Eldritch Abomination Folk Hero

This is an idea I had about twenty minutes ago for a different take on an Eldritch Abomination story. I'm just curious if it's workable

It's pretty much as it sounds: an Eldritch Abomination becomes a legendary folk hero, like Paal Bunyan or Robin Hood. It has an odd fondness for humanity, so it decides to take human form as a man named Temple. Temple wanders and hitchhikes across the US, righting wrongs and doing good deeds to as many people as he meets, and is known for giving second chances to people. Like say, he'll find a man stealing from a house, quietlly stop him, drag him elsewhere, mmake them promise to never do something like this again, then buy you a beer. He may or may not act like a cowboy and be very good with the ladies, (though as it stands, he has a hat to cover up his inhuman eyes).

The problem is that while he has a decent grasp of human morality, it's nowhere near full. If he ever gives you a second chance and you go back to your old behaviors, he'll see it as a personal insult and destroy you, even if it was only a mild wrong. (Like say, he finds a teenage girl picking on a classmate. He convinces her to stop doing it. A few weeks later, the same girl mocks a friend for feeling that she's fat, then gives her a diet plan her mother had been using. Temple only hears the first part, breaks into her room at night while she's sleeping, mind rapes her repeatedly, and turns her body into a horribly deformed collection of tumors and tissue that can barely walk or speak, just stew in what she's become. Then maybe he goes to see her mother (who he's having a one-night stand with), and politely tells her her daughter isn't feeling well and they might want to call a doctor.

Mind you, I just had this idea, so it's pretty unpolished, but I was curious to get a second opinion as to whether it had potential.

Well, I'm interested. Although I don't think people would really call him a "hero" if he was known to go around screwing people over really badly over trivial things. Either make his punishments a lot milder (more of a trickster figure than scary avenging angel) or have him go after only people who really had it coming.

edited 26th Dec '10 9:54:19 PM by melloncollie

It is a good idea, and I could see this being one of those Learn To Be Human stories. Although, if he's a genuine good guy, he kinda loses the Eldritch Abomination designation.

Sounds interesting, I had a similar thing going on in one of my stories at the moment.

It's set in the middle east about two thousand ago and involves a Half-Human Hybrid born from the mating of a moral woman and Shub-Niggurath wandering the deserts and slowing forming an affinity with the human race.

edited 27th Dec '10 5:19:39 AM by joeyjojo

This would be A Good Name for a Rock Band.

I like it. I personally disagree with the advice above to make him only do his horrible punishments to those who deserve it - currently, he sounds like a great morally ambiguous inhuman character.

Incidently, you may want to make him act strangely in face-to-face interaction. Only so much you can fake when you don't understand humans that well. So maybe he comes across as an eccentric loner hero, and stories about his weirdness are about as common as stories about his heroism.

Moral ambiguous-ness is great, but people tend not to view those kinds of figures as heroes.

Sounds really interesting a story idea.

Perhaps you want to write him as a peculiar otherworldly being rather than an outright hero. He might develop something resembling a human conscience as the story goes on(much like Alex Mercer in Prototype).

sounds interesting!

Freaking awesome. I love Blue-and-Orange Morality and I think it's cool that he's trying to understand humans.

I find it pretty hard to get mad at people/animals/creatures that don't understand that what they're doing is wrong even if they're 'following society's rules'.

Maybe I'm just weird that way, but I'd love to read it.

he should probably have an aquaintance who knows what he is, to help him blen in with humanity.

edited 10th Jan '11 9:53:19 PM by dontcallmewave

Sounds good, sort of like a Knight Templar angel of vengeance with BlackAndGrayMorality. Although instead of causing Body Horror I would just put them in a worse situation than they were; but then if he would do that he would get really well known and people would fear and heed his attention. [[hottip:I had a similar idea; It would be about an human gaining and Eldritch Abomination's powers or an Eldritch Abomination becoming sentimental with humans. He would relentlessly punish and attack other horrors, as he's the only one who has a chance against them. He is like the Auditors of Reality, where they are the embodiments of Matter's hatred of life he is akin to an embodiment of humanity's hatred of Cosmic Horrors coming to Earth and acting with impunity.]]