So I have a theory that relates to Lovecraftian entities. They're supposed to be above our understanding and alien because of that, but more often than not they're just sort of aimless and vaguely hostile. I feel like this is mostly because people don't really know how to portray "Unknowable alien" because of that "unknowable" part.
My theory, that I want to Test out on my players is that any motivation, even very simple ones, can be alien and incomprehensible if you only see bits and pieces of it, and even more so if there are other competing actions muddying the water. Here's what I want to do: I'm going to create a pantheon of elder ones, each with a specific motivation and have them all acting at once.
So, can you guys suggest me some motivations for my alien gods? Anything will work really.
To be fair, you can bring the notion of the Outer's and the GOO's beign ammoral above thou, "can complete justify genociding you because too smart" shit to question by the notion that Nyarlathotep is literally the Makuta from Bionicle in Reverse.
And Tsthogga, and the Elephant vampire- nothing about those fucks is remotely "good".
As far as I'm concerened, they're the first organisms to come to be, and Nyarlathotep is actually playing everyone for a trick because nothing can really contest it, and it's literally just Demiurging around for when it act's out it's purpose as a waking hormone on mass scale that it is and triggers the end- which is actually just an implosion so it literally just suicides everyone and ruins almost everything, and then things pick up in the Doctor who universe where Yog-Sothoth is no longer the cosmic definition of cock as is just floating knowledgable testicles, Hastur is furry, but alive, and Cthulhu suicide bombed, and shubby is dead, but her progeny lives on.
Evan Bennett
I just started reading up on the Elder Scrolls lore, and apparently Thalmore, High Elves are fighting to destroy some artifacts so that they can stop Time from being linear. That's a very cool motivation.
Adrian Ward
egregori:
a higher ecosystem made entirely of psychic energy compressed into tangible matter. egregori come in all shapes and sizes but are basically just like carbon-based life, operating on a different level of reality.
dagon is an egregore, while the deep ones are organic servants. likewise yig is egregore, serpent people are organic. all the outer gods and great old ones are egregori.
just like organic life, an egregore's main impetus is to reproduce. they do that by 'impregnating' conglomerations of psychic energy produced by organic life. the most fertile psychic vortices are produced by extreme and traumatic emotions. egregori tend to cluster in localized areas (haunted houses, graveyards, arkham, etc.) because their presence creates positive feedback loops. egregori cause mayhem wherever they go and use it to reproduce, which causes more mayhem, and so on
the bigger the egregore, the bigger a vortex it needs, and the bigger its ambitions. egregori like dagon need to cause havoc on a mass scale to reproduce. The greatest egregori plan for millennia to make breeding grounds of entire worlds
This is good because the elder gods don't necessarily need to kill your players so it could lead to some very interesting situations where it may seem like the players are a threat to some kind of "plan" but are instead small tools for the god to use.
Grayson Kelly
Well there's that age old question with nyarla that Dreams in the Witch-House raises: What the fuck does Nyarly need a child sacrifice for?
Wyatt Morris
One god could want to simply wipe out terrestrial sapient life because they see it as unsightly and disruptive to "pleasant little garden worlds". Another god might want to preserve said terrestrial sapients because it finds them "cute" or amusing. How the latter goes about this could be horrific in it's self as it might come in the form of "tough love" and aggressively teaching terrestrial sapients to defend them selves by steadily bombarding them with things that are just dangerous enough to be a more serious threat than the last but still something they will probably beat or at least mostly survive.
Andrew King
There's some shit that Yog-sothoth likes with it's sacrifices- barring the light-speed sex, is that it get's to watch what happens to a victim that you can't see.
An offering to him is like putting a coin in one of those charit donation wheels that spins the coin into the middle- it's a joy to watch- except instead of spinning dome, it's multiversal parralelicak cosmic infinity. Also, you're effectively just returning them to Yog- because all are one in him and all that- so It's also that shit you hear and see on your first LSD trip made a reality- It's like how some people who get in too deep with the outer gods get all disturbingly slave-morality and comfy going all "I want to be with them". They're all going to a presumably- better place- maybe.
Oliver Brooks
A good idea might be to list out the effect of said motivation first, then reverse engineer it into a higher motivation. That way you'll get good hook points to involve the players with each alien god, and tying the basic effect to a proper motivation can let you refine the details.
For example you want the basic effect to be a monster horde passing through a particular area once a year. The horde's goal would be to get through to a particular spot where a bigger thing absorbs their life before moving elsewhere. At the same time a new horde is borne elsewhere unknown. Turns out the horde functions a lot like blood cells, and the place they go to are like the lungs or the heart of the alien god. Now that we know the motivation, we can refine the horde itself, such as maybe they're soul eaters or something.
A key point for amy lovecraftian god though is that humans are basically non-existant. There can be exceptions like Nyarla for example, but they should all be mostly going about their day without paying specific interest to human beings.
