Category talk:Eldritch creatures

Purpose

Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough, but what is this category even supposed to contain? There is no creature trait called 'Eldritch', and despite the name, it contains a lot of things that are not even considered to be creatures (like NPCs). - HTD (talk) 05:06, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

The Elder Sign's powers "work only on a creature connected to the Elder Mythos or a cosmic horror, such as a wendigo or gug" and refers to this category of beings as "eldritch creatures." The category is more of a narrative grouping rather than a mechanical trait, though the name does leave it open to confusion. I think changing the name would help, but considering the current name is how they're referred to in the sourcebook I'm not sure what would be a good replacement. - Pseudoname (talk) 03:03, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

That is what I initially thought until I saw the creatures associated with the Dominion of the Black being added to the category (they are no more associated with the Mythos than alghollthus or similar aberrations are). That and I'm not sure if that one single mechanic needs a whole category to itself, (I mean, Category:Elder Mythos already exists). - HTD (talk) 12:11, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, adding the Dominion of the Black was a bit of a stretch inspired mostly by their connection to the Dark Tapestry (which would sync them to generic cosmic horror rather than the Elder Mythos, but no more than a havero or shining child) and the fact that some neh-thalggu serve as leaders/proxy gods to the Old Cults. Personally I'm always in favor of expanding categorization, so I'm probably biased, but I considered using that category and decided against it for a couple reasons. First, the Elder Mythos page redirects to the Old Cults, and while that is a significant chunk of its presence in the Golarion setting, it's not all encompassing. Second, the Elder Mythos category would include the Outer Gods and certain magic items, and it's unclear whether those would be affected by an elder sign. I think the eldritch creature category could use some clean-up, but is ultimately valid overall. That said, I am new here and I'm working on a less than fully knowledgeable base of the wiki's systems, so if you think the eldritch creature category isn't necessary, I'm fully on-board with removing it. - Pseudoname (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the criterion 'being affected by a specific magic item' is overly narrow and/or overly crunchy to merit a whole category to itself. I mean, the only differences between this category (as it currently exists minus the Dominion creatures) and the Elder Mythos category (if it were to be populated) would be the magic items (characters are already in Category:Old Cults, and Great Old Ones and Outer Gods have their own categories, all of which are subcategories of Category:Elder Mythos, so they would not have to be put into the parent category). For the record, I redirected Elder Mythos to Old Cults not because they are the same thing, but because the term Elder Mythos seems to have no real in-world meaning (even though every HPL fan would know what it actually refers to); I see it as something that can have a category to itself, but probably not an article (like Category:Megafauna for example). - HTD (talk) 16:13, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I think you're right, I'll start changing over the categorized pages now. --Pseudoname (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

As this page no longer has any use, how do I go about deleting it? --Pseudoname (talk) 00:32, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

In order to preserve this discussion, I'm leaving the empty category for now. Since it doesn't belong to another category and contains no content, it exists solely as a placeholder for this discussion.— Yoda8myhead (talk) 18:26, 29 March 2020 (UTC)