How do I incorporate a big huge cosmic horror conspiracy into a setting that has a standard D&D pantheon where gods...

How do I incorporate a big huge cosmic horror conspiracy into a setting that has a standard D&D pantheon where gods grant spells/miracles to clerics.

Not that hard. Have something alien and outside the Gods be around making things go tits up. Not like it needs to follow the same laws gods do.

Yeah, but what what *are* the gods in that setup? How can they coexist--how can the divine and the alien be in the same setting without one being false?

You can play the "There's always a bigger fish" game and kill off a god. When a god dies, do they decompose and fall apart? What does that look like? Would it be something that you can even comprehend?

Order of the stick.

It's not very good, but it works.

Hell, Tolkien had this shit in his cosmology. He never touched on it much in the books, but it was there.

Something being before the gods/outside the universe isn't that weird. Hell, there are implications of it in judeochristian lore, what with Leviathan.

So are the gods themselves equivalent to eldritch horrors, at least in that they are equally as incomprehensible? How then would the traditional D&D cleric fit in, getting spells and talking to their gods at high levels?

I'll have to look into the Leviathan thing, was it not just a demon?

Also, the Tolkien thing works pretty well, I hadn't considered that there's stuff like Ungoliant that come from outside the order of creation.

Not a lovecraft expert. But isn't Yog-Sothoth working in a way that basically anyone who calls to him gets to do some Magic shtick, just because he is so goddamn helpful?
Like, the gods answer every prayer they hear (you still need to know the proper incantation). They don't care what purpose the prayer serves. Or maybe they gain something from the people who sip their powers to cast spells/magic.

Don't play DnD. Don't do this idiocy either. You are seriously fucked in the head.

Read the manual of the planes (I know it is like this in 3e not sure about the others)
The lovecraftrian stuff comes from the realm outside the main cosmology.
I will see if I can dig it up

Simple; because neither exist in real life as far as we can knowingly prove, and thus neither are mutually contradictory.
Doesn't even remotely need to be that way.
"Gods" in D&D never operate the way the Judeo-Christian deity does, and thus really come off more as exceptionally powerful beings dwelling on higher, more conceptual-based planes of existence.
They are gods in the sense that they are vastly more powerful then mortals, very hard to kill, and are objects of worship.

An alien can be all of these things too and more powerful to boot because there's nothing that says they can't.

It feels good to open up the manual of the planes for the first time in ages. Even if it is just a pdf.

Found it. Manual of the planes 3e page 211.

Make it crazy hard to get to.
>There are no known portals to the Far Realm, or at least none that are still viable. Ancient elves once pierced the boundary of eons with a vast portal to the Far Realm, but their civilization imploded in bloody terror and the portal’s location is long-forgotten. But other portals might exist. Other methods of reaching the Far Realm include traveling to time’s beginning or end or finding the true Dreamheart past the Portal of Sleep. Luckily for the Material Plane, entities of the Far Realm have just as difficult a time finding passage out of their home plane, though rare spells allow them to be summoned.

It's funny. For some reason I recall the far realm as being something out beyond the outer planes. I used to know all the info in this book really well. Maybe it was some other realm just beyond.

The gods are the self aware and sapient fingers of the great one beyond. They themselves do not realize they come from the same wellspring and are merely tendrils of something larger

The more people rely on the divines, the more this creature infiltrates the realm. This will eventually lead to realities collapse into something... Different

By the same token the Divine has had a huge positive effect on the world due to healing magic, etc. So even if you know the truth - would you stop it? Could you?

Remember that existential dread and the despair of inevitability is a huge part of the genre

There was also the older things in the deep places of the world.

Also Tom Bombadil who if you apply the rules of the setting starts to get weird.

And where ever that black iron sword came from because simple metal no imbued by the soul of a fallen angel should not be that vindictive.

My current campaign is literally based around this exact concept.

The cosmic horror the players are facing is the Eldritch manifestation of entropy itself. It was there when the universe was made and it will end once it finally consumes all of existence.

This horror has been slowly consuming other "alternate" realities for all of time and only now is beginning to reach the players' universe. The Gods have enough power to hold it off if they work together, but they all know someone will eventually turn on the rest or try to bargain with this entity because gods will ALWAYS be fickle.
The world and planes are in chaos, doomsday cults are popping up everywhere and both the sides of good and evil are struggling to deal with the concept of the eventual annihilation of reality itself coming MUCH sooner than they expected.

How the party confronts this cosmic threat is up to you as the GM.
They may need some ancient McGuffin items to flee to a different reality the horror has not reached yet.
Or they manage to unite the whole world together, both good and evil, to confront an force they cannot even begin to comprehend, and stage a final stand to hold it off long enough for the next reality to have time to escape or find a solution.

Cosmic horror is all about losing hope. The horror is so great, something so little, like humanity, can do nothing to stop it. Players can only defeat or fight those who are affected by the horror, never the horror itself.

Spells and miracles aren't enough to stave the Outsiders.
For example, let's say the Gods are the very same Outsiders, just apparently benevolent faces of them, like a mountain that will eventually become a volcano.
They listen to prayers and grant boons to those who follow their ideals, because ultimately they won't be able to stop them from dismantling reality.
Hell, to keep the volcano analogy, what's going to happen is perfectly natural and you can escape. The lava isn't going to chase you, but it's going to melt your house and kill you if you get in it's path.
Or maybe the volcano will fire enough soot into the atmosphere that it'll cause a extinction event.

Leviathan is sometimes a demon, sometimes a singular being (or part of a former pair that god slew one of, and made the other immortal), or sometimes a primordial being from before creation. (And may be the same being as Rahab and both may be The Deep/Tehom)

Man, you are really one bitter, fun-hating cynic of a troll, aintcha.

By doing it.

Like other elegan/tg/entlemen have put forth, use of alternate realities is a great way. Halflings aren't native to my setting, but are refugees fleeing the destruction of their universe using spelljammers.

As to how it would effect clerics and paladins and other holy folk, you could represent it with diminished spells per day that will eventually just not happen anymore as the gods and their servants begin to exert more effort and time and attention to the invading horrors. Perhaps as their celestial servants begin to die or are corrupted, the gods put out calls to arms to their followers, summoning volunteers from the faithful to help fight/strengthen weakening barriers/seek out lost artifacts. Eventually the mortal races begin to understand that something is happening across the whole pantheon and leads to cooperation, or competition in these tasks as followers race to arm their deity/fellow practitioners with artifacts that are being sought by all.