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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 4812060" data-attributes="member: 54846">Part of the problem is that your players all ready know the monsters. Why do they know what illithids or aboleth want when they meet them? Because they're established. If your players had never heard of an illithid, they'd not know. Besides, just because it's knowable doesn't make it any less alien. Almost any species, for instance, has the drive: food, reproduction. That doesn't make Xenomorphs from aliens any less freaking scary. Or the entity from the movie "The Thing". Many "alien" entities' purpose is to just propagate and expand. Consider "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The Faculty", "Slither" or any other "conversion/enslavement" movie with mind-controlling parasites. Or hell, Cthulu's whole shtick is that when he wakes up he'll eat the universe. That's pretty easily understood.Another thing is that if you make your whole campaign about encountering the weird, alien, exotic, unknowable... the players are soon going to be not surprised by the 24th "alien, unknowable thing". It's becoming common to throw alien things at them.</blockquote>