I'm a big fan of cosmic horror/weird fiction, but I'm growing extremely bored with Lovecraft and his group of contemporaries. I'm looking for both sources of fiction, and D&D implementations of cosmic horror that don't all rely on Lovecraftian tropes. Do any of you have recommendations? I'm thinking books, movies, D&D campaigns and monsters, or just anything that can give me some inspiration.
Lovecraft invented the concept. Anything anyone does cosmic horror ends up being called Lovecraftian. He was right there when suddenly we started learning about science and how big the universe is. He basically took scientific concepts and incarnated them into Gods, which was outright horrifying. That said, I love some books that have a lot of Cosmic Horror element.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, Here the good guys win, rather than just keep up, but there are some nasty things.
Rook series by Daniell OMalley. Some nasty horrorible stuff going on, but the good guys at least can keep up with them.
Monster Hunters International series. A bit more Cosmic horror, and the normal humans have little chance of winning. But they have enough non-human help that the good guys can keep up with the bad guys.
And the single most cosmic-horror like series I like is:
Laundry Files by Charles Stross. The good guys know they are going to lose, they are scrambling to survive as long as possible. Most Cosmic Horror. Last books have the Cosmic Horrors actually winning the war and ruling multiple countries. Lovecraft would love these books.
All of these books have a bit of strange horror, combined with some magical good guys. The Laundry Files are probably the MOST "cosmic horrory" of series. One of them has a great line about how they could never be religious after having met God and been horrified.
NIck Mamatas does some interesting things with Lovecraft myhthos through a sort of "post lovecraft" anti-lovecraft lens. Not sure how well his stuff would port to D&D but he did do Sabbath which is sorta a much more heavy metal take on Hercules or Conan in New York.
Jason Pargin/David Wong's John Dies at the End trilogy (soon to be quadrology) is also contemporarily set, but I think is actually written more from a gamers mindset so there may be some ideas you can float.
I'll second taking a look at Charles Stross based on only reading a A Colder War (like Mamatas is with post 1950s literature, A Colder War helps if you're familiar with 1980s international and U.S. geopolitics). It's a great story and I can't meaning to read more of him.
You could also check out Mitch Waxman's Weirdass.net webcomic (still online but hasn't produced any new content in I think 15 years). Reworks some Cthlulhu mythos but also mixes in some swords and sorcery and blasters and sorcery tropes too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Mog_Dracov, you just named two of my favorite book series, Rivers of London and Rook. I CANNOT stress enough to people how good The Rook is. Great taste in literature.
One more thing, I think the reason why these things work so well is that they are a metaphor for other stuff AND they are actually powerful. Most monsters that are not 'cosmic horror' style would get their asses handed to them by modern humanity. Way too many movie monsters depend on people being stupid and not having access to phones, cars, etc. Not to mention the strange ability to suddenly appear in a location they could not have gotten to in the given amount of time.
But the "Cosmic Horror" genre has powers beyond what we can deal with. We are not going up against a creature of flesh and blood that can be fought, but something far stranger and more peculiar. Something we cannot understand, let alone out think
If humanity can fight back, it's not Cosmic Horror. One of Cosmic Horror's defining characteristics is that whatever humanity is up against can't be beaten. At most, it can be temporarily incapacitated or distracted, but inevitably it will come back and there's nothing that humanity can do to stop it.
And as a side note, I recommend against the Monster Hunters International series. The author uses it as a vehicle to deliver rants about his political views, that never makes for fun reading.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
One iconic characteristic of Lovecraft (his writing) is trying to explain/describe things with phrases that result in paradoxes and relying on that to define horror by confusion and insanity.
One way to get Lovecraft minus Lovecraft is just to forget about describing the enemy's appearance—the enemy never makes an appearance beyond hints that do make sense but never a complete enough picture to have any full idea what the horror is. Rely more on sane NPCs rooted in the story to make players understand why it's horrible rather than the horror itself.
As for examples, Alien (1979) until the very final end qualifies as a cosmic horror. It's only when you get a good look at the whole thing at the end that it's defeated. When it's only just vague glimpses, it's unstoppable and... well... too alien to understand.
Don't let people get a good look at the horror (through physical description or through the horror's actions), and you'll have something people won't be unable to understand and without needing the paradoxes that Lovecraft loved to use.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Go watch some Werner Herzog. There is cosmic horror all around us, we just get so wrapped up in our everyday lives we don’t notice when existential despair drives a penguin to suicide or when a guy deludes himself into thinking he can talk to bears.
If humanity can fight back, it's not Cosmic Horror. One of Cosmic Horror's defining characteristics is that whatever humanity is up against can't be beaten. At most, it can be temporarily incapacitated or distracted, but inevitably it will come back and there's nothing that humanity can do to stop it.
And as a side note, I recommend against the Monster Hunters International series. The author uses it as a vehicle to deliver rants about his political views, that never makes for fun reading.
I do agree that MHI loves conservative rants. But he has turned it down over the past couple of books (I suspect either his editors convinced him it was holding him back, or he is not a Trump fan and has become disillusioned with his favorite party). Also, some of the books have co-authors, which helps. If you can skip the first few books, the later ones are very fun reading.
-------
I also agree that a good look tends to end the horror. My personal opinion is that is because the core concept does not fit into our universe. We can not conceive of something inconceivable, by definition. So no artistic representation will ever live up to the concept. One trick is to treat it like a Medusa, only to have memory erasure and/or insanity replace petrification.
Have a couple of throw away NPC's whose sole job it is to be stupid, take a look or otherwise get too involved with the Great Old One. Why yes I will take a drink of the strange bubbling water coming out of the fountain shaped like a squid / snail / insect hybrid. Did you guys ever notice how delicious the sound of crying is? Could you please cry for me?
A lot of things in Doctor Who could probably be considered inspirations for Cosmic Horror. The Silence are a great example. A creature that the moment you turn away from it you forget it ever existed. The group on the show only find out there's something wrong because they keep seeing markings appear on their arms in permanent marker, and they keep appearing randomly (they are drawing on themselves every time they see a Silence). Great inspiration for something related to what you are thinking, I believe.
I'm a big fan of cosmic horror/weird fiction, but I'm growing extremely bored with Lovecraft and his group of contemporaries. I'm looking for both sources of fiction, and D&D implementations of cosmic horror that don't all rely on Lovecraftian tropes. Do any of you have recommendations? I'm thinking books, movies, D&D campaigns and monsters, or just anything that can give me some inspiration.
Thanks!
I have absolutely no clue how you might adapt most of his stuff to D&D, but from a fiction standpoint, Thomas Ligotti's work is genuinely mind-blowing. He was a big influence on the first season of True Detective, which is something that might give you some inspiration for how to handle an investigation-driven cosmic horror campaign
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As for examples, Alien (1979) until the very final end qualifies as a cosmic horror. It's only when you get a good look at the whole thing at the end that it's defeated. When it's only just vague glimpses, it's unstoppable and... well... too alien to understand.
That's just garden-variety horror. The xenomorph is only a danger to the crew because it's a highly aggressive monster, but it can be fought and killed. To qualify as cosmic horror it needs to be a threat to all of humanity (not just the crew of a single spaceship) merely by existing and there's no way to kill it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
As for examples, Alien (1979) until the very final end qualifies as a cosmic horror. It's only when you get a good look at the whole thing at the end that it's defeated. When it's only just vague glimpses, it's unstoppable and... well... too alien to understand.
That's just garden-variety horror. The xenomorph is only a danger to the crew because it's a highly aggressive monster, but it can be fought and killed. To qualify as cosmic horror it needs to be a threat to all of humanity (not just the crew of a single spaceship) merely by existing and there's no way to kill it.
I agree that the Xenomorph is not a Cosmic Horror, but it is not the big boss. The xenomorph is the baby created by the Progenitors. We do not know as much about them, which means they could be considered a Cosmic Horror with the Xenomorph their foot soldiers.
As for examples, Alien (1979) until the very final end qualifies as a cosmic horror. It's only when you get a good look at the whole thing at the end that it's defeated. When it's only just vague glimpses, it's unstoppable and... well... too alien to understand.
That's just garden-variety horror. The xenomorph is only a danger to the crew because it's a highly aggressive monster, but it can be fought and killed. To qualify as cosmic horror it needs to be a threat to all of humanity (not just the crew of a single spaceship) merely by existing and there's no way to kill it.
I agree that the Xenomorph is not a Cosmic Horror, but it is not the big boss. The xenomorph is the baby created by the Progenitors. We do not know as much about them, which means they could be considered a Cosmic Horror with the Xenomorph their foot soldiers.
That's a good point. Lovecraft had his day-to-day monsters in the fish-people of Innsmouth. They were just servitors of something worse.
That would require further additions to the franchise to expand upon the Progenitors, and for them to actually still be around and also be something that's more than just physical. I didn't really bother much with the prequel movies, but from what I understand, it was strongly implied that they were killed off by the Xenomorphs.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Alien and Engineers and Humans relationship is a bit more complicated than the engineers being killed off by the Alien. If only films are your canon it's a bit more ambiguous but The Engineers are still around if you go by some of the footage produced as prequel to "Covenant" (that explains what happened to David and the surviving scientist).
Regardless, Alien and and The Thing (the black and white version and the short story basis "Who Goes There?" actually prefiguring and influencing Alien) are sort of on the cusp of Cosmic Horror and Body/Survival Horror. The notion that there's some sort of de facto apex predator (sic) that not only sees humans as "simply prey" but as substances akin to building blocks or play dough to perpetuate the alien species growth (either as simple egg hosts like in Alien, or as biomass to absorb and utilize for disguise in The Thing) hits those "reducing humanities position in the universe" notes as well as the more conventional horror fear of being eaten/consumed. The subtext with the Alien that something "built" them gets kinda cosmic (but humanity is put on a moral equivalence given humanities interest in harnessing the Alien in at least the first four movies).
I think there's equally a distinction between actual Cosmic Horror (where the threat actually comes from something beyond conventional understanding of the universe) and simple existential horror/dread, which is what's really going on in the original True Detective (the cosmic horror of Carcosa etc is a red herring behind which is hiding a much more all too human horror). Ligoti I think rises over some of the more in line Cthulhu types because of his lit background. Just to riff off wikipedia's list of his cited influences, Thomas Bernhard, William S. Burroughs, Emil Cioran, Vladimir Nabokov, Edgar Allan Poe, Giacomo Leopardi, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, and Bruno Schulz ... all of them - but particularly I feel Bernhard, Burroughs, Beckett and Kafka - are really useful for tonally developing a sense of existential or cosmic dread.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Now that the different system has come up: 5e is not a GREAT engine for Lovecraft type horror -or at least not the industry standard, so to speak. That’s a game called Call of Cthulhu. There have been attempts to make 5e a better horror engine by adding things like Sanity Points. These mechanics are often appropriated from CoC. I haven’t read the new Ravenloft book, but you might find a 5th edition optional rule in there. Otherwise, the old 2e Ravenloft/Masque of the Red Death material might provide insights. CoC also has a wealth of material you might rifle through for ideas. But I want to emphasize that it doesn’t play like 5e.
Oh, another set of books you might like is the ones based on a different game system. The system was called Bureau 13, from the 90s. An author by the name of Nick Pollota wrote 4 books based on them, called "Bureau 13", "Doomsday Exam", "Full Moonster" and "Damned Nation" The game system was supposed to be more Cosmic Horror, but wasn't really. The first 3 books read more like D&D in the modern world.
But the last one has real Cosmic Horror. Set in the Civil War, the good guys are still scrambling to understand what is going on, and really do not have as much of a chance against forces they do not understand.
RPGs in general are not good engines for horror, because PCs are prone to behaving like action movie characters, not horror movie characters -- if you had a group of PC-like people in a horror movie, they would all die horribly before the movie was half finished. They're decent for monster movies, but not horror movies.
On the issue of "cosmic horror that isn't Lovecraftian", that gets into what you think makes something cosmic, and what makes it Lovecraftian. Presumably you want to avoid all the things that look like spawn of Cthulhu, which rules out most illithid threats, but how do you feel about aboleths, beholders, gibbering mouthers, nothics, and slaad?
Incidentally, while I wouldn't call his stuff horror, Simon R Green is pretty good at providing purple prose descriptions of one or another mind-blasting horror (which then dies, because his protagonists are PCs).
Hi all,
I'm a big fan of cosmic horror/weird fiction, but I'm growing extremely bored with Lovecraft and his group of contemporaries. I'm looking for both sources of fiction, and D&D implementations of cosmic horror that don't all rely on Lovecraftian tropes. Do any of you have recommendations? I'm thinking books, movies, D&D campaigns and monsters, or just anything that can give me some inspiration.
Thanks!
Lovecraft invented the concept. Anything anyone does cosmic horror ends up being called Lovecraftian. He was right there when suddenly we started learning about science and how big the universe is. He basically took scientific concepts and incarnated them into Gods, which was outright horrifying. That said, I love some books that have a lot of Cosmic Horror element.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, Here the good guys win, rather than just keep up, but there are some nasty things.
Rook series by Daniell OMalley. Some nasty horrorible stuff going on, but the good guys at least can keep up with them.
Monster Hunters International series. A bit more Cosmic horror, and the normal humans have little chance of winning. But they have enough non-human help that the good guys can keep up with the bad guys.
And the single most cosmic-horror like series I like is:
Laundry Files by Charles Stross. The good guys know they are going to lose, they are scrambling to survive as long as possible. Most Cosmic Horror. Last books have the Cosmic Horrors actually winning the war and ruling multiple countries. Lovecraft would love these books.
All of these books have a bit of strange horror, combined with some magical good guys. The Laundry Files are probably the MOST "cosmic horrory" of series. One of them has a great line about how they could never be religious after having met God and been horrified.
NIck Mamatas does some interesting things with Lovecraft myhthos through a sort of "post lovecraft" anti-lovecraft lens. Not sure how well his stuff would port to D&D but he did do Sabbath which is sorta a much more heavy metal take on Hercules or Conan in New York.
Jason Pargin/David Wong's John Dies at the End trilogy (soon to be quadrology) is also contemporarily set, but I think is actually written more from a gamers mindset so there may be some ideas you can float.
I'll second taking a look at Charles Stross based on only reading a A Colder War (like Mamatas is with post 1950s literature, A Colder War helps if you're familiar with 1980s international and U.S. geopolitics). It's a great story and I can't meaning to read more of him.
You could also check out Mitch Waxman's Weirdass.net webcomic (still online but hasn't produced any new content in I think 15 years). Reworks some Cthlulhu mythos but also mixes in some swords and sorcery and blasters and sorcery tropes too.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Mog_Dracov, you just named two of my favorite book series, Rivers of London and Rook. I CANNOT stress enough to people how good The Rook is. Great taste in literature.
One more thing, I think the reason why these things work so well is that they are a metaphor for other stuff AND they are actually powerful. Most monsters that are not 'cosmic horror' style would get their asses handed to them by modern humanity. Way too many movie monsters depend on people being stupid and not having access to phones, cars, etc. Not to mention the strange ability to suddenly appear in a location they could not have gotten to in the given amount of time.
But the "Cosmic Horror" genre has powers beyond what we can deal with. We are not going up against a creature of flesh and blood that can be fought, but something far stranger and more peculiar. Something we cannot understand, let alone out think
If humanity can fight back, it's not Cosmic Horror. One of Cosmic Horror's defining characteristics is that whatever humanity is up against can't be beaten. At most, it can be temporarily incapacitated or distracted, but inevitably it will come back and there's nothing that humanity can do to stop it.
And as a side note, I recommend against the Monster Hunters International series. The author uses it as a vehicle to deliver rants about his political views, that never makes for fun reading.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
One iconic characteristic of Lovecraft (his writing) is trying to explain/describe things with phrases that result in paradoxes and relying on that to define horror by confusion and insanity.
One way to get Lovecraft minus Lovecraft is just to forget about describing the enemy's appearance—the enemy never makes an appearance beyond hints that do make sense but never a complete enough picture to have any full idea what the horror is. Rely more on sane NPCs rooted in the story to make players understand why it's horrible rather than the horror itself.
As for examples, Alien (1979) until the very final end qualifies as a cosmic horror. It's only when you get a good look at the whole thing at the end that it's defeated. When it's only just vague glimpses, it's unstoppable and... well... too alien to understand.
Don't let people get a good look at the horror (through physical description or through the horror's actions), and you'll have something people won't be unable to understand and without needing the paradoxes that Lovecraft loved to use.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Go watch some Werner Herzog. There is cosmic horror all around us, we just get so wrapped up in our everyday lives we don’t notice when existential despair drives a penguin to suicide or when a guy deludes himself into thinking he can talk to bears.
I do agree that MHI loves conservative rants. But he has turned it down over the past couple of books (I suspect either his editors convinced him it was holding him back, or he is not a Trump fan and has become disillusioned with his favorite party). Also, some of the books have co-authors, which helps. If you can skip the first few books, the later ones are very fun reading.
-------
I also agree that a good look tends to end the horror. My personal opinion is that is because the core concept does not fit into our universe. We can not conceive of something inconceivable, by definition. So no artistic representation will ever live up to the concept. One trick is to treat it like a Medusa, only to have memory erasure and/or insanity replace petrification.
Have a couple of throw away NPC's whose sole job it is to be stupid, take a look or otherwise get too involved with the Great Old One. Why yes I will take a drink of the strange bubbling water coming out of the fountain shaped like a squid / snail / insect hybrid. Did you guys ever notice how delicious the sound of crying is? Could you please cry for me?
A lot of things in Doctor Who could probably be considered inspirations for Cosmic Horror. The Silence are a great example. A creature that the moment you turn away from it you forget it ever existed. The group on the show only find out there's something wrong because they keep seeing markings appear on their arms in permanent marker, and they keep appearing randomly (they are drawing on themselves every time they see a Silence). Great inspiration for something related to what you are thinking, I believe.
I have absolutely no clue how you might adapt most of his stuff to D&D, but from a fiction standpoint, Thomas Ligotti's work is genuinely mind-blowing. He was a big influence on the first season of True Detective, which is something that might give you some inspiration for how to handle an investigation-driven cosmic horror campaign
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
That's just garden-variety horror. The xenomorph is only a danger to the crew because it's a highly aggressive monster, but it can be fought and killed. To qualify as cosmic horror it needs to be a threat to all of humanity (not just the crew of a single spaceship) merely by existing and there's no way to kill it.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I agree that the Xenomorph is not a Cosmic Horror, but it is not the big boss. The xenomorph is the baby created by the Progenitors. We do not know as much about them, which means they could be considered a Cosmic Horror with the Xenomorph their foot soldiers.
That's a good point. Lovecraft had his day-to-day monsters in the fish-people of Innsmouth. They were just servitors of something worse.
That would require further additions to the franchise to expand upon the Progenitors, and for them to actually still be around and also be something that's more than just physical. I didn't really bother much with the prequel movies, but from what I understand, it was strongly implied that they were killed off by the Xenomorphs.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Alien and Engineers and Humans relationship is a bit more complicated than the engineers being killed off by the Alien. If only films are your canon it's a bit more ambiguous but The Engineers are still around if you go by some of the footage produced as prequel to "Covenant" (that explains what happened to David and the surviving scientist).
Regardless, Alien and and The Thing (the black and white version and the short story basis "Who Goes There?" actually prefiguring and influencing Alien) are sort of on the cusp of Cosmic Horror and Body/Survival Horror. The notion that there's some sort of de facto apex predator (sic) that not only sees humans as "simply prey" but as substances akin to building blocks or play dough to perpetuate the alien species growth (either as simple egg hosts like in Alien, or as biomass to absorb and utilize for disguise in The Thing) hits those "reducing humanities position in the universe" notes as well as the more conventional horror fear of being eaten/consumed. The subtext with the Alien that something "built" them gets kinda cosmic (but humanity is put on a moral equivalence given humanities interest in harnessing the Alien in at least the first four movies).
I think there's equally a distinction between actual Cosmic Horror (where the threat actually comes from something beyond conventional understanding of the universe) and simple existential horror/dread, which is what's really going on in the original True Detective (the cosmic horror of Carcosa etc is a red herring behind which is hiding a much more all too human horror). Ligoti I think rises over some of the more in line Cthulhu types because of his lit background. Just to riff off wikipedia's list of his cited influences, Thomas Bernhard, William S. Burroughs, Emil Cioran, Vladimir Nabokov, Edgar Allan Poe, Giacomo Leopardi, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, and Bruno Schulz ... all of them - but particularly I feel Bernhard, Burroughs, Beckett and Kafka - are really useful for tonally developing a sense of existential or cosmic dread.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It’s a different system but Delta Green has some nice horror and X-Files type elements and is really fun to play.
Now that the different system has come up: 5e is not a GREAT engine for Lovecraft type horror -or at least not the industry standard, so to speak. That’s a game called Call of Cthulhu. There have been attempts to make 5e a better horror engine by adding things like Sanity Points. These mechanics are often appropriated from CoC. I haven’t read the new Ravenloft book, but you might find a 5th edition optional rule in there. Otherwise, the old 2e Ravenloft/Masque of the Red Death material might provide insights. CoC also has a wealth of material you might rifle through for ideas. But I want to emphasize that it doesn’t play like 5e.
Oh, another set of books you might like is the ones based on a different game system. The system was called Bureau 13, from the 90s. An author by the name of Nick Pollota wrote 4 books based on them, called "Bureau 13", "Doomsday Exam", "Full Moonster" and "Damned Nation" The game system was supposed to be more Cosmic Horror, but wasn't really. The first 3 books read more like D&D in the modern world.
But the last one has real Cosmic Horror. Set in the Civil War, the good guys are still scrambling to understand what is going on, and really do not have as much of a chance against forces they do not understand.
RPGs in general are not good engines for horror, because PCs are prone to behaving like action movie characters, not horror movie characters -- if you had a group of PC-like people in a horror movie, they would all die horribly before the movie was half finished. They're decent for monster movies, but not horror movies.
On the issue of "cosmic horror that isn't Lovecraftian", that gets into what you think makes something cosmic, and what makes it Lovecraftian. Presumably you want to avoid all the things that look like spawn of Cthulhu, which rules out most illithid threats, but how do you feel about aboleths, beholders, gibbering mouthers, nothics, and slaad?
Incidentally, while I wouldn't call his stuff horror, Simon R Green is pretty good at providing purple prose descriptions of one or another mind-blasting horror (which then dies, because his protagonists are PCs).