>>42789258
Isn't that just the organs of a dead whale sinking to the ocean floor?

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>>42789217

>>42789340
Nah, it's called Deepstaria Enigmata or something similar.

Fuck the sea.

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>>42789408

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>>42789472

>>42789443
I second this, goddamn good fuckin reason we're on dry land.

>>42789443
>>42789538
>first creatures shamble onto dry land and evolve into us
>everyone today thinks it was our superior genes fighting to overcome and drive forward
>our ancestors were just trying to get the fuck out of there

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Hey! Deep Sea!

We don't take kindly to your types round here.

Is anybody going to make this thread /tg/ related?

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>>42789645
>implying it isn't
We are dumping deep sea imagery and ideas. Not everything has to be a godamn quest thread.

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>>42789645
>You will sit in the BLUE chair

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>>42789645

I had a setting idea where, in the late Victorian era, a few daring young Anglican mathematicians discovered that God Omnipotent was a sort of blind mechanical computer. Certain circumstances and behaviors acted as inputs; miracles were the output. Various religions had stumbled across a few ideas over the years, but with the aid of calculus, a few whizzing metal wheels, and a good thick book of tables, a properly trained Calculating Priest could bring down mana, cure the lame, or even raise the dead.

Inevitably, in late 1877, a group of drunken poets and lesser clergy rode their roaring mechanical Sin Engine down High Street and crashed it into a bank. It began to rain, and nothing the Calculating Priests tried could make it stop.

The world is flooding. Strange creatures are creeping from their flooded burrows or rising from the seas. Behemoth and Leviathan are stirring. England is sinking. The Queen has fled to the Dominion of Canada, China is fortifying the Himalayas, and a brief, damp World War has broken out in the Alps.

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>>42789645
Here. Here's a goddamn picture to make it "/tg/ related.

Fuck you.

>>42789755
That sounds fun. Does the rain stop on the 41st day, or does it keep going?

>>42789755
So was it water world surface survival or did you Rapture that bitch?

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>>42789826

Stopped on the 41st day, but it was 1 session every 24hrs, so we didn't get there.

>>42789828

Mostly flotillas, navies, Deep Ones, krakens, the French, and the occasional submarine. Plus searching the books for canonical miracles to gain useful advantages.

>>42789760
Why you mad?

I just want a godamn survival horror session on a massive ship or submarine that capsizes and begins it's slow decent to the bottom. Mass hysteria. Everything is on godamn fire or under water. Past break point port holes causing constant flooding and bulkheads failing under pressure. All in effort to reach some kind of way out.

Upside down, underwater, and completely fucked.

>>42789703
Quest threads should get their own damn board too. This isn't (supposed to be) /b/ stop treating it like it is.

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>>42789984

k

>>42790036
>this structure was designed to keep out the vacuum of space at the time it was constructed

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I remember reading about a video game in development where you play as a scientist trapped in the belly of some huge undersea leviathan. There were lots of old sunken ships in there to explore too.

Sounded like an undersea version of Dead Space. Can't remember the title though.

>>42789755
Thank you.

>>42790071
>Jonah: RELOADED

>>42789070
FUCK, why did I listen to that!? I'm going to be hearing that in my nightmares now.

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>>42790135

Can you describe it for me? I'm too scared.

Listen to this lovely story to calm you down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilRbcBhD9_0

What sort of horrible creatures do you suppose live in the frigid, sunless waters of Europa and Enceladus? Air breathing life is right out since the ocean is capped by ice topped by a thin shroud of gases and hard vacuum, so it would have to do its energy exchange directly through water, whether oxygen or ammonia.

>>42790242
Imagine you're inside a submarine as it dives. Deeper and deeper, the hull creaking and banging as the water squeezes it. The creaking gets louder, metal straining. Then there's a bang, and you hear rushing water. Then an almighty shrieking of tearing metal and then then all you can hear is the water pouring in.

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>>42790291

>>42790291
You know that shit that lives near the black smokers? Exactly that. They can't be that big either.

>>42789536
Noping harder than diamond what the fuck is that.

>>42790291
Great feathery clouds, like a starfish that looks like a koosh ball, maximum surface area possible.

Some of them evolved parasitic, fractal dendrites on their flagella/cilia/tentacles to infiltrate and consume other organisms.

>be NASANaut
>exploring Europa
>fuck it's cold
>nothing but water straight down
>wait
>what's that
>it's a worm
>a whole lot of worms
>worms as far as the eye can see
>signal command to real me back in, no use
>bed of worms gets to me
>think I'm safe
>little filaments sprout off the worms
>sensors start going off; my suit is being pried apart
>scream before my suit is compromised and alien water surges in
>I can feel millions of little tendrils crawling into my muscles, my blood, my skin, before I pass out
>Turns out that was one of the smaller, fast moving sub-predators

>>42790371
Black smokers are generated by geological activity. We don't know if Europa or Enceladus has an equivalent hot center.

>>42790291
The optimist in me would like them to have some sort of bio-luminescence, even though the realist in me (a far larger part) knows what kind of chance there is of that.

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>>42790242
>1,743 meters
>1,743 meters
>1,743 meters...
>crush depth of the "Eastern Star"
>I blacked out... I know that much. I felt the sound of the explosion in my very bone and then the ceiling smashed down on my skull. Or rather I flew up into it
>BWWWWWUUAAAUUUHMMMOOOTESSSRK!
>another bulkhead just failed. 3...maybe four segments ahead. It sounded like an explosion as loud as a bomb drowned by an entire ocean and muffled. It stills rattles everything in the room like an earthquake
>1,743 meters...
>I can't see a fucking thing. I have no idea how long I was out. How deep were we? What was the last bed depth scan at?
>maybe we'll hit and stop...
>BWWWWWUUAAAUUUHMMMOOOTESSSRK!UUUUUASSSSTERRRR
>oh god I hear the pressure hatches sheering off. The metal is being ripped apart... oh god another one too fast
>too fast!
>my feet oh jesus it cold
>where is it coming from the utility vents?
>1,743 feet please hit bottom please hit plea-

You guys think there's anything bigger than a blue whale swimmin in the ocean.

>>42790457
Your mom.

Great inspiration for my underwater fantasy campaign.

>>42790435
Reminds me of that scene in Das Boot. Y'know where the dive plane jams and they go so deep that the needle on the depth gauge goes off the measurement. Then its just everyone waiting to see what gives first.

>>42790421
It does. The gravity pull from Jupiter that makes Io a shitstorm also does the same to Europa.

No clue about Enceladus, tho.

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Ascended penguins: yea or nay?

>>42790520
I'm a sucker for ascended sea animals.
I always try to include ascended Octopodes in space campaigns.

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>>42790497

>>42790542
Ascended octopuses would be amazingly useful in zero g for the flexibility and extra limbs. I'd want a few for a space station's engineering crew.

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>ascended cephalopods

>>42790242

Thanks mate, old time radio was hardcore.

>>42790652
I geso.

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So everyone here is familiar with the Bloop, right?

>>42790457
No, not really. It would probably have to live near the surface far away from the abyssal zone to sustain itself.
The amount of available biomass to feed upon deep in the ocean isn't sufficient to support something so massive.
We probably would have found anything larger by now.

>>42790698
Fucking nazi gotta stop trying to wake up Cthulhu.

>>42790698
Yes.
The theory most bought into by morons is that it's icebergs cracking

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>>42790698

Uh, that's still... half a good-sized continent apart. The ocean is biiiiig.

>>42789536
>Greetings, chosen undead!

>>42790723
>>42790728
Then say hello to Julia.

Like the Bloop, it's one of the loudest noises ever recorded in the Pacific.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPae-2nnsoY

>>42790798
>The ocean is biiiig.
Yes. The reason the Bloop is so mysterious is because it was heard by sensors 4800 km apart.

That is a loud motherfucking noise.

These threads make me want to play Terror From The Deep.

>>42790728
The alternatives are a FUCKHUGE cephalopod and Cthulhu. Icebergs cracking isn't that far off compared to that.

>>42790847
Pretty much everyone agrees all these super loud underwaters noises are almost assuredly natural and caused by tectonic and geological sources. Nothing biological could generate the sheer amount of energy needed to project noise through so much thick density liquid. A creature would have to be the size of a largish island and build to make noise to generate such effects. If one did exist the noises would be far more frequent.

>>42789239
What is it?

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>>42790883
Magnapinna squid.

>>42789755
>drunk accident
Top kek

>>42790542
>not ascended squid people a la Splatoon
You fail anon

>>42791359
That's because we've seen Ika Musume and know how badly they'd fuck up.

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>>42789070

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_%28SSN-593%29

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>>42789070
Fuck yeah, deep sea thread! Commencing dump of deep sea critters and semi-informative commentary!

First things first: see the tiny sliver near the surface on the map where I haven't bothered to alter the name? That's what you consider the "normal" ocean, where sunlight can penetrate and photosynthesis can occur. ast majority of all life in the ocean is concentrated into that small area. Below that, you get what is called the Twilight Zone, where some sunlight may be able to reach, but not enough to sustain photosynthesis. You still find plenty of normal fish and stuff here, usually ones that rise closer to the surfcae to eat but live deeper to avoid predators. Below that, you have the Upper Midnight Zone. This is where you start finding weird things with way too many teeth or tentacles. And as the name implies, there is also a Lower Midnight Zone. It's not a nice place. Even most of the deep sea fish don't go near the bottom of the Lower Midnight Zone, although multiple species do live at the upper part of the zone (the 4000 meters mark betwene the zones is usually considered the starting point of the abyss). Below that, you got the deep oceanic trenches (which don't actually look like sheer cliffs like in the picture: they're comparatively narrow areas but still several hundred kilometers wide, with not particularly steep slops)

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>>42792162
Here's an anglerfish, or sea devil as they're also know. Pretty much the quintessential deep sea fish. A large amount of species is known (not sure on the exact numbers, but probably in the hundreds), and they come in variety of shapes and sizes, although mostly somewhat spherical, and pretty small. The most notable feature is the glowy bit (called an esca) in the end of the "fishing pole" (called an illicum) that they use to attract prey. Also, as I'm sure everybody knows at this point, these types of anglerfish are female. The male of the species is much smaller and has a highly developed sense of smell but no lure, pointy teeth or even a proper digestive system! He only exists to find a female, bite onto her body and fuse with her, eventually losing most of his organs and becoming little more than a pair of testicles the female can use to fetilize her eggs.

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>>42792239
More anglerfish. They do come in a lot of different forms. Or particular note is the 2nd from the top, called the wolftrap anglerfish. The upper jaw bends sideways to snap on the prey like a beartrap. Its illicum actually looks like a fishing pole, complete with hooks on the lure. Nobody is quite sure what they're used for.
There are also some anglerfish that don't have the "fishing pole" at all, and instead just have the lure inside their mouth. Fish swim inside their moth to look at the lure, and all they have to do is close their mouth.

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>>42792355
Moving on to other deep sea fish (although I have a lot more pictures of aglerfish I can post later).
The gulper eel is one of the postergirls for why the deep sea is also known as Underwater Vore-Hell. It's pretty much a huge pair of jaws and a highly elastic stomach, plus a few other bits you need to get said jaws and stomach to where they want to go. Unlike most other deep sea fish, they don't have huge pointy teeth, although they make up with the sheer size of their mouth. They normally eat small shrimps and fish, but can swallow fish bigger than themselves if one happens to blunder into their mouth. They're also pretty big by deep sea standards (they can be as long as an adult human is tall), but most of the lenght comes from their whiplike tail (which is tipped with a glowing lure they probably use to catch prey). Like many other deep sea fish, the adult male exists only to find a female and mate with her. He doesn't fuse with her like the anglerfish, though; he just dies some time after mating due to not having functional jaws or digestive system. This is pretty common survival strategy among deep sea fish. Food is scarce and finding a mate is difficult, so the males have evolved to be as efficient as possible at finding a mate, at the expence of everything else.

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>>42789755
Is that... who I think it is?

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>>42792470
Speaking of weird secual dimorphism, here's one of the more extreme examples. These three fish are all the same species, but it took untill DNA tests were invented to find that out. Before that, they were though to be three different species, called the tapetail, the bignose and the whalefish. In actuality, tapetails are the larval form of the fish. They live in shallower water and eat small invertebrates. Once they reach adulthood, they descend deeper and undergo a metamorphosis. The male (the bignose) has his jaws fused shut and develops a very large olfactory organ (hence the name), which he uses to sniff out a female and mate with it before the stored nutrients collected durin the larval stage run out. The female (the whalefish, which being the first one discovered is what the species is now known as) grows bigger and develops the standard deep sea fish large jaws and elastic stomach.

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>>42792586
Another classic deep sea horrorfish, the viperfish and dragonfish have huge needle-like teeth, black serpentine bodies and glowing photopohores running along their sides. Unlike most other deep sea fish, which kind of float around waiting for pray to come at them, the viperfish are actually relatively active, and capable of short bursts of speed. Their larval forms are also really weird, with eyes at the end of long stalks that slowly coil into their eyesockets as they grow up. The adult still has the remains of the stalks coiled up inside its skull.

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>>42792678
Here's a larval dragonfish, which is a species closely related to the viperfish. Note the ridiculously long eyestalks.

>>42790379
Eel that pressed its face against the glass

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>>42792687
This one is a pretty interesting fish in more than one way. The stoplight loosejaw has two special things going for it. First of all, its jaw is designed to extend forward and snap shut at high speed (the "loosejaw" part of the name). It doesn't even have any skin on the bottom of the lower jaw, just a hole, in order to reduce drag caused by water. Secondly, it has a red light organ behind its eye (hence the "stoplight" par of the name). Red light is the the first spectrum absorbed by water, which is why many deep sea fish are either red or black. It allows them to easily blend in with their surroundings. Consequently, most deep sea fish lack the ability to see red light at all. Stoplight loosejaw is an exception, though. The red photophores combined with the ability to see red light give it the ability to illuminate its surroundings while remaining invisible to the prey/predator.

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>>42792758
And here's a drawing showing the stoplight loosejaw's jaws in action.

>>42790877
unless it's sleeping

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>>42792765
I mentioned that the gulper eel is one of the postergirls for the Underwater Vore Hell. Here's the other one (at least I think it's a girl; every other fish I've mentioned so far has extreme sexual dimorphism, so I assume that is also the case here): the Chiasmodon niger, also known as the balck swallower or the great swallower. A relatively unremarkable looking fish (sure, you have the pointy teeth and black skin, but the general body-shape is pretty normal), but it is probably the most extreme example of the common deep sea fish trait of being able to swallow things bigger than itself. The black swallower is known to regularly swallow prey twice its size and ten times its weight, and can swallow even bigger things, although at that point it risks serious injury (as has happened in the picture: the swallower has attempted to eat a snake macrel about 4 times its own size, which has caused its stomach to burst). Sometimes the prey they swallow is large enough that it starts rotting in their stomach before they finish digesting it, and the gasses building up causes the fish to float up to the surface like some kind of bizarre abyssal horror-balloon and die.

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>>42792853
The goblin shark, aka. the "lets ride a bicycle mad eout of nightmares into your ass"-fish. A very primitive kind of shark (and considering sharks have remained essentially unchanged for the past 200 million years, that makes it veyr old indeed) found in the deep sea off the coat of Japan, among other places. The weird thing on their head may help them detect electrical impulses and locate prey, and their jaws are filled with a nightmarish mishmash of hook-like teeth and can extend forward to grab their prey. This one's a bit dried up: they look less wrinkly in their native enviroment, but still pretty freaky.

>>42792801
Welp, I'm not sleeping tonight.

Thanks anon.

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>>42792914
Fish aren't the only animals that get freakier the deepr you go. Invertebrates are pretty good at the whole "deep sea horro" thing as well. This is the Vampiroteuthis infernalis, or the vampire squid from hell, the perennial winner of the "most awesome scientific name" competition. Fossils indicate similar cephalopods have existed since the Jurasic period, when they were found in shallower waters. Nowdays, they only survive in the cold, low-oxygen enviroment of the deep sea. Despite the menacing name, they only eat marine snow, small flakes of organic matter made from dead plankton and fish constantly falling to the ocean floor. If threathened, they squirt glowing ink to distract the predator and use the black "cloak" between their tentacles to cover their bodies in order to hide their resence. The inside of the cloak is covered with spines known as cirry, but they're not useful for defence, being soft.

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>>42792983
Deep sea fish are usually pretty small, due to scarcity of resources, but for some reason many invertebrates grow to bigger the deeper you go. The legendary giant squid is probably the best known example, but these giant deep sea isopods are another well knwon one. They're essentially big underwater versions of pillbugs or roly-polies, living in the ocean floor and eating marine snow and carcasses of fish and whales that fall from above. Whalefalls are pretty much the oasises of the abyssal plains, providing a large amount of food for various deep sea scavengers. There are even worms that have evolved specifically to eat whalebone and nothing else.

>>42793013
>that pic

sweet fucking christ

Why

Why is this a thing allowed to live

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>>42793032
Because the deep sea is no place for cretaures whole and sane. It's mother nature's way of telling you she hates you. Yes, you. Personally.

Speaking of incomprehensible horrors, he's Yog-Sothot, the embodiment of space and time, the holder of the Gate and the Key, who alone knows where the Great Old Ones broke through of old, and where they shall one day return and unmake the works of man.

...Just kididng. It's actually a siphonophore, a colonial organism formed of millions of individual polyps. The Portuquese man-o-war is the best known example, but the deep sea siphonophores are much freakier. You can see one in action on the left side half of the picture in >>42789294
These things can be hundreds of meterals long, and composed of enough flailing tentacles of give H.P Lovecraft nightmares. If they weren't actually composed of millions of tiny animals, they'd be pretty good candidates for the biggest animals on the planet (although they're mostly made out of jelly and water, so despite the size they're pretty light).

>>42793032
Do you now understand why we want to colonize space, and not the deep sea?

>>42793102
I want a setting where humanity is a master of spooky eldritch sea-based horrors that terrify and scare away all other sentient species around the universe.

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>>42793091
Probably the most extreme example of deep sea gigantism, the thing in the picture is essentially a dire ameba (or more accurately, a shell made out of sand and detritus said ameba has built around itself). It's like a regular ameba, except the size of your fist. That doesn't sound all that huge, but considering regular amebas are microscopic, it's ginormously huge relatively speaking.

I still have more pictures of variosu deep sea fish, mostly the species already mentioned, or I could go into my folder of deep sea mermaids I've saved up from the previous threads. Might make this thing at least tangetially fantasy-related.

>>42789955
Probably because you're being a rules lawyer.

Fucking paladins.

>>42793160
>ameba

Don't those eat organic matter if they come into physical contact with it?

>>42790457
By volume, I suspect there are jellyfish and giant squid that are larger than the largest blue whale. By mass, no.

>>42793190
Squids, no. By lenghts, maybe, but most of the lenght comes from the tentacles, so the volume is not huge. Siphonophores (see >>42793091
), however, which are related to jellyfish, can be by volume considerably larger than even the largest whale.

>>42790698
No

>>42793265
I am basing my statement on the fact that claw marks have been found on sperm whales that are proportionally large enough to be from 200-foot long squids.

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>>42793315
It's a sound picked up by hydrophones near the southern end of South America. The name comes from what it sounds like when slowed down to the point where human ears can pick it up. Notable for being one of the loudest underwater sounds detected and being superficially similar to sounds made by living beings, except if it was made by something alive, it'd have to be several times the size of the largest whales. Also, the place where the sound was picked up from is pretty close to the spot where the city of R'lyeh, the resting place of Cthulhu, rises to surface in the Lovecraft story.
In actuality, the sound is probably caused by an iceberg breaking up. Most lound underwater sounds are caused by that, or icebergs scraping the bottom of the sea, or by underwater earthquakes and volcanoes.

Also, because I'm not sure whether I should post more actual deep sea creatures or stuff from my fantasy folder, have both. I have better looking pictures, but they lack woodcutting illustrations of actual deep sea fish.

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>>42793360
That's a bigass squid. Although probably still not volumetrically bigger than a blue whale. Blue whales are over 100 feet long, aren't they? At least half, probably more, of the squids lenght would be in the tentacles, and the body probably wouldn't be as wide as that of a whale. Still, that's a huge squid. Who knows what else is down there we haven't found yet?

>>42793160
Post some mermaids. I think in one of the previous deep sea threads people talked about writing playable deep sea mermaid race for DnD, but that never got finished.

>>42792758
>half its face is literally just skeleton
Metal as fuck

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>>42793450
>I think in one of the previous deep sea threads people talked about writing playable deep sea mermaid race for DnD, but that never got finished.
I remember that. Maybe I should try finishing it and set up a pastebin. The problem is that I haven't actually ever played 3.5/PF, which is what people usually talk about when they talk about DnD. As such, I wouldn't know how to balance things. Anybody know a good source for various DnD race stats, either official or custom ones? An actual mermaid-type race, or failing that, a naga/lamia one (since I could copy the rules for locomations from them; the mermaid could have a serpentine body so it could move on land by slithering like lamias do) would be most useful.

>>42793468
Due to the scarcity of food, most deep sea creatures are calcium deficient and lack excess muscle mass, to make up for this they attack prey with maximum violence, often causing self inflicted injuries in the process.

>>42793488
I'll throw in that deep sea creatures cannot survive at normal sea level without some form of pressurized environment.
Bringing a deep sea mermaid to the surface would be like taking a person to the upper atmosphere without a pressure suit.

Might not bother some people, but for others it could hurt suspension of disbelief.

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>>42793490
The damage on the skin might also be post-mortem, assuming the fish in the picture has been captured for study. Most deep sea fish are very squishy, and considering the lower jaw on that fish is little more than the jawbone covered with a thin layer of skin, it would be very easy to scrape the skin off just by brushing against it.

Here's mermaid based on said fish. I have a few pictures from this artist and they're pretty cool because they're based on actual deep sea fish.

>>42793488
Aquatic elves and merfolk already exist in 3.Xe. Not sure what's needed to make them "deep sea" though.

>>42793533
>>42793490
If this is the case, would that mean that most deep sea creatures would get their asses kicked by surface creatures if they somehow wound up in the same environment. I mean we're presumably much tougher and much more able to exert force reliably

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>>42793523
I know, doesn't make biological sense. But, well, there would not be much point in making a playable race that can't survive on the surface, so if the point is to make a playble deep sea mermaid, then one kind of has to let that slide. Go with Aquaman-style deep-sea adaption instead of realistic kind (Aquaman has super-strenght and durability because his body is built to handle the pressure of the deep sea. In real life, deep sea creatures survive the pressure because their bodies have similar consistency as the water around them, and most will explode when brought to surface).

Some deep sea fish can actually survive being brought to surface. Pic related; the ogrefish is very durably built compared to other deep sea fish, and has been known to survive in aquariums for several months. They also have the longest teeth relative to their size, and have special sheaths for the teeth in their upper jaw to keep them from stabbing themselves in the braisn whenever they close their mouths.

>>42793593
The few creatures exempt from that would be the ones without conventional skeletons, like squid or hagfish, which are basically creatures made of pure muscle.

>>42793534
Bioluminescense, extreme sexual dimorphism, way too many needle-like teeth and the ability to swallow things twice their size. Those are pretty much the standard deep sea fish traits.

>>42793604
I mean I'd be OK with an explanation like that, just pointing out that some other people might not.
>Ogrefish
>"What are ye doin' in my abyss!?"

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>>42793534
Basically just take a normal fish, and add nightmares to it.
Many deep sea creatures are partially or totally translucent, you can see all of their internal organs as well as their skeleton clearly.
Many creatures are bioluminescent, providing themselves with their own light sources, some use it to lure other animals within striking distance, some use it for communication, and some even use it as weapons, for example certain shrimp will launch high pressure jets of bioluminescent liquid at predators to blind them.
Many of the fish have large quantities of disposable fangs, as old ones are torn out, new ones grown in rapidly.
Males and females of the same species are often extremely different, males are often tiny while females are massive, to the point where they're barely identifiable as belonging to the same species.
Some creatures have massive eyes for scraping up as much light as possible, while other creatures evolution has led them to discard eyes almost completely.

>>42790723
Or it's Godzilla feasting on radioactive material down there.

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>>42793628
So, they'd effectively be monogendered (since in most deep sea fish the males are very short lived and just die after mating; in the case of the mermaids the males probably wouldn't even be sapient), have a bite attack and ability to swallow whole. Bioluminescence could let them light their surroundings and maybe use charm monster or similar spell as a spell-like ability to represent using the glowing lure to attract prey?

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>>42793741

>>42790817
>>42790728
>>42790698
You know those are sped up like 15x faster than the speed they were recorded at, right? They sound exactly like ice grinding to a halt. Oh, and "heard across the entire Pacific ocean" doesn't mean it was loud, just that it was far-reaching. It took delicate instruments to pick up the sound waves and they just barely caught anything at all.

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>>42792914
Those things apre pretty big, espcially compared to most other deep sea fish. Wouldn't want to run into one while diving (not that they're really dangerous to humans, but they look pretty damn nightmarish).

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>>42793750
Starting to run out of good looking pictures. I'll probably be back later to post more pictures of fish and to try my hand at writing the deep sea merfolk race, if for no other reason than the fact that I think deep sea stuff is cool as hell, and /tg/ has written considerably stupider races/classes.

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>>42793032
Same reason there are tons of crustaceans in the ocean.
Good body design for milling on the floor!

I would love to put my friends into a deep sea segment of the setting, but I can't think of a good reason or argument for them to get into a pressure-resistant sea vessel.

In this picture, a hairy angler. Still has a lure but uses its hairiness for increased proximal sensitivity.

>>42794378
Apparatus of Kawalsh.

Have it preprogrammed if they hit a specific lever of button sequence.

A little railroady, yes, but they got into it when they realized there is treasure in the oceans.

>>42789645
Newfriend please lurk moar.

Imagine how freaky we'd be to these sort of things though.

>fingers crossed for an "Enemy from the Deep" expansion for XCOM2

>>42796346
>Aquanauts report killing 30 spooky things
>they didn't even get close to the AO

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So let me tell you guys about this game called SOMA...

>>42796472
Go on then, tell us. Don't just leave it hanging like that.

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>>42796511

Well, okay. In short: It shares similar gameplay mechanics to Amnesia (it's by the same developer), but it takes place in a decaying underwater research base. There's a lot of mind-fuckery in the plot, but saying any more would give away some of the game's best discoveries.

If you like creepy underwater stuff, environmental story-telling, and the occasional moment of pants-shitting terror in the black, briny abyss, I highly recommend it so long as you can overlook Amnesia's run/hide mechanics and some uneven voice acting.

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http://pastebin.com/y0041Yjm

Started working on the deep sea merfolk race. Still some things I need to work out, and could use some help with.
I think there could be something like a succesful bite attack giving a bonus on a grapple check, but don't know how big the bonus should be.
Not sure if I should implement something representing the glowy lure, and how it should be done.
No idea and LA, ECL etc.

The statline is taken from regular merfolk, although I changed the charisma bonus to a penalty as slimy fanged deep sea horror-girls are not considered particularly attractive (or so I'm told...).

>>42796606
Assuming that these only live at the bottom of the sea, and can't come up to the surface, how would you get down to face them without some kind of diving bell, or othersuch submersible.

>>42789755
That's fucking awesome. Make it a thing anon. Go for it.

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>>42796639
That's why I made them amphibious, even if it doesn't make any actual biological sense. Other races interacting with them would be nearly impossible otherwise (making statting them kind of pointless), and since this is for a fantasy game that runs more on rules of cool than any kind of real physics and biology, I don't really feel giving deep sea merfolk Aquman powers is a massive problem with suspension of disbelief.

>>42796719
Idk, developing some sort of Aquanaut class like >>42796429 mentions could be pretty fun.

>>42793488
I think the PF SRD has a race building guide

>>42793523
I don't like that idea, half because it would mean PC couldn't fight deep sea dwelling monsters like krakens and aboliths, and half because you could hand wave it by saying they're more durable than real deep sea critters because magic

>>42793534
That's like saying why have dwarfs when you have humans, they both live on the surface after all

>>42793697
That sounds pretty good

>>42796765
That would be interesting, although you would kind of have to make everybody play as that class, then, since a class who'se whole thing is being a deep-sea diver would in a regular party be as useless as Aquaman in the Justice League. I'd love to run a deep-sea adventure campaign, though, although the players would probably be less that thrilled about taking a ride through Underwater Vore Hell.

>>42793360
>>42793429
is there source or pictures on this because it's fucking fascinating

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>>42790242
At some point a whale has had it off with a lobster

>>42796869
>I think the PF SRD has a race building guide
I found one, and looking at it, I think I might be able to squeeze this as +1 LA. It doesn't list the value of swallow whole ability, and I'm not really doing this according to all the rules of art as there is also a limit on how many traits you can pick from different categories, but the total racial points will probably still fall just within +1 LA range. +2 would probably be too crippling, as everybody hates level adjustment.
+1 LA is incidentally the same as regular merfolk. Sahuagin are +0.

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>>42790457
Ningin.

>>42792914
Featured in Malibu Shark Attack

>>42790408
You'd actually die pretty much instantly after a suit breach under Europa. Pressure starts at 772 atmospheres and only goes up.

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>>42790379
"This is a Moray Eel that was disfigured somehow, probably at birth."

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>>42796892
>useless as Aquaman

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Possible idea for a deep sea advanture I came up with:

A ship carrying [extremely important magical macguffin] is caught in a storm and sinks in the middle of the ocean. Since the macgufifn is too important to just leave there, somebody has to decend into the bottom of the ocean to retrieve it. Cue PCs travelling through the ocean (encountering pirates, sea monsters and nasty weather), then down into the abyss, where they have to find the wreck somewhere in the vast abyssal plains (fighting dire viperfish, giant giant isopods and other deep sea monsters along the way). Maybe the wreck is perched right on the edge of a deep sea trench, too deep for even their equipment to reach, or inhabited by some abyssal merfolk, no doubt misuing the macguffin in some way. Or better yet, it's fallen into the trench and only said merfolk are able to dive deep enough to retrieve the item, forcing the PCs to make an alliance with unsettling deep sea monstergirls to retrieve the item. Possible complications may rise from making said abyssal merfolk aware of the existence of the surface world, which might lead to the invasion of horrible vore mermaids from the deep sea.

>>42797606
So, The Abyss with magic, then? Groovy.

>>42797580
Command creayures of the deep wouldn't actually work on Cthulhu, considering he's actually a creature from space, and the only reason he's underwater is because his city sunk while he was sleeping. Infact, being underwater is detrimental to him, as several miles of water between him and the surface keeps him from using his telepathic powers to enslave mankind to his will.

And yeah, Aquaman is kind of useless. I know he has super strenght and durability, but so does pretty much eveyr super hero. And while I'd love to have his ability in real life, commanding sea creatures and being able to breathe underwater isn't that useful for fighting crime, as most crime tends to occur on land, leaving hims as just "generic guy with super strenght".

>>42797677
Godzilla lives in the sea.

>>42797677
Creatures of the deep. Space or ocean, same thing.

>>42797606
The part about retrieving a magical item from the deep sea reminds me of an idea from one of the previous threads about how since dumping something in the ocean is a very good way to get rid of nasty artefacts when the sun or the astral plane are not options, the abyssal plain is positively littered with demonic swords and world-shattering artefacts. The deep sea mermaids have no idea what they actually do, and use them for perfectly mundane things. Meanwhile, the demonic intelligences of the items have long since become traumatised wrecks from the isolation and being exposed to the horrors of underwater vore-hell.

I once had an idea for a character who is an immortal cyborg. He's encountered roaming the bottom of the sea, as he was thrown off a boat by one of his enemies. As most of him is made of metal, he sank, and with no need for air, he couldn't drown or be crushed by the pressure.

When the party finds him, he's gone mad from wandering the bottom of the sea for centuries, still trying to find his way back to dry land.

>>42797920
At the most it should take 4 years. If he's not buffeted around you can walk that far in a straight line.

>>42797920
I'm sure I read that somewhere... but it is still a good idea. Put barnacles on it!

>>42798078
If he knew which way land was. No landmarks either, aside from the odd wreck or whale skeleton. Wouldn't be hard to get lost.

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>>42789971
Somebody should make a movie like that. I bet it would be great.

remake a shit

>>42797823
>It's too cold and dark
>I've been laying in the mud for the past 200 years without seeing any sapient being
>Finally, I was picked up by some weird mermaid! Now I can rule the...
>Holy shit, did she just swallow something twice her size!?
>I want to go back to Hell...

>>42798121
When people are lost with nothing to tell them the correct direction, they almost invariably end up walking in circles. So getting stuck in the middle of the ocean floor, with nothing but flat muddy plain as far as you can see (which isn't really very far since there is no light down there) would in all likelyhood result in you walking in a big circle for the next 200 years.

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>>42796606
Updated the rules somewhat. Any comments/ideas? I wonder if I should post that in a general DnD/PF thread.

Anyway, I'm bored so I'm resuming the freaky deep sea creature dump. Here's a blobfish. You've probably see one before, but what you might not know is that they don't look anything like that when alive. A blobfish's body is very squishy and jelly-like, which allows it to handle the immense pressure of the deep sea (rather than being crushed, the body conforms to the surrounding water pressure). In its natural enviroment it's a pretty unremarkable looking fish. When brought to the surface, the soft squishy body turns into a shapeless blob.

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>>42798598
Here's what they actually look like when underwater.

>>42798618
Kinda cute. In a strange way.

>>42792162
>>42792239
>>42792355
>>42792470
>>42792586
>>42792678

I know you, from a similiar thread, a long time ago.

Blessed be your work

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This is another really weird fish. The things in the front that look like eyes? Actually nostrils. The green spheres inside the transparent head? The actual eyes. Yeah, this fish has a transparent head with the eyes inside it. I believe it feeds on jellyfish, so the protective dome keeps it from getting stung in the eyes.

>>42794397
Ah, very BioShock.

Shoulda thought of that....

It's a modern setting, so this could work just fine.

>>42790799
>Do not treat me like some old, withering snake!

>>42796564
Even Black Plague got me spooked, despite graphical simplicity. If they take my bathophobia and their gameplay, I'm pretty sure I'll need to back on anti-anxiety meds.

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>>42798649
Nice to know I'm being appreciated. I'm hardly the only person who'se posted weird deep sea creatures here, though. I think deep sea stuff (and the ocean in general; I've always liked the ocean, probably runs in the family seeing hwo my grandfather used to be seacaptain), so I like showing people all kinds of cool and creepy stuff you have down there.

Speaking of cool stuff, here's another fish with weird eyes. It has two pupils in each eye, one for looking up to see potential prey silouetted againt what little light comes down from the surface, the other for keeping an eye on its surroundings.

>>42790591

Gotta keep them wet though.

>>42797677
I dunno, man, Cthulhu had a bunch of his followers turned into fishmen. He must have some affinity for water. Trying to remember which story it was, the title escapes me. I believe it's the Shadow over Innsmouth.

>>42798598
At work and pastebin is hard to read on a phone, I'll look at it when I get a chance
Though posting it in thread might help

>>42793176

don't we all do?

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>>42798918
The Deep Ones aren't directly related to Cthulhu, though, although they do worship him along with their gods Dagon and Hydra, because R'lyeh is in the bottom of the ocean where the Deep Ones live.

More fish. Kind of. I don't think hagfish really qualifies as a fish. It barely qualifies as a vertebrate. But "fish" is pretty much a cath-all term for any aquatic vertebrate that isn't a mammal, bird, reptile or amphibian, anyway. They're pretty much as simple as vertebrates can be, and don't even have a proper skeleton. They're most knwon for producing copious amounts of sticky slime. Like, dropping one in a large bucket will cause all the water in the bucet to turn into slime. They use the slime both as a defence mechanism and as lubrication when tunneling into the bodies of dead or dying animals. Along with giant isopods, they're responsible for clearing up much of the dead animal corpse in the ocean floor.

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>>42799208
Here's a close up of ones face. It doesn't even have proper jaws or teeth, but its tongue is covered with sharp sort-of-teeth that allow it to scrape off flesh from corpses. Hagfish also have a single nostril, and are the only fish that can sneeze (that have to, or they might block their nostril with their slime).

>>42789971
Humorous take on sinking sub.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/red-november/

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>>42799045
I think posting it here might mess up the formatting, but let's try anyway (also, turns out I'm pretty much out of deep se mermaid pictures. Must increase the size of my folder).

Abyssal Merfolk

+2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma
Humanoid (Aquatic)
Medium
Base land speed 5 feet (1 square), swim 50 feet (+8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard. It can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line).
Darkvision 60 feet
Light Sensitivity: Abyssal merfolk are dazzled as long as they remain in an area of bright light.
Amphibious: Abyssal merfolk can breathe both air and water.
Bioluminescence (Ex): Abyssal merfolk have bioluminescent photophores that allow them to produce light equivalent to that of a small lanter. The light can be turned on and off at will
Natural Attacks (Ex): Abyssal merfolk have a bite attack, which deals 1d6 points of damage.
Swallow Whole (Ex): Abyssal merfolk can try to swallow a grabbed opponent of up to one size larger than itself by making a successful grapple check. Once inside, the opponent takes an amount of damage equal to 2d4+her CON modifier per round, half of the damage is due to crushing and half due to acid. A swallowed creature can cut its way out by using a light slashing or piercing weapon to deal 1/4 the abyssal merfolk's HP of damage to her stomach (AC as if she was flatfooted). Once the creature exits, the muscular forces closes the hole; another swallowed opponent must cut its own way out. An abyssal merfolk's stomach can hold 1 creature of one size bigger than the abyssal merfolk, twice that of one size less than her max, and so on.
Automatic Languages: Common and Aquan.
Favored Class: ?
Level Adjustment: +1
Effective Character Level: 2

>>42799208
Alright, fair enough. Been a while since I've read up on lovecraftian stuff.

>>42793032
It's literally the cutest thing he's posted, why complain now?

>>42796472
Is that a polyp zombie or something?

>>42796639
It could be an underwater campaign.

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>>42799240
Here's a hatchetfish, making the same face you would upon realising you're stuck in underwater vore hell. Hatchetfish isn't actually all that unsual looking when viewed from the side, but the very flat shape, large upward-facing eyes and upturned mouth give it an eerily uncanny face when seen from the front.

>>42796335
I genuinely find this terrifying. All the moreso because there isn't some giant monster in the shot. Just utter helplessness and the threat of the unknown.

>>42799608
Look more closely

>>42796335
>>42799608
Nevermind. I'm a blind idiot. Just noticed the silhouette.

>>42799647
The original is clear. I have it in my wallpaper folder but that's a hell of a lot of images to go through

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>>42799608
There is a giant monster there as well. Look at the bottom left corner.

Another weird fish, the tripod fish lives in the bottom of the deep sea and uses three elongated spines to prop itself on the bottom, facing the current and eating marine snow and small animals. I don't know why it doesn't just lay on the bottom like most fish would do, maybe the flow of water is better slightly higher up. They're also hermaphroditic and can self-fertilize if they find no partner.

>>42798618
>>42798643
Looks like a Pleco, a bit.

>>42799679
What's marine snow? You've mentioned it before, but I've never heard of it (which is rare). Is it algae or plankton or something?

>>42789239
I've never noped harder than I just did. What the fuck is that?!

>>42798887
So they're female?

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>>42799731
It's a catch-all term for small particles of organic matter that fall from the photic zone. Largely dead plankton and fish-poop, but also pieces of dead fish and anything else organic that might end up falling down to the bottom of the ocean. It falls down on the ocean floor as a constant rain, covering the abyssal plains in a thick layer of ooze.
Pictures show a her od abyssal sea cucumbers grazing on the pelagic ooze.

>>42793176
Ha-
The Xenophyophore is a dead-shit-eater, amoeboid but not an amoeba. Its volume is largely because it secretes a "house". Likes to capture bacteria, pretty much.

>>42799608
A sensible fear of large volumes. I didn't see the monster at first, but I didn't need it to get spooked.

>>42789755
I don't think I like the implication that enlightened chosen mathematicians were making the world perfect until shitty retarded art and faith came along and shit on everything. Feels like a story that's going to lionize and glorify math and logic to the denigration of all else.

Still, besides the potentially heavy handed ideological bent, the premise sounds interesting. Would read.

>>42799351
Okay, looks about right LA wise, unless it's a sea heavy game, then I might bump it up to 2
As for favored class, I'm feeling ranger but that doesn't seem that good a fit...

>>42799744
A squid species with long tentacles (and big fins).
We're not sure why the fuck they have them, but it's safe to say they're for feeding.

>>42799744
A particularly odd-looking squid. See also the picture in >>42790901 (it's the 5th one from the right). The tentacles have odd 90-degree bends on them for some reason. Theyve very long as the squid hangs them under it to catch food (mostly small invertebrates and bits of marine snow).

Although if you want to really nope yourself, take a look at this (ignore the annoying music, though):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT1TSbarW1U
Deep sea siphonophores are pretty much closest we get to visualising an eldritch abomination.

>>42792983
These guys are also some of the laziest mofos in the deep. They have phosphorescent lights along their body, and if they happen to be chased they will shoot out their ink and then, instead of actually swimming away, stay still and run their lights in sequence. This makes it look like they're swimming away, when in fact they are just playing a trick on their pursuers.

>>42799927
Rogue might do. Would synch with the dex bonus and deep sea fish rely on stealth to hunt. I associate rangers with using ranged weapons and having an animal companion, which wouldn't really fit (ranged weapons don't work very well underwater, and animal companions don't really fit for a being living in an enviroment where everything is trying to eat you unless you eat them first).
I'm thinking about having a succeful bite attack gran a bonus for a grapple check, since that's pretty much what the freaky teeth in actual deep sea fish are for, but dunno how big the bonus should be and I don't want to increase the LA to 2.

>>42789760
What is that wierd writing one up from the bottom...

>>42793523
>>42793604
>>42796639
>>42796719
>>42796892
I really, really want to run an exploration-focused campaign in which the players travel to the upper atmosphere, the poles, and the deep sea, and maybe even space. There would be volcanoes and enormous caverns and vast, trackless jungles. Getting there would be half the fun: the players would need to get their hands on balloons, bathyspheres, ships, and other stuff. Part of it would be about contacting new intelligent species, like deep-sea mermaids, sky jellyfish, or magma-dwelling entities that look like giant spirochaetes.

But I don't think anyone really wants to play National Geographic: The Game, so I have to shelve that one.

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>>42800027
tbh just about every deep sea animal is a lazy fuck. With so little food, they generally can't afford to spend resources on unnecessary movement. Viperfish atleast are capable of moving quite fast for short periods of time, but the standard hunting practise of all the fishes with a glowing lure is to float still and wait something to swim right up to them, at which point they grab it and swallow it.

Pic related, btw, is the largest known anglerfish, growing up to 180cm long (6 ft). Considering vast majority of species are around 5cm to at most 30cm (1 ft) long, that's huge.

>>42800163
I'd like to play that. Maybe come up with some kind of plohook to justify why the party has to go to all the exotic places, aside from just for the sake of exploration (which while a noble motive in itself, isn't something most PCs are motivated by). Such a campaign would probably be best fitting for some kind of pseudo-17th century era, when gentleman-explorers were racing to discover the last unexplored places of the world.

>>42793158
>humanity figures out how to make reactionless drives capable of 1.1G acceleration, thereby ending the age of rocketships as we know them
>of course the drives work underwater too, just slower because of water resistance
>spacecraft become freaky mechanical manta rays that can maneuver underwater, like a Gungan transport sub that took twenty levels of badass
>we decide to explore the oceans with the manta ships as a sort of practice run for space, especially moons with sub surface oceans
>turns out H.P. Lovecraft was an optimist
>after conquering the abyss we figure out enough bioengineering to grow some of these nightmare features on to ships such that they resist vacuum while still being a betentacled mess
>no humanity you are the vorlons
>and then the galaxy was ours

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>>42800163
I'd be up for that. Reminds me of an setting I once thought of where a portal to wherever it is that Cthullu and his mates come from opens up in 1884, and the players are big game hunters who get hired to protect the scientists and explorers who make journeys into it.

I was inspired by pic related.

>>42800092
Good point, I didn't even think rogue for some reason, I just went with ranger because ranger=hunter

>>42799927
Druid maybe? Polymorphing into Cthulhu would be a hell of a way to get surface mobility.

>>42799965
> that video
Holy fuck. Never going swimming again.

>>42789984
I can't think of any other place to ask so:
What is a quest thread? Is it exactly like what plagueofgripes described with his animation of "Huge Quest?"

>>42799351
What about the males? With sexual dimorphism being so extreme, wouldn't they get their own template? A size category?

Maybe -4 STR?

>>42800444
It's a choose your own adventure played out on an image board. They can last for dozens of threads and become semipermanent parasites clogging the catalog. That's why they need their own board.

>>42800470
Makes become a level bonus. "Oh you gained three levels while in the abyss. A male has fused himself into your body. Roll for pregnancy."

>>42800424
The stat bonuses don't really favour druids. I would expect the abyssal mermaid society to have druids or shamans as their spiritual leaders. Probably worshipping not-Cthulhu or some horrible underwater vore-god.

>>42800444
They're threads where the posters control a character, usually by selecting an option presented by the GM, who then describes what happens next based on which chose was the most popular. Never really looked into them, though.

>>42800491
*Males become

>>42800470
Considering how short-lived and under-developed males of most abyssal fish are (most can't even eat), I'd assume the males of the species aren't sapient. They just exist to find a female, mate with her and die. Deep sea fish are one of the few cases where an effectively monogendered race is perfectly justified.

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Giant tube worms. They live around black smokers, which are places near mid-oceanic ridges where water that has entered the cracks of the ocean floor and heated by the magma below the active spreading center comes back to surface (well, bottom of the ocean, but you know what I mean). The water has a lot of dissolved minerals, such as iron, sulphur and copper, which are precipitated when it hits the cold seawater, creating the black "smoke" and the "chimneys" from whcih it rises. Also leads to the creation VHMS (volcanically-hosted massive sulfide) ore deposits. I wrote my thesis on one. Anyway, the black smoker fields are like oasises in the ocean floor, as they sustain an ecosystem based on the tubeworms and other creatures that use chemotrophic bacteria to obtain energy from the mineral-ruch water. It's an ecosystem effectively independent from the sun.

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>>42800728
This is a salp. It doesn't look very impressive, but they can reproduce by budding and form chains that may be hundreds of meters long and grow at an extremely high rate. They're a food source for many other animals.
They're also our distant relatives. Salps, like tunicates are actually closely related to vertebrates. In their larval stage they have a notochord (basically a spine without the bony bits) and a brain, but once they reach adulthood they lose them. I feel there's material for social commentary there.

>>42800470
>>42800491
>>42800556
Male template:
Diminutive sized
-8 STR, -8 DEX, -8 CON,
Parasitic mating (EX): As they lack a digestive tract, males cannot eat and must locate and be assimilated by a female of it's species within 1 week of hatching or begin starving, while assimilated the male becomes a physical part of his mate and can take no action that requires movement, speech, or anything other than purely mental actions except for attempting to fertilize her, additionally the male lacks hp, size, AC, speed, saves, STR, DEX, and CON scores while it is assimilated, anything that would target the male affects his mate unless it is already doing so. Should the male somehow be separated from his mate, he immediately begins suffering the effects of starvation and suffiation until he is reassimilated
Favored class: psion
LA +0

>>42800823
Delicious wandering halflings of the abyssal regions, generally unaware of their adult fate until the horrible Flowers For Algernon-esque metamorphosis has already started?

>>42800728
Don't those also live really long?

>>42801014
Depends. I believe they can live for at leats 50 years, probably over 100, but the smoker fields are pretty transient phenomenas, actually. Individual chimneys may suddenly stop smoking, or collapse into rubble, and sometimes entire fields will shut down, only for a new one to start forming nearby. Individual chimneys rarely last for more than few centuries.

>>42800909
>Favored class: psion
>Horrible vore mermaid assassin backed up by half a dozen psion male abyssal mermen fused into her
>JesusChristHowHorrifying.jpg

>>42800909
Pretty much an entire race built around the "psionic tapeworm" trick. Neat-ish, although probably evel less likely to be actually playable than the female version.
>abyssal mermaid barbarian supported by her fused psion male

>>42800728
Are the VHMS ore deposits large or plentiful enough they could be good depositing for mining?

>>42800909
Might add the swim speed bonuses, dark vision and something to represent the highly developed sense of smell (I know there is such an ability, but can't remember what it's called).

>>42801234
>The entire party is one female mermaid and her fused males

>>42801290
Some are. Japan has multiple fairly large and relatively young VHMS deposits. Sweden has some old and highly metamorphised deposits, including Boliden, probably the best knwon goldmine in Sweden. The same area has multiple other VHMS deposits (the whole are is pretty much old ocean floor that got smushed between two continents) that had been mined since thet 1600s, I think. Some are still active mines, others are small and don't have particularly high grade ore. My thesis was one of the latter. A small mine with some copper ore with very small amounts of silver (and technically gold as well: I found one microscopic gold grain in one of my samples).

>>42801475
>>42801475

Follow up question. Could I put undersea dwarves by these things and have them capable of smelting/working it?

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>>42801637
Maybe. You'd need some way to run forges underwater, but considering black smokers occur around active volcanic zones, especially the mid-ocen ridge (where you get magma flowing to the surface and forming new oceanic crust), that isn't actually that hard.
Another thing you can mine underwater are managnese nodules. They're concentrations of managenese and iron that form on the ocean floor. There's a huge amount of them there, and mining them is brought up every now and then but so far the costs far outweight the benefits, even if mining them would be very easy once you somehow get the equipment there (they're literally found laying in the seafloor). Of course you also have ecological issues to deal with aside from just the costs of operation, which also make any attempt to mine them unlikely to happen. Dorfs probably don't give a fuck about that, though.

>>42800909
Edited that slightly to fit the same format as the female (and include the abilities I'd asusme they share). Thats for the idea.

-8 STR, -8 DEX, -8 CON,
Humanoid (Aquatic)
Diminutive
swim 50 feet (+8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard. It can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line).
Darkvision 60 feet
Scent
Light Sensitivity: Abyssal merfolk are dazzled as long as they remain in an area of bright light.
Water Dependency (Ex): Can survive out of water for 1 hour per two points in its Constitution score, after which it begins to drown.
Parasitic mating (Ex): As they lack a digestive tract, males cannot eat and must locate and be assimilated by a female of it's species within 1 week of hatching or begin starving, while assimilated the male becomes a physical part of his mate and can take no action that requires movement, speech, or anything other than purely mental actions except for attempting to fertilize her, additionally the male lacks hp, size, AC, speed, saves, STR, DEX, and CON scores while it is assimilated, anything that would target the male affects his mate unless it is already doing so. Should the male somehow be separated from his mate, he immediately begins suffering the effects of starvation and suffiation until he is reassimilated
Favored class: psion
LA +0

Nt sure if the type should be humanoid, but not sure what else it should be.

>>42801290
>>42801475

For more info see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanogenic_massive_sulfide_ore_deposit
Can't be arsed to dig up my ore geology textbook and copy the relevant chaper. The wikipedia article is good enough.

>>42801721
They really don't, thanks for the info.

>>42789760
Where's evangelion on this chart?

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>>42800823
Bumping with some more deep sea critters. Gulper eels cool, because, well, just look at the thing. It's literally just a huge mouth attached to a tail. They're very alien looking and a good example how extreme the adaption to the deep sea enviroment can be.

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>>42802367
This is the lanternfish, named for its bioluminescent organs. It doesn't possess huge pointy teeth or the ability to swallow things bigger than itself, but it accounts for over 60% of all deep sea fish biomass (indeed, they're one of the most numerous and distributed of all vertebrates on Earth: they're numerous enough that the reflections of their swimbladders on sonar can cause an impression of a false bottom), and serves as an important food source for the more freaky deep sea creatures (as well as lots of animals closer to surface, as the lanternfish rise up to lesser depth during the night to feed).

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Heading off for the night, but before I go I'll leave you this. It's a PF-compatible book for a deep sea setting.

Whats the story about that navy ship that had giant unknown tooth marks in its sensors?

>>42801753
Both seem like monstrous humanoid to me

>>42792577
I'm ready for *parties*

>>42789984
Never gonna happen edgelord

>>42800823
THis is the first time I've seen one of these that hasn't been hollowed out by some nightmare copepod or something

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>>42791308
Yup.

>>42796707
>>42799887

Eh, the whole thing is supposed to be a metaphor for the victorian belief in an unrealistic, pastoral natural world, combined with the changes and dehumanizing aspects of the Industrial Age and the rise of applied physical laws. God is only a machine; your personal morality is as relevant as the holes on a loom's punchcard. The stars orbit by Newton's Laws, steam condenses on Charles' Law...

The Calculating Priests aren't saints by any means. They're mostly accountants with ambition, or explorers, or the very bored rich. A sort of satire of the Church of England at the time.

And then the flood throws all classes and stations together in a chaotic jumble. More metaphorical stuff, as well as good plot fodder.

>>42800293
>>42793158
>CoC future setting. Humans and Deep Ones are allies and have been allies long enough that interbreeding means something like ninety percent of humanity now has the Innsmouth look.

>>42805295
>instead of boarding parties, enemy spaceships are captured by firing attack Shoggoths at/into them
>Cthulhu style dream sending is harnessed for FTL communication
>Pluto is conquered and the Mi-go are a client state
>artificial gravity and intertial damping come from deck and hull plating inscribed with prayers to Yog-Sothoth
>attempts to travel faster than light have thus far failed, tearing open holes between What Is and What Must Not Be, in the space between comets in the Oort Cloud

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>>42798598
>It looks like it's about to post something on tumblr.

>>42797677
Superman is a creature from space and Aquaman can still give him seizures smiply because he evolved from a sea creature.
Plus not only Aquaman totally has controlled Chthulu but he apparently does it once every year in the BATB cartoon. The shitty Earth two comic apparently had Atlanteans keeping him chained up the whole time.

>>42798376
>walking in a big circle for the next 200 years.

There's a character in Grim Fandango that did exactly that before Manny sank down and interrupted him.

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>>42798794

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>>42805526
lol

>>42790473
I dont remember that scene

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

>>42796951
It's an Oarfish, I believe, sometimes believed to be the thing behind sea serpent sightings.

>>42789755
If you type up a PDF of the most complete version of your setting idea and all, I could run your setting on this board.

Cool? Just be wary of Too Many Cooks like what happened to CATastrophe; brainstorming and crowdsourcing people for ideas is best done using very directed, specific questions for the setting you're stuck on.

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>>42796335

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>>42805851

Considering that I think Quest threads are a blight on this board, I'm going to have to pass. Bunch of self-indulgent escapist wanking and bad GMing.

>>42805720
no, the fucking claw marks

>>42806159
This picture made me wonder what underwater societies would use, if anything, for clothing. Dead plant and animal fibers would rot instantly and attract scavenger crustaceans, and the odds of them developing synthetics are small. Living shirts of seaweed? She'll necklaces?

>>42806159
>Bunch of self-indulgent escapist wanking

The same can be said of tabletop campaigns, 40k and MTG.

>>42790798
I know I'm hilariously late to this thread, but what's this fella exhaling everywhere?

Are we really going to go full on Marche in here?

>>42806270
Weed smoke.

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>>42806260

Absolutely! But there's also structure, competition, and real choice. Quest threads go wherever the guy running them wants them to go; it's like GMing for a room of extremely railroad-tolerant players with the attention span of ducks. And CYOA threads are just "what if I was an immortal omnipotent cool guy and not... me" crossed with the things you used to daydream about on the schoolbus.

Most RPGs feel less... masturbatory. If you want to write a novel or desperately wish you were Superman, that's fine. It's just not really a game.

>>42806260
Those topics have actual discussion and aren't just weeaboo circlejerks.
.
And now we're here, defensive questfags are true cancer.

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>>42806270

You vape, we get it.

>>42806368
Depends on the GM. One recently went skew wise immediately after the first roll.

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>>42792355
>Fish swim inside their moth to look at the lure, and all they have to do is close their mouth.

I swear to fucking God

>>42805477
>>42805295
>>42793158
>>42800293
A scene of a human scientist speaking to an Old One via written communication, telling it of how Man has exterminated the Shoggoths, of how they have taken back the Old One cities in the Antarctic and begun to revive those few Elders who survived via cryo-suspension in the ice.

"We have driven the Star Spawn of Cthulhu from our planet. The invaders from Yuggoth have been forced to concede our star system to us, and driven to whence they originally came. We have wreaked vengeance upon the Shoggoths, our superior siblings. We have driven them into oblivion, and they are no more.

"We are grateful, Progenitor, for your creation of our race, and consider our debt paid in full."
The Old One seems to consider this piece of news, its tentacles waving in the air before it brings them down to type out a response.
"You have done well, our Inheritor. You have done well."

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>>42807303

Tasty.

>>42807620
Revivification Transcript 381. (Translations are into nearest English equivalents.)
"Do not panic. All is well."
"Simulation query. Absurdity statement. Panic response."
"Do not panic. All is well."
"Ape monster interrogation query. Absurdity multiplication eight. Sanity despair."
"Do not panic. All is well."
"Simulation query withdrawn. <New sequence #411. No translation. 95% or better correlation with REDACTED sequences>. <Repeated three times>. Query. <Repeated three times>"
"Do not panic. All is well."
= Subject 381 self-terminates 4 minutes, 32 seconds into procedure.
"FUCK IT! I quit! We are driving them insane!"

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>>42807620
It occurs to me that the basic standard design of space probes is kinda similar to how the Elder Things were described.
>long, round or prism-shaped body
>huge expanding wings that glide motionless through the void
>one end of the tube has radially symmetrical sensory and communication apparatus
>the other end has structures designed for movement

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Oh hell yes, abyssal ocean threads are the fucking best. Who needs fiction when reality provides such an abundance of pure horror?

>>42801877
cuthulu related alien-deamon-god things

>>42789635
In my imagination, Cthulhu is hiding from something here. Just the way he's sitting. And he's trying to get the scuba diver to shut up so that whatever else there is doesn't hear them.

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>>42803026
There were Navy Submarines that were being attacked by Cookie-Cutter Sharks, they bit into the neoprene boots of their sonar domes and caused them to malfunction with the navigation. They weren't really attacking them though, the sharks thought the Navy Subs were food.

>>42793429
>>42796951
>>42805720
>>42806192

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t28Cc2VY4M[/media]

>>42808312

raises the needless question. how to youtube link?

>>42793013
I'm torn between complete fear/revulsion and a sense that it looks kind of cute.

>>42808326
Just copy and paste the link into the Comment field. If you have the right 4chan settings turned on, it'll be a clickable link.

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>>42806270
I think that's a cuttlefish, or some other similar squid-like creature. If so, it's spitting ink.

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This thread is now archived on suptg.

>>42808900
Great!

>>42789645
>>42789984
Eat a dick, this is more /tg/ related than TSUNDERE WAIFU QUEST NUMBER 99999999999. Kindly go somewhere else if this triggers you so much.

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Guess I'll dump what I have

>>42808482
Ika Musume is a cuddle fish.

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>>42809108

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>>42809123

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>>42809141

>>42790703
You ever read about the giant squids? They usually live by the extreme depths where oxygen is really sparse. You know how they feed? From the small chunks and particles of food coming from higher depths

Look it up on YT

>>42790542
>You're squid, anon
>You're a kid, anon

>>42804719
Effing hadoken fish!!!!

>>42793265
>Siphonophores (see 42793091), however, which are related to jellyfish, can be by volume considerably larger than even the largest whale.
I was talking about Siphonophores. I just didn't want to confuse Anon with fancy words.

>>42808482
I'm pretty sure that it's a squid. I think a cuttlebone would be visible.

>>42799351
I have a merfolk in Pathfinder with the Strongtail racial trait or whatever it's called (15 land speed/30 swim). It says you can take this if you pick another racial trait to get rid of. RAW, this means you can drop the Legless racial trait, which is the one that prevents you from being tripped. DMs, would you allow this? If so, would you also let my Merfolk not have legs but be tripable due to being very obviously top-heavy?

>>42792765
WHY!? WHY NATURE!? WHY!?

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>>42809600

Sure, RAW is as RAW does. But you should play a hagfish merfolk. Goop everywhere.

>>42809600
I made a bunch of alternate racial traits for merfolk. Also, that actually just replaces your normal swim speed. It doesn't replace anything else.

>>42805477
>Humanity is led by immortal liches created using Charles Dexter Ward's style of alchemy.

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>>42810191
>Emperor Trump turned his own hair into a phylactery.

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>>42810220

"And I ask you, the people of America, to raise me up, for I will not be put down!"

New thread when?
Also, apparently the bump limit is 310 now

>>42809853
>legit biological reason for slimegirls

>>42805477
>Pluto is conquered and the Mi-go are a client state
Cpnsidering Yuggoth/Pluto is supposed to be a tiny mining outpost of a vast interdimensional empire, I think the Mi-Go would be a major threat even to humanity that has mastered eldritch magitech.

>>42803058
Good point. I made them humanoid because the stats I found for regular merfolk has them as humanoid. But these ones are considerably more monstorus. Shouldn't even affect the LA, as monstrous humanoids get darkvision for free, removing the need for me to buy it for them.

>>42811050
I suppose there could be reason to make a new thread. I'm still working on the deep sea merfolk race (should write some fluff for them, at least), and the talk about underwater campaigns has potential.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9DI5I-_s0o

>>42811735
Well that's fucking spooky. Sounds like a goddamn hellmouth at the bottom of a trench.

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>>42811606
I wrote some fluff for the abyssal merfolk race. Any comments?

Description
Abyssal merfolk are merfolk adapted for living in the deep sea. The females are in similar to common merfolk in size and build, but their skin is slimy and scaleless, their eyes are are large and they have disproportionally large mouths filled with long, sharp needle-like teeth. They also have light-producing organs called photophores, that they use to light their surroundings, communicate with each other, attract prey and scare off predators. Due to the scarcity of food in the deep sea they have adapted to be able consume even prey that is the same size or larger than themselves. They have hinged jaws and highly elastic stomachs, which allow them to swallow whole creatures over twice their size and ten times their mass.
Males of the race are radically different looking, being only a foot long and barely humanoid. The male abyssal merfolk live solely to find and mate with a female, which is not an easy task given the size and emptiness of their habitat. Their jaws are underdeveloped and they lack a functional digestive system, but they have an extremely well developed sense of smell that assists them in locating a female of the race, to whom they attach themselves and fuse themselves to her. The male then becomes dependent on the female host for survival by receiving nutrients via their shared circulatory system. In return, the female will always have a mate immediately available when she is ready to spawn.
The skin of abyssal merfolk of both genders is usually black, red or dark brown, but some individuals are fully transparent.

A female abyssal merfolk is about 8 ft long from the top of the head to the end of the tail, and weighs about 400 pounds. (ie. the same size as I found given for regular merfolk)

A male abyssal merfolk is about 1 foot long from the top of the head to the end of the tail, and weighs about 1 pound.

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>>42812165
Habits/Society
Abyssal merfolk are solitary or live in small groups, usually of 10 females or less. These groups may be led by a druid or shaman. Females may have multiple parasitic males assimilated onto their bodies. Abyssal merfolk roam the deep sea and the abyssal plains looking for food, and fashion tools from material found in the ocean floor, such as shipwrecks and whale skeletons. They lack a complex society as their harsh environment means they lack the resources to sustain large groups of individuals and have little time for things not directly related to survival.
Abyssal merfolk are usually True Neutral.

(Also, I ran out of deep sea mermaid pictures. The one on the right at least has teeth fitting for a depe sea creature)

>>42811735
Wasn't that confirmed as icebergs breaking from the ice caps?

>>42811606
>Considering Yuggoth/Pluto is supposed to be a tiny mining outpost of a vast interdimensional empire, I think the Mi-Go would be a major threat even to humanity that has mastered eldritch magitech.
But anon, that's the perfect setup for a campaign. Guess who comes crawling out of the tears in spacetime, mad as hell and loaded for bear?

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>>42812184
>swampmermaids.jpg
>not marshmaids

>>42812165
Based on that, if the deep sea mermaid is 8 ft long and weights 400 lbs, she'd be able to swallow a creature 16 ft long and weighting 4000 lbs (that's, what, 2 metric tons?). Forget about cows, she could probably swallow an elephant!

>>42812165
>400 pound black girl with bad hair and bad teeth
So she's from the south side of Chicago?

>>42797730
Actually he lives on Monster Island

>>42812386
>>42812421
tbh, the weight seems off. I copied the weight and height from 3.5 merfolk entry, but it it does seem a bit high. I'd assume merfolk weight more than humans, because the fish tail is thicker and has more muscles than human legs, but 400 lb seems a bit too much (especially since deep sea fish are pretty scrawny). 200 or 300 lb migth be better.
Interestingly, the 2nd edition entry for mermaid (I looked entries in multiple place for reference material), and that listed their weight as 150 lb (which is probably too little when you take into account the extra weight from the fish tail). Seems mermaids put on a lot of weight between edition change.

Should I make a new thread once this one falls off (which will be pretty soon)?

>>42813479
That would be most appreciated.