Bump cause curious where this is going....

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>>38134108
Here we have examples of probably the most famous abyssal fish, the deep sea anglerfish, also known as sea devils. Much like the non-deepsea anglerfish, they have a lure (called an esca) on the end of a "fishing pole" (called an illium), which they use to attract prey. Since they live in the lightless depths, the lure contains bioluminescent bacteria to make it glow in the dark and hopefully lure prey close enough to be eaten.
Anglerfish come in variety of shapes and sizes. Most tend to be rather spherical in shape, and are not built for speed. They kind of float around waiting for prey to come to them. Some, however, diverge from the usual design. The second one from the top of the picture, for example, is called the wolftrap anglerfish. Its upper jaw folds in half lenghtwise to trap prey. This particular species also has an illium that actually looks like a fishing rod, complete with hooks on the lure! Some anglerfish lack the traditional fishing rod style illium and instead suspend the lure inside their mouths, waiting for the prey to literally swim into their mouth.

Deep sea anglerfish also have a very unique way of reproduction. See the two small fish stuck on the big one in the picture? Those are the male aglerfish. Male anglerfish are much smaller than females, and lack lures, pointy teeth or even a proper digetsive system. Instead they have very good sense of smell, allowing them to track down a female. Once they find one, they bite onto her, secreting an enzyme that fuses their bodies together with the female. Over time their bodies atropy untill they're little more than a pair of testicle attached to the female.

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>>38134108
This is another well-know deep sea fish, the viperfish. Much like the anglerfish, it has huge jaws with oversized teeth, and many species also have lures. However, unlike the rotund anglerfish, the viperfish are sleek an agressive-looking, and are much more active hunters. Uniquely, they posses red-tinted light organs behind their eyes. What's so special about this? Well, red light is the first wave lenght to be absorbed by water, so most deep sea creatures have lost the receptors necessary to see red, as it would be pointless. This is why many deep sea creatures that are not pitch black are bright red, the colour effectively making them invisible.
Viperfish, on the other hand, can see red. The red light organs effectively give it spotlights that only it can see, allowing it to spot prey while remaining invisible.
Viperfish are also sexually dimorphic, but not quite to the extend of anglerfish. The males are smaller than females and do not eat once matured. They attempt to find a female and mate with her before dying of starvation. Young viperfish have eyes on the ends of crazy long stalks, that coil into their eyesockets as they mature.

I have absolutely no fucking idea what this thread is doing here, but please continue.

Here is also some music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfFCeTsWAps

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>>38134108
The thing in the OP is also a type of viperfish, known as the loosejaw or rat-trap fish. Its lower jaw can reach out and grab prey. The jaws are disconnected from the floor of the mouth, which is a open hole, in order to reduce drag and allow the jaws to snap forward at incredible speed. Freaky.

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>>38134108
This...Thing is a gulper- or pelican eel (genus Saccopharyngiformes). It's not actually an ell at all, but it's long and thin like one, so we call it one anyway. Kind of like how Cthulhu doesn't have anything to do with octopuses but his face kind of looks like one.
As you can see, the gulper eel forgoes the traditional "hundreds of needle-like fangs" approach taken by many abyssal fish. Instead it just has an enormous mouth that can stretch extremely wide to swallow large prey, and an elastic stomach that can stretch to several times its original size. This thing is less a fish and more a swimming mouth and stomach. Any non-mouth-or-stomach parts exist just to get the mouth and stomach near something it can swallow whole. It also has a glowing lure on its tail that it uses to attract prey. Some specimens have been observing floating around with the tip of their tail inside their mouths in order to lure prey in.

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These are great. Thanks, OP!

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>>38134108
So, lets say you're a normal fish that took the wrong turn and ended up in the nighmare realm that is the abyss. After narrowly avoiding being eaten by shorrifying monsters, you finally come across a normal-looking fish. Well, normal is a relative term; it's still pitch black with sharp pointy teeth, but after all the fanged horrors and umbrella-mouthed eel-things, at leats this thing looks like something recognizeably like a fish. It's also considerably smaller than you, so it's unlikely to pose much of a treath. You can probably ask him directions on how to get out of here, right?

WRONG! This the the Undersea Vore Dimension, bitch! You've just encountered the black swallower (genus chiasmodon. Also, The Black Swallower totally sound slike a name of an eldricth horror. Or maybe a rock band), and before you can realise your mistake, it unhinges its jaws to chomp onto your head, and begins swallowing you whole. The swalloer is probably the posterchild for the common abyssal trait of "eating things bigger than youself", know to swallow creatures four times its own size, its stomach ballooning to cartoonish degrees. Infact, sometimes one has eaten a prey so big that it starts to decompose before the swallower can fully digest it, the gasses building up in its stomach making it lighter than water and floating it to the surface (which is what happened to the specimen in the picture). There is a saying in my language that goes "the greedy have a shitty end". I quess this fish serves as a warning. Also a warning not to trust strange fish from the abyss, even if they look mostly harmless. The bastard can probably still swallow you whole.

https://dotsub.com/view/000d198e-fb1e-4b63-a273-dfb1add6a925

Video very related.

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>>38134108
WHta the heck is even going on in here? This fish has a transparent head. Those green things inside? Those are the eyes. They can move independently, and generally point upwards. The transparent dome is thought to protect it from stigns of jellyfish, on which it feeds.

There are other examples of abyssal fish with enormour, often upwards-pointing eyes(such as the rather well-know hatchetfish), but this is one of the more extreme. There is also a fish that has a small secondary pair of eyes under the main one, and a third set of eyes behind the second (though that one lacks retinae and just helps collect light for the primary eyes).

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>>38134108
Speaking of hatchetfish, here is one. This picture and ones like it are pretty common around the internet. It looks rather creepy, with eerily human-like features.
When viewed from the side, however, the hatchetfish looks like a fairly normal, if very flat, fish. Unlike many other abyssa fish, this one does not swallow things bigger than itself whole (shocking, I know)! Instead, it rises from the depths at night to feath on the souls (and bodies) of small crustaceans and the like. Being a relatively normal fish trapped in the Horrible Vore Dimension is presumably why it constantly has a look of utter despair on its face. Poor hatchetfish.

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>>38134108
This is a female whalefish. It has the basic bodyshape of a fish, but pretty much nothing else. It looks like a rudimentary scetch, or the bare-bones no extra options fish. Also looks like sombody flayed it. The red colour is, like mentioned above, because most deep sea creatures cannot see red.
As we've already come to expect, this thing has an elactic mouth and stomach that allows it to eat large prey. Some species aren't content to just swallow things with their mouths, and also use their gill-slits as secondary mouths to swallow smaller things. They can potentially eat three things at the same time. Efficient!

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>>38135339
>or the bare-bones no extra options fish
I laughed.

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>>38134108
I specified that the above was a female whalefish. This is the male one. These are yet another extremely sexually dimorphic abyssal fish. In fact, untill relatively recently, the young, the male and the female whalefish were all thought to be different animals.
Whalefish begin their lives as a larval form that lives in the shallower waters, eating small crustaceans and the like. Eventually the time will come for them to leave behind the sunlit surface waters and decend in the darkness of the abyss. During their downward journey, their bodies undergo a dramatic change. The females turn into the bright red bloated beasties seen above, while the males' mouths fuse shut and their nasal cavities enlarge, allowing them to sniff out a female to mate with hopefully before they finish digesting their last meal and die.
It's pretty rough being a male abyssal fish, it seems. Females get to go around eating things bigger than themselves, while the males often lakc the ability to even feed themselves, existing just to mate and die. At leats with the anglerfish, the male merges with the female and lives on as a part of her, even if said part is only his ballsack.

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>>38134108
This is the appropriately named ogrefish or fangtooth. Some species posses fangs so big that have special sheathes on their upper jaw to keep them from accidentally stabbing their brains whenever they close their mouths. In fact, they have the largest teeth relative to body-size on any fish. They kind of remind me of squigs.
The ogrefish is veyr resilient as far as abyssal fishes go. Most tend to suffer explosive decompression when lifted from their habitat, but ogrefish have actually survived several months in captivity.

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>>38134108
This is the above-mentioned multi-eyes fish. Note the smaller, secondary eye under the primary one.

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>>38134108
A drawing of the Chiasmodon fish, showing it before and after it performs fish-vore on an unfortunate victim.

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>>38134108
We can't let fish to have all the fun, though. Abyssal invertebrates can be creepy as well!
This is a giant marine isopod. It's very much like the normal isopod (also known as pillbug or roly-poly), except it lives in the bottom of the ocean and is gigantic. Many deep sea invertebrates reach much larger sizes than their shallower water relatives, the giant squid probably being the most famous example. The giant isopods feed on carcasses of dead things and detritus falling from above.

In fact, there is an entire ecosystem in the bottm of the ocean that revolves around scavenging the craps of food that fall from above. Aside from the occasional carcass of a large fish or a whale, the ocean floor is blanketed by constant fall of "marine snow", bacteria and organic waste of the organism living above. The ocean floor is mostly covered by endless plains formed of the remnats of billions upon billions of dead creatures. A nice place, I'm sure.

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>>38134108
Vapiroteuthis infernalis, or vampire squid from hell. Bearer of the most metal name of any animal ever. Not actually a squid, the vampire squid is the last living member of its order, which used to be much more common back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. It is believed they were usurped by the modern squids and octopuses, banished in the eternal darkness of the abyss where their enemies could not follow them. Perhaps one dya they shall rise up and reclaim their rightful place. For now, they seem content to hang around in the abyss, though.
Vampire squid have bioluminescent ink they can use to distract predators, as well as glowing photophores on their bodies. Its tentacles are connected to each other by a web of tissue, and if trethened is will wrap them around its body, becoming a black ball covered in spiky appendages (called cirri. They're not actually very spiky, being rather soft).

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>>38134108
Here we see a herd of majestetic abyssal sea cucumbers grazing on the marine snow of the abyssal plaines. Tiny abyssal cowboys may or may not be herding them just outside the field of vision.

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>>38134108
A particularly spherical anglerfish. It's kind of cute, really, in a freky way.

>>38135906
>In fact, there is an entire ecosystem in the bottm of the ocean that revolves around scavenging the craps of food that fall from above.
>Craps

>visit 4chan frontpage
>about to click on /k/
>see giant isopod
Thank you for this thread OP

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>>38134108
An anglerfish before and after swallowing some unfortunate fish.

I could post random images of abyssal fish for an arbitarily long time (there is no shortage of pictures of them on the internet), but I'm getting a bit tired. If anybody has ideas on how to adapt the various creatures into their games, feel free to chime in.

>>38136176
That was a typo, but actually pretty accurate, considering what marine snow is largely made from (organic waste, and remains of dead organisms).

Some anon once suggested in a thread about mermaids that perhaps mermaids, like seemingly everything else in the ocean, gets more freakish the deeper you go. Perhaps abyssal merfolk could serve as enemies in a nautical campaigns (maybe they're at war with regular merfolk, or were banished into the abyss ages ago and are now planning to rise up and reclaim the surface world).

I'd rather like seeing somebody draw mermaids based on some of the posted creatures, rather than the usual "human with generic fish tail" look.

>>38136062
This is starting to read like a cracked article.

>>38136361
I've actually seen a few here and there. Bit too spooky for my setting folders, though, I've been wanting to do an undersea setting for a while.

I talked about it a bit a while back, but got nothing done due to college and CYOA's.

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>>38135906
But giant isopods are cute...They even make plushies of them.

>>38138179
Did you include the fish with a transparent skull and eyes in the center of their head, so they can swivel to look directly up as well?

I've always wanted to run a short campaign about a group of scientists (the PC's) going into the deepest abyss in a tight and cramped bathysphere.

I don't think I'll ever be able to run that idea, but shit like this makes me want to try anyways.

Abyss-anon, could we get some more? I'm really digging this.

Have some songs I've found that suit the abyss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-odP4b3Fc4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqaI_i7uec

Cat goes fishing!

This thread is neato. Anybody here follow the crustacean civ quest by any chance? They deal with some pretty similar subject matter.

Shit

This is the stuff of nightmares.

>>38134108
Thanks OP, fantastic stuff.

>>38146437
Damn right it is. I remain convinced that the main reason life evolved the ability to live on land was to get as far as possible from the horrors in the bottom of the ocean.

Seriously, though, I think the deep sea is an awesomely creepy place. It's probably the most alien enviroment you can think of. There is no light or warmth there, no plants to form the basis of the ecosystem. Nothing we normally consider the foundation of a food chain.
The only source of energy input (aside from some locations at the ocean floor with geothermal activity) is the organic waste falling from above and the occasional creatures that move between the abyss and the surface waters.
The ecosystem of the abyss is built entirely around scavengers and predators, with many species having evolved into bizarre and nightmarish forms in an evolutionary arms race to eat or be eaten. Every other cretaure is both a potential prey and a potential predator. It's pretty much a real-life death world.

Luckily for us, life in the abyss operates on a different scale (most of the scary-looking creatures above could fit into the palm of your hand), and tends to die when removed from their enviroment (being built to survive pressure that would crush a human in seconds means they tend to explode when brought up to surface conditions). But imagine if that wasn't the case. Like maybe in a fantasy game, there is an abyss-like enviroment outside normal reality, poulated by monstrous versions of thethings posted above, and some cultists open a rift between them. Our world is filled with life and warmth and other things they lack, so they'll be swarming through, intent on devouring everything in sight.

Not read through this thread yet, but this seems like it'll be fantastic reference material for my Crustacean Civ, which is set on the abyssal plane of an alien world. Cheers OP!

This stuff proves that nature has a vore fetish and/or hates us.

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>Undersea Vore Dimension

I am using this term to refer to the ocean any time I refer to it at all.

This is a good thread.

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Abyss-anon here. I have a few hours before I have to go to work, so I can post some more stuff. Anything in particular you want?

Picture is a larva of a dragonfish/viperfish. Note the eystalks. They're still present in the adult fish, just wound up inside the skull.

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>>38136361
I found this on the internet.

>>38148571
What would you say is the all time strangest thing you know of down there in the dark depths beyond the reach of mortal man?

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Saccopharyngiformes (gulper eels, pelican eels etc) are among my favourites given how absolutely bizarre they look. They're also quite big for abyssal fish, with the largest being around 2 meters in lenght. I'm not sure if that would make one big enough to swallow a human, but given what I've seen so far, I'm quessing it could be possible. Luckily, like most abyssal creatures, they're pretty fragile, so if one did eat you you could probably punch your way out. Not that that a diver and the fish could ever survive in the same enviroment, anyway. Also, they prefer to eat relatively small animals like crustaceans and small squids, which the can scoop up in large quantties into their cavernous mouths.

>>38148571
I'm trying to do something Lovecraft-based. Got anything that would work particularly well (though most of this stuff already fits) in terms of the mythos?

>>38148571
Don't go, Anon of the Abyss. We want to hear more stories.

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>>38148649
Besides really weird-looking fish, it's likely this thing here.
The picture is a test, or a shell formed by a single-celled amoeba from ocean floor detritus. The ameoba lives inside it. This is hardly unusual, but what makes this thing so strange is the size.
Single-celled creatures tend to be microscopic, but here we have the ultimate example of deep-sea giantism. This amoeba is the size of a human fist! That's probably billions of times bigger than your everyday amoeba!

>>38139684
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t01dYTecfS8

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>>38148726
I've always envisioned Nyarlathotep's hunting horrors as looking like viperfish with wings. Most illustrations I've seen descipt them as winged serpentine beings, and making them viperfish fits the theme (the Outer Void is pretty much the interdimensional version of the abyss, and Lovecraft had a thing for creepy sea creatures).
Other extremely alien-looking abyssal creatures such as the gulper eel and the vampire squid are also good basis for otherworldly monsters.

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This is a goblin-shark. It is yet another proof that nature hates you. It is the last extanct species of a family of sharks that can be traced back to 125 million years. The long snout can sense electric fields, and the jaws can shoot outwards to catch prey.

>>38148806
Oh god what the fuck is with its eyes. Why would it have eyes like that?

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>>38139684
>Superior thread music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNN-FdFishs

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>>38148806
Technically the goblin shark is not an abyssal fish, as it it lives in swalloer (but still deep) water, "only" around 1000 meters deep. Stiil, it definitely qualifies as a feaky deep sea creature.

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>>38136361
>>38148604
Here's another one

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>>38148818
Most pictures show them with more normal-like eyes, so the look is probably pertly because of the specimen has been pulled out of the water and partly dried up.
Fun fact: unlike other deep sea sharks, goblin sharks can change the size of their pupils, like a human can.

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More anglerfish. They come in a large variety. Which one is your favourite? I like the horrifying one. Of course, they're all horrifying.

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This is the biggest known deep sea anglerfish, Kroyer's deep sea angler fish. It can grow up to 1.2 meters in lenght. Considering most species are rarely more than 0.2 meters, that is very big. If it follows the bilogy of other abyssal anglerfish, this one could theoretically swallow you whole (many abyssal anglers can swallow a prey animal up to twice their size). Probably not in practice, though.

Fun fact: anglerfish are also known as sea devils. This is presumably due to their horrific appearance and tendancy toward lawful evil.

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I probably should've posted this at the beginning. It shows the different levels of the ocean, and the proper terms for them. The epipelagic zone (upper 200 meters) is the only lvel that gets proper sunlight, and contains 90% of marine biomass. The zone below that (mesopegaligic) is also known as "the twilight zone" due to there being some light, but not enough for photosynthesis. This is the lower limit of what most would consider the "normal" ocean. Beyond this, you enter the world of bathypelagic and abyssopelagic zones, also known as the "midnight zones", nightmare realm or undersea vore dimension, where no light of the sun ever reaches.
Fun fact: despite being mostly a featureless black void, the abyss is still estimated to have more life than all of Earth's rainforests. Mostly because it is mindbogglingly huge.

>>38148902
That one has eerily human-like eyes too. With most fish you see this vacant fish stare, but not these fuckers.

>>38148902
...Those eyes screaming it feels nothing but pain.

>>38149113
Isn't there a version of that picture with Ry'leh and Cthulhu?

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>>38149113
What's in the trench, anon?

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>>38149145
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBAzlNJonO8

>>38149186
Very little is known of life in there. The conditions are similar to the abyssopelagic zone so they're sometimes considered to be the same. Presumably the things living there are similar as well, but relatively little research has been done at those depths. For all we know, it could be home to horrifying monsters that can drive mortal men insane with their appearance alone. Wouldn't really be that different from the horrors living above them.
Most of the creatures I've posted so far are actually typically found in the upper midnight zone (bathypelagic), but can be encountered in the upper levels of the abyss as well. The deeper you go, less life you're likely to find.

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This is a species of fish found in the depths of up to 6000 meters. It has no eyes and stands on the abyssal plan using three long fins (up to a meter in lenght), eating things that float by in the current. When it needs to move, the fins become less rigid and trail behind it. Nobody knows how exactly it changes its fins from soft to rigid.

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This is not a living creature, but a nodule of managenese and iron. These are formed by precipitation of metals from seawater over the timescale of millions of years, and are found in the sediment of the abyssal plains, sometimes in freat quantities. They contain many precious metals, and could serve as a motivation for a campaign set in the deep sea. Mining these things gets brough up every now and then, but so far the cost of sending and retrieving mining equipment from the abyss and concerns of enviromental damage has led to the ideas being shot down. No word whether concerns of waking up Cthulhu or having the miners eaten by previously unknown sea monsters also factors in.

>>38148604
Would tap so hard.
>>38148743
That's fucking amazing.

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Another picture of the Chiasmodon niger (aka. the black swallower or, as I prefer to call it, the vore fish), another fish that has been encountered in the abyssal zone. They grow to about 25 cm in lenght, and regularly swallow fish twice their lenght and ten times their weight. One was found dead after swallowing a fish four times its own lenght, causing its stomach to burst. I like how they look relatively normal, so you don't expect them to do something like that.

>>38148818
The better to see you with dear.

>>38149396
>Would tap so hard.
Based of what we've learned so far, she'd probably swallow you whole if you tried that.

Actually, scratch the "probably". This is the Undersea Vore Dimension. If the deep sea mermaids don't some with swallow whole as a standard ability, somebody is doing something wrong.

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>>38149445
I'll just tape her mouth shut.

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>>38136361
One of the few good things to come out of the New 52 in DC comics was Aquaman. In comics Aquaman has always been a badass (nothing at all like his Superfriends version, Aquaman is a top-tier superhero that can kick the ass of 90% of the other heroes in DC), but the New 52 comic basically condensed everything about him into pure distilled awesome.

And his first enemies in his comic run?

The Trench.

>>38149493
Aquaman has a power that would be really awesome to have, but not really good for crime fighting. I'd love to be able to breathe underwater and communicate with sea creatures, but most crimes tend to occur on land. I know he also has the standard super strenght, but out of the ocean he's pretty much your generic superhero dude, as the things that make him special are of little use.

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>>38149145

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This is the blobfish. It is closely related to lionfish and scorpionfish. A pretty boring looking animal in comparison to many of the surreal horrors posted so far, but it can be found living at great depths. As an adaption to its enviroment, the body is mostly made out of soft gelatinous tissue with less density that water, allowing it to maintain neutral boyancy and not be crushed by the immense pressure. However, when pulled out of the ocean and with no water pressure to maintain its form...

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Tell 'em about the Bobbit Worm, OP.

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>>38134108

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>>38149618
...It collapes into this lump of flesh.

>captha: Hadeo
Appropriate.

>>38148838
>>38148766
Fuck yeah, we need more shit like this.

>>38149620
Well, they grow sevel meters long, can bit hard enough to cut a fish in half (and possibly sever a finger), and are lined with venomous bards that can cause you to permanently loose your sense of touch. Not really abyssal, though, as these things can be found at relatively shallow waters. Have fun never going to the beach again!

Fun fact: one aquarium accdentally got one of these things into their tank (it had been hiding among some corals). They couldn't figure out what kept eating their fish, and any attempts to cath it with meat attached to fishing hooks failed (the next morning the lines had been snapped). They had to empty the whole tank to find the thing. Several half-digested metal fishing hooks were found inside the worm's stomach.

>>38149552
>Aquaman has a power that would be really awesome to have, but not really good for crime fighting

Aquaman can survive in the ocean no matter how deep he goes. Ergo, he can survive having 15,000 psi or more on him. Ergo, when on the surface, he can lift around 15,000 psi.

His skin is also basically bulletproof, his muscles even moreso.

>>38149473
That would involve putting your hands near her mouth, though.
You're a braver man than I am. You're probably still end up eaten, but you're an example to bards everywhere.

>>38149587
Try not saving the tumbnail next time.

Or not uploading the thumbnail.

>>38149714
Yeah, but Superman can do the same, and he can fly and shoot laser beams out of his eyes.
Super strenght and invulnerability are pretty much the standard superhero powers. You expect most heroes to have those.

>>38149735
I might also polymorph into something of more suitable size for her giant appetites, if you catch my drift.

>>38149666
It's called Dark Ambient.

The guy who's been doing it longer than anyone performs under the stage name Lustmord.

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>>38149706
Lookit the pretty colours

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>>38149756
>>38149735
Hey could you stupid fucking niggers refrain from injecting your goddamn fetishes into everything?

Nobody wants to hear a couple of neckbeards talking about what gets their stubs hard.

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Abyssal tube worms, found around deep sea geothermal vents. These animals belong to an ecosystem completely independent of the sun's light, being instead based on chemosyntetic bacteria that derive energy from the vents. If the sun were to go out, they probably wouldn't even notice.
Such forms of life could theoretically exist on Jupiter's moons, and other places with liquid water but no sunlight.

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>>38149781

>>38149810
Just fucking kill me now.

>>38149797
Welcome to /tg/.

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>>38149810
>nature is some scary shit

>>38149845
Yeah, hi. I remember when this board was better then this.

Yeah we had elf slave and oppai threads and I'm cool with that but I'm trying to learn about fucked up deep sea creatures here. We don't have to turn every goddamn world building thread into /d/

>>38149756
Goddamn wizards...

>>38149797
Eh, I'm actually suprised it hasn't happened more, what's with my repeated jokes about referring the deep sea as "the undersea vore dimension". Because, well, that's pretty much what it is.

ANyway, I have to go now. If this thread is still around, and hasn't degraded into anglerfish-girl vore porn or some shit, I can post more pictures and random facts later tonight.

In the mean time, keep talking about creepy underwater things, and never go swimming again.

Abyss-anon out!

You got anything on Colossal Squids?

>>38149885
Time to take off those nostalgia goggles, mate. This shit was just as common back in the day.

>>38149996
How "Back in the day" are we talking?

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>>38149810
I cant stand a centipede. If I saw something like that in real life, it would be over.

>>38150019
2007 is when I came aboard. We had deep sea threads and fetishes then, too. It's not like the thread was being derailed or anything either, so I don't understand how it could possibly stop you from learning about deep sea creatures.

>>38149908
You're doing gods work. Please continue when you can.

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>>38150020
Centipedes, you say?
Arthropleura, from the carboniferous period. Possible the largest land arthropod ever.

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>>38150110
11/10 would saddle and ride.

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>>38150171
Its footprints.

>>38150020
Not centipede. Polychate worm.

>>38149885
>Yeah, hi. I remember when this board was better then this.
Yeah man, 2012 /tg/ was the best! Us oldfags have to stick together, y'know!

>>38149768
Fun fact; when some scientists discovered there's a "fear" note that makes humans hair on the back of our note stand on end, Lustmord decided to make an entire album of variations on this note.

Or all their albums already had it in without realizing, I can't remember which.

Anyway their album with the Melvins is fantastic.

>>38149643
Who would do that to another living being?

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>>38150304
In that case I'm cool with it, polychat worms are fine!

I'm sure there's an anime or something where hot lithe girls battle those things

>>38150413
Nobody does anything to it. It just does that by itself because it's essentially a floating bag of clingfilm and ham

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Have some deep-sea Mermaids, Anons!

The Cookie-Cutter shark is a real asshole. From what I remember, the way they feed is by latching onto a fish with their sharp lower jaws and swimming furiously in a circle to slice out a plug of flesh, eating that and swimming off. They're not trying to kill, they're not trying to burrow in.

They just want to carve out a plug of your flesh and leave.

Assholes.

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The Stoplight Loosejaw is a kind of dragonfish that produce a red bioluminescence. It's not so that other fish can be lured, because as an anon said earlier, what sees red light in the depths? No, their red bioluminescence is essentially a light-source that only they can perceive, hunting in some measure of visibility for their eyes only. The loosejaw comes from their lower jaws, enormous as they are, having no floor.

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We've all seen Anglers, we all know their famous gimmick of the floating, bobbing lure.

But hey, not everyone knows that the males are often excruciatingly tiny, and instead of living lives of their own, latch on to the female by biting into their side! They essentially stop being a living organism, fusing into her flesh and becoming nothing more than a lump with gonads inside, pumping her full of semen for the rest of his fleshless days. Female Anglerfish can be STUDDED with these little guys. It ensures that she never has to waste a single bit of time or nutrients on searching for males when she wants to breed! Just...pseudo-self-insemniating with her absorbed captive males.

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Vampire Squid. Bit of a mean nickname for one of the least active, peaceful cephalopods around. These guys are among the rare few animals that can survive in "Shadow Zones", stagnant, almost oxygen-free areas of water.

They've got lights on their tentacles and heads, with the assumption being that the tentacle-lights are to suggest a school of animals as opposed to a single organism. The headlights intent is to close at will, giving the illusion that the squid has escaped in the lightless waters.

Their spiky, cruel looking tentacles actually never touch a single living thing. These lazy, docile creatures eat nothing but marine snow. IE, anything that drifts down from the upper waters. Shit, rotting fish flesh, anything that winds up falling down in tiny little flakes of ~stuff~ that fuels these ecosystems

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And finally, Gulper Eels.

What's really left to say except that they help give the deeper parts of the ocean their reputation as Underwater Vore Hell?

It's believed that in actuality, they more commonly prey on itty bitty crustaceans, using their mouths as a trawler, with engulfing large prey being a rare opportunity. Similar to how deer, or squirrels, or cows will happily munch down on meat if they can get the chance.

>>38150430
No, I mean who would lift that thing out of the depths knowing it would do that? That's some nightmarish shit.

Christ, this thread. This is love. This is life. This is why I come here.

>>38149242
>For all we know, it could be home to horrifying monsters that can drive mortal men insane with their appearance alone.

I believe this is the current prevalent theory, yes. Also
>The Upper Midnight Zone
That is so going the be somewhere in my next campaign. I don't know what, but it is.
>"The Upper Midnight Zone?"
>"Yeah, why?"
>"So there's a Lower Midnight Zone?"
>"Eyup."
>"So what's in the Lower Midnight Zone?"
>"We Don't Go In The Lower Midnight Zone."

>>38150708
Scientists, people who didnt know it would do that and wanted to study it?

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Hey, this thread looks cool.

Maybe someone here has a good idea for a creature in this adventure.

Needed is a mysterious otherworldly creature of the deep that the Nazis use to sink Allied shipping.
>It could remain mysterious, be an entity of Lovecraft's Mythos like a magically enslaved great Deep One, or it could show characteristics of a Japanese movie Kaiju. It could be a dinosaur, an elemental, or an ancient
weapon system.

Oh sweet Jesus what the fuck holy Shit fuck

This whole thread all of it

Giant amoebas, projectile jaw sharks, ambush nerve killing worms, worm-flowers that eat poison at insane temperatures, lobsters with teeth on their eyelids, servants with projected eye stalks, fish with transparent heads and weird fish with stealth spotlights.

Fuck it. Fuck all of it.

Forget the noble need to explore that drives us to the stars. Forget greed and curiosity as what drives us to new worlds. This should be what sends us forth. The deep and abiding need to get off any planet with this fucked up Shit on it.

>>38150876
But anon, what about the fucked up shit on other planets?

You think they'll be all daisylilies and buttercup beasts? No sir, the stars are just as fucked up as our blue marble filled with horror and bioterror.

Mark my words, you find a habitable planet off on the other end of the galaxy, and you'll find everything just as bad as what we've got. You'll find your knuckle-jawed arthropod horrors rearing up from the swampy morass of whatever bay you wash up on. You'll find your birds that bathe themselves in red clay dust to paint their white feathers a bloody crimson and eat nothing but cracked bone shards. You'll go in the water and get your legs nibbled to shreds by sucker-faced eyeless slithering things you can't name or guess how they move until you feel their long segmented legs bristling beneath the murky waters.

Point is

It's all fucked up. Every star, every world, every twinkling glimmer of possiblity in the sky shines with horrors we have yet to see.

Every last bit of it

And that's beautiful

>>38150876
You forgot all the pitch black or blood red needle-toothed horrors that can swallow whole things bigger than themselves.

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>>38150931
Fuck it all I'm moving to space.

>>38150754
And beyond that there is the hadeic, or hell zone.
We don't even talk about the hadeic zone.

>>38149706
>are lined with venomous bards that can cause you to permanently loose your sense of touch
people keep saying this but i've not found one reputable source that actually agrees with this, or even mentions the fact that they're venomous

>>38150969
Well, space doesn't have life (as far as I know), but it can make your hand swell up to twice its normal size if you have a leak in your glove, or asphyxiate you in thirty seconds flat if your helmet doesn't do its job. Like, imagine going to sleep knowing that on the other side of the wall, there's millions and millions of cubic miles of absolutely fucking nothing, and this nothing will kill you dead in a minute and a half if it gets its hands on you.

>>38151060
A bit like being in a boat.

>>38150429
There's a manga about a cute tapeworm doing cute tapeworm thing.

>>38150931

>It's all fucked up. Every star, every world, every twinkling glimmer of possiblity in the sky shines with horrors we have yet to see.
>Every last bit of it
>And that's beautiful

You. You're the beautiful one.

>>38151060
>space doesn't have life
actually, algae has been found growing on the sides of the ISS and not only surviving, but GROWING
god only knows what they're eating

>>38134108
Would they make nice waifus?
Just because they are horrible abomination doesn't mean they can't be nice waifus with a bard only society.

>>38151357
well, anglers are essentially only female (with the males being little more than vestigial testes)
so if you COULD find a society of anglermaids, there would be hundreds of horny MILFs with no males in sight (aside from the ones fused to their skin, but they don't even have brains so it barely counts as cheating)

>>38151344
Probably the ISS itself. I know of lichen that survives by breaking down and absorbing minerals (and other nutrients?) from rocks.
>>38151391
I feel a LN coming up:
>I Gave Up My Sentience To Become My Girlfriend's Balls And Now She's Cheating On Me

>>38151357
Just keep them away from >>38149706
>are lined with venomus bards

>>38151421
>deep sea dating sim
>MILF angler fish
>vore gulper eel
>tsundere bobbit worm

>>38151391
Are the anglermaids using the collective balls, squeezing them together while going "Ara ara~"?

>>38151425
No, we will avoid no waifu or abominable NG bard races.

>>38151081
Yeah, but a boat at least lets you swim for a couple hours to minutes, depending on temperature. Unless we're talking submarine, but that takes us right back to where we started.

>>38151344
Maybe it's like those black radiotrophic molds in the old Chernobyl reactor that can eat fucking gamma radiation. Life finds a way and so on.

>>38151357
Maybe? Most deep sea fish are horrible abominations because there is so little resources. They have to be prepared to eat whatever or whoever they find because it's likely the only edible thing they find for all week.
If you can regularly feed your abyssfu, she should have no reason to devour you.

>>38151450
But every deep sea fishfu would be vore route by default. Gulper eels and especially the chiasmodon (aka. The Vore Fish) more so than others, though.

>>38151492
Yeah but they are obviously a civilization.
A human would also be a horrible waifu if he was a wild faggot that never invented animal husbandry or deep sea magic farming.

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>>38150931
Definitely had to cap that.

>>38136099
>tiny abyssal cowboys
Yes.

This makes me think - if we hypothetically were shrunk down to tiny size, would we be able to survive greater pressures? Maybe that's a hook - the party has to figure out how to reverse the tiny magic so they can go home?

>>38151466
Christ, this. Like, my one crazy irrational fear (insofar as it is extremely unlikely to ever happen in my lifetime) is being shot off into space. I would seriously rather tire out and drown hoping against hope to reach the shore/surface than to just fly off into the void and realize "Welp, there goes THAT."

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>>38149242
Of course, we didn't think anything could live near the vents either.

>>38151567
The problem is our lungs, mainly. Our bodies are mostly composed of water and water doesn't compress easily (understatement of the thread). The problem is that our lungs are empty and thus susceptible to compression, at the cost of our well-being. If our lungs are already filled with water, then there's not much of a problem to be at high pressure underwater... except that we'll have drowned.

>>38151528
I think the whole idea of the abyss precludes farming or animal husbandry. Sure, we're bringing magic to this (you couldn't really have sapient life in such a place), but it wouldn't really fit the "theme" either, which I feel is important in fantasy. The abyss is a vast featureless void filled with horrible predatory beings. Not a place for farming. >>38151544

>>38151686
Point. Which leads to my next bit: Peter Watts' Rifters books. The main characters are Rifters, cybernetically/genetically enhanced humans who can fill their body cavities with water and saline to survive the crushing pressure and operate on the seafloor. The first book centers on a thermal vent in the deep deep that has some huge versions of this thread's denizens living around it. Second and third are still good, but less about the dark and more about the upstairs ecosystem that gets wrecked by the virus/life form/thing that gets released from said vent when the Rifters come back to the surface and promptly begins remaking everything in its superior image.

http://www.rifters.com/old-index.htm for those who want to read them.

>>38135626
>ogrefish
You know, I wouldn't have named it anything else. The name just fits that face.

>>38151767
Oops. http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm is where they're stored now. Heh.

>>38151686
Alchemist figures out LCL?
I'd just say cleric conjures liquid oxygen targeted at the party's lungs, but I can't for the life of me remember what that shit is actually called, and ACTUAL liquid O would sting like a bitch for all of the few seconds before it rendered them all exploding popsicles.

>>38151735
No fuck that, we can break the norm.
Abominable yet cute fish bards a go.

>>38151767
I was gonna mention these yesterday. Watts did a great job of making you feel like you're in the abyss.

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>>38151421
>>38151391
tfw when you have sex with her, you are NTRing 8 male angler fish

>>38151829
Considering how most male abyssal fish seem to work, the traditional bard activity of screwing everything wouldn't really work.
A race of sapient abyssal beings would probably essentially be all female, with males being nonsapient and dying shortly after mating.

>>38135053
How does this fish prevent bigger prey from just tearing or biting itself out of it?

>>38151735
But imagine the horror of being part of a physically inferior species of herders, as they attempt to navigate their grazing flocks between safe spots as huge monstrous beings swim in and out of sight.

So, ideas for civilization of abyssal mermaids or something?
I figure their society would be essentially hunter-gatherers, roaming the abyss looking for food and supplies. Can't really make permanent settlements in a featureless void.

>>38152000
Yeah, so to get raunchy they have to travel out in the world and bard it up with all they penises.

Totally works since bards are travelers and a people that moves a lot AND are GOAT singers works very well.

>>38152010
No idea. Most deep sea creatures are rather weak and squishy. They might lack the strength to do so.

>>38152062
Settlements might crop up temporarily around whale-carcasses when those drift down from the upper waters. Entire ecosystems flourish around those already in nature when it happens. There's a thousand species that exist to do nothing but finish off every piece of the whale.

You could even do protein-"farming" with creatures that feed off of marine snow.

>>38152113
Underwater nomads that periodically need to move camp from one leviathan carcass to another sounds cool to me.

>>38152113
And to pass the time down in the dark abyss they sing and play really good music.

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

Abyss-anaon back here, what's going...Oh, Hell no!

Nah, actually you've been pretty cool

>>38150572
>>38150605
>>38150632
>>38150673
>>38150689
These pictures are cool. I like how they retain the various monstrous aspects of abyssal fish on the humanoid form. Especially the stoplight loosejaw and the gulper eel, with the human face twisted to fit the weird jaws of the fish. Freaky.

>>38152113
>>38152134
That's a cool idea. Whale (and other large marine animal) carcasses are indeed the oasises of the abyssal plains, with several species of animal and bacteria evolved specifically to live off of them.
It would also retain the central "theme" of scarcity of resources and efficient use of them that run through the "design philosophy" of abyssal life. Whale carcasses are rare and the abyssal plains cover enormous areas, so such a society would have to move over huge area of space, using every bit of resources they can find. Eat as much meat as you can, preserve the remainder for the trip, fashion equipment out of whale bones and stuff.
I could totally see a campaign where the PCs would be abyssal mermaids or whatever, scouting out the location of the next leviathan carcass, defending their people againt sea monsters, fashioning equipment from slain creatures etc. Cool stuff.

>>38151492
I wonder how regularly feeding your abyssfu even work. The whole reason why deep sea critters posses such nightmarish eating habits is specifically that there is no "regular feeding" in the abyss. You eat what you have at hand, even if it's bigger than you and also trying to eat you, because that might be the only edible thing you get this year.
Being in a situation where food is regularly availeable, rather than something you get one chanse of getting every few months or so, would be a big culture shock for your abyssfu.

>>38153231
So, anybody want me t post more pictures? Tbh I've kind of ran out of random facts, so I'd probably just be posting more pictures of the same critters.

I do still have some facts about marine geology. Some cool stuff there, as well.
For example, the Ongton-Java plateou, located (unsuprisingly) off the coast of Java, is the worldn't largest undersea plateoue, and the worldn't largest igneous province. It cover 1% of the total surface are of Earth, and was formed in a massive volcanic eruption in the early Cretaceous period (its formation coincides with a large anoxic event in the oceans, which was probably cause by the eruption). It is infact so large, that some geologists belive it is responsible of changing the direction of the pacific plate.
If you look at the Hawai-Emperor seamount chain, you see it does a sharp bend. The seamounts are formed by the oceanic plate passing over a stationary hotspot, so the bend implies the entire plate has changed direction at some point. Some geologists believe the reason for the change was the Ongton-Java plateou hitting a subduction zone. Forcing such a huge mass of rock to subduct under the other plate was so difficult that it was easier for the entire to oceanic plate to start moving in a different direction.
Also, the original location where said plateoue formed is pretty close where R'lyeh, where dead Cthulhu awaits dreaming, is supposed to be located.

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>>38149755
>Yeah, but Superman can do the same, and he can fly and shoot laser beams out of his eyes.

O...kay? Why is Aquaman always compared to Superman? Superman is designed to be the most powerful hero in the DC universe; it's not an honest comparison.

Aquaman has plenty going for him,. He's super-strong (Spiderman-level strong), bulletproof, can leap many, many times his own height thanks to his strength, is essentially immune to freezing cold conditions...he's basically a less agile but far tougher Spider-man.

Plus he can totally give people seizures with his mind.

>>38154172
And Aquaman can be a remotely interesting character.

So he's got Superman beat all to hell on that front.

>>38153604
I can see a cute romantic comedy about a guy living with his girlfriend who is a cute antropomorphic deep sea fish (that survives on land in 1 atmosphere pressure...Eh, just go with it).
>She has clautrophobia and gets nervous in crowded places
>She insists on keeping the light off as it's more comfortable that way
>He has to convince her that they can have dinner every day so she doesn't need to eat all the food right now
>She's been banned from every all you can eat buffet in town
>She's worried about him since from her experience males don't live very long
>He has to convince her that he won't die or fuse with her if they have sex

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>>38150816
how about the Con Rit, a Vietnamese Sea Serpent that supposedly resembled a cross between a more conventional Sea Serpent and a Centipede

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>>38136361

>>38154411
>spiky teeth
>dark, slick skin (but she sunburns easily)
>huge, adorable eyes (although the pupils are just contacts, her real eyes are completely white
>webbed hands and feet, ears are just gill fins
>her lure lights up, and mesmerizes/hypnotises people
>has lights all over her that light up when she's scared, embarrased, angry, aroused all in corresponding colors

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>>38148902

>>38154289
>>38154172

Superman once knocked out a guy's psychic power by giving him a microlobotomy using his heat vision beamed through the guy's eyeball.

>>38154148
Do Hagfish!

>>38154571
Cute. I got a similar mental image, but her lower body being serpentine, like a lamia or something, to preserve the mermaid vibe.

>>38154580
Damn, nature.

>>38154148
Yes. More pictures. For the love of God, more pictures.

>>38154289
Hey, I like Superman. I just like Aquaman, too.

>>38154606
Again, it doesn't make sense to me to compare Aquaman and Superman and then rule that Aquaman is useless. Of course Aquaman is useless next to Superman. EVERYONE is useless next to Superman.

Why does no one ever compare Aquaman to Batman, or Wonder Woman?

>>38154172
Superman in older comics could literally make up new powers.

>>38138179
Yeah, giant Isopodes are fine...

...Those "little" fuckers who live in Whale and Dolphin wounds on the other hand...
...Oh wait, Whale Lice are Amphipods...

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>>38154690
Ok. Hagfish are pretty cool. Also they're barely fish in any real sense, but we don't really have any other word to call them. They're among the most primitive vertebrates in existance. Forget the mention about being barely fish, these things are barely even vertebrates. For starters, they don't actually have any vertebrae! They do have a skull, though, and a notochord (spine without the bony bits), so they technically count as vertebrates. Maybe. Some scintiests disqualify them from true vertebrates on the account of lacking a proper spine. They also have no jaws and a single nostril.
Hagfish have been around for a very long time. Fossils from 300 million years ago look identical to modern hagfish. Thy've perfected the "slime tube-shape sort-of-fish" look long before dinosaurs became a thing.
Oh, the slime. Slime is kind of the thing the hagfish is known for. They're also called slime hags, and in my native language they're called slime lampreys (lampresy are another ancient jawless kinda-fish). As the name implies, they're slimy. They also secrete vast amounts of sticky slime to defend themselves of predators. A single hagfish can turn 20 liters of water into slime. They're usually scavengers, burrowing into corpses of dead fish, whales etc. and eating them from within. Sometimes they also do the same to live fish.
Fun fact: "eel skin" products are actually made from hagfish. I quess wallets made from carrion-eating slimy flesh-tube not-really-fish doesn't sell as well.

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Here's a better picture of the hagfish in all of it's, um, glory. As you can see, it's pretty much a fleshy tube with a mout on one end. Lacking a proper spine, the hagfish is extremely flexible and can tie itself into a know, which it uses to help pull chunks off carcasses or escape predators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqPMP9X-89o

A cool video of a black sea devil anglerfish filmed in its natural enviroment. Observing abyssal fish alive in their natural enviroment is very rare.

>>38155040
>>38154956
hagfish are badass
due to their lack of a jaw, they eat by latching on to thing and curling into a knot, using their body to tear off the flesh and thus undoing the knot
pretty damn cool

>>38154767
I was just piling on the "reasons why Supes is overpowered".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW93uB5fDLQ
Another video of some scientists performing a CT-scan on a preserved hairy anglerfish (named after hairlike spines sticking from its body, presumably used as sensory organs) so find out just what it has eaten (another fish, as it turns out).

>>38154956
>>38155040
>>38155131

>tfw no carrion-eating slimy flesh-tube not-really-fish waifu to tie herself around you at night

Why even live

>>38154710
>but her lower body being serpentine, like a lamia or something, to preserve the mermaid vibe.
But what if she looks like the deep ones?
I mean just slapping spiky teeth on a mermaid doesn't make it that spooky or abominable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INJ5Tk7Nbi4
A video showing a gulper eel in its natural habitat, the nightmares of mortals. Or the deep sea. Kind of hard to tell.

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>>38155251
>In some species, sex ratio has been reported to be as high as 100:1 in favor of females

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>>38154956
every time I see that image I think the hagfish is saying "KISS MEH YOU FEWL"
...
I'm a weird person
...
Pic related

>>38136361
>abyss mermaid that swallows its prey whole

Oh god yes.

>>38155270
ridiculously long spiky teeth, slimy black skin, bioluminescent glow, ability to swallow things several times bigger than itself...
Whether is has feet or a serpentine tail seems pretty inconsequential to creepiness factor. I find less humanoid generally to be more creepier.

>>38155437
Well the deep ones were humanoid.
Just very fish faced..

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This is a salp. It is actually a distant relative of us vertebrates. In the larval stage they have a brain and a notochord, but they lose those when they enter adulthood.
They're communal organisms that form colonies by "budding". These colonies can be extremely long. I couldn't find the vide on a short notice, but there's a clip on youtube of one such a colony filmed from a submercible. It's a mass of flailing tendrils hundreds of meters long, and looks like some kind of Elder God from Lovecraftian mythos.

>>38155521
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EQGA_4BZ5s

>>38154956
>>38155040
Hagfish are the ONLY fish to be able to SNEEZE

If they couldn't they would literally suffocate on their slime

>>38155521
>they lose the brain when they enter adulthood
Kek

>>38155569
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZzqtA36dw

>>38155521
So, wait, do they lose the brain, or just the notochord?
Cause... if they lose their brain after the larval stage... man. I've got a lot to think about. That's some existential shit, man.

>>38155430
If we assume our abyssal mermaid is based on the black swallower (Chiasmodon niger, the poster-fish for the whole "eat things bigger than youself" thing deep sea fish have going on), and that she's 150cm and 50 kg (she's pretty lightly built. C. niger is not a big fish), she should be able to swallow a prey with lenght of 3 m and weight of 500kg.

...Not sure why I felt I should point it out. It does put the fish's ability, which is pretty extreme even by the standards of abyssal fish, into perspective.

>>38155521
Do the Oarfish next

>>38155575
Adorable

>>38155626
The brain as well. Tunicates, their close relatives, also do it.
A larval tunicate looks kind of like a tiny tadpole. They have a brain and a kind-of spine (without the bones), and swim around. When they grow up, they attach themselves to a rock, absorb their brain and notochord and spend rest of their lives filtering plankton from water.

This thread is awesome, but just think about one thing for a second.

Imagine some scientist get a little submarine and go dow, down in the depths of the ocean, and see all this kind of terrifying deformed creature all around them. Imagine how it would be to look out of a little round window and see a gulper eel on the other side, or an anglerfish staring at you.

That is the stuff of nightmares. But they aren't nightmares. They're real, they're alive, and they're waiting for you, beneath.

>>38155669
or as I call it, Retirement

>>38155692
That's called a dream for me buddy

>>38155692

Think about anything that died in the sea.

That biological matter will have been eaten by something, and eventually those somethings will die and sink.

In the end, it's all going to be marine snow, and eventually part of the growing anglerfish population.

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>>38155648
Awright. Here's an oarfish. Some dudes to scale.
Oarfish are big. That's about all we know of them. Largest species can grow to at least 11 meters in lenght (unconfirmed repors of considerably largest specimens exist), and are likely the inspiration for legends of sea serpents.
They appear to feed primarily on zooplankton and small fish, and have been filmed floating in an upright position, which is apparently how they feed (such positin might make it easier for them to locate food). They appear to live in the depths, only coming near surface when sick or dying.

>>38155795
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvRqqwBoyx8#t=16
Rare footage of live oarfish.

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>>38148806

>>38155636
Technically she would be able to swallow a prey with lenght of 6m, though at that point there would be a high risk of her stomach bursting.

Chiasmodon niger regularly eats fish twice its own lenght, but have been know to swallow things four times their own lenght.

>>38155755
Marine snow is pretty freaky when you start thinking about it.
It's called "marine snow" because if you're standing on the abyssal plains, the stuff will be constantly falling from above, like it would be snowing. The plains are entirely covered with the stuff, just flat expanse of "snow" as far as you can see.
And it all used to be alive. Plains larger than the surface area of all continents combined, covered with decayed remnants of a billion billion living beings.

>>38156062
We already have that up on land though.
It's called dirt.

>>38156062
well, the marine snow is usually heaviest just under places like coral reefs or continental shelves
the open ocean is still pretty empty (aside from all the plankton)

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>>38136361
Look up the Merpeople and Naiads from Arthur Spiderwick's Guide to the Supernatural
They're much more fish/animal like and way creepier. Pic related.
The book itself is also pretty A+, been useful in more than one campaign

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/477735

Here's a nice vide made by your friend and mine, Jonathan Wojcik of bogleech.com. A lot of the pictures I've posed have come from his serie of articles about abyssal life.
Fun fact: all, or at least most, of the monsters on the video have their appearance based on actual creatures. See how many you can recognise!

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>>38136212

I'm reminded of an indie game I played, called the Outer Wilds, which revolved around exploring a solar system with physics and creatures not even remotely similar to our own (players could listen to the sounds planets made via telescope), and there was one planet, called Dark Bramble, that was spooky as fuck.

See, Dark Bramble wasn't really a planet. It was basically a giant tangle of thorny roots (kinda like a hairball, I guess), filled with a thick fog and the wrecks of starships. Said ships had emergency beacons, little flashing lights that you could follow to find salvage.

The catch? Massive Anglerfish, which could swallow some ships whole and bite those they couldn't clean in half, drift lazily around inside Dark Bramble, with lures that look exactly like distress beacons for ships. They were blind, but had incredible hearing. I remember watching a slow profile of one drift by at a disturblingly close range right in front of my ship, while all I could do was watch and shit myself because if I used my maneuvering thrusters, or god forbid my ship hit something, the sound would give me away and the fucker would eat me.

Pic related is Dark Bramble.

>>38156246
Oh dang, you know Jonathan too?

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>>38150816

>>38155481
A Deep One is fine too.
I'd say it kind of depends on the type of fish. An anglerfish, fangtooth or swallower girl can be humanoid, but for something like a viperfish or gulper eel, which are characterized by an extremely long and thin body, not having a serpentine bodyshape feels wrong.

>>38156293
Not personally. I don't think I've ever talked to him in person, but I do follow his DA account, used to post on Bogleech forums and of course read his site regularly.

Another good site for those interested in weird creatures is realmonstrosities.com, a blog about all sorts of weird animals, plants and fungi. Deep sea creatures show up frequently.

>>38155636
>>38155971
Oh. That is...Interesting.

I wonder if there are any illustrations. You know, for research purposes.

>>38135906
>abyssal gigantism
not like I was gonna sleep tonight

>>38156246
Was wondering when someone would post this.

>>38155636
Not even into vore. Do not remotely understand it at all. So why boner. why. how. what is this.

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>>38148453
>picking the worst possible term

>>38156503
Maybe you're just in denial. In which case:
Yeess...Give in to your feelings. Let the power of fetish flow through you!
Or maybe you're not into vore, but are into monstergirls that can eat ten times their body weight.

>google giant isopods
>come across https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOSXtBCY30
>0:43
>ifeelthewarpovertakingme.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7UEMUoUS9Q

At least the nightmares in these pics have shapes.
This one... doesn't.

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>>38156981

>>38156981
Ah, that's the video I was looking for.
That's a mass of salps, or other related species of goopy underwater thingies (that's the technical term, I believe) like siphonophores. That thing is hundreds of meters long, much larger than the largest whales.
The only reason these are not considered the longest animals is because they're technically composed of huge amounts of individual animals, like the Portuguese man'o'war. (the reason they're not considered biggest animals is that and because they're not very massive, being mostly made out of jelly and water).

>>38157068
You could've renamed the picture as "Yog-Sothot" and I wouldn't have doubted for a second that it was an illustration of one of Lovecraft's Outer Gods.

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>>38157115
>That thing is hundreds of meters long, much larger than the largest whales.

>>38154824
haha! In older comics he says. Didn't catch wind of the "Solar Flare"? Got my /co/friend all riled up like 2 weeks ago.

>>38154411
>>38154571
That sounds oddly adorable. I've always had a thing for creepy waifus and monstergirls.

Though based on >>38155636
if you take her out to dinner, you better have a spare cow handy. Or get somebody else to pay the bill.

>>38154824
tbh it was less making new powers, and more calling everything he does "super-something". Super-ventriliquism, super-mathematics, etc. Though his power level did vary wildly, occasionally being strong enough to literally juggle planets, and other times having a hard time beating the villain or monster of the week in a fistfight.

>>38157354
>other times having a hard time beating the villain or monster of the week in a fistfight.
Was this villain/monster of the week a generic thug, or Doomsday?

>>38155636
>>38156503
I'm still suprised you don't see more vore featuring monstergirls based on abyssal fish. Considering they actually do that kind of shit in real life, you'd think the stuff would write itself.

>>38152010

it's the Underwater Vore Dimension. they probably get off on being eaten alive.

Abyss-anon here. It's getting late so I'm going to bed soon. Maybe this thread will still be around tomorrow, though I kind of doubt it.

The discussion earlier about underwater civilization based in the abyss seemed like an interesting idea to me, so maybe I should start a worldbuilding thread about that at some point.

>>38152021

We actually have an ongoing civ thread that deals with this. They're crabs that live on the ocean floor, herd squids, and once made the mistake of using a very bright light and looking up.

OP didn't explicitly say it, but that made them dye the entire seafloor brown in my headcanon.

>>38158147
Ouch.

>>38158147
I'd love to work on it with you.

I once wanted to make an undersea setting a while back - mostly sunlight-zone folk, but there was an isopod civilization that was sci-fi to the others' high fantasy. I remember asking what the non-abyssal civs would eat in the way of prepared foods, but I never got around to talking about the isopods and their dark gods much.

They'd use pressurized astronaut-style suits to interact with the shallow-dwellers and everything.

Thank you for the thread. I just had a shitty break up and the deep sea is one of my favorite things.

The oil rig footage of magnapinna squid I'd my favorite deep sea thing.

>>38155669

That's fucking horrible. Imagine it were sentient, knowing it has moments left before it becomes part of the mindless vegetative mass that spawned it. I'm starting to think that being a human living in the abyss is actually a better fate than being a native of the abyss.

>>38156981

Say, that kinda looks like a chaos spawn. No wait, I meaAARGGHARBFFHGHSSGJREDKJHASDF

>>38158147
An abyss worldbuilding thread would be boss.
That's one aspect of my setting I really want to flesh out more.

>>38160814
Same. The deep sea and the reefs play a big part of the world I'm using in my book. I've got the shallows and reef stuff figured out mostly but I still need stuff for the polychaete and Isopod civilizations

>>38151544
you beat me to it anon.
well done/10

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>>38134108

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4QFhfQCc5w

I'm surprised that nobody's posted this before. (Watch it all the way to the end.)

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>>38161558
Okay, that's probably the scariest fish in this entire thread.

>>38161558
That's some weird HP Lovecraft shit right their. Did that fish do that?

>>38163290
>there
It's happening. I saw the sign and now I'm going mad.

>>38163290
Yeah those ocean circles have confused scientists forever and only recently, I think last year, did they discover that it was pufferfish. The males make these intricate circles and females pick their favorite, laying their eggs in the center where the male fertilizes them and then remains around to protect them until they hatch

>>38163368
Wow, that's crazy. I'm still not convinced it isn't also a portal though.

>>38162972
Is that the motherfucking Yamato?

>>38163574
Now that you mention it, I think you're right.

>>38156981
Why does every Japanese video have reaction cams?

>>38163939
That is indeed a good question. Another good question is why a random Japanese show felt the need to show a siphonophore.

>>38163981
I'm assuming it was part of some kind of Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel-type show.

>>38164012
Not familiar with that, but if siphonophores just happen to pop up as conversation themes, it must be quite something.

>>38134515
if the red light usually gets quickly absorbed then the viperfish must need a lot of it to make use of it

>>38164048
Japan is hugely into Biology especially when it comes to the ocean and/or bugs

>>38148066
wait if most of those things are really small then the huge creatures of the abyss must be massive in comparison

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>>38154411
Japan already did it.

The girl with the ahoge is an angler fish, btw.

>>38148743
thats a cell the size of a fist thats a cell the size of a fist

i had been interested but not really freaked out by this thread so far but thats a fucking cell the size of a fist

>>38164142
Their current Emperor is a marine biologist, actually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihito#Ichthyological_research

>>38148974
so if deep sea angelerfish are about .2 meters how big are surface angelerfish

>>38164278
>Their current Emperor is a marine biologist
And he still doesn't give a shit about the dolphins.

>>38164301
it's revenge for the raping of nanking
the dolphins framed it on the japanese

>>38164295
>surface
>anglerfish
Pick one?

>>38164272
Well, that's a picture of its home. I can't find a picture of the actual amoeba.

>captcha: devil
And I don't feel like continuing to look for it...

>>38149805
wow

>>38149996
well to be fair unlike most do he is not complaining about the existence of fetish threads just that this one is being turned into one which is what most do but most also hate threads that started as fetish threads so i commend him

>>38149805
>Such forms of life could theoretically exist on Jupiter's moons
Wasn't the immediate Jupiter area too irradiated to sustain life?

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>>38164236
That manga was fun, even if it went out of it's way to moe-ify every single one of the fish.

Kabayagi is totally bestgirl though, even if she only had one chapter.

>>38164421
Can you sauce me please?

>>38164469
Shinkaigyo no Anko-san

It's about the adventures of an Angler-fish girl, and her human friend who has a fetish for tailfins.

>>38151357
remember most of these things are tiny though you may not be able to fit

>>38151570
my crazy irrational fear is dying of radiation poisoning

which is odd because im a huge supporter of nuclear power

>>38152078
of course not wanting to die is a great motivator for a bard

>>38164554
it's not like anybody's actually died from radiation poisoning in nuclear power plants since the 1970's
hell, plumbers are more likely to die of radiation poisoning than nuclear power workers

>>38156321
yeah that makes sense

>>38156106
are there any massive reefs other then the great barrier

>>38156281
wait educational use only this game was meant to be educational

>>38164360
oh thats just the home thank god

>>38164360
>Pick one?
>>38134365
im confused it says here
>Much like the non-deepsea anglerfish

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>>38161558

>>38162972
ya know, there was this game on the PS1 when i was little called aquamarine holiday. you scooted around in a little sub and looked at shit. if you went in the right direction you eventually ran into an undersea pyramid that makes freaky fucking noises and seabass attack you.

made me a little afraid of the sea after

>>38165312
aquanaughts holiday*

>>38149810
Those arent abyssal see them all the time at the beach during my childhood they are harmless but probably bigger than you think.

Happy swimming!

>>38152062
>Pirates. Attack the boats passing overhead.

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>>38134515
>Viperfish

The Bobbit Worm in Action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H4J5QDQeA4

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>>38157182
Pretty much my reaction too.

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>>38164408
Water makes for a very effective radiation shield. The conditions under the icy surfcae of Europa are at least theoretically livable (there's liquid water in there, and the water and ice block the radiation).
>>38164747
Yes, though the great barrier reef is the largest. There are multiple large reefs in Indonesia and Polynesia.
>>38164838
Non-abyssal anglerfish still live in the bottom, just at shallower depth. They vary in sizes, but the largest ones can be quite big, around 1.5 meters.

>>38149810
I know this sea-worm...thing. If it manages to inject its venom into a body-part of yours, then that part is paralyzed forever.

Or was it the whole body?

>>38148766
>>38148838

I always prefer the following when reading about whatever new horrors the hadal zone has offered mankind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7zk4as9kzA

>>38165248
to get bitches, what else is there?

>>38135906
>of dead things and detritus falling from above.
Hey, welcome to the abyss. Sure, you can't sea (haha) for shit, and you'll be glad for it because everything looks fucking terrifying, but hey, it literally is raining food down from on high!

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>>38148818

>>38166542
Holy shit!

Ok. I'm never going swimming again. In fact, I think I'll move inland.

>>38168181
But sunken bells toll for thee.

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>>38156981
I had seen most of the things on this thread already. I figured the ocean's depths had no new horrors for me in this thread.

Good job, fucker. You proved me wrong. A literal goddamn fucking shapeless mass of purposeless horror exists on my planet. I should have signed up for the Mars mission.

>>38150110
That was a millipede.

>>38164521
Hey man mantises are pretty tiny too, didn't stop the thrii-kren from existing.
>>38164589
But of course, paladins and clerics are sure they will go to heaven, wizards are to kooky and crazy to know that they can die, fighters are suicidal.

So all that's left are bards who are really afraid that their singing will be stopped by a knife.

>>38164301
Mammals don't belong in the ocean, their destruction is their own doing.

>>38165248
Can't summon the Old Gods without a summoning circle.

>>38168952
Summon an old one for some good kinky times?

Hey I don't judge, some people like to fuck grannies.

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People have already posted mermaid versions of most of the fish mentioned, but there wasn't any for the black swallower (aka. the vorefish). So I made one. Based it on one of Bessiger's drawings of deep sea fish (which has already been posted here). Not very good quality, but I'm not really an artist.

>>38169134
Not bad.
I wonder what the hell the thing the fish has eaten in the original drawing is supposed to be anyway. Or is it just some generic fish there just to showcase the swallower's ability to swallow other fish. In any case it has weird eyes.