Main > Compendia > Creatures > Eldritch

This category enumerates the varieties and some individuals of the native race of The Horizon.

Eldritch beings (Commonspeak), also Ul'Thaenox (Farspeak \ˈulkðeɪnɒks\ for no known translation), are a class of Strange-origin entities native to The Horizon. They are universally regarded by Integral scholarship as fundamentally incompatible with ordered reality. Eldritch beings exhibit persistent violations of causality, perception, and identity. Their presence produces systematic corruption of perception and cognition, often escalating into catastrophic psychological collapse in mortal minds.

All known Eldritch species are associated with one of the seven Eldritch Gods and appear to function as both worshippers and extensions of their patron’s Strange Epiphany. No Eldritch species has ever been observed to exist independently of an Eldritch God.

All Eldritch beings are believed to have come into existence at the very beginning of the Shattered Age, concurrent with the destruction of The Orrery, the Grand Design of Destiny.

The dominant scholarly consensus holds that Eldritch beings are the transformed remnants of the Servitors of Destiny, once known as The Fates. These Servitors were immortal automata tasked with enforcing causality, outcome, and inevitability within the Apparatus. When the Orrery was destroyed, the Fates lost their governing function and coherence, suffering a total metaphysical failure.

Rather than being annihilated, the Fates were drawn into the Strange, where they were reshaped by broken narrative, dream logic, and perception-based existence. Over time, they fragmented into distinct Eldritch species, each aligned with a specific perceptual mode and bound to a corresponding Eldritch God.

Each Eldritch species is native to a specific region of the Horizon. These regions are not merely habitats but appear to be self-reinforcing environments, shaped by and reinforcing the perceptual corruption associated with the species.

Eldritch society, insofar as it can be said to exist, remains poorly understood and heavily debated.

Integral scholars reject the notion that Eldritch beings possess culture, law, or economy in any recognizable sense. However, repeated observation suggests patterns of aggregation, territorial behavior, and coordinated activity that defy pure randomness.

Common hypotheses include:

• Hierarchies of Perception: Eldritch beings may organize themselves based on the intensity or purity of their associated perceptual corruption rather than rank or authority.
• Liturgical Clustering: Some scholars argue that Eldritch groupings resemble religious congregations, not in belief but in shared experiential states centered on their patron God.
• Functional Echoes: A minority theory proposes that Eldritch societies are malformed echoes of the Apparatus’s original Servitor hierarchies, still attempting to perform incomprehensible functions related to Destiny.

No confirmed evidence exists of trade, leadership succession, or diplomacy among Eldritch beings. Any apparent cooperation may be incidental or illusory.

Eldritch beings differ from Mortal ecological traits in a large number of ways.

• They do not sleep, and in fact cannot fall unconscious, even involuntarily.
• They eat, drink, and breathe, but not for biological sustenance. They do not excrete unless they wish to.
• They do not age in any meaningful sense of the word.
• They cannot reproduce conventionally. There are no Eldritch children.
• They cannot die in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, if they are killed, they simply discorporate, only to emerge some time later.

Each species of Eldritch being does possess a consistent physical morphology and a predictable pattern of behavior centered around perceptual corruption.

They were originally regarded as predatory, but that perspective has been modified to be parasitic - as if they need to perform their corruption of perception on Integral beings.

Eldritch beings represent a unique and persistent threat. They do not invade with armies, nor do they seek territory in a conventional sense. Instead, they undermine reality by spreading catastrophic, often contagious madness.

Containment strategies focus on isolation, suppression of sensory exposure, and rapid intervention when early signs of corruption are detected. While these measures have thus far prevented total collapse, Integral authorities acknowledge that Eldritch influence is cumulative and poorly understood.

The continued existence of Eldritch beings is widely regarded as one of the most severe unresolved consequences of the Shattering, and as evidence that the Apparatus, while functional, remains permanently damaged.