"Born from the void... let it die in the Earth!"
—The Ancestor, upon slaying The Thing from the Stars, Darkest Dungeon
"These nightmarish creatures can be felled. They can be beaten!"
—The Ancestor, Darkest Dungeon
"Human beings are mere insects compared to the eldritch gods, much like how humans are to ants. By the way, did you know that twenty to fifty humans a year are killed by ants? Isn't that an interesting statistic, Cthulhu?"
"I'm an Elder God of the Damned! I can't have any ribbons on me, you wretched shrew!"
— Cthulhu, Hello Cthulhu
Mecha-Cthulhu may be out there, and he may want to eat your face, but if you have a big enough gun, you can kick his eldritch, multidimensional ass.
— Word of God's summation of No Gods, Only Guns
"I've never believed in the End Times. We are mankind. Our footprints are on the moon. When the last trumpet sounds and the Beast rises from the pit — we will kill it."
—Pentecost, Pacific Rim
Exalted is in many ways like Call of Cthulhu. Both can be set in a largely negative world and both contain mind-numbing horrors whose gentlest sneeze could kill half of Malaysia. The difference is the scope of fear; humans fear Cthulhu, Cthulhu fears the Exalted.
—Overheard on an rpg.net forum, about Exalted
How like you to ask me for the bad news, even in this moment of triumph. I've finished going over that Ghost's report.
It is my hypothesis - a hypothesis at best - that the Vex saw the abominable presence at the heart of the Garden as a divine power. I can hear your protest already: how can machines have a god?''
''The answer is simple. The Vex, for all their voracious intelligence, could not understand or decipher what they found. They searched through all available reactions, and they settled on the course with the greatest payoff...to worship this power, and to remake themselves in its image.
I believe the three Axis Minds found in proximity to the abomination were Vex machines built to serve as vessels for this power: a way to extend its reach across space and time, binding it to the Vex, and the Vex to it. If they had succeeded, I cannot begin to guess what horrors they would have unleashed.
I believe the three Axis Minds found in proximity to the abomination were Vex machines built to serve as vessels for this power: a way to extend its reach across space and time, binding it to the Vex, and the Vex to it. If they had succeeded, I cannot begin to guess what horrors they would have unleashed.
Attend carefully. There is cause for hope. When endangered, the abomination activated these vessels and defended itself. This tells us that it was threatened. Whatever it was, Guardians could harm it.
—Grimoire: The Sol Progeny, Destiny
Now you're the one who's afraid.
— Bill to Pennywise, It (2017)
The Cthulhu mythos is why the Entity was defeated the way it was. It was inspired by them, after all – a shapeless, all-powerful horror (its origin in this case spawned from a video game glitch as opposed to just being an old one) who would one day consume the world. So in restudying some of the mythos, trying to see if Lovecraft ever came up with a solution to their defeat, I thought more and more about this old favorite: “In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” And I was suddenly puzzled. WHY is Cthulhu dead? I’m sure it’s just because the nature of creatures like this are beyond human concepts of life or death, but if we were to look at it from a human lens, WHY is Cthulhu dead? And why is one time better than another when we’re still so inferior to it? For that matter, if the Old Gods are truly as powerful already as suggested by the mythos… why HAVEN’T they conquered everything already? On top of that, why would they need to conquer, anyway? If they’re already that powerful and if they’re beyond OUR concepts of good and evil… what benefit is there to conquer? What do they GET out of it? Now, I’m fairly certain the mythos DO have the answers to these questions (mostly a resounding, “They don’t actually care. We just see it as conquest when in reality they just accidentally stepped on us.”), but I came up with an image in my head of Cthulhu… or rather, a giant SKELETON of Cthulhu… waiting beneath the oceans, dreaming for its time… and then suddenly realizing that it had no purpose, no reason to conquer, no reason to do ANYTHING. And it accepted its fate and thus died of BOREDOM.
And THAT is how you defeat the Entity – by exposing it to pure existential horror – the meaningless of existence and the absurdity of the cosmos… and how utterly pointless its own existence was. Now I personally believe in a meaning of life, a reason for our existence, and that ultimately there is something else for us beyond this life that’s shaped by how we live this one, but that’s just speculation on my part. For a being like the Entity, who DID live in other realities and saw itself as eventually encompassing everything, the thought of utter pointlessness and lacking meaning in anything was beyond what it could fathom or want.
"The major theme of Lovecraftian Horror is hopelessness. Insignificance. How tiny and unimportant we are in the grand scheme of things, and how, inevitably, we will be destroyed, or consumed, or turned into mindless slaves by beings that we can't even begin to comprehend. I believe in hope. I believe there's always a solution, always a way to beat the bad guys, but these... Outer Gods – these things – exist to tell us that, "No, there is no way to beat things in the end," and I cannot abide that! All the people we love, all the things we do in life, everything that makes life worth living… it's significant, Goddamnit! We are all important! Everything we do is so. God. Damn. Important! I beat the Entity by tricking it – by convincing it that life was meaningless, and I sure as hell don't believe that! But if the Entity is still alive, or if someone like Vyce becomes it, then we're doomed, because… 'cause there's nothing else that we can do. And the same despair that killed it will kill us. And I will not let that happen. If the Entity is alive – or if Vyce becomes it – then I am gonna be the one to shove a sword through its face, just so I can get up close enough to scream in their ear that WE! ARE! IMPORTANT! Every one of us is important! Every one of us is important. And I'll do whatever I have to to save us all."
"And who was it decided to raise Cthulhu from his eternal slumber? His tentacles are so atrophied he'll need centuries of physiotherapy just to get out of bed!"
— Dr Zarkendorf, Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space
