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doc the grey, you seem to know a great deal about the aboleth in Golarion. What are your sources for those massive walls of information you've been providing?
"Of course space rocks can't hurt us! We live underwater, IDIOT!"
This seems pretty small and dumb in scope for an alien intelligence.Well, being alien and strange doesn't necessarily mean they're all that smart.
Remember these are creatures that accidentally wiped out their own empire because they were kind of annoyed at humanity... and that's after a healthy dose of divine intervention. They might have very well rendered themselves extinct had their plan gone off without a hitch. They're kinda dumb like that sometimes.
It actually makes for an interesting dynamic. They're alien, inscrutable, and scheming on a level most people can't even comprehend but at the same time they're petty and often rash and incredibly narcissistic too.
Or rather, "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."
The Aboleth are the original inhabitants of Golarion, then one day a bunch of wankers showed up and said, "Nice planet. Seems like the perfect place to imprison a lunatic god." The Aboleth have been trying to kill said wankers ever since.But why? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Aboleth are effectively immortal right? Barring disease or misfortune an Aboleth can live forever. So wouldn't it be easier for these sorry intelligent, immortal aliens to just wait for humanity to go extinct like the countless other species on Golarion before it? I'd think observation would suggest to them that these new terrestrial cockroaches would go the same route.
So why do they care enough to be involved, and he is their meddling different from that of other races like the get or the devils?
We outlive rodents and roaches many times over. We don't generally wait for them to die of natural causes when they invade our homes.
It's likely much the same with the alghollthus.
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For those arguing about the mistake the Aboleth made with the Starstone, and their implied general fallability being derived therefrom. Are you are taking into account that two gods, Acavna and Amaznen did sacrifice themselves to at least partially disrupt the physical and magical properties of the attack.
Now, as for their inscrutability, some of you actively dislike this concept. Try not to imply that this is a GM failing or just laziness. At the very least, this is poor form in a forum debate.
If you MUST have goals you can wargame out, how about that what the Aboleth are doing are all attempts to modify the magic environment, much like wizards do with their demiplanes, but just on a scale we cannot wholly understand. We don't need to know the end goals, because the party will be loooooooong dead before we reach that point. What the parties are dealing with is collateral damage from individual facets of whatever the plan is.
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The last four or five pages of Sunken Empires is an article titled The Ecology of the Aboleth. It is a great book, you should buy it.
Have you read Lords of Madness? Chapter 2: The Deep Masters is all about aboleths.
both of those books are really good.
I speculate:
Option 1
What is the goal of the Human species?
Depends on who you ask.
Same with Aboleth: They're individuals, or groups with a common goal.
What happened in PF canon is but one (large) group.
To me, this is most likely.
Option 2
They all are stuck on some common goal, because they all inherited the same initial memories ("before the gods" as per their monster description) which set that goal.
That goal is to feel alive, by creating or discovering free-willed beings which challenge them, and to enjoy the thrill of enslaving these beings, transforming them, and to expand their consciousness by devouring some of them and their memories.
The side benefit is that the Aboleth play with enslaved sentient beings the way people play with trading cards. They contest against each other for status as they compare, augment, trade and brag about their collection. They even use this as a way to show off to other "more powerful" cosmic entities, and also to have fun.
So the goal is to have a rich, fulfilling life, forever, at the expense of free-willed mortals.
Any threat to the world is a threat to that endless joy. Any threat to their way of life would also inspire cooperation, and they could possibly do rather cataclysmic things to change what they see as their "playground."
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^-^
Ah, but no Malignar, you do not understand the purpose of the slaves at all.
The Aboleth are a densely urbanized, aquatic culture. Sewage treatment and removal is much more complex in an aquatic environment, and it would be a waste for even the least of the Aboleth to spend all of their time monitoring the process. The true goal of Aboleth "conspiracy" is to permanently alter all of reality so that their s**t don't stink.
For those arguing about the mistake the Aboleth made with the Starstone, and their implied general fallability being derived therefrom. Are you are taking into account that two gods, Acavna and Amaznen did sacrifice themselves to at least partially disrupt the physical and magical properties of the attack.
Yes and that quite arguably makes it worse, not better given that the accidental self inflicted annihilation came at the end of a severely weakened attack.
I am sort of curious though as to why some people seem so resistant to the idea that they mighr be falliable. Isn't that what makes things interesting?
Aboleth? What are aboleth? There's no such thing as aboleth. Nothing whatsoever to get worked up about. Boogeyfish, pure and simple. Now everyone go back about your business. Those nutritious flakes won't scatter themselves over the ocean by themselves!
For those arguing about the mistake the Aboleth made with the Starstone, and their implied general fallability being derived therefrom. Are you are taking into account that two gods, Acavna and Amaznen did sacrifice themselves to at least partially disrupt the physical and magical properties of the attack.Yes and that quite arguably makes it worse, not better given that the accidental self inflicted annihilation came at the end of a severely weakened attack.
I am sort of curious though as to why some people seem so resistant to the idea that they mighr be falliable. Isn't that what makes things interesting?
Oooooor maybe it was an extremely elaborate suicide attempt ... they .... planned to like... invade the boneyard en masse ... and have a pop at Pharasma.
Now they're super salt about like not getting to do that.
This seems like a solid theory to me.
I think the idea that Aboleth are infallible is silly. Even gods aren't infallible in Pathfinder, why should the aboleth be?
Some may have existed before the gods, but that still doesn't make them infallible.
Is it actually published somewhere that they made a grievous error with Earthfall?
Because if it isn't explicitly mentioned somewhere, then there's no reason to believe that they made any mistakes at all.
Also, believing that they didn't screw that up that specific attack is not the same as believing them to be infallible.
When someone says they didn't make a mistake, and others respond with "they shouldn't be infallible" is a mistake of communication at best (the response is unrelated to the prompt, and is thus inaccurate) or a deliberate attempt to manipulate the narrative by putting forth a strawman argument at worst.
So please be careful with the direction of the discussion. We don't want things to get heated over nothing.
Squiggit,
OK with them being fallable, not OK with them being incompetent buffoons.
Devaluing the enemy devalues the conflict. Having everything out there be essentially inferior to my character has all the charm, to my way of thinking, of spending my whole career leveling up on wild boars in Stormwynd Forest
OK with them being fallable, not OK with them being incompetent buffoons.
Isn't "the players think the Aboleths are incompetent buffoons, and thereby underestimate the horror of long game the Aboleths have been playing" a good way to make them terrifying?
It's likely the Aboleths want as many people in positions of power as possible to believe "Aboleths are absolutely no threat to anybody or anything."
This is how adventure paths usually unfold isn't it? You start out fighting some minor goblin incursion, and it gradually escalates until you're saving the world.
I think incompetent is unfair, even if they did goof with Earthfall.
We don't know what kind of magic set the meteor toward Golarion. Perhaps the ritual magic grabbed the nearest meteor, which was bigger than anticipated. We really don't know the full details.
Regardless of why, the end result is the Aboleth's got off worse than humanity did.
Though maybe they decided to make that a tool, perceived weakness so humans would leave them alone for a time.
For those arguing about the mistake the Aboleth made with the Starstone, and their implied general fallability being derived therefrom. Are you are taking into account that two gods, Acavna and Amaznen did sacrifice themselves to at least partially disrupt the physical and magical properties of the attack.
Also keep in mind that the odds are against anyone taking the Test of the Starstone. The Starstone led to the creation of three gods, but it also eliminated who knows how many high level mortals. So the aboleths were definitely ahead from the deaths of Acavna and Amaznen until the ascension of Iomedae.
I mean who said incompeteant baffoon? I mean they managed to cast a spell that killed gods.
At the same time it feels like a clear miscalculation to make an attack so good it smashes your own civilisation. And that's with a buffer...
You know the desperation thing really does seem the most convincing to me.
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Regardless of why, the end result is the Aboleth's got off worse than humanity did.
I'm wondering if this couldn't be deliberate. Like it's conceivable that some omnipaths and veiled masters determined that in addition to humanity's ascendance they were concerned about some sort of popular uprising within aboleth society posing a threat to them. So you kill two birds with one (star)stone. Not only do you set back human civilization significantly, you're going to kill off a whole lot of aboleths while your secret cabal is safely hidden away somewhere safe.
So you emerge from your hiding place and go about rebuilding aboleth society over the next few millennia, and you ensure that your mastery of such is unquestionable (since you're the CR18 omnipath, and most of the aboleths around are of the CR7 variety), and since you're effectively immortal, you can bide your time until you can strike unexpectedly against the gods themselves.
Really play up the whole "cosmic horror" angle- the powers that threaten humanity are unfathomably patient, and impossibly callous towards anything they perceive as beneath them (including their own kind if need be.)
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^-^
Ah, but no Malignar, you do not understand the purpose of the slaves at all.
The Aboleth are a densely urbanized, aquatic culture. Sewage treatment and removal is much more complex in an aquatic environment, and it would be a waste for even the least of the Aboleth to spend all of their time monitoring the process. The true goal of Aboleth "conspiracy" is to permanently alter all of reality so that their s**t don't stink.
I just figured that Aboleths, with their abilities, would be living in an eternal game of Pokemon Go.
Like it's conceivable that some omnipaths and veiled masters determined that in addition to humanity's ascendance they were concerned about
Another thought here: As it is right now none of the sources seem to indicate that the aboleths actually felt threatened by Azlant. Just annoyed with their hubris.
Is it actually published somewhere that they made a grievous error with Earthfall?
From Shadow in the Sky (book 1 of Second Darkness):
The aboleths underestimated the true magnitude of this impact and accidentally sent their own race into decline as well during the millennium of hardships that followed
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Ah, could not the very emergence and disappearance of Aroden, and the emergences of Iomedie, Norgrober and Cayden Caileen, be the attempts to rebalance the equations that Akavna and Amaznen disrupted. OK, Cayden Caileen was an unplanned event, Ignore that, they are infallable I tell you, INFALLABLE. Abandon hope!
OK, this is cycling back to fun again.
Yeah, what he said! Definitely what he said! Even if there were aboleth, which I'm not saying there are, we would be LUCKY if they'd take over everything.
Each Aboleth possess a racial memory going back to the beginning of their race, however, at some point they realized that different groups of Aboleth were actually remembering ancient events happening in different ways. For various reasons humanity was blamed for this.
Azlant was actually an attempt by the Aboleth to study humanity in order to control the problem, but things started getting worse, so Starfall.
Unfortunately, the ritual didn't go off as it's casters 'remembered' it should and the Aboleth suffered in the disaster as well. In the aftermath a faction of the Aboleth that believed their memories were the 'true' version of events waged a genocidal war against the others of their race, further destroying Aboleth society.
Now, millennia after their victory, the 'True' Aboleth are finally ready to finish the job attempted with Starfall - the destruction of the human race.
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I think incompetent is unfair, even if they did goof with Earthfall.
Maybe, but you see the descendants covering almost the whole of the planet, living and thriving. Rather than hiding in some dark hole deep in the water.
Keep hiding in your hole you piscine boogeyman. You think we have all forgotten you're there? No, we've only been waiting for the right opportunity to finish you off and have a nice fish dinner. I've been working on a spell that will convert your blood to tartar sauce.
Theory: the Neothelids manipulated the Aboleths into thinking that humans were getting too powerful to weaken/wipe out both factions at once.
Because why should only one race of underground alien chess masters have all the fun?
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Joking with my alias aside, this is a cool thread, and the timing is pretty interesting with Ruins of Azlant on the horizon. I want to say up front that the Ruins of Azlant Adventure path doesn't directly deal with the "why" of Earthfall nor does it deal with any sort of unified alghollthu plot. However, there will be some insight into the edges of these things and what Azlanti culture was like at the time it was laid low beneath the waves.
One thing that I wanted to express with this approach to the upcoming AP ties in nicely to one of doc's points in the first post of this thread. The alghollthu are not a monolithic race in that they are unified in a single goal. While many alghollthu were also hindered by the events of Earthfall, many others were not, and others on Golarion had no insight into the decision to use extremely powerful glyph magic to reach out into the void of space and draw destruction down on Azlant.
Alghollthu are alien creatures that are masters of deception, control, and genetics. Also, being immortal, they have an outlook on life, plots, and plans that seem absurd (or agonizingly slow in their action) to us short-lived beings. If I were to assign any overarching trait to alghollthu that could be construed as a plot, it would be this: control. Controlling others' minds and actions, as well as their flesh and basic biological code. Alghollthu wish to be instruments of control. And, what's better than overt, domination control? Doing it with the controlled believing that they are serving their own sense of free will. Discovery is a failure for an alghollthu, especially a veiled master.
I'm not going to get into this much deeper right now, but I do want to say that there is an Ecology of the Alghollthu in the first Ruins of Azlant book (written by Greg Vaughan). Others in this thread have pointed to other sources, and while the general flavor of aboleths is similar, we of course have our own slight take on them, so how they were explained in Lords of Madness or old Dragon articles might not be entirely accurate. (Or is that an alghollthu manipulation to throw us off?)
Stay alert, my friends. They're among us!
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Stay alert, my friends. They're among us!
Yay!
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If I were to assign any overarching trait to alghollthu that could be construed as a plot, it would be this: control. Controlling others' minds and actions, as well as their flesh and basic biological code. Alghollthu wish to be instruments of control. And, what's better than overt, domination control? Doing it with the controlled believing that they are serving their own sense of free will. Discovery is a failure for an alghollthu, especially a veiled master.
Yay! I was close!
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If I were to assign any overarching trait to alghollthu that could be construed as a plot, it would be this: control. Controlling others' minds and actions, as well as their flesh and basic biological code. Alghollthu wish to be instruments of control. And, what's better than overt, domination control? Doing it with the controlled believing that they are serving their own sense of free will. Discovery is a failure for an alghollthu, especially a veiled master.Yay! I was close!
Hey, you aren't only person, I did call them control freaks xP
Well, they're definitely freaks!
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Joking with my alias aside, this is a cool thread, and the timing is pretty interesting with Ruins of Azlant on the horizon. I want to say up front that the Ruins of Azlant Adventure path doesn't directly deal with the "why" of Earthfall nor does it deal with any sort of unified alghollthu plot. However, there will be some insight into the edges of these things and what Azlanti culture was like at the time it was laid low beneath the waves.
One thing that I wanted to express with this approach to the upcoming AP ties in nicely to one of doc's points in the first post of this thread. The alghollthu are not a monolithic race in that they are unified in a single goal. While many alghollthu were also hindered by the events of Earthfall, many others were not, and others on Golarion had no insight into the decision to use extremely powerful glyph magic to reach out into the void of space and draw destruction down on Azlant.
Alghollthu are alien creatures that are masters of deception, control, and genetics. Also, being immortal, they have an outlook on life, plots, and plans that seem absurd (or agonizingly slow in their action) to us short-lived beings. If I were to assign any overarching trait to alghollthu that could be construed as a plot, it would be this: control. Controlling others' minds and actions, as well as their flesh and basic biological code. Alghollthu wish to be instruments of control. And, what's better than overt, domination control? Doing it with the controlled believing that they are serving their own sense of free will. Discovery is a failure for an alghollthu, especially a veiled master.
Thanks for the shout out, very happy to know most of my thinking thus far has been on point. That said, doesn't overt control go against subtle control and the aversion to discovery? The idea of overt control means that others are clearly aware of their actions and the question of who is in charge is not up for debate. How does one work these conflicting ideologies together into a cohesive narrative, or is this a poor choice of words? I'm interested to hear your insight.
I think Adam's phrasing is meaning to imply that subtle control IS better than overt control.
I can see how his word choice can be interpreted either way, but I think the proper conclusion is that, for the aboleth, if the controlled never realize that they ARE controlled, they can never rebell. That is aboleth control. To them, the iron fisted tyranny of devils is the work of amateurs who invite rebellion to their doorstep.
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Lovecraftian horror in general doesn't make much sense. I mean, its based on existential crisis that people feel crushed under vast size of universe and their small meaningless existence and that there is information that will drive you mad. But there is nothing that exist that would drive a person mad just by knowing it exists :P I mean, sure, it'd be freaky if it turns out that everything is illusion/aliens are controlling everything/there are monsters in the dark, but you don't go instantly bonkers over that.If they start making sense, they stop being alien. The conceptual problem with aboleths, and other "unknowable" creatures, is that the mind is hostile to the concept. Any way we manage to conceptualize "the unknowable" makes the result, de facto, wrong. It's kind of a paradox: "think of the unthinkable". It's unachievable, anything thought of is be definition thinkable.
And that's why all of these "unknowable" things will never get any serious details. Because either you make up something that makes sense, and get get flack for betraying the initial "alien" concept, or you make something up that makes no sense, and people will intuitively find it stupid and be just as hostile to it.
Lovecraftian horror usually runs on a duality of horrors that are terrifying because they are beyond our understanding reinforced by facts and knowledge that our minds can comprehend, latch onto, and then spiral out into that cosmic horror from. The Elder Things are at their core ancient space bioengineers who are on the decline. What's terrifying is that from what little of their material culture that is left to us we can see that they were doing things with genetics we can barely imagine hundreds of millions of years before mankind was a thing, and we might only exist because one of them got bored one day and said, "I wonder what a Haplorhinne would be like if he walked on two legs and played with fire?"
The insinuation there causes the reader and the humans within the story to question their beliefs in humanity and it's place in the world, and all the assumptions built upon those values. Cosmic horror is built on that bedrock. The deep ones are scary because they represent how much power these entities offer to those who willingly entreat with them and how alien & mad we become but at the same time gain a literal escape from most of mankind's greatest fears (i.e. immortality). The Great Race of Yith challenges mankind and earth as we believe it to be's position within the cosmos, demoting mankind from it's greatest inhabitants to mere truckstop/roadside attraction for a species so advanced we are at best trained dogs and at worst the tiny uncivilized zones between their giant hyperadvanced utopias of the then and the future. The Mi-go are star faring space miners who undermine our concepts of autonomy and authority by showing up wherever they want, mining how they want, and taking us for pets/advice as brains in a jar because they can. We are literally native oddities that get scooped up and put in jars like exotic animals in the pet trade. These things are shown to us rather than just explicitly stated and our minds our left to reel out the consequences and that setup makes it work.
With that said, this is part of the major problem I have with aboleth. They don't do anything specific or in a specific way that helps either separate them from the rest of the pack (especially the Elder Things they are derived from) or trigger that mental spiral like their forebears. They're manipulators but how so, what about that separates them from the devils or a succubus or the illithids of old? Why should I be afraid of them and think of them as more than angler fish that can talk or wonder if they are jellyfish with fish parts or fish with jellyfish parts? They need a At the Mountains of Maddness/Shadow out of Time/Colour out of Space moment where all the insinuated stuff we as players and GMs crystallizes into something greater that causes our minds to shudder at the black abyss of possibilities it entails.
When going for "unknowing vast mind" thing you kinda need to stop thinking and go by emotional reaction if you want to take it as face value. Otherwise unknowable will probably end up as hilarious rather than scary, kinda like mycons there . I mean, even mycons kinda make sense if you are able to keep track of their statements, but otherwise it sounds like nonsensical gibberish
This is more or less what I said above. Making something "unknowable and alien" without contextualizing what it is that is unknowable about them makes the aboleth come off as silly and/or makes you tune out. If they are so unknowable why would I care, and if so how are any of us effected or interacted with by them? If they answer's always going to be, "You can never possibly understand this!" why shouldn't we all just turn around and f**! about in the local tavern instead?
The story of the Aboleth leans to heavily on this trope and this is often the player and GM reaction because of it. The Aboleth collectively end up too vague to do anything that feels right as a GM and just using them as lone actors feels wrong considering what work we do have to go off of.
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doc the grey, you seem to know a great deal about the aboleth in Golarion. What are your sources for those massive walls of information you've been providing?
Bestiary 1, Bestiary 2, Bestiary 6, Strange Aeons 2 (Faceless Hulk), Second Darkness Ap, Inner Sea Races (Gillmen), Into the Darklands, Hell's Vengeance 2 (faceless stalkers), Occult Bestiary, Inner Sea Bestiary, Inner Sea World Guide, Occult Mysteries, Mythic Adventures, Pathfinderwiki (nice collation of Paizo material and decnet place to start), and I feel like I'm missing something from Ultimate Magic and Occult Adventures. I feel like I'm missing a few Paizo published things but there's the start.
Non-Paizo: Sunken Empires, Lords of Madness, and AD&D Monster Manuel.
Though not Pathfinder or Paizo products Sunken Empires and Lords of Madness both are penned by active writers for other Paizo products with LoM having James Jacobs as one of its writers so there is likely to be (and is) cross over between the works. Meanwhile the AD&D monster manual helps verify and establish thematic continuity that the species has had throughout its run and gives ground to help create cross reference comparison between the Aboleth and their likely narrative forebears The Elder Things, from whom they likely drew most of their inspiration and what they are likely meant to emulate as when they (The Aboleth) were first published most of Lovecraft's work was not yet in public domain.
To that end, I guess you could also count At the Mountains of Madness here as well if the Elder Things are the species they are an expy for.
Now, if anyone has any fiction from one of these publishers that features Aboleth I'd love to know, as that's one of the few things I have yet to find.
Also feel free to add to the list if anyone see's material I've missed.
Aboleth was in AD&D Monster Manual 2.
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I think Adam's phrasing is meaning to imply that subtle control IS better than overt control.
I can see how his word choice can be interpreted either way, but I think the proper conclusion is that, for the aboleth, if the controlled never realize that they ARE controlled, they can never rebell. That is aboleth control. To them, the iron fisted tyranny of devils is the work of amateurs who invite rebellion to their doorstep.
Potentially, but I feel like if that is Mr. Daigle's intent his phrasing does not make that clear. Because that said, having the aboleth be pulled between overt and subvert control could be just as interesting as defining them one way or another. Having Aboleth in a pseudoshadow civil war between overtist who find mortals consciously aware of their power and the freedom to act publically and subvertist who find some sort of artistic philosophical purity in controlling everything without ever being seen and cells of neutral groups/lone operators could be really cool.
But for any of this to be clear we kind of need to have Paizo... be clear about this even just a little.
The Pathfinder module...
The 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (pg. 173) has Xxiphu- Soaring City, Seat of the Abolethic Sovereignty.
Well, there isn't even a D&D book calledAboleth was in AD&D Monster Manual 2.
Lol this wouldn't be a pseudoacademic discussion without at least 1 source check.
Monstrous Manual page 6. ISBN 1-56076-619-0
It's the source I'm pulling from. Hopefully that clears that up.
Monster Manuel
but there should be.
Kidding aside, I can't help but see the letters AD&D and think of anything but first edition.
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The Pathfinder module...** spoiler omitted **
The 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (pg. 173) has Xxiphu- Soaring City, Seat of the Abolethic Sovereignty.
Yeah I know. Unfortunately I haven't gotten a chance to sit down with that one in a while so I avoided including it.
As for the 4E stuff I didn't know they'd done anything. Is that stuff that existed prior to 4E or is that something the wrote whole cloth for the setting?
As for the 4E stuff I didn't know they'd done anything. Is that stuff that existed prior to 4E or is that something the wrote whole cloth for the setting?
I'm pretty sure it first appeared in the 4E Forgotten Realms, but it is expanded on in Bruce Cordell's Abolethic Sovereignty trilogy (which I have not read). It's possible that Cordell invented it for his novels and it was then included in the FR setting book. The release dates are just a few months apart.
You can read more on Xxiphu here.
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I think Adam's phrasing is meaning to imply that subtle control IS better than overt control.
I can see how his word choice can be interpreted either way, but I think the proper conclusion is that, for the aboleth, if the controlled never realize that they ARE controlled, they can never rebell. That is aboleth control. To them, the iron fisted tyranny of devils is the work of amateurs who invite rebellion to their doorstep.
Potentially, but I feel like if that is Mr. Daigle's intent his phrasing does not make that clear. Because that said, having the aboleth be pulled between overt and subvert control could be just as interesting as defining them one way or another. Having Aboleth in a pseudoshadow civil war between overtist who find mortals consciously aware of their power and the freedom to act publically and subvertist who find some sort of artistic philosophical purity in controlling everything without ever being seen and cells of neutral groups/lone operators could be really cool.
But for any of this to be clear we kind of need to have Paizo... be clear about this even just a little.
Sorry if my phrasing was unclear, but I was certainly saying that alghollthu prefer subtle control over overt control. This is embodied in the veiled masters. They can look like anyone and walk on land, unlike the more basic aboleth. They're wicked smart and have possibly insinuated themselves into all kinda of places of power within human society.
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Lovecraftian horror usually runs on a duality of horrors that are terrifying because they are beyond our understanding reinforced by facts and knowledge that our minds can comprehend, latch onto, and then spiral out into that cosmic horror from. The Elder Things are at their core ancient space bioengineers who are on the decline. What's terrifying is that from what little of their material culture that is left to us we can see that they were doing things with genetics we can barely imagine hundreds of millions of years before mankind was a thing, and we might only exist because one of them got bored one day and said, "I wonder what a Haplorhinne would be like if he walked on two legs and played with fire?"
The insinuation there causes the reader and the humans within the story to question their beliefs in humanity and it's place in the world, and all the assumptions built upon those values. Cosmic horror is built on that bedrock. The deep ones are scary because they represent how much power these entities offer to those who willingly entreat with them and how alien & mad we become but at the same time gain a literal escape from most of mankind's greatest fears (i.e. immortality). The Great Race of Yith challenges mankind and earth as we believe it to be's position within the cosmos, demoting mankind from it's greatest inhabitants to mere truckstop/roadside attraction for a species so advanced we are at best trained dogs and at worst the tiny uncivilized zones between their giant hyperadvanced utopias of the then and the future. The Mi-go are star faring space miners who undermine our concepts of autonomy and authority by showing up wherever they want, mining how they want, and taking us for pets/advice as brains in a jar because they can. We are literally native oddities that get scooped up and put in jars like exotic animals in the pet trade. These things are shown to us rather than just explicitly stated and our minds our left to reel out the consequences and that setup makes it work.
With that said, this is part of the major problem I have with aboleth. They don't do anything specific or in a specific way that helps either separate them from the rest of the pack (especially the Elder Things they are derived from) or trigger that mental spiral like their forebears. They're manipulators but how so, what about that separates them from the devils or a succubus or the illithids of old? Why should I be afraid of them and think of them as more than angler fish that can talk or wonder if they are jellyfish with fish parts or fish with jellyfish parts? They need a At the Mountains of Maddness/Shadow out of Time/Colour out of Space moment where all the insinuated stuff we as players and GMs crystallizes into something greater that causes our minds to shudder at the black abyss of possibilities it entails.
I personally think that part of the reason cosmic horror doesn't seem quite as horrifying to us these days is because we don't find the idea that humanity is a small part of a bigger universe that scary or horrifying anymore.
That ^^^
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personally think that part of the reason cosmic horror doesn't seem quite as horrifying to us these days is because we don't find the idea that humanity is a small part of a bigger universe that scary or horrifying anymore.
Calling Quibble on that. We are living in a time of religious despair driven extremism, strong anti-science trending, large movements denying facts of nearly any sort, and myriad other symptoms. Add to this the continuing rise of various forms of mysticism; Heck, High end jewelers sell crystalomantic jewelry lines.
World politics also tells a rather different story than you do as well.
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personally think that part of the reason cosmic horror doesn't seem quite as horrifying to us these days is because we don't find the idea that humanity is a small part of a bigger universe that scary or horrifying anymore.Calling Quibble on that. We are living in a time of religious despair driven extremism, strong anti-science trending, large movements denying facts of nearly any sort, and myriad other symptoms. Add to this the continuing rise of various forms of mysticism; Heck, High end jewelers sell crystalomantic jewelry lines.
World politics also tells a rather different story than you do as well.
To expand on this, I think that even if those thoughts of the past no longer scare us that doesn't mean there aren't new things that will tap into the same vein. We live in a world where strangers can know your schedule, life goals, and friend chart with the right google search, our global use of antibiotics has lead to new bugs that are getting stronger than our countermeasures and the civilian attempts to prevent them are only expediting the process, and as global warming continues we are beginning to see how are actions are creating a world less suited for ourselves.
There's a lot of potential for Cosmic Horror there.
On a related note, anyone got a satisfactory pronunciation on Alghollthu?