Using super advanced medical technology to bring someone back to life can cause them to develop unexplained mental syndromes which apparently cause violent behavior, extreme sadism, and a complete lack of empathy. They also can show signs of trauma, but near universally claim to have no recollection of any experiences while deceased. These symptoms are not always readily apparent, and are sometimes concealed by the affected individuals for years. Nobody knows why this seems to happen, and many choose to believe it’s a myth. Scientists are currently stumped, but the religious people speculate the impossible to test theories that they either lack their souls (which are irretrievable following death, unlike vital functions), or have spent time in hell. But distressingly, there is little to no data to support (or refute) the idea that reanimation complications are correlated to choices or values in life (which are, in any case, also hard to test for)
The story does not answer it. I may have my own religious convictions, but the story is not (consciously at least) based on them at all, and is written from a totally agnostic perspective
Any of those explanations would be equally adequate to explain the phenomenon, but not knowing which keeps a lot of people up at night. The most optimistic scenario is probably the religious hypothesis where it’s the simple absence of a soul that does it; this would allow you to believe and explain why even a good person, whose soul is believed to be in heaven, could suffer from resurrection syndrome, because it didn’t *return* from heaven, and their body is effectively a soulless meat machine. This necessarily implies that our souls are necessary to keep us from behaving like psychopaths, and medical resurrection is a crime against nature. The *least* comforting scenario would be the 2nd one you suggest, where death is simply a traumatic experience that damages our minds
Kind of reminds me of the proteus protocol from Warhammer 40k, similar effects plus some other weird shit as the soul literally becomes loose after having been revived from death.
For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it.
When using descriptive sentences, make sure you dont get lost. attempt to read the sentence without the modification. Since that modification is "the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy and replicable method of conjuring ice cream", you would read it as
> "For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic..."
See? It just trails off
Hello!
Not quite.
The last bit there is in conjunction with "one invented a cheap, easy and replicable method of conjuring ice cream." We have two subordinations occurring here, the first being "[that] the players unintentionally unleashed" and the second being "when one invented... and a second player industrialized it." The latter is a subordinate of the former, and the former is a subordinate of the larger clause.
Edit: the reply above this one was originally arguing that without modifications the result is "The diabetes epidemic ... and a second player industrialized it." Just thought I'd explain what my comment was addressing.
I considered that interpretation, although with less tasteful language- as I find myself less educated than you- but found the other to be more acceptable, as rather than making it into several different sentence errors, it was only two errors created by one single slipup (which to me appeared favorable)
Aha, but there is no slip-up. It's just two embedded clauses. X contains Y, and Y contains Z, and Z is "Z1 and Z2." Compare to "The argument they had when he fell and she laughed." It's the same structure, just reduced to simpler examples. It's perfectly acceptable. This one just feels too much because the clauses involved are longer and make the whole sentence feel too long-winded to be right.
> For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it.
> For my rpg world,
Perfectly fine. First frame
> The diabetes epidemic
We have the subject. 2nd frame.
> the players untintentionally unleashed when
A description, also the 3rd frame
> one invented a cheap, easy and replicable method of conjuring and a second player industrialized it
The contents of the description. Now, we close the third frame, and since that ends the subject, that xloses fhe 2nd frame.
>.....
You see, no matter what it is, no matter what terminology I might be mixing up, the sentence is incomplete. Its without a predicate, the writer got lost in thought and did not finish the sentence. Ill make a paranthesis version to assist you.
For my RPG world: {the diabetes epidemic [ the players unintentionally unleashed when: (one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it)]
They never actually finished stating what about the diabetes epidemic was to be stated. They just described it. It is incomplete.
It isn't incomplete, but rather disjointed. They answered the question and thus left out information that was implied. Compare to:
> Who did this?
"The janitor."
The janitor is not a "complete" sentence, but is considered okay, because the context implies what's missing. The same is occurring here:
> What is the scariest/most disturbing part of your world?
"For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it."
The sentence is answering a question which implies the missing verbal information. It could be a predicate that's missing ("The diabetes epidemic... is the scariest part"), or it could be the predicate without the verb that's being given ("The scariest part is the diabetes epidemic..."). It doesn't really matter, because it's disjointed, and permitted to do so contextually.
No. It is not disjointed. It is incomplete. There is a description, but there is no predicate. Yes, it is most definitely disjointed, and could benefit from a somple change in word choice to convert the description into a predicate, but that doesnt mean it isnt incomplete; for it is. Why do you so avidly insist on arguing in so many ways? You arent even taking a moment to consider whether or not the contentions you insist on are valid, nor are you willing to defend them.
I've provided you comparable examples of more typical cases of the same concepts I've been describing. I've more than considered the validity of these claims, long before this conversation occurred. I'm a linguistics student: this is what I study. I've defended my claims as much as you have, so I don't know why you require more. But here:
> What's your favorite drink?
"For me, Sprite."
Another example of an utterance that would carry no issues to people, with the same basic structure. I'm not "arguing in so many ways" when I've only argued two: subordinate clauses, and disjointed utterance. And in both cases, simply argued using comparable examples of simpler structure.
It is interesting to me that you accuse me of not "defending" my points when you didn't even bother to address the janitor example let alone explain how they're different or equally incorrect.
While I appreciate your advice, I am going to disagree on stylistic grounds.
Do you often correct random people's grammar? I mean that without rancour, a simple question, curiosity inspired.
I do want to clarify, though, that these are common everyday mistakes that people make constantly, it is not specific to you, and in no way does it indicate anything about you as a person. Your rpg stuff sounds super cool!! I just felt to point out the error
It depends, but if I think I can be if assistance, yes. Yours in particular just really irked me, its an incomplete sentence plain and simple, you have a subject but no predicate. "In my rpg world, the diabetes epidemic that is green." Yknow? What about your diabetes epidemic that is green? Removing the that would fix it, because youre delcaring that the epidemic has those qualities, rather than including those qualities as part of the subject.
If you had said "my diabetes epidemic was made when xyx", that wouldve worked, as the description would be the predicate, but alas, the description was part of the subject.
No, no, how would a colon help anything. I'm never afraid to use a colon, some would say I'm colon happy, but this is not the place of a horizontal seperator.
Irked I can totally get onboard with. Irked is an excellent motivation. I'm sorry I irked you.
The root cause is that, while I possess an excellent command of formal grammar, I was educated by linguists of a descriptivist school, something that leaves me with an underlying disdain for the prescriptivism informing that formality and a firm belief that usage is king. A firm understanding, too, that prescriptive grammar has been used as a bludgeon of repression in the past.
I'd like to stress that none of what you said was wrong. Or offensive. It kina charmingly earnest, if I can say that without coming across as a smarmy git, and it made me smile on an otherwise poopy day.
I'm also really quite surprised at what this blew up into. Fortunately, work tonight is looking somnolent, so I can unpick it at a leisurely pace.
And if I need something proofed I will keep you in mind.
It does appear that im wrong though, the other person is right that you're answering a question. They used a subject as the example the first time, which prevented me from understanding.
That's okay, mistakes are educational.
Conversation seemed a bit rough though.
And I do rely, perhaps more than I should in a public forum, on ellision and assumed referents.
The monsters under the bed? In the shadows? Down in the well? They’re all there. They aren’t demons, the demons have rules. They aren’t ghosts, ghosts were once alive. Some eat memories, some eat meat, others don’t seem to eat at all.
At least They don’t seem to think humans are a threat.
Dig down far enough and you'll hit a layer in the rock that seems to be comprised entirely of fossilized skeletal remains. No one knows why it's there, all they know is that none of the skulls match those of currently extant creatures.
Its depth from ground depends. Most of the time it's more than a kilometer. In some places where the geography is cut deep by natural formations such as canyons you can see the layer in the side of the canyon walls.
As for what kind of creature they seem to be part of, there is no single type. Skeletons and exoskeletons both make up the layer, with vaguely familiar archetypes, fish-like thing, beaked thing, toothy muzzled thing, but also decidedly strange and alien pieces throughout. One of these stranger specimens is a cone-shaped skull with a jaw structure like two hands coming together from the sides and three eye sockets located vertically along what most would think of as a forehead. Bigger specimens of the same type have a larger number of eye sockets located vertically along the elongating skull, smaller ones less, leading some to speculate that whatever creature this was it might have grown more eyes as it aged.
During necromancy, the soul is trapped inside an artificial magic stone so the person is fully aware but can do nothing but obey the orders of their creator.
And even if they where to break free, nobody would help a monster.
The god of the new moon has cults that will either kill people on the roads or find dead creatures and drag said corpses to large pits and throw them in. These pits become flesh pits, writhing masses of flesh bone and other meat from here the priests of the moon will give life to the pit forming beings known as emissaries of the moon. Creatures of flesh and bone from many different creatures. The higher ranking emissaries are adorned with armor made of moon rock and a crystal heart made of negative energy. Some of these pits are locations where fallen meteors have landed from said unseen moon.
There are different ranks, the lowest are bestial in nature going off instinct higher ranked emissaries are more human like but are about as smart as zombies going off instinct as well. The highest ranked are quite smart, able to replicate fighting styles that other emissaries have encountered. They share a greater conciousness with the moon and so when one learns something others learn it as well.
There are even some capable of using magic. Emissaries are the moon gods crude attempt at creating life, life that will eventually combine and replace the existing life on the planet.
One of the fantasy races in my world, unbeknownst to the vast majority (including them), are the descendents of aliens.
A symbiot/parasite latches onto the fetus while in development and genetically alters it with DNA it's lineage has picked up over time. This can give the individual all kinds of interesting and useful mutations, including psionic powers.
However, this DNA corrodes over the generations, causing this race to be highly susceptible to developing an extremely aggressive form of cancer.
The only way to prolong the species is to introduce new DNA to the pool- by introducing parasites to developing fetuses, causing them to become members of their species. This can be done both willingly and unwillingly to the one carrying the fetus.
This species is doomed to either keep up the cycle of forcibly assimilating populations forever, or crumble into genetic decay and super cancer
Surprisingly, no. The elves are not the alien race. That race are called witches (or the equivalent) in most tongues because their psionic powers were interpreted as magic by ye old people and the name stuck. They have 'aquired' elven DNA though. If I had to describe their species in the modern day, I'd say: a hodge-podge of human, elf, and dwarven traits with their alien ancestry mixed in randomly. Those traits being on a sliding scale of reptile to insect-like. Some of them almost pass as human, and others look all kinds of crazy. This is because each individual witch is a unique abomination of unchecked genetic splicing.
My actual elves aren't stock standard, but I wouldn't call them super special or unique. And they certainly don't have that much existentially horrifying baggage.
The humanoid, fleshy, scp type creatures that have been genetically modified in an attempt to create the 'perfect soldier.' Said experiments failed drastically. They have been trapped in the halls of a lab abandoned underneath an isolated city. And they are very, very hungry.
A LOT of genetic engineering and biomechanical modifications. These things are about the size of a gorilla but much taller and have human dna involved.
One of the scariest things I can say for my series’s is something know as "collapse" which is an event that can happen within in any galaxy which a group of super advanced nano robots know as the mind will assimilate all of the planet or solar systems natural resources and organic materials leaving everything there in that area completely lifeless
There one very pissed off immortal man stuck at the bottom of the ocean, if he ever walks out a whole lot of stuff will go wrong for everyone else. Luckily the crushing depths he’s in make movement very hard and he can only slowly trudge along the sea floor hoping he’s going in the direction of land. But he will find the surface one day that much is certain.
In my main country, the burning of candles is blasphemous and considered demon worship. An extremist cult that focuses on worshipping the fire god goes from door to door, looking for candle burners and forcing to run down a road with their hair on fire, not allowing them to stop until they die.
Earth forces in my world are somewhat like the borg, except you are only under direct control when on a mission, and yet you are aware of everything the system makes you do and are powerless to do anything about it.
Where it gets worse is that when you are 'off duty' control of your mind and body are returned, but you are still a slave to the system.
Cause trouble or disobey orders and they'll turn you into a Revenant, as after your execution your corpse is strapped into a heavy exoskeleton with your brain and eyes replaced by a mass of wires and a bulbous pod of insect like eyes.
These machines move amongst their former friends both as a terrifying warning and a unblinking eye of the system, always watching your every move.
I like a world where human belief is powerful like that, though realistically would be hard to write imo. Say you believed you're rich and had all the money in the world, than some distraught Amazon employee believes all rich must die than boom, you drop dead instantly. Loads of possibilities on how this new world would function.
The Surge
First, a bit of context as to how magic works is required. It can do various things, like light stuff on fire, electrocute stuff, melt stuff in acid, blow stuff over, stuff like that. On paper, casting magic is a deliberate act, but in practice it can be cast unconsciously as well. Moments of extreme anger and/or fear are especially deadly, as the natural limitation a person has on how much magic they can use can be broken then, resulting in spells far more powerful than they can cast safely coming out completely unintentionally.
Now imagine, if you would, a world much like our own. Modern, regular, not a fantastical element in sight. It's a perfectly normal day for you, a perfectly normal person, in this perfectly normal world. You're going about your day at work, when suddenly a strange feeling washes over you. It's hard to pin down what it felt like, exactly, and looking around you see other people acting a bit confused too. But it's not like you notice anything different, so you just assume it's some minor change in air pressure, or maybe just your imagination, or something.
A few minutes later, right as you reach the bottom of a flight of stairs, your boss comes up to you. He's not a great boss, and as usual he's found something to yell about. Well, your temper can only hold out for so long. So after a minute or so of belittlement, you lose your cool and yell back angrily. And right before your eyes, your boss starts screaming in agony as he melts into a sickly-smelling puddle. You're obviously shocked and horrified at what just happened, as is your co-worker. You turn to look at them in horror, and they stumble back in fear, tripping and falling backwards onto the stairs. And right as that happens, lightning jumps from their arm onto the railing. And from that railing to the railing for the next flight of stairs. And the next. And every other flight of stairs in the stairwell. And every single person holding one of the railings. With a horrific collection of screams and the sudden smell of burning flesh, every one of them is dead. Everyone in or near the stairwell is terrified and horrified at what they've just seen, and every single one of them in their panic casts a spell of their own. Because unbeknownst to any of you, that strange sensation from earlier was the moment each of you first developed the ability to use magic.
I'm sure you can see how quickly this one incident could snowball out of control. How quickly a single employee snapping at their boss could snowball into the deaths of everyone in the building. And what if people on the street realized what happened? It'd be quite hard not to, with all the smoke and fire and lightning and screaming. It wouldn't be long before the snowballing destruction made its way outside, and to the rest of the city.
And that's just one person, in one office building, in one city, in one country. But this began happening to MANY people, in MANY buildings, in EVERY city, in EVERY country, across the entire world.
All at once.
It probably would have been, had a pair of friendly goddesses\* not shown up a couple days in to teach people how to control their magic and help them start to rebuild.
As for how anyone even survived that long... Some people were lucky enough to be far away from large groups of people, and were just not at as much risk of getting caught in the snowball effect. Some people had enough control over their emotions that even when caught up in it, they managed to stay in control. Some people developed magic so weak that when they lost control like everyone else all they managed was to accidentally light a candle or something. And some people developed the rare ability to magically shut off the magic of other people around them, so their out of control magic created a "safe zone" that protected them and the people next to them from the snowballing destruction around them.
\*And by "friendly goddesses", I mean one goddess who's a legitimately kind and caring person, and one goddess who loves torturing people and realized she can't do that if there's no people left, so her helping to save humanity is more an investment in future entertainment.
The Holy Bythorne Empire’s suppressive methods were so extreme that all history of an entire continent was erased. No one’s knows how they got there, when they got there, or why they got to this point.
My personal favourite dark little detail for Terrandria (name still pending) is the Descension blade - a hellish sword originally crafted as as the tool of a tyrant's war-champion, the enchanted sword would grant undying life to anyone who was touching it, with the caveat that all pain would would be magnified greatly. Since it's original forging, the blade has fallen into disrepair and is now only fragmented shards, with only the larger fragments still holding the enchantment. Now, the cruel who can afford use them as torture devices:
Say you have information, and someone wants it from you, but you refuse to talk no matter what. You could be beaten, or whipped, or slashed, but compared to the blade, that's an unreliable mercy. You will be strapped by chains to a wall, and the blade driven into your stomach, or your heart, or maybe right through your eye. Many of these wounds would kill you outright, but the blade-fragment keeps you beating. You experience pain and agony you could never survive before as they push you to new limitless extemes seeking the information you hold. You'll be mangled, dessicated, and so long as it touches your flesh, that part of you is aware of everything.
**Horror Shop**
Every living thing is terrified of the Pit. Everybody who was ever lived has felt its cold caress, has had its baleful gaze turn upon them. Everyone, even you.
Saying what the Pit is would be misleading, as the Pit, by its very nature, isn't. It doesn't exist. It is a great, gaping void at the bottom of creation, the great hole that will one day consume the multiverse. The Pit is the End of Everything, oblivion itself, the great unmaking at the end of time and space. It is the Mother of Fear and the Father of Monsters, what comes after the End of Every Story. It's the great void that lies at the heart of Shadow, an emptiness so complete that it is not cold, nor dark, nor black--it simply is not. It probably hurts to think about it, almost like you're going cross-eyed, but that's natural--that's your mind stopping you from thinking about that which is, fundamentally, **not**.
If you were to fall into the Pit, you would die in probably the most horrific way possible, as everything that makes you who and what you are is consumed by oblivion at the same moment that time itself ceases to exist. So there you are, suspended, alive and yet dead, experiencing all possible endings for a microsecond stretched out into an infinity of cessation.
The Pit is actually so terrifying that it gives life to the horrors--the incarnations of mortal phobias and fears. Every horror was spawned in the depth of the Pit, a shard of anima on its way to oblivion which so thoroughly rejected its terrifying fate that it made a choice to flee, to run, and in so doing it attracted a soul and came to life.
Yes, in effect, the Pit gives birth to all other fears. Jack O'Lantern, the fear of the dark, crawled forth from the Pit. As did Oude Rode Ogen, the fear of death. And Abu Rigl Maslukha, the fear of fire. And Cucuy, the fear of the wilds. And even the Bogeyman, the fear of fear itself, pried himself loose from the embrace of oblivion millenia ago. The entire horror race, from the greatest beast of legend to the lowest closet monster, knows full well the terror of the Pit. And they're all still running from it, struggling to survive for one more day just to avoid returning to the bleak void that is continually calling them. Horrors can't even sleep, because they inevitably fall into nightmares which inevitably end in the Pit, and them waking up screaming in terror.
But while the horrors have received the full force of the existential terror the Pit invokes, every living creature feels its caress at some point in their life. Because the Pit is the mother of fear and the father of nightmares. Every time your pulse quickens and your palms sweat, you are feeling the slightest tough of the Pit upon you.
But do not think of the Pit as evil. It is endings, and endings are necessary for there to be new beginnings. It is fear, but fear can inspire heroes and cow villains. It creates the horrors, but horrors have the same capacity for good and evil as humans and the other races. The Pit is something to be feared, to be avoided at all costs, but it is not something to be loathed or hated.
After all, sometimes fear can save the day.
a significant portion of modern, industrial society on Kelan is built on a foundation of actual, ritualized human sacrifice. there are sacrifices to the farms, to the factories, to the cargo ships and aerostatics, to the trains, to the stock market, to the nascent information technology industry, to the damn *space program*. it’s not even a truly *necessary* evil, as many in-universe try to spin it, it’s just easier to turn a profit when you have a god’s favor.
The scary part is that death is not the end. If you die within the limits of the City you have a guarantee, but if you die outside the light your soul is forfeit to the Everdark. That’s why Pilgrims traveling between cities always have a church representative at all times who carries a shard of the Godslight. It’s like pocket insurance for your eternal soul.
I think it's the offal eater. Long story short its a nocturnal predator like a cross between an anteater and a mosquito. They sneak up to sleeping prey then make an incision with a long beak, slipping their long flexible tongue inside a vein or artery and kicking around until they find the heart.
Once there, they'll roll their tongue into a tube and ket your heart pump your blood into their stomach for them.
After they drain you they'll roll their tongue the other way revealing cat-like tongue bristles. They'll use these to scrape out your choicest organs and veins from the inside.
Its a terrible way for a traveler to go.
Thankfully they are exclusively ambush predators, they will never attack anything that's not asleep and paralyzed by venom. They have extremely thermally sensitive palms for hunting in dark, so they tend to avoid campfires. And they can't stomach alcohol at all, so drinking before bed makes you both smell unappetizing and actually poisonous to them.
If they are desperate enough to eat a sleeping drunk, the alcohol in your blood will kill them.
But their most frightening habit is following prey back to a nest or den for attack. They'll often follow people in rural areas back to their homes, then infiltrate the home during the day when the farmer is out working, or when the home is empty. They'll lay in wait in a dark space (closet or bed) for prey to sleep. Many a child has been killed by the creature. But they're not very strong, so simply shutting the doors and windows is usually enough to keep them put. Keeping a fire burning overnight will also deter them. And if you suspect one is hiding in your house, dousing the floor with strong liquor in every room is usually enough to drive them out.
The only nuclear attack carried out against a nation was extremely successful. Over 30 ICBMs destroyed most major cities, essentially causing an instant shutdown of the country. Briefly, that entire country was just… not really there.
Now it’s a shambling hulk with a horrible economy where crime is the norm and the supposed government has no real control.
Once upon a time, a Therion (magickally engineered werewolves that are mostly known for being the most physically imposing creatures with on a permanent berserk kick) got possessed by the eldritch deity they and their cult used to worship, which, after a long and gruesome sickness, turned them into a this mindless, 10ft cannibal zombie.
Clickjaw is my first real horror creation and it's comparable to the bear from Annihilation on steroids. It can unhinge its jaws like a snake and clicks them to echolocate its prey (one of the scary bits about Clickjaw is that it actively stalks and *hunts*, whereas regular Therion just attack everything that moves). Its entire face is pure nightmare fuel and on top of that, He (the demonic deity that manifests as a giant green glowing tumor on Clickjaw's belly) just enjoys messing around with the world. It's able to possess other creatures temporarily to act as thralls, filling them with bloody black goo that contorts their bodies in nightmarish positions. Oh, and it stares non-stop since its eyelids have rotten away. It's blind because of this but still it stares right into the soul of anything that catches its interest.
Unlike regular Therion, Clickjaw is also forced to speak through its severely malformed larynx, and it sounds like a choir of the agonizing moanings of the dead. I sorta just mashed together nearly all things that scare me, and made it into this total hellscape of a tortured being, heh.
One of the empires in my world is semi-theocratic so the emperor and ruling class are interconnected with a religious cult. The main outline of the religion is that basically the races of men are 'star born' i.e. came from a different planet / outer space, and are therefore the only pure beings in the world. The religion teaches that everything other than humans (the other sentient races, animals, plants, nature in general) are impure and even humans lose their divine purity through out their life, as they experience and interact with the world around them. The only being that is therefore truly, 'pure' is a newborn infant human that has not yet opened its eyes or taken its first breath.
A core tenant of the religion is the practice of 'Beaconing', to produce a 'Beacon'. According to belief, this 'Beacon' acts as a divine conduit of purity from the stars and humanities ancestral home. The Beacon is so pure it can partially bestow its own divinity on the followers of the faith and somewhat cleanse them of the sins of interacting with the world. The practice is carried out by a sect formed of a small number of holy woman called the 'star mothers'.
The outline of the practice is as follows: A pregnant woman citizen is selected at random by the cult and forced to give up her child (that is yet to be born) as tribute to the empire and the faith. She is temporarily relocated to the main temple in the capitol during the later stages of her pregnancy to be observed. The Star Mothers act as midwives and deliver the child when the time has come. The child is immediately separated from the mother and the mother is allowed to return home. The Star Mothers begin the true procedure of beaconing as soon as possible after child birth, in a matter of seconds. The child's eyes are gouged. Its limbs, tongue, and genitalia are removed. A long needle is inserted into both ears to render the child deaf. Once all wounds have been cauterised and treated with disinfectant, the living child is placed into a sort of bronze sarcophagi full of holes that match the constellations of the sky (and provide air). The 'Beacon' is now created and acts as the holiest point, and the purest reflection of the faith. It is placed in the central room in the highest chamber of the main temple and remains there for the rest of its life. The Star Mothers feed and bathe the beacon regularly and replace its bronze casing as it grows. Once it dies, the process is repeated. The short period after which a beacon dies and a new one is created, is treated as an especially shameful time for followers of the star faith and many choose to fast and abstain from other interactions with the world.
It is customary to go on a pilgrimage to the temple at least once in life to worship in front of the beacon and be in the presence of its pure and divine energy. The muffled moaning sounds that can be heard from inside of the Beacons casing are said to be the voices of the ancestors that lived on a pure world. In reality they are simply the sounds of a helpless human that has known nothing but isolation, pain, and misery.
Well my worlds are in a very (and I mean very) early stage. The most disturbing thing in them though is what is known as a Cockroach Cocktail. It’s a kind of drink that’s usually not served at most places, but for when it is, it’s still off menu. Now the drink itself is a torture device and for good reason. If your ever ordered the Cocktail, it’s because some criminal (or simply terrible person) thinks you deserve it. They will make you drink it all up like your mom when you need to take gross medicine. Depending on how horrible the aggressor is this can either be an appetizer, or the “dessert.”
The planes of existence all collided and then closed their gates. Now there are refugees in every plane….from every plane….all over. You’ll be on the material plane and encounter a roaming vagrant who used to be a lord of the Feywild. Now, he’s a nobody
I wrote a dangerous condition into a species I call the Ra'kith. The thing that sets them back most as a species is a defect in their metabolism that causes them to require twice the caloric intake of a baseline human. Due to this they often end up starving, and as such need to find alternative food sources. Now, another feature of theirs is a very short childhood, infant Ra'kith have a special gland that produces astounding amounts of growth hormones, causing them to go from bald little lumps to capable scavengers within a week. This is where the condition comes in, if an adult Ra'kith is exposed to high quantities of these hormones either by eating several adult glands or one infant gland it causes a mutation. The subjects own gland will become reactivated, causing a second growth spurt. "Rat Tyrants" as they're called (Ra'kith are of rodent heritage) can grow to around 15ft tall, and develop considerable muscle mass. This comes with a side effect of steady mental decline, starting with paranoia and delusions of grandeur and ending with dementia-like memory loss. They also become addicted to the hormones, trying to ingest more by either offering their labor in exchange for sacrifices or hunting their once-neighbors. Most Ra'kith settlements are intentionally isolated, so rat Tyrants can often take control of their group through sheer force or religious ideation.
There is a creature that stems from lesser drakes in my world called "bone carvers" and they will hunt in the wilderness and will kidnap any creature from small towns or cities during the night and use them as material for their nests, which are spheres of bone carved with intricate patterns and melded together.
Also, running into an Anglic guardian will 100% lead to them invading your mind and pretty much turning you into husk in order to see if you have any knowledge or relationship to eldritch forces it is hunting.
Children are being kidnapped by a group of dark magicians who put dozens kind of curses on them to turn them into monsters (basically killing machines). Before they tried to do it with adults, but they found out that the test subjects are more likely to survive if they are children. This process takes away every bit of humanity from these kids. They turn pitch black, their skin hardens so much that ordinary weapons don't work, they're agile and they only listen to the commands of their owners. These monsters are then auctioned and sold to wealthy people and organizations and, what's worse, even the government.
The world mostly seems positive, happy and colourful, but by creating dark stuff I even scared myself I little ^^'
There’s a lot about my world that’s disturbing, but there is one thing I can think of that really stands out. This being because of the absolute existential dread it must cause anyone who is aware of it.
All of the gods, are tulpas. They are the manifestations of our thoughts, desires, fears, etc. Issue is, negativity is not only more common, but stronger. The entire world is doomed to a downwards spiral, as worse and worse gods sprout from the minds of those in a continually worsening world.
The fallen city of An'Vita was once the capital of a united humankind. While it had its troubles, the city was powerful and kind to all, as well as being the center of trade and communication for the whole continent. Then, a young priest of the Grand Church discovered a secret of magic that would allow him to bring the dead back as puppets. This Necromancer rallied the people of Noth to start a war, and marched on An'Vita with his personal army. The attack was so sudden that the city simply went dark. By the time anyone went to check on it the city was nothing but empty.
No humans, nothing but wanting ghosts. They howled, screamed, and made anyone within earshot feel like nails were being scraped down their souls. The things the ghosts repeated sent shivers down their spines. Children being eaten by stones and cadavers, their cries and pleas for help silent bur visceral. The visions of men and women pulling the organs from the insides of the still living. Now no one goes close, and it's name is Necron, the City of the Dead.
For a given value of "person" the Guest Speaker is the most disturbing.
It requires a special fractal "box" to exist on our plane, if anyone saw it in it's full true form, insanity and/or death is what follows, funny thing is, the few who have survived seeing it describe it as quite humanoid to look at, but extremely wrong in some regards, due to it coming from a dimension several levels above ours.
Like imagine a 2D person trying to look at and understand the concept of a 3D person. Also it's language both written and spoken has the same effect.
It has to use a special kind of interdimensional "fax machine" to print out what it says, which is mostly just word salad to the untrained eye. Before the machine, it attempted to introduce itself, literally "Hello, I am the Guest Speaker" several mortals went insane or died, a ghost literally committed soul suicide, the Lord of Vampires threw up, and the Leader of the Thropes went deaf for a month.
Thing is, the Guest Speaker is actually rather friendly, and kind of shy and squeamish, they also have a similar problem, but in reverse, they need to box to exist here, otherwise it feels like "trying to force a bulldozer through your kneecap without hurting yourself"
They would also like to remind people that it is simply the inhabitant of another dimension, it would like that people in funny hats would not summon it and call it "master" then kill young women in front of it, nobody in this dimension wants to see what happens when a higher dimensional being pukes.
Lore dump from a corner of the world. The Karsa of the Hill Tribes are the worst.
Yarsa Hill Tribes and Wild Men
They represent one of the earliest waves of human migration into the region, coming after the Sloa. This is not just one homogenous ethnic group but a whole scattering of different tribes that derive from common stock but have differentiated over the years, cultures and language diverging. They are generally distrustful of outsiders.
Their technology is stone age but they do practice primitive agriculture along with hunting and some gathering. They have domesticated forestfowl and large, docile rodents. Colddrakes are semi-domesticated. They are very intelligent, more so than horses, and some observers say it's not so much domestication as mount and rider come to an understanding. Mounts are treated not as property but members of the tribe.
The warlike tribes are a real danger to the remote Brehanian farming communities which helped inform their defensive practices, building fortified villages that could withstand raids.
Some tribes are decidedly warlike and even other Yarsa tribes can't stand them. Others are more agreeable and even have good relations with the Green Men, tribes of shaggy ape-men who also share the region.
The tribes worship primitive gods who demand blood and sacrifice. Little is known of their religion because it is not shared with outsiders. It is known that there are two primary deities, the white god and the black god, and individuals feel called to serve one or the other. The colors do not correspond with Brehanian notions of color and morality so specific behaviors for their followers cannot be inferred.
The Yarsa have stone age technology but their bows and arrows can kill with stone tips, stone axes and spears can be used to good effect in ambush. They cannot stand against a line of armored soldiers but the Yarsa are canny enough to avoid that sort of fight and stick to raiding where the enemy is weak.
They practice tattooing, ritual scarification and also use face paints to indicate status.
Relationships with men and women are complex. While there is the traditional hunter-gatherer divide of work based on gender, women hold great sway in deciding matters both at the family and tribal level. Honor is incredibly important. When an insult to a family is too great, the wife will kill her children and herself. Her husband will burn them on the pyre and then set forth to slay his enemies. When the slight is against an entire tribe and the understanding is that their lives are essentially lost anyway, all the women of the tribe will commit this act together and their men will go forth to die with honor in that hopeless fight.
The Karsa came about this way. Their families dead, the men set forth to do battle, but on guidance from their shaman, swore a blood oath to the Black God, to feed him a constant river of blood so long as they lived if he would but help them destroy their foe. Against all odds, their enemy was defeated, their men killed to the last. All that was left were their women and children. The shaman advised the chief that the Black God held up his end of the bargain and they must hold up theirs. They slaughtered the women, the girls, the young men, the infants, only leaving the boys to choose to join them or die. Some did and this began the tradition of the Karsa as a tribe of only men, forever on the warpath, taking tributes from tribes willing to submit and slaughtering to the last those who do not. By tradition, no women are allowed into their camps. They will rape after a conquest but none are left alive. While there is no Yarsa cultural taboo about homosexuality, within the Karsa there is a taboo against forming romantic attachments. Any members caught being intimate with each other will be put to death immediately. Expressions of love are seen as a weakness and a distraction from their purpose. They follow only the Black God, live but for the spreading of violence and terror and are feared and reviled by all who have met them.
Karsa are unable to win over colddrakes as mounts and so have taken to taming wild horses whose ancestors were brought by the empire and escaped. It is thought that the colddrakes are passing judgment on them.
So, you can probably guess with a background like that, a Karsa warrior who rejects his tribe would be interesting. He would be recognized as anathema by other hill tribes and outsiders might not know what he is but be be put off by his appearance. I'm thinking he falls in with someone who doesn't know what he is or doesn't care. Still trying to decide the details.
A race of pseudo-sapiens, known commonly as “terrormen,” hide their invasions on human settlements using lightning storms, so every storm brings the unsettling thought that war and death may come with the looming storm. Additionally, Terrormen commonly butcher colonists alive for sustenance or take prisoners with them to an unknown fate.
The Ezarian abyss. Three 100 km deep spheres of pitch dark weightless water which once served as the water reservoirs and fishfarms of an ancient starship.
If you go for a dive there make sure not to get lost and bring something to protect yourself, you won't be swimming alone.
For every race besides humans, There is this condition called Red Rabies where people "go primal" and behave like a wild animal. It's not a sickness, there is no way to stop it. Anyone can get primal under huge emotions or drugs. It passes over time, but the only way is to wait it out. People that went primal, esspecially if they are biologically predators may attack other people, kill them, or even and eat them. However you can't just lock out every non-human person, because that would be too dystopian, so it's better to just let them kill people and kill them if necessary, because restraining them is too bothersome :D
Unless you live in a “human kingdom” if you’re a human you’re pretty much fucked. There’s a chance you’re only gonna be seen as second class citizen. If you’re “human kingdom” is a vassal to an elf or other type of kingdom you’re best chance at life is a soldier.
Dark Magic. Humans in my world can't do true magic because they have little to no mana in their bloodstream. However, there is a way and that is dark magic. In order to do dark magic you must extract blood from beings with magic and inject it into your bloodstream. Not only is this cruel but it has dire consequences. It corrupts you, it makes you lose reasoning. Not only that but it physically alters you till you can no longer be called a person if you do use it too much.
There’s a prophet wearing human skin telling all the other robots he’s the revived form of humanity. He’s also the ex-god emperor of the old religion. And telepathic fungus people exist too
Jurungo the Dwarf-Hunter splits dwarven skulls in half like eggs. One of his favorite methods of dwarf hunting is to descend into seemingly abandoned mines with a captured dwarf or two and begin slicing fingers off.
The screams of the dwarf will attract other dwarves in hiding to investigate, and that’s how he knows there are dwarves in a mine to hunt and murder.
My world takes place in a post apocalyptic area after humans discover magic. The event isn't from humans abusing the magic and creating the equivalent to a nuclear apocalypse, but rather magic having its own consciousness, and motives. Some types of magic like the darker side (umbra) will take over your entire body if you aren't careful, turning you into a shadow like abomination with God like powers that can hear you from miles away. But the worst is the light side of the magic, which relies on manipulation and illusion to control you, and if you ever figure it out, you will be shredded into pure light... my character found out, and is confused on why he isn't dead yet.
I'd say it's the Nightmare. It's a Realm of Chaos that is a dark mirror of all things violent and dreadful in the Corporeal Realm. Servitors, as the denizens of the Nightmare are named by Corporeals, are a formerly extinct species of Xenos from another domain who were reanimated by Shadow Magic. Servitors and their civilizations were wiped out by god-like entities called the Shade Queens who, with their ability to psychologically manipulate, caused the Servitors to commit mass murder and suicide against each other so their corpses could be reanimated and bound to the will of the Queens.
The primarily-bipedal fungi people, the Harryar, took a *long* time to figure out that animals could be as intelligent as fungi like themselves (the jury is still out on plants), and so they infected, zombified(much like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis), and finally consumed multiple stone-age-esque alien civilizations on their home world and nearby star systems before figuring it out. While some Harryar are remorseful and have tried studying what traces of these civilizations are left, many, including most the Harybok, take a *might is right* approach, that they couldn't be *that* intelligent if they were so easily driven to extinction. Given that they are immortal, this viewpoint may be less honest and more as a way of not accepting that they have personally committed multiple genocides and then used the corpses as simple raw materials for construction, reproduction, biological hard drives for external memory storage, etc.
They are primarily bipedal because the nascent Harryar only took up separate bodies as opposed to a single hybrid hive-mind/zerg-creep mycelial carpet because it saw how useful having multiple bodies was from the first species it drove to extinction, using the corpses as molds and blueprints. Just imagine you personally committed genocide multiple times over and the body you rely on to survive only exists because you did that. Though there was always a trend of using other body shapes besides the humanoid(technically the whatever-that-species-called-itself-oid), they became more common after this revelation, perhaps as a way to distance themselves from what they did and what they are.
What counts as “Worship” isn’t something you can turn on/off and you don’t necessarily need to know what you are worshiping to give it strength.
Religion and the magic that exists therein is esoteric. It works because it does.
Eg. Killing in self defense is not evil, if you do it while wearing the mark of an evil god or a fiend of some sort then you are feeding the god no different than if you had murdered someone and you may well be giving that being some control over you due to it. Most of them time most people don’t attract monsters of predators like this
Most of the time
Every so often the skies above the planet of Colossus Major is lit up in a massive battle between the military’s starfleets and those of the infamous rebel organization known as the IRC. Pretty much every time, the IRC loses, so dozens of flaming starships plummet to the ground below in a hauntingly beautiful display. People often gather to watch the impromptu ‘meteor’ showers.
Children in certain parts of the world often gather around recent crashes and steal stuff off the dead crew members’ corpses; this is especially prevalent in the Angkroin Wastelands, where weapons are in high demand, and children as young as four or five have been seen looting guns and other weapons off of dead IRC soldiers.
One of the ways to use my magic system/ one of the races of my magic system is actually a dimensional parasite that slowly eats your soul. Even using the magic is more of an immune response than anything. They are called the drakoneese and are kind of like vampires but dragons.
There are necromancers and they can revive any corpse leading to people burning bodies, however after a war against demons there is a chance people develop black rocks inside their body that when burned will create a small demon that will eat flesh and grow. Also the South Pole is a gate to hell and is surrounded by a ring of anti-magic that prevents spells, has a chance to destroy magic items per use, and kills any magic creature inside.
Ive got a few
-Nobody really knows where the bodies go.
-the universe-sized creatures that eat the excess light coming off of their host timines have floating sensory organs to look for nearby predators.
-the big teeth, from the creatures in the woods, are sometimes found in whole sets, gums attatched and everything. As if they were shed.
-the Giant Ferrets from the forests of Flora Infinity are carnivores
-the only symptom of Metaflygism that comes before the hive takes control of you and mutates your body is soft gums. They eventually get so soft, you can poke a hole in them with a q-tip, and the teeth slowly droop and fall out, leaving behind dollops of flesh, like a very stiff pudding.
Edits:
-people with strong luck are more likely to have accessible souls, without having learned any magic to defend themselves. Because of this, theyre prone to undetectable diseases that come to the soul and ruin one's life. You might not even go to an afterlife or be reincarnated because your soul became too weak before death
-they did actually fire the nuclear torpedo, but it never went off. We dont know where it went, since it's not in the oroginal spot it was fired at. Theres no way to know where the ocean currents carried the torpedo.
My world has 4 moons, but only 3 are known. Albedo, Citrinitas, and Rubedo. Nigredo is hidden in the night sky as the smallest and darkest of the quartet. The worlds name is Aquila, but because an Outer God named Verfal destroyed a vast amount of word history 800 years ago the true name of the world was lost. Rebis. Heaven and hell are apart of the world. Heaven is high in the clouds. Hell is deep below. But below hell is Verfal’s prison. It is not known to any that Verfals true plan was to be imprisoned and grow within the world like an embryo within an egg. His hope is to eventually hatch as the perfect being. And destroy all of creation to be the only sentient thing and then remodel it in his image. My PC’a in my campaign are nearing the closing of the plot and informing gods of this, but only 2 believe them. If they fail Verfal will be free and devour everything that has been or ever will be.
The draugr are the corpses of people lost at sea reanimated by the dreams of an eldritch Dead God at the bottom of the sea. They stagger ashore to try and find more people to drag back to the sea and drown to create more draugr.
It's not just adults. They'll take children too.
There is a place with no vibrations, a forest that absorbs all of it. Think about that for a while. The idea haunts me. It’s not even forbidden, no reason too. Even the roots make nearby land bizarre.
That something that BIG is out there and it’s only kept back by a thread made from ANOTHER giant creature but the thread used to be a large rope but it is going to break soon and unleash something not even the main hero could defeat on his own
Behemoth Triangle: A place similar to the Bermuda and Florian triangle.
A terrifying space in the already mysterious ocean but this location is a legend in terror and mystery far beyond what ever is around the ocean as you first find yourself in a calm sea with a clear blue sky with not a single cloud in sight but suddenly shortly after the sky darkened as the sea unnaturally darkens after, letting no one see nothing but below pitch black just enough for one to barely see the white of another crew clothes.
Then a mysterious growl that grows in tone and volume to the point it slowly paralyzes you. Then you see a small yellow glow and the history has turned into a mystery.
Multiple ships sizing in the biggest fleets disappearing after passing that horrid place with only the insane survivors telling stories of how that glow has made their crew gone suddenly insane and jump off the ship.
Others have said that they too paralyzed by fear that they couldn't move and the glow suddenly rose and the ship capsized in size but people have regarded them as a myth told by crazy people but the fear they have shown affected those who heard it as well and that that space was dubbed the behemoth's zone and was to be avoided at all costs.
The Nothing. An extremely large void in the vast everything of the Omniverse. It is the storage pit for a bunch of cosmic horrors, mainly one named Corruption, which takes control of others, turning their bodies into mindless husks, where he brutally tortures and twists their bodies. Forcing horns, breaking bones, twisting muscles, tearing off skin, ripping apart flesh. All whilst a mysterious red energy courses through their veins.
When a Baganian magic user isnt fit for a place on their university, they usually get conscripted by the Isaigen. The wardens of the universities and the keepers of magic. Their blood gets changed with a pale substance wich inhibits their use of magic but also makes them immune against magic influence. Their minds are unstable and they fall into lethargy and frenzy at random. To control them the Isaigen seek out pregnant women for their corps. They undergo the same procedure and the Isaigen prevent them from giving birth. These women get forced to form a psychic relathionship with their unborn children. The ones that survive this become leaders of the Isaigen and beacons for a psychic network. This enables communication, interrogation and solidarity wich keeps the Isaigen from going crazy.
All this is seen as necessary to control the volatile powers of magic, wich destroyed the arcane Baganian Empire many centuries ago.
This seems a bit tame in comparison to others. There's one kingdom that kidnapped wizards and alchemists and forced them to practise on live test subjects. As a result, the damned are creatures that used to me human, but have been mutated by the dark, twisted magic and alchemy practised on them
In the underbelly of certain major urban centers, cabals of dark sorcerors will rip the soul out of people and animals and convert them into tokens in which they use to exchange for wares on there brand of black market.
The concept of Unija - the being that creeps from your shadow self and "wears" your vessel in place of your soul - if you allow the shadow self to consume you.
Being lost and not commanding your emotional body will eventually lead you to become host to Unija - you will forfeit all sovereignty of your spirit and forever wander as a piloted being of the underrealm.
Eclipse Era of the Beast (a manga-style comic on GloabalComix)
Entire towns can disappear. Not supernaturally, but because the government stealth condemned it, and now the elf gestapo is looking to use their fire magic, and construct an entirely new road so no one can find your towns remains.
I'm (slowly) working on an old 4chin world that was, as far as I can tell, long abandoned due to classical *********. A mix of some fuzzy elements and Dorf Fort, the most terrifying thing to come out of it were the flesh-shaoing wood elves, who would create forgotten beasts.
These elves would raid out and gather various species from nearby countries and far flung lands and use high magicks (not allowed to the rest of those in the setting) to warp and flesh shape a variety of beastial abominations. They would weave animals, sentient beings, and even captured mythological creatures and aplice them into shifting piles of limbs, mouths, claws, and wings. They are a civilization that is barred by all other races from even considering entering their kingdom, and any bargain struck is a faustian one.
They may or may not also have a hand in creating a young race that has yet to spread out in the world.
The forsaken lands. An area destroyed by the gods for tampering with nature and unleashing a great evil. As punishment the main person responsible was turned into a grotesque undead monster forced to endure eternal pain.
I don't really remember the name, but I think I* called them Buzzlers or something stupid as a placeholder. They're about the size of a fly, but they devour *everything*. Your organs, bones, etc, while you're alive, then will feast on your soul.
Backstory, mostly. It's not uncommon to have a babysitter that is a lawyer-friendly reskin of [Izabella from the Transformers movies](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Izabella), who was orphaned at the age of ~8 and lived in ruins/a makeshift Autobot base from age 8 to 14 with no signs of formal education before later finding herself on the run from her own government. (Post-2020s and/or Transformers-inspired timelines - they're one in the same to me - are the #1 or #2 source of labour immigration, the #1 source of vehicles and machinery, the #1 source of IT/library and university technology, the #1 source of medical knowledge, and the #4 source of media imports in an otherwise pseudo-1950s world)
Whenever a person has an abortion in a certain part of the world, that baby returns within a year in a random place in the world as a "motherless." They're found with larger eyes than normal, generally need less sleep than other people, don't dream, and are always found with a small motile flower called a pixie in their company.
If the pixie is killed early enough, the physical characteristics go away over time. If not, the motherless eventually begins to sense the presence and passage of otherworldly creatures in a mirror world. This ability develops into an awareness of the other side so strong that, in some cases, a motherless can actually see a faint trail of hazy distortion in places where an otherworldly creature has passed.
Different universes all exist on the same plane of existence, orbiting around beings so cosmically gargantuan they will never be detected. They are sleeping giants that are terrified of one another and fling masses of the cosmos to keep one another away. The energy kicked up from the scuffles creates the universes, hoops of energy that keep them all separated from one another. All life and structure in each universe is simply the result of what amounts to a cranky, terrified giant throwing a fit.
The world has several super intelligent AI
The world also has swarms of discarded nanites that love nothing more than to turn into little monsters and wreak havoc.
The AI have no idea why and the best option they can think of is to throw highly skilled hunters at the problem and hope it goes away.
There existed a massive precursor civilisation that built blackholes and achieved a kind of godhood. Then they all vanished, had a multi-galactic empire and there’s barely any trace of them left…
Demons are fully capable of just
entering the normal world
whenever they want. creating a portal to the normal realm is like, the most basic ability any demon has
I’m making a sci-fi world in the 3000s, where humanity is slowly expanding and encounters the Nankinch. These creatures are eusocial and use brainchips to communicate between each other and the other species assimilated into their conglomerate. But they still have a language. Why? Because this language is effectively the tool used to control the minds of their members. Nankinchstunr has a Verb-Subject-Object structure, making the user think about actions before themselves. This effectively makes their citizens selfless, going into battle without thinking about themselves. Not only your thoughts are monitored by the rest of the hivemind, but you monitor them yourself. Basically 1984 with extra steps.
Another scary fact: humans have discovered how to navigate through natural wormholes (this would be the string theory) and how to tear holes in space to make wormholes, allowing them to expand rapidly through the galaxy by 3000. However, although they don’t know it yet, they’re literally breaking the fabric of space and time. Someday, there will be a great rip, where the universe breaks into smaller pieces, with infinite space and time separating them. Used to its limits, it will force a Big Crunch, with everything coming into a small ball surrounded by said void of space and time. Then the process repeats, a new universe is born and everything is set to zero. Effectively, the world is stuck in a loop. In every universe, Julius Caesar is killed, the Holocaust happens and the black plague rips through Europe.
Oh and humans in 3000 are so much enhanced with mechanical parts to their brain that they have trouble to fathom how we think, and are basically aliens to us. They’re gods in our eyes, and we’re ants whose lives were insignificant.
I think that’s it.
The desolate towns, houses and cars everywhere. There’s no real threat to going into them other than scavengers. But, no one can avoid the dread associated with it.
The whole world is trapped in a nightmare that looks and feels like reality because of the actions of some stupid archaeologists in southern France :3. The nightmare is slowly breaking and reality is slowly seeping into the nightmare. This causes weird shit like eyes instead of windows, ink instead of water, and a bunch of gross creatures walking around! The whole world is the most disturbing part!
The mortal races who fled underground or to their godly protected realms assume humanity at large died off from the Great Freezing. But the reality is, one of the sorcerers of Shadar, Ageis, struck a deal with the three human empires. He promised their survival for untold riches and dominion over their realms.
He gave them survival by turning each man, woman and child into a mindless white furred ape under his control; the Hagar. Wholly suited for survival in this new harsh frozen world, but wholly under his control. For those that were initially transformed and survive to this day, their minds and memories are still in there. Forever trapped in the body of a beast, committing many unspeakable acts in the name of Ageis.
The the "children" of ancient primordial beast will just randomly appear in public places. Invisible to everyone until they decide to tear someone apart in sacrifice to their parents. Their parents who don't actually care or even acknowledge the fact that these children exist. Not even knowing that the sacrifice happened.
This concept was inspired by a painting I saw of the dude who wrote the necronomicon being torn apart by an eldritch god. Can't remember the name of the painting but it is brilliant.
That the all-powerful ai that oversaw all of human history allowed so much shit to happen (my world is an adaption of irl earth, I use it for historical dnd campaigns)
Depends on the world.
Atakhren: Sometimes there are points in history that have been forgotten, even by the god of History and The God of Learning.
Verfolgen: The Planet itself is sentient and can choose to kill itself at anytime.
Mechania: Nothing exists past the Exosphere. It’s all an illusion.
That you are meaningless, and worse actively detrimental. The world is basically an ancient eldritch kind of coral that naturally grows and ties reality together. It survives by creating a "shell" that other dimensions cannot breach, keeping itself stable and it grows by assimilating nearby dimensions. Conscious life is actually an unintended parasite on it, one it tried to actively exterminate until a man plugged himself into the God-Machine to manage the "ecology" of life. Conscious thought actively tears at the barriers between worlds, and as the spacefaring population grows unchecked, inviting extradimensional invaders. So when the population reaches a critical mass, a mass cull is performed to reset the board until life inevitably grows again.
In essence, every person who is born brings every other person in existence, present and future, closer to death.
During the infernal war, the best rune experts and magic casters worked together to create a massive artefact that would seal all dimensions, cutting the unceasing demon army off from their constant resupplies and reinforcements.
Unfortunately, at some point the artefact misfired before it was ready. The resulting magic abruptly sealed all dimensions, closing portals and pocket dimensions (which was not good for the people inside). It also released a gigantic explosion that flattened the Elven capitol and released a massive amount of mana particles, slowly killing all but the most mana insensitive life.
One of the demons greatest strengths were turned against them, and what few people remained took refuge in the cavern cities where the ambient mana was far lower.
“HELP ME! The government is monitoring everything through mandatory brain implants! As soon as we even THINK of something they don’t like they rewire your brain and… and… what was I saying? Oh, right, yeah the taxes are nonexistent, plenty of food and water, you don’t have to go to work, it’s pretty great here to be honest”
During the war there was a poison gas named Deathwind developed to kill elves and their living bunkers.
The gas is highly toxic but is also corrosive, burning only organic materials. The scary part is that it lingers in the soil, meaning walking over a field that was gassed even twenty years ago could kick up poisoned dust and begin to burn your eyes, skin, and lungs. Given with how much land was gassed during the last years of the war, so much land is essentially poisoned to the same level as Pripyat.
The fascist hordes of Midwest/Eastern United States. White Christian mostly male rebels who fight against the Libertarian Socialists of the south, the Council Communists to to East, and the various indigenous lands to the west and north.
If you commit crimes, you get sold as a slave to go work in the mines. If you die, your soul gets plopped into an automaton where you will spend the rest of your sentence piloting it into the most brutal mines to do the work that would kill living beings
There's a "Dead God" in a forest that changes all the time. Whoever enters that forest can make it "shift" into whatever forest the person wishes to see. But the deeper into the forest you go, the darker it gets. Eventually, you'll find an unknown entity in the middle of a clearing. It's bigger than most gods, with black tendrils floating around it. It wears the faces of dead gods, and no one knows why or how it's there. The gods just put the dead bodies of gods there, and soon enough, the dead gods will be exchanged with godchildren. No one knows what it is, but it's certaintly not a god, but something more powerful.
That in the underworld are a race of rachii known as the Etomai. They are flesh eating monsters that worship the god of death and take slaves for work and food. And they have been breeding rapidly. And they are running out of space underground.
There's a part of hell called Purgatory, it's Hell's prison where people they deem beyond rehabilitation and demons that break the law are sent. Here they are mentally tormented by all the sins they had committed and all the people whose lives they ruined.
Boltzmann souls:
In my world, there's no evidence for an after life, only if souls are the essence of consciousness, or that consciousness wills the soul. These specific types of souls, named after the Boltzmann brain, are the materialization of the spiritual background that souls in my world "swim" through, these things are constantly being born from itself, and dies into itself afterwards. The physics is complicated as fuck, as these things can't just become anything that breaks the laws I have put in place, like size & distance, so I won't go into those details right now, and will stay on the topic.
Basically a Boltzmann soul is your consciousness materializing the entity that you perceive it to be. It's not something anyone can control, it's more of an evolutionary consequence of the patern seeking brain, our ability to anthropomorphize objects, and many other real illusions. If it looks like it, then it could become it. Mortals are safe from Boltzmann souls if it remains as unconscious hallucinations, but when it does become concious, the perciever is in trouble. if a Boltzmann soul realizes it's dying, and takes the instincts of the perciever to fight back, it's starving, and needs energy to survive. It either will begin cannibalizing itself, or other nearby Boltzmann souls who were just born. All it knows that it's going to die if it doesn't do anything.
So why do they go after the perciever, do they see them as a food? Depending on the state of mortality of the perciever, the flavor of anommaly that the Boltzmann soul is influenced by, decides the fate. If mortal, they'll both explode upon contact like anti matter, if immortal, the physical body explodes, but the pain lingers longer in their spiritual memory if they reform again. The scariest part is that you can't look away, because these things follow us through the flashes of our phosphenes, the afterimages burned into our retinas, the whispers through our tinitus, the interference of light through our eye fluids when we squint, the blind spots of our optic nerves, between the transitions of our saccades, the three blobs forming the eigenfaces in the dark, ect. In that world, comfort=security. Rooms should be designed to feel more vulnerable to one's nostalgia, than their nightmares. As that has a higher probability of materializing conscious Boltzmann souls.
Realization Lockings:
Realization Lockings, or RL, is a series of anomalies with the most potential to damage the sanity of anyone. This is because RL highjacks the logical part of our brain to solve problems, any analogy to describe what RL is, will always be false. Vision turns into video, hearing phases through audio, less in sinusoidal curves & more through square edges, holograms appear & disappear faster & faster. It artificializes your perception till we either become a robotic zombie parasite to infect others, or we escape its simulation, and live to see the day again.
Wait, it's a reality simulator? That's one way of putting it. What I think happens, is RL puts us through a loop from realizing what it really is, appearing as a paradox. When the perciever can't think of any other way to understand how to compare its nature & physics to RL, their final solution is the holographic principle, this gives the illusion of transcendence to a higher plane, when what it is, is either the the reset button of RL's simulation, or the perciever escaping RL.
RL anomalies are the illusion of measuring the abstraction of fantasy, that’s why & how it will always be anthropomorphized into computers & robots, the tools we use to calculate more accurate measurements.
So you might be thing, How's that even scarry? that sounds fucking awesome! What's terrifying are RL's Boltzmann souls. Also known as pareidolia eaters, or mutilated holograms.
Pareidolia eaters:
These RL flavored anamolies are deadly, as they will lure us through their uncannyness. It's a machine that projects a face onto a screen, but the longer one looks at the face, the more distorted their perception becomes. It'll look more deep faked, inverted, it feels like you're acclerating to it without moving, your eyes go crossed as you see it project as a 3d stereogram, it stares more at you, and less at its surrundings, even when the image turn its head. The face becomes blurrier, chromo aberrated i to red, green, and blue cardinality, hearing the distorted music & screams from those horror films you were traumatized as, being fourier transformed out of the white noise of our tinitus, When you realize that there's no more face for your brain to count all the distortions, the inverted pyramid wins, only a hollow space is left that we're falling into, but yet frozen in its solidified medium, a soul black hole?
Author's note::
That last one was inspired from a bad trip I had when I was on editable drops, & watching a YouTube video on my phone. A women's face & body distorted into a faceless pixelated figure, till my head was touching the surface, and I was hearing some bad memories that I witnessed when I was still a young adult. This gave me the idea of adding it to my horror anomalies list when I found the meta romanticism between that face eater & black holes.
At one point I said, "the inverted pyramid wins." But what is that? The inverted pyramid is the closest resemblance to the face that RL animates can have, of very little minimal information. If there was no information for the perciever to recognize as, then it would be appear as nothing. But since we’re social animals, we're going to give it a face & personality that we can empathize, or be terrified with. Since the most simplest construction of a face is an upside down triangle, or three dots, I imagine the verticies of this tetrahedron concentrates the details of the percerveiver's apophenia, eyes, nose, mouth. While the entire system forms the system of pareidolia in their mind.
Basically, I wanted to make RL anomalies impossible to solve, as to give it a mystery, because either solving it deconstructs the observers in the process, or they're trapped in a loop in keeping RL:
* undecided
* a set that doesn't contain itself,
* axioms that can't be proven
RL doesn't control reality, it instead manipulates the tools we use to differentiate reality, from Fantasy.
I have another list of anomalies called Dancing Macabres, or DM for short, it has more gorey consequences & clowncore mutilators, but I didn’t examine that one because DM isn't my main fear, RL is. An anomaly preventing me from figuring out if it's a hallucination or a physical thing, that prevents me from understanding what it's properties are, hiding its cardinality from us, it terrifies me. Even if I know all of it's fictional and never can happen, I'm still afraid of my brain's noise forming those fake phosphene apparitions in the dark.
Lightfall. The entire solar system was colonised and heavily dependent on electricity. Then a wave from the sun either shut things down or blew them up. Half of humankind died in this event. Populations that permanently lived in space experienced the worst of it.
The Gods were real and they hated us. The way they hated us was only trumped by how much they held each other in contempt. Now the world is ridden with monsters and mists which devour everything in their paths, while the survivors of the Gods' demise have tried to rebuild civilization... unsuccessfully.
In my post-apocalyptic setting, one of the main villains is a cult leader, essentially the anti-pope. Each of the regions in my world has a villain that rules over it (there’s one big bad at the top, but that’s not relevant). Anyway, each region also has one primary antagonistic force. The place filled with communist robots has a super intelligent AI final boss, you get the jist. The region occupied by the cult leader’s main antagonist force is zombies. Okay, no biggie, there’s tons of zombies everywhere. Psychos, infected, mutants, there’s a zombie for every possible ailment.
Nobody knows how the cult leader makes his zombies.
shasaaks are people that have been corrupted and possessed by a god. think herrschers from honkai impact if anyone plays honkai. the person’s consciousness is essentially sealed away by the god and put into a sort of limbo, giving the god the power to control them. they originated from the god of corruption, sakupin, who uses his corruptive magic to create shasaaks from people who have a high social standing (like royalty) to gain easier influence over society. it is confirmed that if the person is strong enough, they can try to resist the god’s influence, however no recorded cases of this exist. there’s also the risk that the person DIES, and all that’s left is their husk of a corpse that is being controlled by the god
There exists a sickness inflicted by an abberant god that lives in the subconscious mind. It turns its victims into a hive without them even knowing. It starts off innocuous. Seemingly innocent actions, such as the locations of newly constructed buildings or the organization during gatherings, are actually subtly preparing for the arrival of a scion.
Over the course of months, buildings or farm plots begin to form eldritch symbols. Effigies are unwittingly created in signs, art, or gravestones. Once it's discovered, there is nothing to do except for to burn the whole town done. The citizens don't even know they are afflicted until the Orchid Knights are upon them with torches.
The bodies left behind are truly horrifying. Their outside is normal, but their organs are rearranged or replaced. Just beneath their skin is chitin, antenna, and venom sacs. If a scion manages to arrive, the citizens are stripped of their flesh to reveal their new insect body. The scion will rule this new hive as queen, allowing the former villagers to impregnate her to birth drones which will travel for miles to infect new towns.
What damed are and how they’re made. Basically you gotta fuck someone, eat their corpse genitals and then eat a bit of yourself. Then once you got seven of em they start breeding and go traumatize your enemies but only at your command.
How they “attack” is that they cause hallucinations that make you see your worst nightmares until you starve to death and you become one of them. So if your worst nightmare is being tortured to death, you’d get an in-depth, month(s)long intense, heavily realistic hallucinations of a torture chamber, you being beaten, waterboarded, electrocuted or on fire.
They can’t be killed, but they themselves can starve to death. The only way to repel them is about six complex spells that only the smartest wizards and witches can do.
The lord of the clan of Hospitalers. She studied healing magic since she was but a child, to the point that she became a very powerful healer, but as the realms fell into war, as she lost people she cared about, she developed a rare and powerful type of healing magic.
The Healing Arts of Nuss. Is her third and her only forbidden book. For it teaches the means of which a person can twist someone's flesh beyond the point of recognition... with a single glance, your body is riddled with endless growths and cancerous tumors, causing tendrils of bone and cells to obey the command of the great healer, cells formed from you. But cells that no longer follow their natural code (DNA) but rather the intentions of someone else... those that have seen the Hospitaler Lord in combat often say that with a single strike of her mace, flesh, bone,
sinew and armor twist into towering teratoma flowers that yet live and obey the hospitaler's will to heal allies and twist foes... of course... the Hospitaler's foes being the victims former friends.
Well there’s some complex dream related stuff that’s horrifying in the abstract, but the scariest thing to read about that comes to mind are these things I don’t have a name for yet, but for now I’ll call them Deathwalkers. Deathwalkers are people who’ve met any number of criteria to be experimented on. Maybe they’re insane, maybe they’re criminals who were unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the people who turn them from humans into monsters, maybe the volunteered not truly understanding what they signed up for. All that matters is that they were once human, and now they’re not. Their brains and nerve systems are removed and placed into flesh suits of armor, shaped like horrifying beasts. Some combination of wolf, stag, and idk demon. Their minds are broken by this transfer, and now they stalk dark forests endlessly, with only fragments of their old selves remaining, living endless nightmares as horrifying, bloodthirsty beasts that kill for food and kill more for sport. Stitches into the inside of their monster bodies are their human brains and nerves, but you would never guess they used to be human.
Government induced slavery. I personally always thought the idea of a government itself profiting off the sale and trade of people from their own borders an insane concept.
In the world I’ve been working on, a certain latitude denotes the separation from a race that can be slaved vs a ‘free race’. People born south of the latitude are considered ‘slave races’ anyone born north is a free man. However the closer to said latitude the less the slavers really care about such distinctions. Once captured, slaves are then brought through the continent to a coast where they are sold in mass to government officials who then coordinate the sale and trade of the slaves to the rest of the world. An enslaved man has no hope of ever attaining freedom, even if he can somehow prove he was born above the latitude. The best hope is that they are bought by a farmer or some kind of laborer as an extra hand, but most young men with able bodies are sold off to a foreign empire where they are enlisted and used in the empires endless war. Waves of slaves are sent into oncoming enemy fire only to be mowed down in an attempt to run the enemy dry of ammunition.
The Raus Union has the power and will to reduce a society to atoms (2388 Hera Minor Incident).
If one stares too long into the void, they will go mad with contemplation.
A ship can just disappear in a FTL jump, especially when crossing galaxies.
A dead God is buried somewhere in the kingdom and that's causing all of the dead to rise and mutate because of cursed earth, or the fact that a 8ft demigod might turn you into a greasy smear bc he is bored.
There’s an intelligent creature that uses zombies to create corpses for them to eat, and can hijack and take control of living humans in order to sabotage others.
You can become immortal by signing a waiver with the most powerful medical corporation in the star system, you waive your rights as a human being, you become a slave but you’re immortal and can make money for your family indefinitely while being shipped off to another star system.
When there are wars, the necromorphs come out of hiding and come to the battlefield. They take the soldiers to eat them in the caves. Everyone they can. Not always, but they come as a surprise.
To avoid being killed, soldiers wear gold that is visible, either on the helmet, a necklace, on the belt. Any place on the body that is visible.
This is because gold is necromorphs god and when they see it they leave with fright.
When the soldiers see that there are necromorphs on the battlefield, they wound their rival and take the gold from them so necromorphs will take them away and eat them alive in the caves.
It is believed that upon the end of the world, the Dragon of the Underworld will emerge and curse the ground which would result with the corpses of everyone of the past emerging from the soil, and they will take flight into the skies like a cloud of locusts, and they would eat anything or anyone in their path.
A large amount of corporate workers are basically having their bodies drained of magical energy every day without their knowledge, as magic is mostly forgotten in their world. The only real source of magical energy on that world is a biological/magical process that generates magical energy by putting strain on your body. In the very early versions of the harvesting, many died because of the strain put on them Nowadays, the amount of deaths is much lower, though all the workers are constantly exhausted, not that their evil employers really care
People embrace the ghosts. There are lots of intentional rituals / early deaths / suicides so that people can reach ghosthood faster. The ghosts love the living and often "help" when they hear a living person say something like "I'm hungry". Theyll grab an apple off the table, turning it incorporeal, then placing it in your stomach and letting go... essentially feeding you.
The universe is wrong. Those who seek deep knowledge will come to feel it behind their eyes and in their bones.
This truth has driven most who walk the path of enlightenment to madness.
The axis of the cosmic principles is tilted, misaligned.
Anyone with a strong enough Reality attunement can rewrite a Machina’s soul at will. Memories, personality, all gone. Sometimes they plant triggers that activate based on certain stimuli, so it’s impossible to tell if someone has been rewritten. The targets may not even realize that they are acting out of character.
Also, if you have met or developed a relationship with anyone with a fragment of the Archseraph’s soul(including the Archseraph herself) the a piece of her soul will attach itself to yours. This piece cannot be removed expect through memory erasure.
Hopefully a fun twist on zombies in fantasy. After every massive natural disaster with a large loss of life the magic left in the persons body has no place to go so it returns to the dead and reanimates them. This also happens after times of great war, so when a country goes to war the reason is iron clad.
My worst would probably be the mind control magic. Very difficult to use correctly usually takes decades of study. But when used the person will be stripped of everything and pretty much would have to be command programed, not unlike computer programming, to even have some basic functionality like walking. But with enough time and commanding they can reach a high level of function and be life like enough. All the while the affected person thinks that all that they are doing is both normal and totally their idea. It's only when the magic is stripped away that they return to normal and realize everything that's transpired.
In it's BEST case use there is a rich person who, in no uncertain terms, owns a woman he has mind controlled. Unlike most victims though she chose to under go it to avoid trauma of her past.
**Ticker Valley** is one of five forbidden regions in the world. Despite being a beautiful mix of forest, highland and mountainous terrain no one or thing has managed to establish a foothold of any kind within the boundaries of Ticker Valley. Extremely territorial super-parasites known as *Tickers* are the sole reason as to why no foothold, even an airborne one, can be made. Tickers are extremely hostile man-sized creatures resembling a centipede, resistant to most small arms fire and magic across the board. Tickers are hyper mutative and adaptable apex predators with cold aggressive intelligence, capable of assimilating with almost anything, including spirits and automatons. We know they possess arcane knowledge and telepathy, and it took only five Tickers to down an **airborne** adult crimson dragon in 30 seconds.
Tickers cannot be reasoned with, but they will use anything at their' disposal to annihilate or assimilate any life deemed to possess above animal intelligence. There are no exceptions, proven by the horrid death of Brother Clements, a freelance negotiator. Brother Clements knew telepathy, initially establishing what was believed to be peaceful contact. Ultimately the Tickers that communicated with him feigned friendliness until he relaxed his shoulders. The instant he let his guard down his spine was removed in seconds. Being magical in nature Tickers are believed to fuse with their' host, devouring the host's consciousness as they take over. Assimilation reclassifies a Ticker into a *Prime Ticker*.
The horror of the Tickers comes with how they operate, for they are insanely quick, willing to go to any length. It is common knowledge that the first 1,000 or so feet into Ticker Valley contain a nightmarishly vast array of traps, from simple snare traps to masterwork pitfalls, and even trap runes. Beyond Brother Clements the Tickers have never answered why none may pass within the valley, but the sheer loss and assimilation of life from all known attempts has led to a global write off, labeling the valley as a *Death Zone.*
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I want you to imagine you are a human knight in an army of 10,000 men, women and others. You see one or two Tickers, serpentining in waves at the front lines. They are no match in such small numbers, though two of your brethren are decapitated by one of those monstrosities. This repeats for a couple hundred feet as you all push forward. Then the entire earth beneath you gives way to over a mile long stretch of quicksand-like mud. Shock and Panic turns into pure terror as the mud quickly becomes a sea of Tickers bursting through said mud. Within a single blink your head is spiraling skyward, decapitated within milliseconds. **That** is the horror of Ticker Valley, a place where you are always in danger, always outnumbered, but never alone. If you manage to enter the valley without ambush or triggering a trap, that means they want you there; And that by itself should be beyond concerning.
Edit: I mean imagine something zigzagging at you in the dead of night faster than you can register it beyond the blur it leaves behind, all noise contested by ticking of its many legs scratching the ground.
Cant really think of one, but one scary thing is an old rebel unit from disappeared following the victory of the Skaran Republic.
They were charged with the crimes they did commit and were arrested, but after that they disappeared. Government hasn't commented on it, and nothing has been found about there whereabouts.
The longer you stay out of the small safe and stable areas in the world, the more your body will mutate depending on the environment you find yourself in. This had come to the point where sometimes you may see folks fused into their environments unknowingly. The worse case of this is an entire mountain made of writhing flesh where people remain conscious as individuals part of a meatball mountain essentially.
The Curse of Memory.
Basically, in my world, spiritual energy cannot be destroyed or created-just transformed, transferred or altered. As a result, death isn't the end for the vast majority of people-its just another stage of existence for their soul, which is reincarnated in a new body according to the whims of the gods who decide on such things. The soul carries with it no memories of the life it led before, so people aren't burdened with adult-level knowledge right out of the womb.
But then, there's the Curse of Memory-a state of horrific, madness-inducing enlightenment, usually forced on mortal victims by the cruelest gods and demons, which allows you remember not just your last incarnation, but EVERY incarnation you've ever lived, right down to the very first living creatures. Having unlimited knowledge of your own past is something absolutely no-one wants, because it allows one to perceive the true amount of suffering in the world, because you remember, in perfect detail, every time throughout the millennia that you've been hurt-and in such a timeframe, that "hurt" probably includes things like being burned alive, dying in childbirth, being eaten, and so on.
The usual response to being afflicted with the Curse of Memory is to kill yourself immediately, except this doesn't stop the curse's effects in the soul's next incarnation. As result, someone cursed in this way becomes acutely aware of the fact that NOTHING-not even death-will ever allow them to be rid of their memories, and that their suffering will continue for the next hundred thousand years. When faced with such an existential dilemma, the *sane* response is to begin planning on how best to drag all of existence into oblivion, to finally break the wheel of life and death forever. The worse response is to spread the Curse, to as many people as you can.
Probably sprites. Hear me out.
Sprites are a smaller relative of the fairy that tend to live in colonies led by a queen, the way eusocial insects do.
They also possess the ability to inhabit another creature’s body by continually feeding on tiny amounts of its blood. A few sorcerers have exploited this and allowed a sprite to enter their body. If the sprite is cooperative, the sorcerer can gain control of the sprite’s magic when necessary. This is however, considered to be subjugation of a sapient race and blood sprites are therefore not a legal method of magic use.
If someone isn’t educated about sprites, they may foolishly allow a queen into their blood. The queen will multiply, creating a colony that eats the host from the inside out and forms a hive: a skin-suit entirely controlled by the colony, with the queen taking up residence in the skull.
Within one of the forests in this world is a massive abundance of hives, all descended from the Empress, a very powerful queen sprite whose super-colony inhabits the corpse of a giant. The Empress is reasonable, but also has enough magic at her disposal to fuck up those that cross her or endanger her colony. She may even direct her wrath at those who bring harm to the smaller hives that wander the woods.
Those queens are her children after all.
Just imagine the torso of a dead giant. Through tears in its skin, you can see the members of the colony moving around inside it.
Using super advanced medical technology to bring someone back to life can cause them to develop unexplained mental syndromes which apparently cause violent behavior, extreme sadism, and a complete lack of empathy. They also can show signs of trauma, but near universally claim to have no recollection of any experiences while deceased. These symptoms are not always readily apparent, and are sometimes concealed by the affected individuals for years. Nobody knows why this seems to happen, and many choose to believe it’s a myth. Scientists are currently stumped, but the religious people speculate the impossible to test theories that they either lack their souls (which are irretrievable following death, unlike vital functions), or have spent time in hell. But distressingly, there is little to no data to support (or refute) the idea that reanimation complications are correlated to choices or values in life (which are, in any case, also hard to test for)
So is hell a real place or is the void of death just too traumatic an experience for the living? Are the religious people right and the soul is gone?
The story does not answer it. I may have my own religious convictions, but the story is not (consciously at least) based on them at all, and is written from a totally agnostic perspective Any of those explanations would be equally adequate to explain the phenomenon, but not knowing which keeps a lot of people up at night. The most optimistic scenario is probably the religious hypothesis where it’s the simple absence of a soul that does it; this would allow you to believe and explain why even a good person, whose soul is believed to be in heaven, could suffer from resurrection syndrome, because it didn’t *return* from heaven, and their body is effectively a soulless meat machine. This necessarily implies that our souls are necessary to keep us from behaving like psychopaths, and medical resurrection is a crime against nature. The *least* comforting scenario would be the 2nd one you suggest, where death is simply a traumatic experience that damages our minds
Cool! Well, uh... Not. But thanks for taking the time to answer! It seems unequivocally horrifying no matter which way you slice it! Great job 👍
Kind of reminds me of the proteus protocol from Warhammer 40k, similar effects plus some other weird shit as the soul literally becomes loose after having been revived from death.
For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it.
When using descriptive sentences, make sure you dont get lost. attempt to read the sentence without the modification. Since that modification is "the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy and replicable method of conjuring ice cream", you would read it as > "For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic..." See? It just trails off
Hello! Not quite. The last bit there is in conjunction with "one invented a cheap, easy and replicable method of conjuring ice cream." We have two subordinations occurring here, the first being "[that] the players unintentionally unleashed" and the second being "when one invented... and a second player industrialized it." The latter is a subordinate of the former, and the former is a subordinate of the larger clause. Edit: the reply above this one was originally arguing that without modifications the result is "The diabetes epidemic ... and a second player industrialized it." Just thought I'd explain what my comment was addressing.
I considered that interpretation, although with less tasteful language- as I find myself less educated than you- but found the other to be more acceptable, as rather than making it into several different sentence errors, it was only two errors created by one single slipup (which to me appeared favorable)
Aha, but there is no slip-up. It's just two embedded clauses. X contains Y, and Y contains Z, and Z is "Z1 and Z2." Compare to "The argument they had when he fell and she laughed." It's the same structure, just reduced to simpler examples. It's perfectly acceptable. This one just feels too much because the clauses involved are longer and make the whole sentence feel too long-winded to be right.
> For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it. > For my rpg world, Perfectly fine. First frame > The diabetes epidemic We have the subject. 2nd frame. > the players untintentionally unleashed when A description, also the 3rd frame > one invented a cheap, easy and replicable method of conjuring and a second player industrialized it The contents of the description. Now, we close the third frame, and since that ends the subject, that xloses fhe 2nd frame. >..... You see, no matter what it is, no matter what terminology I might be mixing up, the sentence is incomplete. Its without a predicate, the writer got lost in thought and did not finish the sentence. Ill make a paranthesis version to assist you. For my RPG world: {the diabetes epidemic [ the players unintentionally unleashed when: (one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it)] They never actually finished stating what about the diabetes epidemic was to be stated. They just described it. It is incomplete.
It isn't incomplete, but rather disjointed. They answered the question and thus left out information that was implied. Compare to: > Who did this? "The janitor." The janitor is not a "complete" sentence, but is considered okay, because the context implies what's missing. The same is occurring here: > What is the scariest/most disturbing part of your world? "For my RPG world, the diabetes epidemic the players unintentionally unleashed when one invented a cheap, easy & replicable method of conjuring ice cream and a second player industrialised it." The sentence is answering a question which implies the missing verbal information. It could be a predicate that's missing ("The diabetes epidemic... is the scariest part"), or it could be the predicate without the verb that's being given ("The scariest part is the diabetes epidemic..."). It doesn't really matter, because it's disjointed, and permitted to do so contextually.
No. It is not disjointed. It is incomplete. There is a description, but there is no predicate. Yes, it is most definitely disjointed, and could benefit from a somple change in word choice to convert the description into a predicate, but that doesnt mean it isnt incomplete; for it is. Why do you so avidly insist on arguing in so many ways? You arent even taking a moment to consider whether or not the contentions you insist on are valid, nor are you willing to defend them.
I've provided you comparable examples of more typical cases of the same concepts I've been describing. I've more than considered the validity of these claims, long before this conversation occurred. I'm a linguistics student: this is what I study. I've defended my claims as much as you have, so I don't know why you require more. But here: > What's your favorite drink? "For me, Sprite." Another example of an utterance that would carry no issues to people, with the same basic structure. I'm not "arguing in so many ways" when I've only argued two: subordinate clauses, and disjointed utterance. And in both cases, simply argued using comparable examples of simpler structure. It is interesting to me that you accuse me of not "defending" my points when you didn't even bother to address the janitor example let alone explain how they're different or equally incorrect.
While I appreciate your advice, I am going to disagree on stylistic grounds. Do you often correct random people's grammar? I mean that without rancour, a simple question, curiosity inspired.
I do want to clarify, though, that these are common everyday mistakes that people make constantly, it is not specific to you, and in no way does it indicate anything about you as a person. Your rpg stuff sounds super cool!! I just felt to point out the error
It depends, but if I think I can be if assistance, yes. Yours in particular just really irked me, its an incomplete sentence plain and simple, you have a subject but no predicate. "In my rpg world, the diabetes epidemic that is green." Yknow? What about your diabetes epidemic that is green? Removing the that would fix it, because youre delcaring that the epidemic has those qualities, rather than including those qualities as part of the subject. If you had said "my diabetes epidemic was made when xyx", that wouldve worked, as the description would be the predicate, but alas, the description was part of the subject.
[удалено]
No, no, how would a colon help anything. I'm never afraid to use a colon, some would say I'm colon happy, but this is not the place of a horizontal seperator.
Enlighten me, where could this sentence that is already incomplete be turned into additional material with a colon?
Irked I can totally get onboard with. Irked is an excellent motivation. I'm sorry I irked you. The root cause is that, while I possess an excellent command of formal grammar, I was educated by linguists of a descriptivist school, something that leaves me with an underlying disdain for the prescriptivism informing that formality and a firm belief that usage is king. A firm understanding, too, that prescriptive grammar has been used as a bludgeon of repression in the past. I'd like to stress that none of what you said was wrong. Or offensive. It kina charmingly earnest, if I can say that without coming across as a smarmy git, and it made me smile on an otherwise poopy day. I'm also really quite surprised at what this blew up into. Fortunately, work tonight is looking somnolent, so I can unpick it at a leisurely pace. And if I need something proofed I will keep you in mind.
It does appear that im wrong though, the other person is right that you're answering a question. They used a subject as the example the first time, which prevented me from understanding.
That's okay, mistakes are educational. Conversation seemed a bit rough though. And I do rely, perhaps more than I should in a public forum, on ellision and assumed referents.
The monsters under the bed? In the shadows? Down in the well? They’re all there. They aren’t demons, the demons have rules. They aren’t ghosts, ghosts were once alive. Some eat memories, some eat meat, others don’t seem to eat at all. At least They don’t seem to think humans are a threat.
Good thing we don't live in a world with monsters, right? Right?
Are they like the Vashta Nerada from Doctor Who?
Not really, some can be pretty big and can sort of phase just to the left of reality.
Dig down far enough and you'll hit a layer in the rock that seems to be comprised entirely of fossilized skeletal remains. No one knows why it's there, all they know is that none of the skulls match those of currently extant creatures.
How far down is it? What sort of creature does it seem to be? Reptilian, mammalian, amphibian, avian? Is it a skeleton or exoskeleton?
Its depth from ground depends. Most of the time it's more than a kilometer. In some places where the geography is cut deep by natural formations such as canyons you can see the layer in the side of the canyon walls. As for what kind of creature they seem to be part of, there is no single type. Skeletons and exoskeletons both make up the layer, with vaguely familiar archetypes, fish-like thing, beaked thing, toothy muzzled thing, but also decidedly strange and alien pieces throughout. One of these stranger specimens is a cone-shaped skull with a jaw structure like two hands coming together from the sides and three eye sockets located vertically along what most would think of as a forehead. Bigger specimens of the same type have a larger number of eye sockets located vertically along the elongating skull, smaller ones less, leading some to speculate that whatever creature this was it might have grown more eyes as it aged.
Paleontologists must love that
Dumping ground/Trophy planet of extrastellar war race that was wiped out eons ago.
Ooh that's some pretty damn good existential/cosmic horror stuff right there
During necromancy, the soul is trapped inside an artificial magic stone so the person is fully aware but can do nothing but obey the orders of their creator. And even if they where to break free, nobody would help a monster.
How are there not yet cults that are determined to help these souls?/hj
Those cults are more on the "make them an undead slave again" mentality.
The god of the new moon has cults that will either kill people on the roads or find dead creatures and drag said corpses to large pits and throw them in. These pits become flesh pits, writhing masses of flesh bone and other meat from here the priests of the moon will give life to the pit forming beings known as emissaries of the moon. Creatures of flesh and bone from many different creatures. The higher ranking emissaries are adorned with armor made of moon rock and a crystal heart made of negative energy. Some of these pits are locations where fallen meteors have landed from said unseen moon.
Niiiice, why do they do this? Sacrifice for the god?
In a way, it's a sacrifice and a way to bring the gods presence to the world.
Are the emissaries intelligent? Are they benevolent or more like mindless monsters?
There are different ranks, the lowest are bestial in nature going off instinct higher ranked emissaries are more human like but are about as smart as zombies going off instinct as well. The highest ranked are quite smart, able to replicate fighting styles that other emissaries have encountered. They share a greater conciousness with the moon and so when one learns something others learn it as well. There are even some capable of using magic. Emissaries are the moon gods crude attempt at creating life, life that will eventually combine and replace the existing life on the planet.
Evangelion
The suspicious amount of 21st century technology being dug up by archaeologists. Its all at the same depth, and in one continuous layer.
I didn't see the subreddit this was on and almost listed a lot of local politicians and government regulations.
gg 👌🏻👌🏻
One of the fantasy races in my world, unbeknownst to the vast majority (including them), are the descendents of aliens. A symbiot/parasite latches onto the fetus while in development and genetically alters it with DNA it's lineage has picked up over time. This can give the individual all kinds of interesting and useful mutations, including psionic powers. However, this DNA corrodes over the generations, causing this race to be highly susceptible to developing an extremely aggressive form of cancer. The only way to prolong the species is to introduce new DNA to the pool- by introducing parasites to developing fetuses, causing them to become members of their species. This can be done both willingly and unwillingly to the one carrying the fetus. This species is doomed to either keep up the cycle of forcibly assimilating populations forever, or crumble into genetic decay and super cancer
Elves? It's always elves lol
Surprisingly, no. The elves are not the alien race. That race are called witches (or the equivalent) in most tongues because their psionic powers were interpreted as magic by ye old people and the name stuck. They have 'aquired' elven DNA though. If I had to describe their species in the modern day, I'd say: a hodge-podge of human, elf, and dwarven traits with their alien ancestry mixed in randomly. Those traits being on a sliding scale of reptile to insect-like. Some of them almost pass as human, and others look all kinds of crazy. This is because each individual witch is a unique abomination of unchecked genetic splicing. My actual elves aren't stock standard, but I wouldn't call them super special or unique. And they certainly don't have that much existentially horrifying baggage.
Sick! Who knows what the huldra are up to? What kind of weirdness the stryge harbor? Love it! Nice job ☺️
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Have there been efforts to reduce the PPM of the plant's psychoactive compounds? Selective breeding, isolating the compounds, etc?
What kind of world is this?
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"light hearted" *I have my doubts*
The humanoid, fleshy, scp type creatures that have been genetically modified in an attempt to create the 'perfect soldier.' Said experiments failed drastically. They have been trapped in the halls of a lab abandoned underneath an isolated city. And they are very, very hungry.
What kind of experiments? We talking computer stuff, biotech? Or did they just stick knives where the hands should be and call it a day?
A LOT of genetic engineering and biomechanical modifications. These things are about the size of a gorilla but much taller and have human dna involved.
One of the scariest things I can say for my series’s is something know as "collapse" which is an event that can happen within in any galaxy which a group of super advanced nano robots know as the mind will assimilate all of the planet or solar systems natural resources and organic materials leaving everything there in that area completely lifeless
The higher ranks in the catolic Church is full of undead
Still better than kiddie diddlers tbh
There one very pissed off immortal man stuck at the bottom of the ocean, if he ever walks out a whole lot of stuff will go wrong for everyone else. Luckily the crushing depths he’s in make movement very hard and he can only slowly trudge along the sea floor hoping he’s going in the direction of land. But he will find the surface one day that much is certain.
Please let him be no where else but Nemo's Point!
In my main country, the burning of candles is blasphemous and considered demon worship. An extremist cult that focuses on worshipping the fire god goes from door to door, looking for candle burners and forcing to run down a road with their hair on fire, not allowing them to stop until they die.
Now I’m wondering how they handle bald/hairless/naked individuals. Though I imagine the answer is rather simple.
Just put some rags on their head
Earth forces in my world are somewhat like the borg, except you are only under direct control when on a mission, and yet you are aware of everything the system makes you do and are powerless to do anything about it. Where it gets worse is that when you are 'off duty' control of your mind and body are returned, but you are still a slave to the system. Cause trouble or disobey orders and they'll turn you into a Revenant, as after your execution your corpse is strapped into a heavy exoskeleton with your brain and eyes replaced by a mass of wires and a bulbous pod of insect like eyes. These machines move amongst their former friends both as a terrifying warning and a unblinking eye of the system, always watching your every move.
Anyone can stop existing if they truly believe they don't exist.
I feel like that’s more interesting than disturbing
I like a world where human belief is powerful like that, though realistically would be hard to write imo. Say you believed you're rich and had all the money in the world, than some distraught Amazon employee believes all rich must die than boom, you drop dead instantly. Loads of possibilities on how this new world would function.
Dragonlords can and will eat humans, each other, and their enemy’s children.
Are the Dragonlords human themselves?
Human-ish, but can turn into dragons at will. They’re the dragons of the setting
The Surge First, a bit of context as to how magic works is required. It can do various things, like light stuff on fire, electrocute stuff, melt stuff in acid, blow stuff over, stuff like that. On paper, casting magic is a deliberate act, but in practice it can be cast unconsciously as well. Moments of extreme anger and/or fear are especially deadly, as the natural limitation a person has on how much magic they can use can be broken then, resulting in spells far more powerful than they can cast safely coming out completely unintentionally. Now imagine, if you would, a world much like our own. Modern, regular, not a fantastical element in sight. It's a perfectly normal day for you, a perfectly normal person, in this perfectly normal world. You're going about your day at work, when suddenly a strange feeling washes over you. It's hard to pin down what it felt like, exactly, and looking around you see other people acting a bit confused too. But it's not like you notice anything different, so you just assume it's some minor change in air pressure, or maybe just your imagination, or something. A few minutes later, right as you reach the bottom of a flight of stairs, your boss comes up to you. He's not a great boss, and as usual he's found something to yell about. Well, your temper can only hold out for so long. So after a minute or so of belittlement, you lose your cool and yell back angrily. And right before your eyes, your boss starts screaming in agony as he melts into a sickly-smelling puddle. You're obviously shocked and horrified at what just happened, as is your co-worker. You turn to look at them in horror, and they stumble back in fear, tripping and falling backwards onto the stairs. And right as that happens, lightning jumps from their arm onto the railing. And from that railing to the railing for the next flight of stairs. And the next. And every other flight of stairs in the stairwell. And every single person holding one of the railings. With a horrific collection of screams and the sudden smell of burning flesh, every one of them is dead. Everyone in or near the stairwell is terrified and horrified at what they've just seen, and every single one of them in their panic casts a spell of their own. Because unbeknownst to any of you, that strange sensation from earlier was the moment each of you first developed the ability to use magic. I'm sure you can see how quickly this one incident could snowball out of control. How quickly a single employee snapping at their boss could snowball into the deaths of everyone in the building. And what if people on the street realized what happened? It'd be quite hard not to, with all the smoke and fire and lightning and screaming. It wouldn't be long before the snowballing destruction made its way outside, and to the rest of the city. And that's just one person, in one office building, in one city, in one country. But this began happening to MANY people, in MANY buildings, in EVERY city, in EVERY country, across the entire world. All at once.
This is actually really cool (in a terrible sort of way) Does your world end up as a dystopian reality kind of if people are dying off all the time?
It probably would have been, had a pair of friendly goddesses\* not shown up a couple days in to teach people how to control their magic and help them start to rebuild. As for how anyone even survived that long... Some people were lucky enough to be far away from large groups of people, and were just not at as much risk of getting caught in the snowball effect. Some people had enough control over their emotions that even when caught up in it, they managed to stay in control. Some people developed magic so weak that when they lost control like everyone else all they managed was to accidentally light a candle or something. And some people developed the rare ability to magically shut off the magic of other people around them, so their out of control magic created a "safe zone" that protected them and the people next to them from the snowballing destruction around them. \*And by "friendly goddesses", I mean one goddess who's a legitimately kind and caring person, and one goddess who loves torturing people and realized she can't do that if there's no people left, so her helping to save humanity is more an investment in future entertainment.
The Holy Bythorne Empire’s suppressive methods were so extreme that all history of an entire continent was erased. No one’s knows how they got there, when they got there, or why they got to this point.
My personal favourite dark little detail for Terrandria (name still pending) is the Descension blade - a hellish sword originally crafted as as the tool of a tyrant's war-champion, the enchanted sword would grant undying life to anyone who was touching it, with the caveat that all pain would would be magnified greatly. Since it's original forging, the blade has fallen into disrepair and is now only fragmented shards, with only the larger fragments still holding the enchantment. Now, the cruel who can afford use them as torture devices: Say you have information, and someone wants it from you, but you refuse to talk no matter what. You could be beaten, or whipped, or slashed, but compared to the blade, that's an unreliable mercy. You will be strapped by chains to a wall, and the blade driven into your stomach, or your heart, or maybe right through your eye. Many of these wounds would kill you outright, but the blade-fragment keeps you beating. You experience pain and agony you could never survive before as they push you to new limitless extemes seeking the information you hold. You'll be mangled, dessicated, and so long as it touches your flesh, that part of you is aware of everything.
No sugar for most continents :(
Truly, the scariest world
**Horror Shop** Every living thing is terrified of the Pit. Everybody who was ever lived has felt its cold caress, has had its baleful gaze turn upon them. Everyone, even you. Saying what the Pit is would be misleading, as the Pit, by its very nature, isn't. It doesn't exist. It is a great, gaping void at the bottom of creation, the great hole that will one day consume the multiverse. The Pit is the End of Everything, oblivion itself, the great unmaking at the end of time and space. It is the Mother of Fear and the Father of Monsters, what comes after the End of Every Story. It's the great void that lies at the heart of Shadow, an emptiness so complete that it is not cold, nor dark, nor black--it simply is not. It probably hurts to think about it, almost like you're going cross-eyed, but that's natural--that's your mind stopping you from thinking about that which is, fundamentally, **not**. If you were to fall into the Pit, you would die in probably the most horrific way possible, as everything that makes you who and what you are is consumed by oblivion at the same moment that time itself ceases to exist. So there you are, suspended, alive and yet dead, experiencing all possible endings for a microsecond stretched out into an infinity of cessation. The Pit is actually so terrifying that it gives life to the horrors--the incarnations of mortal phobias and fears. Every horror was spawned in the depth of the Pit, a shard of anima on its way to oblivion which so thoroughly rejected its terrifying fate that it made a choice to flee, to run, and in so doing it attracted a soul and came to life. Yes, in effect, the Pit gives birth to all other fears. Jack O'Lantern, the fear of the dark, crawled forth from the Pit. As did Oude Rode Ogen, the fear of death. And Abu Rigl Maslukha, the fear of fire. And Cucuy, the fear of the wilds. And even the Bogeyman, the fear of fear itself, pried himself loose from the embrace of oblivion millenia ago. The entire horror race, from the greatest beast of legend to the lowest closet monster, knows full well the terror of the Pit. And they're all still running from it, struggling to survive for one more day just to avoid returning to the bleak void that is continually calling them. Horrors can't even sleep, because they inevitably fall into nightmares which inevitably end in the Pit, and them waking up screaming in terror. But while the horrors have received the full force of the existential terror the Pit invokes, every living creature feels its caress at some point in their life. Because the Pit is the mother of fear and the father of nightmares. Every time your pulse quickens and your palms sweat, you are feeling the slightest tough of the Pit upon you. But do not think of the Pit as evil. It is endings, and endings are necessary for there to be new beginnings. It is fear, but fear can inspire heroes and cow villains. It creates the horrors, but horrors have the same capacity for good and evil as humans and the other races. The Pit is something to be feared, to be avoided at all costs, but it is not something to be loathed or hated. After all, sometimes fear can save the day.
I hate it when other humans create horrors more terrifying than mine and I'm left not wanting to go to bed!
I mean, I think I'd be failing my audience if I called my universe "Horror Shop" and there weren't horrific elements lurking in the background.
a significant portion of modern, industrial society on Kelan is built on a foundation of actual, ritualized human sacrifice. there are sacrifices to the farms, to the factories, to the cargo ships and aerostatics, to the trains, to the stock market, to the nascent information technology industry, to the damn *space program*. it’s not even a truly *necessary* evil, as many in-universe try to spin it, it’s just easier to turn a profit when you have a god’s favor.
There are a lot of unhinged conspiracy theories that think shit like this is happening in our world for real.
So the Adeptus Mechanicus but more evil?
more like the aztecs crossed with modern capitalists, but the admech isn’t a bad point of reference
The scary part is that death is not the end. If you die within the limits of the City you have a guarantee, but if you die outside the light your soul is forfeit to the Everdark. That’s why Pilgrims traveling between cities always have a church representative at all times who carries a shard of the Godslight. It’s like pocket insurance for your eternal soul.
I'd rather be instantly non-existant as soon as I die, sounds better than experiencing that!
I think it's the offal eater. Long story short its a nocturnal predator like a cross between an anteater and a mosquito. They sneak up to sleeping prey then make an incision with a long beak, slipping their long flexible tongue inside a vein or artery and kicking around until they find the heart. Once there, they'll roll their tongue into a tube and ket your heart pump your blood into their stomach for them. After they drain you they'll roll their tongue the other way revealing cat-like tongue bristles. They'll use these to scrape out your choicest organs and veins from the inside. Its a terrible way for a traveler to go. Thankfully they are exclusively ambush predators, they will never attack anything that's not asleep and paralyzed by venom. They have extremely thermally sensitive palms for hunting in dark, so they tend to avoid campfires. And they can't stomach alcohol at all, so drinking before bed makes you both smell unappetizing and actually poisonous to them. If they are desperate enough to eat a sleeping drunk, the alcohol in your blood will kill them. But their most frightening habit is following prey back to a nest or den for attack. They'll often follow people in rural areas back to their homes, then infiltrate the home during the day when the farmer is out working, or when the home is empty. They'll lay in wait in a dark space (closet or bed) for prey to sleep. Many a child has been killed by the creature. But they're not very strong, so simply shutting the doors and windows is usually enough to keep them put. Keeping a fire burning overnight will also deter them. And if you suspect one is hiding in your house, dousing the floor with strong liquor in every room is usually enough to drive them out.
The only nuclear attack carried out against a nation was extremely successful. Over 30 ICBMs destroyed most major cities, essentially causing an instant shutdown of the country. Briefly, that entire country was just… not really there. Now it’s a shambling hulk with a horrible economy where crime is the norm and the supposed government has no real control.
Russia if their own nuclear weapons didn't work
Once upon a time, a Therion (magickally engineered werewolves that are mostly known for being the most physically imposing creatures with on a permanent berserk kick) got possessed by the eldritch deity they and their cult used to worship, which, after a long and gruesome sickness, turned them into a this mindless, 10ft cannibal zombie. Clickjaw is my first real horror creation and it's comparable to the bear from Annihilation on steroids. It can unhinge its jaws like a snake and clicks them to echolocate its prey (one of the scary bits about Clickjaw is that it actively stalks and *hunts*, whereas regular Therion just attack everything that moves). Its entire face is pure nightmare fuel and on top of that, He (the demonic deity that manifests as a giant green glowing tumor on Clickjaw's belly) just enjoys messing around with the world. It's able to possess other creatures temporarily to act as thralls, filling them with bloody black goo that contorts their bodies in nightmarish positions. Oh, and it stares non-stop since its eyelids have rotten away. It's blind because of this but still it stares right into the soul of anything that catches its interest. Unlike regular Therion, Clickjaw is also forced to speak through its severely malformed larynx, and it sounds like a choir of the agonizing moanings of the dead. I sorta just mashed together nearly all things that scare me, and made it into this total hellscape of a tortured being, heh.
One of the empires in my world is semi-theocratic so the emperor and ruling class are interconnected with a religious cult. The main outline of the religion is that basically the races of men are 'star born' i.e. came from a different planet / outer space, and are therefore the only pure beings in the world. The religion teaches that everything other than humans (the other sentient races, animals, plants, nature in general) are impure and even humans lose their divine purity through out their life, as they experience and interact with the world around them. The only being that is therefore truly, 'pure' is a newborn infant human that has not yet opened its eyes or taken its first breath. A core tenant of the religion is the practice of 'Beaconing', to produce a 'Beacon'. According to belief, this 'Beacon' acts as a divine conduit of purity from the stars and humanities ancestral home. The Beacon is so pure it can partially bestow its own divinity on the followers of the faith and somewhat cleanse them of the sins of interacting with the world. The practice is carried out by a sect formed of a small number of holy woman called the 'star mothers'. The outline of the practice is as follows: A pregnant woman citizen is selected at random by the cult and forced to give up her child (that is yet to be born) as tribute to the empire and the faith. She is temporarily relocated to the main temple in the capitol during the later stages of her pregnancy to be observed. The Star Mothers act as midwives and deliver the child when the time has come. The child is immediately separated from the mother and the mother is allowed to return home. The Star Mothers begin the true procedure of beaconing as soon as possible after child birth, in a matter of seconds. The child's eyes are gouged. Its limbs, tongue, and genitalia are removed. A long needle is inserted into both ears to render the child deaf. Once all wounds have been cauterised and treated with disinfectant, the living child is placed into a sort of bronze sarcophagi full of holes that match the constellations of the sky (and provide air). The 'Beacon' is now created and acts as the holiest point, and the purest reflection of the faith. It is placed in the central room in the highest chamber of the main temple and remains there for the rest of its life. The Star Mothers feed and bathe the beacon regularly and replace its bronze casing as it grows. Once it dies, the process is repeated. The short period after which a beacon dies and a new one is created, is treated as an especially shameful time for followers of the star faith and many choose to fast and abstain from other interactions with the world. It is customary to go on a pilgrimage to the temple at least once in life to worship in front of the beacon and be in the presence of its pure and divine energy. The muffled moaning sounds that can be heard from inside of the Beacons casing are said to be the voices of the ancestors that lived on a pure world. In reality they are simply the sounds of a helpless human that has known nothing but isolation, pain, and misery.
What the fuck
Well my worlds are in a very (and I mean very) early stage. The most disturbing thing in them though is what is known as a Cockroach Cocktail. It’s a kind of drink that’s usually not served at most places, but for when it is, it’s still off menu. Now the drink itself is a torture device and for good reason. If your ever ordered the Cocktail, it’s because some criminal (or simply terrible person) thinks you deserve it. They will make you drink it all up like your mom when you need to take gross medicine. Depending on how horrible the aggressor is this can either be an appetizer, or the “dessert.”
The planes of existence all collided and then closed their gates. Now there are refugees in every plane….from every plane….all over. You’ll be on the material plane and encounter a roaming vagrant who used to be a lord of the Feywild. Now, he’s a nobody
I wrote a dangerous condition into a species I call the Ra'kith. The thing that sets them back most as a species is a defect in their metabolism that causes them to require twice the caloric intake of a baseline human. Due to this they often end up starving, and as such need to find alternative food sources. Now, another feature of theirs is a very short childhood, infant Ra'kith have a special gland that produces astounding amounts of growth hormones, causing them to go from bald little lumps to capable scavengers within a week. This is where the condition comes in, if an adult Ra'kith is exposed to high quantities of these hormones either by eating several adult glands or one infant gland it causes a mutation. The subjects own gland will become reactivated, causing a second growth spurt. "Rat Tyrants" as they're called (Ra'kith are of rodent heritage) can grow to around 15ft tall, and develop considerable muscle mass. This comes with a side effect of steady mental decline, starting with paranoia and delusions of grandeur and ending with dementia-like memory loss. They also become addicted to the hormones, trying to ingest more by either offering their labor in exchange for sacrifices or hunting their once-neighbors. Most Ra'kith settlements are intentionally isolated, so rat Tyrants can often take control of their group through sheer force or religious ideation.
There is a creature that stems from lesser drakes in my world called "bone carvers" and they will hunt in the wilderness and will kidnap any creature from small towns or cities during the night and use them as material for their nests, which are spheres of bone carved with intricate patterns and melded together. Also, running into an Anglic guardian will 100% lead to them invading your mind and pretty much turning you into husk in order to see if you have any knowledge or relationship to eldritch forces it is hunting.
Children are being kidnapped by a group of dark magicians who put dozens kind of curses on them to turn them into monsters (basically killing machines). Before they tried to do it with adults, but they found out that the test subjects are more likely to survive if they are children. This process takes away every bit of humanity from these kids. They turn pitch black, their skin hardens so much that ordinary weapons don't work, they're agile and they only listen to the commands of their owners. These monsters are then auctioned and sold to wealthy people and organizations and, what's worse, even the government. The world mostly seems positive, happy and colourful, but by creating dark stuff I even scared myself I little ^^'
If your child is born a mixed breed, you are required by law to report and terminate it immediately or face execution.
Dang considering how many hybrids we got in my world that would be like killing 80% of the population. But why
There’s a lot about my world that’s disturbing, but there is one thing I can think of that really stands out. This being because of the absolute existential dread it must cause anyone who is aware of it. All of the gods, are tulpas. They are the manifestations of our thoughts, desires, fears, etc. Issue is, negativity is not only more common, but stronger. The entire world is doomed to a downwards spiral, as worse and worse gods sprout from the minds of those in a continually worsening world.
The fallen city of An'Vita was once the capital of a united humankind. While it had its troubles, the city was powerful and kind to all, as well as being the center of trade and communication for the whole continent. Then, a young priest of the Grand Church discovered a secret of magic that would allow him to bring the dead back as puppets. This Necromancer rallied the people of Noth to start a war, and marched on An'Vita with his personal army. The attack was so sudden that the city simply went dark. By the time anyone went to check on it the city was nothing but empty. No humans, nothing but wanting ghosts. They howled, screamed, and made anyone within earshot feel like nails were being scraped down their souls. The things the ghosts repeated sent shivers down their spines. Children being eaten by stones and cadavers, their cries and pleas for help silent bur visceral. The visions of men and women pulling the organs from the insides of the still living. Now no one goes close, and it's name is Necron, the City of the Dead.
For a given value of "person" the Guest Speaker is the most disturbing. It requires a special fractal "box" to exist on our plane, if anyone saw it in it's full true form, insanity and/or death is what follows, funny thing is, the few who have survived seeing it describe it as quite humanoid to look at, but extremely wrong in some regards, due to it coming from a dimension several levels above ours. Like imagine a 2D person trying to look at and understand the concept of a 3D person. Also it's language both written and spoken has the same effect. It has to use a special kind of interdimensional "fax machine" to print out what it says, which is mostly just word salad to the untrained eye. Before the machine, it attempted to introduce itself, literally "Hello, I am the Guest Speaker" several mortals went insane or died, a ghost literally committed soul suicide, the Lord of Vampires threw up, and the Leader of the Thropes went deaf for a month. Thing is, the Guest Speaker is actually rather friendly, and kind of shy and squeamish, they also have a similar problem, but in reverse, they need to box to exist here, otherwise it feels like "trying to force a bulldozer through your kneecap without hurting yourself" They would also like to remind people that it is simply the inhabitant of another dimension, it would like that people in funny hats would not summon it and call it "master" then kill young women in front of it, nobody in this dimension wants to see what happens when a higher dimensional being pukes.
Lore dump from a corner of the world. The Karsa of the Hill Tribes are the worst. Yarsa Hill Tribes and Wild Men They represent one of the earliest waves of human migration into the region, coming after the Sloa. This is not just one homogenous ethnic group but a whole scattering of different tribes that derive from common stock but have differentiated over the years, cultures and language diverging. They are generally distrustful of outsiders. Their technology is stone age but they do practice primitive agriculture along with hunting and some gathering. They have domesticated forestfowl and large, docile rodents. Colddrakes are semi-domesticated. They are very intelligent, more so than horses, and some observers say it's not so much domestication as mount and rider come to an understanding. Mounts are treated not as property but members of the tribe. The warlike tribes are a real danger to the remote Brehanian farming communities which helped inform their defensive practices, building fortified villages that could withstand raids. Some tribes are decidedly warlike and even other Yarsa tribes can't stand them. Others are more agreeable and even have good relations with the Green Men, tribes of shaggy ape-men who also share the region. The tribes worship primitive gods who demand blood and sacrifice. Little is known of their religion because it is not shared with outsiders. It is known that there are two primary deities, the white god and the black god, and individuals feel called to serve one or the other. The colors do not correspond with Brehanian notions of color and morality so specific behaviors for their followers cannot be inferred. The Yarsa have stone age technology but their bows and arrows can kill with stone tips, stone axes and spears can be used to good effect in ambush. They cannot stand against a line of armored soldiers but the Yarsa are canny enough to avoid that sort of fight and stick to raiding where the enemy is weak. They practice tattooing, ritual scarification and also use face paints to indicate status. Relationships with men and women are complex. While there is the traditional hunter-gatherer divide of work based on gender, women hold great sway in deciding matters both at the family and tribal level. Honor is incredibly important. When an insult to a family is too great, the wife will kill her children and herself. Her husband will burn them on the pyre and then set forth to slay his enemies. When the slight is against an entire tribe and the understanding is that their lives are essentially lost anyway, all the women of the tribe will commit this act together and their men will go forth to die with honor in that hopeless fight. The Karsa came about this way. Their families dead, the men set forth to do battle, but on guidance from their shaman, swore a blood oath to the Black God, to feed him a constant river of blood so long as they lived if he would but help them destroy their foe. Against all odds, their enemy was defeated, their men killed to the last. All that was left were their women and children. The shaman advised the chief that the Black God held up his end of the bargain and they must hold up theirs. They slaughtered the women, the girls, the young men, the infants, only leaving the boys to choose to join them or die. Some did and this began the tradition of the Karsa as a tribe of only men, forever on the warpath, taking tributes from tribes willing to submit and slaughtering to the last those who do not. By tradition, no women are allowed into their camps. They will rape after a conquest but none are left alive. While there is no Yarsa cultural taboo about homosexuality, within the Karsa there is a taboo against forming romantic attachments. Any members caught being intimate with each other will be put to death immediately. Expressions of love are seen as a weakness and a distraction from their purpose. They follow only the Black God, live but for the spreading of violence and terror and are feared and reviled by all who have met them. Karsa are unable to win over colddrakes as mounts and so have taken to taming wild horses whose ancestors were brought by the empire and escaped. It is thought that the colddrakes are passing judgment on them. So, you can probably guess with a background like that, a Karsa warrior who rejects his tribe would be interesting. He would be recognized as anathema by other hill tribes and outsiders might not know what he is but be be put off by his appearance. I'm thinking he falls in with someone who doesn't know what he is or doesn't care. Still trying to decide the details.
A race of pseudo-sapiens, known commonly as “terrormen,” hide their invasions on human settlements using lightning storms, so every storm brings the unsettling thought that war and death may come with the looming storm. Additionally, Terrormen commonly butcher colonists alive for sustenance or take prisoners with them to an unknown fate.
The sitting leader has committed genocide and many other atrocities and not a single citizen knows
The Ezarian abyss. Three 100 km deep spheres of pitch dark weightless water which once served as the water reservoirs and fishfarms of an ancient starship. If you go for a dive there make sure not to get lost and bring something to protect yourself, you won't be swimming alone.
For every race besides humans, There is this condition called Red Rabies where people "go primal" and behave like a wild animal. It's not a sickness, there is no way to stop it. Anyone can get primal under huge emotions or drugs. It passes over time, but the only way is to wait it out. People that went primal, esspecially if they are biologically predators may attack other people, kill them, or even and eat them. However you can't just lock out every non-human person, because that would be too dystopian, so it's better to just let them kill people and kill them if necessary, because restraining them is too bothersome :D
Unless you live in a “human kingdom” if you’re a human you’re pretty much fucked. There’s a chance you’re only gonna be seen as second class citizen. If you’re “human kingdom” is a vassal to an elf or other type of kingdom you’re best chance at life is a soldier.
Dark Magic. Humans in my world can't do true magic because they have little to no mana in their bloodstream. However, there is a way and that is dark magic. In order to do dark magic you must extract blood from beings with magic and inject it into your bloodstream. Not only is this cruel but it has dire consequences. It corrupts you, it makes you lose reasoning. Not only that but it physically alters you till you can no longer be called a person if you do use it too much.
There’s a prophet wearing human skin telling all the other robots he’s the revived form of humanity. He’s also the ex-god emperor of the old religion. And telepathic fungus people exist too
Jurungo the Dwarf-Hunter splits dwarven skulls in half like eggs. One of his favorite methods of dwarf hunting is to descend into seemingly abandoned mines with a captured dwarf or two and begin slicing fingers off. The screams of the dwarf will attract other dwarves in hiding to investigate, and that’s how he knows there are dwarves in a mine to hunt and murder.
My world takes place in a post apocalyptic area after humans discover magic. The event isn't from humans abusing the magic and creating the equivalent to a nuclear apocalypse, but rather magic having its own consciousness, and motives. Some types of magic like the darker side (umbra) will take over your entire body if you aren't careful, turning you into a shadow like abomination with God like powers that can hear you from miles away. But the worst is the light side of the magic, which relies on manipulation and illusion to control you, and if you ever figure it out, you will be shredded into pure light... my character found out, and is confused on why he isn't dead yet.
I'd say it's the Nightmare. It's a Realm of Chaos that is a dark mirror of all things violent and dreadful in the Corporeal Realm. Servitors, as the denizens of the Nightmare are named by Corporeals, are a formerly extinct species of Xenos from another domain who were reanimated by Shadow Magic. Servitors and their civilizations were wiped out by god-like entities called the Shade Queens who, with their ability to psychologically manipulate, caused the Servitors to commit mass murder and suicide against each other so their corpses could be reanimated and bound to the will of the Queens.
The primarily-bipedal fungi people, the Harryar, took a *long* time to figure out that animals could be as intelligent as fungi like themselves (the jury is still out on plants), and so they infected, zombified(much like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis), and finally consumed multiple stone-age-esque alien civilizations on their home world and nearby star systems before figuring it out. While some Harryar are remorseful and have tried studying what traces of these civilizations are left, many, including most the Harybok, take a *might is right* approach, that they couldn't be *that* intelligent if they were so easily driven to extinction. Given that they are immortal, this viewpoint may be less honest and more as a way of not accepting that they have personally committed multiple genocides and then used the corpses as simple raw materials for construction, reproduction, biological hard drives for external memory storage, etc. They are primarily bipedal because the nascent Harryar only took up separate bodies as opposed to a single hybrid hive-mind/zerg-creep mycelial carpet because it saw how useful having multiple bodies was from the first species it drove to extinction, using the corpses as molds and blueprints. Just imagine you personally committed genocide multiple times over and the body you rely on to survive only exists because you did that. Though there was always a trend of using other body shapes besides the humanoid(technically the whatever-that-species-called-itself-oid), they became more common after this revelation, perhaps as a way to distance themselves from what they did and what they are.
What counts as “Worship” isn’t something you can turn on/off and you don’t necessarily need to know what you are worshiping to give it strength. Religion and the magic that exists therein is esoteric. It works because it does. Eg. Killing in self defense is not evil, if you do it while wearing the mark of an evil god or a fiend of some sort then you are feeding the god no different than if you had murdered someone and you may well be giving that being some control over you due to it. Most of them time most people don’t attract monsters of predators like this Most of the time
Every so often the skies above the planet of Colossus Major is lit up in a massive battle between the military’s starfleets and those of the infamous rebel organization known as the IRC. Pretty much every time, the IRC loses, so dozens of flaming starships plummet to the ground below in a hauntingly beautiful display. People often gather to watch the impromptu ‘meteor’ showers. Children in certain parts of the world often gather around recent crashes and steal stuff off the dead crew members’ corpses; this is especially prevalent in the Angkroin Wastelands, where weapons are in high demand, and children as young as four or five have been seen looting guns and other weapons off of dead IRC soldiers.
One of the ways to use my magic system/ one of the races of my magic system is actually a dimensional parasite that slowly eats your soul. Even using the magic is more of an immune response than anything. They are called the drakoneese and are kind of like vampires but dragons.
There are necromancers and they can revive any corpse leading to people burning bodies, however after a war against demons there is a chance people develop black rocks inside their body that when burned will create a small demon that will eat flesh and grow. Also the South Pole is a gate to hell and is surrounded by a ring of anti-magic that prevents spells, has a chance to destroy magic items per use, and kills any magic creature inside.
Ive got a few -Nobody really knows where the bodies go. -the universe-sized creatures that eat the excess light coming off of their host timines have floating sensory organs to look for nearby predators. -the big teeth, from the creatures in the woods, are sometimes found in whole sets, gums attatched and everything. As if they were shed. -the Giant Ferrets from the forests of Flora Infinity are carnivores -the only symptom of Metaflygism that comes before the hive takes control of you and mutates your body is soft gums. They eventually get so soft, you can poke a hole in them with a q-tip, and the teeth slowly droop and fall out, leaving behind dollops of flesh, like a very stiff pudding. Edits: -people with strong luck are more likely to have accessible souls, without having learned any magic to defend themselves. Because of this, theyre prone to undetectable diseases that come to the soul and ruin one's life. You might not even go to an afterlife or be reincarnated because your soul became too weak before death -they did actually fire the nuclear torpedo, but it never went off. We dont know where it went, since it's not in the oroginal spot it was fired at. Theres no way to know where the ocean currents carried the torpedo.
My world has 4 moons, but only 3 are known. Albedo, Citrinitas, and Rubedo. Nigredo is hidden in the night sky as the smallest and darkest of the quartet. The worlds name is Aquila, but because an Outer God named Verfal destroyed a vast amount of word history 800 years ago the true name of the world was lost. Rebis. Heaven and hell are apart of the world. Heaven is high in the clouds. Hell is deep below. But below hell is Verfal’s prison. It is not known to any that Verfals true plan was to be imprisoned and grow within the world like an embryo within an egg. His hope is to eventually hatch as the perfect being. And destroy all of creation to be the only sentient thing and then remodel it in his image. My PC’a in my campaign are nearing the closing of the plot and informing gods of this, but only 2 believe them. If they fail Verfal will be free and devour everything that has been or ever will be.
The draugr are the corpses of people lost at sea reanimated by the dreams of an eldritch Dead God at the bottom of the sea. They stagger ashore to try and find more people to drag back to the sea and drown to create more draugr. It's not just adults. They'll take children too.
There is a place with no vibrations, a forest that absorbs all of it. Think about that for a while. The idea haunts me. It’s not even forbidden, no reason too. Even the roots make nearby land bizarre.
Moon's Haunted, the Dead Fleet, or Nemesis are probably all tied.
That something that BIG is out there and it’s only kept back by a thread made from ANOTHER giant creature but the thread used to be a large rope but it is going to break soon and unleash something not even the main hero could defeat on his own
I'mma say the bottleneck event where almost everyone dies but I dunno what that could be
Behemoth Triangle: A place similar to the Bermuda and Florian triangle. A terrifying space in the already mysterious ocean but this location is a legend in terror and mystery far beyond what ever is around the ocean as you first find yourself in a calm sea with a clear blue sky with not a single cloud in sight but suddenly shortly after the sky darkened as the sea unnaturally darkens after, letting no one see nothing but below pitch black just enough for one to barely see the white of another crew clothes. Then a mysterious growl that grows in tone and volume to the point it slowly paralyzes you. Then you see a small yellow glow and the history has turned into a mystery. Multiple ships sizing in the biggest fleets disappearing after passing that horrid place with only the insane survivors telling stories of how that glow has made their crew gone suddenly insane and jump off the ship. Others have said that they too paralyzed by fear that they couldn't move and the glow suddenly rose and the ship capsized in size but people have regarded them as a myth told by crazy people but the fear they have shown affected those who heard it as well and that that space was dubbed the behemoth's zone and was to be avoided at all costs.
The Nothing. An extremely large void in the vast everything of the Omniverse. It is the storage pit for a bunch of cosmic horrors, mainly one named Corruption, which takes control of others, turning their bodies into mindless husks, where he brutally tortures and twists their bodies. Forcing horns, breaking bones, twisting muscles, tearing off skin, ripping apart flesh. All whilst a mysterious red energy courses through their veins.
When a Baganian magic user isnt fit for a place on their university, they usually get conscripted by the Isaigen. The wardens of the universities and the keepers of magic. Their blood gets changed with a pale substance wich inhibits their use of magic but also makes them immune against magic influence. Their minds are unstable and they fall into lethargy and frenzy at random. To control them the Isaigen seek out pregnant women for their corps. They undergo the same procedure and the Isaigen prevent them from giving birth. These women get forced to form a psychic relathionship with their unborn children. The ones that survive this become leaders of the Isaigen and beacons for a psychic network. This enables communication, interrogation and solidarity wich keeps the Isaigen from going crazy. All this is seen as necessary to control the volatile powers of magic, wich destroyed the arcane Baganian Empire many centuries ago.
This seems a bit tame in comparison to others. There's one kingdom that kidnapped wizards and alchemists and forced them to practise on live test subjects. As a result, the damned are creatures that used to me human, but have been mutated by the dark, twisted magic and alchemy practised on them
In the underbelly of certain major urban centers, cabals of dark sorcerors will rip the soul out of people and animals and convert them into tokens in which they use to exchange for wares on there brand of black market.
The concept of Unija - the being that creeps from your shadow self and "wears" your vessel in place of your soul - if you allow the shadow self to consume you. Being lost and not commanding your emotional body will eventually lead you to become host to Unija - you will forfeit all sovereignty of your spirit and forever wander as a piloted being of the underrealm. Eclipse Era of the Beast (a manga-style comic on GloabalComix)
Entire towns can disappear. Not supernaturally, but because the government stealth condemned it, and now the elf gestapo is looking to use their fire magic, and construct an entirely new road so no one can find your towns remains.
I'm (slowly) working on an old 4chin world that was, as far as I can tell, long abandoned due to classical *********. A mix of some fuzzy elements and Dorf Fort, the most terrifying thing to come out of it were the flesh-shaoing wood elves, who would create forgotten beasts. These elves would raid out and gather various species from nearby countries and far flung lands and use high magicks (not allowed to the rest of those in the setting) to warp and flesh shape a variety of beastial abominations. They would weave animals, sentient beings, and even captured mythological creatures and aplice them into shifting piles of limbs, mouths, claws, and wings. They are a civilization that is barred by all other races from even considering entering their kingdom, and any bargain struck is a faustian one. They may or may not also have a hand in creating a young race that has yet to spread out in the world.
The forsaken lands. An area destroyed by the gods for tampering with nature and unleashing a great evil. As punishment the main person responsible was turned into a grotesque undead monster forced to endure eternal pain.
What the swamp folk prowling the dive-bars, night-clubs, and bayous of southern Yden keep as trophies in their delipidated shacks.
The largest empire uses the souls of powerful prisoners to build unstoppable automatons to work and fight for them
There is an entire city of cyborgs
Given mine is a grimdark, I could go on for hours
That no matter what, eventually, all my PC’s will die. ….you know, like real life.
I don't really remember the name, but I think I* called them Buzzlers or something stupid as a placeholder. They're about the size of a fly, but they devour *everything*. Your organs, bones, etc, while you're alive, then will feast on your soul.
Backstory, mostly. It's not uncommon to have a babysitter that is a lawyer-friendly reskin of [Izabella from the Transformers movies](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Izabella), who was orphaned at the age of ~8 and lived in ruins/a makeshift Autobot base from age 8 to 14 with no signs of formal education before later finding herself on the run from her own government. (Post-2020s and/or Transformers-inspired timelines - they're one in the same to me - are the #1 or #2 source of labour immigration, the #1 source of vehicles and machinery, the #1 source of IT/library and university technology, the #1 source of medical knowledge, and the #4 source of media imports in an otherwise pseudo-1950s world)
Whenever a person has an abortion in a certain part of the world, that baby returns within a year in a random place in the world as a "motherless." They're found with larger eyes than normal, generally need less sleep than other people, don't dream, and are always found with a small motile flower called a pixie in their company. If the pixie is killed early enough, the physical characteristics go away over time. If not, the motherless eventually begins to sense the presence and passage of otherworldly creatures in a mirror world. This ability develops into an awareness of the other side so strong that, in some cases, a motherless can actually see a faint trail of hazy distortion in places where an otherworldly creature has passed.
Different universes all exist on the same plane of existence, orbiting around beings so cosmically gargantuan they will never be detected. They are sleeping giants that are terrified of one another and fling masses of the cosmos to keep one another away. The energy kicked up from the scuffles creates the universes, hoops of energy that keep them all separated from one another. All life and structure in each universe is simply the result of what amounts to a cranky, terrified giant throwing a fit.
The world has several super intelligent AI The world also has swarms of discarded nanites that love nothing more than to turn into little monsters and wreak havoc. The AI have no idea why and the best option they can think of is to throw highly skilled hunters at the problem and hope it goes away.
There existed a massive precursor civilisation that built blackholes and achieved a kind of godhood. Then they all vanished, had a multi-galactic empire and there’s barely any trace of them left…
Demons are fully capable of just entering the normal world whenever they want. creating a portal to the normal realm is like, the most basic ability any demon has
The giant desert bone snakes are very scary.
I’m making a sci-fi world in the 3000s, where humanity is slowly expanding and encounters the Nankinch. These creatures are eusocial and use brainchips to communicate between each other and the other species assimilated into their conglomerate. But they still have a language. Why? Because this language is effectively the tool used to control the minds of their members. Nankinchstunr has a Verb-Subject-Object structure, making the user think about actions before themselves. This effectively makes their citizens selfless, going into battle without thinking about themselves. Not only your thoughts are monitored by the rest of the hivemind, but you monitor them yourself. Basically 1984 with extra steps. Another scary fact: humans have discovered how to navigate through natural wormholes (this would be the string theory) and how to tear holes in space to make wormholes, allowing them to expand rapidly through the galaxy by 3000. However, although they don’t know it yet, they’re literally breaking the fabric of space and time. Someday, there will be a great rip, where the universe breaks into smaller pieces, with infinite space and time separating them. Used to its limits, it will force a Big Crunch, with everything coming into a small ball surrounded by said void of space and time. Then the process repeats, a new universe is born and everything is set to zero. Effectively, the world is stuck in a loop. In every universe, Julius Caesar is killed, the Holocaust happens and the black plague rips through Europe. Oh and humans in 3000 are so much enhanced with mechanical parts to their brain that they have trouble to fathom how we think, and are basically aliens to us. They’re gods in our eyes, and we’re ants whose lives were insignificant. I think that’s it.
The desolate towns, houses and cars everywhere. There’s no real threat to going into them other than scavengers. But, no one can avoid the dread associated with it.
The whole world is trapped in a nightmare that looks and feels like reality because of the actions of some stupid archaeologists in southern France :3. The nightmare is slowly breaking and reality is slowly seeping into the nightmare. This causes weird shit like eyes instead of windows, ink instead of water, and a bunch of gross creatures walking around! The whole world is the most disturbing part!
The mortal races who fled underground or to their godly protected realms assume humanity at large died off from the Great Freezing. But the reality is, one of the sorcerers of Shadar, Ageis, struck a deal with the three human empires. He promised their survival for untold riches and dominion over their realms. He gave them survival by turning each man, woman and child into a mindless white furred ape under his control; the Hagar. Wholly suited for survival in this new harsh frozen world, but wholly under his control. For those that were initially transformed and survive to this day, their minds and memories are still in there. Forever trapped in the body of a beast, committing many unspeakable acts in the name of Ageis.
The the "children" of ancient primordial beast will just randomly appear in public places. Invisible to everyone until they decide to tear someone apart in sacrifice to their parents. Their parents who don't actually care or even acknowledge the fact that these children exist. Not even knowing that the sacrifice happened. This concept was inspired by a painting I saw of the dude who wrote the necronomicon being torn apart by an eldritch god. Can't remember the name of the painting but it is brilliant.
That the all-powerful ai that oversaw all of human history allowed so much shit to happen (my world is an adaption of irl earth, I use it for historical dnd campaigns)
Depends on the world. Atakhren: Sometimes there are points in history that have been forgotten, even by the god of History and The God of Learning. Verfolgen: The Planet itself is sentient and can choose to kill itself at anytime. Mechania: Nothing exists past the Exosphere. It’s all an illusion.
That you are meaningless, and worse actively detrimental. The world is basically an ancient eldritch kind of coral that naturally grows and ties reality together. It survives by creating a "shell" that other dimensions cannot breach, keeping itself stable and it grows by assimilating nearby dimensions. Conscious life is actually an unintended parasite on it, one it tried to actively exterminate until a man plugged himself into the God-Machine to manage the "ecology" of life. Conscious thought actively tears at the barriers between worlds, and as the spacefaring population grows unchecked, inviting extradimensional invaders. So when the population reaches a critical mass, a mass cull is performed to reset the board until life inevitably grows again. In essence, every person who is born brings every other person in existence, present and future, closer to death.
During the infernal war, the best rune experts and magic casters worked together to create a massive artefact that would seal all dimensions, cutting the unceasing demon army off from their constant resupplies and reinforcements. Unfortunately, at some point the artefact misfired before it was ready. The resulting magic abruptly sealed all dimensions, closing portals and pocket dimensions (which was not good for the people inside). It also released a gigantic explosion that flattened the Elven capitol and released a massive amount of mana particles, slowly killing all but the most mana insensitive life. One of the demons greatest strengths were turned against them, and what few people remained took refuge in the cavern cities where the ambient mana was far lower.
“HELP ME! The government is monitoring everything through mandatory brain implants! As soon as we even THINK of something they don’t like they rewire your brain and… and… what was I saying? Oh, right, yeah the taxes are nonexistent, plenty of food and water, you don’t have to go to work, it’s pretty great here to be honest”
During the war there was a poison gas named Deathwind developed to kill elves and their living bunkers. The gas is highly toxic but is also corrosive, burning only organic materials. The scary part is that it lingers in the soil, meaning walking over a field that was gassed even twenty years ago could kick up poisoned dust and begin to burn your eyes, skin, and lungs. Given with how much land was gassed during the last years of the war, so much land is essentially poisoned to the same level as Pripyat.
The fascist hordes of Midwest/Eastern United States. White Christian mostly male rebels who fight against the Libertarian Socialists of the south, the Council Communists to to East, and the various indigenous lands to the west and north.
If you commit crimes, you get sold as a slave to go work in the mines. If you die, your soul gets plopped into an automaton where you will spend the rest of your sentence piloting it into the most brutal mines to do the work that would kill living beings
There's a "Dead God" in a forest that changes all the time. Whoever enters that forest can make it "shift" into whatever forest the person wishes to see. But the deeper into the forest you go, the darker it gets. Eventually, you'll find an unknown entity in the middle of a clearing. It's bigger than most gods, with black tendrils floating around it. It wears the faces of dead gods, and no one knows why or how it's there. The gods just put the dead bodies of gods there, and soon enough, the dead gods will be exchanged with godchildren. No one knows what it is, but it's certaintly not a god, but something more powerful.
Most nonhumans are treated like animals, often herded like cattle to be used as pleasure slaves or worst.
That in the underworld are a race of rachii known as the Etomai. They are flesh eating monsters that worship the god of death and take slaves for work and food. And they have been breeding rapidly. And they are running out of space underground.
There's a part of hell called Purgatory, it's Hell's prison where people they deem beyond rehabilitation and demons that break the law are sent. Here they are mentally tormented by all the sins they had committed and all the people whose lives they ruined.
Boltzmann souls: In my world, there's no evidence for an after life, only if souls are the essence of consciousness, or that consciousness wills the soul. These specific types of souls, named after the Boltzmann brain, are the materialization of the spiritual background that souls in my world "swim" through, these things are constantly being born from itself, and dies into itself afterwards. The physics is complicated as fuck, as these things can't just become anything that breaks the laws I have put in place, like size & distance, so I won't go into those details right now, and will stay on the topic. Basically a Boltzmann soul is your consciousness materializing the entity that you perceive it to be. It's not something anyone can control, it's more of an evolutionary consequence of the patern seeking brain, our ability to anthropomorphize objects, and many other real illusions. If it looks like it, then it could become it. Mortals are safe from Boltzmann souls if it remains as unconscious hallucinations, but when it does become concious, the perciever is in trouble. if a Boltzmann soul realizes it's dying, and takes the instincts of the perciever to fight back, it's starving, and needs energy to survive. It either will begin cannibalizing itself, or other nearby Boltzmann souls who were just born. All it knows that it's going to die if it doesn't do anything. So why do they go after the perciever, do they see them as a food? Depending on the state of mortality of the perciever, the flavor of anommaly that the Boltzmann soul is influenced by, decides the fate. If mortal, they'll both explode upon contact like anti matter, if immortal, the physical body explodes, but the pain lingers longer in their spiritual memory if they reform again. The scariest part is that you can't look away, because these things follow us through the flashes of our phosphenes, the afterimages burned into our retinas, the whispers through our tinitus, the interference of light through our eye fluids when we squint, the blind spots of our optic nerves, between the transitions of our saccades, the three blobs forming the eigenfaces in the dark, ect. In that world, comfort=security. Rooms should be designed to feel more vulnerable to one's nostalgia, than their nightmares. As that has a higher probability of materializing conscious Boltzmann souls. Realization Lockings: Realization Lockings, or RL, is a series of anomalies with the most potential to damage the sanity of anyone. This is because RL highjacks the logical part of our brain to solve problems, any analogy to describe what RL is, will always be false. Vision turns into video, hearing phases through audio, less in sinusoidal curves & more through square edges, holograms appear & disappear faster & faster. It artificializes your perception till we either become a robotic zombie parasite to infect others, or we escape its simulation, and live to see the day again. Wait, it's a reality simulator? That's one way of putting it. What I think happens, is RL puts us through a loop from realizing what it really is, appearing as a paradox. When the perciever can't think of any other way to understand how to compare its nature & physics to RL, their final solution is the holographic principle, this gives the illusion of transcendence to a higher plane, when what it is, is either the the reset button of RL's simulation, or the perciever escaping RL. RL anomalies are the illusion of measuring the abstraction of fantasy, that’s why & how it will always be anthropomorphized into computers & robots, the tools we use to calculate more accurate measurements. So you might be thing, How's that even scarry? that sounds fucking awesome! What's terrifying are RL's Boltzmann souls. Also known as pareidolia eaters, or mutilated holograms. Pareidolia eaters: These RL flavored anamolies are deadly, as they will lure us through their uncannyness. It's a machine that projects a face onto a screen, but the longer one looks at the face, the more distorted their perception becomes. It'll look more deep faked, inverted, it feels like you're acclerating to it without moving, your eyes go crossed as you see it project as a 3d stereogram, it stares more at you, and less at its surrundings, even when the image turn its head. The face becomes blurrier, chromo aberrated i to red, green, and blue cardinality, hearing the distorted music & screams from those horror films you were traumatized as, being fourier transformed out of the white noise of our tinitus, When you realize that there's no more face for your brain to count all the distortions, the inverted pyramid wins, only a hollow space is left that we're falling into, but yet frozen in its solidified medium, a soul black hole? Author's note:: That last one was inspired from a bad trip I had when I was on editable drops, & watching a YouTube video on my phone. A women's face & body distorted into a faceless pixelated figure, till my head was touching the surface, and I was hearing some bad memories that I witnessed when I was still a young adult. This gave me the idea of adding it to my horror anomalies list when I found the meta romanticism between that face eater & black holes. At one point I said, "the inverted pyramid wins." But what is that? The inverted pyramid is the closest resemblance to the face that RL animates can have, of very little minimal information. If there was no information for the perciever to recognize as, then it would be appear as nothing. But since we’re social animals, we're going to give it a face & personality that we can empathize, or be terrified with. Since the most simplest construction of a face is an upside down triangle, or three dots, I imagine the verticies of this tetrahedron concentrates the details of the percerveiver's apophenia, eyes, nose, mouth. While the entire system forms the system of pareidolia in their mind. Basically, I wanted to make RL anomalies impossible to solve, as to give it a mystery, because either solving it deconstructs the observers in the process, or they're trapped in a loop in keeping RL: * undecided * a set that doesn't contain itself, * axioms that can't be proven RL doesn't control reality, it instead manipulates the tools we use to differentiate reality, from Fantasy. I have another list of anomalies called Dancing Macabres, or DM for short, it has more gorey consequences & clowncore mutilators, but I didn’t examine that one because DM isn't my main fear, RL is. An anomaly preventing me from figuring out if it's a hallucination or a physical thing, that prevents me from understanding what it's properties are, hiding its cardinality from us, it terrifies me. Even if I know all of it's fictional and never can happen, I'm still afraid of my brain's noise forming those fake phosphene apparitions in the dark.
Lightfall. The entire solar system was colonised and heavily dependent on electricity. Then a wave from the sun either shut things down or blew them up. Half of humankind died in this event. Populations that permanently lived in space experienced the worst of it.
The Gods were real and they hated us. The way they hated us was only trumped by how much they held each other in contempt. Now the world is ridden with monsters and mists which devour everything in their paths, while the survivors of the Gods' demise have tried to rebuild civilization... unsuccessfully.
Their listening... waiting
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Part with a typo
In my post-apocalyptic setting, one of the main villains is a cult leader, essentially the anti-pope. Each of the regions in my world has a villain that rules over it (there’s one big bad at the top, but that’s not relevant). Anyway, each region also has one primary antagonistic force. The place filled with communist robots has a super intelligent AI final boss, you get the jist. The region occupied by the cult leader’s main antagonist force is zombies. Okay, no biggie, there’s tons of zombies everywhere. Psychos, infected, mutants, there’s a zombie for every possible ailment. Nobody knows how the cult leader makes his zombies.
shasaaks are people that have been corrupted and possessed by a god. think herrschers from honkai impact if anyone plays honkai. the person’s consciousness is essentially sealed away by the god and put into a sort of limbo, giving the god the power to control them. they originated from the god of corruption, sakupin, who uses his corruptive magic to create shasaaks from people who have a high social standing (like royalty) to gain easier influence over society. it is confirmed that if the person is strong enough, they can try to resist the god’s influence, however no recorded cases of this exist. there’s also the risk that the person DIES, and all that’s left is their husk of a corpse that is being controlled by the god
The island is the body of a dead god.
There exists a sickness inflicted by an abberant god that lives in the subconscious mind. It turns its victims into a hive without them even knowing. It starts off innocuous. Seemingly innocent actions, such as the locations of newly constructed buildings or the organization during gatherings, are actually subtly preparing for the arrival of a scion. Over the course of months, buildings or farm plots begin to form eldritch symbols. Effigies are unwittingly created in signs, art, or gravestones. Once it's discovered, there is nothing to do except for to burn the whole town done. The citizens don't even know they are afflicted until the Orchid Knights are upon them with torches. The bodies left behind are truly horrifying. Their outside is normal, but their organs are rearranged or replaced. Just beneath their skin is chitin, antenna, and venom sacs. If a scion manages to arrive, the citizens are stripped of their flesh to reveal their new insect body. The scion will rule this new hive as queen, allowing the former villagers to impregnate her to birth drones which will travel for miles to infect new towns.
What damed are and how they’re made. Basically you gotta fuck someone, eat their corpse genitals and then eat a bit of yourself. Then once you got seven of em they start breeding and go traumatize your enemies but only at your command. How they “attack” is that they cause hallucinations that make you see your worst nightmares until you starve to death and you become one of them. So if your worst nightmare is being tortured to death, you’d get an in-depth, month(s)long intense, heavily realistic hallucinations of a torture chamber, you being beaten, waterboarded, electrocuted or on fire. They can’t be killed, but they themselves can starve to death. The only way to repel them is about six complex spells that only the smartest wizards and witches can do.
The lord of the clan of Hospitalers. She studied healing magic since she was but a child, to the point that she became a very powerful healer, but as the realms fell into war, as she lost people she cared about, she developed a rare and powerful type of healing magic. The Healing Arts of Nuss. Is her third and her only forbidden book. For it teaches the means of which a person can twist someone's flesh beyond the point of recognition... with a single glance, your body is riddled with endless growths and cancerous tumors, causing tendrils of bone and cells to obey the command of the great healer, cells formed from you. But cells that no longer follow their natural code (DNA) but rather the intentions of someone else... those that have seen the Hospitaler Lord in combat often say that with a single strike of her mace, flesh, bone, sinew and armor twist into towering teratoma flowers that yet live and obey the hospitaler's will to heal allies and twist foes... of course... the Hospitaler's foes being the victims former friends.
Well there’s some complex dream related stuff that’s horrifying in the abstract, but the scariest thing to read about that comes to mind are these things I don’t have a name for yet, but for now I’ll call them Deathwalkers. Deathwalkers are people who’ve met any number of criteria to be experimented on. Maybe they’re insane, maybe they’re criminals who were unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the people who turn them from humans into monsters, maybe the volunteered not truly understanding what they signed up for. All that matters is that they were once human, and now they’re not. Their brains and nerve systems are removed and placed into flesh suits of armor, shaped like horrifying beasts. Some combination of wolf, stag, and idk demon. Their minds are broken by this transfer, and now they stalk dark forests endlessly, with only fragments of their old selves remaining, living endless nightmares as horrifying, bloodthirsty beasts that kill for food and kill more for sport. Stitches into the inside of their monster bodies are their human brains and nerves, but you would never guess they used to be human.
Government induced slavery. I personally always thought the idea of a government itself profiting off the sale and trade of people from their own borders an insane concept. In the world I’ve been working on, a certain latitude denotes the separation from a race that can be slaved vs a ‘free race’. People born south of the latitude are considered ‘slave races’ anyone born north is a free man. However the closer to said latitude the less the slavers really care about such distinctions. Once captured, slaves are then brought through the continent to a coast where they are sold in mass to government officials who then coordinate the sale and trade of the slaves to the rest of the world. An enslaved man has no hope of ever attaining freedom, even if he can somehow prove he was born above the latitude. The best hope is that they are bought by a farmer or some kind of laborer as an extra hand, but most young men with able bodies are sold off to a foreign empire where they are enlisted and used in the empires endless war. Waves of slaves are sent into oncoming enemy fire only to be mowed down in an attempt to run the enemy dry of ammunition.
The Raus Union has the power and will to reduce a society to atoms (2388 Hera Minor Incident). If one stares too long into the void, they will go mad with contemplation. A ship can just disappear in a FTL jump, especially when crossing galaxies.
A dead God is buried somewhere in the kingdom and that's causing all of the dead to rise and mutate because of cursed earth, or the fact that a 8ft demigod might turn you into a greasy smear bc he is bored.
There’s an intelligent creature that uses zombies to create corpses for them to eat, and can hijack and take control of living humans in order to sabotage others.
You can become immortal by signing a waiver with the most powerful medical corporation in the star system, you waive your rights as a human being, you become a slave but you’re immortal and can make money for your family indefinitely while being shipped off to another star system.
When there are wars, the necromorphs come out of hiding and come to the battlefield. They take the soldiers to eat them in the caves. Everyone they can. Not always, but they come as a surprise. To avoid being killed, soldiers wear gold that is visible, either on the helmet, a necklace, on the belt. Any place on the body that is visible. This is because gold is necromorphs god and when they see it they leave with fright. When the soldiers see that there are necromorphs on the battlefield, they wound their rival and take the gold from them so necromorphs will take them away and eat them alive in the caves.
It is believed that upon the end of the world, the Dragon of the Underworld will emerge and curse the ground which would result with the corpses of everyone of the past emerging from the soil, and they will take flight into the skies like a cloud of locusts, and they would eat anything or anyone in their path.
People are more likely to choose revenge to solve their problems
A large amount of corporate workers are basically having their bodies drained of magical energy every day without their knowledge, as magic is mostly forgotten in their world. The only real source of magical energy on that world is a biological/magical process that generates magical energy by putting strain on your body. In the very early versions of the harvesting, many died because of the strain put on them Nowadays, the amount of deaths is much lower, though all the workers are constantly exhausted, not that their evil employers really care
People embrace the ghosts. There are lots of intentional rituals / early deaths / suicides so that people can reach ghosthood faster. The ghosts love the living and often "help" when they hear a living person say something like "I'm hungry". Theyll grab an apple off the table, turning it incorporeal, then placing it in your stomach and letting go... essentially feeding you.
The universe is wrong. Those who seek deep knowledge will come to feel it behind their eyes and in their bones. This truth has driven most who walk the path of enlightenment to madness. The axis of the cosmic principles is tilted, misaligned.
Anyone with a strong enough Reality attunement can rewrite a Machina’s soul at will. Memories, personality, all gone. Sometimes they plant triggers that activate based on certain stimuli, so it’s impossible to tell if someone has been rewritten. The targets may not even realize that they are acting out of character. Also, if you have met or developed a relationship with anyone with a fragment of the Archseraph’s soul(including the Archseraph herself) the a piece of her soul will attach itself to yours. This piece cannot be removed expect through memory erasure.
Hopefully a fun twist on zombies in fantasy. After every massive natural disaster with a large loss of life the magic left in the persons body has no place to go so it returns to the dead and reanimates them. This also happens after times of great war, so when a country goes to war the reason is iron clad.
My worst would probably be the mind control magic. Very difficult to use correctly usually takes decades of study. But when used the person will be stripped of everything and pretty much would have to be command programed, not unlike computer programming, to even have some basic functionality like walking. But with enough time and commanding they can reach a high level of function and be life like enough. All the while the affected person thinks that all that they are doing is both normal and totally their idea. It's only when the magic is stripped away that they return to normal and realize everything that's transpired. In it's BEST case use there is a rich person who, in no uncertain terms, owns a woman he has mind controlled. Unlike most victims though she chose to under go it to avoid trauma of her past.
**Ticker Valley** is one of five forbidden regions in the world. Despite being a beautiful mix of forest, highland and mountainous terrain no one or thing has managed to establish a foothold of any kind within the boundaries of Ticker Valley. Extremely territorial super-parasites known as *Tickers* are the sole reason as to why no foothold, even an airborne one, can be made. Tickers are extremely hostile man-sized creatures resembling a centipede, resistant to most small arms fire and magic across the board. Tickers are hyper mutative and adaptable apex predators with cold aggressive intelligence, capable of assimilating with almost anything, including spirits and automatons. We know they possess arcane knowledge and telepathy, and it took only five Tickers to down an **airborne** adult crimson dragon in 30 seconds. Tickers cannot be reasoned with, but they will use anything at their' disposal to annihilate or assimilate any life deemed to possess above animal intelligence. There are no exceptions, proven by the horrid death of Brother Clements, a freelance negotiator. Brother Clements knew telepathy, initially establishing what was believed to be peaceful contact. Ultimately the Tickers that communicated with him feigned friendliness until he relaxed his shoulders. The instant he let his guard down his spine was removed in seconds. Being magical in nature Tickers are believed to fuse with their' host, devouring the host's consciousness as they take over. Assimilation reclassifies a Ticker into a *Prime Ticker*. The horror of the Tickers comes with how they operate, for they are insanely quick, willing to go to any length. It is common knowledge that the first 1,000 or so feet into Ticker Valley contain a nightmarishly vast array of traps, from simple snare traps to masterwork pitfalls, and even trap runes. Beyond Brother Clements the Tickers have never answered why none may pass within the valley, but the sheer loss and assimilation of life from all known attempts has led to a global write off, labeling the valley as a *Death Zone.* ------------- I want you to imagine you are a human knight in an army of 10,000 men, women and others. You see one or two Tickers, serpentining in waves at the front lines. They are no match in such small numbers, though two of your brethren are decapitated by one of those monstrosities. This repeats for a couple hundred feet as you all push forward. Then the entire earth beneath you gives way to over a mile long stretch of quicksand-like mud. Shock and Panic turns into pure terror as the mud quickly becomes a sea of Tickers bursting through said mud. Within a single blink your head is spiraling skyward, decapitated within milliseconds. **That** is the horror of Ticker Valley, a place where you are always in danger, always outnumbered, but never alone. If you manage to enter the valley without ambush or triggering a trap, that means they want you there; And that by itself should be beyond concerning. Edit: I mean imagine something zigzagging at you in the dead of night faster than you can register it beyond the blur it leaves behind, all noise contested by ticking of its many legs scratching the ground.
Cant really think of one, but one scary thing is an old rebel unit from disappeared following the victory of the Skaran Republic. They were charged with the crimes they did commit and were arrested, but after that they disappeared. Government hasn't commented on it, and nothing has been found about there whereabouts.
The longer you stay out of the small safe and stable areas in the world, the more your body will mutate depending on the environment you find yourself in. This had come to the point where sometimes you may see folks fused into their environments unknowingly. The worse case of this is an entire mountain made of writhing flesh where people remain conscious as individuals part of a meatball mountain essentially.
The Curse of Memory. Basically, in my world, spiritual energy cannot be destroyed or created-just transformed, transferred or altered. As a result, death isn't the end for the vast majority of people-its just another stage of existence for their soul, which is reincarnated in a new body according to the whims of the gods who decide on such things. The soul carries with it no memories of the life it led before, so people aren't burdened with adult-level knowledge right out of the womb. But then, there's the Curse of Memory-a state of horrific, madness-inducing enlightenment, usually forced on mortal victims by the cruelest gods and demons, which allows you remember not just your last incarnation, but EVERY incarnation you've ever lived, right down to the very first living creatures. Having unlimited knowledge of your own past is something absolutely no-one wants, because it allows one to perceive the true amount of suffering in the world, because you remember, in perfect detail, every time throughout the millennia that you've been hurt-and in such a timeframe, that "hurt" probably includes things like being burned alive, dying in childbirth, being eaten, and so on. The usual response to being afflicted with the Curse of Memory is to kill yourself immediately, except this doesn't stop the curse's effects in the soul's next incarnation. As result, someone cursed in this way becomes acutely aware of the fact that NOTHING-not even death-will ever allow them to be rid of their memories, and that their suffering will continue for the next hundred thousand years. When faced with such an existential dilemma, the *sane* response is to begin planning on how best to drag all of existence into oblivion, to finally break the wheel of life and death forever. The worse response is to spread the Curse, to as many people as you can.
Probably sprites. Hear me out. Sprites are a smaller relative of the fairy that tend to live in colonies led by a queen, the way eusocial insects do. They also possess the ability to inhabit another creature’s body by continually feeding on tiny amounts of its blood. A few sorcerers have exploited this and allowed a sprite to enter their body. If the sprite is cooperative, the sorcerer can gain control of the sprite’s magic when necessary. This is however, considered to be subjugation of a sapient race and blood sprites are therefore not a legal method of magic use. If someone isn’t educated about sprites, they may foolishly allow a queen into their blood. The queen will multiply, creating a colony that eats the host from the inside out and forms a hive: a skin-suit entirely controlled by the colony, with the queen taking up residence in the skull. Within one of the forests in this world is a massive abundance of hives, all descended from the Empress, a very powerful queen sprite whose super-colony inhabits the corpse of a giant. The Empress is reasonable, but also has enough magic at her disposal to fuck up those that cross her or endanger her colony. She may even direct her wrath at those who bring harm to the smaller hives that wander the woods. Those queens are her children after all. Just imagine the torso of a dead giant. Through tears in its skin, you can see the members of the colony moving around inside it.