Eldritch Terrors; Older than the Old Gods
The Darkness, The Uninvited, The Weird, The Perverse, The Cosmic, The Returned, The Endless, and lastly The Void. These are the octet of the inhumane, wicked creatures that predate even the Dark Lord. He himself declares that they are unkillable and horrifying beings, with power that harnesses that horror to annihilate anyone that bears witness to their monstrosity. Anything that has the capacity to feel fear, will fear them.
Eldritch Terrors; THE SUMMONING.
When Lucifer was dethroned and stripped from his ruling over the pits of the Abyss, there was a power vacuum that must be filled. Father Faustus Blackwood, having spent fifteen years within his temporal church (although it had merely been a month for everyone else), sought to accept the unusual and overwhelmingly cruel power of beings beyond understanding.
Whilst contained in the dungeons of the Academy with the Dark Lord prisoner in his mind, Father Blackwood denies his allegiance to Satan, denouncing him. When demanding who Faustus aligned himself to, Lucifer comes to realize that the Old Ones are the Eldritch Terrors, esoteric concepts bore reality that predates time and space. And they were coming for their world.
Faustus eventually was able to conduct a summoning ritual for them, utilizing a Time Egg received from a Deep One. He declares himself their priest and vessel, and once the ritual was over, he tells Agatha—who questioned what was birthed from the egg, "The beginning of the end, Agatha. The end of the Spellmans. The end of all things."
Eldritch Terrors; THE ARRIVAL.
The first of the Eldritch Terrors to arrive is The Darkness, who creates spectral avatars to absorb all light from Greendale in order to create despair in absolute darkness. Then, it’s The Uninvited who hunts for the inhospitable and tears their beating hearts from their chests. The Weird is a parasite that merges with Sabrina’s consciousness to enslave the town and world at large, in order to have a feast prepared for The Void. The Perverse, through its Imp, gives Faustus the power to alter reality and create a perverted world in which he is the Dictator-Emperor.
The Cosmic, with the time distortions caused by Sabrina Morningstar’s time paradox, causes Earth and Hell to collide, as well as bringing Heaven into the midst of it all. Despite being solved, the cosmic imbalance porouates the veil between the realms of the living and dead, causing The Returned to unleash Lazarus along with other dead into Greendale. None of the dead are aware that they are, well, dead and struggle to subscribe to their defunct nature. They are eventually returned into balance, though, thanks to the Spear of Longinus by Lilith and Mambo Marie.
The Endless is an eternal abdominal creature that acts upon the behalf of The Void, manifesting itself as a sitcom of all things, where actors are turned into food. Oh, and it’s a time loop as well. Quirky. Sabrina Morningstar is ensnared by it, but manages to escape just long enough to warn Sabrina Spellman. The latter uses Pandora’s Box to trap the Terrors and faces The Void, only to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save her loved ones.
Eldritch Terrors; THE WICKED EIGHT.
In order, here are the Eldritch Terrors;
Eldritch Terrors; INSPIRATIONS.
When speaking of the eldritch and esoteric, it’d be impossible to ignore the clear influence one (very troubled) man has within its sphere. Howard Philips Lovecraft—or simply, H. P. Lovecraft—is considered the father of all modern tales of cosmic horror. A key feature of all of his most popular tales, would be the overwhelming, incomprehensible workings of the universe and humanity’s insignificance within it. In fact, many of his tales show humans as nothing more than specs of dust for the horrific, extraterrestrial or supernatural entities that exist in the beyond. Their mere perception by human observers begets madness.
This factor of Lovecraft’s writing is likely due to the man’s crippling fear of many things in his life. Space, the seas, animals, other people, and the unknown in general. Notoriously conservative to a startling fault, Lovecraft is the perfect example of a need to reclaim stories for a wider audience. Nowadays, despite his tales being kept in their original harmful views, the concept has widely been integrated into horror, claiming its own genre title even. Lovecraftian horror, something that prolific creators have found fame in. Names such as Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Junji Ito, Stephan King, Ridley Scott (Alien, Prometheus), Frank Darabont (The Mist), Alex Garland (Annihilation), Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse), Gore Verbinski (A Cure for Wellness), Jordan Peele (Nope) and even Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods).
If you’re interested in the gaming sphere, though, ever heard of a little known game called Amnesia? Or what about Bloodborne? In terms of podcasts, The Magnus Archives are quite possibly the greatest reinvention of Lovecraftian mythos in our modern day.
Some of Lovecraft’s greatest works are; The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Shadow out of Time, The Call of Cthulhu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Rats in the Walls, Dagon, Color Out of Space, Herbert West – Reanimator, The Outsider, The Shunned House, The Nameless City, The Cats of Ulthar, and Pickman’s Model to name a few.