Eldritch Abominations in Real Life

Do you think there's a possibility that an Eldritch Abomination could exist in Real Life? If so, how do you think it would interact with us humans? What would it appear as? And most importantly, where would it reside in the universe?

No, but I'm not religious. In religion, there seem to be two types of supernatural creature, depending on who you listen to. Creatures that are different from humans, perhaps phenomenally cosmically powerful, but not fundamentally different. And then creatures we could not hope to understand because they are fundamentally different from us.

I have always placed eldritch abominations in the second group of religious theories. They are essentially gods, angels, or djinn that think in ways that it is impossible for us to relate to normally.

How do you define an Eldritch Abomination? Is it anything that defies the known laws of man and nature alike, be it willingly (as in actively seeking to break our understanding of the universe) or is it more of an unwilling force, akin to a force of nature: without thought, without conscience, but nonetheless relentless? Is it something whose psychology is so inherently different to ours that it is, for all facts and purposes, incomprehensible?

Make a clear definition of what you consider "eldritch". You won't find real-life Cthulhu, but there are some interesting concepts that might fit the bill such a Teilhard de Chardin's "Omega Point"

There are Eldritch abominations in reality: and I know where to find them: Black Holes. A form so vast, not even light can escape there reach. The universe hates a naked singularity, so one must wonder, what is on the other side.

If it breaks the laws of physics, it could count. But again, exactly 100% of the universe is completely enslaved to the laws of physics

That's an Eldritch Location, since black holes don't have consciousness or life-like behavior

That's what they want you to think.

No, because I believe in science. But if one did exist, where would it live, how would it behave? Any damn way it wanted to. By definition, any limitations it may have are incomprehensible to us.

That we know of

Eldritch abominations are beyond are understand, a black hole could be either a Location or Abomination depending on how you write it.

Or it could be both....or neither, Elderich abomination are like magic: it can be whatever it want and contradiction only help with the efect.

Given that a common meaning of "eldritch" is something otherworldly or, well, alien, it's pretty logical that an eldritch location would be populated by eldritch abominations. One need only look at deep sea creatures or microscopic lifeforms as examples of things that defy most expectations of what living beings should look like. And never mind all the various body horror-inducing parasites out there.

So, with that in mind, let's have a hypothetical look at the average dweller of an eldritch location, such as a black hole. First off, the shoggothis nigruforamenis is extremely physically dense, with a uniform body density so as to survive the pressure. It's also resistant to heat and radiation. More importantly however, it has developed the ability to form apertures in space-time, since that's the only way to actually move around the inside of a black hole; the creature essentially lives in non-linear time. If by accident a shoggoth emerges in the vicinity of our world, the effect may be contagious - a person would perceive it for an eternity in an instant, and since human brains aren't generally equipped to function eternally, going bananas is not unexpected.

I'm not a fan of the whole "indescribably hideous and/or madness inducing" aspect of speculative fiction creatures, since it tends to break the rule of showing, rather than telling about their qualities. As Lovecraft put it, the most horrifying creatures are those that have something almost human in their appearance. What was truly eldritch about them was the greater idea of humanity being insignificant in the grand scale of the Universe... which may have been somewhat unsettling in the 1930's, but is pretty much accepted as mainstream science today.

Funny coincidence: the Bigger Bad of the game I'm working on is a black hole-dwelling abomination. Personally, I find the best choice to invoke horror with Eldritch Abominations is a sort of fridge horror that The Missing No tends to invoke. They simply shouldn't exist and they come across as a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. I do think you're right, though-it's better to invoke Nothing Is Scarier.

The existence of Eldritch Abominations is kind of subjective. I would look at viruses for a good example: Not quite living, not quite dead. They have little-to-no response to any stimuli at all, don't eat, and don't really move either. They reproduce by "possessing" cells and taking them over to turn them into virus-producing factories.

Also, sufficiently advanced aliens or a Super-AI could theoretically work as eldritch abominations.

And obviously, there's several beings in various religions that would qualify as eldritch abominations.

edited 6th May '16 6:13:21 PM by Protagonist506

I'd say creatures that shouldn't exist is a great way to go. More specifically, I find that mixing and matching qualities that normally just don't go together works best to really hit the sweet spot. And it doesn't mean they can't be real either.

edited 7th May '16 1:59:08 PM by indiana404

An Eldritch Abomination in Real Life has to be something which we can't understand. The problem? We can extrapolate a lot. As I mentioned, everything we know follows the laws of physics and thus is comprehensible. Even if it seems like it breaks the laws of physics, we just later discover how things work. For something to be solidly incomprehensible, we would have discover how all rules of nature work in our universe, down to the last nook and cranny of physics...and then the incomprehensible thing just breaks those rules. Even black holes, arguably the closest to this trope, are things we understand how they work. Kind of...and as mentioned, they'd be an Eldritch Location, as they're the result of space and time being warped and bent beyond the natural order...

Except not. Black holes work in ways we can predict. Even the unknown aspect is explained by how we know light and space-time work. It's unusual to use simply because we developed on a significantly different realm. For example, if somewhere sentient made of dark matter exist, the 5% of normal matter in the universe would be considered eldritch and mysterious.

Tl;dr-We will only know if an incomprehensible being exists if we are the limits of things we can comprehend. And by that point we'd be so advanced that we'll be considered eldritch by modern humans. Or extinct.

But here's the rub, The Laws Underlying the Physics of Everyday Life are Completely Understood. That's actually a pretty big deal. I saw this guy speak at a convention a few years ago, and it was fascinating. Science now has a complete picture of the physics of everyday life. Naturally, there's a lot that isn't included in that, but if there is a particle or force out there we haven't discovered, it would be too weak, small or distant to have an impact on our everyday lives.

So, translating that to a hypothetical Eldritch Abomination, such a being would, by its very nature, have to have the ability to have some sort of impact or interaction with human beings. If there were some force capable of remotely projecting nightmarish visions into a person's brain, for example, we would have observed it, measured it, and formulated it by now. But there isn't, so we haven't.

Or alternately, such a being would have to have the ability to bend or even break the laws of physics. Not behave in a manner that seems impossible, but actually perform what we know to be impossible under the laws of physics. That's what we would call "magic". And magic, fortunately, isn't real.

edited 25th May '16 2:42:13 PM by Lawyerdude

Note the word distant in "too weak, small or distant". An eldritch abomination only has to come from somewhere else, and bam, real world physics science has no knowledge of yet. That phrase above is also in error. It should read "too weak, small, distant, or uncommon for it to impact everyday life."

Sure, in a sort of multiverse model, some creature from another reality or dimension, pops over to our reality somehow. But once in our reality, it would need to a) follow our rules of physics, or b) whatever mechanism that poofed them over here somehow also allowed them to drag their own rules along. Option "b" would really screw with reality around it, since that would be some sort of trans-dimensional breach in the fabric of space-time.

So it comes from some alternate dimension where the fundamental laws like gravity and electromagnetism operated on different principles, or there was another fundamental force that just doesn't exist in our reality.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a race of space aliens with unobtan-ion based technology. They sent ships to our world at light-speed. Unobtan-ions don't occur naturally in our galaxy. Their ships will arrive tomorrow.

I usually go for meteorites containing green rocks with extremely short effective half-lives. Rock falls down, trace elements cause whatever flora and fauna nearby to go all B-movie on the surrounding environment, and once the elements decay into more common isotopes, their unusual properties become impossible to prove.

Meanwhile, a common mutation in wildlife encountering said rocks, particularly in cephalopods, is the ability to release hallucinogenic and otherwise mind-altering toxins, as well as produce infrasonic waves able to shake the psyche of all but the most badass of humans. It's not that they can't be understood, but that encountering them without proper protection would leave one's mind too messed up to make the difference. And of course, death of the creature would disable whatever biological mechanism allowed it to perform such seemingly physics-defying feats. After all, these creatures may have been affected by otherworldly phenomena, but they aren't truly alien themselves. What's left is a vaguely identifiable lump of flesh with little scientific value and no recognizably foreign genetic material.

All in all, for some time now I've been working on a modern fantasy setting that aggressively defies all sorts of masquerades, conspiracies, hidden discoveries and inconsequential technological resources, so I figured I could share some of the scientific cornerstones, for review as well as common use.

edited 26th May '16 7:11:22 AM by indiana404

While I'm a science lover, I just think there's a major reason that Eldritch Abomination can be named that way: The circumstances surrounding them and the creature itself is just too dangerous to get close and find out more about them. We even have problems discovering our own Earth's ocean for example and who say that the Abomination doesn't exist there? All we can do is speculate and offer explanation.

I find this only works for a while, in a "god of the gaps" sort of way. Far too many scientific expeditions to previously unexplored locations have turned out surprisingly abomination-free, so the notion that this particular ocean abyss or mountain crevice would be different is just plain teasing. Meanwhile, the idea that such creatures do appear, but don't last too long at any specific location, is somewhat more flexible, and compatible with anything from ancient myths to modern alien sightings.

The same goes for their supernatural attributes - breaks in the laws of physics are a handy writing tool for both practical and stylistic purposes, but so far, reality has been remarkably uncooperative in that regard. At the same time, the number of known phenomena than can at least mimic the effects of such attributes grows almost daily.

Finally, the whole incomprehensible aspect of eldritch abominations has always struck me as the writer telling the readers what to feel, rather than working out a genuine reason for them to feel that way. What I like about the grandaddy of the genre is that it incorporated works featuring all sorts of people with vastly different reactions to these phenomena. Robert Howard's Conrad and Kirowan (and Conan and Kane, for that matter) are good examples of characters well versed in dealing with horrors that easily drive Lovecraft's own protagonists insane. This is fascinating to me, because it sets some limits, making the creatures in question actually mysterious, instead of just obscured. It makes them more realistic - even a common spider is a minor nuisance to some, yet an instinctive nightmare to others. With that in mind, it's no great leap of logic to assume that creatures exist on Earth that would easily drive some people bonkers, especially in the right circumstances... all while closer inspection would reveal nothing inherently horrifying. After all, from the proper perspective, humans are just as scary.

say does an Eldritch abomination have to be incomprehensible? Yes we know modern physics and can understand pretty much anything given enough time, but me knowing about the propertys of electricity does not help if I get electrocuted NOW. So how "Eldritch" does an "Abomination" need to be a "Eldritch Abomination"

A lot, power dosent make you weird, just...powerfull(I always like to quote a book that said "if human workship power, there would be atlas for atomic bombs) is how STRANGE and just WRONG they are againt everything we know about.

Imagine how and Ant would see a human: strange being that live in gigantic fortress made of stone,steel and glass in form that made no sense to them, doing thing that are just....weird, that is how elderich abomination really is.

I'd say there's a difference between strange and outright wrong, and that's beside the aforementioned use of ostensible incomprehensibility as a lazy way to avoid description and consistent storytelling. First and foremost, the original Lovecraftian monsters worked against the then-popular conception that the Universe is created and cared for by an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent God. They'd likely have no such impact on anyone raised with the tenets of Greek mythology, where everything arose from primordial chaos and the gods aren't too fond of their creations.

Next, science, both as academic discipline and as part of the popular worldview, has expanded to the point that presenting creatures and concepts it cannot grasp is treated as a challenge rather than a frightening realization. In fiction, it's very tempting to put those obnoxious labcoat-wearing eggheads against forces they are unable to analyze and powerless to counteract; see how calm and logical they remain then. In reality, it's about as plausible as beating an android at chess, while the eggheads are known to use nuclear explosions to light their cigarettes. Kinda hard to figure out what would scare a guy like that.

In a way, eldritch abominations are like teen-horror slashers. Under the right circumstances, they can be horrifying. But just as a slasher film would be very short if it took place in an open-carry state, an eldritch abomination can only remain scary if it also remains out of focus. Otherwise, it becomes a generic doomsday villain at most - powerful, yes, but nothing to write home about.

I'd like to add something here. There are a lot of animals which look or act in ways that are incomprehensible to humans, Blue-and-Orange Morality and all that. For example, dolphins. They are certainly intelligent. However, they find it acceptable to rape and murder with ease, and will kill things just for the sake of it, a concept nearly incomprehensible to humans. Even in the most cold-blooded human murderer you can find a motive, but dolphins will just do it for the sake of it. On the imagery side of things, the deep sea produces a lot of strange creatures that even Lovecraft couldn't think up. A good insance of this is the big-fin squid.

After rereading some of my favorite Lovecraft stories, I have to say, the thing about eldritch abominations isn't that they're scary in their own right, like dragons or various other monsters. Instead, the horror comes from the implications their very existence has about the world itself - that the Universe doesn't work the way it's supposed to. That even the laws of physics are basically held up by string and duct tape, easy to shatter without a moment's notice. That even places or objects on this planet may offer a maddening glimpse at things the human mind was never designed to withstand.

But again, when half of the above is already taught in Quantum Mechanics 101, it just doesn't have the same punch as it once might.

With all that in mind, perhaps the first question to ask is not what sort of creature would be completely unnatural and twisted, but rather what creature would imply that nature itself is twisted. Like I said, even Lovecraft pointed out that the scariest trait of his monsters was them being almost human.