History EldritchAbomination / DungeonsAndDragons

''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has its fair share of Eldritch Abominations, varying in size and severity from the kind your players might have a chance against if they get some lucky rolls, to the kind that consumes universes for funsies. Note that several settings have their own specific abominations. All have been gathered here for simplicity's sake.

* Aboleths from the far realm are on the lower end of the eldritch scale, but still powerful enough to pose a legitimate threat to virtually anyone. They look like really weird fish with three eyes placed on top of each other, have extremely potent psychic powers, are nearly immortal, and their ancient empire predate the gods. When a new aboleth is born, they inherit a copy of all of their parent's memories, so all of them are able to remember a time when they ruled the world, and they want to take it back.
** Aboleths worship nothing, but they ''respect'' beings they call the Five Elder Evils. These are [[{{Expy}} thematically based on]] Creator/HPLovecraft horrors and include flames surrounding a body that will [[GoMadFromTheRevelation drive you mad if you see it]] (if it does not kill you outright), a ball of sentient goo the size of a planet, and a drilling subterranean squid/centipede thing that appears to be eating its way very, very slowly through the crust of the planet. [[BrownNote Whose feces will make your head go wonky if you get too close to it]].
** 4e suggests that aboleths aren't even intelligent, thinking creatures; rather, everything they do is the result of a guiding, species wide instinct that is unfathomable by mortals.
** 3.5e and the previous editions, on the other hand, state that aboleths are intelligent and thinking beings, but operate on concepts entirely beyond mortal comprehension; their intelligence is described as a vast and endless ocean, while that of a regular human is but a drop of water. See BlueAndOrangeMorality, or ''Lords of Madness''.

* [[{{Pun}} Behold the Beholder]]. A floating orb thing with one big eye, and several smaller ones on eye stalks. Each eye stalk can send a different ray (petrification, charm, damage, etc.), and the big eye in the middle prevents magic from working in its area of effect. And that's not the weirdest thing. It is revealed in 5th edition that when a beholder dreams, its dreams alter reality. This can cause momentary changes in the immediate area, but it can also spawn new beholders, the weaker beholder-kin, or change the beholder itself. The world itself may be a beholder dream, Azathoth style.
** What’s even more eldritch about Beholders is that they, like other species, can be "normal" zombies, but if a beholder dreams about existing beyond death, it gets weird. Death Tyrants lose all their skin, including the tentacles, leaving behind a skull with floating dots for eyes. The eyes retain their abilities, but the central eye gains a new one: People affected cease all healing. Whether through magic or natural causes, all life ceases, and what dies, become zombies under the tyrant's control.
* The Gibbering Mouther is the most well known and reviled example of the horrendous Aberration type creatures hailing from the Far Realm, a BlobMonster with TooManyMouths and eyes in weird places whose constant gibbering induces BrownNote and sucks blood from its victims. Plus, some excerpts directly reference Lovecraft's own Shoggoth, of which it perfectly resembles.
** It is revealed in the 4th edition that the Gibbering Mouther is actually the weakest type of a group of monsters called Gibbering Beasts. The stronger kinds are the Gibbering Abomination, which looks like a more solid mouther with tentacles that also has EyeBeams, and the Gibbering Orb, which looks like a floating sphere of eyes and mouths that have even more Eye Beams. And even though Gibbering Beasts seem like they are completely insane, they actually are quite intelligent and may work with other kinds of aberrations to accomplish mysterious goals.

* Mordenkainen poses the theory that the Far Realm isn't simply a single place; rather, it's an entire multiverse, akin to the one that all your campaigns take place in, except it's just... wrong.

** Beholders, like other species, can be "normal" zombies, but if a beholder dreams about existing beyond death, it gets weird. Death Tyrants lose all their skin, including the tentacles, leaving behind a skull with floating dots for eyes. The eyes retain their abilities, but the central eye gains a new one: People affected cease all healing. Whether through magic or natural causes, all life ceases, and what dies, become zombies under the tyrant's control.

** While 3.5e and backwards states that aboleths are intelligent and thinking beings, but operate on concepts entirely beyond mortal comprehension; their intelligence is described as a vast and endless ocean, while that of a regular human is but a drop of water. See BlueAndOrangeMorality, or ''Lords of Madness''.

* [[{{Pun}} Behold the Beholder]]. A floating orb thing with one big eye, and several smaller ones on eye stalks. You've probably seen them before. Each eye stalk can send a different ray (petrification, charm, damage, etc.), and the big eye in the middle prevents magic from working in its area of effect. That's not the weirdest thing. It is revealed in 5th edition that when a beholder dreams, its dreams alter reality. This can cause momentary changes in the immediate area, but it can also spawn new beholders, the weaker beholder-kin, or change the beholder itself. The world itself may be a beholder dream, Azathoth style. And don't even get me started on the undead ones.
** Too late, you got me started. Beholders can be "normal" zombies, but if a beholder dreams about existing beyond death, it gets weird. Death Tyrants lose all their skin, including the tentacles, leaving behind a skull with floating dots for eyes. The eyes retain their abilities, but the central eye gains a new one: People affected cease all healing. Whether through magic or natural, all life ceases, and what dies, become zombies under the tyrant's control.
* The Gibbering Mouther is the most well known and reviled example of horrendous Aberration type creatures hailing from the Far Realm, a BlobMonster with TooManyMouths and eyes in weird places whose constant gibbering induces BrownNote and sucks blood from its victims. Plus, some excerpts directly reference Lovecraft's own Shoggoth, of which it perfectly resembles.
** It is revealed in 4th edition that the Gibbering Mouther is actually the weakest type of a group of monsters called gibbering beasts. The stronger kinds are the gibbering abomination, which looks like a more solid mouther with tentacles that also has EyeBeams, and the gibbering orb, which looks like a floating sphere of eyes and mouths that have even more Eye Beams. Although gibbering beasts seem like they are completely insane, they actually are quite intelligent and may work with other kinds of aberrations to accomplish mysterious goals.
* The Kaorti were once a group of wizards who traveled to the Far Realm to study it but they ran into an Elder Evil called Zurguth, The Feasting Vast. Zurgurth transformed the wizards into inhuman monsters by accident, just by examining them. Now the Kaorti are invading the material plane and working to make it more like the Far Realm.

* Mordenkainen poses the theory that the Far Realm isn't simply a single place. Rather, it's an entire multiverse, akin to that all your campaigns take place in, except it's just... wrong.

* Neth, The Plane That Lives. A whole freaking demiplane that is ALIVE, introduced in The Manual of The Planes. It qualifies as both an EldritchAbomination and an EldritchLocation. The Far Realm suggests that it contains creatures possibly just as large or maybe even larger, leading to the idea that Neth is one such native of the Far Realm that just so happens to have a portal to the Astral Plane inside itself. It learns by absorbing the denizens of other Planes that visit it.

* One of the various backstories of [[SatanicArchetype Asmodeus]], the Lord of Nessus and King of Hell, is that he is actually one of these. What others see when dealing with him [[FightingAShadow is actually an advanced illusion]]. Asmodeus' real body is that of a titanic, hundreds of miles long serpentine creature named Ahriman who is still injured from his crash landing in Hell. He was some sort of [[TimeAbyss primordial entity who predated the Gods]] and either was thrown into Baator by the gods or crashed there after his struggle with his twin sister Jazirian (who seems to have become the god of the Couatls — AlwaysLawfulGood winged serpents — since then). In the latter case he fell so hard that when he hit the bottom of the seventh layer (Baator initially had seven layers), he fell through it and created the eight layer, only to fall through that as well and land on the ninth layer, where he came to a stop at the bottom of an impossibly deep canyon created by his fall.
** While he is still injured by the fall he found a way to recover: by feasting on the souls of unbelievers he regains his power to the point where he can break free from his prison of Baator and remake the multiverse in his image. Fortunately, people who do not believe in anything are rather rare in the setting and Asmodeus can gather this energy only in trickles over the course of centuries. To both increase the number of unbeliever souls and to deceive those who would stop him Ahriman created Asmodeus to divert attention away from this fact. Everything about him and his actions, from his status as an angel, his fall, the [[ForeverWar Blood War]] and the politics of Hell are nothing but a sham designed to keep everyone occupied and freeing a lot of Asmodeus' time to be able to plot to increase the numbers of unbelievers to feed on. And the worst part? It's working.

* Before Asmodeus even landed in the Nine Hells, they were inhabited by the Ancient Baatorians. Hardly anything is known about them, since they appear to be resistant to both scrying and divine magic, and because Asmodeus has done his best to remove record of their existence from existence. They still occasionally manifest as indestructible, shapeless forms that breathe in light and breathe out darkness. Some of them even breathe life rather than light. Some say the Ancient Baatorians aren't even alive in the same way that both devils and mortals are — they're more some kind of formless primordial entity that can only partially manifest under certain conditions and in certain places. More strangely, the realm of Baator itself seems to be involved in their generation — nupperibo[[note]]The weakest type of devil[[/note]] will evolve into an Ancient Baatorian over a very long period of time, which is why more powerful devils destroy nupperibo when they can. There is however one ancient Baatorian who did survive. See Zargon from the book ''Elder Evils''.

* One could argue that the Abyss, a LayeredWorld upon a Layered World, is a similar kind of living EldritchLocation. Many of the levels of the Abyss are certainly alive and thinking, the 92nd layer itself being no more than a giant tentacle monster called a Draeden; however it's made clear that the Abyss as a whole, and the Demons that live within, are a single entity. It's inferred that the already infinitely deep Abyss feeds on the other dimensions around it, absorbing them into its mass; and worse yet, [[FromBadToWorse It's growing]] ''[[MoreThanInfinite even bigger]]''.

* Dread Tharizdun originated in the Greyhawk setting, but eventually came to be a bit of a GreaterScopeVillain for D&D in its entirety: Tharizdun was originally a god. In fact, he was one of the first gods. After the Dawn War, the Obyriths started whispering to him about how he could become all powerful, he could rule the entire universe, if he just did them a small favor. Take this little shard of ultimate evil, and plant it in the Astral Sea. He could do that, right? Unfortunately (or fortunately), Tharizdun was smart enough to realize the gods would instantly stop him if he tried something like that, so he instead took the shard to the middle of the Elemental Chaos, the plane of origin for the Primordials, and planted it there. That shard grew into the Abyss. The gods realized what he had done, and tried to kill him, but the shard had given him power to rival every other god, so they couldn't do much more than to imprison him in his own personal hellish universe (where its own version of the Abyss had already won).
* Demogorgon, known as the Prince of Demons and Lord of Madness, is the most powerful demon lord. ''It'' has vaguely reptilian legs, with tentacled arms, and the upper body of a primate. Its two heads are both batshit crazy, even by demon standards. The leading theory among demonologists is that it seeks to destroy everything in the universe aside from itself, and once it's alone, its two heads will consume each other. Demogorgon was the very first tanar'ri demon created by the Queen of Chaos and so is the most eldritch of them, while most while tanar'ri demons resemble more familiar beasts or simply take the classic BigRedDevil look and so don't qualify.
** ''Most'' Tanar'ri resemble the shapes above. Some demon lords can be truly eldritch. Take, for instance, Zuggtmoy, demon queen of fungi, our lady of rot and decay. She usually takes the shape of a woman made of fungi, but even in that shape, she's unsettlingly thin, and there's a wrongness about her. Her personality isn't much better. As the demon prince(ss) of fungi, her attitude is utterly inhuman in every way. Her only concern is to spread her spores, wanting to make the entire multiverse into a super organism with her on top.

* Elder Elementals from the ''Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes'' sourcebook. Basic elementals are creatures made from the different elements. These elementals are that taken to its logical extreme. They're also so dumb that they probably won't notice you until you attack it. That doesn't mean they won't cause enough destruction that you'll probably not have a choice but fight it, however.

* Tarrasque. {{Kaiju}}, Godzilla-expy widely considered the strongest beast in the world. Only one exists, and it alone is enough to make the gods fear. In the Forgotten Realms, it was created by the Primordials as a biological weapon during the Dawn War, and it certainly shows. It's death requires more damage output than most parties can scrape together at level 20, and in most editions, it's never quite dead. Where is your god now?
* The TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook for 3rd edition brought us the Abominations: malformed offspring of deities which desired to destroy all reality. Among the most horrific of them are the Atropal, which are the undead remains of stillborn godlings.
** Really, several other monsters from the book qualify, such as the Neh-Thalggu brain collectors ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin guess what they do]]), the Uvudaaum, who are powerful enough to reign as SorcerousOverlord over sections of the Far Realm itself, and the epic version of the pseudonatural template, which represents creatures that are either heavily corrupted by the Far Realm's taint, or are actually attempts by the Far Realm to imitate "normal" lifeforms. Which tend to fail. Badly ([[http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/sfery/images/a/a7/44260_C5_pseudonaturaltroll.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111224000559 trolls should not look like that]]).
* 4th Edition has the Primordials — a primeval race of elementals who created the universe (depending on the setting. In others, they are simply rivals to the gods) and are powerful enough to destroy gods. They would like nothing more than to [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt destroy said creation]], since as their nature are as elementals dictate, they wish to continue an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Most mortals are perfectly fine with the world as it is now, especially since said death and rebirth would include them.

* The stars themselves are Eldritch Abominations in 4th edition. And some of them have the ability to create avatars of their power, to the point where even black holes can create such avatars. [[DarkIsNotEvil And at least one of those stars is good]]; Ulban the Messenger is a mostly benevolent comet god who wants to change the future, but his Star Spawn was featured in the Monster Manual Three, and oh looky, it's evil aligned.

* The D20 setting TabletopGame/DragonMech has the lunar gods, mysterious entities from the [[ColonyDrop rapidly-descending moon]]. There are three main ones: Andakakilogitat, lunar god of dragons, a squirming mass of dragon parts; Erefiviviasta, lunar goddess of flight[[note]] "goddess" because there are slightly more female characteristics than male ones[[/note]], who is not described; and Seroficitacit, god of change, which is a perpetually mutating and somewhat insane mass of flesh.

** Atropus is probably the most horrific of the Elder Evils. ''It'' is a moon made of god knows what, with massive geological marks forming a giant, screaming, skeletal face. It's origin is unclear, and varies depending on setting, but includes the quasi sapient head of the god who created the universe, hoping to finally die, a literal stillborn god, and the head of a primordial, and the most popular theory is that it is undead afterbirth of the creation of the universe. It's arrival increases the effectiveness of necromancy all over the world, until everyone who dies become zombies, whether someone reanimates them or not. The only imaginable way for the players to even remotely challenge it, is to fight a manifestation of its consciousness, weakening it enough for the ''gods'' to come finish it off. The book suggests that the only way to finally kill it is to throw it into the [[LightIsNotGood Positive Energy Plane]].
** Father Llymic is a being from the Far Realm that radiates cold when exposed to light. The ancient elves exploited this by putting him on a mountain, but his prison has started to weaken. The sun's rays are weakening, and Llymic's brood, which consists of creatures infected by a disease that makes them more like Father Llymic, is prowling the countryside. Villages near his mountain has been abandoned due to the cold, and there are sightings of an old man walking the empty streets, beckoning people towards the mountain...
** The Hulks of Zoretha are the least eldritch of the elder evils, but are still an apocalyptic threat like all of them. The Hulks are five giants from another world who plan to exterminate all life on the planet in so they can repopulate it with their own kind. They are currently asleep, but as they get closer to waking up, the moon turns red, causing everyone in the world to be affect by uncontrollable rage, throwing the world into chaos.
** The Leviathan is on the lower end of the scale, but still pretty horrific. A ''massive'' sea creature, one spike big enough to contain an entire temple, made from all the leftover destruction stuff from the creation of the universe.
** Pandorym is an intelligent super weapon from another reality that was summoned by a group of wizards who wanted to threaten the gods. The wizards trapped it by separating its mind from its body and sealing them away separately. While its disembodied mind looks like a cloud of smoke (with tremendous psionic might, such that coming in contact with it risks complete mental domination), its body is a Sphere of Annihilation, a hole in reality that destroy anything it touches like a black hole. If it were ever made whole, it would be completely unstoppable.
** Ragnorra the Mother of Monsters is an entity of corrupt life energy that travels between worlds in the form of a comet. She horrifically transforms all life on any planet she visits to fit her own twisted ideals of what life should be.

** Kyuss, the WormThatWalks, was a evil prophet who attempted to achieve godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and merging with an ancient obelisk. He didn't entirely succeed and got stuck in the obelisk. He takes the form of a giant made worms. If he is unleashed it will result in the beginning of the Age of Worms
** Originally from the early adventure ''B4: The Lost City'', Zargon the Returner is the former ruler of hell who was overthrown by Asmodeus. He is only still alive because not even the gods could kill him permanently as if he is killed he will just regrow from his indestructible horn. He looks like a one-eyed, one-horned, giant with tentacles in place of limbs. His touch can turn people into ooze monsters.

** Dendar the Night Serpent is a massive snake said to be born from the first dream. She grows stronger by consuming nightmares. She is destined to one day destroy the entire solar system of the ''Forgotten Realms'' setting when she has grown strong enough.
** Kezef the Chaos Hound looks like an enormous dog whose flesh has been replaced with maggots. He was either created by or released by the setting's old god of death. He devours the souls of the faithful in the afterlife and he is powerful enough that the gods fear him.
** Ityak-Ortheel the Elf-Eater is the most alien of the three. It looks like a gigantic turtle, but with only three legs and its head replaced with a mouth surrounded by tentacles. It was born from the spilled blood of two gods and it hates all living things and it feeds only on the souls of elves. Being mostly unintelligent, it is used as a living superweapon against elves.
* The [[TabletopGame/{{Eberron}} Daelkyr]]. Extradimensional invaders who mess with the fabric of reality for [[ForTheEvulz shits and giggles]]. They also like to mess with mortal biology [[EvilutionaryBiologist like a kid plays with Play-Doh]]. And their plane of origin, Xoriat, is Eberron's cosmological equivalent to the Far Realm.
** For some reason, all of the six Daelkyr who were trapped on Eberron look like [[RedRightHand unnaturally handsome male humans with one feature changed]]. The Master of Silence, the Daelkyr BigBad in ''Literature/TheDragonBelow''' Trilogy, has smooth skin where his mouth should be. According to WordOfGod, however, the question is not to ask why Daelkyr look so humanoid, but to ask why humanoids look so Daelkyr...
** WordOfGod later clarified that this was a joke and that [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith nonhumans see them as looking similar to themselves]].
** Speaking of Eberron, there's also the Quori, horrifying monstrosities from the plane of dreams with very strong PsychicPowers (usually of the MindControl or MindRape varieties) and the ability to possess mortals; they've already conquered/subverted almost a continent and would really like to take over the rest...

** The Dark Powers, the force(s) that created Ravenloft itself, since their actual nature, methods, and motives are entirely unfathomable. As well, the Nightmare Court could qualify.
** Regular old fiends (demons, etc.) were described in eldritch abomination terms in Van Richten's Guide to Fiends for this setting. It didn't seem inappropriate. Horrifying creatures of great power and alien minds from other realities...

* ''[[https://www.rpgnow.com/product/3481/Immortals-Handbook--EPIC-BESTIARY-Volume-One?it=1 The Immortals Handbook: Epic Bestiary 3rd-Party rulebook]]'', designed to make the best of the AbsurdlyHighLevelCap features the "Nehaschimic Dragons", beings who are described as "nightmarish interdimensional creatures extraneous to the universe itself... transdimensional tapeworms writhing within the body of the [universe], a surreal symbiosis of reality and unreality". In the rules, all Nehaschimic Dragons have the '[[RealityWarper Alter Reality]]' power, stupidly high DamageReduction, [[AntiMagic immunity to all but a few]] [[AchillesHeel specific types]] of magic and [[ElementalRockPaperScissors elemental damage]], can travel at the speed of light ([[FasterThanLightTravel or faster]]), [[SuperSenses see all the way to the]] [[AnotherDimension edge of their current universe]], [[SizeShifting grow to become bigger than]] [[AlienGeometries the universe]] ([[YourMindMakesItReal at least from your perspective]]) and their very presence causes [[GoMadFromTheRevelation permanent insanity]] for everything within miles. They also far exceed most other monsters in sheer size; the largest are well over a quarter mile long, at least as far as their stats are concerned. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there was only one Nehaschimic Dragon ever published, the Nexus or Wormhole Dragon. It has a BreathWeapon with a [[NoSavingThrow flat 50% chance]] (or higher) to shunt you into an AlternateUniverse, [[BornLucky power over probability]], and an aura of "[[PowerNullifier Unknowing]]" which can even cause the universe to [[RetGone forget you]] if you're weak enough. A few other have been [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?268666-3-5E-Nehaschimic-Dragons unofficially published online]], and are just as weird, if not more so, than the nexus dragon. On the [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?304-Eternity-Publishing-Hosted-Forum forum which discusses possible ideas for these books]], one person suggested an adventure where a planet needs to be evacuated because it's a dragon egg about to hatch. The poster eventually made the idea into dragons[[note]] called Muhlatimic, after the Hebrew word for ultimate [[/note]] which are the nerves of the AkashicRecords (the one power above God, basically). Their flavor text is about a MultiversalConqueror who has just crushed the God of another universe... and then he sees one of these dragons. It ends with him realizing that [[spoiler:almighty artifact around which he built his empire is merely a scale said dragon lost]]. No attempts to stat the dragons have been made as of fall 2017.

* Basic D&D was no stranger to Eldritch Abominations. Aside from the Nightmare creatures (like the Diaboli and the Malphera), whose physiology was utterly alien and horrific to humanity, there were also the creatures from the Vortex, a place beyond all dimensions and planes of existence, who could cause inexplicable phenomenons with their mere presence. Even the [[PhysicalGod Immortals]] are afraid of such things.
* [[https://www.rpgnow.com/product/3481/Immortals-Handbook--EPIC-BESTIARY-Volume-One?it=1 The Immortals Handbook: Epic Bestiary 3rd-Party rulebook]] designed to make the best of the AbsurdlyHighLevelCap features the 'Nehaschimic Dragons', beings who are described as 'nightmarish interdimensional creatures extraneous to the universe itself... transdimensional tapeworms writhing within the body of the [universe], a surreal symbiosis of reality and unreality'. In the rules, all Nehaschimic Dragons have the '[[RealityWarper Alter Reality]]' power, stupidly high DamageReduction, [[AntiMagic immunity to all but a few]] [[AchillesHeel specific types]] of magic and [[ElementalRockPaperScissors elemental damage]], can travel at the speed of light ([[FasterThanLightTravel or faster]]), [[SuperSenses see all the way to the]] [[AnotherDimension edge of their current universe]], [[SizeShifting grow to become bigger than]] [[AlienGeometries the universe]] ([[YourMindMakesItReal at least from your perspective]]) and their very presence causes [[GoMadFromTheRevelation permanent insanity]] for everything within miles. They also far exceed most other monsters in sheer size; the largest are well over a quarter mile long, at least as far as their stats are concerned. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there was only one Nehaschimic Dragon ever published, the Nexus or Wormhole Dragon. It has a BreathWeapon with a [[NoSavingThrow flat 50% chance]] (or higher) to shunt you into an AlternateUniverse, [[BornLucky power over probability]], and an aura of '[[PowerNullifier Unknowing]]' which can even cause the universe to [[RetGone forget you]] if you're weak enough. A few other have been [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?268666-3-5E-Nehaschimic-Dragons unofficially published online]], and are just as weird, if not more so, than the nexus dragon.
** On the [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?304-Eternity-Publishing-Hosted-Forum forum which discusses possible ideas for these books]], one person suggested an adventure where a planet needs to be evacuated because it's a dragon egg about to hatch. The poster eventually made the idea into dragons[[note]] called Muhlatimic, after the Hebrew word for ultimate [[/note]] which are the nerves of the AkashicRecords (the one power above God, basically). Their flavor text is about a MultiversalConqueror who has just crushed the God of another universe... and then he sees one of these dragons. It ends with him realizing that [[spoiler:almighty artifact around which he built his empire is merely a scale said dragon lost]]. No attempts to stat the dragons have been made as of fall 2017.

Dungeons & Dragons have its fair share of Eldritch Abominations, varying in size and severity from the kind your players might have a chance against if they get some lucky rolls, to the kind that consumes universes for funsies. Note that several settings have their own specific abominations. All have been gathered here for simplicity's sake.

** ''Most'' Tanar'ri resemble the shapes above. Some demon lords can be truly eldritch. Take, for instance, Zuggtmoy, demon queen of fungi, our lady of decay. She usually takes the shape of a woman made of fungi, but even in that shape, she's unsettlingly thin, and there's a wrongness about her. Her personality isn't much better. As the demon prince(ss) of fungi, her attitude is utterly inhuman in every way. Her only concern is to spread her spores, wanting to make the entire multiverse into a super organism with her on top.
** Another demon lord that fits high on the eldritch scale is Juiblex, demon prince of {{Ooze}}s, the Faceless Lord. A vaguely green ooze covered in eyes who rules over all oozes and other shapeless things. Unlike other demon lords, who are at least somewhat involved in plotting, even the deranged Demogorgon, Juiblex cares nothing for anything, only wanting to consume. Not even out of hunger, it simply desires to consume everything around it until it lives in a world of only slime. All demon cultists are mad, but one would have to be utterly ''insane'' to worship Juiblex. And according to some sources, Juiblex may just be an aspect of a much worse and [[TimeAbyss incredibly ancient]] evil god of slimes and aberrations called Ghaunadaur.

* An entity that actually exists on [[TabletopGame/Greyhawk Oerth]] itself is the Mother, a bizarre entity served by a colony of degenerate and inbred humans who found it while they fled the destruction of their old empire. Physically, the Mother looks like a large mass of disgusting white ooze that slithers across the walls, floor, and ceiling of the caverns it inhabits, with the ability to drain the life out of anything it makes physical contact with. Unlike the other examples, it's possible for the PlayerCharacters to actually [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punch the Mother out]], as it's mentioned in one of the adventure ideas provided by Creator/GaryGygax in the original 1983 Greyhawk boxed set.

** Father Llymic is a being from the Far Realm that radiates cold when exposed to light. The ancient elves exploited this by putting him on a mountain, but his prison has started to weaken. The sun's rays are weakening, and Llymic's brood is prowling the countryside. Villages near his mountain has been abandoned due to the cold, and there are sightings of an old man walking the empty streets, beckoning people towards the mountain...

** Another demon lord that fits high on the eldritch scale is Juiblex, demon prince of {{Ooze}}s, the Faceless Lord. A vaguely green ooze covered in eyes who rules over all oozes and other shapeless things. Unlike other demon lords, who are at least somewhat involved in plotting, even the deranged Demogorgon, Juiblex cares nothing for anything, only wanting to consume. Not even out of hunger, it simply desires to consume everything around it until it lives in a world of only slime. All demon cultists are mad, but one would have to be utterly ''insane'' to worship Juiblex.

** ''Most'' Tanar'ri resemble the shapes above. Some demon lords can be truly eldritch. Take, for instance, Zuggtmoy, demon queen of fungi, out lady of decay. She usually takes the shape of a woman made of fungi, but even in that shape, she's unsettlingly thin, and there's a wrongness about her. Her personality isn't much better. As the demon prince(ss) of fungi, her attitude is utterly inhuman in every way. Her only concern is to spread her spores, wanting to make the entire multiverse into a super organism with her on top.

* 3.5 edition had an entire [[AllThereInTheManual Splatbook]] specifically about eldritch horrors called ''Lords of Madness''. Aboleths, Beholders, Illithids, Grell, Neogi, and a new monster called the Tsochari got their own chapters, and it also introduced a large number of other horrific monsters to the game.

* 3.5 edition had an entire {{Splatbook}} specifically about eldritch horrors called ''Lords of Madness''. Aboleths, Beholders, Illithids, Grell, Neogi, and a new monster called the Tsochari got their own chapters, and it also introduced a large number of other horrific monsters to the game.

** Aboleths worship nothing, but they respect beings they call the Five Elder Evils. These are [[{{Expy}} thematically based on]] Creator/HPLovecraft horrors and include flames surrounding a body that will [[GoMadFromTheRevelation drive you mad if you see it]] (if it does not kill you outright), a ball of sentient goo the size of a planet, and a drilling subterranean squid/centipede thing that appears to be eating its way very, very slowly through the crust of the planet. [[BrownNote Whose feces will make your head go wonky if you get too close to it]].

** Pandorym is an intelligent super weapon from another reality that was summoned by a group of wizards who wanted to threaten the gods. The wizards trapped it by separating its mind from its body and sealing them away separately. While its disembodied mind looks like a cloud of smoke, its body is a Sphere of Annihilation, a hole in reality that destroy anything it touches like a black hole. If it were ever made whole, it would be completely unstoppable.

** The Leviathan (not to be confused with the Elder Evil above) is an enormous sea serpent made from water. It can smash ships with little to no effort, create tidal waves in a few seconds, and moves like lightning under water (120 feet in 3 seconds). Its only real weakness is that it can freeze over, and even that only slows it down.

** Atropus is probably the most horrific of the Elder Evils. ''It'' is a moon made of god knows what, with massive geological marks forming a giant, screaming, skeletal face. It's origin is unclear, and varies depending on setting, but includes the quasi sapient head of the god who created the universe, hoping to finally die, a literal stillborn god, and the head of a primordial, and the most popular theory is that it is undead afterbirth of the creation of the universe. It's arrival increases the effectiveness of necromancy all over the world, until everyone who dies become zombies, whether someone reanimates them or not. The only imaginable way for the players to even remotely challenge it, is to fight a manifestation of its consciousness, weakening it enough for the ''gods'' to come finish it off. The book provides a few suggestions for how they do this, but none of them actually involve ''killing'' it. Just dragging it off to hell.

* Each of the demon lords qualify in their own right;
** The Demogorgon, known as the Prince of Demons and Lord of Madness, is the most powerful demon lord. ''It'' has vaguely reptilian legs, with tentacled arms, and the upper body of a primate. Its two heads are both batshit crazy, even by demon standards. The leading theory among demonologists is that it seeks to destroy everything in the universe aside from itself, and once it's alone, its two heads will consume each other.
** Orcus, the Blood Lord, Prince of the Undead, is the demon lord of Undeath, either equal to, or second to the Demogorgon in power. In his mind, all life is an aberration, a disgusting thing that crawls in the back of his mind, a constant noise that disturbs his every moment. He will only get peace when every living thing in the multiverse is turned into the quiet bliss of undeath. A guy who spends [[OrcusOnHisThrone all his time sitting on his throne]], [[DoubleEntendre grasping his great rod]] may not seem particularly threatening, but what's most dangerous about Orcus is that he's fiercely intelligent, and resilient as only a demon lord can be.

* Elder Elementals from the Mordenkainen's tome of foes sourcebook. Basic elementals are creatures made from the different elements. These elementals are that taken to it's logical extreme. They're also so dumb that they probably won't notice you until you attack it. That doesn't mean they won't cause enough destruction that you'll probably not have a choice but fight it, however.

** Zaratan are a ''slightly'' less lethal Tarraque. Massive earth creatures that just walk around and destroy, without even knowing it.

* While it mostly deals with Gothic horror, the ''TabletopGame/Ravenloft'' campaign setting features an eldritch abomination in the form of [[spoiler:Gwydion the Shadow-Fiend, Darklord of the Shadow Rift. He became trapped between realities when a planar gate collapsed on him, and really, really wants out. His full appearance is unknown, but what has been seen causes even TheFairFolk to go mad]].

* 4e suggests that aboleths aren't even intelligent, thinking creatures; rather, everything they do is the result of a guiding, species wide instinct that is unfathomable by mortals.
* While 3.5e and backwards states that aboleths are intelligent and thinking beings, but operate on concepts entirely beyond mortal comprehension; their intelligence is described as a vast and endless ocean, while that of a regular human is but a drop of water. See BlueAndOrangeMorality, or ''Lords of Madness''.
* Aboleths have enough parallels to abominations of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos that the question was directly addressed in the ''Lords of Madness'' sourcebook:

** The Kaorti were once a group of wizards who traveled to the Far Realm to study it but they ran into an Elder Evil called Zurguth, The Feasting Vast. Zurgurth transformed the wizards into inhuman monsters by accident, just by examining them. Now the Kaorti are invading the material plane and working to make it more like the Far Realm.

* The multiverse features several examples of world-enders from virtually every plane, but the most eldritch ones originate from the Far Realm, an EldritchLocation of infinite madness and horror. It has no place on the Great Wheel, World Tree or World Axis cosmologies, because it defies any kind of categorization. Limbo may be weird, but you can boil it down to just "The opposite of Mechanus". The Far Realm has no such simplicity. It's assumed that just going there would cause permanent madness, if not outright death. Aboleths originate here (see bellow), as do several Elder Evils.

* 3.5 edition had an entire [[Splatbook]] specifically about eldritch horrors called ''Lords of Madness''. Aboleths, Beholders, Illithids, Grell, Neogi, and a new monster called the Tsochari got their own chapters, and it also introduced a large number of other horrific monsters to the game.
* Aboleths from the far realm are on the lower end of the eldritch scale, but still powerful enough to pose a legitimate threat to virtually anyone. They look like really weird fish with three eyes placed on top of each other, have extremely potent psychic powers, collective memories, actual immortality, and their ancient empire predate the gods.

* [[{{Pun}} Behold the Beholder]]. A floating orb thing with one big eye, and several smaller ones on eye stalks. You've probably seen them before. Each eye stalk can send a different ray (petrification, charm, damage, etc.), and the big eye in the middle prevents magic from working in its area of effect. That's not the weirdest thing. When a beholder dreams, its dreams alter reality. This can cause momentary changes in the immediate area, but it can also spawn new beholders, the weaker beholder-kin, or change the beholder itself. The world itself may be a beholder dream, Azathoth style. And don't even get me started on the undead ones.

** It turns out that the Gibbering Mouther is actually the weakest type of gibbering beasts. The stronger kinds are the gibbering abomination, which looks like a more solid mouther with tentacles that also has EyeBeams, and the gibbering orb, which looks like a floating sphere of eyes and mouths that have even more Eye Beams. Although gibbering beasts seem like they are completely insane, they actually are quite intelligent and may work with other kinds of aberrations to accomplish mysterious goals.

* Before Asmodeus even landed in the Nine Hells, they were inhabited by the Ancient Baatorians. Hardly anything is known about them, since they appear to be resistant to both scrying and divine magic, and because Asmodeus has done his best to remove record of their existence from existence. They still occasionally manifest as indestructible, shapeless forms that breathe in light and breathe out darkness. Some of them even breathe life rather than light. Some say the Ancient Baatorians aren't even alive in the same way that both devils and mortals are — they're more some kind of formless primordial entity that can only partially manifest under certain conditions and in certain places. More strangely, the realm of Baator itself seems to be involved in their generation — nupperibo[[note]]The weakest type of devil[[/note]] will evolve into an Ancient Baatorian over a very long period of time, which is why more powerful devils destroy nupperibo when they can.

* The only thing that Aboleths are really disturbed by are the brain eating {{Cthulhumanoid}}s known as Illithids, simply because Aboleths have no idea where they came from.

** Atropus is probably the most horrific of the Elder Evils. ''It'' is a moon made of god knows what, with massive geological marks forming a giant, screaming, skeletal face. It's origin is unclear, and varies depending on setting, but includes the quasi sapient head of the god who created the universe, hoping to finally die, a literal stillborn god, and the head of a primordial. It's arrival increases the effectiveness of necromancy all over the world, until everyone who dies become zombies, whether someone reanimates them or not. The only imaginable way for the players to even remotely challenge it, is to fight a manifestation of its consciousness, weakening it enough for the ''gods'' to come finish it off. The book provides a few suggestions for how they do this, but none of them actually involve ''killing'' it. Just dragging it off to hell.

Dungeons & Dragons have its fair share of EldritchAbominations, varying in size and severity from the kind your players might have a chance against if they get some lucky rolls, to the kind that consumes universes for funsies. Note that several settings have their own specific abominations. All have been gathered here for simplicity's sake.

** Expanded upon in The TabletopGame/GatesOfHell fan supplement. Asmodeus is the Prime Force of Lawful Evil, who initially was part of a circle of three beings. Once their disagreements on how to arrange the multiverse caused them to separate, Lawful Good was flung up and created Heaven, Lawful Neutral was flung sideways and became the cogs of Mechanicus, and Lawful Evil was flung down. That fall didn't create two of Hell's circles, it created all of them. The Ancient Baatorians, the Malefircareim, were formed out of his blood, each a demigod. Then, a trillion or so years later, the Overlord awoke, found his "children" to be too independent, and created an avatar to put them in place. That wasn't Asmodeus; he was named Lucifer. The final battle was Lucifer against nine million of the demigods, and it was a CurbStompBattle. He spared a few to become the Lords of Nine and other noblemen, and created a hierarchy of weaker devils, from lemures to pit fiends [[note]] some Malefircareim did flee or were spared for the Overlord's own reasons, and yes, the nupperibo, who, unlike the lemures, are born from the very ground of Hell, will eventually evolve into them — with an intermediate stage called barregons[[/note]]. A couple trillion years later, the Overlord grew wary of gods opposing him, so he created a second avatar, Asmodeus, and [[XanatosGambit "overthrew" Lucifer, to make Hell appear less threatening]]. When a devil who aided Asmodeus, who also happened to be his wife, suspected something and wanted to know more about him... well, she was never the same after he showed her, ultimately getting killed while attempting a literal BrainBleach. Now, what is the Overlord doing with his time? He feeds upon mortal souls in order to heal his real body. How big is the body? Not hundreds of miles. It is a winged serpent which can fit the entire Earth on a single one of its scales.

* Dread Tharizdun originated in the Greyhawk setting, but eventually came to be a bit of a LargerScopeVillain for D&D in its entirety: Tharizdun was originally a god. In fact, he was one of the first gods. After the Dawn War, the Obyriths started whispering to him about how he could become all powerful, he could rule the entire universe, if he just did them a small favor. Take this little shard of ultimate evil, and plant it in the Astral Sea. He could do that, right? Unfortunately (or fortunately), Tharizdun was smart enough to realize the gods would instantly stop him if he tried something like that, so he instead took the shard to the middle of the Elemental Chaos, the plane of origin for the Primordials, and planted it there. That shard grew into the Abyss. The gods realized what he had done, and tried to kill him, but the shard had given him power to rival every other god, so they couldn't do much more than to imprison him in his own personal hellish universe (where its own version of the Abyss had already won).

** Really, several other monsters from the book qualify, such as the Neh-Thalggu brain collectors ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin guess what they do]]), the Uvudaaum, who are powerful enough to reign as SorcerousOverlords over sections of the Far Realm itself, and the epic version of the pseudonatural template, which represents creatures that are either heavily corrupted by the Far Realm's taint, or are actually attempts by the Far Realm to imitate "normal" lifeforms. Which tend to fail. Badly ([[http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/sfery/images/a/a7/44260_C5_pseudonaturaltroll.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111224000559 trolls should not look like that]]).

* The [[TabletopGame/Eberron Daelkyr]]. Extradimensional invaders who mess with the fabric of reality for [[ForTheEvulz shits and giggles]]. They also like to mess with mortal biology [[EvolutionaryBiologist like a kid plays with Play-Doh]]. And their plane of origin, Xoriat, is Eberron's cosmological equivalent to the Far Realm.

* Many of the Cthulhu Mythos deities (such as Cthulhu himself) have entries in the 1st edition Deities & Demigods supplement — and the way 1st edition rules worked, a high enough leveled player character could, in fact, [[DidYouJustPuncOutCthulhu punch them to death.]]

* [[https://www.rpgnow.com/product/3481/Immortals-Handbook--EPIC-BESTIARY-Volume-One?it=1 The Immortals Handbook: Epic Bestiary 3rd-Party rulebook]] designed to make the best of the AbsurdlyHighLevelCap features the 'Nehaschimic Dragons', beings who are described as 'nightmarish interdimensional creatures extraneous to the universe itself... transdimensional tapeworms writhing within the body of the [universe], a surreal symbiosis of reality and unreality'. In the rules, all Nehaschimic Dragons have the '[[RealityWarper Alter Reality]]' power, stupidly high DamageReduction, [[AntiMagic immunity to all but a few]] [[AchillesHeel specific types]] of magic and [[ElementalRockPaperScissors elemental damage]], can travel at the speed of light ([[FasterThanLightTravel or faster]]), [[SuperSensessee all the way to the]] [[AnotherDimension edge of their current universe]], [[SizeShifting grow to become bigger than]] [[AlienGeometries the universe]] ([[YourMindMakesItReal at least from your perspective]]) and their very presence causes [[GoMadFromTheRevelation permanent insanity]] for everything within miles. They also far exceed most other monsters in sheer size; the largest are well over a quarter mile long, at least as far as their stats are concerned. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there was only one Nehaschimic Dragon ever published, the Nexus or Wormhole Dragon. It has a BreathWeapon with a [[NoSavingThrow flat 50% chance]] (or higher) to shunt you into an AlternateUniverse, [[BornLucky power over probability]], and an aura of '[[PowerNullifierUnknowing]]' which can even cause the universe to [[RetGone forget you]] if you're weak enough. A few other have been [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?268666-3-5E-Nehaschimic-Dragons unofficially published online]], and are just as weird, if not more so, than the nexus dragon.
** On the [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?304-Eternity-Publishing-Hosted-Forum forum which discusses possible ideas for these books]], one person suggested an adventure where a planet needs to be evacuated because it's a dragon egg about to hatch. The poster eventually made the idea into dragons[[note]] called Muhlatimic, after the Hebrew word for ultimate [[/note]] which are the nerves of the AkashicRecords (the one power above God, basically). Their flavor text is about a MultiversalConqueror who has just crushed the God of another universe... and then he sees one of these dragons. It ends with him realizing that [[spoiler:almighty artifact around which he built his empire is merely a scale said dragon lost]]. No attempts to stat the dragons have been made as of fall 2017.

* The 3.5th edition sourcebook Elder Evil contains guides on how to make one of these for your campaign, as well as a list of a few pretty horrific ones to use as you wish. Each come preloaded with their own SignsOfTheEndTimes.
** Father Llymic is a being from the Far Realm that radiates cold when exposed to light. The ancient elves exploited this by putting him on a mountain, but his prison has started to weaken. The sun's rays are weakening, and Llymic's brood is prowling the countryside. Villages near his mountain has been abandoned due to the cold, and there are sightings of an old man walking the empty streets, beckoning people towards the mountain...
** Atropus is probably the most horrific of the Elder Evils. ''It'' is a moon made of god knows what, with massive geological marks forming a giant, screaming, skeletal face. It's origin is unclear, and varies depending on setting, but includes the quasi sapient head of the god who created the universe, hoping to finally die, a literal stillborn god, and the head of a primordial. It's arrival increases the effectiveness of necromancy all over the world, until everyone who dies become zombies, whether someone reanimates them or not. The only imaginable way for the players to even remotely challenge it, is to fight a manifestation of its consciousness, weakening it enough for the ''gods'' to come finish it off. The book provides a few suggestions for how they do this, but none of them actually involve ''killing'' it. Just dragging it off to hell.
** The Leviathan is on the lower end of the scale, but still pretty horrific. A ''massive'' sea creature, one spike big enough to contain an entire temple, made from all the leftover destruction stuff from the creation of the universe.

* Tarrasque. Kaiju, gorilla-expy widely considered the strongest beast in the world. Only one exists, and it alone is enough to make the gods fear. In the Forgotten Realms, it was created by the Primordials as a biological weapon during the Dawn War, and it certainly shows. It's death requires more damage output than most parties can scrape together at level 20. Even if you kill it, it will probably get up again. Where is your god now?

** And even worse? All of them can be summoned, like any other elemental. Anywhere. Someone could be performing a ritual to summon a Zaratan under the streets of Waterdeep, and you wouldn't know until Waterdeep suddenly sits on the back of an earth turtle.

* Tarrasque. Kaiju, gorilla-expy widely considered the strongest beast in the world. Only one exists, and it alone is enough to make the gods fear. In the Forgotten Realms, it was created by the Primordials as a biological weapon during the Dawn War, and it certainly shows. It's death requires more damage output than most parties can scrape together at level 20. Even if you kill it, it will probably get up again. Where is your god now?

* The multiverse features several examples of worldenders from virtually every plane, but the most eldritch ones originate from the Far Realm, an EldritchLocation of infinite madness and horror. It has no place on the Great Wheel, World Tree or World Axis cosmologies, because it defies any kind of categorization. Limbo may be weird, but you can boil it down to just "The opposite of Mechanus". The Far Realm has no such simplicity. It's assumed that just going there would cause permanent madness, if not outright death. Aboleths originate here (see bellow), as do several Elder Evils.

** Atropus is probably the most horrific of the Elder Evils. ''It'' is a moon made of god knows what, with massive geological marks forming a giant, screaming, skeletal face. It's origin is unclear, and varies depending on setting, but includes the quasi sapient head of the god who created the universe, hoping to finally die, a literal stillborn god, and the head of a primordial. It's arrival increases the effectiveness of necromancy all over the world, until everyone who dies become zombies, wether someone reanimates them or not. The only imaginable way for the players to even remotely challenge it, is to fight a manifestation of its consciousness, weakening it enough for the ''gods'' to come finish it off. The book provides a few suggestions for how they do this, but none of them actually involve ''killing'' it. Just dragging it off to hell.
**
* [[{{Pun}} Behold the Beholder]]. A floating orb thing with one big eye, and several smaller ones on eye stalks. You've probably seen them before. Each eye stalk can send a different ray (petrification, charm, damage, etc.), and the big eye in the middle prevents magic from working in its area of effect. That's not the weirdest thing. When a beholder dreams, its dreams alter reality. This can cause momentary changes in the immediate area, but it can also spawn new beholders, the weaker beholder kin, or change the beholder itself. The world itself may be a beholder dream, Azathoth style. And don't even get me started on the undead ones.
** Too late, you got me started. Beholders can be "normal" zombies, but if a beholder dreams about existing beyond death, it gets weird. Death Tyrants lose all their skin, including the tentacles, leaving behind a skull with floating dots for eyes. The eyes retain their abilities, but the central eye gains a new one: People affected cease all healing. Wether through magic or natural, all life ceases, and what dies, become zombies under the tyrant's control.