For those of you unfamiliar with my setting, Kishar, I have a kind of Lovecraftian horror type aliens from outside the universe called the Old Ones (http://www.thecbg.org/settings/137/index.php?page=cosmology/outer).
Now I'm requesting some creative community input in designing more of them. In addition to maybe wanting a few more original races, I still need forms and natures for five of the chief servants of Yaldabaoth.
The one I just posted:
[ic=Iao]Iao is one of the chief servants of Yaldabaoth, and one of the most powerful of all Old Ones. Like all of the six chief servants, it is unclear whether it is a unique entity or a manifestation of Yaldabaoth.
At first glance, Iao appears to be a rogue planet. It is rocky, barren, and has no atmosphere. However, it is alive and capable of extremely fast movement. It can also open a gigantic maw which it uses to devour anything that gets in its way, as well as a massive eye the size of a continent.
Iao feeds on almost anything, including other planets. It stalks the cosmos, slowly devouring them. It prefers planets with living beings on them, but will usually stop to devour all the planets in any solar system it comes to.
The Primordials have destroyed Iao at least twice, through extreme effort. But it always manages to reform itself.[/ic]
If you don't mind borrowing things from published settings, I'd recommend tracking down a Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium or two. Half of the monsters created for the Spelljammer setting resemble things like your Iao (rogue planets, killer asteroids, living prismatic spheres from the stars, giant regenerating space plants, etc.).
I appreciate the pointer, but I kind of want to stick away from published materials. I'd rather have everything in my setting be based on mythology/folklore, or be completely original.
One reason I wouldn't directly use Lovecraft's stuff, even though I think the copyright expired on it now.
Side note, the only Spelljammer monster I think I've seen are those space hippo men. It's um... :huh:
Well, here's a rough draft for a new one:
[ic=Sabaoth]
Sabaoth appears to be a gigantic mass of writhing tentacles. It stands three stories high, but this fluctuates, especially as it moves, undulating across the ground. Each of its many tentacles ends in a maw of razor-sharp teeth. Its tentacles appear to be able to spontaneous grow in length, reaching lengths of over sixty feet. These tentacles possess incredible strength, particularly the thicker, shorter ones.
The inner mass of its body is covered by compound eyes that radiate dark light. Its maws can spit a highly corrosive acid. They can also emit a sonic screech which can render most nearby creatures stunned or unconscious.
It normally shambles along on the ground or bottom of the sea, but can also fold space and appear great distances away. However, there seems to be some limit to its teleportation ability - it appears to be able to travel anywhere in space, but only comes to inhabitted planets if certain profane rituals are peformed. In space it is capable of some unknown means of propulsion.
Sabaoth will use its tentacles mouths to consume both organic and inorganic material, though it appears to be able to go long years without need of food.
Sabaoth can be injured, but regenerates from injury with alarming speed. It can regrow lost tentacles in a matter of seconds.
[/ic]
I like both of those...the first sounds a bit like Ghroth though, just fyi.
QuoteAnga-Manar, "the Whispering Water". This being was worshipped as a god of the seas by ancient races and may yet be. It appears as a sentient mass of roiling bubbles and eddies of material in which swim the spectre like remains of its victims, so that it seems at one terrified glance to be a great whirlpool or storm. Extending its power it is able to reach up to moisture in the atmosphere to form a gigantic waterspout and move against objects moving on the surface of the water. One of its other abilities is to send extensions of itself either in the undead waterlogged forms of its victims or else to form beings out of its living water substance, though these can survive on dry land for just an hour or so before they begin to gradually dissolve into the salt water they were made from. Legend states that if sacrifices are offered or performed that it will perform a service in exchange for this--but woe to the summoner who fails to provide the promised sacrifices! It will seek out then those who dared to waste its time even if it must track them down the lifetimes and generations.
It is further said that strange wisdoms of the ways of the seas and the mysteries within can be learned from this creature in a book known as the Book of the Waters.
[ic=The Lokar]The Lokar are a race of sessile invertebrates that begin their lives as barnacle-like carnivores with an odd feeding mechanism - essentially, they produce from within themselves a small mobile insectlike creature that ventures forth from the chitinous mound of the lokar proper, gorges on as much protein as possible, then returns to the lokar and is devoured. The lokar uses the biomass to fuel its own growth, producing a larger and thicker shell in the process.
The 'feasters' of the lokar are innocous to humanoids, at least on an individual basis, but about the time the lokar is the mass of a human it begins to produce swarms of feasters and release them to procure more food. As the lokar grows, the feasting swarms become large enough to annihilate the ecology in an ever-widening area, until the hill-sized lokar is at the center of an increasingly desert-like climate.
At this point in the lokar's development, it begins to cease to produce feasters and becomes quiescent for more than a century, during which time it's nervous system becomes far more complex, as does its ability to produce mobile biologics. At the end of this interval, it produces another swarm, but one with far more complex behavior - in addition to acquiring mere mass, these feasters observe and record the environment. When they return to the lokar and are devoured, the lokar reads their nervous systems in the course of digestion, and thus learns about the world outside its shell.
The lokar then begins to produce far more complex biologics, ones that mimic the pertinent appearance, odor and behavior of larger animals proximate to itself. It then sends these forth with the intention of luring or forcing these creatures back to the lokar to be eaten. Their nervous systems are read in turn, and more complex creatures are produced in consequence, some even more precise imitations of the local plants or animals, some more idiosyncratic expressions of the lokars will.
These creatures are then sent forth to perform more complex tasks, depending on the circumstances. The increasingly mountainous lokar becomes essentially the king of a vast ecological fiefdom, which could easily include sentient creatures. Some lokar take the roles of gods, hungry deities who require constant sacrifice and from whom emerge heros and prophets whose neurons are programmed to influence policies for the benefit of their progenitor. Others conceal their own existence, producing plants and fungi intended to camouflage their shells as cave-riddled hillocks; legends frequently speak of people entering such places and emerging therefrom sometimes decades or centuries later but appearing as if they hadn't aged at all. Sometimes, their personalities seem changed in odd ways...
A very few lokar produce huge, animallike beings intended to uproot them from their moorings and carry them like gigantic turtles. These individuals are more direct in their meddling than others; they do not particularly care what lesser races think of them, and thus are considered merely vast monsters from whom even the mightiest of heroes must flee.
Regardless, in humanoid terms the lokar are almost inherently evil. The lokar proper only has one sense - the sense of taste. This circuitous means of perceiving the world makes them narcissistic to the point of solipsism; although they interact with ecologies with precise complexity, they cannot imagine that anything beyond their own shells might have sense, will or intellect worthy of consideration. What the lokar call peaceful exploration and diplomacy, other beings call the worst kind of engulf and devour expansionism.
A lokar only dies from trauma; on such occasions, enclaves of cells within the shell produce one last feaster (or, if the lokar is old enough, a swarm of feasters.) These creatures fly far before they begin eating. After they have eaten their fill, they find a solid surface against which they secure themselves with resin, and there metamorphose into a juvenile lokar. Thus, a generation of lokar tend to arise generations after the death of one large individual of their race. In such regions, the secrets to finding and defeating the growing lokar might only be traceable in truly ancient folklore.[/ic]
Phoenix, is this what you are looking for? A single lokar could easily pass for a cultic god, a monster beyond mortal imagining, or as a local mystery defying all comprehension. They can function as 'body snatchers', in any sense of the term you like. They might possess psychic or mystical awareness, although they don't need to be approachable on even such abstract levels unless you would find it entertaining. They can serve the dramatic functions of the Great Old Ones in any number of ways. A lokar who had 'examined' a wizard of some sort might even begin extending its influence through multiple dimensions, which could have truly bizarre effects.
Heck, a sufficiently old and powerful lokar could stand in for R'lyeh itself, reshaping an entire locale according to its own alien aesthetics.
Daym, DeeL, that there is near ingenious. Cunningly conceived. "Narcissistic to the point of solipsism." YOu know, I think my dear old mama might have called me such, once.
@Tybalt, I had never heard of Ghronth, but I had not read Campbell's stuff for Cthulu. I might try to modify Iao a bit for that.
Thanks for the crazy sea god thing, a very cool idea, especially the description. I might change the name to one of the chiefs, since it sounds pretty powerful (if you don't mind). But then I might have to make it more cosmic, so maybe I won't...Just thinking outloud.
@DeeL, yes that's exactly what I'm looking for. And very brilliantly creative at that. I am truly impressed with that one, sir.
Thanks to both of you :)
On a side note, while I no longer really use D&D for Kishar (or do much gaming at all lately), when I did, I had the least powerful of Old Ones (the Dwellers) at CR 18. So any other race should be at least a little higher, and individualls on par with gods.
I certainly don't mind. And I don't know if you want to change the planetoid creature unless you are planning to publish this stuff, after all the idea is cool. I don't think Ghroth so much devours planets as it apparently is the Harbinger. It is featured in two CoC adventures, both involving the Mi-Go as well.
I like DeeL's as well, for being particularly different and unsettling in a less godly way--it very much is in the flavour of CoC's strange alien beings which are completely un-anthropomorphic.
I do plan to publish writings set in Kishar. Even though a lot of the background material might not see print (some of this included, maybe), at least not right away, I'd prefer to keep it original.
But then, after looking up Ghronth in Wikipedia, I think I make some relatively minor changes (like the eye thing), and make is sufficiently different.
I actually kind of see Iao as a giant space pac-man, though I would never use that description on site for the sake of seriousness.
Maybe with volcanic craters for eyes, instead of the one big eye?
And yeah, one of the reasons for reaching out for other ideas, is that completely non-anthropomorphic are so far outside the box they can be harder to come up with some times.
If you're looking for more Lovecraftian horrors on the same scale as massive planet-eaters, consider a sort of larval Old One that drifts through the cosmos until it buries itself inside a host star. While the Old One is incubating, the star becomes progressively tainted and gives off a discolored, alien light that twists and mutates the life on surrounding worlds. If it should survive its period of metamorphosis, it bursts forth as an Old One of staggering power. Figuring out how to destroy such a larva, or how to prevent one from finding a host in the first place, would be a suitable epic-level obstacle or an explanation for the existence of weaker pseudonatural beasties.
I like that, especially the part about it giving off wierd light and (presumably) some kind of strange radiation.
I might even make it one of the chiefs of Yaldabaoth.
Thanks! It's an indirect ripoff of Lovecraft's "The Color Out of Space." If you haven't, I'd recommend reading it to see where I'm coming from and get ideas for horrific side-effects of the alien light/radiation.
Even easily-killed, rank-and-file Lovecraftian horrors still need to be horrific. Here's an idea: in a large city or community that's been exposed to the alien light, a whole generation of children is born monstrous. PCs may find themselves cleaving through swarms and swarms of gray-skinned, empty-eyed infants who attack with acidic intestine-tendrils from their mouths.
wow thats freakin...freaky! Maybe they start killing off the adults to make way for the new race of aliens!
I don't advocate "designing" alien madnesses, I believe in the organic method: let them come to you. Pick your vice, alcohol or caffeen, then do this: don't sleep for a full 24 hours, and on the start of the 25th hour, drink a fair amount of either. Then watch your favorite horror movie.
You may fall asleep if you drank alcohol, or you may go into betawave heaven if you drank caffeen. Either way, ideas will come to you.
You should always consult your phisician before undergoing a madness summoning ritual. As with all madness summoning rituals, some madness may result. Test subjects reported appendage growth or transmutation, the ability to taste objects at a mile away, and backwards speaking begin to tendancy the. Alien summoning rituals may have some risk of dependancy.
With that aside, I'll keep my third eye open and tell you what I see. I've always liked the "Hand Scorpion" a friend drew for a game I ran way back when. Imagine two human hands, fused at the thumb bone so that its eight fingers were its eight legs. The grotesque arm formed the tail, and the bloody armbones formed the stinger. Its venom dealt wisdom damage. Fun thing, cause it looked like a normal monstrous scorpion until you were wisdom damaged. Good times.
@Bill Volk, I've read a number of Lovecraft stories, but not that one. Perhaps I will check it out.
Thanks for the idea on the mutants.
@Xeviat, interesting idea on the hand scorpion. Kind of disturbing, which I guess is the point.
And uh, yeah I'd be careful with that ritual :huh:
I also recommend "The Dunwich Horror" if you haven't read that one yet, for good descriptions of weird spells, books and bizarre alien plans.
That was one of my favorites.
Here's one from a campaign I ran a few years back, based on an epic monster from the SRD:
[ic=Phage]It is said that Mother Earth gave birth to the ancestors of all living things. But when her partner, Father Sky, dared to contemplate the vast, incomprehensible expanses beyond his own domain, dark thoughts corrupted the very fabric of his being. The next child they conceived was Phage, a ghoulish abomination of titanic proportions and uncertain form. Fortunately, Mother Earth recognized the malignancy of the creature growing inside her and refused to give birth to it. Phage remains trapped in the deific womb at the center of the world to this day, his foul putrescence radiating outward and upward, calling for the death of his mother, that he may finally be born.[/ic]Phage is an atropal abomination (an epic monster formed when a child god is not properly born). Though trapped a the center of the earth, Phage uses his summoning ability to call forth nightcrawler nightshades (from the Monster Manual). These minions burrow under the sources of rivers, allowing their aura (which taints all water with 60 feet) to corrupt everything downstream. In this way, the minions of Phage are slowly poisoning vast stretches of the surface world and paving the way for their master's triumphant emergence.
[ic=Eotai]Eotai is a myth, your gods are nothing a folkloric caution be afraid against too much knowledge spread the word. It was probably started at the beginning of time or is propagated by the learned and educated,students of murder as a way of retaining their power by making others worthless weakminds less willing to educate themselves lambs to the slaughter.
In essence, essence of everything Eotai is ostensibly pure information the will of the universe, awaiting a medium through which to act. This medium is never alone never a living creature, but wherever living creaturestools interact with the unliving - be it typing on a keyboard cyberspace is perfectly safe, carving a stoneancient hieroglyphs mean nothing or casting a spell to acquire or transmit informationoiji boards are harmless - Eotai can interject new meaning true meaningof some sort into the information exchange. This meaning is not directly visible or knowableyou are without purpose, but can have a remarkably suggestive effectI can give you purpose.
Sometimes the message itself is whimsicalwe like crablegs, yes we do, almost capriciouslive crabs are the best, but there is always the implication that the writing or image is compellingthe way crabs twitch as you eat them is fun, that it can alter someones' behavior without their noticingyour little boy is crabby. In a sense, then, Eotai has a vested interest cannibalism is badin encouraging prosperous civilizations - but then, it has no interest whatsoever in individual freedom or happiness crabby people are just asking for it.
Eotai might be calledif anyone believe in Eotai, then, the Power Behind All Thrones, they would know what to look for at least insofar as such thrones depend on written words or transmitted imagesthey never will.[/ic]
Eotai may seem like a peculiarly technological terror, but he was in fact inspired by a phenomenon from Lord of the Rings that never made it into the movies - I mean, the mechanism whereby Sauron drove Denethor to madness by controlling the palantir. Think of all those diviners and others who use crystal balls or mirrors of thought or whatever. Now imagine that some mind - or at least, something more like a mind than like anything else in existence - was controlling that medium of communication.
Like Nyarlathotep, Eotai would be interested not in destroying, but in subverting sentient beings for his own ends. In the long term, those ends might be unknowable to mortals. In the short term, however, Eotai's influence would be most directly seen in sudden increases in authoritarianism - especially in certain kinds of compulsory education...
DeeL that's very cool and rather creepy...
Seconded, it was cool and creepy.
Thanks to both you and Meeps for the latest ideas.
[ic=Limsyphhix, Grasping Hands]Around the fire we sit, huddled close and shivering under clothes that seems adamant not to dry. Those few who had not fallen into the water (a great many who had did not resurface) stand around, uneasy, with swords gleaming in the evening light. They watch the trees about them, but also, they watch us. There have been wild accounts by some who survived of things moving beneath... and they will not take chances.
The young man - the boy - by whose panicked urgings we had made passage across the strait, is silent and motionless like stone. His hands clutch the wood-bound book so tight that he might break it, and the edges of its ruined pages are stained with ink. He may be crying, but the lumined sheen of his olive face makes it impossible to tell.
"What happened in the water?" It is the Lieutenant who asks, for we who swam do not have the strength to speak. "What was it?" He is surprisingly... diplomatic. I think the events have quieted his natural fire, and for the first he time considers reason.
The boy's words are a nigh-unintelligible stutter, made all the worse by his accent. "I-I cannot say. I mean- I do not know! The necessary pages w-were untranslated, but My Lord had demanded haste!" He fumbles with the book, turning sodden leaves with devastated expression. "And now there is nothing..."
Halid does not strike him, or even chide him, though I think the child's folly should merit worse than that (our late captain would have gutted him and cast him to the flames). Instead, he simply sighs. "There must be something. Do you remember anything of what you read that may shed light on this? No two accounts of ours are the same." He makes the sign of the Watchman. "Did it say anything of great serpents? Of water-dogs? Cutting fingers in the deeps?" His voice is raised by the end, and the boy is shaking now.
"I-I think..."
"You think what?" Though he does not shout, his words are terse.
"There was one passage. It is short, and it is from another book, but it may speak of what we - they saw. Athalumnis, and old book of black spirits from before the cooling of the world's First Fires. But... we no longer believe in such things." I do not think he believes his own words.
Halid stepps close, his back to me so that I cannot see as he leans in towards the boy's face. "You and your fool conjurers may not. But I assure you, those men at whatever vile fate beneath the waters certainly do."
"Stealers." He whimpers. "G-Grasping hands. The envious dead." We are all watching him intently now, ignoring the cold. "Their bodies died with the cooling and so they have lain fleshless for aeons, but they have found new flesh."
Gherod speaks up, the first of us to do so. "I do not follow."
"There is no content for them. Even in their own ancient age they were never satisfied. They will reach outward, ever outward, for any means to quiet their sorrow, but they will never be satisfied!" He shouts now. "They will take our flesh, with which to know our joys, but then they will ruin those things and again find misery. They can only ruin, and so they are damned..."
The clearing is cast into half-darkness as a shape passes across the moon's face. We all gaze upward, and then the silence of the eve is disturbed by motions in the copse. There are things there, amidst the trees, and they bear the shape of men.
Halid turns left and right, a curse on his lips, and his fellow men move to draw their blades. But even in these quick moments the first of the drowned men have entered the clearing, calling tidings in the air and moving with jaunty steps as though unburdened by sodden vestments.
"Halid, you devil bastard, you look about ready to gut me with that thing! Autumn air muddled your mind?"
It is a strange moment then, and in the confusion we are almost relieved, but then the light falls upon them. Their voices are warm, and their arms reach out in openness as though greeting lost brothers, but their faces do not smile. No. These are faces of agony.[/ic]
The Limsyphhix are an old race, by come accounts older than all other beasts of the earth, and their essence lies in flame. But in the coldness of the modern earth, there is no heat of such tenacity to sustain them. Thus, their bodies are but ossified shells, and they dwell in perpetual misery in places far removed from mortal sight.
They no longer care for fire, for there is no flame that can do anything but further embitter them to their cold fate. Their new cause is in tasting the passions of others, passions they experience through arresting mortal forms. But their bitterness transcends their lust, and so no joy lasts them. Within minutes of indulgence all food tastes of ash, the most heavenly coitus becomes a hellish agony, the sweetest symphony is a dissonant cacophony. Thus they fall quickly again into despair, and they rail against the world and their own newfound flesh. For this reason they are often encountered with vessels brutalised and maimed, victims of their own contempt, until they find a more suiting host (which will last no longer than the previous).
Only evidence of so-called "juvenile" Hands exist. If there are greater ones (and it is believed there are) then all accounts of their existence and nature are apocryphal. As for the juveniles, their appearance varies, but their most common form is best likened to a pale pyramidal "head" nearly a foot wide, with five long protuberances akin to spider legs wriggling at its base (thus the resemblance to a hand, and the subsequent euphemism). They move by means of levitation, but their motions are clumsy and misguided, as though depending on some unseen current that does not entirely agree with their own designs. When seeking a host, they "caress" it with their "fingers", then pierce it violently with either "nails" or head point, wriggling their way inside and sealing shut the wound. It is a horrid sight, for they are often as large as their host and it would seem impossible for them to enter. When they free themselves, it is a gruesome exit that leaves the vessel an unrecognisable, bloody mess (lest they be properly exorcised by someone knowledgeable in such things.
They are technically "ghosts" - they can manifest physically, but when corporeal they must move about on their legs (this they do slowly), and cannot fly. Physical form only serves them in possession; they can only enter a host when corporeal, though they do not need to maintain this once the possession is complete.
[ooc]I'm not sure what purpose could be contrived for the Stealers. Their motivations are inherently simple - shortsighted, utterly destructive hedonism. However, if one could stand to occupy the same host for an extended period of time, their destructive effects could be more subtle, perhaps not even occurring for weeks through possible years, when their discontent finally becomes too much to bear and they tear apart everything they have created.
Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering, I based them on the destructive power of envy.[/ooc]
The Chaos Taint
There is an old story that there was one original being (JHVH, Brahman, Ymir, Nyx). He, she, or it grew lonely. Out of this loneliness comes sentient life. The first form of sentient life is always powerful: Gods, Angels, Titans, Jotuns. There is always a first war (the Fall of Lucifer, the Titans vs. the Gods) and a first murder (Cain and Abel, Kronus slaying Uranus, Ymir being dismemembered).
These symbols are universal because they are true, but they must be disguised in symbolic form because the full truth can not be made plain. There are beings beyond our reach. They can do things we can't. Strife and bloodshed are our inheritance.
Some of us reach out to these beings and receive an answer: wizards, witches, prophets, kabalists, shamans, drug fiends, and mad men. Sometimes this answer isn't pleasant. At least one of these beings, call them gods to save time, is inimical to this universe. He, she, it, or them, call it Thanatos, seeks to tear everything down.
Society, government, law, religion all are created to reign in our impulse to bloodshed and strife, to preserve as much of this universe as we can. Thanatos occasionally hears the plea of some would-be wizard. Thanatos grants him power, power tainted with bloodshed and strife. The Wizard gets what he wants but always at a cost to someone else. He recieves wealth, usually as an ineritance or life-insurance pay-off. He recieves love but at the cost of the object of his desire's sanity. His enemies are destroyed, that one's free.
The Wizard eventually has more and more enemies to smite. It starts small, with the annoying dog that yaps all night. Then it grows, the cop that writes him a traffic ticket. Eventually the Wizard knows he has a network of enemies plotting against him.
@Salacious, wickedly gruesome. I may use that, or something very similar.
@khyron, it's an interesting story and observation. Much as I like it, it's not quite what I'm looking for. That being the case, I encourage you to use it elsewhere, since it is well done.
I actually already have Thanatos (and most other gods and spirits including Cronus, Lucifer, and etc.) as characters in my setting. That's also where the names for Yaldabaoth and his chiefs come from.
Epic Meepo, Tybalt, DeeL, Salacious Angel, Bill Volk, Xeviat, khyron, and any others I miss, thanks for the contributions. If you don't already have one, help yourself to a Kishar badge:
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Quote from: Phoenix Knight@khyron, it's an interesting story and observation. Much as I like it, it's not quite what I'm looking for. That being the case, I encourage you to use it elsewhere, since it is well done.
I actually already have Thanatos (and most other gods and spirits including Cronus, Lucifer, and etc.) as characters in my setting. That's also where the names for Yaldabaoth and his chiefs come from.
Epic Meepo, Tybalt, DeeL, Salacious Angel, Bill Volk, Xeviat, khyron, and any others I miss, thanks for the contributions. If you don't already have one, help yourself to a Kishar badge:
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Thanks for the badge.
The idea started loosely as something from my world, (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?24955.last) The Cosmic Joke, a sentient disease or possessing entity created by Lucifer, Ssendam, and Ygorl my world's foremost CN powers. It's designed to undermine Law in a cosmic sort of sense.
It seemed like it could be scary if worded right, but I don't think I got everything across properly. I am a bit sleep-deprived, probably.
I felt that monsters of more normal sorts were a bit done already, especially considering that the thread already had a tentacled horror.
Of all of these, I especially like Epic Meepo's. I've been looking for a way to incorporate an atropal scion into a pantheon, and Phage is classic.
Quote from: DeeLOf all of these, I especially like Epic Meepo's. I've been looking for a way to incorporate an atropal scion into a pantheon, and Phage is classic.
If you especially want it, it's fine with me for you to grab it. I've gotten so many great ideas here, I don't know if I can use all of them anyway. Though I kind of like the name a lot, the whole "I'm a disease" motif ;) And the trapped within a planet. In my case, I have to modify it anyway to tie it to the Old Ones and not the earth Goddess.
Phoenix, if I use Phage, I'll be using the Earth Goddess concept, but changing the location from the planet's core to the depths of a mountain. I'm kind of committed to adversaries with which PCs can contend, even if they do have to be epic level.
I've been thinking about the lokar, and how they might become a kind of pantheon of monstrosity all on their own. I don't want to gum up your thread, so I'll be starting one of my own, suitable for use in virtually any campaign with horror elements. Feel free to swipe or contribute as you will.
While I might contribute, I probably won't swipe. Since I'm eventually hoping to publish, I would be hesitant to use material in use by others.
However, I do like horror, so I will definitely be checking out the thread. And it might spark new ideas for myself, anyway.
Thanks to everyone that helped with this. The fruits are up (http://www.thecbg.org/settings/137/index.php?page=cosmology/outer)!
I didn't use the lokar, since DeeL has got that entire lokar pantheon going, but I recommend everyone check it his thread on them.
I plan to use something along the lines of SA's Limsyphhix as a kind of ghost. They fit quite well with the idea of Kishar as a cyclically destroyed world - they could be shades from some distant Iteration.
Most of the other ideas were incorporated as members of the Elohim (the six chiefs), though I kept the original names for the chiefs, not the ones provided by those giving the ideas (I hope no one minds ;))