The element of horror

Unless you live under a rock, it's pretty obvious the pictures are above are from a Silent Hill game (they're from Silent Hill: Homecoming to be precise). Now, there are many things that the Silent Hill games get right, and the absolute aesthetic of the world is one of them. The games creators make their "otherworld" a mix of rusted metal and strangely organic that when you're playing a game, you can't help but think "This is what hell has to be like".

Now, I bring this up not just because I'm a Silent Hill fan (which I am), but because the look of Otherworld is very much something I want to incorporate into Eastgate. 

Now, I'm pretty sure that the notion of using the look of a hell dimension in a high fantasy story will probably cause some people to think I'm losing it. I'd argue, however, that Eastgate is a story about a world where the Dark Lord won. It's a story where Tolkiens 'scouring of the Shire' happened to the entire world (or, at least the entire world that anyone will be seeing for a while in this series [oops, was that a spoiler?]).

Anyway, since this is a very Tolkien inspired world, I'd been  wondering (this is months ago mind you) what would a world taken over my Orcs look like? If you think about the world of the Orcs as presented in the Lord of the Rings films, then most environments had a fiery glow to them. Trees are laid to waste in order to stoke the fires. Forges are readily available. Things are dirty. Metal is prominent, and since these are not a people that think much about hygiene or preservation, it's probably all going to rust in short order. 

It's like the basement of any Saw movie. Heck, look at this orc helmet from Moria, and tell me this doesn't look like a Saw prop.

It's horrible to human sensibilities, yet to these Orcs, it probably just seems like normal. 

This is where my mind connected to Silent Hill. 

Although every Silent Hill game has a slightly different take on the Otherworld, they always seem to incorporate the same elements in different proportions. The entire world seems like it's made out of enough rusty metal to warrant an iron maiden full of tetanus shots. It's always back lit by unseen fires. There are weird organic elements that looks like organs sprouting out of things (think about those birthing pods in the pits at Isengard, they're not too dissimilar).

To me, it seems like an Orc-itect's wet dream. 

There are problems with this, though. The first being selling the strong element of horror in a fantasy story. 

Case in point. In Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, he has a fell drawn world in which the Dark Lord won. It's a world where ash falls from the sky and nights are consumed in a mist that makes it hard for normal people to see. The thing about this, though, is that it doesn't seem like a terrible place to live (and it's explained why it's not a terrible place to live in later books). 

That's not something I want people to think when they're reading Eastgate. 

Now, let me say straight off that the actual ghetto of Eastgate isn't going to look like the Silent Hill images above. No, they'll be a bit different (something I'll get into later). However, I want the rest of the books primary city (Ban Cathratch) to look a lot like Silent Hill's Otherworld in order to really sell that this is a terrible place in a terrible world. There's no "well it's not so bad" about living under the reign of the One True Lord. There's only terrible and bearable. 

Eastgate is bearable (barely). The rest of the city is terrible. 

Selling a strong horror element without making it a horror story is, to me, tricky. It needs to be clear, and a factor in the story that is always in the mind of the reader. It needs to be loud and visible without dominating the narrative. Simultaneously, it's got to avoid going over the top, so that no one gets horror out of the element, it just comes off as silly and unbelievable.

The second tricky element is, as mentioned above, not letting the horror completely override the fantasy tone. It's very easy for a story with horror elements to simply become a horror story, but that's not what Eastgate is at all. Yes, the world is a nightmare. There are immortal wraths in charge, and a "dark god" ruling the world. There are also ambers that can give immeasurable power, but at a terrifying cost. But, it's really no more a horror story than Lord of the Rings. 

So, where in the middle do the elements of fantasy and horror meet? Where does the rusty industrial nightmare meet the story of hope and rebellion?