History Quotes / CosmicHorrorStory

->One can hear Ithlinne's Prophecy whispered at every market, garbled and reused by every village witch, delved into in any treatise touching on sooths and diviners and in general saturating our common culture. We all know that "the time of the Wolf's Blizzard approaches, the Time of the White Frost" and that "the world will perish amidst ice." But few truly understand the meaning of these words.\\

We know for a certainty however, that, thanks to the telescopic observations of elven astronomers, the White Frost, whatever it is, has already destroyed a great many worlds. The star systems in which it appears perish into lifeless hunks of ice over the course of a few decades. Furthermore, each scholar is agreed that the White Frost will one day come to our world. Ithlinne's Prophecy, though based on magic intuition and not scientific observation, thus appears to foretell the truth...

->One can hear Ithlinne's Prophecy whispered at every market, garbled and reused by every village witch, delved into in any treatise touching on sooths and diviners and in general saturating our common culture. We all know that "the time of the Wolf's Blizzard approaches, the Time of the White Frost" and that "the world will perish amidst ice." But few truly understand the meaning of these words.
\\
The self-proclaimed prophets who shout out Ithlinne's words mistake stars reflected in a still pond for the sky. For the White Frost is no legend or mythical apocalypse. It is a natural phenomenon that can be described in the dry yet precise language of scholarship.
\\

We do not know exactly what the White Frost is - perhaps a microscopic dust that blocks the incoming light of the sun? Perhaps infinitesimal particles of the sort postulated by Democritus of Ban Ard, with the unusual property of sucking up warmth as a sponge does water?
\\

->''One can hear Ithlinne's Prophecy whispered at every market, garbled and reused by every village witch, delved into in any treatise touching on sooths and diviners and in general saturating our common culture. We all know that "the time of the Wolf's Blizzard approaches, the Time of the White Frost" and that "the world will perish amidst ice." But few truly understand the meaning of these words.

We know for a certainty however, that, thanks to the telescopic observations of elven astronomers, the White Frost, whatever it is, has already destroyed a great many worlds. The star systems in which it appears perish into lifeless hunks of ice over the course of a few decades. Furthermore, each scholar is agreed that the White Frost will one day come to our world. Ithlinne's Prophecy, though based on magic intuition and not scientific observation, thus appears to foretell the truth...''

->One can hear Ithlinne's Prophecy whispered at every market, garbled and reused by every village witch, delved into in any treatise touching on sooths and diviners and in general saturating our common culture. We all know that "the time of the Wolf's Blizzard approaches, the Time of the White Frost" and that "the world will perish amidst ice." But few truly understand the meaning of these words.\\
The self-proclaimed prophets who shout out Ithlinne's words mistake stars reflected in a still pond for the sky. For the White Frost is no legend or mythical apocalypse. It is a natural phenomenon that can be described in the dry yet precise language of scholarship.\\

We do not know exactly what the White Frost is - perhaps a microscopic dust that blocks the incoming light of the sun? Perhaps infinitesimal particles of the sort postulated by Democritus of Ban Ard, with the unusual property of sucking up warmth as a sponge does water?\\
We know for a certainty however, that, thanks to the telescopic observations of elven astronomers, the White Frost, whatever it is, has already destroyed a great many worlds. The star systems in which it appears perish into lifeless hunks of ice over the course of a few decades. Furthermore, each scholar is agreed that the White Frost will one day come to our world. Ithlinne's Prophecy, though based on magic intuition and not scientific observation, thus appears to foretell the truth...

-->-- '''The White Frost (book)'', ''VideoGame/Witcher3TheWhiteFrost''

The renowned scholar of Thorn's studies have clearly shown that our world is not the center of the universe, but one of a thousand such globes spinning in the endless darkness of space. This space is usually described as a vacuum - yet to do so is grossly misleading, for through this "vacuum" swims, invisible to the naked eye, the White Frost.

-->-- '''Partial translation of "Uninstall"''', opening theme for ''Manga/{{Bokurano}}''

-->-- ''Darkness Beyond'', by Jason Franks

-->-- ''Quetzacthulhu'', by Set Sytes

->The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids no longer want rock-and-roll. There's no electricity to play it. Ziggy's adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, 'cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. "All The Young Dudes" is a song about this news. It's no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite...The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I've made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage...Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a Starman, so he writes "Starman", which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately...The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don't have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black hole jumping. Their whole life is travelling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a Black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie, the Infinite Fox...Now Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make them real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world. And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide". As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible.

-->-- ''Podcast/TheAdventureZoneBalance'', Ep. 58 Lunar Interlude V; Reunion Tour - Part 1

[[ArcWords Ruin has come]] [[BookEnds to our family.]]''

->No civilization that grows beneath a veil of stars can resist assigning some sort of meaning to them. When humanity first escaped the confines of Earth and began exploring the universe, they brought with them, like so many others before, an earnest hope that some grand understanding or purpose might be found in the darkness. But the galaxy raised only more questions, the greatest of which came from the ruins of a species that came to be known as the [[{{Precursors}} Forerunners]]. How a race of such sophistication and power could disappear in an instant, and the purpose of the mysterious relics they left behind, would lead to war and carnage by those who followed them. But the answer would be far worse than this question, for it came in the form of [[TheVirus the Flood]].

-->--'''Rose Walker''', ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989''

[[folder:Live-action TV]]
->''You are dealing with something that has never occurred on this '''planet''' before.''
-->--'''Valery Legasov''', ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}''

-->-- '''Mr. Fantastic''', delivering the ArcWords for ''ComicBook/TheAvengersJonathanHickman'', the cosmic horror story of the end of Marvel's Multiverse.

-->--'''Rose Walker''', ''ComicBook/TheSandman''

[[folder:Film - Live-Action]]

-->-- ''Darkness Beyond,'' by Jason Franks

->'''Shi Qiang''': That's... that's really dark.\\
'''Luo Ji''': [[CrapsackWorld The real universe is just that black]]. The universe is a [[TitleDrop dark forest]]. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life -- another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod -- there's only one thing he can do: [[DoUntoOthersBeforeTheyDoUntoUs open fire and eliminate them]]. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It's the explanation for the UsefulNotes/FermiParadox. But in this dark forest, there's a [[HumansAreMorons stupid child called humanity]], who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting, '[[TooDumbToLive Here I am! Here I am]]!'

->''Are we "invading" an anthill when we build a drive-through bank machine on top of it? Probably, from the ants' point of view. And if some small fraction of those ants survive — if they manage to get out of the way and set up a new colony somewhere else — are we incompetent invaders because we haven't exterminated all of them? Have they beaten us, if the bulldozers came and went and left some ants alive? No, because the goal wasn't to wipe out the anthill. We were putting up an ATM. But you can’t explain currency, finance, or automated tellers to an ant. It’s impossible for them to comprehend our acts as anything other than a devastating attack by a god-like force that the ants — for some mysterious reason — were able to fend off.''
-->-- '''Aiyeola,''' comparing humanity to [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens the Ceph]], ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}: Legion''

->''You are dealing with something that has never occurred on this planet before.''

-->-- ''[[Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem The Dark Forest]]''

-->-- ''[[Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem The Dark Forest]]''

-->-- ''Literature/TheExpanse''

->''Most people have no idea of the doom that hangs over their heads. They live their petty lives, scratching out whatever living they can with whatever wretched work they can find. Slaves to their desires, they pine for things they cannot afford, for love from people who would never spare a thought for them. They cling to all their grievances and complaints, all the while considering themselves to stand at the center of things—their lives and their experiences defining the reality in which they live.

So small, these people are. So insignificant, and yet so puffed up with self-importance. If they only knew how minor, how meaningless, they truly were and they could see the horror that lies just out of reach, they would drop to their knees and grovel, beseeching the empty vessels they call gods for mercy.

-->-- '''Mr. Fantastic''', delivering the ArcWords for ''ComicBook/JonathanHickmansAvengers'', the cosmic horror story of the end of Marvel's Multiverse.

-->-- '''Inquisitorial Proverb''', ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

-> ''The thing that makes Lovecraftian Horror and the thing that's kept it popular is this overwhelming fear of the unknown; a concept that easily translates even as "the unknown" changes wiht social and scientific developments. Even though [[ValuesDissonance Lovecraft's works haven't aged at all]], the underlying principle is sound. If you don't fully understand something you can interpellate existential horror and turn ever mystery into a nightmare of TingsManWasNotMeantToKnow. And separate from that, the aesthetic of horror he chose is also pretty effective on its own. Lovecraft's overwhelming [[EldritchOceanAbyss fear of the ocean]] produced a memorable and [[BodyHorror viscerally nasty]] horror aesthetic grounded in slime and rot that was far removed from the stone-cold sterility of the previous GothicHorror genre.''