Portraying a Lovecraftian Horror as A Pathetic Entity

[Leliel]

Well, I got World of Darkness: Asylum the other day, and I was perturbed by the "Bishopgate (a really cringeworthy insane asylum) is the Prison For A Fallen Angel" theory in there. Of course, being a fan of Cosmic Horror Stories (you know, Lovecraft), I thought Inothiel (the fallen angel) would be a good "ultimate villain" for a Bishopgate game.

Unlike most Lovecraftian fans though, I believe that for true horror, you have to make it personal, self-damming. Even if humanity is just a brief stain on the universe, there's a lot to be said for personal choice.

Of course, if the PCs find out about the blasphemous god in the basement, they're going to assume he's the one pulling the strings. So, to show that Bishopgate is a horrible place because people made it that way, not the Archdemon, I want to show Inothiel as the pathetic little parasite that he is-a drug addict.

OK, the analogy doesn't hold all that well-his buzz of choice is the sweet taste of human insanity-but I want to show that there is no grand, overarching plan to bring Hell to Earth or drive all of humanity insane-all Inothiel wants is his next high. Helps him forget what a mess he's made of his immortal life.

Of course, learning that the ineffable, blasphemous demon is a junkie tends to make him, to be frank, a joke. While that's all and well (it shows just how small-minded a "cosmic horror" has to be to even notice us), I want to show that he's still pretty terrifying, madness crystal meth aside.

So, how would you show an evil, godlike demon to be just another addict while still letting him remain scary?

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Make him disgusting, but still pitiful. He could be small, thin, pale, stuff like that. He could do things like vomit on himself, and even when he's finished it still oozes from his mouth. Stuff like that.

[Grumman]

Of course, learning that the ineffable, blasphemous demon is a junkie tends to make him, to be frank, a joke. While that's all and well (it shows just how small-minded a "cosmic horror" has to be to even notice us), I want to show that he's still pretty terrifying, madness crystal meth aside.

So, how would you show an evil, godlike demon to be just another addict while still letting him remain scary?

Personally, trying to paint this creature as a victim of its addiction is just going to make me roll my eyes. I'm not going to feel sympathy for it, I'm just going to lose whatever respect I had for it as a villain, and go back to doing my best to burn it to ash.

[Volkov]

Don't try this on the actual lovecraftian gods (Cthulhu, Azathoth, etc). It'd utterly ruin their character. Try to keep this to your own made up deities.

[Leliel]

Personally, trying to paint this creature as a victim of its addiction is just going to make me roll my eyes. I'm not going to feel sympathy for it, I'm just going to lose whatever respect I had for it as a villain, and go back to doing my best to burn it to ash.

That's the point.

Driving people to madness so Inothiel can get his buzz is a profoundly selfish and callous thing he does, no matter how you slice it.

"Pathetic" does not mean "pitiable".

I just want to make him scary despite knowing why he drives people insane.

@Volkov: I don't intend to.

[Melamoto]

Throw him entirely on a sort of "insanity" edge: Make him not too smart, and seem a bit aloof, but at the same time give him an imposing physical form, and make it clear that his high makes him mad, and desperately evil (But not in a villain way, more in a serial killer way).

[Tyndmyr]

That's the point.

Driving people to madness so Inothiel can get his buzz is a profoundly selfish and callous thing he does, no matter how you slice it.

"Pathetic" does not mean "pitiable".

I just want to make him scary despite knowing why he drives people insane.

@Volkov: I don't intend to.

That doesn't so much make him scary as it makes him trivial.

It's absolutely fine to play up the addict angle, but don't try to play up the pathetic aspect. The two are very different, and pathetic and scary don't mesh terribly well together.

[chiasaur11]

That doesn't so much make him scary as it makes him trivial.

It's absolutely fine to play up the addict angle, but don't try to play up the pathetic aspect. The two are very different, and pathetic and scary don't mesh terribly well together.

Yup.

Ever read "Hell House" by Richard Matheson?

The reveal at the end, well, the whole point was making the villain pathetic and defusing its terror. Scary before then, but the motive...

In fact, that's how the good guys won.

[Saph]

If your players are fans of the Lovecraft mythos, they're going to be really disappointed to find the entity they've been building up in their minds is the supernatural equivalent of a crackhead. Just FYI.

[Reluctance]

Junkies and those with severe mental illnesses are already pretty f'ing scary. Think less "rocking in the corner waiting for the next fix", and more "obsessive, nonsensical, and violent when confronted". Throw in the ability to inflict his tentacle-filled delusions on other people, and you have a classic horror backdrop.

The one problem I see you running into is that you can make Inothiel a scary raving madman, but making him a figure of awe and dread is incompatible with your other stated goal. If the place is messed up thanks entirely to humanity - if Inothiel is ultimately only an ineffective parasite - he can't have any great, broadly-reaching influence. He may not be a nice guy, but he's still well-contained and ineffective as far as cosmic entities go. You need to highlight that point if you want to make it clear that this is all people doing it, not the fault of the convenient basement horror.

[Crow]

Google up some of the accounts of Lane Staley's last days, and what people had to say about him. Disgusting is one thing, but if you want pathetic, it fits the bill quite well, and is still pretty grotesque.

[Dimers]

Whenever a PC fails a SAN check around him, have him Inothiel shudder and roll his eyes back. If he has eyes. Point being, show him helplessly partaking of his addictive substance; show it totally controlling him in-the-moment.

[Yucca]

I've never read anything lovecraftian that wasn't actually written by Lovecraft, so I've never heard of this particular entity, but this is how I would do it.

Show him as a very powerful entity, but one that is so addicted that he directs every resource he has to feeding his high. He *could* squash the party flat, but that would require putting down the needle (so to speak). The party can hardly get any reaction from him until they find some way to interrupt his feeding, and then he flies into an uncontainable rage. He makes stupid decisions, but he is able to brute force his way to victory. He stops after only disabling the party so he can get back to his addiction as soon as possible.

A recklessly powerful entity solely focused on himself that the party (for whatever motivation) is forced to deal with.

[Sewblon]

That doesn't so much make him scary as it makes him trivial.

It's absolutely fine to play up the addict angle, but don't try to play up the pathetic aspect. The two are very different, and pathetic and scary don't mesh terribly well together.

"Addict" but not "pathetic" sounds kind of like a Cosmic Horror version of Tony Montana, which sounds like a pretty good villain.

[Leliel]

What I meant to say was that for an entity capable of destroying a city if he so wanted, Inothiel is pathetic. In relation to the PCs, he's powerful and scary, but in relation to what he could be, he's a stain.

Instead of being a horrible world-killing entity who's name mortals fear, he's chosen to retreat into a pseudo-drug fueled delusion rather than confront the truth of his existence. So while he is a terrible godlike horror, he's also a petty, selfish little man too cowardly to admit to himself what he is.

This human spin, of course, might make the terror worse.

[Randel]

Okay, so he's a cosmic horror that is addicted to human insanity like a meth addict is to drugs?

Lets just say that he's not a 'sad and pathetic' meth addict, he's one of those scary crazy ones that has just enough sanity to be able to actively go out of his way to get what he wants. He's the kind that would break into your house, tie you up, steal all your precious possessions and pawn them off to get more of his fix. He's also so messed up that shooting him in the gut or knocking his teeth out isn't going to slow him down until his body gives out... he's NOT going to stop until you bash his head to mush.

Except that this guy feeds on peoples brains.

Now, even if you want to make it known that the Horror himself doesn't give a damm about the rest of the world... he's just a drug addict who found a planet full of tasty psychedelic mushrooms (aka human beings) there's nothing stopping you from making the victims of his attack the scary ones.

The Joker is insane... but also disturbingly lucid enough to pull off crazy schemes. Lets say that our cosmic horror in the story does feed on insanity by sucking it out of people. Most of his victims go catonic, some still wander around almost zombie like, and a rare few get into a sort of super-sane state like the Joker... they actually see the terrible terrible truth of the universe and see the utter meaninglessnes of human life. They also tend to become addicted to insanity as well... trying to reclaim that veil that kept them from seeing how utterly wrong the universe it.

The Horror meanwhile tells his new pets to go get more drugs for him, sending Jokers out to inspire madness in people and get them locked up in the asylum where he can suck out their minds.

Half the inmates in the place are insane, a few of them WANT to go insane to drown out the terrible sanity that assaults them, and maybe one or two look into the void and see that its good... these guys plan on driving everyone around them utterly mad and then feeding them to their master. Those who survive being 'awakened' then go on to repeat the cycle.

This cosmic horror is so terrible that he just wants to get some smokes and inadvertantly inspires a bunch of ultra-sane maniacs to start mind-raping their fellow humans. He's not the villain, he's just the cosmic horror that unleashed The Joker on the world.

Joker: You wanna know how I got these scars?

Victim: How?

*flash to a scene of a massive tentacled abomination in the celler of the asylum, the bodies of inmates litter the floor, some still twitching and some wandering the room like mindless zombies. All their faces are bleached white and their mouths split open. See The Joker hanging in the air as a tentacle from the horror invades his mouth, sucking out his madness even as his mouth is split open from the pressure and the color bleached from his skin. After a few moments he is tossed into a pile, like a used up roofie.*

Joker: Let me... show you!

[Randel]

Actually, reading the latest post... I'm getting the image of Galactus deciding that he doesn't want to go about devouring whole planets to sate his hunger and instead decides to park underneath Arkheim Asylum, extract the raw madness from the inmates, and spend his time in a drugged-out stupor.

He might slowly waste away, his hunger eating him from the inside as he stays there shooting up on mortal madness. The faculty of the place may secretly know about this, aiming to keep him as doped up as possible... but he's getting a tolerance for it and he needs more and more to get buzzed.

Right now, its just a matter of time... can they keep this walking armegeddon doped up long enough that his Hunger will eventually kill him? Will he suddenly snap out of his stupor, see the wreck he is and feel how ungodly hungry he is (which would likely result in the Earth getting devoured), or will somebody figure out a way to kill him before it becomes impossible to keep him doped up?

Hes actually trying to commit suicide because of all the eldrich abominations out there he's actually noticed the little things he eats and would rather die than continue destroying worlds. From the point of view of his fellows, he's a hippie who stopped eating meat and instead is drowning his hunger out on drugs until he starves.

To us, he's a freaking super-monster thats insanely nice enough to actually help us kill him before he eats the planet out of sheer hunger. The guys at the asylum have to keep getting inmates to feed him in order to postpone or possibly even prevent the End of the World. They also can't tell anyone about it (like the government who could potentially get all the inmates they would need... but once word gets out about this Barely Sealed Evil in a Can then there is no guarantee that somebody would try stopping the flow of inmates).

So, its actually a good thing overall that he's doped up as he is, the real problem is finding out how to keep him doped up long enough to find a way to kill him for good. Any interuption in his stupor, or anything that might make him think twice about his decision would likely make him start eating the earth itself.

He's shooting up with human madness because he's already addicted to eating planets... this is pretty much the lesser of two evils.

[Set]

Instead of being a horrible world-killing entity who's name mortals fear, he's chosen to retreat into a pseudo-drug fueled delusion rather than confront the truth of his existence. So while he is a terrible godlike horror, he's also a petty, selfish little man too cowardly to admit to himself what he is.

This human spin, of course, might make the terror worse.

To add to the effect, perhaps he only subsists for so long off of a particular 'flavor' of insanity, and so has to arrange for the asylum residents to either die off (when he gets bored with them) or be 'miraculously cured,' so as to free up space for new and exciting 'flavors' to be interred in his private larder. By tweaking and manipulating the doctors and caregivers (or causing them to suffer precise hallucinations), he can arrange overdoses, and by directly controlling inmates he can arrange for them to get 'cleans bills of health.'

If they go back out into the world and cause all sorts of misery, perhaps this also feeds him, as he retains a link to them and gets off on the things they end up doing to their friends and loved ones before they are put down.

Not only is the asylum a focus of horror, but those who come and go from the place serve to spread the infection, as it were.

Meanwhile, the 'cosmic horror' has become so enmired in his little games, playing with people's lives and moving them around like toys (that he always ends up spitefully destroying, moving on to new 'toys'), that he's lost sight of anything grander or more magnificent. He's still incredibly dangerous, and responsible for murder-suicides all over the city (people recently released with 'clean bills of health,' in some cases, or those otherwise affected by his actions), not just being limited to causing misery in his dismal home.

[Quietus]

Reading Randel's thoughts inspired at least one of my own : The Head Warden *knows* Inothiel is down there, and *knows* exactly why it's there. But he can't say anything, or he looks like a raving lunatic and gets locked up with his wards.. so he continues to feed Inothiel as much as he needs to in order to keep it in a stupor, so it doesn't go out and start harming healthy people. Of course, this whole process is, itself, driving the Head Warden mad, as he is overcome by his own guilt and self-loathing for what he has to do every single day...

Seems fairly lovecraftian to me, at least? As to Inothiel itself, having it diving headfirst down the hole that is addiction can make it incredibly scary.. as others have said, addicts can be terrifying, if they're the sort that will do anything to get their next fix. As long as it's "topped up", maybe it seems sort of.. passive, drugging out and keeping to itself, until someone or something decides to slow/stop the flow of its drug of choice, at which point it freaks out and puts every shred of its resources - which likely includes several of the inmates it's sucked dry - into restoring the flow of insanity.

[Acanous]

Love a couple of the above ideas; Joker-like inmates, being released into the world with a warden going slowly insane to top it off.
The demon-in-the-basement should definately be a spazz. Maybe whatever insanity he's feeding off of at the moment starts to manifest in the area around him.
The players finally get there, and as they approach, hear a "Crunch".. The floor and walls are moving as a tidal wave of living insects swarm out from the tile, the walls, possibly even the flesh of the players themselves (SAN check for that last part)
suddenly it stops, the insects vanish as they hear this freakish laugh, the figure in front of them wracked with such painful pleasure that he resembles a man in fits of seisure. The room warps, acrid scents assault the party as a greasy, cloying vapour coats everything in putrid yellow-green oil.
It burns to the touch and (SAN) makes you feel unclean

Things like that. Most of the real fun of Lovecraftean scenerios is the atmosphere. Set it up well and it'll not only make the villain look still-formidable and horrorworthy, but upon retrospect highlight humanity as the real bugbears (After all, the things they see in that chamber are the insanities syphoned from human minds, not any veil-tearing on the bad's part.)

[BobVosh]

Read about fey in Exalted. Work similar. They instead eat peoples dreams until they go insane when they no longer dream. I'm sure several exalted sites have great info for this type of thing.

[bosssmiley]

H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds - the Martians are powerful, terrifying and hostile, but Earth's environment is painful to them in turn. Wells likened them to deep sea creatures brought to the surface IIRC.

[Kris Strife]

a rare few get into a sort of super-sane state like the Joker... they actually see the terrible terrible truth of the universe and see the utter meaninglessnes of human life.

Terry Prachett has a word for this. Its called Knurd and comes from drinking Klatchian coffee not mixed heavily with alchohol, scorpion poison or other intoxicant.

[Reinboom]

What I would imagine this as, is more desperate.
Having the entity plead with the party. Preferably, long before they meet him. Just when they start going the way away from him.
"Just... please... come here... I want you... I need you..."

Or if they make decent progress away from
"You shall ___ing stay!"
Cued with effects given by above posters, such as the walls breathing alive in insectoid fury, lashing out in front of the group, then forming a living wall.

If there is any sign of giving in, an echoing
"Ah.. yes... that... that's the stuff."

[Yucca]

Quietus's idea of having the Head Warden be aware of and be feeding Inothiel is a good one.

The OP said he wanted the to show that the asylum is full because of human choices, not because of the machinations of demons. Having the fallen angel draw people to the asylum, drive them insane, then use them up puts him in too active of a role for what the OP was talking about.

The inmates are insane, therefore they drew the angel there, not vice versa.

Once he was there the Warden found a way to keep him trapped (kinda). The emphasis is still on human choice, while the demon is made more pathetic without being weak. The choice he made is wearing away the sanity of the head warden, but it should be made clear that he was fully lucid when he made the choice originally. Fear of the unknown, desperate choices, isolation and sacrifice are all classic Lovecraft themes to play up in the part of the warden. Barely restrained, mindless power, hidden danger: Lovecaftian themes for the fallen angel.

[chiasaur11]

Terry Prachett has a word for this. Its called Knurd and comes from drinking Klatchian coffee not mixed heavily with alchohol, scorpion poison or other intoxicant.

Or being Sam Vimes.

[Kris Strife]

Or being Sam Vimes.

No, Vimes isn't Knurd. The other watchmen used Klatchian coffee so sober him up in the book right before he got married though. He actually did become knurd, so they gave him some more whiskey to get him back to normal.

Being Knurd makes Sam Vimes start screaming in terror.

[Coidzor]

Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions ala Discworld are lovecraftian horrors which are truly pathetic.

A half brick in a sock is enough to do away with them. Of course, they only get stronger if magic is used against them and they love succulent brain meats of magic types...

[Myrmex]

Evil angels? Don't you mean angles?

[Dervag]

No, Vimes isn't Knurd. The other watchmen used Klatchian coffee so sober him up in the book right before he got married though. He actually did become knurd, so they gave him some more whiskey to get him back to normal.

Being Knurd makes Sam Vimes start screaming in terror.

Vimes's default state is to knurd as buzzed is to drunk. He's always slightly knurd; that's why he became an alcoholic in the first place.

A mild state of knurd is indistinguishable from appalling cynicism and keen insight, both of which are traits we know Vimes has.