The Most Dangerous Monsters Of Fiction

[GabeZhul]

But seriously, the discussion of 'Most Dangerous Monster' always feels like the 'Who Can Beat Superman' arguments, in that someone's always gonna dump some god-like creature of the abyss or one of Lovecraft's abominations and throw everything out of wack.

Don't be that guy. Party poopers are seldom appreciated.

If you want to have a more down-to earth discussion about fictional monsters, consider them in-universe only, aka. the scariest, hardest to kill, most badass monster a series offers that you think is worth mentioning here.

Also, just to add another entry to the thread:
He Who Walks Behind (Dresden Files): Less of a monster and more of a creepypasta-escapee. This guy is from "outside" (we don't even know what that really means; outside of this dimension, universe, existence?), and he is the harbinger of his entire race that also wants to come in. Now, why is he scary? Well, because we don't know what he looks like since he walks behind you. Always. Even if you have your back to the wall. Oh, and it is immune to magic, conventional weapons, can only be hurt by a handful of people born at a very specific date, and even if he is killed, he just comes back for round two later. Fun guy, wouldn't invite him to a party though.

 

[Batou667]

But are the Tyranids really that big of a threat? The Imperium has destroyed multiple hive fleets using only a small fraction of their resources. Claims that the Tyranids have devoured whole galaxies are little more than speculation at this point.

Everything in 40k is a big threat according to them, but not according to anyone else, it seems.

Yeah... 40K suffers from power creep, even within the backstory. Chaos were meant to be the ultimate threat that had humanity hanging by a thread... and then along come the Tyranids, a race that eats galaxies; then the C'tan popped up (literally gods among mortals until they were retcon-nerfed to something more reasonable); the Orks see-saw between being comedy material and an imminent threat to the galaxy, and so on.

It makes the backstory to the Tau actually quite refreshing. For once a 40K faction wasn't introduced as a superpower or an imminent threat to humanity/the materium/existence itself... it was just "hey, here are this small empire of vaguely Japanese aliens who are probably doomed in the big scheme of things, they've got some cool units though, why not give them a go".

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Lovecraft's Elders seems like the obvious response. End of the cosmos and all that.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Let's see...

The Tarrasque from DnD has got to be up there.

And on the topic of D&D, honestly? Dragons. They're severely underappreciated in D&D, often just put in as a super strong monster. But no, they're not just that. They're also extremely intelligent, extremely cunning, extremely charismatic and magically adept. Basically The Ubermensch but huge, winged, clawed and with an elemental breath attack. Hell, unlike the Tarrasque they are sentient, and how!

It's just that most GM's only remember that last part and forget the "Ubermensch" bit. But I can see a D&D dragon make all kinds of complicated, intricate plants to further its goals, use all kinds of mortal agents and be one helluva BBG. Not just a fire breathing lizard with wings.

Naagloshii (Dresden Files): A shape-shifting, semi-divine, intelligent, magic-wielding monster that eats vampires and wizards for breakfast and the only confirmed kill of a Naaglooshi ever was performed by dropping a literal Nuke on it (the wizard in question was one of the strongest combat-oriented member of his organization and he killed it by luring it into a nuclear test-site and teleport out just before the explosion). It says something about the Dresden Files universe that the supernatural Alcatraz of the universe threats these guys as minimum security inmates

Which is actually why I'm sort of worried about all that powercreep in the Dresden Files universe.

 

[Fox12]

Hmm, well the Idea of Evil gets a shout out. He's basically the ruler of humanities collective unconscious, which means that you can't really kill him without wiping out or fundamentally changing humanity... Which is a Pyrrhic victory. He also controls the fate of the world, and human will. Not necessarily the most powerful monster, but he's certainly the most terrifying.

Anything Lovecraftian wins, of course. Since we're basically just the mad dream of some dark God.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Let's see...

The Tarrasque from DnD has got to be up there.

And on the topic of D&D, honestly? Dragons. They're severely underappreciated in D&D, often just put in as a super strong monster. But no, they're not just that. They're also extremely intelligent, extremely cunning, extremely charismatic and magically adept. Basically The Ubermensch but huge, winged, clawed and with an elemental breath attack. Hell, unlike the Tarrasque they are sentient, and how!

It's just that most GM's only remember that last part and forget the "Ubermensch" bit. But I can see a D&D dragon make all kinds of complicated, intricate plants to further its goals, use all kinds of mortal agents and be one helluva BBG. Not just a fire breathing lizard with wings.

Naagloshii (Dresden Files): A shape-shifting, semi-divine, intelligent, magic-wielding monster that eats vampires and wizards for breakfast and the only confirmed kill of a Naaglooshi ever was performed by dropping a literal Nuke on it (the wizard in question was one of the strongest combat-oriented member of his organization and he killed it by luring it into a nuclear test-site and teleport out just before the explosion). It says something about the Dresden Files universe that the supernatural Alcatraz of the universe threats these guys as minimum security inmates

Which is actually why I'm sort of worried about all that powercreep in the Dresden Files universe.

Well the prison kind of avoids the power-creep issue by having god-level beings clearly state that if there's a jailbreak, it's The End. Harry isn't trying to "level up" in order to deal with them, since an explosion that would destroy most of North America will only delay them if they get out. They're less of an enemy and more of an instant-loss condition for the world that can't be dealt with, only avoided.

I'd say that for Harry, the naagloshii is probably one of the toughest monsters he'll be able to have a chance with in an honest fight, since he has some sort of to-be-revealed advantage over the Outsiders as a "starborn." Since the best thing he could do to the skinwalker last time was delay it and give it some bruises before it started torturing him to death, it'll take some serious cheating to do anything more to anything bigger.

 

[Compatriot Block]

snip

Have you read Cold Days? It's shown that

Spoiler

what Harry always thought was the "Black Council" was Nemesis (the Outsider spy/contagion/sentient possession spell) influencing and controlling various powers with the goal of eventually letting all of the Outsiders in through the Gates. Harry actually realizes and discusses how he was arrogantly assuming that it must have been wizards behind anything of importance, when it ended up being something much older and more dangerous.

More info: [link]http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Council[/link]

Plus Harry asks why Indian Joe didn't finish off the skinwalker, and he explains that while he might have hurt it, it was running towards a population center where the skinwalker would have had the advantage via hostages and collateral damage.

Plus, he said that if he ever made a mistake or just got plain unlucky, the skinwalker could absolutely kill him. This is the skinwalker that had spent time away from its home, which weakened it, and just received a soulfire-based bruising from Harry, up against a wizard that is centuries older and far stronger than Harry, and has Native American tradition and knowledge to give him extra advantage.

 

[ecoho]

Let's see...

The Tarrasque from DnD has got to be up there. To quote wikipedia's description:

"It is hoped that the tarrasque is a solitary creation, some hideous abomination unleashed by the dark arts or by elder, forgotten gods to punish all of nature. The elemental nature of the tarrasque leads the few living tarrasque experts to speculate that the elemental princes of evil have something to do with its existence. In any case, the location of the tarrasque remains a mystery, as it rarely leaves witnesses in its wake, and nature quickly grows over all remnants of its presence. It is rumored that the tarrasque is responsible for the extinction of one ancient civilization, for the records of their last days spoke of a 'great reptilian punisher sent by the gods to end the world'."

Also gotta throw up SCP-682.

People are working around the clock to find a way of killing the damned thing. They have to keep it submerged in hydrochloric acid just to incapacitate it. And unlike the Tarrasque, it knows what it's doing. It hates the world and everything in it.

......tarrasque the monster I hate the most. Had a DM drop one of those in on a campaign we were running because he didn't like how we kept beating him. That said we did kind of get the last laugh as we all rolled for divine intervention, using a dame D100 and half the group got the 100 we needed to live.

OT: have to be death himself. I mean you just cant win, at best you get a reprieve but he always gets you in the end.

 

[Summerstorm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4RuB3gT8t0

Come on. There are billions of them, cloaked in "niceness" they are intelligent, reasonable, altruistic and diplomatic... Except when they aren't. Madness, aggression. EVIL--- EVUUUL

Also the Terrasque is child's play. There are lvl 12 Character builds who can end it. (Technically CR2-3??? Alps can take it down forver)

I am casting my vote for the "Colour out of space" (Lovecraft knows what he is doing) Somewhere between a body-less infection and unseen presence. It is something which just... expands... always a bit more. You can't fight it, can't reason with it, if you are "infected", you can't leave. All you can do is nourish it and waste away. This thing eats Godzilla for breakfast, literally... might just take a few hundred years.

 

[GundamSentinel]

The Shrike from Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. Travels through time, manipulates time, can travel faster than light, can basically be everywhere at once, can modify his own density, is immune to weaponry, sticks people on a giant tree of thorns to suffer for all eternity (while traveling backwards in time). Piles millions (literally) of dead bodies in its underground lair and looks like a pile of knives welded together.

Described like this it might seem very made-up and random, but when placed inside that universe, where the Shrike is as strange and mysterious as it is dangerous and scary, it makes some strange sense.

 

[Ugicywapih]

Well, I'd say that for a monster to be dangerous, the threat it poses needs to be both potent and imminent. With that in mind and considering the nature of technological progress, where more powerful tools are progressively becoming more widely available (and destruction seems to be inherently easier than protection, much less creation), it's obvious that the most inescapable and everpresent threat of mankind's destruction comes from...

And don't do man, it's just cliche.

...well, fuck. How about the zombies then? Zombie virus appears to be statistically one of, if not THE most common cause of humanity's extinction/near extinction in fiction, so I guess it does have raw efficiency going for it.

 

[Denamic]

No one's mentioned Cthulhu yet? Or any great old one of the cthulhu mythos, really. Many of them will do worse things than kill you if you just look at them.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Let's see...

The Tarrasque from DnD has got to be up there. To quote wikipedia's description:

"It is hoped that the tarrasque is a solitary creation, some hideous abomination unleashed by the dark arts or by elder, forgotten gods to punish all of nature. The elemental nature of the tarrasque leads the few living tarrasque experts to speculate that the elemental princes of evil have something to do with its existence. In any case, the location of the tarrasque remains a mystery, as it rarely leaves witnesses in its wake, and nature quickly grows over all remnants of its presence. It is rumored that the tarrasque is responsible for the extinction of one ancient civilization, for the records of their last days spoke of a 'great reptilian punisher sent by the gods to end the world'."

Also gotta throw up SCP-682.

People are working around the clock to find a way of killing the damned thing. They have to keep it submerged in hydrochloric acid just to incapacitate it. And unlike the Tarrasque, it knows what it's doing. It hates the world and everything in it.

I have to say the Tarrasque personally. It requires so much to take it down and it never is destroyed, it just goes back to sleep. Hard to contend with an elemental force that is functionally immortal and truly impossible to kill. When the best you can do is hope to put it back to bed and are more likely to be obliterated in the attempt... Lets just say I'd rather run a group of players through the Tomb of Horrors with more success rate than pit them against a Tarrasque. I have only once used it in a campaign and it wasn't a central figure of the game, more of an encounter that changed the world to set up a new game and retire some old characters in heroic fashion.

 

[Tsaba]

I'm gonna go with Sauron.

 

[Thyunda]

No one's mentioned Cthulhu yet? Or any great old one of the cthulhu mythos, really. Many of them will do worse things than kill you if you just look at them.

Azathoth already got a mention, and he's easily the most dangerous. Cthulhu's nothing but a priest, Azathoth's epithet is 'The Primal Evil.'

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

OT: have to be death himself. I mean you just cant win, at best you get a reprieve but he always gets you in the end.

Deaths not that bad. After all, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah... 40K suffers from power creep, even within the backstory. Chaos were meant to be the ultimate threat that had humanity hanging by a thread... and then along come the Tyranids, a race that eats galaxies; then the C'tan popped up (literally gods among mortals until they were retcon-nerfed to something more reasonable); the Orks see-saw between being comedy material and an imminent threat to the galaxy, and so on.

It makes the backstory to the Tau actually quite refreshing. For once a 40K faction wasn't introduced as a superpower or an imminent threat to humanity/the materium/existence itself... it was just "hey, here are this small empire of vaguely Japanese aliens who are probably doomed in the big scheme of things, they've got some cool units though, why not give them a go".

I disagree a bit there.

The 'nids, yeah, suddenly they are the next big thing, but that's because they arrived from the next galaxy all of a sudden, it makes sense for them to be a new surprising threat, and in the old days this was based on the fear that there might be lots of them. OTOH, it was many years before it was confirmed that there were, if there were just the 3 first Hive Fleets, not good, but the first two were defeated and they were working on the 3rd.

Then the Dark Eldar were introduced, and, IMHO, they are the example of how to do it right. They are just another bunch of eldar, except nastier, then can appear anywhere in the galaxy and have reasons for fighting anyone. They fit the theme, don't change much about the game, they make sense.

Then the Tau, who were revealed to be everything that 40k was built on not having. Yeah, introducing a race that contradicts what made the setting popular, have them stuck in the middle of nowhere so that most armies wouldn't have a chance to fight them, and then keep blathering on about them in the fluff...grrr.

Then the C'tan, which absolutely everyone had known about forever, just nobody ever mentioned (or done anything about) until now for some reason.

If the C'tan had been there since the start, they'd have worked. The TAU, IMHO, aren't 40k at all.