Old Ones in your setting

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The Manifold. Carskan researchers are still unclear as to whether or not the Manifold are an infinite number of seperate beings operating under a single title or a gestalt organism, though differences in behavior have been noted as being chartable by esoteric conversions of astronomic data.

Regardless, The Manifold are some sort of extraplanar life, bound intrinsically to some other realm colloquially referred to as the Far Realm. The barrier between our plane and theirs is semi-porous, with celestial bodies acting as lenses through which they can either peer or focus their power on particular subjects, as well as granting devout worshipers eldritch powers.

The Manifold are theorized to exist in a place where the concepts of Death, Pain, and Suffering have been eradicated. As a result, they are undying and impervious to harm within their own realm. The pain and deaths of mortal beings are a sort of currency to them, as they cannot attain such 'precious commodities' -- quoting a Carskan researcher -- on their own. In exchange for knowledge of fleshwarping and other forms of esoteric enlightenment, they have been known to broker in ritual sacrifices and trials revolving around participants inflicting pain upon one another.

Likewise, it is suggested that with enough ritualistic offerings, one can turn these celestial bodies from from viewpoints into summoning circles, allowing these eldritch horrors entry into our plane from theirs. Such a ritual would require an almost incalculable level of suffering, however, roughly the equivalent of the poor wretches living in the lower levels of the Spire channeled to a single facet of the Manifold. Smaller scale summons are also theoretically possible, based around the construction of representative spheres of cosmic origin to act as portals between the fabric of our plane and theirs.

I mean, I'm not saying that one of the Carskan metropolises is actually a ritualistically-designed arcology design to focus and magnify human suffering to the point of allowing an eldritch god to be born of the moon. But if anyone were to attempt something that cosmically foolish, they'd certainly be at the top of the list. Magitech Nazi+Unionists, no sense of right or wrong.

I originally had a whole bunch of Old Ones in my setting.
Over time I slowly weened them out until the only one that was left was, a super cool OC donut steel I made in High School
Which is basically a giant bell will spider legs that is suppose to ring to signify the beginning of the end of the world

I'm a big Lovecraft fan so I've kind of incorporated lots of mythos stuff into my campaign setting, although it's mostly in the background.

Firstly, there's an ancient civilization actually known as the Old Ones. Nobody really knows anything about them because they've been dead for as long as even the oldest mortal races remember. Their ruins exist in the frozen northern lands, however, and from the relics that have been recovered it's clear they posessed great knowledge of magic.

Then there's proper Lovecraftian Great Old One style beings, known to people in the setting as the Titans of ancient legends, who fought against and were eventually defeated by the gods (actually the stars stopped being right and they went to sleep). They're generally considered a footnote in religious lore, only really mentioned in some of the oldest legends. The only one that gets more publicity in modern times is the Mother of Dragons, a Titan whose defeat at the hands of the head of the pantheon of gods is a very important and well-known story.
True/elder dragons themselves are effectiveely lesser Titans/GOOs. They can exist when the stars aren't right, but only barely, and spend most of their time in hibernation. When one wakes up it is likely to cause untold destruction before eventually going back to sleep for several thousand years. Dragons as statted in your average monster manual are the considerably less powerful offspring of the elder dragons.

Then there's the Outer Gods, who are literally Lovecraftian Outer Gods, although rarely if ever actually called by their "real" names. Most people are completely unaware they exist. Occasional cults pop up that worship them, but they usually have no idea what they actually are. Dark elves worship them, but their common intrepretion is much more "Derlethian" than "Lovecraftian". Extremely few people, mostly mages who have spent a lot of time studying cosmology, have anything approaching proper understanding of what they are.

That could be interesting.

I wasn't implying you should recreate them exactly, just that making it so that they are all sleeping is deviating from the original mythos

Replace tentacles with math, incomprehensibility with searingly painful revelations, and horror insanity with epiphany insanity.

Huh, like the use of celestial spheres as the border to the Far Realm. Guessing astronomers are pretty fucked in that setting. Do you use the old dead stars and shit like that which came with 4E GOOlocks?

They were the first race to come into existence and create the universe. The race comprised of many of the familiar Lovecraft creatures (Cthulhu, Aylith, etc). The race itself is lead by an all powerful entity that is responsible for the creation of everything.

Eventually, the eldritch race created another race of weaker, but similarly powerful beings to become their slaves. After eons of oppression and hardships, the slave race rallied together and revolted against the eldritch. This civil war lasted for thousands of years. During the war however, commanders of the eldritch army began to plot against the all powerful entity, and believed that if they were to kill it, they to would become just as powerful as it once was.

The entity soon realized the inevitable, and was able to escape from the clutches of its betrayers by dividing it's spirit up into 20 pieces, each piece to symbolize a different element of creation. During this process, however, the entity released a massive wave of pure destructive energy throughout the cosmos, killing about 70% of all life, including many members of the slave race and the eldritch race. The only survivors of the eldritch race being the commanders of it's armies. The remaining members of the slave race took the opportunity of the confusion of the commanders and why most of their armies are gone, and sealed them away in temples on the planet mundaria.

After the war was over, the remaining survivors of the slave race decided to keep watch over mundaria to make sure that the evils sealed inside were to never escape. The beings who inhabited this planet would see this, and began worshiping the survivors. The survivors saw this and took it as an opportunity to gain more power for themselves, eventually becoming the gods of that world.

The 20 spirit fragments would go through either two different procedures. They would either take a crystalline form of a large egg, or they would infuse themselves within a being, effectively giving them powers that would relate to whatever element is within them. Only when the stars are right will the spirit fragments all conjoin and the entity be resurrected. Then, it will completely rewrite the universe in a new image and have complete control.

In my campaign, the PC's were people who had the soul fragments inside of them, and were sent out by a wizard to find the other fragments in the belief that it would be the only way to stop a major cataclysmic event. Ironically not know what would truly happen.

so how all of them except Cthulhu are already?

right, and theyre NOT FROM the original mythos
so your opinion is just like you asshole; everyone has one, and i dont need to see it

The Far Realm is the nuclear yolk, the afterbirth of the universe itself. At the beginning of all things, the "true" worlds were nurtured by its unlimited possibilities. What is left? Things which are simply not possible in the planes. It is a hollow place, hungry for form and purpose. To view it or its inhabitants is to see something which is half an approximation and half a parasitic mimic of the Form it so desperately desires.

The ideas of law and chaos, good and evil, and cause and effect are null and void to the Far Realm. It will devour any body or mind given to it. It will devour itself given any chance.

To do business with its horrors, to open up gateways to the impossible, or to worship it is madness.

It read as though you said that yours were like the original mythos and then gave them slumbering as an example, I was saying that them slumbering is not a common traits, making it a poor example. If you did not mean it as an example of that then fair enough.

>If you did not mean it as an example of that then fair enough.
congratulations, you figured it out
stop posting

>Widely accepted story: Long ago, the gods created the human race and all other magical things. Divinity is the magic granted to humans by the gods(similar to white/holy magic). Alternatively, humans created their own form of magic powered by their faith in themselves called Mysticism an many devout Divinity-practitioners believe that this was an insult that led to the gods to avoid direct contact with humans.

>Actual story: Gods are more similar to the unfathomable power and size of the Old Ones than the mostly-human greek gods. They created humans and fucked off cuz they were bored. Divinity is all a lie and it's the same thing as Mysticism.

Is it bad my old ones are just dragons?

I'm working on gods being weirder by default. For example its ambiguous whether the gods are more like "people" or places, and the places that the gods are have either transitional spaces between our world and theirs or outright bleeding into ours. So something like Dreams in the Witch House or The Color Out of Space can play out even with a Thor analogue. On top of that I intend to litter the pantheons with all the cannibalism and doom and animal sex and one-off monsters from curses and stuff.

While there are nearer Olympian-like gods with discernable motives, and a few ascended mortals, there are also the imprisoned old generations, killed gods that won't quite stay down, and lawless things never quite brought to heel. If we assume greek myth as a baseline, these are Titans, Giants, Typhos and/or Echidna. That sort of thing.

Also there's no hard line between any other spirit and a god. So while mortal heroes might ascend, so can mad ghosts or the spirit of a now burned-out cedar forest or something.

>and echidna

They are the real humans. The ones that everyone thinks are humans are just genetically engineered pigs, bred for work that requires a semblance of intelligence.

Replaced them with faeries.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna_(mythology)

The things before Life and thus only belonging to the realm of Death (though if you asked Death or any of the creatures they couldn't tell you if Death or themselves were older). They rest in the underworld/afterlife dreaming and essentially don't give a shit except for that one time when the mortal beings created gods and those gods attempted to create their own afterlives (right after essentially assassinating and stealing the power of Life). This encroaching on Death's territory was taken personally and a horrific war broke out between the moral races (with some exceptions) and their gods against Death, the Things Before Life and the Immortals.
Really they are fluff unless the story line progresses to the point that the Underworld is encroached upon again. Then the Old Ones will rise from the water and lay waste to Heaven and Earth alike until it's naught but ocean and Death rebirth Life.

Distant, unknowable, but sympathetic. They watch our world from behind a pane of glass and wonder at our lives, our struggles, our conflicts; just as we could never understand them, they could never understand us. And they are fascinated.

Each individual is wholly unique, and many often choose a "surrogate" from among our number to "mark", the brand granting strange powers and terrible purpose. Most attractive are those ruined by tragedy, the Great Ones little understanding that their gifts create tragedies anew.

>Humanity will bring ruin to the stars! Your ambition for power and destruction knows no bounds! We keep YOU in line!

Or something like that, been awhile since I've watched Gurren Lagann. And this is assuming the Old Ones have an emissary to talk to you through. Otherwise them explaining themselves would end with you dead.

Also a Spiral King figure who keeps humanity in place for the Old Ones would be interesting. Focuses attention away from Old Ones and onto himself.

Ohh that reminds me of the Great Ones from Bloodborne. Able to reach out and manifest themselves, making a religion to them flourish with "proof" of their existence. Even if it turns out bad for those marked by them.

Yep, I was inspired partially by Bloodborne and Dishonored. The difference is these Great Ones would only be known through whispers in dreams, with absolutely no ability to influence the world outside their surrogates, over whom they have no control. They are simply watching, curious.

Gameplay-wise, my idea is for players to compile a sort of mini-class during character creation by choosing (in very broad strokes) a personality, wish, fear and tragedy. For example, brash, wish, rats, dead wife. These would grant a unique array of supernatural abilities.

As the GM, I would explain a great overarching tragedy in the setting (plague, terrorist attack, etc) and how it ultimately lead to each character's tragedy - and how in their dreams they see each other, reach out to each other, and in the real world find each other. Then use their newfound abilities to right how they've been wronged.