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People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness. -- [Bramblesand, tumblr][32] (worth reading the rest of that thread).

It doesn't require "navigator"-level sky knowledge. I think enough of the readers can recognize two constellations that even a city dweller knowing them should be believable and relatable to the reader.

unless your world is similar enough that they can connect, in which case they can always just Google it.

This is unlikely to be the same reality as they were in the day before, as that would require the nebula to have come into being across the entirety of the night sky in one day, which would require a faster-than-light spread of the nebula, so seems like an unlikely possibility. If there are other people in that reality who treat the nebula as if it has always been there, that would solidify this conclusion.

They can't fully eliminate the possibility of hallucination or insanity or other mental effect that causes them to either imagine the nebula, or to imagine that it once was not there. But some reasoned thought and confirmation from third parties (eg the star map, other people) should allow them to rank that as fairly low on the probability list.

People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness. -- Bramblesand, tumblr (worth reading the rest of that thread).

It doesn't require "navigator"-level sky knowledge. I think enough of the readers can recognize two constellations that even a city dweller knowing them should be believable and relatable to the reader, unless your world is similar enough that their phones can connect, in which case they can always just Google it.

This is unlikely to be the same reality as they were in the day before, as that would require the nebula to have come into being across the entirety of the night sky in one day, which would require a faster-than-light spread of the nebula, so seems like an unlikely possibility. If there are other people in that reality, or internet sources there, who treat the nebula as if it has always been there, that would solidify this conclusion.

They can't fully eliminate the possibility of hallucination or insanity or other mental effect that causes them to either imagine the nebula, or to imagine that it once was not there. But some reasoned thought and confirmation from third parties (eg the cached star map, other people who came over with them) should allow them to rank that as fairly low on the probability list.

Hallucination or insanity or other mental effect that causes them to either imagine the nebula, or to imagine that it once was not there, can't be fully eliminated as a possibility, but some reasoned thought and confirmation from third parties (eg the star map, other people) should allow them to rank that as fairly low on the probability list.

They can't fully eliminate the possibility of hallucination or insanity or other mental effect that causes them to either imagine the nebula, or to imagine that it once was not there. But some reasoned thought and confirmation from third parties (eg the star map, other people) should allow them to rank that as fairly low on the probability list.

1. A pretty Aurora: weird but OK. Glowing with colours, a pretty light show. They look at it for a few seconds, but they are too busy with other things to think much about it. They would perhaps be surprised to see an aurora. ("Aurora Borealis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country?..."). It'd be weird, perhaps a little unnerving in the context, but not supernaturally so.

2. Known constellations: comforting touchstone. Let the protagonist spot a couple of the constellations that they know. Preferably two well-known ones which are a decent distance from each other. So, say, Orion and the Ursa Major. Someone reasonably educated would know two constellations, and would understand that being able to see two that are at a significant angle to each other means they can't be too far from Earth in any direction. Seeing only one would mean they're in a line from earth to the midpoint of that constellation. Seeing two means that you're somewhere in the intersection of the two lines, which gives probably less than a lightyear of scope for movement, especially for those constellations with fairly close stars.

   Be sure to pick two constellations that are visible from wherever the protagonist is on Earth: the Southern Cross is only visible from the southern hemisphere, and Ursa Major from the northern!

   So at first, seeing their familiar constellations, they would be comforted. I am comforted whenever I see the Plough. It's like a touchstone to me.

   Perhaps a couple of stars in the constellation are hidden behind the Aurora, but it's still easily recognizable.

3. A Nebula: the penny drops. But over time, because it is static, with features and details that remain constant over multiple hours, the protagonist will slowly realize that the glow in the sky is not an aurora, a localized Earth phenomenon, but something unimaginably vaster in scale. The entire galaxy is within a nebula.

   One way to play with this is to have savvy readers spot this before the protagonist. Perhaps, in their initial glance, have them notice a curl that appears to wrap around the moon. In a later scene, describe that the moon has moved out of that curl, then that the moon's setting, and maybe even have the protagonist calculate time's passage by comparing the distance from the moon's position to the curl, dividing the arc of the sky into 12 to get approx time in hours, or something, without explicitly mentioning or making any point of the fact that the aurora is stationary, until the protagonist goes "hey wait, why isn't this aurora moving?"

   However they realize, the protagonist can then look closer, and see more static details, sweeping tendrils of glowing gas across the sky. Has something happened in space? A big solar flare, or even something hit the Moon and filled Earth's orbit with dusty ejecta...?

4. Behind the stars: unimaginable scale. To really drive home the scale to the reader, the protagonist may investigate further, in which case they will realize that the nebula is BEHIND the constellations we all know and love. Encompassing the whole Milky Way, that it's not just planetary, interplanetary, or interstellar, but intergalactic. Or at least, too nebulous to have a significant effect within just the few hundred light years that contain the stars of the constellations.

   So the constellations would be visible as they are all made from nearby stars, only a few of them more than about 1k light-years of us, in our local area of the 100-light-year-across Milky Way galaxy. But Andromeda (another galaxy, 2.5 million light-years away) would be hidden by the glowing nebula. The Pleiades (442,000 light years) could be hidden, or just somewhat faded.

   You might argue that knowing where to find galaxies or star clusters in the sky is a bit of a stretch, and I agree. I recognize the Pleiades when I see them, but I wouldn't be able to tell if they were missing, because I don't know where they are relative to other stuff. I suggest having them find it out from their phone's star map app. If the alternate world is similar enough, they can always just connect and download one, but otherwise, you can handwave that they have one that has the star maps cached and the last known geolocation cached, so being unable to connect to GPS and cell data would be another hint they aren't in the same reality, but wouldn't prevent the app from working. Either way, that'll show them where they SHOULD be able to see the various constellations, and they should match up perfectly... except for the missing distant stuff.

5. Science: Is that even possible? Further investigation could show them that the largest known nebula is the NGC_262 halo cloud, only 1.3 million light years across, so what they're looking at is plausibly big, but its existence around the Milky Way implies at least subtle differences in the physical laws or formation of this universe, or some natural event at intergalactic scale, or some immense supernatural or alien influence, far beyond the normal imaginings of man.

1. A pretty Aurora: weird but OK. Glowing with colours, a pretty light show. They look at it for a few seconds, but they are too busy with other things to think much about it. They would perhaps be surprised to see an aurora. ("Aurora Borealis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country?..."). It'd be weird, perhaps a little unnerving in the context, but not supernaturally so.

2. Known constellations: comforting touchstone. Let the protagonist spot a couple of the constellations that they know. Preferably two well-known ones which are a decent distance from each other. So, say, Orion and the Ursa Major. Someone reasonably educated would know two constellations, and would understand that being able to see two that are at a significant angle to each other means they can't be too far from Earth in any direction. Seeing only one would mean they're in a line from earth to the midpoint of that constellation. Seeing two means that you're somewhere in the intersection of the two lines, which gives probably less than a lightyear of scope for movement, especially for those constellations with fairly close stars.

   Be sure to pick two constellations that are visible from wherever the protagonist is on Earth: the Southern Cross is only visible from the southern hemisphere, and Ursa Major from the northern!

   So at first, seeing their familiar constellations, they would be comforted. I am comforted whenever I see the Plough. It's like a touchstone to me.

   Perhaps a couple of stars in the constellation are hidden behind the Aurora, but it's still easily recognizable.

3. A Nebula: the penny drops. But over time, because it is static, with features and details that remain constant over multiple hours, the protagonist will slowly realize that the glow in the sky is not an aurora, a localized atmospheric phenomenon, but something bigger in scale.

   One way to play with this is to have savvy readers spot this before the protagonist. Perhaps, in their initial glance, have them notice a curl that appears to wrap around the moon. In a later scene, describe that the moon has moved out of that curl, then that the moon's setting, and maybe even have the protagonist calculate time's passage by comparing the distance from the moon's position to the curl, dividing the arc of the sky into 12 to get approx time in hours, or treating the moon as a half-degree (fairly common knowledge I think), and counting the distance to the curl in moon-widths to get time in 720ths of a day, without explicitly mentioning or making any point of the fact that the curl (and hence the aurora) is stationary, until the protagonist goes "hey wait, why isn't this aurora moving?"

   However they realize, the protagonist can then look closer, and see more static details, sweeping tendrils of glowing gas across the sky. The moon isn't just "bright enough to shine through" the aurora, it's in front of the aurora. Has something happened in space? A big solar flare, or even something hit the far side of the Moon and filled Earth's orbit with dusty ejecta...?

4. Behind the stars: unimaginable scale. To really drive home the scale to the reader, the protagonist may investigate further, in which case they will realize that the nebula is BEHIND the constellations we all know and love. Encompassing the whole Milky Way, that it's not just planetary, interplanetary, or interstellar, but intergalactic. Or at least, too nebulous to have a significant effect within just the few hundred light years that contain the stars of the constellations.

   So the constellations would be visible as they are all made from nearby stars, only a few of them more than about 1k light-years of us, in our local area of the 100-light-year-across Milky Way galaxy. But Andromeda (another galaxy, 2.5 million light-years away) would be hidden by the glowing nebula. The Pleiades (442,000 light years) could be hidden, or just somewhat faded.

   You might argue that knowing where to find galaxies or star clusters in the sky is a bit of a stretch, and I agree. I recognize the Pleiades when I see them, but I wouldn't be able to tell if they were missing, because I don't know where they are relative to other stuff. I suggest having them find it out from their phone's star map app. If the alternate world is similar enough, they can always just connect and download one, but otherwise, you can handwave that they have one that has the star maps cached and the last known geolocation cached, so being unable to connect to GPS and cell data would be another hint they aren't in the same reality, but wouldn't prevent the app from working. Either way, that'll show them where they SHOULD be able to see the various constellations, and they should match up perfectly... except for the missing distant stuff.

5. Science: Is that even possible? Further investigation could show them that the largest known nebula is the NGC_262 halo cloud, only 1.3 million light years across, so what they're looking at is plausibly big, but its existence around the Milky Way implies at least subtle differences in the physical laws or formation of this universe, or some natural event at intergalactic scale, or some immense supernatural or alien influence, far beyond the normal imaginings of man.