Hi!* Image credit: Shub-Niggurath by Jason Juta www.jasonjuta.com
There was a darkness outside reality, they say — a darkness full of things
. Hungry, nasty
things with no shape or form, not as long as they were out there
. —
Kurt Busiek, "Storms of the Heart,"
Astro City
How to describe these grotesque mockeries of natural law? There are no words that can encompass such disgusting foulness, not in English or any other human tongue. They are The
Other. The
Inconceivable.
Alien beyond comprehension, their sole existence
is an affront to all reason. We could speak of
painfully dissonant noises and nauseating colours,
ichor-dripping vermiform tentacles and abyssal yonic voids, or complex
mathematical geometries, but those are mere superficialities. Monstrous and sick though these stigmata are, they do not define the abominations; they are merely among some of the more common symptoms of their underlying wrongness.
Eldritch Abominations, are not simply creatures that look horrible on a metaphorically cosmic scale. They are alien madness-inducing
reality warpers who literally
are horrible on a cosmic scale. Eldritch is not just anything that looks like an ugly mashup of different kinds of
Body Horror. What actually defines the Eldritch Abominations (or as we
puny Homo sapiens can only define them) is their defiance of natural law, as humans understand it. They are the things that should not be, the ultimate aliens. It is this what makes them abominable, and it is this that
horrifies and
reduces to gibbering madness all but the strongest of those who encounter them. Such laws as they do obey, such as
When The Planets Align or
Sealed Evil in a Can, are their nature, not ours.
They are native to the genre known as
Cosmic Horror Story, but they are not confined to it.
Mild examples can be found throughout the
horror and
fantasy genres. Greater abominations can occur in almost any type of fiction, so long as enough
Cosmic Horror Story tropes are used. Usually they derive, at least in inspiration, from
Lovecraft's work.
Physically, Eldritch Abominations range from
almost human,
through big ugly monsters, to the
unimaginably bizarre. Generally, the weirder they look the more powerful they are, but this isn't a universal rule. Here, the "ugly" in "big, ugly monster" doesn't just mean that it's horrible to look at — it means that there's
something about it, about the way it looks, or the
spaces through which it moves, that violates every law of reality as you know it. "Big" doesn't just mean that it could use the Empire State Building as a toothpick — it means that the... thing doing just that is only the barest fraction of the monster's true form, the 3-dimensional tip of a multidimensional iceberg. Eldritch abominations are perhaps the biological equivalent of
Absolute Comparative: They are uglier, they are bigger, and they are more powerful than anything else in existence. Some abominations are so eldritch that even lesser abominations find them abominable. Some look approximately human, but just
reading their name condemns you to
Mind Rape. If you see one of these in the flesh, it's too late to run.
The most eldritch of the abominations come from
Beyond. Whether they are from
beyond the stars,
before the dawn of time, or
a place incomprehensible to humans, they are alien to this universe and its laws. The creatures may actually outnumber humanity — trillions may dwell in the Stygian abysses far below the ocean waves, trillions of trillions may drift between the stars — but they prefer wild and lonely places, where people seldom tread.
Slightly milder abominations can get an exemption, provided the reality-screwing does not override all of their rules and set a permanent stellar battle that anything that gets close dies horribly over a long period of time with so much excessive
Mind Rape (
Serial Escalation, anyone?) that
Brain Bleach will be necessary. They are also typically the descendants of greater abominations, or the work of mad wizards or mad scientists who harnessed another dimension's powers. These include some of the rarer varieties of undead, so long as they are rare, and the product of ill-advised breeding programs.
This trope has some overlap with
Starfish Aliens. However, Starfish Aliens aren't necessarily horrific or unnatural; they're alien only because they evolved in a different environment than humanity, and can be helpful or neutral, whereas Eldritch Abominations have a deep
wrongness to them, no matter where you find them. For example, while Starfish Aliens are usually willing to take on a
A Form You Are Comfortable With to avoid breaking your mind if they can, most Eldritch Abominations won't even acknowledge/realize you have one to break (and the rest either can't or won't care).
Eldritch Abominations will rarely be seen by people; showing them too often can make them seem less unfathomable and closer to basic
Starfish Aliens.
No self-respecting fantasy RPG seems to do without one or more of these (except some of the Evil Witchking
villain variety, and even then, not always). Typically, Eldritch Abominations in Video Games
aren't depicted as
omnipotent and implacable. But if they were,
one of their attacks would take out ALL of your H.P. And destroy your computer,
or at least delete the game, in the process.
Note that while normally used as an Antagonist, Eldritch Abominations can
be helpful or neutral, though most of them are
way beyond the whole
alignment system and are
merely uncaring or incomprehensible, treating Earth as
at best a colorful plaything, and
at worst... they're
absolutely insane Omnicidal Maniacs.
If an
Eldritch Abomination exists in a story where the primary antagonist is of a more human scale, it's probably the
Bigger Bad. See
God of Evil,
Demon Lords and Archdevils,
The Legions of Hell, and
The Fair Folk for supernatural horrors that are knowingly malevolent rather than simply alien and amoral.
When their appearance is
uncomfortably human-like, see
Humanoid Abomination, (Or, perhaps,
The Fair Folk) but never expect them to be any nicer, though. When humans are regarded as THIS by non-humans, this is a case of
Humans Are Cthulhu.
Remotely related to
Ludicrous Speed, which will break your brain in a similar fashion. Also
Our Monsters Are Weird,
Eldritch Location and
Divide by Zero, which often overlap with this, thanks to their nature.
See
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? when one of these abominations have their ass handed to them.
Once again, please note that a character/creature merely being extremely ugly is not, in of itself, an example of this trope.
Examples
