Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka
Yes. Divine Powers can work for a specific God ("Thor is displeased"), but it can also apply to fickle forces or elements ("The spirits are displeased" or "The Universe knows you mean ill.") In fact, if you really dig deep into theology, or even mythology, you'll find that the personification of a god is a simplification. While many Christians might picture God as a bearded white dude sitting on a throne on a cloud in the sky, actual Christian theology* depicts God as an omnipresent entity that suffuses, or is, the universe.
The best way to make things eldritch is to play up the alienness of this entity. You can easily do this by just claiming that "the Magic does what it wants to do." If "magic" becomes inherently malign, that might make it more eldritch, andif it become inherently ineffable, then it becomes more mysterious (though, ideally, you want it to be somewhat logical, because the point of a mysterious thing is that it can be investigated and understood: the magic teases you with glimpses of structures that you do not yet understand)
*depending on your sect of Christianity, of course.
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Yes and No. And ignoring theology for aesthetics. Chesterton in one essay said that paradoxically people do not get scared of trees until they imagine tree-people inside. When it is just a wooden organism it is not very scary. If it has a guardian nymph that dislikes being disturbed it is scarier. If the guardian nymph has a regular audience with Artimis you are in big trouble. It is true when you think of it. Anthropomorphism when done right is SCARY. Or make it a Celtic version. For some reason Celtic myth seems more frightening then Greek; maybe because it is less obviously subdued and there were folks not so long ago that believed a distilled version of it, and not just intellectual chic but the peasant stuff.
The trick to making things Eldritch is to combine the Anthropomorphized with the Mysterious and Inhuman in the proper way.
When magic is used have a Wise One communicate with something like this-however. He will not see the roll, the GM will make the roll. It will require good acting for the GM to scare the PC playing the Wise One. He will give a cryptic message to the Wise One(perhaps a riddle or whatever in fact a riddle is a good idea). What the other PCs will see is something spectacular and mysterious happening to the Wise One until he returns with his message.
In any case the Eldritch Creature has to be anthropomorphized just a little bit or it will be just beastly rather then eldritch. But the anthropomorphism can't be taken to far. Perhaps a good guide is to imagine the Wizard of Oz-without a little man in the corner.