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// Prelude: Regarding the Strange 
// Story: Lost in a Terrifying World 
// by Erisn 
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	From beyond reality they come. From the simple dimensional timeframe that most mortal, sentient species observe, their arrival appears…infrequent. Entire generations of even the most persistent type of mortal races can pass from inception to dust before even so much as one of them enters our sphere of existence.

It's not that such beings are slow, and indeed any earthly being meeting them face to face (so to speak) would find the eldritch-kind are often disturbingly quick. That is, of course, because of the chronal, spatial, and conceptual imbalance. When you take a being which normally operates without the constraint of dimensional space-time laws and puts it in one of the more primitive spheres that demands not only conformance to some arbitrary law like gravity, but also insists upon a sun, planetary bodies, and nonsense like oxygen just to keep a bunch of hairless pink fleshy things alive, things can get…complicated.

To put things in another perspective, the reason why the eldritch, the unnatural, the things-from-beyond, or just those-obnoxious-monsters-that-lay-waste-to-all-sentient-life-every-millennia-or-two have trouble with our worlds is because they’re just so damn confusing. It doesn’t help that many of these beings are attracted to our worlds, and thus constantly seek to enter them, despite, as the case may be, constantly suffering from extreme vertigo. Imagine being on a month-long bender filled with alcohol, gratuitous use of semi-illegal substances (depending on your current abode and planet), and to top it all off, being sick with the flu, a fever, and severe dehydration. Then hit yourself on the hammer. That would be the basic state of your average eldritch invader into the worlds we like to think of as home. It’s a miracle they don’t all die within the first few seconds. 

However, part of the enduring success of such beings to survive and enter urban mythology is their refusal to obey the rules of physics, reality, and common sense. It’s practically a job-requirement for them. When one of the strangers from beyond finally manages to enter our reality and is inevitably spotted by the:

A: Hapless bystander with unnatural physical and mental ability,

B: The hapless bystander sans said abilities and with the lifespan of a duck in a KFC restaurant,

C: Innocent waif, child, etc. ready to be saved by one of the people from category A,

D: Or army of heavily-armed, highly trained warriors battling for their lives against the cult/empire/individual bent on dominating all life though the summoning of said eldritch individual, 

They are naturally somewhat confused.

This gives the hapless individual or army of individuals’ time to fruitlessly spend their time running away, cowering in fear, talking, or wasting enough firepower to slag a mountain range. It never works. Something that ignores death itself isn’t going to be slowed down by the laws of physics. A bullet won’t even touch an eldritch being unless it’s really conforming to the laws of the current dimension and even then, it’s more likely to confuse it than anything else. You might as well toss peanut butter at an eldritch abomination. That at least has been known to work once or twice.

Anyways, the main thing to do when a reality-warping monster appears is not to run, hide, fight, or talk to it. It’s important to think first. You see, those that exist outside of reality don’t obey any of our rules, but boy, are they a stickler for their rules. It’s also important to remember that such beings are bound by the rules of common belief. It is a strange fact, but while a Weeping Angel may be able to bypass an octagonal-reinforced word-motion bonded defense spell without a problem, they still can’t move so long as someone’s looking at them. This, of course is due to the popular myth that Weeping Angels can’t move when someone is looking at them. This is of course, false. However, the belief of thousands forces this ‘fact’ to become true, and Weeping Angels are once again prevented from reaching their true, universe-decimating potential. An eldritch being can deal with physics, time, and even boredom without much trouble but it’s in real trouble when people start to believe.

This is why it is possible to survive an ‘attack’ by one of the strange-kind without possessing a magic sword, an arsenal of nukes, or even an army of willing stunt-doubles. It even explains why someone can by simply call an eldritch being’s name three times to summon it and then blow it up. It should not be possible to destroy an elder god of the abyss with a few explosives, but because there are rules, it is. And eldritch beings are sticklers for those kinds of rules, which explains why only a few realities are dragged screaming into the beyond each second.

And that, in a nutshell defines the key aspect of understanding (and surviving) an encounter with one of the beyond-people. Play their game. If SCP-173 comes after you, stare at it and run away while it breaks someone else’s neck. If a vampire is after you, wait to see if it sparkles while downing a few garlic gyozas. If you run across a gorgon, grab a mirror. And if you spot a langolier, STOP MESSING ABOUT WITH THE TIME-FRAME CONTINUUM. It’s quite simple, really.

It’s important to have rules. Without rules, there’s nothing between you and them, and you will subsequently soon be in one of them unless you’re very, very lucky. But that’s not a problem. Eldritch abominations never break the rules, unlike humans or badly-behaved dogs (or the average cat). You’ll never catch a chupacapura without a goat nearby, creepers don’t spawn inside of elevators, and pit fiends never go for a summer holiday at the beach (unless it’s a really nice day out). No matter what, you’ve always got a chance, and that’s because the eldritch are predictable. They always manifest in the same situations – they don’t do well with change. If one of them ever did enter an unfamiliar environment, all bets would be off for what happened next.  Pity the fools who would encounter one of the ancient (or not-so-ancient) ones in that situation. The best that could happen is that they would die painfully. In the worst case, they might have an interesting experience.

They come from beyond reality. Not slowly, not quickly, but with the unstoppable approach that has ended countless civilizations. Their appearance is unearthly; their presence alone warps fate itself. They are the mystery beyond mystery; that which terrifies even the gods. Sometimes they get lost…