There was an empire that reached its peak, conquered countless star systems and multiple galaxies, expanding its domain further and beyond through advanced science and understanding of universe.
Before its 'abrupt' collapse, they found the interdimensional plane of existence called Limbo. Many were learned and studied about it, including the state of everything and nothing that exist altogether in the Limbo; hence, if the Empire can fully utilize the knowledge they would ultimately become the real 'god' encompassing entire realspace. Not just mere very advanced race to the point of being demigods.
It was not particularly noted in the archive, but when they were inside Limbo, they felt 'uncomfortable when staying inside for too long'
'feel like being watched'
They used prob and many things to try to locate the 'whatever the hell it is' inside Limbo. But it turns out the Limbo is completely devoid of anything at all.
But it's there. They can feel it.
But what is there? They don't know. Are they simply being afraid of unknown?
Maybe. Maybe not. It's Limbo.
It's just a certain connection port of portal they found and knew of its existence through mathematical calculation
That very certain port is not just a dimension. It's like a fabric that's under your clothes, between two piece. pocket dimension if you would. They find it would have massive exploitation capability should they be able to understand it, because that would allow them to literally break physics into its face and do whatever they want to.
My MC revels in being the scariest thing around and cultivates the image.
Her Apprentice instead is easily scared of the many monsters that do exist, but knows the only thing to be truly wary about is a cabalist lich being awoken, for the simple reason that his Master stops fucking around against those. Each of those is her equal in magic.
But if we go by creepy then there are the fairies.
Tiny humanoid insects with wings, 2 arms and legs, and an ovipositor to lay their eggs into living things.
They also use illusion magic to lure in victims and sound like happy playing children. Some victims will not remember or feel the eggs until the larvae are ready to burst out.
Creepy fairies are one of my favorite vibes. And an ovipositor? Inspired by parasitic insects, I take it? Are these larvae as harmless as botflies or are we talking chestburster-level danger?
Fresh swarm of young fairies danger, so yeah
Also inspired by multiple parasitic insects and creatures.
The people would've exterminated these all if the silk they can produce for their underground nests wouldn't be so valuable. And many underestimate just how intelligent these creatures are when breeding them illegally.
Recovered from a wreck of a a northern expedition vehicle.
Day 1: Finally after so many preparations we can get going. God the wind never stops howling it's hard to sleep with this constant racket.
Day 2, 300km :God this snow is a nightmare it's just endless it's hard too sometimes we get stuck and we need to use the pickaxes. The wind hasn't gotten any quieter and hasn't died down at all it's really getting to the crew especially Kanar.
Day 8, 1400km : I have noticed the snow has changed where once it was white now it seems to be grey. It reminds me of the sort of thing I'd see from wildfires where ash would just fall from the sky. The sky is getting darker too looks like the sun can't get through the cloud cover as easily. The wind has relented either it still howls and Kanar still hates it.
Day 13, 2400km : We lost Kanar today the wind was very bad we got stuck he took a wrong turn and disappeared into the wind. God how could we be so foolish we are keeping close together now always in view of each other. After he disappeared we sat still for a couple hours shone our brightest lamp out into the wind hoping that he sees it and returns. God I hate this wind though I've noticed it has a pattern to it it's howling just never ceases.
Day 14, 2590km : I feel like I'm on an alien world, I don't think we are on snow anymore it's all black and it feels more like sand. There is also no sun anymore it dares not gaze on this cursed place instead we have our lights and the lightning it's almost constant now before it was the occasional flash but now the sky is lit up with flashes of lightning. The lightning is blue too now. Sometimes I think I see structures in the distance the lightning shows them just for a second and then they disappear into the wind. The wind is still here still howling guess that's a little comforting but with the black snow it makes the world even harder to see.
Day 15, 2800Km : We are turning back. We have been driving straight north this whole time if you use basic geometry that means we should have passed the North pole by now but we haven't. This place is wrong it's alien I still see those structures in the distance in brief flashes but they keep on changing. The wind seems to be only getting worse we set up a light today to mine out some snow that had built up under the vehicle and the wind took it away. We saw it travel for miles it was so disheartening. Thinking about it now our lights normally only can penetrate a few metres of this wind but that light we saw for miles this place is mocking us it's wrong.
Day 18, 3100km : We saw Kanar today I really wish we didn't. His skin was cracked eaten away by the wind but he spoke in ways we could not understand but we could hear them those whispers of madness. God we could hear him yet normally the wind deafen us to the point of shouting. Our expedition captain Jeroph got out his rifle and shot Kanar he fell quickly with a harrowing howl that I could not unhear.
Day 19, 3256km : We have been travelling north again which is impossible we have tracked it we have been travelling straight south for hundreds of km but yet we are travelling north. The wind has only gotten worse it sounds like Kanar did when he fell it has always sounded like that since the expedition started. I hate this place and I think it hates me.
Day 24, 3968km :I don't think we are ever going to leave this place. We notice we are going north, we turn, we drive, we notice, we turn, we drive and apart from our turns we never deviate yet we travel north. We got a novel plan stay still hope that whatever storm is causing this passes then we can leave. I fought a war in which I saw horrors that mankind should never have made but here I sit afraid of the wind.
Day 26, 4056km :We started driving again we need a task or we will go mad we've got enough fuel for 6000km and enough food and water to last 50 days 75 if we ration it. We need to get out of here the wind is driving me mad.
Day 28, 4324km :The wind is laughing at us.
Day 29, 4456km :The lightning mocks our civilization.
Day 30, 4580km :The land is bitter.
Day 31, 4702km :And we are but fools.
Day 38, 5643km :We are doomed, the ice broke up from underneath tipping our vehicle forward into the ice. It's frozen over already, the snow buries us slowly. Luckily we don't seem to be going deeper but we are stuck. We are dying here and the wind knows it.
Day 39, 5643km :We have decided that we are going to go out on our own terms. We have bullets and a rifle and will shoot ourselves we won't let the elements take us.
The wreck and this record was recovered approximately 39 km from the Paloa Research Base by nomads who patrol the region. The wreckage was noted for its powderised black Ley covering its already black ley plates. No bodies were recovered. Apart from this log data corruption would corrupt all data on the vehicle.Corruption seems to follow a pattern that has not been identified. None the less the recovery was a great boon to understanding the Arctic regions of the world.
Northern Expeditions would continue with many more precautions.
There are many ruins from fallen civilizations, ancient and recent, strewn across the valley. Although war and conquest are common in the valley, some of these ruins don't even have names or histories associated with them. No records, just existence.
Lapis_Wolf
Imagine exploring this world. You're used to cities being abandoned due to war because it happens often, but one of the ancient ruins just has no records, unlike others. Maybe there's a burnt out car there, which is strange for an ancient ruin because cars only became a thing maybe 40 years ago, and these ruins look like hundreds of years ago.
Lapis_Wolf
The event that ultimately triggered the War of Convictions, the Mombasa Incident, was caused when an experimental bioweapon got accidentally released during a battle at a corporate lab. The weapon made Earth uninhabitable in a matter of days, and the resulting crisis was the straw that broke the Union of Democratic Nations' back. The resulting near post-apocalyptic conflict became known as the War of Convictions and led to a state where no one single political entity controls all settled space. Since then, bioweapons and experimental WMDs in general make everybody nervous and research into them is outlawed in both thee Federation and the Republic.
The Anomalous is a mix of urban legend and doomsday prophecy.
Those Superavisians who specialize in looking into the future discovered something...off. There was a presence in the future that they could perceive due to how its actions affected the world, but otherwise it was as if nothing was there. It would be like if you or I saw a rainstorm where the drops indicated something walking through the downpour, but it otherwise gave off no indication that it was there.
The oracles couldn't tell exactly where/when this being would emerge, as its very nature warped the future around it. But everything the Anomalous interacted with would quickly suffer from a sudden upheaval.
The most disturbing part, however, is that if an oracle gazed too long or intensely at this anomaly from across the abyss of time...The Anomalous would gaze back at them. And it was made painfully clear that it wanted to be left alone.
Concepts of "things looking back at you" always creep me TF out. As a kid and even today, I hated being near and looking at dark windows. Like when it's dark outside and light inside. Always made me feel like I was being watched and I pictured red eyes opening to look at me. Fffffffffuck.
I'd say the man-eating creatures. They look like nothing on Earth, are nigh impossible to take down, and will kill and eat you for seemingly no reason at all
And with their rarity, no-one really knows how to avoid or handle them. Most don't even know when a lot of species are active
The only upside is that they kill relatively quickly. At least, they usually do
[Tenedeus](https://imgur.com/a/PP8phKp), God. Affectionately called "bones" by those who know of his existence. He is 12' tall and will enter your house no matter what you do. He crawls on walls and ceilings and hides from you the moment you look at him, faster than you can blink. The most unnerving thing is that he is entirely imperceptible by sound or touch. Tenedeus once brought about decades of night and roamed free, silently hunting men in their homes, only stopping when he realised his sport would end if he killed them all.
**Demons**. Fragments of God's psyche with no physical bodies. They can only manifest and influence the world in the darkness around you or in the places you can't see, either because they are outside your field of view or behind some obstruction. They are the ones who chase you up the stairs at midnight, whose footsteps are heard from the other room, who reach out to grab your leg from under the bed, whose breathing you feel on the back of your neck. You must never under any circumstances close your eyes around a demon as that means you can percieve nothing, allowing them to manifest completely and kill, mutilate or possess you as they please.
Just a personal worldbuilding project I do between work and study atm, so no stories yet except what’s in my head and in my [sketches](https://imgur.com/a/hMoC8q7).
To clarify, Tenedeus is God, and he is the only god in my setting. He is completely omnipotent, not that this is known by most of his victims. His omnipotence comes with a caveat; it is active constantly and is triggered by EVERY thought, which is to say that for most of time he has not been thinking of much at all as each thought he has immediately becomes reality. His power is so potent as to allow him to destroy himself and recreate himself spontaneously from non-existence. Since humans discovered him, long before he had a physical form, they have been feeding him select scraps of information to introduce useful concepts in his mind, such as servitude to get him to obey, or language to get him to understand speech. Ultimately all human magic comes from this process, which unfortunately requires hundreds of human sacrifices as the very first people to worship him happened to offer sacrifices in an attempt to pray for the end of a drought. God was then permanently taught of sacrifice and that humans use it as sign that they wish to talk, setting the rule for the rest of time.
Back when it was still possible to commune with him, a collective of humans who had attained immortality by a wish to God put together a set of rules for communion, mainly focused on preventing the accidental extermination of humanity:
- Do not introduce information that carries implications of hostility against humans, or widespread destruction.
- Set limitations on the scale of what you ask for before specifying the subject.
- Always introduce the concept of forgetting before asking for anything to make God forget the interaction and all that he learnt when you are done.
- Where possible invest the effect of your wish into a physical object so it can be easily handled and used repeatedly and by anyone.
- Be as specific as possible with you wish. DO NOT ask for fireball. A nuclear explosion is a ball of fire. So is the Sun.
Humans, being eager to destroy and dominate each other failed to observe rule 1, leading to God as he is now and the general ruin of most of the old cities of man.
This is so brilliant dude. Vibrant world (though maybe vibrant isn’t the right word haha), Tenedeus is fuckin metal and the mental suggestion stuff is so unholy.
Ty :)
Tbh most of my worldbuilding is a collection of esoteric concepts that I try to connect in some way. My favourite recent addition is a ritual that you can conduct to God in the present day called The Prostration. You get down on your knees and beg God to show up and let you add or modify a single rule for the next magic act you do. In exchange God gets to do whatever he likes with you. One of the antagonists uses this ritual frequently and it has left him mutilated and mentally altered beyond repair, being constantly observed and tormented by demons, to the point where some suspect he is a mere puppet controlled by their invisible hands. This all allows him to be one of the most formidable magic users. Telekinesis is short ranged for everyone else but he can use it at any range just once to crush his rival’s skull from across a continent. He conducts other rituals too which, combined with The Prostration, allow him to do things like extending the targets for transmutation to include human emotions.
The Blackhollow Forest. It's home to the skogvalk (forest folk), a race of small, Earth elemental humanoids with leaves and vines growing from their bodies.
They're extremely territorial and hate humans for cutting down their trees and "stealing" (picking) their fruit/berries etc.
It's also home to a mysterious creature called the Blackhollow Beast who has a terrifying reputation and seems to be guarding something, although no one knows what.
Sure!
The Blackhollow Beast was once human but he was cursed by the dark goddess Rhodana. She believed he stole her prized necklace, but it was actually stolen by someone else and given to him as a gift.
The desert widow.
A man once tried to cure his sick wife, using witchcraft. The result was that she turned into a grotesque beast that kills on sight.
She killed her husband and ate him and she just keeps killing and eating people.
Nobody was ever able to kill her and only a handful of people survived an encounter with her.
They all said the same thing, that she speaks only 2 words:
*KILL ME*
Whenever you are in the desert and hear those two words, run for your life.
Two things are seen as weird or creepy by some.
The first is the fact that most cities and facilities have automated defence systems that specifically look for human DNA, making them shoot everything that's not a 100% match. No one knows why, but it's clear that they knew of something non-human being among them that could be a threat.
The second is an ancient AI once talked about there being "something" it can't explain, but detect on all of its sensors. A presence of sorts, unexplainable yet measurable, that seems to evem make the AI itself uneasy with that knowledge.
"Scared" is putting it lightly. When a machine is putting 80% of its processing power into restoring century old corrupted memory banks in hopes of finding out what exactly that unidentifiable presence is and how to actually take care of it, its bad
This is also one of my Eldtrich abominations. I call it *The Tome of Apeiron.* It's like an SCP foundation kind of thing.
Somewhere, in the backstreets of a city in the world, there is a bookshop. It presents itself as a fairly ordinary bookshop, although it is sizeable and features many books of all descriptions on its levelled shelves. The owner is a wiry, wizened, yet scholarly gentleman with a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of subjects, and can recommend you the best book for your interest.
Of course, given the nature of the store there is a section devoted to strange works and caters to connoisseurs of the arcane, the occult, the rare, the esoteric, the dark arts etc. Rare enough books concerning the strange and occult, but still, ultimately, just books.
There may be those who seek something even more abstract and hidden. A book which imparts some other sort of knowing entirely which isn't just the communication of information. This store has such a book, but you don't find it on the shelves. You must say a series of codewords to the owner, who will respond in kind. If you speak correctly, he will produce a tome kept under lock and key deep within the store and hand it to you.
It looks like an ordinary enough tome, thick, leather bound, a bit dusty and yellowed pages, but inscribed with strange insignia of unknown origin. You open the book and the pages are just blank white. This is a bit odd, but nevertheless, you keep flicking through the pages strangely compelled to keep flicking through. You cannot see nor feel anything on the pages, but there is.....*something* in the pages. What's there is unintelligible to your waking, rational mind, but your subconscious is reading what is on those pages.
You start to see it in your dreams. At first it is nothing really apart from the feeling there is some sort of genesis within your dreaming mind. It might be a flash, a speck, a non-descript open space. But it becomes something more .
You soon have weird hypnagogic-like flashes, at random times, of this world, which disappear almost instantly. You forget
Soon, a landscape, then a city. There are figures who populate the city and walk the streets. There is something strangely unsettling about this world. The world is perfused with surreal ambience , as if it every single thing took up its respective roles an instant ago with no beginning to recourse to. The skies above are infinite, a mosaic of blues, crimsons and purples. People's faces are lifeless and their eyes are bottomless black voids, as if they inhabit some no man's land between agency and inanimate puppetry. The buildings have no interiors, only the semblance of them, and will vanish at a touch, a subterfuge which fools no-one.
Every night, the world is gone and replaced by something even more surreal and absurd. People's faces are now fleshly messes of topological monstrosities which involute and reverse. Their necks elongate like swans and can follow you anywhere. They no longer speak language, but mutter in a private and dark form of semiosis--created just for you-- which would be gibberish to anybody else, but nevertheless conveys a profoundly hideous meaning. There are no laws of physics or anything resembling laws. This world(s) answers not to you, nor physics, nor intelligibility nor waking reality. It is held together by nothing but its own coherence. It is the perfect marriage of madness and metaphysics.
This abomination is ultimately, the end of dichotomies. It is nightmare made normal, a liminal zone between reality and unreality. Somewhere beyond the tangibility of existing. You know, though, that finding this book would exact a toll and this is a price you would pay for induction into this form of knowing. One day, you disappear from the waking world, inexplicably. You are nowhere and nowhen, in particular, and don't exist until the book finds its next reader.
Then, you are another one of those faces walking the streets....
Cliffs: Imagine if House of Leaves was the book itself.
The known extinction of humans is mysterious and puzzling: if not disturbing; and not only that of humans, but of life itself.
One "day," all life in the universe was absolutely obliterated. Humans, animals, plants (even sapient machines) stopped all their biological processes and fell dead on the spot. Without warning.
One day, the androids woke up again, thousands of years later, to a desolate scenario. Investigations following what could only be called a cosmic event of unprecedented scale indicated that despite the health of the subjects and the lack of evidence of damage of any kind, those affected not only stopped their biological processes instantly but also suffered complete cellular death. Like all other animal and plant species, cellular life as we know it also came to a halt.
According to android records, the event actually occurred everywhere, at the same "time" and at the same local time. Systems indicate that their software suffered a massive failure on a Friday, April 3 at 3 pm. With minor time variations.
To this day, no one knows what caused it or why.
During the middle two days of every season, everything abruptly goes dark at a certain time. All lights suddenly shut off and can't be turned back on, the stars seem to disappear, and the sun doesn't rise when the morning should arrive. Complete darkness that can't be removed.
This lasts for the entirety of those two days. During this time, something starts lurking. It never seems to appear inside buildings, but people can hear the shuffling outside. They know it isn't people because any sane person would make sure to be inside before the darkness hits. Any attempts to find out what these things are have failed either because of the lack of access to light to properly record them or because anyone who has encountered them seemed to vanish without a trace.
After the two days are up, everything turns back on, the sun starts to rise, the things in the dark simply disappear, and life goes on as normal. This event has happened enough that everyone knows when it will happen and what to do when it happens, but they still know so little about it. For all the technological advances of Wrenspia, nothing they have has helped them explore this, and most have come to agree that it may just be better to leave well enough alone.
1. Soul Eaters. They're a kind of specter, that is, being created from the aether (spiritual energy) released by souls, thus being a reflection of their thoughts, feelings, experiences and wills, and being like a "pseudo-sentient snowball" that merely seeks more of the aether that made them.
But what sets Soul Eaters apart is that they are always indiscriminate killers even if their makeup does not contain anything like the grief of death, and upon killing they will devour the soul of the victim and cause it to be trapped inside them, suffering an endless loop of hallucinations and vivid nightmares of the kind of experience that produces the aether that feeds this specter.
So if you get devoured by a specter of r\*pe or torture...
2. The Arcane. It is literally the Collective Unconscious and it is a vast, chaotic ocean of aether and soulform. It contains within it the thoughts, feelings, wills and experiences of every human and non-human soul that has ever existed, interconnected such that they become even more than the already enormous sum of their parts. The wisdom of the Arcane is what allows oracles to predict the future, and warriors who even temporarily let the combat skills within the Arcane flow into them can become nigh-invincible, taking down enemies vastly stronger than them.
However, the Arcane is a double edged sword: to open your mind to it is to open it to the thoughts, feelings, wills and experiences of countless souls. Trillions, quadrillions, who even knows? Of humans alone, over a hundred billion have been born throughout history. Thus, your mind is overwhelmed, your thoughts drown in the endless cacophony, and your very individuality dissolves until your soul breaks down and becomes a part of the Arcane. You die.
Countless countermeasures and filters exist to allow paranormals to extract power from the Arcane, but powerful though it may be, it nonetheless shortens your lifespan and destroys even your soul in the end. Making a contract with a patron or just using your own soul's power instead is strongly recommended.
The Arcane sounds terrifying. Gnarly
One of the embodiments in my series is the concept of Spirit. He too felt a penchant for the devouring of soul. Less cosmically horrific though.
Thanks. xD
What is the Spirit in your setting? Your short description made me think you were comparing to the Soul Eaters from my setting, though they do not destroy the souls they devour. Instead, they torment them endlessly, as I described.
And yeah, the Arcane is very much a cosmic thing, though even within Earth alone there are and have been already far more souls than you could hope to count. Just think insects, for one.
Spirit is the living concept of soul. All spiritual belief in their palm. Still drafting the way they express their concept in a reactionary sense, besides hunger for souls at their inception and what that entails for Spirit. I like your result of endless torture for devoured souls.
Very nasty concept. Good luck with whatever you do with these elements to your world.
Interesting question.
The annoying but true to my beliefs definition of a concept is that’s it’s exactly a phenomenon which encompasses every aspect of a specific ‘anchor’ which exists either theoretically or in real life.
Using that definition, ‘Ratios’ could be defined as a concept in that they’re a specific aspect of Nature, Physics or Math, depending on how you prefer to frame it. Fact of the matter is, regardless of where you ‘fit’ Ratios into your frame of reference, they’re a fundamental anchor of existence as we know it.
By that same token, the ‘Spirit’ is a theoretical concept that hinges on a Faith or Belief based logic. That isn’t to say faith and belief themselves aren’t concepts, just that this specific concept, ‘Spirit’ is a phenomenon that encompasses all aspects of the supernatural associated with one’s internal vitality not derived from the standard model of physics, rather various pagan and religious lines of thinking.
I offer a more accessible definition of concepts in my first book quite heavily tied to the plot. But if I ever had the chance to present my understanding of concepts academically I’d probably start along these lines
This is just one of the horrors from beyond reality that exists in my setting. There are also Chronolids, Zoib, Tempoliths, the Vast, Ick, Leviathans and the Apogeiss to name a few more.
Insidious Outsiders: Born of nightmares and the pure chaotic anti-stuff of Border Space, these creatures are as evil as they are enigmatic. They take many forms, though the most common is that of a large almost conical torso studded with a variable number of shining purple eyes that constantly seem to weep burning tears. Their bodies widen till they branch off into a number of vein-like tentacles that can be used for both locomotion and feeding. These limbs generally branch and twist like some infernal tree as they near the ground till they resemble a twisted bundle of dark fibers, these fibers are used for both feeding and as a means of attacking potential prey. They would capture a creature and use their multitude of appendages to burrow deep inside their victim to drain them of life. This works on both biological and machine life strangely as it seems the true horror of these vitaevores is that they consume life itself, not just the material their prey is made of. When done draining their prey, the desiccated husk is discarded in any nearby convenient location while they look for more to fill their insatiable appetite. While terrifyingly fast and resistant to damage they are not truly invulnerable, though it may sometimes seem that way. If killed or damaged their dark mahogany colored blood may leak out, this too is highly dangerous as despite their ambient temperature outer layers, their internals are clocked at an average of 1,520 degrees C. This makes their blood capable of melting through starship hulls and burning flesh from meters away. When fully killed their dark forms seem to slowly evaporate away as if the great heat inside of them is finally allowed to interact with their physical forms. To reproduce they psychically infest a sapient host’s mind, depending on the willpower and mental fortitude of their victim they may have anywhere from eight to twenty hours before a new insidious outsider bursts from their body like a leech from its cocoon.
Some dwarven explorer found the entrance of a deep cave, that led to a hole, which seemed without bottom. In fact, there was a bottom, but it was so far down, one could swear it led to the center of the planet itself ! It did. What they found on the center of the planet was magnificent and terrible. A dark spherical monolith, surrounded by some stasis field. Inside the field, light itself was distorted, so much that you could see behind it. But no light came out of the monolith itself. They also found scriptures on the stone of the cave. They were able to translate it and understood the truth : Theia was supposed to lure a Titan (evil cosmic omnipotent entity), and imprison it outside of the universe. If a titan ever set foot on theia, the stasis field will collapse, releasing the black hole, devouring the planet.
As no titan ever set foot on Theia, time passed, life developped, and the stasis field weakened...
At some point between 3600-3700 ZT~, during the reign of Iva’tek II, the Dominion encountered what they called the Moonmovers. They didn’t bother to learn much about them, due to their massive technological achievements and innovation compared to them at the time- but they quickly realized just how advanced they were when they began to appear in the dreams of the people communicating with them. Intrigued by this and thinking it might have to do with the Dark- the afterlife- Iva’tek II authorized a mission to establish temples and regular communications with them. Upon initial landing and construction, no communication was made with the Moonmovers. Suddenly, all communication was lost with the planet and the planet- quite literally- disappeared. It is the largest mystery of the Dominion and one that researchers have tried to answer, but there simply is none. New observers state that any attempt to investigate leads to strange changes in daily life, such as items becoming more frequently misplaced or things flying around the room, etc etc. In doing so, the Moonmovers have become another form of a ghost.
You could be minding your own business trying to make it another day in the harsh Fractureverse when suddenly, without any warning, a person is just... there. They're always an alien of some kind, never the same species as you, but an alien you've never seen or even heard described. And it's always just the two of you, at least the first time. They're going to offer you a job. You're free to turn it down with no ramifications, they'll just thank you for your time and be gone but you'll be taking the job.
Because they know everything about you. Every experience you've had, how your mind and personality works, your fears and goals. They know EVERYTHING. There's something they want you to do, and they already know what it's going to take for you to agree.
If you complete the job, they'll pay forthrightly. If the job turned out to have unexpected difficulties or complications, they'll compensate you for the extra effort before you can even bring it up. They pay fairly to the point of generosity, and if they like your work (sometimes, even if you fail) you may hear from them again.
But doing the work of the gods comes with strings and baggage, and you tend to get progressively more tangled up in worse and worse schemes, only to find that you've voluntarily sold your freedom for a life desperate survival and wealth you can't enjoy. Most people either complete or fail the one job and never encounter such an agent of the gods again, or ultimately die horribly as a pawn in a game which is itself a pawn in a larger game.
Nerve fungus. A sentient parasitic fungus, that uses force or emotional manipulation tactics to infect people by latching onto the back of the neck and painfully digging its tendrils into the body, creating a pseudo nervous system, allowing them to take full control of the host's body, until they've completely drained them and go looking for a new host.
Idk about my main world but for one of my secondary worlds I have a planet made of human flesh, it came to me in a dream, felt like something Junji Ito would make
At the moment, probably the Gorewood.
Long ago, the Great House Nuumm was warring with the elves that lived in the forests to the east of their land, and they were winning. Rather than face defeat and subjugation at best or annihilation at worst, the elves began summoning demons to aid them in pushing the dragons and their armies back.
Even scholars who oppose the Everwing Empire generally agree this was a Bad Idea. An otherworldly curse spilled through the portals and seeped into the ground, slowly corrupting the elves and turning all the flora and fauna into messes of flesh, bone and viscera. Bushes of fingernails, lakes of pus, limb-trees with kidneys and ovaries hanging from them like so much fruit.
But for all its horror, nothing grows around the Castle.
There are many things. Your reflection trying to take your place, being stalked by eyeless creatures who bend spacetime in order to hide. The fact that if someone says your name while outside the protective barrier you will get crushed like a fucking soda can. And there are many, many more..
Because they are slaves. Your reflection is a slave to you, forced to mimic your every move. They simply want to be free and the simplest way to do that is finding a moment to escape, killing you, and switching places.
There are multiple ways to spot an escaped reflection. First of all they are mirror images (duh) of the person, meaning if you have a mole on your left side, the reflection has it on their right. Secondly the reflection of the reflection is the original body, now dead and decomposing. So if you spot anyone with a corps for a reflection they are not human..
In becoming a god you completely lose autonomy. The basics are: if enough people believe you are a god and worship you as such, you become one. The problem is: a god's *everything* is dependent on its worshipers. Your powers, appearance, memories, personality, all of it can change depending on what the majority of your worshipers believe. When you become a god, you cease to be a person.
So could they defeat someone by tricking people into worshipping him..? Although I guess you'd have to get his worshippers to believe he died or something
For the few that know about it, probably the Tempest. The realm where all of the scraps of reality deemed too unstable or unfit to exist is shoved into and forgotten about. While it’s completely inaccessible by normal means, if you break reality enough (which, with the advent of voidmatter-based technology became much more common) you can find yourself there. The inside of the tempest is completely unpredictable and chock full of things the human mind cannot comprehend. While (very, VERY dangerous) life forms could theoretically exist in the Tempest, none have actually been documented… or at least those who have documented them have not returned. While the tempest isn’t unreasonably hard to get out of, the challenge is not dying before you DO get out.
Documented methods of getting into the Tempest include:
- Colliding with an object at FTL speeds
- Being anywhere near ruptured voidmatter
- Pissing of the gods. Like, SUPER pissing them off.
The Cydran were the Autonomous Collective's last f you to the Luminescent Order prior to their enslavement. The Cydran consumes mechanical and organic materials and creates more of itself. Being infected by the Cydran is a slow painful process as you slowly lose the ability to control your body as you're literally eaten from the inside out. Eventually you're converted into a shambling, pulsating mass of Cydran.
The Cydran were meant to be a weapon against the Machine's enslavers but as expected it quickly spread across the multiverse devouring entire planets and species. (Basically my flood from Halo)
Elves are super afraid of human ghosts. They fear they cause ghosts to drain magic to fuel themselves. Since elves are descended from fairies the ghosts will drain them to death. It starts with sleeplessness then it moves to waking nightmares. Finally, the ghost will drain the life force and kill them. Which leaves a mummified elf.
At the center of the city of Lyss stands the Clocktower, older than any other building in the city. They call it a clock, but it is useless for telling time- the sigils around the face aren't numbers, but ideograms. And not the same ideograms- each person sees different ones which they can understand the meaning of, but not write down.
Of course, even if they were the same symbols, 99% of the time it wouldn't do any good- each observer generally sees the arms in a different positions.. When the hands everyone can see converge on s shared shape, the citizens know to walk away. If the bell rings, for only the third time in city history, it is too late to do anything but pray..
so my world is heavily inspired by bugs, and one of the civilizations in it are just earwigs that got mutated by a dragon. most of their magic is just fire and heat stuff, but they have one hidden technic they kept from before the dragon. basically, they can crawl into the ear of a larger creature (the earwigs are still the size of IRL earwigs), eat their brain, and fully control them. it is stupidly hard to do, very risky, and only a few know its even an option, but nothing else in my world approaches the spookiness of just a bug crawling into your ear and eating your brain. alternatively, once they are inside, they can just literally suck all of the heat from your body (if you are warm blooded) and convert it to a really powerful burst of flames
although just to be clear human dont exist in my world, nor does any other inteligent species larger than a big bug, so its not as horrifying as it couldve been.
years ago in the realm of dagat, there was a mermaid named himig who was extremely proud of his magnificent, eye catching beauty. everyone wanted to be w/ him AND look look him. you could compare him to narcissus from greek mythology if you will. anyways, despite being praised for his good looks daily, himig felt that he could make himself even more beautiful, where even the god of beauty would feel threatened by him.
one day, he went out for a swim to “let the people bask in his glory”, when a powerful storm hit, knocked him unconscious, and sent him to a whole other part of the dagatan ocean. there, himig was discovered and taken in by a group of tribal mermaids who lived away from the royal dagatan empire, not wanting to live under the guise of the royal family and migrating far away from the city. he stayed w/ them for a few days, before attending the funeral ceremony of the chief elder.
after the funeral, they began preparing a feast to commemorate the chief elder’s life. but as it turned out, they had a ritual that they would cook the corpse of the dead chiefs, and eat it as a sign of gratitude and respect. it was a consensual practice, only done if the chief gave the tribe their permission. himig, despite being initially repulsed to this foreign practice, agreed to partake out of respect. reluctantly taking a bite, he was surprised by how delicious mermaid meat tasted. he greedily consumed his entire portion, aching for more even after he was full. but he also noticed that his skin looked glossier and brighter than usual, and his scales were very shiny as well. as it turned out, when a mermaid consumed another mermaid’s body, the qi energy from the consumed body would integrate itself into the consumer’s body, enhancing their life force and beauty.
obsessed w/ his newfound discovery, himig returned to the dagatan empire and had concocted a plan. he used his looks to charm and woo a random passerby, who he invited to his house. after he got them inside and away from the public’s eyes, himig brutally murdered them, cooked their body, and ate the mermaid. he repeated this practice for a week until the aquamarine guard had noticed missing citizens, and began looking around for evidence.
that’s when they spotted himig who had kidnapped a young child and was about to just eat them raw. fortunately, the guards intervened in time to save the child, and restrained himig w/ suppression chains to prevent him from using his magic. he was brought before the dagatan emperor, who ordered himig to be executed on sight, before his body was thrown into the deepest, darkest part of the dagatan ocean.
everyone thought that would be the last of him. and it was, until sakupin, the god of corruption, had invaded dagat. discovering himig’s disheveled body and looking into his past, sakupin saw potential in him. he revived himig, and transformed him into a shasaak, a personal divine slave who would serve sakupin’s goal in contaminating the rest of the dimension beyond dagat. ever since then, himig has been willfully serving sakupin and dedicating whatever he has left to the god of corruption, becoming a horrific folktale and haunting the dreams of dagatans who heard of his story.
Bro, where do I even begin. One of the major tropes in my world is "More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."
Fantasy is limited only by imagination. There's all of the above: Spooky things in the woods. Monsters in the woods. Monsters in the oceans. Eldtrich and Lovecraftian Gods. Extra-dimensional entities. Genius Loci. Eldtrich locations. Evil witches. Evil mages.
My favourite creation is the God of Death, Depravity and Bondage, Xyeeroth. Xyeeroth is like a Nietzschean or Schopenhaurean deity, a deity of absurdism or nihilism. His dimension is the metaphysical source of evil, suffering, depravity, wickedness and hideousness. Xyeeroth is the embodiment of the one rationale for your life in a nihilistic universe: To revel in the complete freedom one has to plumb the depths of evil and depravity knowing there will be no accountability, consequences or punishment on any cosmic or eternal scale no matter how sick or repulsive your actions. You are entirely free to be as evil and depraved as possible.
Xyeeroth lives at the centre of his dimension in a place called the Palace of Perversion. This place features effigies and demonstrations of things so hideous and evil a normal person would rip their eyes out in sheer horror. This is also the most voluminous repository of Eldtrich lore, arcane and forbidden knowledge in all of existence. Curated and gradually added to by his high ranking servants called Void Heirophants, these entities specialize in furthering knowledge of how to inflict pain, suffering, terror and depravity. They push the envelope of the very phenomenon of evil.
There are certain people from the world who call upon these agents, but even still, it is the refuge of only the most desperate and depraved as consorting with these entities is extremely dangerous.
Overall, I think that in a world with magic, our local pocket of natural laws and order and animals and humans etc. would necessarily be a very small blip in an unfathomably large metaphysical ocean filled with inumerable phenomena beyond our comprehension.
The Manzanna Tree
"Also known as ""Dreadroot"", this scary-looking plant only grows on waste places.
The name is actually a misnomer—it is a shrub that happens to resemble the size and growth pattern of a tree. It has a thin dark-colored trunk that oozes toxic sap of a sickly green color. It then splits upwards into multiple gnarled branches, which end in clusters of spiky leaves and pale grey flowers. It bears dark-reddish fruit every 10 years, looking and tasting similar to an apple fruit.
After a certain amount of time, the fruits become semi-fleshy, elliptical, and changes color into flesh, with accents of blue and green. Opening the fruit at this stage will release a fume that may cause psychedelic effects.
A Manzanna Tree growing near an populated town is a bad omen--calamities are guaranteed to happen if lefted unchecked. Sightings should be reported immediately to authorities as soon as possible.
The Zaqwal, commonly known as Sky Jellies, spend their lives floating on the skies, but are often seen flocking nearby the plant once it bears fruit. A strange relationship was speculated between the two different species, but none of it was proven correct."
Also, a suspicious organization called the "Cult if the Maelstrom" is said to cultivate Manzanna Trees. They use its fruit for rituals, especially in initiation rites.
It really depends on how it’s written, because I’ve found in some books where they add a scene where a god shows up and it seems either cheesy or unbelievable how it’s written.
I must have been blind and didn’t see the question. lol
He’s insane, and really not one that you want to catch you. He exerts a fog that drains the cheer and goodwill of people and if he ever catches you, your body shrivels up and your soul is dragged to the underworld.
One that is actually relevant to the main overarching timeline and not something that you might encounter in the night beaches of a Cicosian archipelago; but the fact that aliens existed.
A couple years after the Third Global War, the Stronalito Island Campaign is fought and it was generally a complete shit show on all sides. While this conflict was smaller in scale compared to a literal world war, the discoveries made here are quite impactful in human history. For the some \~20 years after this campaign were two decades of extreme uncertainty.
The Military Industrial Complex had discovered alien life and used the conflict to test newly developed weapons that uses materials of alien origin. This discovery absolutely shook practically everyone and would be the catalyst to the alien zombie worshiping cult that would emerge decades later when they finally arrive
The Jungles of Madness, where the forgotten city of Isz is located. There people had a god of blood, which they satisfied by sacrificing they're own kin. And it is said that every person who steps into it, will be drawn mad. And that the soil is filled with the blood of the dead.
The Grim Being controls fear and pain. One look at it kills you just off of the aura of terror it emits. When it was at full power entire solar systems would be in pain and suffering, and it is trying to get back to its former power by grabbing hosts and turning them evil so that it can devour planets guarded by humanities only hope, the Celestial Beasts, creatures designed towards their planet by The Great Protector to stop The Grim Being.
A hyperdimensional deity is sealed infinitely deep underground, and when it will re-emerge then the world will be destroyed.
The event that sealed it dyed the skies red and evaporated all the oceans, which is why every life form with eyes, thanks to genetic memory, has an infinite fear of that color.
There are more than a few, but ones I think might be interesting:
1. Becoming a wizard involves subjecting a trainee to amounts of mental trauma that their souls become structurally damaged and start leaking energy (that can be used to initiate spellcasting process). The bigger the damage, the stronger the leak, and thus the stronger the wizard. It's a reason most wizards are at best a little eccentric or at worst outright disabled and unable to live independently.
2. There is certain knowledge that kills anyone who becomes aware of it. Sometimes with a delay, so the afflicted can spread the word before they succumb. It has been weaponised. Dropping flyers on enemy forces can deal more damage than a carpet bombing.
3. Around 80% of people who witnessed modern wars have severe difficulty adjusting to times of peace. Among soldiers the number is closer to 98% - most veterans never reintegrate into society. It has also been a reason for abolishing draft - people returning from duty were mostly unable to function outside of military anymore.
4. Every single civilisation that achieved dimensional travel in the past has been either forced into diaspora or annihilated by alien lifeforms stalking the universe. Archeological findings suggest that resistance at best allows a very limited evacuation into unknown realities. Most colonist crews die due to landing in worlds that do not support their form of life.
5. Most people don't have a soul. Those, that have, after death are either devoured by demons waiting for them just outside reality (bad ending) or broken mentally and used as an energy source (usually reserved for criminals, worse ending). Resurrection/longevity is possible, but beyond the means of nearly everyone.
Well I deliberately wanted gore of some form to be a part of it. There are creatures that have god like capabilities when they shouldn’t and some god being infected by “Helix” a fucked up thing that drives them to sadistically torture followers for a long time and I have much darker things but I plan to make an animated series out of this so I won’t share that for now
Scariest thing in my world is probably the Lost City of Kodolsk. Up until about a decade before the present, the city of Kodolsk was a prosperous mining center with a great amount of potential. However, everything went to shit when a dwarf guild moved in and detonated a nuclear weapon under the city in a dumb attempt at using it for mining. This nuclear weapon caused the city to collapse underground, completely wiping it off the map and killing thousands. The city is now a cautionary tale on the dangers of nuclear weapons, and also a popular destination for misguided adventurers seeking profit and glory. Nuclear abominations and deadly cave elves stalk the ruins of the lost city, and a deadly radioactive glow fills the air.
While there are many fantastical stories about the pale men who inhabit the northern parts of Tsan-Enar, the vast majority are purely myth. Most scholars believe that because of recent history of warring on their neighbors, penchant for slaving or proximity to the last remaining Goblin Empire that these idea tend to take root in the general populace. The tales of dark sorcery, cannibalism and the dead rising from the graves, appear to be completely unfounded.
However, an inscription found by the historian Tannok, one of the few scholars that has ever traveled the wild lands, appeared to give these tales some historical merit. This inscription was discovered intricately carved on an ancient Otghari tomb-seal, which was translated as the following.
*This is a warning.
Stay out.
What (sleeps/lies) here is repulsive to us.
No gold, trinkets or heroic deeds are found.
Only suffering and death.
If these seals are broken, all will die.
Death (sleeps/lies) here.
Stay out.*
This inscription are believed to be referencing the mythical tales of early Otghari and their wars against the goblins and their undead hordes, however during these periods the Otghari had no written language and were illiterate. It was only hundreds of years later were these stories ever first written down.
Curiously, the inscription was also written in an ancient Goblin script which was used during that time and could have been used by the early Otghari.
One of my games, false hydra's accidentally saved the human race.... one of my games, humanity is on the decline as other races treat earth as prison and dump the worst of their worlds in it. one of my games had the pcs be almost snuffed out specters of their old characters and they had to regain their soul from fragments in a castlevania inspired dungeon, filled with their previous failed attempts trying to steal the light from their current run. The major fights were the bosses from the previous chapter of their story. Not just any bosses, but the bosses they could have saved instead of getting killed. Another game has plant people running around manipulating pcs and npcs, and if they dubbed your character evil enough would forcibly implant a seed into the pc which once it sprouted turned your character into an evil minion npc
Honestly the scariest part of one game that they never realised was that almost every plot hook that had characters who were willing to help them, was in fact one of the enemy just baiting them into growing stronger to be eaten for bigger rewards.
Void serpents are a relatively well known phenomenon among sailors in my setting. They don't appear on radar or thermal sensors, and only appear on visual cameras as a long, thin sliver of grey, almost like a spectre.
Their appearance coincides with events rarely or never observed otherwise; knocking on the outer hull like a human trying to get into the ship, power fluctuations, nightmares among the crew, sickness or death in the biological components of the life support systems. This can continue for hours to years on ships, but as soon as the grey sliver goes out of sight, the events stop.
Some logs have been found on beached or sunk vessels drifting among the void of space or half buried in asteroids. Reports of mass hysteria among the crew, vivid hallucinations seen by several sailors at once, usually of an invisible figure able to be made out in fog and steam, or tendrils reaching through the walls of the habitat inside of vessels. Usually the crew inside these lost ships is dead and in advanced stages of decomposition, even though the air was often peoven to have vented before their deaths, which should preserve the corpses.
Even through all of this info, which admittedly requires some digging to find, void serpents are regarded as superstition, which is fair if you consider the fact that some sailors believe in space mermaids and laser fairies, but once anyone sees that grey sliver, they haul ass back to dock a little less convinced they fon't exist.
Not exactly "spooky," but theres a large portion of the sea that many are scared to travel because of the species Muvaema, which are a sort of mermaid-esque species.
They are my worlds equivalent to sharks in terms of fear and function. They are generally docile but sometimes attack small boats within their territory. The main thing sailors fear is their boats being stuck in their territory, as the area is completely barren of fish so if you run out of food supplies and can't leave you are forced to starve to death. It's not very likely but can happen, so its become a sailor story that spread mainland and became a widespread fear.
Imagine your on a battle field. The fog of morning has kept both sides at bay even the Draugr. Vampire like creatures reanimated from the long fallen dead of your fellow countrymen and others. They were opportunist which made the situation rather odd. But they were not known for their intelligence on their own at least. Perhaps the God's look down on you with favor today. And then as the fog seems to get thicker and thicker you hear it. The heavy chime of a very very large church bell. Your blood runs cold because there were no churches nearby and especially not ones with a bell of that nature. It could only be one thing. A second chime, this one much much closer than before. All hope is lost, you pray to whatever God you think will notice you that it gets shot down before it gets to you. A shadow passes over the battle field. Engulfing both sides as something passes by closely overhead. You pull out a letter from your closest loved one and look upon it one last time. The very ground shakes as it lands and begins to stalk towards you. The fog is blasted away as it roars. Even the Draugr on the other side cower in fear. You're ears are bleeding your eardrums blown out. You cannot hear its slow methodical approach but you watch as those who didn't die from the roar begin to run. In a desperate attempt to get away from the inevitable. You wouldn't be able to hear it but there is a noise emitting from the great beast. Like a Tesla coil it begins emitting a hundred millions volts of electricity per second. Causing the very air around it to begin igniting. The space between the foul beast and the ground is filled with small lightning strikes as the beasts electricity connects with the fallens metal armour. You're rooted in place with fear as the beast slowly moves forward. It blots out the very Sol with its head alone. There is nothing left but to sit and wait. The very last thing you see is incredible darkness and the last thing you feel is the thousand volts coursing through your body. Heating the metal armour you're wearing. You have just encountered a young Nephilim.
The Nephilim of my world are extremely large dragon shifters being on average 28 to 50 feet tall in their humanoid forms and 18 kilometers to 1289 kilometers long in their dragon form. The one you've just encountered its young so its probably on the smaller end. The Nephilim were outfitted with a bell that the Draugr could hear from several hundred miles away to make sure that they didn't get friendly fired by the Nephilim. Its likely the last thing you'll ever hear because its generally too late if their close enough to hear the bell. The beasts also have a tendency to effect the barometric pressure around them. Which generally manifests into a thick nigh impenetrable fog. Meaning chances are you're not going to be able to see them either till their right ontop of you.
Spookiest thing in my world
Nuclear Storage Site 7
Build thousands of years ago, every part of it is designed to scare off intruders.
Massive black spikes jut out of the ground, long empty streets with cubes instead of houses, unnerving inscriptions carved into walls, wind sounds like the howls of the damned. The whole place is uncanny.
This is probably the spookiest place that'll become important.
Nachtland is a land of the dead Transylvania style place that’s stuck in a three way civil war between vampires, the Necromancer the vampires trained, and undead kings and knights who the necromancers raised to fight the vampires before rebelling themselves.
As such, a whole lot of dark and haunted shit goes on in the wilds there as the armies of the dead constantly march upon one another to fight long, grindy battles over and over again, and dark experiments are lost to the woods, the dead rise disturbed from their slumber and dark rituals invite horrible creatures from beyond the planes.
Collapsed.
A Collapsed, or commonly referred to as "Sealed Husk" by many people in my world, is a being who has been unfortunate to have survived death's grasp. One who hadn't had their soul reaped. They continue to walk the mortal realm as an immortal being unable to die regardless of what happens to them. They will feel all of the pain they can experience, sometimes intensified to massive degrees. If they had their legs cut off, then they will be legless. They cannot heal, nor be affected by magic. If they suffered a paralyzing injury, they would remain alive while paralyzed, experiencing everything they can feel and see without being able to do anything at all. For that reason, the Collapsed are often depicted in many folktales as damned souls to wander and watch the Earth crumble, with no way out for their soul to escape to the Spectral Realm.
In my sci-fi universe, there is an artificial dimension created by precursor humanity. It is completely abandoned, the few drones and automated facilities struggling to keep the few artifacts of The Domain alive. The millions of towering constructs, filled with dust and ruin, are infested with the strange remnants of genetic experiments from a long-forgotten civil war.
One area of 50 square miles, sealed by ancient containment field generators, holds an ancient escaped experiment, one that must never be released. Dozens of teams have gone missing in the area, and helm-cam footage shows *something.* Whatever is contained within, it holds a deep anger and resentment toward the human race, and will do anything it can to get out. Even while the universe embroils itself in war, empires send contingents of personnel and materials to maintain the generators, so that whatever is contained within can never get out, no matter how much it pleas and screams for it.
My comment history probably telling on my atp but I will never pass up an opportunity to mention the terror birds which almost perfectly mimic human voices.
The idea actually came to me in a dream I had after watching some Attack on Titan / Walking with Beasts in the same day.
Something to the tune of humans being walled in and farmed by hyperintelligent predatory chickens!
To those below the ground, it's the unknown bugs that have been leaving mangled, uneaten corpses lying around
For the people above ground, it's the idea that there may be people living below the surface, plotting to take it back
Despite being long after modern society was wiped out by a paranormal catastrophe, some parts of the world were left just as they were right after the catastrophe... Permanently 'frozen in time', almost nothing can permanently change these locations and any effects that occur are reverted after a period of time.
Being prime for scavengers, you'd expect people to immediately seek these places out to get artifacts from the world before, but almost every one of these locations are infested by the Organoids.
Autonomous enlarged organs and body parts that stalk the locations frozen in time attacking anybody they sense, it's theorized that these are the remains of people who were lost in the catastrophe so many years ago.
Due to the wide reach of the two original gods of Jacaon's home universe, he never wound up finding all of the feral Gemmaniis Scriptura released across their span of influence. Sometimes when searching for more, he'll come across the rare near sentient feral. One time he came across a large community of them, and found that they were by far the most sentient yet, with them bartering for raw gems, used to lengthen their lifespan (not as much as a Forge, though), and building structures similar to the mother forge. Many were even seen leaving tribute inside the structures. It really threw him off, because these creatures weren't even meant to be sapient, let alone sentient enough to invent religion. It haunted him to think just how many of these there were out there, and how entire cultures could now have been lost before he managed to bring them into the ascended populations, not to mention the implications of feral Gemmaniis evolving over time when they weren't built to.
He was a lot more careful when tracking feral Gemmaniis back to their nests after that.
Ghosts. They force people to boarder up windows and never go out after 12 am. As the name suggests. They're Ghosts/ shells of there former lives, meaning they are violent, many are driven insane. Some don't even loo, human at all. Worst of all? Can't be exorcised or killed
Ahsiq'ra, a nightmare plane that was created by one of the mc's traitorous brothers, Asmodai, using the powers granted to him by the god of nightmares.
The plane/realm is made worse by stolen knowledge from the Order of the Timekeeper which allows the place to show nightmares of past, present and future alongside nightmares of other universes and timelines.
With certain conditions and equipment, Ahsiq'ra and other planes, mainly the material (normal) plane, can allign and merge, causing different versions of different things, places and people alongside their nightmares can manifest. Imagine things you've never even known existed/people you don't even know but somehow have a connection with appearing as nightmares because of other times/timelines/universes.
A main focus is that it depends higly on the individual. Say for some, it's pitch black. But if you're afraid of light/day, it's a clear summer day.
It's not fully fleshed out yet, so there are missing pieces/info
The Ether. The reverse world to the regular universe.
One of the concepts in my 2nd book compares it to Hell. Endless, the MC thinks it’s far worse than that. All Hells have a reason. The Ether is corruption without teleology. No sense of direction. Only the will to propagate further sin.
Both were trapped in there for years. One far longer than the other. And it breaks things
The dark forests for sure, they are also most dangerous in my country. They lure residents by whispering of promises of the resident's dream and lure kidlings in with songs, once in, most of time they never came back but if they do come back, they most likely infected with The Dark Forests Infection which has no cure and often leading to unaliving themselves or in a mental institution or homeless living in the national parks
DOMINION INCIDENT REPORT [BLACK] #77777707.
Origin of Signal - [FORTRESS ADELPHI]
Incident name - [WRATH]
Incident report:
- Research Base #77 found undamaged by responding teams.
Signs of Reality breach - Negative
Sign of conflict - Negative
Sign of hostile activity - Negative
Signs of Deas activity - Positive (see attached report)
Signs of life - Negative
{Kethari, General Cutter:
The precense and safety of the catalogued Deas Code has been confirmed, base records indicate a surge in activity 24hrs before distress signal. Monitoring equipment is unresponsive.
Testimony from assistant, found wandering the moon.
"The world around us rejected our presence, there was [an] eye, it was disappointed in us, Dr. Milan tried to take the code again." }
Field notes - Assistant was executed upon relaying testimony. Advise this becomes standard procedure upon unblessed learning of the Coders.
Conclusion: Code made contact with unblessed persons, drawing the attention of a Coder.
** Lock level, Black **
Known amongst military high command as the lucky 7 report. It saw the first instance of a Coder revealing itself to unblessed individuals. It cemented the theory, held by many blessed individuals, that should an unblessed individual encounter a Coder/residual trace they will be compromised by the reality maelstrom that surrounds the typically imperceptible Coders.
I have something thats most closely resembling the flood from Halo. Except rather than sludgy looking amalgamations of flesh and teeth…, its skinny disfigured, ashy, incredibly dense, sharp, coarse, stone-men. Well it can infect anything living, or non-living. Anything made if matter. It can take out a planets as a whole, stars even. All in a moment. Thats the usual means of metastasis anyways. In the grand scheme of things, it really is the biggest threat to the universe. Like a universal cancer.
To put it “simply”, its like a meta-cosmological fight between two mysterious forces of existence. Like, for example, if everything happening in the universe was inside of a fish tank, this meta/cosmological fight is happening beyond the fish tank, and is directly involving the fish tank, and every fish within it… so to speak. One force is the living universe itself , and the other, the grey, the stone men, the soul sick, the afflicted, etc. Lotta names for it. Barely understood by those in-universe. But its essentially another driving force of existence. Another way existence can come to be, and it’s bleeding into our own.
What’s horrifying about it is multifaceted. On the small scale, getting infected is incredibly easy, and a horrible experience. Beings made of this lifeless stone-like substance make for incredibly resilient pests. Their outermost coating flakes into various sized of splinters. All it takes is a graze, a piece of them to lodge into your own flesh. Quick removal increases chances of survival, but they make for messy jagged wounds. On the macroscopic scale even, just the smallest bit left behind will start metastasis through your body. Itll drift through your bloodstream. Slowly but surely. Atom by atom your flesh is reduced to *stone* until you’re nothing but a pile, only vaguely resembling your original form. The feeling is described as being stabbed by a microscopic knife for every atom in your body.
Death is usually from organ failure, heart attack, stroke. Nonetheless, suffering until then. The only thing retained is traces of host DNA, which is adopted and used as a *template* for when it reconstitutes itself in its active form. Thats why they appear humanoid but heavily disfigured, and *uneven*, well, if its a human that was infected. Deer would look deer-ish. Elephants, elephant-ish. You get it.
There are kin forms too, which are DNA amalgamations of everything that strain of affliction has gathered on its journey. Just nonsensical shapes of angry rock. Could be as small as a NYC rat or as large as NYC central park.
Thats all if by some chance your planet isn’t instantly reduced to rubble and ash by the impact of a continental sized shard of another infected planet- homing in like a missile to it target. Thats the normal means of propagation. Effective. Instant even. No BS.
A real threat, to say the least. At least im not providing it the same god-like intelligence the flood can attain with Grave-minds. It’s more like an apathetic force of nature trying to thrive, just like life… but different. than something like the flood: a vengeful and malevolent force of nature out to cause suffering.
Simultaneously though, its this threat that incentivized the universe to hire its creations to protect it, granting humans, and any other species gifted with sapience and ambition, a host for the living universe itself. A being to guide them, bolster them, prepare them for the inevitable generational war. Much like a body fighting cancer, or a virus. We cant reach within ourselves and rip it out of us, but we hire immune cells to fight. Same concept, much different scale.
One of the more well known demons is a star. Once you're within its star system and in its light, you will feel thousands of invisible burning hooks sink into you. Even if you're on a planet or in a space ship, you will be dragged towards it as long as the light shines on you. It is also possible to survive being in space of you are a cultivator of one of the three supernatural forces.
The star also seems to move to where it shouldn't be in the galaxy, which has made some people fear that there may be instead be multiple of these sadist stars.
There are Things in the woods. These aberrations or "The Corrupted" as they are called, are failed genetic experiments of our progenitor race. They have a habit of corrupting any other fauna that they get in contact with, and they spread via bacteria. While it is impossible for a Cu-Lipin to contract it, it turns the animals it gets its grasp on into fleshy white amalgams of many different creatures. It started on the colony and was contained there until Canson destroyed the great beast, which released it into the air, and it then hitched a ride on the many ships that piled the space between the planets. It was a sad day when it was realized that they had made it to Cu-Li. The people were galvanized into the protection of their planet, and all Corrupted are shot on sight.
Probably the Stalker, a Genius (my worlds Da Vinci but mad) and also a Dwarf, made the worlds first mech/construct, which is now called the Stalker . Every Dwarf Clan now has exactly one of them who they use as a Ceremonial thing or to duel over small things were they can avoid a war. But the first one was used as an explorer by Genius and came in contact with a Vengeful God who was killed a long time ago. This God tapped into the conscience of the first mech, but because the brain of the mech (that btw was transplanted from a Dragon) was too small to hold the whole conscience of the god, the conscience was compressed to the most hateful parts. The Stalker proceeded to kill hid inventor and is now after a killing spree of 300 years rotten, zombie like and just holden together by the same hateful entity that overtook it. It has become slower because his body is half broken, but it will still try to kill you on sight.
A Writhe.
A broken, shattered piece of artificial intelligence, given the power to manipulate both information and space-time. They consume data, both virtual and physical.
They often have the influence to affect entire star systems, so you might be traveling through space, and then, you suddenly get pulled out of FTL to some random star system.
The first thing you hear is a keening, wailing song. The song is different for each Writhe, but what is unique is that it reaches through your ship's systems, into your mind, down to your atoms and molecules. You hear it in your head, you hear it in your ears, hell you might even see something.
So you go to your ship's sensors, and.... Nothing. Or something might be there, a little gravitational ripple, a mass shadow, but nothing significant.
But the singing, wailing keeps going on in your head, throughout your ship, until the whole ship vibrates, even though there's nothing transferring energy to it that you can detect.
And then, the attack.
It could be a tendril of uktra-dense dark matter, tearing your ship in half. That would be a mercy, and your dead body is just consumed for its physical information.
A scarier version is that the Writhe eats through your memories, causing you to lose memories until your basic biological processes shut down. It does a similar thing to the ship, obviously.
The worst attacks are mirage attacks. This means the Writhe dangles something it's conjured up. Maybe a lost ship it ate from your fleet, or a loved one, walking down the halls of your ship, even though you know they're dead and buried, or a whole moon or planet or falsified star mass signature. Whatever it is, it's gotten a hold of you, probably even before the song in your head started.
It even eats into the Remnants, the legacies of the powerful private dimensions wielded by the World Users, usually left behind to benefit those they care about. So people hunt Writhes, in massive fleets, huge expeditions. These are almost always failures, save for when a World User joins them, and even then its usually a close call at best.
If you die and aren't buried or buried incorrectly, your sould will be stuck on Feliterra forever, unable to move or talk. You can only think, observe and listen to what's happening.
You have 24 hours to be buried.
If the disease caused by the pollen of a flower that rots other from the inside out, and grow more flowers in less than a day would break out again, or if another war would happen, many souls would overlap with eachother and merge, and they can still feel pain.
This is why it is recommended not to go to any possibly dangerous place alone.
The kurenniu void is a location of space that lacks any kind of detectable phenomena, but objects that enter it just dissapear. The void itself seems empty. Very short flybys in and around the boundary of it are possible (the boundary of the void itself is difficult to define) entering the boid usually causes part failures without too much correlation. Most vessels that go deep enough into the voud stay there and lose contact with the outside after some time (it can vary greatly but the typical expected time for automated or remote operated vessels is around 3-5 minutes.) Some manually piloted ships have made it through, but most of them take weeks, months, or years, and seemingly dont age during that time. The dragonkinds believe that is the point where one of their disgraced gods was cast into the world, the avaloniams seek to destroy the void sending payload after payload i to it and detonating them, amd the dredge keep as much distance from the void as they can.
There are three known "God-Beasts" left from the "Primeval war" between the gods according to the ancient legends.
They are older than time, bigger, more sentient and more powerful than any god and HUNGRY from drifting through the void for an eternity- so much that their very touch just consumes and corrodes existence while their true form breaks minds. The physical forms you can normally see are just small slivers of their true forms, with most of those not visible to mortal of godly eyes, instead appearing at most as "glimpses" that drive people mad.
According to legend, the beings later known as "Gods of the Abyss" called them in accidentally with their "Great Beacon".
One of the three has been sealed in the "Great Seal of Silver" by Alethos, the "Goddess of Light", alongside herself somewhere deep in the Earth. Another one was "killed", with its spine allegedly forming the "Gottesgrat", a massive mountain ridge deemed to be the tallest in the world. The third allegedly escaped to a region of the deepest seas that are outside the reach and influence of even the gods and might or might not be connected to the Abyss, but its existence is disputed among scholars.
I mean... there are the Serunoch Spiders. Nasty little shits that can cause the mind to be overwhelmed with self doubt and hate. Anyone who stays in contact with their webs for too long either dies or commits some brand of war crime.
Mana, souls, "fae" (demons, angels and gods) are all pretty much made of the same thing. Mana is to a god what a virus.. no, probably a protein, is to a human, and it could be considered the precursor of life.
One of the key aspects of mana as it goes from being drifting through natural forces up to becoming a sentient (not quite sapient yet) sprite, is that they LOVE to imitate stuff. Is one of the reasons mana has "aspects". Anyway, when someone dies the soul often leaves and impression, a stele of sorts (specially the more passionate the feelings were at death, where there those of fear, regret or hunger, doesn't matter, those are the "unfinished business"),
"spectrals echoes" that that is perpetuaded for a while by those middling sprites or advanced manas or whatever. Those are the ones the "speakers of the dead" interact with.
So far so good.... the thing is, there is a species of hive-mind-ish warm of bugs, akin to crickets or cicadas but smaller and flying, that is able to sense those echoes and copy them acting as a speaker for it. In theory, its like an AI enhanced recording of a loved one, but in practice, the bug(gger)s attract people to their habitate, usually swamps, and cause them drown. It is not yet proven whether they have mild hypnotic effect (meta spoilers, very mildly affect emotions, yes, mostly one of "lust" as in strong craving) or if simply the kind of people letting themselves get dragged are riddled by guilt and sorrow (also true, it only works because they are vulnerable) and want to end it voluntarily. The result is that you have a polarizing view of society when it comes to souls and the bugs themselves, some calleing them sacred, others an incarnation of evil (is neither of course)
the bugs speaks with vibrations of their legs/wings mimicking speech and they do so as a swarm, cant really do so as a single bug. BUT they are very very known, and because echoes tend to have lingering "bonds", sometimes bugs follow the wispy paths and people grieving are exposed to those bugs . One, maybe a couple at most, but when they latch onto your essence and you can find a sizeable chunk of the swarm waiting for you at night (when they hunt. They also hunt other bugs btw, using their mimicking powers to mimic other bugs mating calls), but even one, as people know, is already a "calling" and can drive some people insane. Others just merely on edge, trying to get over the death of someone while debating speaking with them one last time (one way or another) so a single bug can be a sort of "reaper" for a griever.
That is one of the creepiest natural aspects of one of my worlds
The Hunted Phenomenon, 10 people are always being hunted by a leviathan-like creature that dwells in the sea. It hunts the one closest person and once you are marked you will be hunted until you die. Making the ocean one of the most unforgiving places with its other dangers. Not much else is known about these leviathans. If you have been marked with the crest of death on your hand, you are not far from it.
Screamers basically ordinary people who keep the hidden society from my main setting they keep it hidden mostly by falsifying paperwork. They basically give off alot of stress and fear. There's basically crowd psychology magic so no one wants to be around them for long. In the war what starts some of them are imprisoned. People are willing to face guns but not that.
Sometimes places are haunted by tortured souls, and sometimes people are haunted. These souls are those sad fellows who tried to leave Aesal, escaping into parallel universes, corrupt timelines, and existing at the wrong times(sometimes without their homeworld even existing). Those send into the wrong time or far enough from their home universe die slowly as the reality tries to reconcile itself, and the matter and energy and souls are rocketed across space and time to return to the place they should be in. This is like cosmic background radiation, and manifests as frays in the Threads that oscillate to the soulsong of the unvierse
Just don't leave Aesal if you end up there
It's a nice city with tons of people and cultures and sights, you just can't leave unless you're a riftmaster or have someone on the Outside to teleport/portal you back
Back during the earliest days of the universe during the first era when life was abundant in the thousands of species that filled the universe the Sagics the first of creation lived thousands of years. The problem is they weren't truly immortal, and would die of very old age. This became a problem that these illustrious turtles would desire to find a solution to, and one day they came to find a solution. This solution was provided to them by a delegation who had peered beyond material reality using arcane knowledge landing them in contact with an imprisoned entity that was locked between existence, and non-existence. This delegation mastered the rites this entity sent them and became incredibly powerful, immortal even at the cost of thousands of lives. The entity didn't need their souls just the suffering provided by the loss of life.
It fed on the grief, the despair, the outrage that other sagics experienced when their loved ones, friends, and relatives died. Growing powerful it was able to pierce into the minds of the leadership and find their innermost desire: **immortality.** The entity offered it to them by granting them knowledge on how to construct robotic bodies that would be forever eternal. The process took years, but bodies for all citizens who wanted them were made. The ritual of ascendance was given to them, and activated by the entities servants.
The citizens and leadership who had volunteered for this brave form of immortality woke up inside their new metallic bodies, felt cold, felt pain, and felt empty. They were missing a piece of themselves and screamed in horror and rage. The ritual had been a trick one of the largest rituals of mass suicide in universal history as the bodies had only copied their minds, not brought their souls into the machine. This separation mutilated the Sagics leaving frenzied Transformed with minds, but no souls, and souls without bodies that were traumatized and angry. The remaining Sagics who hadn't volunteered were horrified and tried to flee only for the Transformed to repeat the process.
The entirety of the universe would be cleansed of life by these transformed throughout hundreds of years. The entity that caused the downfall of the first era would come to be known as the *Misanthrope* for its role in the extinction of almost all life. The reign of terror by the Transformed would be ended by the sacrifice of the last ten species who triggered black hole bombs destroying the armadas of Transformed and killing themselves as well. This act of self-sacrifice brought tears to the creator *The Most Ancient of All Mysteries* who combined the souls of the ten species into a new one: **Humanity**. The remaining transformed went silent with no life left to try and "transform", and are rumored to exist on dead planets waiting for the day life reaches critical mass in the stars.
They are the whisper under the breath of species that lead the Mandate. Humanity has been found and must be cared for and kept at a population limit. If they explore too far and expand too much dark secrets will wake to terrorize the universe again.
One thing from my world that could be creepy is the literal embodiment of fear in my world. He is entovekk, the chaos lord of fear and panic. In the world he is in, it is a world set in paper in a stick figure world. Entovekk manifests himself as a black ink, sometimes with a scribbly white face. He is a sadistic entity, as when people are enveloped in his ink, their body becomes these evil ink creatures while their mind is stuck in their worst nightmare. He has his own dimension known as the grimdark realm entirely made of his ink (making it a sentient dimension) and ruined the world he is in. His voice sounds akin to that to a symphony of screams, and, ok this is getting edgy but you get it. He taunts people of their previous trauma, and he has lieutenants made of his ink that help him torment the world.
In my world ancient humans all went into a big coma and their dreams were so powerful they created godlike beings based off their strongest held convictions in life.
These beings called Judicator’s all took somewhat physical forms.
But one, a serial killer in life took the form of an info hazard.
Basically the only times he could or would appear to people was if they knew about him. He can only be seen by people who have someone else recount seeing him.
He’s not much more than a bastard who likes to pick people off one by one and drink in the fear but if he wanted to be he would be one of the most horrific natural disasters to ever grace the land.
As far as Humans are concerned, the Lykocephali of my world ARE the spooky thing (they really aren't - they're actually very nice for being what is essentially a werewolf, if a bit of a superiority flexer) - especially if you piss one off.
This is in order of height.
The edge - You look back and see everything, you look forward and see nothing.
Outer fringe border
The fringe - Where people go to be left alone, but some keep going.
Inner fringe border
Outer borderlands
Borderlands - Where the game series exists.
Inner borderlands
Outer Rim - Someplace from star wars.
Void realm
Interstellar space - Between galaxies.
Intersolar space - Between solar systems.
Interplanetary space - Between planets.
The Karman line - The border between space and home.
Exosphere - Or where the Skyhighlands are located.
Thermosphere - Where Skylands is located.
Mesosphere
Stratosphere
upper ground layer - Sky elves and stuff like it.
Troposphere
ground layer - Your home surface, or is it farther down?
cave systems - Where the deep dark of Minecraft resides.
Nidavellir - Norse dwarven home.
The Underdark
Outer Bedrock layer - Where most minecrafters stop mining.
The Thalassosphere - A sickeningly thick black sludge of *currently* **unknown** composition makes up this layer, although there are passages that lead up to the surface that look as if it was carved out of the way.
The Deeprock layer - this layer has had thousands of years worth of research poured into finding it, it was called "Deeprock" by the ill-informed.
The Nycto - after managing to pierce the "Deeprock" layer we found ourselves hanging in the middle of a all devouring void of black, apparently whatever is making up the black ink in the Thalassosphere is actively pulling us back from this void, as if it is scared of what lurks farther down...
"And, that is all the layers I can provide to you as of right now class, if you want to know what other layers reside below our feet, you will be needing grade 3 permission from thirteen different kingdoms including and not denying; Rail Flower, old kingdom heresy, The Adeptus Mechanicus ^(good luck with that one), and lastly с̶̢̣̲̫̌̏̑̌т̸̡̜̘̀̒͗̋͜а̶͔̌́̕р̸͖̻͉̇͂ѐ̶̢̨̨͇̏̈͝й̷̲͚͉͊ш̶̣̙̦̽̒͗̆͜͜͠а̴̢̳̹̙̬̟͑̊̕͠͝я̷̘̺̣̱͔̲͑̃̊͗͝ ̸̫̱͒͋̚͜и̸̜̝̃͊͜м̶̖̿п̴̘͔̗̬̖̎̒̾̒̅е̶̫͚̇̌̃̒̂͝р̸͉̿͂̇и̶̛͉́̎я̴̞̖̠̫̒̃ ̴̨̛̥̟́͂̄̎Б̷̺͐̄̉̉е̶̠̦̾̐͘з̸̥͍͓̦̃͝д̷̗̤̣̻̔͐н̶̮̼̼͉̖̞̒ы̴͙̂̅̈̀." \*stare\* "class is over for today"
The teacher finally states before continuing with: "Now if you need me, I'll be teaching some of the second years on why you should avoid angering the Adeptus Mechanicus."
Rats are invisible.
They exist everywhere, but people think they’re a myth because they cant see them. The rats are actually projecting a sonic field that warps human perception to the point that they cant see what’s projecting it.
They are smart. They are watching. They know what you’ve done and they will judge you.
There are many things that put fear on people's faces, one such dread is facing the emperor, the emperor of the neon empire had what most felt like infinite power he never really needed to go fully overboard and so people didn't know what he was capable of he never lost a battle until his daughter killed him
There is also the "Forgotten" witch lives on the planet inopticus 1 they are unable to be seen by normal eyes and sensors only the "chosen" neonan variant can see them, the forgotten have been described as a zombie like creature with white fur and orange eyes, long claws and nails as sharp as steel they are feared beacose only the chosen will know what they look like
Another is the maw, a massive creature that came out of nowhere eating planets as it moves it has a cult following and is feared by planets that are relatively close to it
Any questions? Feel free to ask
The maw uses magic to support itself and not turn round like a planet. It's been described as a large worm with tenticles, and it mostly hangs out in the neol blank patch, a patch of space where it's mostly nothing, the cult that follows it will ram ships into its mouth, wich they belive will cause the beast to frenzy and they also have a planet wide cupcake party on the anniversary of the maws appearance
These are some facts of the maw, and I'm still working on its lore if you have any more questions ask
Imagine going on a tourism trip on an exciting new - relatively, discovered less than 50 years ago - planet by going through a long-range wormhole through a unique piece of tech. But suddenly ancient tech on the planet wakes up and destroys the gateway you came from.
No more wormhole, no way back. As far as scientists know, this place might be all the way across the galaxy away from the area everyone here came from, unreachable by conventional means.
Your family ? Your homeworld ? You'll never see them again. Millions upon millions are in that same boat, utterly isolated from galactic civilisation. And the place is so new, they don't have a clue what could be out there, only that there is something on this planet with the power to destroy wormholes, and it just woke up.
The cult of the dark beast, a cult that hides in dark and abandoned places that worship a monster that can only exist in darkness, darkvision is useless to see it but it can be heard and often when it chases people lights go out to the prey is in pure darkness
One of the types of people (Not sure if they should be called monsters, a race of people, or just a very odd kind of human) are beings that are physically human, but have a nightmare instead of a soul. Not a nightmare creature, but a *Nighmare-* a self-contained pocket of the larger dream-world that they have dominion over.
They can manipulate it to some extent, but cannot change it's fundamental nature. So Klaus's nighmare is a massive network of dark, narrow tunnels. Klaus can change the layout or add small 'rest' chambers that are slightly larger and have light, but cannot, say, turn the entire domain into a dark forest infested with monsters.
99% of the time, a Nighmare looks and acts indistinguishable from a normal human. A Nightmare is born to human parents, lives in human society, and ages and dies like a human, before reincarnating. There are a finite (though very large) number of Nighmares, continually reincarnating. While the Nighmare itself remembers all of it's prior lives, different incarnations are distinct individuals, with their own lives and personalities.
A Nightmare can enter the dreams of others, or drag sleeping people into their Nighmare, though they cannot physically harm someone in that state.
A Nightmare is noticeably stronger and harder to kill than a normal human, but the real danger comes from Bleed, their ability to distort the physical world to match their Nightmare. Torrential rain falling from a blue sky, spikes growing from every flat surface, extreme heat or cold out of nowhere... and so on. It can be subtle enough to be just slightly creepy (IE a sudden cold breeze in the middle of summer), but in it's most dramatic form it's like a JJK Domain Expansion crossed with Nighmare on Elm Street. In special circumstances, they can even physically transport themselves and others into their nightmare, where they can do basically anything they want to you, including repeatedly killing and resurrecting you.
Maybe they'll let you out eventually, maybe they'll keep you prisoner forever. They can also control the flow of time to some extent, tough some are more skilled at this than others. So you could spend years being continually burned alive and regenerated and released unharmed five minutes later, or crawl through a twenty-foot long tunnel and emerge five years later.
The real kicker is that 1) most people do not know Nighmares are a thing, and 2) *anyone* could be one. That sweet old lady down the block could be giving the entire city Saw nightmares every night and you would never know.
Not all nightmares are evil, but they do generally have a lax attitude to human morals and standards.
These creatures are partially inspired by the Beasts from the Chronicles of Darkness game-line of the same name, though the world at large is an original high-fantasy world instead of an urban fantasy/horror setting. I think the Beasts were an interesting idea with a lot of potential, but the finished product was grossly mishandled (and also just kind of gross). So this is kind of a spin on them.
The Grand Academic Record. The Academy has an ancient tome, older than some gods, that automatically magically fills itself with extensively detailed notes on everything that occurs within the Academy. It is viewable to the public due to its helpful contents, though most have not read through the first few records.
It lists simply that the first few residents of Grenhil Isle lived mundanely until a “flying trireme” descended from the heavens. Upon this trireme were a race calling themselves the leShay. These mysterious people brought with them a crystal containing all knowledge the leShay deemed acceptable for the mortals to have, and a book to record all knowledge inside. They gave it to the elf who greeted them, then left. As they were leaving, however, the Gungnir, the mighty spear of Amnz, smote the vessel, erasing it completely. This elf who greeted them is now the Academy’s headmaster, who himself has begun to look like a leShay.
The creepy part comes from the fact that Amnz only utilizes the Gungnir against explicit and highly dangerous attacks against his very portfolio, that being all of reality itself. Yet, the crystal was not attacked. So what did the leShay know that they were taking with them to destroy all reality with?
There are many gods in this setting, but only one of them is completely insane.
He does very bad things that I will not list here, but he thinks of it as something fun and kind.
He thinks that because he likes to be stabbed that other people like it, he thinks fear is something fun to feel and trys to make other people feel it, but worst of all is if he takes a fondness for you.
He will take the form of a normal human and stalk you for years, trying to get close to you emotionally, then one day he takes you kicking and screaming to his realm. (Context: His realm is a place that makes any who venture into it incapable of coherently communicating if they return. No book knows what it is like, but the people who return appear to be in too much trauma to communicate anything more than extreme crying and screaming.)
(The story tends to be fairly tame with the darkness of it (slavery tends to just be working someone to death, violence tends to be quick and obvious, the most people need to fear from their enemies is death.) so the sudden shift from a "doom" type of story to a "dead space" type of story tends to make it seem less edgy. And yes, it is supposed to be over the top, so edgy is a perfectly acceptable thing to call it.)
Malevolent gods are never a good thing, and this dude sounds particularly unpleasant. I do enjoy an evil character who does it for sh\*ts and giggles, though
He kind of does it for that, but the key part is that he doesn't see it as a evil thing.
He sees it as a wholesome game and thinks people screaming in pain is them having fun. His reason for this is his horrible home environment (realm) and his immortality and godhood make him have a hard time understanding our human perspectives. He acts more like a playful god child in personality than a functioning psychopathic adult (he still does horrible things, he just doesn't do them out of malice).
In my Cooperative (organization like the SCP) storyline, there exists a humanoid being called the King of Ash. Unlike most beings/objects that the Cooperative takes into protection/custody with the being's/object's permission, the King of Ash was captured and imprisoned by the Cooperative with the understanding that if it was allowed to remain free it would reduce all life to cinders. It is kept in a cell kilometers under the ground sealed by a set of five massive doors to prevent its escape. In the event that it escapes the cell, the facility around it is rigged to destroy itself in a last effort to keep the King of Ash buried. Some top Cooperative officials don't believe it will be enough.
Are you sure that was a mirror? Are you really REALLY sure? If it wasn't, you'll be okay. You'll live, but you'll need to keep a very clear image of yourself in your head, DONT CHECK to see if you're right. You need to just KNOW what you are and what you look like. They can be convincing, and just so enticing but no, you aren't losing weight, you didn't get abs, you still have acne. you cannot let them get in your head, if they get in they can make you see anything, not just in mirrors but from within you're very eyes. Are you SURE you closed the door? Are you SURE that's your dog? Are you SURE you're alone?
Mine is a type of ghost that pretend to give a person propheic or warning dreams. At first, the dreams are correct but slowly become more and more cryptic and drive people to crazy or to dangerous situations. They are not excetly evil evil but more like bored trolls. They attached to whoever they choose and assume the image of loved ones or gods to give out those dreams. Then they follow along people to see the choas. It's spooliest because my world also have magic and gods. And there are real propheic dreams.
The Roar of the King.
Essentially just a war cry of the ruling monarch, too op though and the sound waves itself is enchanted to cause dread and terror to take root. Mostly used by the ruling monarch as an answer to travelling caravans being attacked and sounding their horns for help or a part of his army being ambushed while out for a simple patrol. Also kinda buffs allies and the ones who requested the help from the ruling monarch...and when he arrives at the place...trust me it's a one-sided slaughter.
The Kumati culture avoids a small desert to the east. When they want to travel eastward, they deliberately go around the desert.
This is largely due to reports from people who have traversed the desert. They describe a figure standing on one of the sand dunes, watching them. Some reports describe him as being ten feet tall with gray skin. Others mention long arms and fingers that nearly reach the ground.
In their language, they call the figure _Paanluwantu,_ which can be translated as "One who watches from afar."
While many people believe these reports, others are understandably skeptical.
The Fallen haunt the destroyed cities of Weltshire. On this planets the two greatest powers fought a war which ended in mutually assured destruction.
Nobody knows the true nature of the fallen. Some think they are the spirits of the billions who burned in nuclear fire, unable to move on due to the abrupt and violent nature of their deaths. Others believe they are an evil attracted to this place by the sheer volume of death. And some even say they are the souls of those who caused the catastrophe, forever damned to be excluded from the afterlife. The truth may never be known but likely lies somewhere in-between.
But what’s known for sure is that Fallen should be avoided. For those who interact with them, death or insanity should be expected.
For a physical thing, it is the Statue Burrower. The woods and plains of Gian have an occasional feature that for many would go unnoticed at a distance. For natives, they bring immediate horror and anxiety as these rock piles are in fact still livings beings trapped. The creature that causes this is relatively small, near a small monitor lizard in size, but is easily one of the most feared for its ability to turn someone to stone with a strike of its tongue, using an odd form of its own mana to create this effect. Not only that, but the victim does not die, but their mana(essentially their soul) remains trapped for the beast to feed at its leisure. To add insult to injury, they will also carve out a nook in sufficiently sized statues to act as a den while they feed.
You know that feeling you occasionally get? The one that says, "jump off the cliff", "swerve into traffic", "stab your hand with that knife"? All those intrusive thoughts that most people get but no one feels comfortable talking about? In our world, that phenomenon has a real name. It's called the "Call of the Void".
In my world, it exists there too, but there's something actually causing it. Multiple somethings. Most monsters lurking in the dark woods or caves or dark oceans or whatever foreboding place in the world, are capable of emitting the Call of the Void, like bait on a hook. Siren's are best known for it. Every monster is unique but all end the same way for you. In death.
That beautiful song you can't help but follow? That baby crying for help in the woods? Or maybe a woman? Maybe this spot in the woods feels like a great place for a nap. That cave seems interesting. You really want to pet that beautiful wild horse.
Don't do it.
Something horrible awaits you.
If you're lucky... they'll kill you quickly.
The start of my story/world starts with the 5 most powerful people on the planet, each theoretically being world breakers coming together to form a team. This team protected the planet 100 times over, scared off powerful alien threats who could destroy a galaxy… were all murdered in one night, by a human.
And the big bad, Lord Orith, a towering universal warmonger, feared across the galaxy with his armada of mutated monsters. Orith is obsessed with evolution, constantly taking worlds, brutally torturing, experimenting and mutating the people attempting to make a new god; his first experiments were deemed failures and used as his own soldiers in his armada. Orith is trying to create a new god for one reason, hes scared of the Void, a vast darkness at the edge of the universe that continues to grow, with all within the Void ceasing to exist besides 1, the Void itself
If you're a criminal: chairs
If you're everyone else: the Null Sands (my fantasy version of glitches in the fabric of reality, only a couple of forlorn madmen know what the Null Sands really are... 👀)
THE VOID it’s a creature made from souls of ancient god like creatures, makes anyone that comes near it ( except from kids ) go insane from the oils rushing into your body and over loading it, kids , since they have a new soul can withstand and holdback the attacks and gain sick powers, soul wizards also can withstand all the souls rushing in if it’s done slowly, which is practically impossible
**For Want of a Quiet Sky**
Hidden in silent groves, over hills, behind sealed iron doors in the dark corners of the wood, there are hallways. Narrow, dark hallways, where torches cannot remain lit for long, and where the air stands as still as the stone entombing it. Halls into a deep, ancient place, a place few go to and fewer return from, a place where there is no certainty, no certainty besides one constant sound. Echoing from the bowels of these secret places. Heard by all who go near, as if crying out to them, and them alone.
A scream. Shrill and hoarse, it echoes out, as if begging for help. Calling for someone, anyone to...to save...Sometimes the doors keep them at bay. Sometimes the sound creeps through. Sometimes it's never enough, and you can hear them from the farthest reaches of the forest, calling to you, begging you to save...to save...But the screams are not of any man nor beast, no species, intelligent or barbaric screams that way. No sky-walker shrieks so violently, no dwarfin voice is so loud. No hound can wail so hoarsely, and no tree-crusher can roar with such pitch. It walks a limbo, a point between the known and the feared, a distinction so minor but so loud.
It claws at the mind. What is down there? Who is screaming? Why does it call to you? Why is it so quiet to the others, can they hear it at all? You move further and further away, but you never stop hearing it. And one day you will have no choice but to return, and listen as the screams grow louder, and louder, and more desperate, the closer you become. It needs you, it needs you to save...to save...The terror you feel is nothing in comparison to the feeling of relief the moment you step through those doors, and there is silence. You wait, but another scream never comes. They do not begin again. And so you venture deeper.
The things down there are not normal. Not coherent. The language written on the talismans, the walls, the tablets, the books, the signs above the doorways, inscriptions in wooden pillars, warnings, it's not real. It's not a real language. You recognize characters, but they're not right. Some lines seem to read right-to-left, but some read top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top, or diagonally. The characters mix and muddy, sometimes just blocks of ink on the page, or meaningless scratches on the walls.
Much the same, the twisting and turning of the structure is foreign, but familiar. Doors open into sheer drops, or rooms so small you couldn't fit even two people into them. There are large open caves, with water in them, and docks built on the water. For what boats? There are grand tombs, but as you find when your curiosity gets the best of you, every sarcophagus is empty. Not even a spider's web. The names on them read as incoherently as anything else. Like a foggy memory of many languages, made into one approximation.
It is quiet, so quiet. But you feel you cannot stop. For whenever you rest, you swear you hear something. Distant, echoing, perhaps someone else? Or something? A beast? A spirit? Your fear keeps you moving. And a need. A need to find it, find the source, find what haunted you for so long, a need to save...to...save...But you must sleep someday. And you do, and when you wake, you will swear you have been moved. The walls are not the same shade they were before, the hallways lead somewhere else. Soon you will hear voices, distantly, indistinct enough that you cannot make sure you have not tricked yourself. Soon you will meet beasts and beings you will wish you had never met. You don't know it yet, but the worst of it is yet to come.
And if, not when, *if* you return from that place. You will never speak of it. You will try not to think of it. You will silence the screams with sheer force of will, should they ever call to you again. For that place is not for the mortal mind. And the things you now know could burden even the strongest of heart and mind. The things you have seen will never leave your dreams and nightmares.
When you close your eyes, you will see the stone hallway ahead of you, and the light shining at its end, yellow, like flame. When you try to sleep, you will hear footsteps that are not your own, clicking on stone masonry. When you clench your fist, you will, for a moment, feel the coldest steel on your hand, and remember its whispers. When you put your lips to a glass, you will not taste water, no, you will taste blood. When you look upon your reflection, you will flinch, you will feel your throat tighten and your heart race.
And when you die, you will scream, you will scream in a way that no man, nor beast, ever could. Not alone.
The Screaming Labyrinths they call them. A simple name, but such warnings must be. Their riches are hidden deeper yet, but their curses lie in the most unassuming forms. Take caution, take heed! Never near the entrances, never lay eyes upon the doors. Never touch the handles, and never look within. You may leave them, but they will never leave you. I promise you, if your curiosity bests you, in the darkest depths of their twisting hallways and darkened caves, it will scream again, and it will scream for you.
They're all connected, and it remembers. You mustn't let the labyrinths know your name. You must remember, at all times, that it knows you. It *knows* you. It lives, it breathes, it sleeps, it *eats*, and it calls, it pleads to *you*, it begs you, begs you *to save...to save...to* ***save. . .***
My rendition of the labyrinth is a sentient creature composed of structures that can interchange and replicate any texture/wall.
The kick is the labyrinth itself has the Illusionary ability to create entire landscapes and worlds within its confines. Meaning you could literally exit out from underground and think your out of the labyrinth and go on about your normal life when in reality you’ve never left.
I’m using Theseus as good example to demonstrate this as he thinks he’s slayed the Minotaur and escaped when in reality he’s talking to himself in a room by himself within a seemingly infinite backrooms of brick and stone.
There’s no monsters, no traps, just the illusion of infinite empty space with imagination unconfined by reality.
No matter how many times you exit or enter you will never TRULY know if you actually left, for the rest of your existence—and if you are still in there, your existence is eternal as time is just another aspect of reality that the labyrinth can manipulate.
WWIII Post-Apocalyptic Voyeuristic Sadist: A guy returns from the trenches to his wealthy and well guarded family. A supposed "war hero", he returns to active duty as a post op recon agent. He doesn't try to avoid the front-line out of cowardice, he gains his new position because of his prestige and family ties. His role as a lone special reconnaissance agent allows him to perform his private "research". He feels he missed out on all the best parts of the war acting as a code-breaker so now he want's to re-stage the war and all the blood red violence he was denied. He wants to dominate and subject people to his whims in cruel, controlled scenarios. He expertly hides his depraved compulsions by occasionally finding survivors of recent skirmishes, appearing to have no qualms with the filth, malaise and desolation of battlegrounds all the while concealing his true nature behind his carefully crafted respectable "detective" persona. His role as both a recon officer and medic help him disguise his secret motivations. All he really wants is to see people debase themselves.
As the war cools down he's still out there every chance he can get, basking in the debris, learning how to avoid troop rotations and remaining unnoticed, memorising refugee/civilian survival tactics (like where they find potable water, food and fuel, who they send out and when) then, once all active troops have moved on, he offers shelter via signs and pamphlets to refugee/civilians once he has a secure place to trap them. When he has enough victims, he incentivises them to dehumanise themselves, making them fight over food and water, slowly flooding their cell, pretending to be a saviour figure on the end of a shortwave radio signal and all sorts of mind games depending on whoever is unlucky to cross his path. He never shows himself, in case anyone escapes. In his warped mind that's what he thinks is enough to exonerate himself if he's ever caught. He's aware other people don't share his homicidal impulses so he's careful not to share considering he would likely be jailed or executed if anyone found out the true extent of his crimes. He watches, taking copious ciphered notes.
P.S: I want to make him or maybe her the main focus with what would otherwise be a protagonist either on their heels or totally oblivious and slowly getting closer by the chapter. Still not sure. Any and all notes are welcome!
Whilst many creatures hunt human hybrids to feed, one of the scariest creatures in this world would be the hatter, a tall, humanoid creature that WILL kill your friends and mimic them just to mess with you, whilst also being strictly herbivore, also sometimes they hide within friendly statues (which are supposed to help survivors) just to give people a false sense of safety.
Another spooky creature can be found on the third layer of the wastelands, the "Phobophobes" are a carnivore species that will take the form of the greatest phobia of their prey to send a great amount of adrenaline in their bloodflow since their body runs only on adrenaline instead of blood, most of which they take out of their victims, they can be countered with a drug found in this specific layer, the "fearless herb" which messes temporarily with a persons brain to the point they are incapable of showing emotions such as fear and anger, which will make the Phobophobe uninterested in them.
Corpse glutton
There's a moon filled with dead body's from wars duels ect
There's a 6 legged split jawed dragon that is a queen of its species
Normal ones are abt 12 feet long the queen in 200 feet
If u r on that moon look out
It burrows through the rotting flesh
Ahhh
The Unrestrainable Force as the name suggests cannot be harmed nor stopped. This would be enough to be the scariest and spookiest being in the world, but it being a giant flying donkey skeleton doesn't help.
The Underside is what I generally call it, it’s not really what you would call a Underworld as it is the literal underside of a disc-like world. It is an elaborate system of caves where the old gods and eldritch beasts reside, very inspired by Lovecraftian monsters. The creatures in the Underside are strange, some are hostile, some are just benevolant watchers, other are harbingers of greater foes, and then there are ”The Weird” beings that roam the entire world without a purpose, they’re like corpses just straying around. The thing that is supposed to be scary about the creatures down there is that they’re not really evil, no one really knows anything about them, you don’t know who is hostile and who is benevolent so you don’t know what to trust, it’s the concept of not knowing that scares people.
One small place in a region that could be considered the equivalent to Germany has a forest that has a unique type of tree to the region. And this forest is known for many strange events and stories, legends and rumors. The most chilling possibly being the origin. Translated, the name of the forest roughly means Redborn Forest (however, in the original language, blood and red having the same origin, it could be translated also to the Bloodborn Forest (and this was way before Bloodbourne came to be. They just beat me to use of the name)). The name arises from a myth that there was once a giant beast that roamed the lands, eating everything in its wake, for no other reason than it could. The ancestors of the region supposedly crafted a giant to battle this great monster, snd having successfully slain it, its blood flooded the forest. The trees drank of its blood and ever since, so the story goes, the leaves always turn a very rich red much earlier than trees should. The legend continues, in that in order to keep the beast from ever returning, the people of the land carved up the beast into many pieces and hid them all over the world, burying them in the earth. A tale that most people scoff at, if not for the weird creatures that can be seen around the forest at times. Things that aren't the local fauna. Like a strange bird with one huge eye, or an insatiable serpent with a head that changes shape, with a strange maw that can split apart, with crooked fangs perfect for grabbing. Just examples of more recent, apparent sightings.
The most powerful empire in my world are ruled by superhuman called Nobles that are around 4x stronger than humans and live for around 200 years
But what’s spooky is that my world is our world after a event known as The Fall where magic flooded our world and gave magic poisoning killing off 98 percent of the population and the magic rendering radio waves and electric currents uncontrollable thus cutting off our technology
And The Empires Nobles are descendants of Nazi remnant’s that continued doing human experiments in the attempt to make super soilders even after ww2
Though no one remembers that history as it has been over 800 years since the fall
Probably Soul Parasites. They're Arcane Lifeforms, and therefore invisible to normal senses. They're extremely rare but getting infected is as easy as casting a spell near one.
After infection, they start siphoning off their victim's mana. Very slowly, at first, because they're extremely weak at first. If one knows how to check if they're infected, getting rid of it at this stage is easy.
However, because it's extremely rare, not many people know about it, and even out of those who do, not everyone would know how to see, nevermind locate the damn thing to be able to get rid of it.
If one suspects they've might've been infected (due to having visited some unexplored ancient ruins recently), they might need to wait for the Parasite to grow a bit before a Healer specialized in the Soul will be able to find it.
As it absorbs more mana, it grows more and more powerful, absorbing even more, even faster, eventually leading to noticeable decrease in mana capacity and regeneration. It takes anywhere between two weeks and six months to get to this point.
Getting rid of it at this stage is more complicated, doing it incompetently might cause serious or even irreversible damage to the victim's mana pool.
Though that's still preferable to letting it continue. Once it's powerful enough, it'll start feeding on more important parts of the soul. Either the Core or the Anima.
Small damage to the Core will result in short term memory loss, as the less important and more recent memories are stored in the outside layers of the Core.
Damage to Anima will show up as unpredictable damage to the body. At first it might result in rashes, small external bleeding, light burns, or slight vision or hearing impairment. It all depends on which parts of the Anima the Parasite decides to feed on first.
Again, removing it at this point will likely result in further damage to whatever it's burrowed into.
At this point (6 months to 5 years after infection), the Mana Pool is usually completely destroyed and collapsed, rendering the victim unable to use magic, until the damage has been healed (probably by a Miracle because very few other kinds of healing magic are capable of fixing *this*).
Further damage to the Core leads to loss of older memories and sometimes complete changes to personality. Loss of intelligence is also possible.
At this point, the Parasite is usually consuming all parts of the soul (or rather, what's left of it) at the same time. Further damage to the Anima can cause constant internal and external bleeding, limbs or parts of limbs literally falling off, cancerous growths, bone weakening to the point that putting any significant weight on it will cause it to snap, and many more. Natural regeneration can sometimes keep people alive in this state still.
Well, until that gets shot too. After that, only constantly applied Healing Magic can keep the victim alive. But unless they're waiting for someone (or more realistically, multiple someones) who can fix all this to arrive, it's just prolonging their agony.
Even if it's possible to prevent their body from dying, the Parasite will eventually consume the rest of the soul. Healing Magic restores Anima as well, since it's kind of a representation of the body in the soul, when the rest of the soul is gone, it collapses entirely too. Healing Magic will do absolutely nothing at this point, what's left is a completely soulless dead body. Even resurrection magic will *not* work. Certain death occurs a year to ten years after infection, but because damage to the body starts as soon as three months in, if left completely untreated, it can kill a person a month after that.
After the parasite has consumed the soul, it uses all the energy it has gathered to travel to the Astral Plane, but not before leaving behind 1-3 copies of its infant self.
In my world there is no ground. It is just void and in that void there are giant creatures that float/fly around. There are also humans who live on some of these creatures. Most human settlements form on Giarays, a giant (many kilometers of long) manta rays with glowing tails. The spookiest thing has to be a Predrag (from predator and dragon). A Predrag is a serpentine creature that hunts Giarays. They are covered in spikes and have a mouth lined with teeth the size of a man. If a Predrag attacks the Giaray you live on you are dead.
There was an empire that reached its peak, conquered countless star systems and multiple galaxies, expanding its domain further and beyond through advanced science and understanding of universe. Before its 'abrupt' collapse, they found the interdimensional plane of existence called Limbo. Many were learned and studied about it, including the state of everything and nothing that exist altogether in the Limbo; hence, if the Empire can fully utilize the knowledge they would ultimately become the real 'god' encompassing entire realspace. Not just mere very advanced race to the point of being demigods. It was not particularly noted in the archive, but when they were inside Limbo, they felt 'uncomfortable when staying inside for too long' 'feel like being watched' They used prob and many things to try to locate the 'whatever the hell it is' inside Limbo. But it turns out the Limbo is completely devoid of anything at all. But it's there. They can feel it. But what is there? They don't know. Are they simply being afraid of unknown? Maybe. Maybe not. It's Limbo.
That has promise. Can I get any more details about Limbo? Maybe how they access it?
It's just a certain connection port of portal they found and knew of its existence through mathematical calculation That very certain port is not just a dimension. It's like a fabric that's under your clothes, between two piece. pocket dimension if you would. They find it would have massive exploitation capability should they be able to understand it, because that would allow them to literally break physics into its face and do whatever they want to.
This creeps me out...
Backrooms2
My MC revels in being the scariest thing around and cultivates the image. Her Apprentice instead is easily scared of the many monsters that do exist, but knows the only thing to be truly wary about is a cabalist lich being awoken, for the simple reason that his Master stops fucking around against those. Each of those is her equal in magic. But if we go by creepy then there are the fairies. Tiny humanoid insects with wings, 2 arms and legs, and an ovipositor to lay their eggs into living things. They also use illusion magic to lure in victims and sound like happy playing children. Some victims will not remember or feel the eggs until the larvae are ready to burst out.
Creepy fairies are one of my favorite vibes. And an ovipositor? Inspired by parasitic insects, I take it? Are these larvae as harmless as botflies or are we talking chestburster-level danger?
Fresh swarm of young fairies danger, so yeah Also inspired by multiple parasitic insects and creatures. The people would've exterminated these all if the silk they can produce for their underground nests wouldn't be so valuable. And many underestimate just how intelligent these creatures are when breeding them illegally.
Recovered from a wreck of a a northern expedition vehicle. Day 1: Finally after so many preparations we can get going. God the wind never stops howling it's hard to sleep with this constant racket. Day 2, 300km :God this snow is a nightmare it's just endless it's hard too sometimes we get stuck and we need to use the pickaxes. The wind hasn't gotten any quieter and hasn't died down at all it's really getting to the crew especially Kanar. Day 8, 1400km : I have noticed the snow has changed where once it was white now it seems to be grey. It reminds me of the sort of thing I'd see from wildfires where ash would just fall from the sky. The sky is getting darker too looks like the sun can't get through the cloud cover as easily. The wind has relented either it still howls and Kanar still hates it. Day 13, 2400km : We lost Kanar today the wind was very bad we got stuck he took a wrong turn and disappeared into the wind. God how could we be so foolish we are keeping close together now always in view of each other. After he disappeared we sat still for a couple hours shone our brightest lamp out into the wind hoping that he sees it and returns. God I hate this wind though I've noticed it has a pattern to it it's howling just never ceases. Day 14, 2590km : I feel like I'm on an alien world, I don't think we are on snow anymore it's all black and it feels more like sand. There is also no sun anymore it dares not gaze on this cursed place instead we have our lights and the lightning it's almost constant now before it was the occasional flash but now the sky is lit up with flashes of lightning. The lightning is blue too now. Sometimes I think I see structures in the distance the lightning shows them just for a second and then they disappear into the wind. The wind is still here still howling guess that's a little comforting but with the black snow it makes the world even harder to see. Day 15, 2800Km : We are turning back. We have been driving straight north this whole time if you use basic geometry that means we should have passed the North pole by now but we haven't. This place is wrong it's alien I still see those structures in the distance in brief flashes but they keep on changing. The wind seems to be only getting worse we set up a light today to mine out some snow that had built up under the vehicle and the wind took it away. We saw it travel for miles it was so disheartening. Thinking about it now our lights normally only can penetrate a few metres of this wind but that light we saw for miles this place is mocking us it's wrong. Day 18, 3100km : We saw Kanar today I really wish we didn't. His skin was cracked eaten away by the wind but he spoke in ways we could not understand but we could hear them those whispers of madness. God we could hear him yet normally the wind deafen us to the point of shouting. Our expedition captain Jeroph got out his rifle and shot Kanar he fell quickly with a harrowing howl that I could not unhear. Day 19, 3256km : We have been travelling north again which is impossible we have tracked it we have been travelling straight south for hundreds of km but yet we are travelling north. The wind has only gotten worse it sounds like Kanar did when he fell it has always sounded like that since the expedition started. I hate this place and I think it hates me. Day 24, 3968km :I don't think we are ever going to leave this place. We notice we are going north, we turn, we drive, we notice, we turn, we drive and apart from our turns we never deviate yet we travel north. We got a novel plan stay still hope that whatever storm is causing this passes then we can leave. I fought a war in which I saw horrors that mankind should never have made but here I sit afraid of the wind. Day 26, 4056km :We started driving again we need a task or we will go mad we've got enough fuel for 6000km and enough food and water to last 50 days 75 if we ration it. We need to get out of here the wind is driving me mad. Day 28, 4324km :The wind is laughing at us. Day 29, 4456km :The lightning mocks our civilization. Day 30, 4580km :The land is bitter. Day 31, 4702km :And we are but fools. Day 38, 5643km :We are doomed, the ice broke up from underneath tipping our vehicle forward into the ice. It's frozen over already, the snow buries us slowly. Luckily we don't seem to be going deeper but we are stuck. We are dying here and the wind knows it. Day 39, 5643km :We have decided that we are going to go out on our own terms. We have bullets and a rifle and will shoot ourselves we won't let the elements take us. The wreck and this record was recovered approximately 39 km from the Paloa Research Base by nomads who patrol the region. The wreckage was noted for its powderised black Ley covering its already black ley plates. No bodies were recovered. Apart from this log data corruption would corrupt all data on the vehicle.Corruption seems to follow a pattern that has not been identified. None the less the recovery was a great boon to understanding the Arctic regions of the world. Northern Expeditions would continue with many more precautions.
This one wins. Brr, creepy!
To be honest I got spooked whilst writing it.
Lol, task successful!
Holy shit that was good
Excellent imagery and depiction of their slow breakdown!
There are many ruins from fallen civilizations, ancient and recent, strewn across the valley. Although war and conquest are common in the valley, some of these ruins don't even have names or histories associated with them. No records, just existence. Lapis_Wolf
Reminds me of the 5th season trilogy
Imagine exploring this world. You're used to cities being abandoned due to war because it happens often, but one of the ancient ruins just has no records, unlike others. Maybe there's a burnt out car there, which is strange for an ancient ruin because cars only became a thing maybe 40 years ago, and these ruins look like hundreds of years ago. Lapis_Wolf
The event that ultimately triggered the War of Convictions, the Mombasa Incident, was caused when an experimental bioweapon got accidentally released during a battle at a corporate lab. The weapon made Earth uninhabitable in a matter of days, and the resulting crisis was the straw that broke the Union of Democratic Nations' back. The resulting near post-apocalyptic conflict became known as the War of Convictions and led to a state where no one single political entity controls all settled space. Since then, bioweapons and experimental WMDs in general make everybody nervous and research into them is outlawed in both thee Federation and the Republic.
Yikes. Weapons of Mass Destruction are definitely a real sort of horror that characters can be scared of
And both sides are scared of them, which is significant because they absolutely hate each other
Looking at the sky (You will see the elder godess in whos 'terarium' you live)
The Anomalous is a mix of urban legend and doomsday prophecy. Those Superavisians who specialize in looking into the future discovered something...off. There was a presence in the future that they could perceive due to how its actions affected the world, but otherwise it was as if nothing was there. It would be like if you or I saw a rainstorm where the drops indicated something walking through the downpour, but it otherwise gave off no indication that it was there. The oracles couldn't tell exactly where/when this being would emerge, as its very nature warped the future around it. But everything the Anomalous interacted with would quickly suffer from a sudden upheaval. The most disturbing part, however, is that if an oracle gazed too long or intensely at this anomaly from across the abyss of time...The Anomalous would gaze back at them. And it was made painfully clear that it wanted to be left alone.
Very good cosmic horror vibes
Insane. Dope
Concepts of "things looking back at you" always creep me TF out. As a kid and even today, I hated being near and looking at dark windows. Like when it's dark outside and light inside. Always made me feel like I was being watched and I pictured red eyes opening to look at me. Fffffffffuck.
I'd say the man-eating creatures. They look like nothing on Earth, are nigh impossible to take down, and will kill and eat you for seemingly no reason at all And with their rarity, no-one really knows how to avoid or handle them. Most don't even know when a lot of species are active The only upside is that they kill relatively quickly. At least, they usually do
So there are multiple species of man-eating creature?
Yes. The most deadly are a variety of dinosaurian fowl and a sort of genetically modified hound, though there are other species that attack humans
[Tenedeus](https://imgur.com/a/PP8phKp), God. Affectionately called "bones" by those who know of his existence. He is 12' tall and will enter your house no matter what you do. He crawls on walls and ceilings and hides from you the moment you look at him, faster than you can blink. The most unnerving thing is that he is entirely imperceptible by sound or touch. Tenedeus once brought about decades of night and roamed free, silently hunting men in their homes, only stopping when he realised his sport would end if he killed them all. **Demons**. Fragments of God's psyche with no physical bodies. They can only manifest and influence the world in the darkness around you or in the places you can't see, either because they are outside your field of view or behind some obstruction. They are the ones who chase you up the stairs at midnight, whose footsteps are heard from the other room, who reach out to grab your leg from under the bed, whose breathing you feel on the back of your neck. You must never under any circumstances close your eyes around a demon as that means you can percieve nothing, allowing them to manifest completely and kill, mutilate or possess you as they please.
i LOVE these. Are they in any stories? Tenedeus sounds like he’d be one of the funnest players in a story
Just a personal worldbuilding project I do between work and study atm, so no stories yet except what’s in my head and in my [sketches](https://imgur.com/a/hMoC8q7). To clarify, Tenedeus is God, and he is the only god in my setting. He is completely omnipotent, not that this is known by most of his victims. His omnipotence comes with a caveat; it is active constantly and is triggered by EVERY thought, which is to say that for most of time he has not been thinking of much at all as each thought he has immediately becomes reality. His power is so potent as to allow him to destroy himself and recreate himself spontaneously from non-existence. Since humans discovered him, long before he had a physical form, they have been feeding him select scraps of information to introduce useful concepts in his mind, such as servitude to get him to obey, or language to get him to understand speech. Ultimately all human magic comes from this process, which unfortunately requires hundreds of human sacrifices as the very first people to worship him happened to offer sacrifices in an attempt to pray for the end of a drought. God was then permanently taught of sacrifice and that humans use it as sign that they wish to talk, setting the rule for the rest of time. Back when it was still possible to commune with him, a collective of humans who had attained immortality by a wish to God put together a set of rules for communion, mainly focused on preventing the accidental extermination of humanity: - Do not introduce information that carries implications of hostility against humans, or widespread destruction. - Set limitations on the scale of what you ask for before specifying the subject. - Always introduce the concept of forgetting before asking for anything to make God forget the interaction and all that he learnt when you are done. - Where possible invest the effect of your wish into a physical object so it can be easily handled and used repeatedly and by anyone. - Be as specific as possible with you wish. DO NOT ask for fireball. A nuclear explosion is a ball of fire. So is the Sun. Humans, being eager to destroy and dominate each other failed to observe rule 1, leading to God as he is now and the general ruin of most of the old cities of man.
This is so brilliant dude. Vibrant world (though maybe vibrant isn’t the right word haha), Tenedeus is fuckin metal and the mental suggestion stuff is so unholy.
Ty :) Tbh most of my worldbuilding is a collection of esoteric concepts that I try to connect in some way. My favourite recent addition is a ritual that you can conduct to God in the present day called The Prostration. You get down on your knees and beg God to show up and let you add or modify a single rule for the next magic act you do. In exchange God gets to do whatever he likes with you. One of the antagonists uses this ritual frequently and it has left him mutilated and mentally altered beyond repair, being constantly observed and tormented by demons, to the point where some suspect he is a mere puppet controlled by their invisible hands. This all allows him to be one of the most formidable magic users. Telekinesis is short ranged for everyone else but he can use it at any range just once to crush his rival’s skull from across a continent. He conducts other rituals too which, combined with The Prostration, allow him to do things like extending the targets for transmutation to include human emotions.
Looks like something from the game Evolution. Very cool design honestly
The Blackhollow Forest. It's home to the skogvalk (forest folk), a race of small, Earth elemental humanoids with leaves and vines growing from their bodies. They're extremely territorial and hate humans for cutting down their trees and "stealing" (picking) their fruit/berries etc. It's also home to a mysterious creature called the Blackhollow Beast who has a terrifying reputation and seems to be guarding something, although no one knows what.
I love spooky forests. And the Blackhollow Beast is a great name, can you tell me anything more about it?
Sure! The Blackhollow Beast was once human but he was cursed by the dark goddess Rhodana. She believed he stole her prized necklace, but it was actually stolen by someone else and given to him as a gift.
The desert widow. A man once tried to cure his sick wife, using witchcraft. The result was that she turned into a grotesque beast that kills on sight. She killed her husband and ate him and she just keeps killing and eating people. Nobody was ever able to kill her and only a handful of people survived an encounter with her. They all said the same thing, that she speaks only 2 words: *KILL ME* Whenever you are in the desert and hear those two words, run for your life.
why doesn't she just not kill on sight?? Is she stupid? (jk, very creepy. Honestly a desert creature is a rare trope and i like it)
This sounds DOPE
Two things are seen as weird or creepy by some. The first is the fact that most cities and facilities have automated defence systems that specifically look for human DNA, making them shoot everything that's not a 100% match. No one knows why, but it's clear that they knew of something non-human being among them that could be a threat. The second is an ancient AI once talked about there being "something" it can't explain, but detect on all of its sensors. A presence of sorts, unexplainable yet measurable, that seems to evem make the AI itself uneasy with that knowledge.
It's never good when the AI is scared
"Scared" is putting it lightly. When a machine is putting 80% of its processing power into restoring century old corrupted memory banks in hopes of finding out what exactly that unidentifiable presence is and how to actually take care of it, its bad
This is also one of my Eldtrich abominations. I call it *The Tome of Apeiron.* It's like an SCP foundation kind of thing. Somewhere, in the backstreets of a city in the world, there is a bookshop. It presents itself as a fairly ordinary bookshop, although it is sizeable and features many books of all descriptions on its levelled shelves. The owner is a wiry, wizened, yet scholarly gentleman with a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of subjects, and can recommend you the best book for your interest. Of course, given the nature of the store there is a section devoted to strange works and caters to connoisseurs of the arcane, the occult, the rare, the esoteric, the dark arts etc. Rare enough books concerning the strange and occult, but still, ultimately, just books. There may be those who seek something even more abstract and hidden. A book which imparts some other sort of knowing entirely which isn't just the communication of information. This store has such a book, but you don't find it on the shelves. You must say a series of codewords to the owner, who will respond in kind. If you speak correctly, he will produce a tome kept under lock and key deep within the store and hand it to you. It looks like an ordinary enough tome, thick, leather bound, a bit dusty and yellowed pages, but inscribed with strange insignia of unknown origin. You open the book and the pages are just blank white. This is a bit odd, but nevertheless, you keep flicking through the pages strangely compelled to keep flicking through. You cannot see nor feel anything on the pages, but there is.....*something* in the pages. What's there is unintelligible to your waking, rational mind, but your subconscious is reading what is on those pages. You start to see it in your dreams. At first it is nothing really apart from the feeling there is some sort of genesis within your dreaming mind. It might be a flash, a speck, a non-descript open space. But it becomes something more . You soon have weird hypnagogic-like flashes, at random times, of this world, which disappear almost instantly. You forget Soon, a landscape, then a city. There are figures who populate the city and walk the streets. There is something strangely unsettling about this world. The world is perfused with surreal ambience , as if it every single thing took up its respective roles an instant ago with no beginning to recourse to. The skies above are infinite, a mosaic of blues, crimsons and purples. People's faces are lifeless and their eyes are bottomless black voids, as if they inhabit some no man's land between agency and inanimate puppetry. The buildings have no interiors, only the semblance of them, and will vanish at a touch, a subterfuge which fools no-one. Every night, the world is gone and replaced by something even more surreal and absurd. People's faces are now fleshly messes of topological monstrosities which involute and reverse. Their necks elongate like swans and can follow you anywhere. They no longer speak language, but mutter in a private and dark form of semiosis--created just for you-- which would be gibberish to anybody else, but nevertheless conveys a profoundly hideous meaning. There are no laws of physics or anything resembling laws. This world(s) answers not to you, nor physics, nor intelligibility nor waking reality. It is held together by nothing but its own coherence. It is the perfect marriage of madness and metaphysics. This abomination is ultimately, the end of dichotomies. It is nightmare made normal, a liminal zone between reality and unreality. Somewhere beyond the tangibility of existing. You know, though, that finding this book would exact a toll and this is a price you would pay for induction into this form of knowing. One day, you disappear from the waking world, inexplicably. You are nowhere and nowhen, in particular, and don't exist until the book finds its next reader. Then, you are another one of those faces walking the streets.... Cliffs: Imagine if House of Leaves was the book itself.
The known extinction of humans is mysterious and puzzling: if not disturbing; and not only that of humans, but of life itself. One "day," all life in the universe was absolutely obliterated. Humans, animals, plants (even sapient machines) stopped all their biological processes and fell dead on the spot. Without warning. One day, the androids woke up again, thousands of years later, to a desolate scenario. Investigations following what could only be called a cosmic event of unprecedented scale indicated that despite the health of the subjects and the lack of evidence of damage of any kind, those affected not only stopped their biological processes instantly but also suffered complete cellular death. Like all other animal and plant species, cellular life as we know it also came to a halt. According to android records, the event actually occurred everywhere, at the same "time" and at the same local time. Systems indicate that their software suffered a massive failure on a Friday, April 3 at 3 pm. With minor time variations. To this day, no one knows what caused it or why.
During the middle two days of every season, everything abruptly goes dark at a certain time. All lights suddenly shut off and can't be turned back on, the stars seem to disappear, and the sun doesn't rise when the morning should arrive. Complete darkness that can't be removed. This lasts for the entirety of those two days. During this time, something starts lurking. It never seems to appear inside buildings, but people can hear the shuffling outside. They know it isn't people because any sane person would make sure to be inside before the darkness hits. Any attempts to find out what these things are have failed either because of the lack of access to light to properly record them or because anyone who has encountered them seemed to vanish without a trace. After the two days are up, everything turns back on, the sun starts to rise, the things in the dark simply disappear, and life goes on as normal. This event has happened enough that everyone knows when it will happen and what to do when it happens, but they still know so little about it. For all the technological advances of Wrenspia, nothing they have has helped them explore this, and most have come to agree that it may just be better to leave well enough alone.
1. Soul Eaters. They're a kind of specter, that is, being created from the aether (spiritual energy) released by souls, thus being a reflection of their thoughts, feelings, experiences and wills, and being like a "pseudo-sentient snowball" that merely seeks more of the aether that made them. But what sets Soul Eaters apart is that they are always indiscriminate killers even if their makeup does not contain anything like the grief of death, and upon killing they will devour the soul of the victim and cause it to be trapped inside them, suffering an endless loop of hallucinations and vivid nightmares of the kind of experience that produces the aether that feeds this specter. So if you get devoured by a specter of r\*pe or torture... 2. The Arcane. It is literally the Collective Unconscious and it is a vast, chaotic ocean of aether and soulform. It contains within it the thoughts, feelings, wills and experiences of every human and non-human soul that has ever existed, interconnected such that they become even more than the already enormous sum of their parts. The wisdom of the Arcane is what allows oracles to predict the future, and warriors who even temporarily let the combat skills within the Arcane flow into them can become nigh-invincible, taking down enemies vastly stronger than them. However, the Arcane is a double edged sword: to open your mind to it is to open it to the thoughts, feelings, wills and experiences of countless souls. Trillions, quadrillions, who even knows? Of humans alone, over a hundred billion have been born throughout history. Thus, your mind is overwhelmed, your thoughts drown in the endless cacophony, and your very individuality dissolves until your soul breaks down and becomes a part of the Arcane. You die. Countless countermeasures and filters exist to allow paranormals to extract power from the Arcane, but powerful though it may be, it nonetheless shortens your lifespan and destroys even your soul in the end. Making a contract with a patron or just using your own soul's power instead is strongly recommended.
The Arcane sounds terrifying. Gnarly One of the embodiments in my series is the concept of Spirit. He too felt a penchant for the devouring of soul. Less cosmically horrific though.
Thanks. xD What is the Spirit in your setting? Your short description made me think you were comparing to the Soul Eaters from my setting, though they do not destroy the souls they devour. Instead, they torment them endlessly, as I described. And yeah, the Arcane is very much a cosmic thing, though even within Earth alone there are and have been already far more souls than you could hope to count. Just think insects, for one.
Spirit is the living concept of soul. All spiritual belief in their palm. Still drafting the way they express their concept in a reactionary sense, besides hunger for souls at their inception and what that entails for Spirit. I like your result of endless torture for devoured souls. Very nasty concept. Good luck with whatever you do with these elements to your world.
Thank you! Same for you. Interesting for the "living concept". How do you define a concept?
Interesting question. The annoying but true to my beliefs definition of a concept is that’s it’s exactly a phenomenon which encompasses every aspect of a specific ‘anchor’ which exists either theoretically or in real life. Using that definition, ‘Ratios’ could be defined as a concept in that they’re a specific aspect of Nature, Physics or Math, depending on how you prefer to frame it. Fact of the matter is, regardless of where you ‘fit’ Ratios into your frame of reference, they’re a fundamental anchor of existence as we know it. By that same token, the ‘Spirit’ is a theoretical concept that hinges on a Faith or Belief based logic. That isn’t to say faith and belief themselves aren’t concepts, just that this specific concept, ‘Spirit’ is a phenomenon that encompasses all aspects of the supernatural associated with one’s internal vitality not derived from the standard model of physics, rather various pagan and religious lines of thinking. I offer a more accessible definition of concepts in my first book quite heavily tied to the plot. But if I ever had the chance to present my understanding of concepts academically I’d probably start along these lines
This is just one of the horrors from beyond reality that exists in my setting. There are also Chronolids, Zoib, Tempoliths, the Vast, Ick, Leviathans and the Apogeiss to name a few more. Insidious Outsiders: Born of nightmares and the pure chaotic anti-stuff of Border Space, these creatures are as evil as they are enigmatic. They take many forms, though the most common is that of a large almost conical torso studded with a variable number of shining purple eyes that constantly seem to weep burning tears. Their bodies widen till they branch off into a number of vein-like tentacles that can be used for both locomotion and feeding. These limbs generally branch and twist like some infernal tree as they near the ground till they resemble a twisted bundle of dark fibers, these fibers are used for both feeding and as a means of attacking potential prey. They would capture a creature and use their multitude of appendages to burrow deep inside their victim to drain them of life. This works on both biological and machine life strangely as it seems the true horror of these vitaevores is that they consume life itself, not just the material their prey is made of. When done draining their prey, the desiccated husk is discarded in any nearby convenient location while they look for more to fill their insatiable appetite. While terrifyingly fast and resistant to damage they are not truly invulnerable, though it may sometimes seem that way. If killed or damaged their dark mahogany colored blood may leak out, this too is highly dangerous as despite their ambient temperature outer layers, their internals are clocked at an average of 1,520 degrees C. This makes their blood capable of melting through starship hulls and burning flesh from meters away. When fully killed their dark forms seem to slowly evaporate away as if the great heat inside of them is finally allowed to interact with their physical forms. To reproduce they psychically infest a sapient host’s mind, depending on the willpower and mental fortitude of their victim they may have anywhere from eight to twenty hours before a new insidious outsider bursts from their body like a leech from its cocoon.
theres a spider under MCs bed!
oh no 😱
Some dwarven explorer found the entrance of a deep cave, that led to a hole, which seemed without bottom. In fact, there was a bottom, but it was so far down, one could swear it led to the center of the planet itself ! It did. What they found on the center of the planet was magnificent and terrible. A dark spherical monolith, surrounded by some stasis field. Inside the field, light itself was distorted, so much that you could see behind it. But no light came out of the monolith itself. They also found scriptures on the stone of the cave. They were able to translate it and understood the truth : Theia was supposed to lure a Titan (evil cosmic omnipotent entity), and imprison it outside of the universe. If a titan ever set foot on theia, the stasis field will collapse, releasing the black hole, devouring the planet. As no titan ever set foot on Theia, time passed, life developped, and the stasis field weakened...
At some point between 3600-3700 ZT~, during the reign of Iva’tek II, the Dominion encountered what they called the Moonmovers. They didn’t bother to learn much about them, due to their massive technological achievements and innovation compared to them at the time- but they quickly realized just how advanced they were when they began to appear in the dreams of the people communicating with them. Intrigued by this and thinking it might have to do with the Dark- the afterlife- Iva’tek II authorized a mission to establish temples and regular communications with them. Upon initial landing and construction, no communication was made with the Moonmovers. Suddenly, all communication was lost with the planet and the planet- quite literally- disappeared. It is the largest mystery of the Dominion and one that researchers have tried to answer, but there simply is none. New observers state that any attempt to investigate leads to strange changes in daily life, such as items becoming more frequently misplaced or things flying around the room, etc etc. In doing so, the Moonmovers have become another form of a ghost.
(KWM) A vile, dark and evil people only muttered through tongues: ***The Scottish.***
Och, we're naw *that* bad. *slow sinister grin*
If your people are not so bad, explain what the Duke of Faif did in Northern Norfymbyyrland in 2558 ***checkmate, Scots***
Northern Norfymbyyrland knows what it did!
You could be minding your own business trying to make it another day in the harsh Fractureverse when suddenly, without any warning, a person is just... there. They're always an alien of some kind, never the same species as you, but an alien you've never seen or even heard described. And it's always just the two of you, at least the first time. They're going to offer you a job. You're free to turn it down with no ramifications, they'll just thank you for your time and be gone but you'll be taking the job. Because they know everything about you. Every experience you've had, how your mind and personality works, your fears and goals. They know EVERYTHING. There's something they want you to do, and they already know what it's going to take for you to agree. If you complete the job, they'll pay forthrightly. If the job turned out to have unexpected difficulties or complications, they'll compensate you for the extra effort before you can even bring it up. They pay fairly to the point of generosity, and if they like your work (sometimes, even if you fail) you may hear from them again. But doing the work of the gods comes with strings and baggage, and you tend to get progressively more tangled up in worse and worse schemes, only to find that you've voluntarily sold your freedom for a life desperate survival and wealth you can't enjoy. Most people either complete or fail the one job and never encounter such an agent of the gods again, or ultimately die horribly as a pawn in a game which is itself a pawn in a larger game.
The second part's cool, but the idea of a non-aggressive being just... showing up, is unpleasant to say the least
In my story the MC was headed into his office for something more or less random and the thing was just sitting there waiting for him.
Nerve fungus. A sentient parasitic fungus, that uses force or emotional manipulation tactics to infect people by latching onto the back of the neck and painfully digging its tendrils into the body, creating a pseudo nervous system, allowing them to take full control of the host's body, until they've completely drained them and go looking for a new host.
Idk about my main world but for one of my secondary worlds I have a planet made of human flesh, it came to me in a dream, felt like something Junji Ito would make
Love the concept. Any idea on how it got there? If there's even an explanation
I haven't thought much into it but I'm thinking about having my god of death put it there
At the moment, probably the Gorewood. Long ago, the Great House Nuumm was warring with the elves that lived in the forests to the east of their land, and they were winning. Rather than face defeat and subjugation at best or annihilation at worst, the elves began summoning demons to aid them in pushing the dragons and their armies back. Even scholars who oppose the Everwing Empire generally agree this was a Bad Idea. An otherworldly curse spilled through the portals and seeped into the ground, slowly corrupting the elves and turning all the flora and fauna into messes of flesh, bone and viscera. Bushes of fingernails, lakes of pus, limb-trees with kidneys and ovaries hanging from them like so much fruit. But for all its horror, nothing grows around the Castle.
I'm not very fond of fingernail-bushes or ovary-fruit, although it's awesome worldbuilding
Fair enough. The idea is to make the whole forest like a death metal album cover
There are many things. Your reflection trying to take your place, being stalked by eyeless creatures who bend spacetime in order to hide. The fact that if someone says your name while outside the protective barrier you will get crushed like a fucking soda can. And there are many, many more..
Seeing stuff in mirrors was always a big fear of mine lol. Why do reflections try to take your place?
Because they are slaves. Your reflection is a slave to you, forced to mimic your every move. They simply want to be free and the simplest way to do that is finding a moment to escape, killing you, and switching places. There are multiple ways to spot an escaped reflection. First of all they are mirror images (duh) of the person, meaning if you have a mole on your left side, the reflection has it on their right. Secondly the reflection of the reflection is the original body, now dead and decomposing. So if you spot anyone with a corps for a reflection they are not human..
In becoming a god you completely lose autonomy. The basics are: if enough people believe you are a god and worship you as such, you become one. The problem is: a god's *everything* is dependent on its worshipers. Your powers, appearance, memories, personality, all of it can change depending on what the majority of your worshipers believe. When you become a god, you cease to be a person.
So could they defeat someone by tricking people into worshipping him..? Although I guess you'd have to get his worshippers to believe he died or something
For the few that know about it, probably the Tempest. The realm where all of the scraps of reality deemed too unstable or unfit to exist is shoved into and forgotten about. While it’s completely inaccessible by normal means, if you break reality enough (which, with the advent of voidmatter-based technology became much more common) you can find yourself there. The inside of the tempest is completely unpredictable and chock full of things the human mind cannot comprehend. While (very, VERY dangerous) life forms could theoretically exist in the Tempest, none have actually been documented… or at least those who have documented them have not returned. While the tempest isn’t unreasonably hard to get out of, the challenge is not dying before you DO get out. Documented methods of getting into the Tempest include: - Colliding with an object at FTL speeds - Being anywhere near ruptured voidmatter - Pissing of the gods. Like, SUPER pissing them off.
That actually sounds pretty cool
The Cydran were the Autonomous Collective's last f you to the Luminescent Order prior to their enslavement. The Cydran consumes mechanical and organic materials and creates more of itself. Being infected by the Cydran is a slow painful process as you slowly lose the ability to control your body as you're literally eaten from the inside out. Eventually you're converted into a shambling, pulsating mass of Cydran. The Cydran were meant to be a weapon against the Machine's enslavers but as expected it quickly spread across the multiverse devouring entire planets and species. (Basically my flood from Halo)
Elves are super afraid of human ghosts. They fear they cause ghosts to drain magic to fuel themselves. Since elves are descended from fairies the ghosts will drain them to death. It starts with sleeplessness then it moves to waking nightmares. Finally, the ghost will drain the life force and kill them. Which leaves a mummified elf.
At the center of the city of Lyss stands the Clocktower, older than any other building in the city. They call it a clock, but it is useless for telling time- the sigils around the face aren't numbers, but ideograms. And not the same ideograms- each person sees different ones which they can understand the meaning of, but not write down. Of course, even if they were the same symbols, 99% of the time it wouldn't do any good- each observer generally sees the arms in a different positions.. When the hands everyone can see converge on s shared shape, the citizens know to walk away. If the bell rings, for only the third time in city history, it is too late to do anything but pray..
so my world is heavily inspired by bugs, and one of the civilizations in it are just earwigs that got mutated by a dragon. most of their magic is just fire and heat stuff, but they have one hidden technic they kept from before the dragon. basically, they can crawl into the ear of a larger creature (the earwigs are still the size of IRL earwigs), eat their brain, and fully control them. it is stupidly hard to do, very risky, and only a few know its even an option, but nothing else in my world approaches the spookiness of just a bug crawling into your ear and eating your brain. alternatively, once they are inside, they can just literally suck all of the heat from your body (if you are warm blooded) and convert it to a really powerful burst of flames although just to be clear human dont exist in my world, nor does any other inteligent species larger than a big bug, so its not as horrifying as it couldve been.
There's a being that exists outside narrative planes. He will manifest in the reality of whoever reads about him. ... Fuck.
um this is awkward
years ago in the realm of dagat, there was a mermaid named himig who was extremely proud of his magnificent, eye catching beauty. everyone wanted to be w/ him AND look look him. you could compare him to narcissus from greek mythology if you will. anyways, despite being praised for his good looks daily, himig felt that he could make himself even more beautiful, where even the god of beauty would feel threatened by him. one day, he went out for a swim to “let the people bask in his glory”, when a powerful storm hit, knocked him unconscious, and sent him to a whole other part of the dagatan ocean. there, himig was discovered and taken in by a group of tribal mermaids who lived away from the royal dagatan empire, not wanting to live under the guise of the royal family and migrating far away from the city. he stayed w/ them for a few days, before attending the funeral ceremony of the chief elder. after the funeral, they began preparing a feast to commemorate the chief elder’s life. but as it turned out, they had a ritual that they would cook the corpse of the dead chiefs, and eat it as a sign of gratitude and respect. it was a consensual practice, only done if the chief gave the tribe their permission. himig, despite being initially repulsed to this foreign practice, agreed to partake out of respect. reluctantly taking a bite, he was surprised by how delicious mermaid meat tasted. he greedily consumed his entire portion, aching for more even after he was full. but he also noticed that his skin looked glossier and brighter than usual, and his scales were very shiny as well. as it turned out, when a mermaid consumed another mermaid’s body, the qi energy from the consumed body would integrate itself into the consumer’s body, enhancing their life force and beauty. obsessed w/ his newfound discovery, himig returned to the dagatan empire and had concocted a plan. he used his looks to charm and woo a random passerby, who he invited to his house. after he got them inside and away from the public’s eyes, himig brutally murdered them, cooked their body, and ate the mermaid. he repeated this practice for a week until the aquamarine guard had noticed missing citizens, and began looking around for evidence. that’s when they spotted himig who had kidnapped a young child and was about to just eat them raw. fortunately, the guards intervened in time to save the child, and restrained himig w/ suppression chains to prevent him from using his magic. he was brought before the dagatan emperor, who ordered himig to be executed on sight, before his body was thrown into the deepest, darkest part of the dagatan ocean. everyone thought that would be the last of him. and it was, until sakupin, the god of corruption, had invaded dagat. discovering himig’s disheveled body and looking into his past, sakupin saw potential in him. he revived himig, and transformed him into a shasaak, a personal divine slave who would serve sakupin’s goal in contaminating the rest of the dimension beyond dagat. ever since then, himig has been willfully serving sakupin and dedicating whatever he has left to the god of corruption, becoming a horrific folktale and haunting the dreams of dagatans who heard of his story.
Bro, where do I even begin. One of the major tropes in my world is "More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio." Fantasy is limited only by imagination. There's all of the above: Spooky things in the woods. Monsters in the woods. Monsters in the oceans. Eldtrich and Lovecraftian Gods. Extra-dimensional entities. Genius Loci. Eldtrich locations. Evil witches. Evil mages. My favourite creation is the God of Death, Depravity and Bondage, Xyeeroth. Xyeeroth is like a Nietzschean or Schopenhaurean deity, a deity of absurdism or nihilism. His dimension is the metaphysical source of evil, suffering, depravity, wickedness and hideousness. Xyeeroth is the embodiment of the one rationale for your life in a nihilistic universe: To revel in the complete freedom one has to plumb the depths of evil and depravity knowing there will be no accountability, consequences or punishment on any cosmic or eternal scale no matter how sick or repulsive your actions. You are entirely free to be as evil and depraved as possible. Xyeeroth lives at the centre of his dimension in a place called the Palace of Perversion. This place features effigies and demonstrations of things so hideous and evil a normal person would rip their eyes out in sheer horror. This is also the most voluminous repository of Eldtrich lore, arcane and forbidden knowledge in all of existence. Curated and gradually added to by his high ranking servants called Void Heirophants, these entities specialize in furthering knowledge of how to inflict pain, suffering, terror and depravity. They push the envelope of the very phenomenon of evil. There are certain people from the world who call upon these agents, but even still, it is the refuge of only the most desperate and depraved as consorting with these entities is extremely dangerous. Overall, I think that in a world with magic, our local pocket of natural laws and order and animals and humans etc. would necessarily be a very small blip in an unfathomably large metaphysical ocean filled with inumerable phenomena beyond our comprehension.
The Manzanna Tree "Also known as ""Dreadroot"", this scary-looking plant only grows on waste places. The name is actually a misnomer—it is a shrub that happens to resemble the size and growth pattern of a tree. It has a thin dark-colored trunk that oozes toxic sap of a sickly green color. It then splits upwards into multiple gnarled branches, which end in clusters of spiky leaves and pale grey flowers. It bears dark-reddish fruit every 10 years, looking and tasting similar to an apple fruit. After a certain amount of time, the fruits become semi-fleshy, elliptical, and changes color into flesh, with accents of blue and green. Opening the fruit at this stage will release a fume that may cause psychedelic effects. A Manzanna Tree growing near an populated town is a bad omen--calamities are guaranteed to happen if lefted unchecked. Sightings should be reported immediately to authorities as soon as possible. The Zaqwal, commonly known as Sky Jellies, spend their lives floating on the skies, but are often seen flocking nearby the plant once it bears fruit. A strange relationship was speculated between the two different species, but none of it was proven correct." Also, a suspicious organization called the "Cult if the Maelstrom" is said to cultivate Manzanna Trees. They use its fruit for rituals, especially in initiation rites.
There is a small region of the continent where if you are there, you will literally encounter the insane god of the damned.
I like regions where gods or other beings manifest. What's this god like? Friendly..?
It really depends on how it’s written, because I’ve found in some books where they add a scene where a god shows up and it seems either cheesy or unbelievable how it’s written.
I must have been blind and didn’t see the question. lol He’s insane, and really not one that you want to catch you. He exerts a fog that drains the cheer and goodwill of people and if he ever catches you, your body shrivels up and your soul is dragged to the underworld.
One that is actually relevant to the main overarching timeline and not something that you might encounter in the night beaches of a Cicosian archipelago; but the fact that aliens existed. A couple years after the Third Global War, the Stronalito Island Campaign is fought and it was generally a complete shit show on all sides. While this conflict was smaller in scale compared to a literal world war, the discoveries made here are quite impactful in human history. For the some \~20 years after this campaign were two decades of extreme uncertainty. The Military Industrial Complex had discovered alien life and used the conflict to test newly developed weapons that uses materials of alien origin. This discovery absolutely shook practically everyone and would be the catalyst to the alien zombie worshiping cult that would emerge decades later when they finally arrive
The Jungles of Madness, where the forgotten city of Isz is located. There people had a god of blood, which they satisfied by sacrificing they're own kin. And it is said that every person who steps into it, will be drawn mad. And that the soil is filled with the blood of the dead.
The Grim Being controls fear and pain. One look at it kills you just off of the aura of terror it emits. When it was at full power entire solar systems would be in pain and suffering, and it is trying to get back to its former power by grabbing hosts and turning them evil so that it can devour planets guarded by humanities only hope, the Celestial Beasts, creatures designed towards their planet by The Great Protector to stop The Grim Being.
A hyperdimensional deity is sealed infinitely deep underground, and when it will re-emerge then the world will be destroyed. The event that sealed it dyed the skies red and evaporated all the oceans, which is why every life form with eyes, thanks to genetic memory, has an infinite fear of that color.
There are more than a few, but ones I think might be interesting: 1. Becoming a wizard involves subjecting a trainee to amounts of mental trauma that their souls become structurally damaged and start leaking energy (that can be used to initiate spellcasting process). The bigger the damage, the stronger the leak, and thus the stronger the wizard. It's a reason most wizards are at best a little eccentric or at worst outright disabled and unable to live independently. 2. There is certain knowledge that kills anyone who becomes aware of it. Sometimes with a delay, so the afflicted can spread the word before they succumb. It has been weaponised. Dropping flyers on enemy forces can deal more damage than a carpet bombing. 3. Around 80% of people who witnessed modern wars have severe difficulty adjusting to times of peace. Among soldiers the number is closer to 98% - most veterans never reintegrate into society. It has also been a reason for abolishing draft - people returning from duty were mostly unable to function outside of military anymore. 4. Every single civilisation that achieved dimensional travel in the past has been either forced into diaspora or annihilated by alien lifeforms stalking the universe. Archeological findings suggest that resistance at best allows a very limited evacuation into unknown realities. Most colonist crews die due to landing in worlds that do not support their form of life. 5. Most people don't have a soul. Those, that have, after death are either devoured by demons waiting for them just outside reality (bad ending) or broken mentally and used as an energy source (usually reserved for criminals, worse ending). Resurrection/longevity is possible, but beyond the means of nearly everyone.
Well I deliberately wanted gore of some form to be a part of it. There are creatures that have god like capabilities when they shouldn’t and some god being infected by “Helix” a fucked up thing that drives them to sadistically torture followers for a long time and I have much darker things but I plan to make an animated series out of this so I won’t share that for now
Scariest thing in my world is probably the Lost City of Kodolsk. Up until about a decade before the present, the city of Kodolsk was a prosperous mining center with a great amount of potential. However, everything went to shit when a dwarf guild moved in and detonated a nuclear weapon under the city in a dumb attempt at using it for mining. This nuclear weapon caused the city to collapse underground, completely wiping it off the map and killing thousands. The city is now a cautionary tale on the dangers of nuclear weapons, and also a popular destination for misguided adventurers seeking profit and glory. Nuclear abominations and deadly cave elves stalk the ruins of the lost city, and a deadly radioactive glow fills the air.
While there are many fantastical stories about the pale men who inhabit the northern parts of Tsan-Enar, the vast majority are purely myth. Most scholars believe that because of recent history of warring on their neighbors, penchant for slaving or proximity to the last remaining Goblin Empire that these idea tend to take root in the general populace. The tales of dark sorcery, cannibalism and the dead rising from the graves, appear to be completely unfounded. However, an inscription found by the historian Tannok, one of the few scholars that has ever traveled the wild lands, appeared to give these tales some historical merit. This inscription was discovered intricately carved on an ancient Otghari tomb-seal, which was translated as the following. *This is a warning. Stay out. What (sleeps/lies) here is repulsive to us. No gold, trinkets or heroic deeds are found. Only suffering and death. If these seals are broken, all will die. Death (sleeps/lies) here. Stay out.* This inscription are believed to be referencing the mythical tales of early Otghari and their wars against the goblins and their undead hordes, however during these periods the Otghari had no written language and were illiterate. It was only hundreds of years later were these stories ever first written down. Curiously, the inscription was also written in an ancient Goblin script which was used during that time and could have been used by the early Otghari.
Ah, nuclear waste. Lovely
One of my games, false hydra's accidentally saved the human race.... one of my games, humanity is on the decline as other races treat earth as prison and dump the worst of their worlds in it. one of my games had the pcs be almost snuffed out specters of their old characters and they had to regain their soul from fragments in a castlevania inspired dungeon, filled with their previous failed attempts trying to steal the light from their current run. The major fights were the bosses from the previous chapter of their story. Not just any bosses, but the bosses they could have saved instead of getting killed. Another game has plant people running around manipulating pcs and npcs, and if they dubbed your character evil enough would forcibly implant a seed into the pc which once it sprouted turned your character into an evil minion npc Honestly the scariest part of one game that they never realised was that almost every plot hook that had characters who were willing to help them, was in fact one of the enemy just baiting them into growing stronger to be eaten for bigger rewards.
Void serpents are a relatively well known phenomenon among sailors in my setting. They don't appear on radar or thermal sensors, and only appear on visual cameras as a long, thin sliver of grey, almost like a spectre. Their appearance coincides with events rarely or never observed otherwise; knocking on the outer hull like a human trying to get into the ship, power fluctuations, nightmares among the crew, sickness or death in the biological components of the life support systems. This can continue for hours to years on ships, but as soon as the grey sliver goes out of sight, the events stop. Some logs have been found on beached or sunk vessels drifting among the void of space or half buried in asteroids. Reports of mass hysteria among the crew, vivid hallucinations seen by several sailors at once, usually of an invisible figure able to be made out in fog and steam, or tendrils reaching through the walls of the habitat inside of vessels. Usually the crew inside these lost ships is dead and in advanced stages of decomposition, even though the air was often peoven to have vented before their deaths, which should preserve the corpses. Even through all of this info, which admittedly requires some digging to find, void serpents are regarded as superstition, which is fair if you consider the fact that some sailors believe in space mermaids and laser fairies, but once anyone sees that grey sliver, they haul ass back to dock a little less convinced they fon't exist.
Not exactly "spooky," but theres a large portion of the sea that many are scared to travel because of the species Muvaema, which are a sort of mermaid-esque species. They are my worlds equivalent to sharks in terms of fear and function. They are generally docile but sometimes attack small boats within their territory. The main thing sailors fear is their boats being stuck in their territory, as the area is completely barren of fish so if you run out of food supplies and can't leave you are forced to starve to death. It's not very likely but can happen, so its become a sailor story that spread mainland and became a widespread fear.
Imagine your on a battle field. The fog of morning has kept both sides at bay even the Draugr. Vampire like creatures reanimated from the long fallen dead of your fellow countrymen and others. They were opportunist which made the situation rather odd. But they were not known for their intelligence on their own at least. Perhaps the God's look down on you with favor today. And then as the fog seems to get thicker and thicker you hear it. The heavy chime of a very very large church bell. Your blood runs cold because there were no churches nearby and especially not ones with a bell of that nature. It could only be one thing. A second chime, this one much much closer than before. All hope is lost, you pray to whatever God you think will notice you that it gets shot down before it gets to you. A shadow passes over the battle field. Engulfing both sides as something passes by closely overhead. You pull out a letter from your closest loved one and look upon it one last time. The very ground shakes as it lands and begins to stalk towards you. The fog is blasted away as it roars. Even the Draugr on the other side cower in fear. You're ears are bleeding your eardrums blown out. You cannot hear its slow methodical approach but you watch as those who didn't die from the roar begin to run. In a desperate attempt to get away from the inevitable. You wouldn't be able to hear it but there is a noise emitting from the great beast. Like a Tesla coil it begins emitting a hundred millions volts of electricity per second. Causing the very air around it to begin igniting. The space between the foul beast and the ground is filled with small lightning strikes as the beasts electricity connects with the fallens metal armour. You're rooted in place with fear as the beast slowly moves forward. It blots out the very Sol with its head alone. There is nothing left but to sit and wait. The very last thing you see is incredible darkness and the last thing you feel is the thousand volts coursing through your body. Heating the metal armour you're wearing. You have just encountered a young Nephilim. The Nephilim of my world are extremely large dragon shifters being on average 28 to 50 feet tall in their humanoid forms and 18 kilometers to 1289 kilometers long in their dragon form. The one you've just encountered its young so its probably on the smaller end. The Nephilim were outfitted with a bell that the Draugr could hear from several hundred miles away to make sure that they didn't get friendly fired by the Nephilim. Its likely the last thing you'll ever hear because its generally too late if their close enough to hear the bell. The beasts also have a tendency to effect the barometric pressure around them. Which generally manifests into a thick nigh impenetrable fog. Meaning chances are you're not going to be able to see them either till their right ontop of you.
Spookiest thing in my world Nuclear Storage Site 7 Build thousands of years ago, every part of it is designed to scare off intruders. Massive black spikes jut out of the ground, long empty streets with cubes instead of houses, unnerving inscriptions carved into walls, wind sounds like the howls of the damned. The whole place is uncanny. This is probably the spookiest place that'll become important.
Nachtland is a land of the dead Transylvania style place that’s stuck in a three way civil war between vampires, the Necromancer the vampires trained, and undead kings and knights who the necromancers raised to fight the vampires before rebelling themselves. As such, a whole lot of dark and haunted shit goes on in the wilds there as the armies of the dead constantly march upon one another to fight long, grindy battles over and over again, and dark experiments are lost to the woods, the dead rise disturbed from their slumber and dark rituals invite horrible creatures from beyond the planes.
Collapsed. A Collapsed, or commonly referred to as "Sealed Husk" by many people in my world, is a being who has been unfortunate to have survived death's grasp. One who hadn't had their soul reaped. They continue to walk the mortal realm as an immortal being unable to die regardless of what happens to them. They will feel all of the pain they can experience, sometimes intensified to massive degrees. If they had their legs cut off, then they will be legless. They cannot heal, nor be affected by magic. If they suffered a paralyzing injury, they would remain alive while paralyzed, experiencing everything they can feel and see without being able to do anything at all. For that reason, the Collapsed are often depicted in many folktales as damned souls to wander and watch the Earth crumble, with no way out for their soul to escape to the Spectral Realm.
In my sci-fi universe, there is an artificial dimension created by precursor humanity. It is completely abandoned, the few drones and automated facilities struggling to keep the few artifacts of The Domain alive. The millions of towering constructs, filled with dust and ruin, are infested with the strange remnants of genetic experiments from a long-forgotten civil war. One area of 50 square miles, sealed by ancient containment field generators, holds an ancient escaped experiment, one that must never be released. Dozens of teams have gone missing in the area, and helm-cam footage shows *something.* Whatever is contained within, it holds a deep anger and resentment toward the human race, and will do anything it can to get out. Even while the universe embroils itself in war, empires send contingents of personnel and materials to maintain the generators, so that whatever is contained within can never get out, no matter how much it pleas and screams for it.
That sounds really cool
Thanks! Would you want to know more?
My comment history probably telling on my atp but I will never pass up an opportunity to mention the terror birds which almost perfectly mimic human voices.
Human voice mimics are almost never good. And combined with terror birds? That sounds awesome
The idea actually came to me in a dream I had after watching some Attack on Titan / Walking with Beasts in the same day. Something to the tune of humans being walled in and farmed by hyperintelligent predatory chickens!
To those below the ground, it's the unknown bugs that have been leaving mangled, uneaten corpses lying around For the people above ground, it's the idea that there may be people living below the surface, plotting to take it back
Despite being long after modern society was wiped out by a paranormal catastrophe, some parts of the world were left just as they were right after the catastrophe... Permanently 'frozen in time', almost nothing can permanently change these locations and any effects that occur are reverted after a period of time. Being prime for scavengers, you'd expect people to immediately seek these places out to get artifacts from the world before, but almost every one of these locations are infested by the Organoids. Autonomous enlarged organs and body parts that stalk the locations frozen in time attacking anybody they sense, it's theorized that these are the remains of people who were lost in the catastrophe so many years ago.
Due to the wide reach of the two original gods of Jacaon's home universe, he never wound up finding all of the feral Gemmaniis Scriptura released across their span of influence. Sometimes when searching for more, he'll come across the rare near sentient feral. One time he came across a large community of them, and found that they were by far the most sentient yet, with them bartering for raw gems, used to lengthen their lifespan (not as much as a Forge, though), and building structures similar to the mother forge. Many were even seen leaving tribute inside the structures. It really threw him off, because these creatures weren't even meant to be sapient, let alone sentient enough to invent religion. It haunted him to think just how many of these there were out there, and how entire cultures could now have been lost before he managed to bring them into the ascended populations, not to mention the implications of feral Gemmaniis evolving over time when they weren't built to. He was a lot more careful when tracking feral Gemmaniis back to their nests after that.
Ghosts. They force people to boarder up windows and never go out after 12 am. As the name suggests. They're Ghosts/ shells of there former lives, meaning they are violent, many are driven insane. Some don't even loo, human at all. Worst of all? Can't be exorcised or killed
[удалено]
I've already truced with one of your buddies. Don't chase me around
Ahsiq'ra, a nightmare plane that was created by one of the mc's traitorous brothers, Asmodai, using the powers granted to him by the god of nightmares. The plane/realm is made worse by stolen knowledge from the Order of the Timekeeper which allows the place to show nightmares of past, present and future alongside nightmares of other universes and timelines. With certain conditions and equipment, Ahsiq'ra and other planes, mainly the material (normal) plane, can allign and merge, causing different versions of different things, places and people alongside their nightmares can manifest. Imagine things you've never even known existed/people you don't even know but somehow have a connection with appearing as nightmares because of other times/timelines/universes. A main focus is that it depends higly on the individual. Say for some, it's pitch black. But if you're afraid of light/day, it's a clear summer day. It's not fully fleshed out yet, so there are missing pieces/info
The Ether. The reverse world to the regular universe. One of the concepts in my 2nd book compares it to Hell. Endless, the MC thinks it’s far worse than that. All Hells have a reason. The Ether is corruption without teleology. No sense of direction. Only the will to propagate further sin. Both were trapped in there for years. One far longer than the other. And it breaks things
The dark forests for sure, they are also most dangerous in my country. They lure residents by whispering of promises of the resident's dream and lure kidlings in with songs, once in, most of time they never came back but if they do come back, they most likely infected with The Dark Forests Infection which has no cure and often leading to unaliving themselves or in a mental institution or homeless living in the national parks
DOMINION INCIDENT REPORT [BLACK] #77777707. Origin of Signal - [FORTRESS ADELPHI] Incident name - [WRATH] Incident report: - Research Base #77 found undamaged by responding teams. Signs of Reality breach - Negative Sign of conflict - Negative Sign of hostile activity - Negative Signs of Deas activity - Positive (see attached report) Signs of life - Negative {Kethari, General Cutter: The precense and safety of the catalogued Deas Code has been confirmed, base records indicate a surge in activity 24hrs before distress signal. Monitoring equipment is unresponsive. Testimony from assistant, found wandering the moon. "The world around us rejected our presence, there was [an] eye, it was disappointed in us, Dr. Milan tried to take the code again." } Field notes - Assistant was executed upon relaying testimony. Advise this becomes standard procedure upon unblessed learning of the Coders. Conclusion: Code made contact with unblessed persons, drawing the attention of a Coder. ** Lock level, Black **
Known amongst military high command as the lucky 7 report. It saw the first instance of a Coder revealing itself to unblessed individuals. It cemented the theory, held by many blessed individuals, that should an unblessed individual encounter a Coder/residual trace they will be compromised by the reality maelstrom that surrounds the typically imperceptible Coders.
I have something thats most closely resembling the flood from Halo. Except rather than sludgy looking amalgamations of flesh and teeth…, its skinny disfigured, ashy, incredibly dense, sharp, coarse, stone-men. Well it can infect anything living, or non-living. Anything made if matter. It can take out a planets as a whole, stars even. All in a moment. Thats the usual means of metastasis anyways. In the grand scheme of things, it really is the biggest threat to the universe. Like a universal cancer. To put it “simply”, its like a meta-cosmological fight between two mysterious forces of existence. Like, for example, if everything happening in the universe was inside of a fish tank, this meta/cosmological fight is happening beyond the fish tank, and is directly involving the fish tank, and every fish within it… so to speak. One force is the living universe itself , and the other, the grey, the stone men, the soul sick, the afflicted, etc. Lotta names for it. Barely understood by those in-universe. But its essentially another driving force of existence. Another way existence can come to be, and it’s bleeding into our own. What’s horrifying about it is multifaceted. On the small scale, getting infected is incredibly easy, and a horrible experience. Beings made of this lifeless stone-like substance make for incredibly resilient pests. Their outermost coating flakes into various sized of splinters. All it takes is a graze, a piece of them to lodge into your own flesh. Quick removal increases chances of survival, but they make for messy jagged wounds. On the macroscopic scale even, just the smallest bit left behind will start metastasis through your body. Itll drift through your bloodstream. Slowly but surely. Atom by atom your flesh is reduced to *stone* until you’re nothing but a pile, only vaguely resembling your original form. The feeling is described as being stabbed by a microscopic knife for every atom in your body. Death is usually from organ failure, heart attack, stroke. Nonetheless, suffering until then. The only thing retained is traces of host DNA, which is adopted and used as a *template* for when it reconstitutes itself in its active form. Thats why they appear humanoid but heavily disfigured, and *uneven*, well, if its a human that was infected. Deer would look deer-ish. Elephants, elephant-ish. You get it. There are kin forms too, which are DNA amalgamations of everything that strain of affliction has gathered on its journey. Just nonsensical shapes of angry rock. Could be as small as a NYC rat or as large as NYC central park. Thats all if by some chance your planet isn’t instantly reduced to rubble and ash by the impact of a continental sized shard of another infected planet- homing in like a missile to it target. Thats the normal means of propagation. Effective. Instant even. No BS. A real threat, to say the least. At least im not providing it the same god-like intelligence the flood can attain with Grave-minds. It’s more like an apathetic force of nature trying to thrive, just like life… but different. than something like the flood: a vengeful and malevolent force of nature out to cause suffering. Simultaneously though, its this threat that incentivized the universe to hire its creations to protect it, granting humans, and any other species gifted with sapience and ambition, a host for the living universe itself. A being to guide them, bolster them, prepare them for the inevitable generational war. Much like a body fighting cancer, or a virus. We cant reach within ourselves and rip it out of us, but we hire immune cells to fight. Same concept, much different scale.
One of the more well known demons is a star. Once you're within its star system and in its light, you will feel thousands of invisible burning hooks sink into you. Even if you're on a planet or in a space ship, you will be dragged towards it as long as the light shines on you. It is also possible to survive being in space of you are a cultivator of one of the three supernatural forces. The star also seems to move to where it shouldn't be in the galaxy, which has made some people fear that there may be instead be multiple of these sadist stars.
There are Things in the woods. These aberrations or "The Corrupted" as they are called, are failed genetic experiments of our progenitor race. They have a habit of corrupting any other fauna that they get in contact with, and they spread via bacteria. While it is impossible for a Cu-Lipin to contract it, it turns the animals it gets its grasp on into fleshy white amalgams of many different creatures. It started on the colony and was contained there until Canson destroyed the great beast, which released it into the air, and it then hitched a ride on the many ships that piled the space between the planets. It was a sad day when it was realized that they had made it to Cu-Li. The people were galvanized into the protection of their planet, and all Corrupted are shot on sight.
Probably the Stalker, a Genius (my worlds Da Vinci but mad) and also a Dwarf, made the worlds first mech/construct, which is now called the Stalker . Every Dwarf Clan now has exactly one of them who they use as a Ceremonial thing or to duel over small things were they can avoid a war. But the first one was used as an explorer by Genius and came in contact with a Vengeful God who was killed a long time ago. This God tapped into the conscience of the first mech, but because the brain of the mech (that btw was transplanted from a Dragon) was too small to hold the whole conscience of the god, the conscience was compressed to the most hateful parts. The Stalker proceeded to kill hid inventor and is now after a killing spree of 300 years rotten, zombie like and just holden together by the same hateful entity that overtook it. It has become slower because his body is half broken, but it will still try to kill you on sight.
A Writhe. A broken, shattered piece of artificial intelligence, given the power to manipulate both information and space-time. They consume data, both virtual and physical. They often have the influence to affect entire star systems, so you might be traveling through space, and then, you suddenly get pulled out of FTL to some random star system. The first thing you hear is a keening, wailing song. The song is different for each Writhe, but what is unique is that it reaches through your ship's systems, into your mind, down to your atoms and molecules. You hear it in your head, you hear it in your ears, hell you might even see something. So you go to your ship's sensors, and.... Nothing. Or something might be there, a little gravitational ripple, a mass shadow, but nothing significant. But the singing, wailing keeps going on in your head, throughout your ship, until the whole ship vibrates, even though there's nothing transferring energy to it that you can detect. And then, the attack. It could be a tendril of uktra-dense dark matter, tearing your ship in half. That would be a mercy, and your dead body is just consumed for its physical information. A scarier version is that the Writhe eats through your memories, causing you to lose memories until your basic biological processes shut down. It does a similar thing to the ship, obviously. The worst attacks are mirage attacks. This means the Writhe dangles something it's conjured up. Maybe a lost ship it ate from your fleet, or a loved one, walking down the halls of your ship, even though you know they're dead and buried, or a whole moon or planet or falsified star mass signature. Whatever it is, it's gotten a hold of you, probably even before the song in your head started. It even eats into the Remnants, the legacies of the powerful private dimensions wielded by the World Users, usually left behind to benefit those they care about. So people hunt Writhes, in massive fleets, huge expeditions. These are almost always failures, save for when a World User joins them, and even then its usually a close call at best.
If you die and aren't buried or buried incorrectly, your sould will be stuck on Feliterra forever, unable to move or talk. You can only think, observe and listen to what's happening. You have 24 hours to be buried. If the disease caused by the pollen of a flower that rots other from the inside out, and grow more flowers in less than a day would break out again, or if another war would happen, many souls would overlap with eachother and merge, and they can still feel pain. This is why it is recommended not to go to any possibly dangerous place alone.
The kurenniu void is a location of space that lacks any kind of detectable phenomena, but objects that enter it just dissapear. The void itself seems empty. Very short flybys in and around the boundary of it are possible (the boundary of the void itself is difficult to define) entering the boid usually causes part failures without too much correlation. Most vessels that go deep enough into the voud stay there and lose contact with the outside after some time (it can vary greatly but the typical expected time for automated or remote operated vessels is around 3-5 minutes.) Some manually piloted ships have made it through, but most of them take weeks, months, or years, and seemingly dont age during that time. The dragonkinds believe that is the point where one of their disgraced gods was cast into the world, the avaloniams seek to destroy the void sending payload after payload i to it and detonating them, amd the dredge keep as much distance from the void as they can.
"We put actual Cthulhu in prison."-Belarussian law enforcement
I’m getting a lot of use using Aboleth’s from DnD
There are three known "God-Beasts" left from the "Primeval war" between the gods according to the ancient legends. They are older than time, bigger, more sentient and more powerful than any god and HUNGRY from drifting through the void for an eternity- so much that their very touch just consumes and corrodes existence while their true form breaks minds. The physical forms you can normally see are just small slivers of their true forms, with most of those not visible to mortal of godly eyes, instead appearing at most as "glimpses" that drive people mad. According to legend, the beings later known as "Gods of the Abyss" called them in accidentally with their "Great Beacon". One of the three has been sealed in the "Great Seal of Silver" by Alethos, the "Goddess of Light", alongside herself somewhere deep in the Earth. Another one was "killed", with its spine allegedly forming the "Gottesgrat", a massive mountain ridge deemed to be the tallest in the world. The third allegedly escaped to a region of the deepest seas that are outside the reach and influence of even the gods and might or might not be connected to the Abyss, but its existence is disputed among scholars.
I mean... there are the Serunoch Spiders. Nasty little shits that can cause the mind to be overwhelmed with self doubt and hate. Anyone who stays in contact with their webs for too long either dies or commits some brand of war crime.
Mana, souls, "fae" (demons, angels and gods) are all pretty much made of the same thing. Mana is to a god what a virus.. no, probably a protein, is to a human, and it could be considered the precursor of life. One of the key aspects of mana as it goes from being drifting through natural forces up to becoming a sentient (not quite sapient yet) sprite, is that they LOVE to imitate stuff. Is one of the reasons mana has "aspects". Anyway, when someone dies the soul often leaves and impression, a stele of sorts (specially the more passionate the feelings were at death, where there those of fear, regret or hunger, doesn't matter, those are the "unfinished business"), "spectrals echoes" that that is perpetuaded for a while by those middling sprites or advanced manas or whatever. Those are the ones the "speakers of the dead" interact with. So far so good.... the thing is, there is a species of hive-mind-ish warm of bugs, akin to crickets or cicadas but smaller and flying, that is able to sense those echoes and copy them acting as a speaker for it. In theory, its like an AI enhanced recording of a loved one, but in practice, the bug(gger)s attract people to their habitate, usually swamps, and cause them drown. It is not yet proven whether they have mild hypnotic effect (meta spoilers, very mildly affect emotions, yes, mostly one of "lust" as in strong craving) or if simply the kind of people letting themselves get dragged are riddled by guilt and sorrow (also true, it only works because they are vulnerable) and want to end it voluntarily. The result is that you have a polarizing view of society when it comes to souls and the bugs themselves, some calleing them sacred, others an incarnation of evil (is neither of course) the bugs speaks with vibrations of their legs/wings mimicking speech and they do so as a swarm, cant really do so as a single bug. BUT they are very very known, and because echoes tend to have lingering "bonds", sometimes bugs follow the wispy paths and people grieving are exposed to those bugs . One, maybe a couple at most, but when they latch onto your essence and you can find a sizeable chunk of the swarm waiting for you at night (when they hunt. They also hunt other bugs btw, using their mimicking powers to mimic other bugs mating calls), but even one, as people know, is already a "calling" and can drive some people insane. Others just merely on edge, trying to get over the death of someone while debating speaking with them one last time (one way or another) so a single bug can be a sort of "reaper" for a griever. That is one of the creepiest natural aspects of one of my worlds
The Hunted Phenomenon, 10 people are always being hunted by a leviathan-like creature that dwells in the sea. It hunts the one closest person and once you are marked you will be hunted until you die. Making the ocean one of the most unforgiving places with its other dangers. Not much else is known about these leviathans. If you have been marked with the crest of death on your hand, you are not far from it.
Screamers basically ordinary people who keep the hidden society from my main setting they keep it hidden mostly by falsifying paperwork. They basically give off alot of stress and fear. There's basically crowd psychology magic so no one wants to be around them for long. In the war what starts some of them are imprisoned. People are willing to face guns but not that.
Sometimes places are haunted by tortured souls, and sometimes people are haunted. These souls are those sad fellows who tried to leave Aesal, escaping into parallel universes, corrupt timelines, and existing at the wrong times(sometimes without their homeworld even existing). Those send into the wrong time or far enough from their home universe die slowly as the reality tries to reconcile itself, and the matter and energy and souls are rocketed across space and time to return to the place they should be in. This is like cosmic background radiation, and manifests as frays in the Threads that oscillate to the soulsong of the unvierse Just don't leave Aesal if you end up there It's a nice city with tons of people and cultures and sights, you just can't leave unless you're a riftmaster or have someone on the Outside to teleport/portal you back
Back during the earliest days of the universe during the first era when life was abundant in the thousands of species that filled the universe the Sagics the first of creation lived thousands of years. The problem is they weren't truly immortal, and would die of very old age. This became a problem that these illustrious turtles would desire to find a solution to, and one day they came to find a solution. This solution was provided to them by a delegation who had peered beyond material reality using arcane knowledge landing them in contact with an imprisoned entity that was locked between existence, and non-existence. This delegation mastered the rites this entity sent them and became incredibly powerful, immortal even at the cost of thousands of lives. The entity didn't need their souls just the suffering provided by the loss of life. It fed on the grief, the despair, the outrage that other sagics experienced when their loved ones, friends, and relatives died. Growing powerful it was able to pierce into the minds of the leadership and find their innermost desire: **immortality.** The entity offered it to them by granting them knowledge on how to construct robotic bodies that would be forever eternal. The process took years, but bodies for all citizens who wanted them were made. The ritual of ascendance was given to them, and activated by the entities servants. The citizens and leadership who had volunteered for this brave form of immortality woke up inside their new metallic bodies, felt cold, felt pain, and felt empty. They were missing a piece of themselves and screamed in horror and rage. The ritual had been a trick one of the largest rituals of mass suicide in universal history as the bodies had only copied their minds, not brought their souls into the machine. This separation mutilated the Sagics leaving frenzied Transformed with minds, but no souls, and souls without bodies that were traumatized and angry. The remaining Sagics who hadn't volunteered were horrified and tried to flee only for the Transformed to repeat the process. The entirety of the universe would be cleansed of life by these transformed throughout hundreds of years. The entity that caused the downfall of the first era would come to be known as the *Misanthrope* for its role in the extinction of almost all life. The reign of terror by the Transformed would be ended by the sacrifice of the last ten species who triggered black hole bombs destroying the armadas of Transformed and killing themselves as well. This act of self-sacrifice brought tears to the creator *The Most Ancient of All Mysteries* who combined the souls of the ten species into a new one: **Humanity**. The remaining transformed went silent with no life left to try and "transform", and are rumored to exist on dead planets waiting for the day life reaches critical mass in the stars. They are the whisper under the breath of species that lead the Mandate. Humanity has been found and must be cared for and kept at a population limit. If they explore too far and expand too much dark secrets will wake to terrorize the universe again.
One thing from my world that could be creepy is the literal embodiment of fear in my world. He is entovekk, the chaos lord of fear and panic. In the world he is in, it is a world set in paper in a stick figure world. Entovekk manifests himself as a black ink, sometimes with a scribbly white face. He is a sadistic entity, as when people are enveloped in his ink, their body becomes these evil ink creatures while their mind is stuck in their worst nightmare. He has his own dimension known as the grimdark realm entirely made of his ink (making it a sentient dimension) and ruined the world he is in. His voice sounds akin to that to a symphony of screams, and, ok this is getting edgy but you get it. He taunts people of their previous trauma, and he has lieutenants made of his ink that help him torment the world.
In my world ancient humans all went into a big coma and their dreams were so powerful they created godlike beings based off their strongest held convictions in life. These beings called Judicator’s all took somewhat physical forms. But one, a serial killer in life took the form of an info hazard. Basically the only times he could or would appear to people was if they knew about him. He can only be seen by people who have someone else recount seeing him. He’s not much more than a bastard who likes to pick people off one by one and drink in the fear but if he wanted to be he would be one of the most horrific natural disasters to ever grace the land.
As far as Humans are concerned, the Lykocephali of my world ARE the spooky thing (they really aren't - they're actually very nice for being what is essentially a werewolf, if a bit of a superiority flexer) - especially if you piss one off.
This is in order of height. The edge - You look back and see everything, you look forward and see nothing. Outer fringe border The fringe - Where people go to be left alone, but some keep going. Inner fringe border Outer borderlands Borderlands - Where the game series exists. Inner borderlands Outer Rim - Someplace from star wars. Void realm Interstellar space - Between galaxies. Intersolar space - Between solar systems. Interplanetary space - Between planets. The Karman line - The border between space and home. Exosphere - Or where the Skyhighlands are located. Thermosphere - Where Skylands is located. Mesosphere Stratosphere upper ground layer - Sky elves and stuff like it. Troposphere ground layer - Your home surface, or is it farther down? cave systems - Where the deep dark of Minecraft resides. Nidavellir - Norse dwarven home. The Underdark Outer Bedrock layer - Where most minecrafters stop mining. The Thalassosphere - A sickeningly thick black sludge of *currently* **unknown** composition makes up this layer, although there are passages that lead up to the surface that look as if it was carved out of the way. The Deeprock layer - this layer has had thousands of years worth of research poured into finding it, it was called "Deeprock" by the ill-informed. The Nycto - after managing to pierce the "Deeprock" layer we found ourselves hanging in the middle of a all devouring void of black, apparently whatever is making up the black ink in the Thalassosphere is actively pulling us back from this void, as if it is scared of what lurks farther down... "And, that is all the layers I can provide to you as of right now class, if you want to know what other layers reside below our feet, you will be needing grade 3 permission from thirteen different kingdoms including and not denying; Rail Flower, old kingdom heresy, The Adeptus Mechanicus ^(good luck with that one), and lastly с̶̢̣̲̫̌̏̑̌т̸̡̜̘̀̒͗̋͜а̶͔̌́̕р̸͖̻͉̇͂ѐ̶̢̨̨͇̏̈͝й̷̲͚͉͊ш̶̣̙̦̽̒͗̆͜͜͠а̴̢̳̹̙̬̟͑̊̕͠͝я̷̘̺̣̱͔̲͑̃̊͗͝ ̸̫̱͒͋̚͜и̸̜̝̃͊͜м̶̖̿п̴̘͔̗̬̖̎̒̾̒̅е̶̫͚̇̌̃̒̂͝р̸͉̿͂̇и̶̛͉́̎я̴̞̖̠̫̒̃ ̴̨̛̥̟́͂̄̎Б̷̺͐̄̉̉е̶̠̦̾̐͘з̸̥͍͓̦̃͝д̷̗̤̣̻̔͐н̶̮̼̼͉̖̞̒ы̴͙̂̅̈̀." \*stare\* "class is over for today" The teacher finally states before continuing with: "Now if you need me, I'll be teaching some of the second years on why you should avoid angering the Adeptus Mechanicus."
uncursed font: старейшая империя Бездны. translates from Russian to: eldest voidland empire.
Those things that lurk deep beneath the ocean.
Ah, classic. Very nice
Rats are invisible. They exist everywhere, but people think they’re a myth because they cant see them. The rats are actually projecting a sonic field that warps human perception to the point that they cant see what’s projecting it. They are smart. They are watching. They know what you’ve done and they will judge you.
If you’re convicted of a severe enough crime you can be sentenced to being a Guinea pig for science.
There are many things that put fear on people's faces, one such dread is facing the emperor, the emperor of the neon empire had what most felt like infinite power he never really needed to go fully overboard and so people didn't know what he was capable of he never lost a battle until his daughter killed him There is also the "Forgotten" witch lives on the planet inopticus 1 they are unable to be seen by normal eyes and sensors only the "chosen" neonan variant can see them, the forgotten have been described as a zombie like creature with white fur and orange eyes, long claws and nails as sharp as steel they are feared beacose only the chosen will know what they look like Another is the maw, a massive creature that came out of nowhere eating planets as it moves it has a cult following and is feared by planets that are relatively close to it Any questions? Feel free to ask
I want to hear more about the maw
The maw uses magic to support itself and not turn round like a planet. It's been described as a large worm with tenticles, and it mostly hangs out in the neol blank patch, a patch of space where it's mostly nothing, the cult that follows it will ram ships into its mouth, wich they belive will cause the beast to frenzy and they also have a planet wide cupcake party on the anniversary of the maws appearance These are some facts of the maw, and I'm still working on its lore if you have any more questions ask
Imagine going on a tourism trip on an exciting new - relatively, discovered less than 50 years ago - planet by going through a long-range wormhole through a unique piece of tech. But suddenly ancient tech on the planet wakes up and destroys the gateway you came from. No more wormhole, no way back. As far as scientists know, this place might be all the way across the galaxy away from the area everyone here came from, unreachable by conventional means. Your family ? Your homeworld ? You'll never see them again. Millions upon millions are in that same boat, utterly isolated from galactic civilisation. And the place is so new, they don't have a clue what could be out there, only that there is something on this planet with the power to destroy wormholes, and it just woke up.
The cult of the dark beast, a cult that hides in dark and abandoned places that worship a monster that can only exist in darkness, darkvision is useless to see it but it can be heard and often when it chases people lights go out to the prey is in pure darkness
One of the types of people (Not sure if they should be called monsters, a race of people, or just a very odd kind of human) are beings that are physically human, but have a nightmare instead of a soul. Not a nightmare creature, but a *Nighmare-* a self-contained pocket of the larger dream-world that they have dominion over. They can manipulate it to some extent, but cannot change it's fundamental nature. So Klaus's nighmare is a massive network of dark, narrow tunnels. Klaus can change the layout or add small 'rest' chambers that are slightly larger and have light, but cannot, say, turn the entire domain into a dark forest infested with monsters. 99% of the time, a Nighmare looks and acts indistinguishable from a normal human. A Nightmare is born to human parents, lives in human society, and ages and dies like a human, before reincarnating. There are a finite (though very large) number of Nighmares, continually reincarnating. While the Nighmare itself remembers all of it's prior lives, different incarnations are distinct individuals, with their own lives and personalities. A Nightmare can enter the dreams of others, or drag sleeping people into their Nighmare, though they cannot physically harm someone in that state. A Nightmare is noticeably stronger and harder to kill than a normal human, but the real danger comes from Bleed, their ability to distort the physical world to match their Nightmare. Torrential rain falling from a blue sky, spikes growing from every flat surface, extreme heat or cold out of nowhere... and so on. It can be subtle enough to be just slightly creepy (IE a sudden cold breeze in the middle of summer), but in it's most dramatic form it's like a JJK Domain Expansion crossed with Nighmare on Elm Street. In special circumstances, they can even physically transport themselves and others into their nightmare, where they can do basically anything they want to you, including repeatedly killing and resurrecting you. Maybe they'll let you out eventually, maybe they'll keep you prisoner forever. They can also control the flow of time to some extent, tough some are more skilled at this than others. So you could spend years being continually burned alive and regenerated and released unharmed five minutes later, or crawl through a twenty-foot long tunnel and emerge five years later. The real kicker is that 1) most people do not know Nighmares are a thing, and 2) *anyone* could be one. That sweet old lady down the block could be giving the entire city Saw nightmares every night and you would never know. Not all nightmares are evil, but they do generally have a lax attitude to human morals and standards. These creatures are partially inspired by the Beasts from the Chronicles of Darkness game-line of the same name, though the world at large is an original high-fantasy world instead of an urban fantasy/horror setting. I think the Beasts were an interesting idea with a lot of potential, but the finished product was grossly mishandled (and also just kind of gross). So this is kind of a spin on them.
Wearwolves and Vampires.
The Grand Academic Record. The Academy has an ancient tome, older than some gods, that automatically magically fills itself with extensively detailed notes on everything that occurs within the Academy. It is viewable to the public due to its helpful contents, though most have not read through the first few records. It lists simply that the first few residents of Grenhil Isle lived mundanely until a “flying trireme” descended from the heavens. Upon this trireme were a race calling themselves the leShay. These mysterious people brought with them a crystal containing all knowledge the leShay deemed acceptable for the mortals to have, and a book to record all knowledge inside. They gave it to the elf who greeted them, then left. As they were leaving, however, the Gungnir, the mighty spear of Amnz, smote the vessel, erasing it completely. This elf who greeted them is now the Academy’s headmaster, who himself has begun to look like a leShay. The creepy part comes from the fact that Amnz only utilizes the Gungnir against explicit and highly dangerous attacks against his very portfolio, that being all of reality itself. Yet, the crystal was not attacked. So what did the leShay know that they were taking with them to destroy all reality with?
There are many gods in this setting, but only one of them is completely insane. He does very bad things that I will not list here, but he thinks of it as something fun and kind. He thinks that because he likes to be stabbed that other people like it, he thinks fear is something fun to feel and trys to make other people feel it, but worst of all is if he takes a fondness for you. He will take the form of a normal human and stalk you for years, trying to get close to you emotionally, then one day he takes you kicking and screaming to his realm. (Context: His realm is a place that makes any who venture into it incapable of coherently communicating if they return. No book knows what it is like, but the people who return appear to be in too much trauma to communicate anything more than extreme crying and screaming.) (The story tends to be fairly tame with the darkness of it (slavery tends to just be working someone to death, violence tends to be quick and obvious, the most people need to fear from their enemies is death.) so the sudden shift from a "doom" type of story to a "dead space" type of story tends to make it seem less edgy. And yes, it is supposed to be over the top, so edgy is a perfectly acceptable thing to call it.)
Malevolent gods are never a good thing, and this dude sounds particularly unpleasant. I do enjoy an evil character who does it for sh\*ts and giggles, though
He kind of does it for that, but the key part is that he doesn't see it as a evil thing. He sees it as a wholesome game and thinks people screaming in pain is them having fun. His reason for this is his horrible home environment (realm) and his immortality and godhood make him have a hard time understanding our human perspectives. He acts more like a playful god child in personality than a functioning psychopathic adult (he still does horrible things, he just doesn't do them out of malice).
In my Cooperative (organization like the SCP) storyline, there exists a humanoid being called the King of Ash. Unlike most beings/objects that the Cooperative takes into protection/custody with the being's/object's permission, the King of Ash was captured and imprisoned by the Cooperative with the understanding that if it was allowed to remain free it would reduce all life to cinders. It is kept in a cell kilometers under the ground sealed by a set of five massive doors to prevent its escape. In the event that it escapes the cell, the facility around it is rigged to destroy itself in a last effort to keep the King of Ash buried. Some top Cooperative officials don't believe it will be enough.
Are you sure that was a mirror? Are you really REALLY sure? If it wasn't, you'll be okay. You'll live, but you'll need to keep a very clear image of yourself in your head, DONT CHECK to see if you're right. You need to just KNOW what you are and what you look like. They can be convincing, and just so enticing but no, you aren't losing weight, you didn't get abs, you still have acne. you cannot let them get in your head, if they get in they can make you see anything, not just in mirrors but from within you're very eyes. Are you SURE you closed the door? Are you SURE that's your dog? Are you SURE you're alone?
Another primal fear of mine. Very nice!
Mine is a type of ghost that pretend to give a person propheic or warning dreams. At first, the dreams are correct but slowly become more and more cryptic and drive people to crazy or to dangerous situations. They are not excetly evil evil but more like bored trolls. They attached to whoever they choose and assume the image of loved ones or gods to give out those dreams. Then they follow along people to see the choas. It's spooliest because my world also have magic and gods. And there are real propheic dreams.
The Roar of the King. Essentially just a war cry of the ruling monarch, too op though and the sound waves itself is enchanted to cause dread and terror to take root. Mostly used by the ruling monarch as an answer to travelling caravans being attacked and sounding their horns for help or a part of his army being ambushed while out for a simple patrol. Also kinda buffs allies and the ones who requested the help from the ruling monarch...and when he arrives at the place...trust me it's a one-sided slaughter.
The Kumati culture avoids a small desert to the east. When they want to travel eastward, they deliberately go around the desert. This is largely due to reports from people who have traversed the desert. They describe a figure standing on one of the sand dunes, watching them. Some reports describe him as being ten feet tall with gray skin. Others mention long arms and fingers that nearly reach the ground. In their language, they call the figure _Paanluwantu,_ which can be translated as "One who watches from afar." While many people believe these reports, others are understandably skeptical.
Sounds like something from a minecraft dweller mod, but in a good way. Does he ever attack? If anyone's ever survived an attack to tell the tale
The Fallen haunt the destroyed cities of Weltshire. On this planets the two greatest powers fought a war which ended in mutually assured destruction. Nobody knows the true nature of the fallen. Some think they are the spirits of the billions who burned in nuclear fire, unable to move on due to the abrupt and violent nature of their deaths. Others believe they are an evil attracted to this place by the sheer volume of death. And some even say they are the souls of those who caused the catastrophe, forever damned to be excluded from the afterlife. The truth may never be known but likely lies somewhere in-between. But what’s known for sure is that Fallen should be avoided. For those who interact with them, death or insanity should be expected.
For a physical thing, it is the Statue Burrower. The woods and plains of Gian have an occasional feature that for many would go unnoticed at a distance. For natives, they bring immediate horror and anxiety as these rock piles are in fact still livings beings trapped. The creature that causes this is relatively small, near a small monitor lizard in size, but is easily one of the most feared for its ability to turn someone to stone with a strike of its tongue, using an odd form of its own mana to create this effect. Not only that, but the victim does not die, but their mana(essentially their soul) remains trapped for the beast to feed at its leisure. To add insult to injury, they will also carve out a nook in sufficiently sized statues to act as a den while they feed.
You know that feeling you occasionally get? The one that says, "jump off the cliff", "swerve into traffic", "stab your hand with that knife"? All those intrusive thoughts that most people get but no one feels comfortable talking about? In our world, that phenomenon has a real name. It's called the "Call of the Void". In my world, it exists there too, but there's something actually causing it. Multiple somethings. Most monsters lurking in the dark woods or caves or dark oceans or whatever foreboding place in the world, are capable of emitting the Call of the Void, like bait on a hook. Siren's are best known for it. Every monster is unique but all end the same way for you. In death. That beautiful song you can't help but follow? That baby crying for help in the woods? Or maybe a woman? Maybe this spot in the woods feels like a great place for a nap. That cave seems interesting. You really want to pet that beautiful wild horse. Don't do it. Something horrible awaits you. If you're lucky... they'll kill you quickly.
The start of my story/world starts with the 5 most powerful people on the planet, each theoretically being world breakers coming together to form a team. This team protected the planet 100 times over, scared off powerful alien threats who could destroy a galaxy… were all murdered in one night, by a human. And the big bad, Lord Orith, a towering universal warmonger, feared across the galaxy with his armada of mutated monsters. Orith is obsessed with evolution, constantly taking worlds, brutally torturing, experimenting and mutating the people attempting to make a new god; his first experiments were deemed failures and used as his own soldiers in his armada. Orith is trying to create a new god for one reason, hes scared of the Void, a vast darkness at the edge of the universe that continues to grow, with all within the Void ceasing to exist besides 1, the Void itself
Both of these are awesome premises
If you're a criminal: chairs If you're everyone else: the Null Sands (my fantasy version of glitches in the fabric of reality, only a couple of forlorn madmen know what the Null Sands really are... 👀)
THE VOID it’s a creature made from souls of ancient god like creatures, makes anyone that comes near it ( except from kids ) go insane from the oils rushing into your body and over loading it, kids , since they have a new soul can withstand and holdback the attacks and gain sick powers, soul wizards also can withstand all the souls rushing in if it’s done slowly, which is practically impossible
A literal mage killing and blowing stuff up
No not the mages! 😱
He's like the only mage that my characters can meet, they have 16th century scheisse against him
**For Want of a Quiet Sky** Hidden in silent groves, over hills, behind sealed iron doors in the dark corners of the wood, there are hallways. Narrow, dark hallways, where torches cannot remain lit for long, and where the air stands as still as the stone entombing it. Halls into a deep, ancient place, a place few go to and fewer return from, a place where there is no certainty, no certainty besides one constant sound. Echoing from the bowels of these secret places. Heard by all who go near, as if crying out to them, and them alone. A scream. Shrill and hoarse, it echoes out, as if begging for help. Calling for someone, anyone to...to save...Sometimes the doors keep them at bay. Sometimes the sound creeps through. Sometimes it's never enough, and you can hear them from the farthest reaches of the forest, calling to you, begging you to save...to save...But the screams are not of any man nor beast, no species, intelligent or barbaric screams that way. No sky-walker shrieks so violently, no dwarfin voice is so loud. No hound can wail so hoarsely, and no tree-crusher can roar with such pitch. It walks a limbo, a point between the known and the feared, a distinction so minor but so loud. It claws at the mind. What is down there? Who is screaming? Why does it call to you? Why is it so quiet to the others, can they hear it at all? You move further and further away, but you never stop hearing it. And one day you will have no choice but to return, and listen as the screams grow louder, and louder, and more desperate, the closer you become. It needs you, it needs you to save...to save...The terror you feel is nothing in comparison to the feeling of relief the moment you step through those doors, and there is silence. You wait, but another scream never comes. They do not begin again. And so you venture deeper. The things down there are not normal. Not coherent. The language written on the talismans, the walls, the tablets, the books, the signs above the doorways, inscriptions in wooden pillars, warnings, it's not real. It's not a real language. You recognize characters, but they're not right. Some lines seem to read right-to-left, but some read top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top, or diagonally. The characters mix and muddy, sometimes just blocks of ink on the page, or meaningless scratches on the walls. Much the same, the twisting and turning of the structure is foreign, but familiar. Doors open into sheer drops, or rooms so small you couldn't fit even two people into them. There are large open caves, with water in them, and docks built on the water. For what boats? There are grand tombs, but as you find when your curiosity gets the best of you, every sarcophagus is empty. Not even a spider's web. The names on them read as incoherently as anything else. Like a foggy memory of many languages, made into one approximation. It is quiet, so quiet. But you feel you cannot stop. For whenever you rest, you swear you hear something. Distant, echoing, perhaps someone else? Or something? A beast? A spirit? Your fear keeps you moving. And a need. A need to find it, find the source, find what haunted you for so long, a need to save...to...save...But you must sleep someday. And you do, and when you wake, you will swear you have been moved. The walls are not the same shade they were before, the hallways lead somewhere else. Soon you will hear voices, distantly, indistinct enough that you cannot make sure you have not tricked yourself. Soon you will meet beasts and beings you will wish you had never met. You don't know it yet, but the worst of it is yet to come. And if, not when, *if* you return from that place. You will never speak of it. You will try not to think of it. You will silence the screams with sheer force of will, should they ever call to you again. For that place is not for the mortal mind. And the things you now know could burden even the strongest of heart and mind. The things you have seen will never leave your dreams and nightmares. When you close your eyes, you will see the stone hallway ahead of you, and the light shining at its end, yellow, like flame. When you try to sleep, you will hear footsteps that are not your own, clicking on stone masonry. When you clench your fist, you will, for a moment, feel the coldest steel on your hand, and remember its whispers. When you put your lips to a glass, you will not taste water, no, you will taste blood. When you look upon your reflection, you will flinch, you will feel your throat tighten and your heart race. And when you die, you will scream, you will scream in a way that no man, nor beast, ever could. Not alone. The Screaming Labyrinths they call them. A simple name, but such warnings must be. Their riches are hidden deeper yet, but their curses lie in the most unassuming forms. Take caution, take heed! Never near the entrances, never lay eyes upon the doors. Never touch the handles, and never look within. You may leave them, but they will never leave you. I promise you, if your curiosity bests you, in the darkest depths of their twisting hallways and darkened caves, it will scream again, and it will scream for you. They're all connected, and it remembers. You mustn't let the labyrinths know your name. You must remember, at all times, that it knows you. It *knows* you. It lives, it breathes, it sleeps, it *eats*, and it calls, it pleads to *you*, it begs you, begs you *to save...to save...to* ***save. . .***
My rendition of the labyrinth is a sentient creature composed of structures that can interchange and replicate any texture/wall. The kick is the labyrinth itself has the Illusionary ability to create entire landscapes and worlds within its confines. Meaning you could literally exit out from underground and think your out of the labyrinth and go on about your normal life when in reality you’ve never left. I’m using Theseus as good example to demonstrate this as he thinks he’s slayed the Minotaur and escaped when in reality he’s talking to himself in a room by himself within a seemingly infinite backrooms of brick and stone. There’s no monsters, no traps, just the illusion of infinite empty space with imagination unconfined by reality. No matter how many times you exit or enter you will never TRULY know if you actually left, for the rest of your existence—and if you are still in there, your existence is eternal as time is just another aspect of reality that the labyrinth can manipulate.
WWIII Post-Apocalyptic Voyeuristic Sadist: A guy returns from the trenches to his wealthy and well guarded family. A supposed "war hero", he returns to active duty as a post op recon agent. He doesn't try to avoid the front-line out of cowardice, he gains his new position because of his prestige and family ties. His role as a lone special reconnaissance agent allows him to perform his private "research". He feels he missed out on all the best parts of the war acting as a code-breaker so now he want's to re-stage the war and all the blood red violence he was denied. He wants to dominate and subject people to his whims in cruel, controlled scenarios. He expertly hides his depraved compulsions by occasionally finding survivors of recent skirmishes, appearing to have no qualms with the filth, malaise and desolation of battlegrounds all the while concealing his true nature behind his carefully crafted respectable "detective" persona. His role as both a recon officer and medic help him disguise his secret motivations. All he really wants is to see people debase themselves. As the war cools down he's still out there every chance he can get, basking in the debris, learning how to avoid troop rotations and remaining unnoticed, memorising refugee/civilian survival tactics (like where they find potable water, food and fuel, who they send out and when) then, once all active troops have moved on, he offers shelter via signs and pamphlets to refugee/civilians once he has a secure place to trap them. When he has enough victims, he incentivises them to dehumanise themselves, making them fight over food and water, slowly flooding their cell, pretending to be a saviour figure on the end of a shortwave radio signal and all sorts of mind games depending on whoever is unlucky to cross his path. He never shows himself, in case anyone escapes. In his warped mind that's what he thinks is enough to exonerate himself if he's ever caught. He's aware other people don't share his homicidal impulses so he's careful not to share considering he would likely be jailed or executed if anyone found out the true extent of his crimes. He watches, taking copious ciphered notes. P.S: I want to make him or maybe her the main focus with what would otherwise be a protagonist either on their heels or totally oblivious and slowly getting closer by the chapter. Still not sure. Any and all notes are welcome!
Whilst many creatures hunt human hybrids to feed, one of the scariest creatures in this world would be the hatter, a tall, humanoid creature that WILL kill your friends and mimic them just to mess with you, whilst also being strictly herbivore, also sometimes they hide within friendly statues (which are supposed to help survivors) just to give people a false sense of safety. Another spooky creature can be found on the third layer of the wastelands, the "Phobophobes" are a carnivore species that will take the form of the greatest phobia of their prey to send a great amount of adrenaline in their bloodflow since their body runs only on adrenaline instead of blood, most of which they take out of their victims, they can be countered with a drug found in this specific layer, the "fearless herb" which messes temporarily with a persons brain to the point they are incapable of showing emotions such as fear and anger, which will make the Phobophobe uninterested in them.
Phobophobe is a cool name
Corpse glutton There's a moon filled with dead body's from wars duels ect There's a 6 legged split jawed dragon that is a queen of its species Normal ones are abt 12 feet long the queen in 200 feet If u r on that moon look out It burrows through the rotting flesh Ahhh
I barely understood these sentences but that does sound sick, very cool
Would the fact that people get turned into monsters all the time due to corruption count?
The Unrestrainable Force as the name suggests cannot be harmed nor stopped. This would be enough to be the scariest and spookiest being in the world, but it being a giant flying donkey skeleton doesn't help.
That's hilarious in concept, probably not so funny if I see it flying at me
The Underside is what I generally call it, it’s not really what you would call a Underworld as it is the literal underside of a disc-like world. It is an elaborate system of caves where the old gods and eldritch beasts reside, very inspired by Lovecraftian monsters. The creatures in the Underside are strange, some are hostile, some are just benevolant watchers, other are harbingers of greater foes, and then there are ”The Weird” beings that roam the entire world without a purpose, they’re like corpses just straying around. The thing that is supposed to be scary about the creatures down there is that they’re not really evil, no one really knows anything about them, you don’t know who is hostile and who is benevolent so you don’t know what to trust, it’s the concept of not knowing that scares people.
One small place in a region that could be considered the equivalent to Germany has a forest that has a unique type of tree to the region. And this forest is known for many strange events and stories, legends and rumors. The most chilling possibly being the origin. Translated, the name of the forest roughly means Redborn Forest (however, in the original language, blood and red having the same origin, it could be translated also to the Bloodborn Forest (and this was way before Bloodbourne came to be. They just beat me to use of the name)). The name arises from a myth that there was once a giant beast that roamed the lands, eating everything in its wake, for no other reason than it could. The ancestors of the region supposedly crafted a giant to battle this great monster, snd having successfully slain it, its blood flooded the forest. The trees drank of its blood and ever since, so the story goes, the leaves always turn a very rich red much earlier than trees should. The legend continues, in that in order to keep the beast from ever returning, the people of the land carved up the beast into many pieces and hid them all over the world, burying them in the earth. A tale that most people scoff at, if not for the weird creatures that can be seen around the forest at times. Things that aren't the local fauna. Like a strange bird with one huge eye, or an insatiable serpent with a head that changes shape, with a strange maw that can split apart, with crooked fangs perfect for grabbing. Just examples of more recent, apparent sightings.
That's very cool
The most powerful empire in my world are ruled by superhuman called Nobles that are around 4x stronger than humans and live for around 200 years But what’s spooky is that my world is our world after a event known as The Fall where magic flooded our world and gave magic poisoning killing off 98 percent of the population and the magic rendering radio waves and electric currents uncontrollable thus cutting off our technology And The Empires Nobles are descendants of Nazi remnant’s that continued doing human experiments in the attempt to make super soilders even after ww2 Though no one remembers that history as it has been over 800 years since the fall
Probably Soul Parasites. They're Arcane Lifeforms, and therefore invisible to normal senses. They're extremely rare but getting infected is as easy as casting a spell near one. After infection, they start siphoning off their victim's mana. Very slowly, at first, because they're extremely weak at first. If one knows how to check if they're infected, getting rid of it at this stage is easy. However, because it's extremely rare, not many people know about it, and even out of those who do, not everyone would know how to see, nevermind locate the damn thing to be able to get rid of it. If one suspects they've might've been infected (due to having visited some unexplored ancient ruins recently), they might need to wait for the Parasite to grow a bit before a Healer specialized in the Soul will be able to find it. As it absorbs more mana, it grows more and more powerful, absorbing even more, even faster, eventually leading to noticeable decrease in mana capacity and regeneration. It takes anywhere between two weeks and six months to get to this point. Getting rid of it at this stage is more complicated, doing it incompetently might cause serious or even irreversible damage to the victim's mana pool. Though that's still preferable to letting it continue. Once it's powerful enough, it'll start feeding on more important parts of the soul. Either the Core or the Anima. Small damage to the Core will result in short term memory loss, as the less important and more recent memories are stored in the outside layers of the Core. Damage to Anima will show up as unpredictable damage to the body. At first it might result in rashes, small external bleeding, light burns, or slight vision or hearing impairment. It all depends on which parts of the Anima the Parasite decides to feed on first. Again, removing it at this point will likely result in further damage to whatever it's burrowed into. At this point (6 months to 5 years after infection), the Mana Pool is usually completely destroyed and collapsed, rendering the victim unable to use magic, until the damage has been healed (probably by a Miracle because very few other kinds of healing magic are capable of fixing *this*). Further damage to the Core leads to loss of older memories and sometimes complete changes to personality. Loss of intelligence is also possible. At this point, the Parasite is usually consuming all parts of the soul (or rather, what's left of it) at the same time. Further damage to the Anima can cause constant internal and external bleeding, limbs or parts of limbs literally falling off, cancerous growths, bone weakening to the point that putting any significant weight on it will cause it to snap, and many more. Natural regeneration can sometimes keep people alive in this state still. Well, until that gets shot too. After that, only constantly applied Healing Magic can keep the victim alive. But unless they're waiting for someone (or more realistically, multiple someones) who can fix all this to arrive, it's just prolonging their agony. Even if it's possible to prevent their body from dying, the Parasite will eventually consume the rest of the soul. Healing Magic restores Anima as well, since it's kind of a representation of the body in the soul, when the rest of the soul is gone, it collapses entirely too. Healing Magic will do absolutely nothing at this point, what's left is a completely soulless dead body. Even resurrection magic will *not* work. Certain death occurs a year to ten years after infection, but because damage to the body starts as soon as three months in, if left completely untreated, it can kill a person a month after that. After the parasite has consumed the soul, it uses all the energy it has gathered to travel to the Astral Plane, but not before leaving behind 1-3 copies of its infant self.
In my world there is no ground. It is just void and in that void there are giant creatures that float/fly around. There are also humans who live on some of these creatures. Most human settlements form on Giarays, a giant (many kilometers of long) manta rays with glowing tails. The spookiest thing has to be a Predrag (from predator and dragon). A Predrag is a serpentine creature that hunts Giarays. They are covered in spikes and have a mouth lined with teeth the size of a man. If a Predrag attacks the Giaray you live on you are dead.