (Creator)|Barbara Hambly]]'s [[Literature/Sun Wolf And Starhawk|Sun Wolf And Starhawk]] novel ''The Ladies of Mandrigyn''... {{spoiler|Altiokis's power source. [[Karmic Death|It gets him in the end]].}}

** The poem is about the aftermath of World War One, anticipating the further horrors of the Twentieth Century. It certainly does use Eldritch Abomination (by way of Christian apocalypse) imagery in its central metaphor, though.

* In the ''[[Bionicle]]'' series by Greg Farshtey, there is a character called Tren Krom who was so horrifying it would literally drive you insane to look at it. It is a crimson blob with hooked tentacles.

* The Bugs from Phillip Palmer's ''Debatable Space''. Their name isn't very evocative of what they are, but immediately after discovering them, humanity sacrificed millions of people to put up thousands of indestructible, uncrossable walls between the Bugs and the rest of the universe. Despite this, the leaders of the government live in unending, mortal fear of them. This is all entirely justified. The {{spoiler|Fire Beasts}} are also implied to be remarkably friendly, apathetic versions of this.

* The ''[[Repairman Jack]]'' novels of F. Paul Wilson had the Ally and the Otherness (who see the world as a poker chip) and The Lady (who seems to be the personification of Earth's life).