>>56144646
I always liked the gulper eel mermaid, what with her big happy grin.

>And as it turns out, the best way to survive in such a horrible place is to evolve to look like something out of HP Lovecraft's nightmares.
That's okay; we'll just pollute the fuckers out of existence.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/mariana-trench-pollution-pacific-ocean-chemicals/

>The Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench—one of the most remote locations on Earth:

>Crustaceans that live in the trench, which extends 36,000 feet (11,000 meters) below sea level, were captured by a robotic submarine. In the journal Nature, Ecology & Evolution, scientists reported that they found 50 times more pollutants in those crustaceans than in crabs from paddy fields fed by the Liaohe River, one of the most polluted rivers in China.

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I'll start with a personal favourite animal. Anybody who'se seen me post this thread before (last time some time before summer, I think?) has seen em gush about the majestetic creature known as the gulper eel. It just so happens to be a very good real world example of a type of monster design that I really like. There's plenty of deep sea fish that menace with sleek black bodies and mouths filled with enormous needle-like fangs, but the weird flabby body of the gulper eel (the best description of which I can think of is "what if you took the world's ugliest pool toy and let half the air out?"), the huge gaping maw, and a face that from a certain angle looks way too much like a grotesque caricature of a human face give it the mix of monstrousness and patheticness that I find far more uncanny.

The order saccopharyngiformes contains four families; the pretty mundane bobtail eels (which, being not particularly freaky, we don't really dwell on), and three families commonly referred as the gulpers (even though gulper eels proper is only one of said families) that all share several interesting traits, the most notable being loss or extreme reduction of many features, even by deep sea fish standards (while not having swim bladder or scales is standard among deep sea fish, the gulpers also lack ribs, most of their fins, and in one family all of their upper jaw bones), as well a prominent huge gaping mouth. These three are the pelican eels (eurypharyngidae), the gulper eels (saccopharyngidae) and the onejaws (monognathidae).

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>>56144791
Those crustaceans seem to be doing suprisngly fine even with that much pollutants in their bodies. Do we want a Godzilla scenario on our hands? Because this is how you get Godzilla.

>>56144886
Pelican eels are probably the most well known of the gulpers, although I see a them mislabeled as gulper eel a lot of times. They're pretty easy to tell apart, really. Pelican eels are smaller, usually less than 2,5 ft long (about half or mor of which is the tail), and have a proportionally huge toothless mouth. The body tapers off to a long, thin tail, tipped by a luminous organ. The shape kind of reminds me of a windsock, or the giant planet-eating spacecraft from 1960s Star Treck (which I'm pretty sure was just a windsock dipped in paper mache). Unlike what one might expect from a deep sea fish fwith a colossal mouth, the stomach of the pelican eel is not particularly stretchy, so it can't do the whole "swallow things your own size or bigger" thing a lot of deep sea fish do. It appears to intead eat small fish and invertebrates, and probably uses its big mouth like a fishing net to catch many small animals at one bite. There is only a single species of pelican eel, but it's found worldwide.

The gulper eel is the bigger, meaner cousin og the pelican eel, and far better lives up to the reputation of the deep sea as the underwater vore hell. It's bigger (around 6 feet long, although again most of that is tail), has a more well defined body and proportionally smaller (but still huge) jaw, and rows of sharp teeth, even if they are still small by deep sea standards. It also has a stomach that is both large and elastic, allowing it to swallow whole fish larger than itself (I don't know how large exactly, but I'd imagine quite large considering you could probably fit a fish almost the lenght of the gulper eel's body, minus tail, into its stomach without much stretching).

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>>56145085
Unlike the pelican eel, there are multiple species of gulper eels (even if they mostly look extremely similar), found in different places of the world.

The third member of the gulper family (of which I don't have any other good pictures but the one I posted already) is actually the weirdest, if not as impressively freaky at first clance. The onejaws are a family of very deep-dwelling fish that, as the name implies, have only one jaw. They've lost all the bones in their upper jaw, and instead have a single totth growing directly from their braincase. Said tooth is also venomous, because of course it is. They're small fish, about half a foot long, and we know pretty much nothing of them. Their extremely atrophies bodies and near total lack of sensory organs given even actual biologists a hard time figuring how the hell do these things even survive. It's tought they may use their venoumous tooth in hunting by ramming their prey with it, but really, it's all pure speculation.

Really we don't know all that much about the biology of any of the gulper eels, but the onejaws are the most mysterious of them all.

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For the more standard "fangly deep sea horror" fish, we have the dragonfish, viperfish, and assorted other stomiiformes. Stomiiformes are a large order with a wide variety of fish, including those small, perpetually terrified-looking marine hatchet fish, but mostly various long-bodied fangly fish with names like viperfish, dragonfish, and star-eaters. They really do look like some kind of miniature glow-in-dark sea serpents.

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>>56145253
Many stomiiformes are notable for being able to open their mouths wider than would normally be anatomically possible. They've actually lost the bones of the vertebrae that connect to the skull, allowing them to bend their jaw up to a degree that would normally be impossible without breaking the animal's neck (the black dragonfish for example can open its jaws almost 180 degrees, like some kind of living beartrap). They have bioluminescent spots along the stomach, which probably help to camoflage the fish when viewed from below by providing counter-illumination. They also often have bioluminescent lures (viperfish has one on its tailfin, while many dragonfish have a barbel on their chin). Unlike many deep sea fish, viperfish actually rise closer to surface at night to feed.

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>>56145345
The stoplight loosejaw (Malacosteus niger) is a very unique stomiiformid with a relatively short body and huge jaws (its actually has one of the largest gapes of any fish), with two very unique traits that are both reflected in its name.
The "stoplight" part refers to the red bioluminescent organs near its eyes. This is significant because red light is the fist wavelenght of light absorbed by water. Therefore, most deep sea fish aren't even able to see red light. The stoplight loosejaw is an excaption, so with its red photophores it can light up its surroundings with a light its prey or predators can't see. The way it generates red light is alos rather interesting, as it involved the use of chlorophyl of all things.
The "loosejaw" part refers to the jaw, which is hinged so that it can spring forward and catch prey. The jaw is barely attached to the skull and is even missing its floor to reduce drag when it springs forward. Interestingly, the loosejaw mostly eats small copepods (it actually gets the chlorophyl it needs for its red photophores from said copepods). How it keeps them from falling out of the gaping hole in its jaw is anybody's quess.

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Aside from the gulper eel, the other posterchild for why the deep sea is also known as underwater vore hell (not scientifically accepted name, but I'm working on it) is the black swallower (Chiasmodon niger). A relatively normal-looking fish by deep sea standards (it's actually related to the common perch), but the black swallower has an extremely elastic stomach and is able to swallow fish several times its own size. It has been fairly often been found with a fish twice its own size in its stomach, and the record is one having swallowed a fish four times its own size (although that appearred to have caused the swallower's stomach to rupture). In fact, most black swallower specimens have been collected after the fish ate something so big that the prey started to decompose before it had time to digest, and the buildup of gasses lifted the fish to the surface like some kind of grotesque balloon.
It's thought the black swallower swallows its prey by biting onto the tail, then "walking" its jaws up toward the prey's head untill the prey is fully swallowed.

>>56145085
>Those crustaceans seem to be doing suprisngly fine even with that much pollutants in their bodies. Do we want a Godzilla scenario on our hands? Because this is how you get Godzilla.
Nah. At worst you get a giant crab that Godzilla goes on to kill. And really anything that keeps the big guy busy...

I have to admit that some of these weird denizens of the deep sea strike a nerve in me. They're at that point where eerie and off-putting crosses over into some kind of haunting alien beauty.

Here, have some theme music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEO2E7Jheqs&index=1&list=PL8ady045yxC_dwqQWM9pneyttMbV3GxD2

>>56144646
goddamnit, mermaids, stop being so damn hot.

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Of course one couldn't discuss deep sea fish without mentiong the deep sea anglerfish, probably the most iconic of deep sea fish. They're a large and varied order whichaside from the standard round fangly fish with a glowing lure contains less round, more or less fangly fish with or without a glowing lure (either a lure that does not glow, or no lure at all). Some also have lures growing from their chin as well, or one inside their mouth, so that instead of luring prey within striking distance they just lure it right inside their mouths. The anglerfish lure is actually an extremely complex organ with bioluminescent bacteria that provide the light and various lenses and covers to magnifiy the light and to extinquish it when necessary. Interestingly, some species with multiple lures have completely different bacteria in them, implying the same fish has evolved bioluminescent lures more than once. So far all attempts to get the bacteria to produce light outside an anglerfish have failed.

Anglerfish also range widely in size, from a few inches all the way to around five feet (although most are less than a foot long). Well, the female anglerfish do, since like many other deep sea fish anglerfish have extreme sexual dimorphism. It's common for deep sea fish to be hermaphroditic or have a male with reduced jaws and enhanced senses, intended to find a mate and die shortly after. With deep sea anglerfish, the males are extremely small and have very good sense of sight, smell, or both, but no ability to eat at all upon reaching adulthood. Famously in some families, the male will upon finding a female bite into her and merge with her, eventually atrophying into nothing more than a pair of testicles. Some genuses of anglerfish have been observed with multiple males attached to one female, while some seem to be "monogamous" as no individual has ever been found with more than one attached male.

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While I've sad deep sea fish are harmless to humans, both due to being (usually) very small and squishy and livign far deeper than people could normally venture...That's not entirely true. The cookie cutter shark is a small shark with huge teeth designed of scooping bites out of large fish and marine mammals (really, given the way its jaws work "icecream scoop shark" would've been a better name). It uses bioluminescence to lure an animal close, the quickly bites a chunk from it and swims off. The process is not fatal, but probably quite painful.
There has actually been more than one case where a cookicutter shark has mistaken a nuclear submarine as a whale and taken a bite out of the plastic covering the very sensitive sonar equipment, forcing the submarine to return to base for repairs and probably costing several millions of taxpayers' dollars. I think there may have also been a case of one biting somebody who had gone diving at night (they rise closer to surface during the night, and can actually get to fairly shallow depths).

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>>56145909
*said, not sad. Although it's sad that we're significantly lacking in huge sea monsters, as well.

Also the part about deep sea fish being squishy and liable to suffer explosive decompression is not entirely true either. That holds for most species, but not all. The fangtooth, also known as the orgrefish, is notable for having proportionately the longest teeth on any animal (it actually has to have special "sheathes" on its upper jaw for its teeth to keep it from accidentally stabbing its own brain whenever it closes its mouth; viperfish also have a similar arrangement), but also being really tough by deep sea fish standards. It appears to be a relatively recent comer in the deep sea and still shares a lot of traits with its shallower water relatives, including still having scales (very small ones, though), and having less reduced muscles that allow for a more fast and agressive hunting style than the standard "float around until something gets close to your mouth" style of ambush predation most deep sea fish employ. These traits also allow it to handle surface conditions better than most, and individuals have been kept alive in aquariums for several weeks (compared to a few hours with most deep sea fish).

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From the Twilight Zone we have the telescopefish (genus Gigantura, not to be confused with the completely unrelated telescope fish), with veyr distinctive huge binocular-like eyes. At this depth there is still some light, so the huge eyes allow it to spot prey visible in the dim light. Given that both eyes face directly forward, the fish likely also has binocular vision, helping to judge distance when it attacks. Strangely enough whoever gave the fish its scientific name didn't name it after the eyes, but the very long tailfin (which is admittedly impressive, making up half the lenght of the fish, but not really quite as notable as the freaky binocular eyes). Two species are known, G. indica and G.chuni, with the former being longer (about 20 cm, 40 with the tail fin included) but the latter somewhat shorter (about 16 cm without the tailfin) but bulkier.

Interestingly wikipedia lists the black dragonfish as a common prey item, which is pretty impressive as the drgonfish is around twice as long as the telescopefish (exculding the tail) and a pretty fierce deep sea predator by itself. Like most deep sea fish, the telescope fish has an elastic stomach and swallows its prey whole.

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Another deep sea fish with strange eyes, the barreleye has eyes that normally point straight up (those green orbs are the eyes, and what at fist glance look like eyes are actually nostrils). It uses the eyes to spot food above it, then rises to the same level as its target and swivels they eyes 90 degrees (I didn't mention that the eyes can swivel to point forward, did I? Well, they can) so that it can see what it's biting.
While the species has been known for a long time (I think already in 19th century) the transparten dome that covers its eyes was only discovered when the animal was oserved in its natural habitat, as it had always broken when the fish was caught and brought to surface. It is thought to protect the eyes from stinging cells of siphonophorae (communal polyp creatures like the Portuques man'O'war), allowing the fish to steal prey the siphonophorae has caught in its tentacles.

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At this point I take a break and post more pictures of the animals I've already introduced, as well as some horrible deep sea mermaids.

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Ogrefish

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From this angle the gulper eel's face looks uncannily like a twisted human face.

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Different anglerfish.

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Dragonfish larvae have their eyes at the end of long stalks. As they age, the stalks gradually get "reeled in" inside the head. They're actually still present in the adult, coiled up behind the eyes.

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Ogrefish larva, with less teeth, more spikes, and about equal amount of grumpyness as the adult.

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Black swallower doing what it does best: being a horrible vore-fish.

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Biggest anglerfish, at around 160 cm.

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By the way, if anybody remembers those horrible deep sea mermaid RPG comics I did, I'm open to further ideas. Only reason I haven't drawn any more (after the time I illustrated a filk song based on a Kipling poem, which come to think of it I never posted on /tg/) is because I kind of ran out of ideas.

But now we return to our regularly schedueled program. Although I won't start with a fish, but with one of the few mammals that has not just my grudging respect, but unanimous approval: whales! Specifically the sperm whale, the largest apex predator alive (actually, quite possibly the largest apex predator ever, as the largest spermwhale ever recorded may have been somewhat larger than largest prehistoric marine reptile or giant shark) and the deepest diving mammal. Aside from doing battle with giant squid in the depths of the ocean, what makes the spermwhale extra awesome is that it's armed with an organic sonic blaster. The weird shape of the whale's head, as well as its name (spermwhale is actually short of spermaceti whale) is due to an organ located on the whales head, filled with oily substance known as spermaceti. The sustance transmits sounds better than water than the organ is positioned so that the soundwaves the whale generates will pass through it and get reflected back through layers that function like sonic lenses, focusing the sound into a coherent beam of destruction. The full blast from the face-mounted sonic cannon of a spermwhale is louder than a jet engine and would easily kill a human diver on its line of fire by pulping all their internal organs. It's more than enough to stun or kill a giant squid, as well.

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Since I mentioned siphonophorae earlier, it's probably worth introducing them in more detail, as they are quite faschinating. They're colonial organisms, with each colony being made from countless polyps, each with their own role. Some propel the colony, others deply long tentacles with stinging cells to catch prey, others digest said prey, and some take care of reproduction. By working together, the tiny polyps create a mighty super-organism that can be tens if not hundreds of meters long (by comparison the maximum recorded size of the blue whale is about 30 m. Granted, the blue whale is thousands of times more massive since siphonophorae are usually just long thin lines of polyps).

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And since the spermwhale got mentioned, it would be amiss not to bring up its prey, the giant squid (and the similar colossal squid). The colossal squid is actually somewhat larger, but both are huge deep sea squid. The lenght of squid's mantle alone can be around 2 meters, and the lenght to the tip of the long feeding arms may be 14 m for colossal squid (around 13 for giant squid). The colssal squid also has sharp hooks inside the suckers on all of its arms and tentacles, because clearly just being a colossal cephalopod wasn't scary enough.
They also has largest eyes on any living animal (beaten only by one species of ichtyosaur, if I recall correctly), being literally the size of dinnerplates.

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Not all deep sea fish are small, although most of them tend to be. The goblin shark (aka. the "lets ride a bicycle made of nightmares up your ass" shark; you've all seen that reaction image) is a particularly freaky-looking deep sea shark found in all oceans. It typically lives near the slopes of continental margins at the upper limit of the Twilight Zone, but has been encountered over 1 km deep as well. It's the last surviving member of a family dating back around 125 million years (i.e. when dinosaurs ruled the world), and has retained many primitive characteristics compared to most modern sharks.
The two most notable traits of the goblin shark are its jaws, filled with a jumbe of hooklike teeth, that can spring forward to catch prey, and the weird "nose" that contains large amount of electrosensitive organs, allowing the shark to detect bioelectricity of its prey. An adult goblin shark is usually 3 to 4 m (10 to 13 ft) long, but can apparently grow considerably larger.

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Not everything in the deep sea is a horrible vore-fish. Lanternfish and other similar fish are actually the most common fish down there, and in the world. The lanternfish in particular is probably the most common fish on the planet, with population outnumbering the population every commercially caught fish species put together by a fair margin. They're so numerous, in fact, that they're the source of a phenomena that used to confuse early sonar operators: that of a "false bottom" visible on sonar, several miles above the actual ocean floor, that also seemed to move depending on the time of the day. The "false bottom" is actually cased by sound reflecting off the swim bladders of billions of lanternfish that migrate up and down the water column during the day (rising up to feed during night and sinking down to avoid predators during the day).

Because of their sheer numbers, thought has been given to commercially fishing them, but they normally only congregate in huge shools at specfic areas and are normally spread out over too large areas to be worth fishing, and also we don't known how quickly they replenish their numbers. Also they're not directly suitable for human consumption (too greasy with very little meat), and the one time somebody tried to commercially fish them the warehouse the catch was held spontaneously combusted.

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As an example of what can happen when attempts are made to commercially exploit deep sea without proper study, consider the organge roughy. A fish that was found in huge amount at very specific locations (they congregate around some seamounts), whose flesh is also resistant to being frozen and tastes pretty good. The demand for the fish exploded, and they were caught in huge numbers, until suddenly the catches dropped practically overnight.
Only at this point were the fish actually studied to find out just what was going on. It turns out the orange roughly lives over 100 years and takes several decades to reach sexual maturity. Catching them in such large quantities is unsustainable and it will take hundreds of years before the population density at those locations rises to the point where they could be economically and safely caught. Obviously that actually makes them terrible for commercial exploitation, since nobody has the time to wait a hundred years between catching fish.

>>56146363
thanks for reminding me that im a disgusting vorefag and that i should kill myself asap

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Speaking of extremely long lived fish, the Greenland shark, which briefly reached memetic status a while ago, is the longest living vertebrate known, with some individuals having been dated around 300 - 500 years. They're also very large sharks, almost as big as the great white shark, and also extremely slow moving (swimming at 1,6 mph is considered fast for them). How they're able to eat seals, which can swim far faster, I don't know. Maybe they slowly sneak up to them.
The flesh of the Greenland shark is also very high in trimethylamine N-oxide, a chemical that gives fish the "fishy" scent, acts as an osmolyte, and helps counteract the effect of pressure on proteins. Deep sea fish have higher amount of TMAO than other fish, so they smell extra-fishy (incidentally, relyiong on this chemical to counter pressure has a side effect of placing a hard cap at the maximum depth fish can live in). It's also poisonous at high concentration, which makes the flesh of Greenland shark toxic unless properly prepared. Otherwise eating it would cause an effect similar to intoxication, followed by loss of balance, vomiting, explosive diarrhea, and possibly death.

Greenland sharks are also often parasiticed by copepods that attach to their eeys and render them blind. This does not seem to bother them the slightest, and some hypotheseise that the copopods dangling from their eyes may serve as lures to attract fish.

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>>56148245
I'm starting to think most people who follow me are vorefags, since whenever I draw the black swallower mermaid it gets a lot more attention than anything else I do.

>>56148637
She's cute
Also vore is hot

>>56144646
Nice! Great time for a Cold Dark Vore Hell thread!!

>>56149161
I could draw "vore" art with pretty much any of them, since eating things your own size or bigger is a standard deep sea fish trait, but I've kept it to black swallower since it's the defining trait of the fish (anglerfish has the lure, gulper eel has a huge mouth, black swallower is the fish that can swallow ridiculously large things relative to its size). Character-wise it'd also fit the gulper eel but since it's not the most obvious defining trait I don't focus on it. In the picture I used as the OP, gulper eel actually has eaten something, her stomach just isn't as distended as the black swalloer's. In case of that picture I really did it just to get the characters off the ground so they would be more clearly visible.

Incidentally, the "thing" of that picture is that all the mermaids are drawn as long as the actual fish they represent (1 square on the picture represents 1cm of length for the actual fish). Although I think I made gulper eel's body slightly too short.

I just stopped in to say I'm really digging this thread.

>>56144646
Abyssal drawfag's art has really improved since these started.

>>56148245
horrible sea louse pregnancy > gulper eel vore.

>>56151533
But no-one's here for gulper eel vore, they're here for black swallower vore.
Black swallower mermaid a cute (although I think anglerfish mermaid is superior).

>>56152475
>although I think anglerfish mermaid is superior
Same

>>56148369
>Otherwise eating it would cause an effect similar to intoxication, followed by loss of balance, vomiting, explosive diarrhea, and possibly death.
Takes me back to my college days.

>>56149161
I do like her immature, monomaniacal obsession with stuffing herself. “I roll to eat the King!”

>>56146363
Is there a collection of these anywhere?

Well, my internet connection is down, so I’m stuck being a filthy phoneposter for a while.

The main campaign-ish idea I had involving a deep-sea civilization involved the recognition that the large area of the deep sea might allow an underwater civilization to reach a very high population, meaning that any sophonts dwelling at such depths should be prevented from forming a complex society at all costs. Something happens to mitigate the severe resource constraints prevailing in the abyssal zone, a civilization starts to coalesce, terrestrial critters get wind of it and freak out, and the PCs have to decide who to side with, or what to do more generally.

>>56152689
She's actually my favorite design of them, as well.
>>56156468
I have them all on my DA page, but I'm on my phone now and can't link it directly. Searching for elder-thing on DA should find the page. They're buried among others random drawings, though. I should probably make a separate folder for them.

>>56146501
I first encountered these in an ancient “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!” book, in which they were described as their own species. For years I wondered what had happened to them, because I couldn’t find a reference to that species anywhere, until I hit on something about dragonfish larvae by chance and realized that it had been a taxonomic error all along.

>The gulper eel is the bigger, meaner cousin og the pelican eel, and far better lives up to the reputation of the deep sea as the underwater vore hell. It's bigger (around 6 feet long, although again most of that is tail), has a more well defined body and proportionally smaller (but still huge) jaw, and rows of sharp teeth, even if they are still small by deep sea standards.
Six feet is within striking distance of the semi-mythical Beebe’s Monster, although it’s highly unlikely (in my estimation) that such a thing actually exists, or existed. I didn’t know there was anything that even came close to being an actual candidate, so that’s very interesting.

>Really we don't know all that much about the biology of any of the gulper eels, but the onejaws are the most mysterious of them all.
Onejaws are really fucking weird. IIRC, Bogleech has written a little bit about them, with some illustrations, if anyone wants more information.

I hate posting from a phone.

>>56145481
this is one of the creepiest fucking fish i've ever seen

>>56147275
I remember a creepy video on those. Every other search I made for it just gets me a giant jellyfish, thanks for the name.

>>56149161
I don't understand vore, how is things eating shit hot?

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Horrible deep sea? i've got some right here.

>>56157732
The approximately 6 ft length was mentioned in the section on saccopharyngiformes on a paper on fish of the north Atlantic. Can't remember the specific species, though. However, if I recall correctly, Fishbase gives smaller lengths (I think about 5 ft at longest) for gulper eels. That might be due to reporting assumed average versus longest reported individual, or due to uncertainty in measurements.
I'd assume in both cases the body length (without tail) would be approximately the same, and the difference is just the length of the tail which already makes up most of the total length.

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>>56160153
I don't doubt that account, but Beebe's Monster was reportedly not only huge (for a deep-sea fish), but heavy, so I doubt it could have been a gulper eel. I rather doubt it existed at all.

>Beebe's adventures and popular books were frequently ridiculed by scientists. One such scientist, Carl L. Hubbs (University of Michigan), reviewed Beebe's book "Half Mile Down," and scoffed at the idea that Beebe had indeed seen a six foot long sea serpent, saying in his review, that Beebe probably saw two fish swimming close together. He even said that the fishes' lights "may be a 'phosphorescent coelenterate whose lights were beautified by halation in passing through a misty film breathed onto the quartz window by Mr. Beebe's eagerly appressed face." ("Natural Man," by Robert Henry Welker, p.139) Hubbs added that it was fraudulent and even contemptible for Beebe to presume "to describe and assign generic and species names 'for animals faintly seen through the bathysphere windows.'" ("Natural Man," p.139). Another scientist, John T. Nicols, a curator of recent fishes at the American Museum of Natural History, hinted that "Half Mile Down" belonged on the fiction shelf, because Beebe wrote the book in "dramatic fashion rather than meticulous." ("Natural Man," p. 139).

https://sites.google.com/site/cwilliambeebe/Home/bathysphere

("Half Mile Down" is out of copyright and freely available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/halfmiledown00beeb )

(Like all such texts, the epub version is garbage.)

Have an evil robot ogrefish. Well, maybe not evil. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

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>>56160481
One perennial problem that I have when thinking about a deep-sea campaign is "How do I make the exploration part interesting?" Because this is definitely a case where getting there is half the fun. However, I feel like I'd need a group full of engineering nerds in order to do it in a way that's not "a wizard solves the problem with magic."

>"It was apparent that something was very wrong," Will wrote, "and as the bathysphere swung clear I saw a needle of water shooting across the face of the port window. Weighing much more than she should have, she came over the side and was lowered to the deck. Looking through one of the good windows I could see that she was almost full of water. There were curious ripples on the top of the water, and I knew that the space above was filled with air, but such air as no human being could tolerate for a moment. Unceasingly the thin stream of water and air drove obliquely across the outer face of the quartz. I began to unscrew the giant wingbolt in the center of the door and after the first few turns, a strange high singing came forth, then a fine mist, steam -like in consistency, shot out, a needle of steam, then another and another. This warned me that I should have sensed when I looked through the window that the contents of the bathysphere were under terrific pressure. I cleared the deck in front of the door of everyone, staff and crew."
This was followed by a solid cylinder of water, which slackened after a while to a cataract, pouring out of the hole in the door, some air mingled with the water looking like hot steam. Instead of compressed air shooting through ice-cold water. If I had been in the way, I would have been decapitated." (Above from: Half Mile Down by William Beebe, Published by Duell Sloan Pearce, New York, 1951.)

Have an evil robot gulper eel. The fight with this guy is pretty fun, but the resulting ending is... well, your ship implodes. Kind of a downer.

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>>56160512
Interestingly, Barton learned about Beebe's venture from a newspaper, and, thanks to his training in mechanical engineering, immediately realized that the bathysphere design Beebe proposed to use was inadequate. If he didn't do something, his hero, the great popular naturalist, was about to die.

I'm working on a CYOA with an underwater city in it (very, very slowly). Here's a piece of art I plan on using.

I really hope this thread doesn't die while I'm away today.

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>>56157593
>>56157732
>>56160481
>>56160512
>>56160546
>>56160546
Since we both mentioned phoneposting at roughly the same time, I feel like I should mention that I'm not the OP.

Any sea spider fans out there?

>>56145608
>>56146577
What bugs me about C. niger is that it must have some mode of predation which is different from most of the other deep-sea fish here. Gulper eels, loosejaws, anglerfish, telescopefish, barreleyes, and dragonfish all have adaptations aimed at acquiring prey— luring it, grabbing it, enveloping it, or seeing it. But the black swallower has none of that. Its jaws open wide, but aside from that, it looks relatively normal. Its specialty is handling prey, not getting it. Why? How the hell does it hunt? It doesn't have any obvious way to subdue fish larger than it is. It doesn't have any clear means of avoiding being killed or eaten itself. It just finds fish larger than it is and swallows them whole.

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>>56147635
>3-4 meters
And I thought they only were about 80-140 cm from the footage of one biting a diver's arm.

>>56156468
>>56157684

Now that I got home, I can actually give a direct link, and even made a separate folder for just the deep sea stuff https://elder-thing.deviantart.com/gallery/64616122/Horrible-Deep-Sea-Stuff

>>56160481
>>56160512

Thanks for the link. I've heard the account of Beebe's bathysphere but haven't actually ever read his book. While the scientiic veracity of much of his claims can be doubted (naming new species based on what you glimpse from a window isn't really proper scientific conduct), he was right about a lot of things.
Also, I find it amusing that I'm pretty sure I know exactly what picture the artist of that robo-gulper has used as a reference. In fact, I posted it, or one very much like it, in this thread.

Bump

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Bumping with more underwater art.

Bump for more vore hell goodness.

>>56160731
Well, they're like 90% legs (even most of their internal organs are located in their legs because the body i too small), so they're OK if you're a leg man, I quess.

Hmmmm...i feel inspired to write something based on things which I have read in some 5E content...

I’ll tend tobthat in a bit. Not much on the vore stuff, but adventure in Abyssal depths

>>56160731
Not really a seaspider fan myself, no.

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>>56167590
I never how to get players there, or have abyssal creatures interact with terrestrial ones more generally. I want something better than "a wizard used magic," and I think perhaps the idea simply needs a higher level of technology.

It's really hard to get decent-looking art for an underwater city. This is probably the best I've got.

>>56169335
They are pretty spooky, anon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkX2s_xSMBU

>>56160731
It's a life support system for legs.

You drift, conserving energy, amid the expanse. Far from the silt deeper below you and the whispered gloaming above. The buzz of distant interlap and electrical sparks frame arcs in the back of your mind that are familiar, allowing you to occasionally push against or glide with the currents to stay within this place.

Where your natural buoyancy is steady, within the boundaries of your territory to hunt and explore. Hunt...soon it will be time to hunt again. It has been days since you last ate, in the distance you feel the presence of small things. Too small, too dispersed, and not nearly many enough to sate your need or be worth the energy.

Your mouth, already gaping and wide, adjusts to swallow the current as your gills frill as you try to settle your nerves.

In this place and moment you debate, do you rise into the reaches above for the chance at something palatable? Or do you risk sinking toward the silt and scour the seafloor for something of volume that will undoubtedly put up a fight.

Briefly, your webbed fingers grip at the necklace of shells and bones around your neck. One of the shinier ones might be worth a meal at the Gatherplace...near the trench.

While for some there are safety in numbers, the Gatherplace unnerves you. So many potential meals and predators in one place, but under the Rust King’s rule none may feast on another of full mind within it’s bounds. Though, the raiders from the trench do not abide by that rule.

Chance wasting energy above. Risk becoming a meal below. Or...the relative safety of Gatherplace unless the Sahuagin raid again.

It happened the last time you were there. You acquired a squid beak knife off the corpse of one of them after they were repelled in mutual defense, though it was a close and pitched war…

At least for the effort, many ate well that day.

>>56170985
Perhaps trading at Gatherplace would a good idea afterall.

As you bank toward the deep, you pause. Something has entered your territory, from above. A disturbance in the buzz at that, iron descends with this intrusion...and something else.

Long ago, when you were small, you encountered something in the deep. Not the deep of the silt or the deep of the trench...but somewhere that shouldn’t have been. Somewhere deeper and where you lost the familiar buzzing. Where you did not know where you were.

Where even your eyes meant for the dark were blinded, and strange things of immensity shifted in the distance both near and far.

There you met something that saw you as a curiosity. Too small to be a meal, but fitting for other purposes. It had a loneliness that you were all too familiar with in the deep, and in exchange for your brief company came to you with an accord in exchange for that time. A pact.

Now you know well the sniff of what descends with the iron, and have eyes that can pierce even the utter dark below the trench. Magic descends.

Holding your position, you gaze upward and search. Something moves far off, at first a gloaming to you and then a distant brightness. Smaller prey, without the full mind, investigate this light as they are want to. You’ve seen anglers use this as a tool to hunt...though have never known an angler to possess iron. It could yet be a sinking ship, readily full of meat from beyond the gloaming that cannot abide these waters.

Such succulence and exotic flavor. Could you be so lucky again?

As silhouettes become visible against the light, you find your heart sinking. Surfacers descending in a bubble, guided by a familiar presence and figure ahead of them. You have never seen those from above the gloaming alive before, it fascinates you briefly as you focus on the one leading them.

>>56171000
Hair braided, the color of kelp. Skin blue. Armor of coral. And a spear with the polish and shimmer of pearl. Frills upon his awkward legs as they casually kick behind him. Corus Thalhoruth, a Triton whom you met in Gatherplace. Fought beside, and shared conversation with.

Behind him, in the bubble, are three surfaces. All with profiles recognizable as similar to Corus’s, two legs, two arms, and small heads.

A broad and stocky figure, clad in skin not their own and still sporting thick clumps of fur. The skin that is their own is a lighter green than kelp. They are bald and with pointed ears. On their back is iron with a wide curved head.

Beside that one, a sleight robed figure. With rounded ears and long hair unbound. Their build, their skin, and their torso reminds you of the merfolk women you have met from afar at Gatherplace, tending the personal court of the Rust King. Though, concealed in that burgundy robe. From them you feel the source of magical disturbance.

Lastly a figure of small stature and broad set, but covered head to toe in strangely inscripted iron, which gleams in the ball of light held aloft by the magic user. A short but heavy hammer rests in their iron clad grip.

“Corus,” you think across the distance before you fall into the gloam of their light with a power born of your pact, “You are within my territory. With guests?”

Rather, any one of them would have made a fine meal. Or a dangerous predator if they were so inclined. Still, Corus has earned good will enough from your time together in Gatherplace to extend to him niceties. Besides, four of them together would not be an exchange in your favor. Were he not here, you would be on guard at their passing.

Well, more on guard.

>>56171017
“Zarine?” calls Corus in a tongue that matches the eb and presence of the currents before thinking back across your awakened connection, “My friend and once sister in arms, glorious tidings upon you in this most fortuitous of circumstances!”

Rolling your jaw at his over verbose nature, you begin swimming toward them. Your long tail undulating through the push and pull around you.

He raises a hand, uttering something in unfamiliar words toward the bubble behind him. Bringing himself and them to a stop at the command before he opens his arms wide and points the head of his spear away. The three seem concerned, though their eyes eventually find you when you breach the farthest edge of their light.

Beneath their helm of gleaming iron, the short one’s expression is inscrutable. The green one seems to be sizing you up as you have done to some meals and some would be predators have done to you. The sleight one, who might be a woman of her species as you are, well her eyes go wide in fear as she momentarily cringes in revulsion.

The small things swimming in the periphery of their light, you catch one such small fish in your outer jaw as you pass. It will not be enough, but it is something for the moment. Many of the other fish around their light now scatter a bit, but turn back to predictable patterns once your explosion of motion is done.

“Yes,” you think succinctly, “Tidings. Why are you here?”

One of them says something within the bubble with words you do not know. Corus calls back to them, offering a placating gesture before he swims forward and embraces you. The end of your outer jaw presses against his belt as you wraps his arms around your shoulders in what you once learned to be a hearty greeting between friends for his people.

Awkwardly, you return this...niceiety.

>>56171028
“We are here my friend because we are lost in our descent,” his mind expresses woe to your own, “My party and I have important business and just cause. First in gather place, and then perhaps within the depths of the trench. However I have always been a poor navigator, and our way is lost!”

“That is,” you frill your gills gulping a deep breath, “unfortunate,”

“My most stalwart ally and judicious arcane imbued friend,” he throws complimentary language at you, “Could we impose upon you to guide us to Gatherplace? I assure you my allies from the surface beyond and I can see to make it worth your time before we take to our fiendish foe beneath, and the reliquary their servants have absconded with!”

“This sounds,” you mull his exuberance over, “like a long story,”

There is a beat of silence as the fish you snagged squirms in your mostly empty gullet.

Making your time worth it may well mean a meal…

“You best tell me on the way,” you break away from him and bank toward the silt.

Glancing back up he says more of those strange words, and follows after you. The bubble close behind.

What madness have you involved yourself in, you wonder… No matter, either way you will surely eat well.

You know, I never found the deep sea creepy, but I've been fond of an idea of using the dark zones and abyssal plain of the ocean as an underworld/realm if the dead that spirits need to make their way towards (life began in the ocean and ends in the ocean) dodging deep sea demons on the way but have no idea how to use it in a setting.

>>56171396
Those sound like poor unfortunate souls.

>>56148369
>It literally sacrifices its eyes for lures

Fucking hardcore

>>56171421
And if they make it to the end, their reward is dissolution back into the life force of the world. The problem with the journey would be more intelligent demons trapping them for their own purposes or less intelligent ones attacking and eating them, both of which prevent their proper dissolution.

>>56148369
>Loss of balance, vomiting, explosive diarrhea and death.
Sounds like the average Taco Bell meal.

>>56171622
So sad, so true.

>>56171622
I almost want to imagine this as a planar sea rather than a material sea. Like, in a through the looking glass next door spirit world style

I read somewhere that sperm whales are the deepest diving mammals on the planet, and sometimes when they surface, their bodies carry scars made by another organism. Is that just a myth or does anyone know anything about this?

Also, please tell me more about large deep sea creatures like the greenland shark.

>>56160512
>>56170728
This post has quite a bit of gameable content for this kind of stuff, I know it mentions exploration mechanics a little bit, and it has a whole lot of spoors and traces of undersea monster activity.
http://melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com/2017/10/watery-depths-and-watery-deaths-coastal.html?m=0

>>56172978
It's true that they carry scars, mainly from all their battles with squids.

>>56173511
>battles with squids
Sounds badass, details?

>>56173600
Calling it a battle is a bit overselling it. The giant squid is a big squid (the main body is somewhat larger than a grown man, and the feeding arms extremely long). The spermwhale is the largest apex predator alive, and is armed with a biological sonic blaster on its head. There really isn't any contest.
Still, all adult spermwhales are covered in scars from where the squids' suckers have gripped on their skin during the struggle.

>>56172671
I figure it's one of several spirit realms (Olympus or an underworld might also be examples) that from the outside appears to have specific dimensions, but once you're inside can go on impossibly even if it doesn't make sense from a standpoint of material topography outside of this realm.

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>>56144646
it's like every shit fetish combined into one horrible image, in it's most unholy form of some edgy anime fan's school doodles that get him sent to the counselor but he technically didn't do anything wrong so he gets off with a warning until he calls in a half hearted bomb threat to get out of school picture day 2 years later or something.

>>56173833
Any giant creatures of the deep that are not that known? Any fascinating/weird/creepy things to share about giant squids?

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>>56174092
>horrible image
Did you not see the thread's title?
Have you not heard of this? It's been a thing here on /tg/ for months, although I've only seen 3 threads with this stuff in it, including the mermaid thread that started it off. Full story (abridged): mermaid thread, someone asks "what if mermaids based on horrible deep sea fish instead of just vague fishiness", anon graduates to drawfag, everyone loves black-swallower-mermaid and nu-drawfag is forever relegated to drawing horrible deep sea mermaids in the minds of anons such as myself).

>>56175230
I think I've done the Horrible Deep Sea Thread for two years now (I made the first one on Halloween, and I don't think it was last year). I'd ideally keep about half a year between the threads, but I might do them more often if I'm bored/stressed/depressed because posting about deep sea animals is how I unwind.
The mermaids are more recent, though. I made the first drawing last year. And yes, I do other stuff as well (mostly sketches for my science fiction setting, or random prompts whenever a "bad drawthred" thread shows up), but lately I've been too busy with work and university to draw much.
I do take prompts if people have any fun ideas, though.

>>56175516
They’re fun threads, and I don’t think you are the only one to make them.

>>56177060
If it's called "Horrible Deep Sea Thread", it should be me, unless somebody has cribbed my naming scheme.

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Thanks for this thread, OP; this is really fascinating.

>>56160481
>>56160512
These are bosses from Darius Gaiden, by the way. The Darius games are side-scrolling shmups where all the enemies are robotic sea creatures with Engrish names. Most of them also have fantastic soundtracks by Zuntata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uw8yqEWFGI

>>56177905
Well, sometimes it’s Underwater Vore Hell. Or less creative names.

>>56174092
>stop having Unapproved Fun!

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>>56174092
Do you really think that's "every shit fetish"? Have you ever seen were-diaper art? The infamous shitting dick-nipples? /d/ has such sights to show you, friend...

>>56178545
Yeah, I'm a huge Darius fan—I love the music and the (robotic) marine life— and Gaiden is probably my favorite entry in the series. G-Darius is probably the only game where you can fight a giant robot Marella-spitting Anomalocaridid.

Here's a live performance of that song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvO2EpfrM88

This is my favorite one, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKafzVxEQfg

Incidentally, I'm having a really hard time finding decent submersible art. This is the best I've been able to manage for my CYOA, and it's a lot sketchier than I'd like.

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Posting more underwater art, because why not. Is this a good image for a (non-mermaid) underwater waifu, /tg/?

>>56174102
As I recall, there was some significant controversy about the mode of feeding of giant squid. Biologists had noted that the beak size of the giant squid was relatively small, and suggested that perhaps it acted as a sort of enormous filter feeder, leaving its arms splayed out to catch smaller prey passing by.

Our first encounter with a live colossal squid put that one to rest, IIRC. It's an active predator.

There was also the paleontological speculation about intelligent "kraken." This notion was derived from the curiously regular arrangements of ichthyosaur bones found at I-forget-where, which prompted the idea that some sort of intelligence was responsible. But this was the Triassic, so what could it be? An enormous, unfossilizable cephalopod, maybe, which arranged the ichthyosaur bones in a manner which purportedly resembles modern octopus middens.

I have another article from the American Journal of Malacology which talks about the propensity of octopuses to feed on birds. We aren't talking about specialized predation, here, but given the opportunity, octopuses will indeed go after avians.

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>>56183421
>intelligent squids from Triassic

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>>56183421
Oh, right, article on the "kraken:" http://www.ibtimes.com/intelligent-kraken-sea-monster-purposefully-arranged-ichthyosaurs-bones-its-lair-video-322503

I didn't make it to GSA that year, but my friends told me that this idea received a lot of... skepticism.

Also posting some information about doing 3D underwater combat with minis. I've never used miniatures in a game before, but this stuff kind of makes me want to.

Oh, and this is an /x/ thread from a guy who claims to have been a commercial deep sea diver. If it's a fake, it's a darn good one; everything in it is accurate as far as I can tell. Sadly, the images in the thread do not survive.

http://4chandata.org/x/I-was-a-commercial-diver-for-an-oil-and-gas-company-in-the-1990s--a164294

>The strangest was the thing my buddy insisted must've been a greenland shark. It had smooth grey skin like a dolphin, but a head that was like a stretched out spade, very triangular and streamlined with a dolphin like jaw. It had a long tail and four flippers. Couldn't place it. Wasn't a fish, wasn't a mammal. Definitely a vertebrate. And definitely not a fucking shark, or a hallucination. Circled me four or five times like it was checking out the worksite, then swam off. Last I saw of it.

This rang a bell the first time I read it, but I can't remember what it was that I thought.

>>56183421
IIRC said ichthyosaurid bones also don't belong to just any ichtyosaurid, but to shonisaurus, one of the largest marine reptiles known (while most people tend to think ichtyosaurs as Jurassic equivalent of dolphins, some of the early ichtyosaurs were huge). So if they were indeed killed by an octupus of some kind, sapient or not, it would have to have been mythical kraken-tier.

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>>56183596
Second of three thingies regarding the underwater minies.

This is some video of another siphonophore, which gives you an idea of how weird they are. As you can see, we've come a long way since Beebe's time. ("Is that what the back of it is supposed to look like?" one of the people in the video asks.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KZsrDGLUJQ

Oh, and here's a polychaete you won't see in an aquarium. Not really deep sea, as such, but an incredibly weird-looking creature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNvx19UD1HM

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>>56183788
I have to go, so this post isn't going to be interesting, but I wanted to put up the third bit on the miniatures before I left.

Waifu feedback would be appreciated because I have no idea what I'm doing CYOA-wise.

>>56144646
I feel like there's enough interest to put together some sort of convention or web resource or something regarding Weird Biology. There's a distinct quality that unites people who like parasitic crustaceans, people who like carnivorous plants, and people who like deep-sea fish. What do you think?

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I don't have much to add, since my planned underwater campaign is going to be closer to the surface until I can find an explanation for what kind of bronze age to mediæval technology could help mammal mermaids cope with the pressures and overall averse conditions of the deeper sea, but I'll bump this thread because it is interesting.

>>56148369
Let's not forget- TMAO is a chemical fish use to counter the adverse effects of urea buildup in its own body, so this shark's meat is so much poisoned by its own piss it needs extra strength chemicals to survive. It's also been found with remains of polar bears, reindeer, horses, and moose in its stomach!

Bumping this back up from the abyss

Sharp teeth are charming.

>>56188610
Gulper eel is charming.
Black swallower is cute.
Anglerfish is cuter.
Black dragonfish is sexy. That expression gets me real hot'n'bothered.

Post more abyssal merfolk!

>>56189972
I would if I had any

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>>56189972

>>56184060
>I feel like there's enough interest to put together some sort of convention or web resource or something regarding Weird Biology
Isn't that just bogleech.com? When he isn't talking about fictional monsters or reviewing Halloween merchandise, at least.

>>56183687
But what if it's a bunch of smaller chepalopods that arranged the bones that way?
Think less 'life-size self-portrait of sucker arrangements' and more like 'housing arrangements'. It could be that the Shonisaurus bones could be used as some sort of shelter.
Or, if it's still about chepalopod 'art' - why do people think it's always life-size portraits? People built the Statue of Liberty and it's definitely not life-sized. Then again, there's more statues that are actually smaller than man-sized, so yee. Imagine those Shonisaurus bones as miniature bases for an absolutely gigantic undersea nerd chepalopod.

>>56144646
Normally this would be "boner no" material if it was text alone, but the uguu kawaii mermaids are putting it in strong "boner maybe" territory.
send help

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>>56189972

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>>56191308

>>56150273
Double this.

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>>56188740
I found dragonfish's face in the OP picture the weakest part. I was trying to make her look smug about how anglerfish is tiny compared to her when properly scaled, but I think it just looks off.
From when I first drew the dragonfish, I decided that she and anglerfish have a rivalry goign on, since I consider anglerfish and dragon/viperfish to be the main competitors for most iconic deep sea fish. I've never really drawn anything to really establish that, though (then again, the only comic I've drawn with dragonfish in it is this one, which is an odd one even by my standards).

>>56191156
Text alone makes it a yes for me

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>>56193214
Well, if people can be turned on by tile arrangements, I suppose getting a bones from description og the benthic zones isn't that suprising.

Also, dumping deep sea mermaid pictures I have.

>>56190602
Jonathan Wojcik is either the best or the second-best authority I know of on the subject of Weird Biology. I was one of the best in my local area, to the point where a well-respected scientist I had a long conversation with called me a "twisted man." (I also won a weird-off with a zoology major on /an/ once.) Bogleech.com is, correspondingly, one of the better places to go if you want information on the strepsipterans or the parasitic Crustacea.

However, I really think there's room for more—in particular, I'd like to pull together the people who actually work on these groups in a professional capacity (to the extent that they exist!) and the people who popularize them (...I'm pretty sure Jonathan knows more than a few biologists, but I think we can do better).

>>56185747
They're helping! One mermaid got his arm and the others are clearly lifting that poor diver towards the surface.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This is a neat thread.

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I decided to doodle some more mermaids. Anglerfish and dragonfish finally have a rivalry moment.

Also,
>>56152475
Too bad!

>>56195371
Cute.
I like black swallower there being jealous at gulper eel stealing her thunder.

Bump

>>56195371
>Pic
It's cute

>>56193545
This one preys on weebs, doesn’t she? She’s all kawaii uguu onii-chan until you get too close and then it’s suddenly Vore O’clock, isn’t it?

Diabolical.

>>56170985
>>56171000
>>56171017
>>56171028
>>56171046
This is pretty good any more?

>>56195371
Is that a pufferfish?
Aren't they ridiculously poisonous? I mean, I'm aware that fish and humans have different biological reactions to different toxins, but aren't a pufferfish's poisons supposed to kill all potential predators?

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>>56203457
apparently it is a deep-sea pufferfish. Dunno about its toxin level, though.

>>56203457
I'm not sure if all pufferfish are poisonous. The ones that are are ridiculously toxic, though.

>>56203133
if it is so wanted, and the thread persists, I will write more this weekend.

>>56202821
I'm disappointed the manga doesn't really use her deep sea fish traits, aside from occasionally bliding people by flashing a bright light (which isn't really an anglerfish thing either, they use their light to hunt, rather than for defense). There is a shark girl with shark teet, so they could've at least given Anko the long needle-like fangs deep sea fish tend to have.

Still cute, though. I should check if there's any new chapters.

>>56207380
I want

>>56209343
Then I will have for you more of the abyssal mermaid Zarine, the Triton Paladin Corus, and the rest of this so far introduced cast as they venture into the domain of The Rust King’s Law...and then the

>>56145909
>heh heh hehehe
>huh huh huhuhu

>>56146164
>YOU GUYS WANNA DO COCAAAAIIINNNEEEE?!?!

>>56183421
dont forget colossal squids have a trait to there suckers besides the normal, they have fucking hooks or spines attached to them.

Guys, what about sea vent creatures? Would that be the closest thing of cities, surrounded by the vast, deep, mostly empty and sandy pelagic deserts?

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>>56212890
Tubeworms. Loads of tubeworms and clams that live off of symbiotic bacteria that feed on sulfur-rich water erupting from the vents. Besides that, some animals that feed on the tubeworms and clams, like crabs and fish.
Interestingly, some hydrothermal vents have been observed having large populations of fish that have evolved high tolerance to the poisonous chemicals, and feed on whatever happens to swim over the vent and die from breathing in the chemicals.

>>56213036
There's not only tubeworms and clams, there's also colonies of crabs, mobile tubeworms, shrimps, octopuses, and in some vents the tubeworms are plentifuk enough to look like a patch of grass (red, tubey grass but still)

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On a closely related note; do you guys have any ideas for more surface level horrors and mysteries? Current campaign has somehow lead the party to want to go out searching and sailing the oceans, think ~19th century whaling but with monsters&mysteries. Krakens, not!Moby Dick, an island made of crabs, a crab that is an island, giant seasnakes and oceanic birds, living whirlpools, rocky mazes... Trying to think of grim/exciting near-mythical encounters, preferably with loads of seamonsters that the "whalers" are hunting.

>>56214385
A crab that is made up of smaller crabs that are an island

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>>56215012
You know, we have never done anything with the underwater double hell. What is there anyway? Drow!Isopods? Brine wraiths? kingdoms of crystalic sponges manned by foraminifera and decorated by the remains of would-be invaders?

>>56215194
As I recall on the Abyssal plane there's a fuckton of urchins, and weird fish that walk around on stilt fins moving very little to catch marine snow.

>>56215305
I like the idea of there being a difference between the regular underwater vore hell, where the horrible deep sea fishes (and mermaids) live, and the underwater double hell, which should be even more hellish.

Imagine it like something as alien to the underwater inhabitants as they are to the surface inhabitants, a place full of spikes, weird(er) organism, and so frigid and still as to make the mesopelagic zone seem positively vibrant.

Imagine a place of death, where everything occurs in so slow a motion that any would-be visitor could be fooled into thinking they are seeing statues, and not creatures. Where the living spaces are truly living, composed of glass and filaments. A place where the enormous pressures and gelid temperatures zap the life and vitality of intruders, and where the inhabitants don't need to defeat you, merely to outlast you. A place where even the minuscule amounts of light the living produce is a faint memory, and true darkness reigns supreme.

That is my idea of the double hell. A place of death in life, where the structures are alive and the inhabitants act as if dead. In the vore hell you will be hunted and devoured, in the layer below you might be followed, you might get lost in living labyrinths, you might get baited into toxic brine seas or fume lands, and when you perish they will be waiting to consume your body and built with your bones.

So I think fish should be rarer, and more focus should be put on artropomaids (mertropods?), sponges and "worms".

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I cast my net into Pixiv and hauled in a bunch of merfolk—not abyssal perhaps, but some monstrous enough to fit thematically.

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>>56216050

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>>56216076

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>>56216102

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>>56216140

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>>56216182

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>>56216198

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>>56216237

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>>56216277

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>>56216322

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>>56216346

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>>56216371

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Since we are posting mermaid stuff, here's a half-baked shrimp. I'm not sure if the number of legs is right though.

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>>56215553
Also giant isopodmen (they're like regular isopodmen on the surface, except bigger).
Apparently gaitn isopods spend all their life in effectively half hibernation, which allows them to function with extremely little energy. A Japanese aquarium kept one for five years, and during that time it never once ate.

>>56213036
>Interestingly, some hydrothermal vents have been observed having large populations of fish that have evolved high tolerance to the poisonous chemicals, and feed on whatever happens to swim over the vent and die from breathing in the chemicals.
This is highly relevant to my interests. Do you have a citation on it?

Vents would almost certainly be the cities of the deep. For fantasy, I’d make them huge— black smokers as high as two- or three-story buildings, whole fields of them, populated by built structures, tube worms, large pale crabs, and the other cool vent fauna.

Funny story— I was once at a talk given by a researcher who studied the deep ocean, and I caught up with her afterwards to talk about the state of the art. She mentioned that everything was moving to ROVs, because they’re much cheaper than manned submersibles and can stay down for very long periods of time (some have been built to hang around for months). I felt a little sad about it. “But what about the romance?” I asked. “Romance?” she spluttered, “What romance? You’re stuck in a cramped vehicle the size of a minivan for hours and hours. There’s no romance.”

I’d still like to go on a submarine dive before I die.

>>56215194
>Brine wraiths?
I don’t know what a bribe wraith is, but I already like them.

>>56214385
My favorite non-standard sea monsters (at least, the first ones that occur to me) are both yokai.

The bakekujira are vengeful skeletal whale ghosts which call forth other unnatural marine life and curse people: http://yokai.com/bakekujira/

The other ones are umi-bozu, huge black humanoids that rise out of the water and smash ships, or, in classic yokai fashion, ask for a barrel; if denied the barrel, they smash the ship, and if given one, they swamp it with water until it sinks. The trick to beating one is to give it a barrel with no bottom. http://yokai.com/bakekujira/

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>>56217649
It was from ROV footage I saw on youtube, but I cant recall whether it was from a nature documentary or recordings from the Nautilus livestream.
After some searching I managed to find a wikipedia article talking about the fish in question, which does mention them scavenging on fish killed by swimming through the vent plumes.
The fish themselves, while looking like pretty plain flatfish, are impressive by themselves. They have high tolerance to heat and resistance to pH as low as that of sulfuric acid, to the point where they can just rest on pools of molten sulfur.

>>56204655
The hagfish always gets me. I feel like I was the only person who liked that part of Berserk. (Also, Isma a cute. And lewd. “Tits? Don’t worry, they didn’t get any smaller!”)

>>56211825
Goddamnit, who invited telescopefish? This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME.

>>56215305
Yes, that’s right. The fish you’re thinking of is called a tripod fish. Also, crinoids. Here is a video of a crinoid, supposedly a sessile animal, crawling across the sea floor: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cZcomBnNKXg

One of my paleontology professors opined that this video is proof that man was never meant to visit the deep sea.

>>56216705
In a previous thread, I tried to envision a “reverse submarine” that a deep-sea intelligence might design to explore the land. Crustacea are their best model for terrestrial locomotion, and their vehicle needs a thick hull to maintain pressure, so I postulated a giant, thick, globose
shell moving on ten pairs of stubby legs, using blue bioluminescent patches for illumination (the deep-sea creatures aren’t sure how dark the night will be). They’d walk out of the surf at night to avoid the punishing heat and bright light of day. And humans would freak out.

>>56214385
I also liked one aspect of the medieval concept of a sawfish— a creature with a saw-like crescent fin on its back used to saw open the hulls of ships. The wings detract from it, though. http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast147.htm

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>>56217908
Of course I forgot the link the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphurus_thermophilus

Too spooky, too deep

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>>56217926
Here you have it. Don't think too much on how the metalurgy works.

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>See goblin sharks mentioned
>surprised to find out they can grow to 4m in length.
>do some online research
>Peer-reviewed scientific journals mention that specimens have been seen that measure over 6m in length.

What the fuck, nobody said goblin sharks could reach 20 fucking feet.

As if I needed another reason to never go into the ocean ever forever

>>56218740
You know, we worry about running out of air, but I bet they worry about running out of power and getting stranded on land.

It’s fun to imagine this machine slowly crawling across a meadow, trying to pick flowers with its robotic gripper while toothy nightmares peer out the portholes.

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>>56144646
If you're trying to get me spooked OP, is working.
The deep sea honestly scares the fuck out of me, and no amounts of cute mermaids like change that.

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http://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm
http://www.rifters.com/real/MAELSTROM.htm
http://www.rifters.com/real/Behemoth.htm
If you guy's haven't read Perter Watt's Rifters Trilogy you should check it out. Basic premise is only psychotics can deal with the long term stress of being been genetically and cybernetically modified to work on seafloor thermal-generators. Turn's out they're not the most dangerous thing down there...

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>>56223852

>>56171566
I made them sacred to not!Odin in my setting.

>>56216346
>spine of fish bits meets front of pelvis
>doesn't just continue on from the tailbone
>has a tailbone in the first place
Why does this trigger me so

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>>56223865

>>56183421
>>56183552
>>56183596
>>56183687
>>56191025

Sorry to be a buzzkill, but there’s absolutely no evidence of a gigantic “Triassic kraken”. The guy who proposed the idea is known for proposing rather imaginative ideas with very little evidence to back it up. Indeed, the idea of a “Triassic kraken” makes so many assumptions it’s almost as equally plausible to argue that space aliens did it. There is no other source of evidence that cephalopods even got to the size required. Modern octopus nests look nothing like this (they look like, you know, nests). And Shonisaurus is basically a reptilian sperm whale. They eat cephalopods.

I’ve actually been to the site in question (it is literally in the most nowhere spot you can get in the entire United States, just as lonely as the deep sea but with less water and more heat). It doesn’t show some amazingly arranged pattern of ichthyosaur bones that resembles a squid. The whole site is actually kind of muddled, and what you get instead is a series of vertebrae aligned roughly parallel to one another that have fallen apart due to decay, currents, and the like. If it actually did resemble a squid or octopus there might be more of a point, but you just get…lines. You see this kind of thing pretty often when it comes to mass death assemblages of large marine vertebrates (whales, for example).

Big carcasses, especially if they die due to dinoflagellate blooms and the like, often get oriented in the same direction, often due to currents washing the bodies in the direction of least resistance (same thing happens with logs). When the bodies finally sink they end up aligned, and it is even more likely to occur if the animals are travelling in a pod beforehand.

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>>56224300
>>56223865
>>56223852
Lennie Clarke did nothing wrong

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>>56225262
She's also a total hottie.

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>>56223852
Aww yeah, Peter Watts.

>>56224436
Yeah, nobody took that idea seriously. I thought I said as much. I suppose I should have been more clear about that, but I didn’t expect anyone here to imagine that it was serious; I mentioned it because I thought it’d be good setting inspiration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn574acq9Fk
>you came to the wrong neighbourhood

>>56227186
I do not want to be in this neighborhood.

>>56228560
The neighborhood has no brakes

...hold on, that somehow doesn't sound quite right...

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>>56144886
Fucking love those eels, and yes, I know them better as gulper eels myself, purely because of them being labelled that in the books I read as a kid. Had no idea that that was wrong. Had one painted onto my bedroom wall as a child.

I've introduced a homebrew PC race of gulper eel people into my setting as well last session.

>>56224060
It bothers me, too, if it makes you feel any better.

>>56217908
Recently, I saw a video of worms that hide inside the bent tubes, at water that should be boiling were it at surface pressures.

Quite impressive that, no other multicellular life does that.

>>56232290
So majestic

>>56232290
> Sea flap-flaps want to become sky flap-flaps

>>56235474
Wouldn't that be an interesting evolutive path?

Gonna do some more writing in a bit.

>>56238474
Yay!

>>56238892
Slight delay. Actually writing now

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Bumping for writefag-anon.

I am just posting to say that I love this thread and you guys are awesome!

>>56220623
Would the land expedition team freak about at the sheer abundance of life on land? I mean, there's plants everywhere and all these hairy creatures.
To them it must be some sort of terrifying hyper-biorealm, constantly consuming and being consumed.

>>56207380
I'd likewise like to see more.

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>>56227186
Six Gill sharks are so much creepier than other shark species. I think it's the way their eyes have such clearly defined sclera, iris, and pupils. It almost feels unsharklike.

>>56147183
>after the time I illustrated a filk song based on a Kipling poem, which come to think of it I never posted on /tg
Ooh, post it!

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>>56158811
I like mine better.

>>56174102
>Any giant creatures of the deep that are not that known?
???

Well, maybe, but if we knew about them then they wouldn't be unknown.

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>>56245077
He(?) could be speaking about creatures of the deep that are giant, but not WELL know.

Like the boneless, vertically-swimming oarfish.

>>56244645
Speaking of land expedition team freaking out, everyone knows what the photic zone is, right? Where photosysthesis occurs, light reaches the sea and all of that. Everyone also knows that land has even more sunlight that the ocean ever does, right?

Imagine then that our avid explorers were cautious, and designed the windows to counteract such ungodlily painfull levels of light, to be able to see better without harm.

Then of course night arrives.

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>>56223852
Thanks for that, binge-reading right now.

>>56146577
>Latex vorefish

>>56245023
I already did: >>56193206

>>56247789
Doh, thanks.

>>56194275
>the way it smacks its lips then smirks
o i am laffin

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Can we get some stuff about horrific deep sea invertebrates? I'm working on a setting where divine and supernatural stuff is based on invertebrates, with evil pagan gods being horrific deep sea shit, but I'd like to be able to branch out beyond the usual squids and octopi.

Current inspiration is stuff like Cambrian sea creatures, and that one episode of Life where there's a shot of the sea bed beneath an ice sheet and it's an endless blanket of urchins, sponges, starfish and sea stars. Still gives me nightmares.

Continuing earlier tale of Zarine the Abyssal Mermaid.

Diving when you feel a force against your buoyancy, to bring some volume of ease to what you hope will be a long and empty swim, you await your friend’s explanation.


“Very well, but it is by far not my tale to tell alone,” muses Corus in far more words than necessary over your awakened connection, “If you would be so kind as to bring my surface dweller allies into your local telepathy I shall handle introductions and we will explain our journey to this point and our purpose ahead,”

At his request, you roll your hanging jaw in frustration, but agree all the same to the Triton’s request as he kicks violently to catch up with you. To swim alongside you.

Though a concern strikes you as you come to the edge of your territory, and in the distance catch motion before it further drifts into the thickening black.

“Very well,” you extend your mindful ability toward the others within their sorcery wrought bubble, “Greetings, surfacers. Before we continue, snuff that light,”

You are not watching them as their bubble drifts behind your long body. Though you certainly feel their surprise. Corus introduces them to you properly, in his expected flair and pomp before explaining that below this depth there are things we would rather not be seen by. Then he begins introducing each of them to you in turn with all the circumstance and titles of accomplishment he seems to believe each of them to have earned in their travels together. Perhaps even before.

Though it is something unspoken, you appreciate and commiserate with their own frustrations with Corus’s tendencies.

Tamilro the Madrigal; accused Slayer of False Gods. The green one with the, as it is described to you, axe. His voice in his own mind is short and to the point, but with the due weight of consideration. He is unbothered by the dark.

>>56249402

Amara of Southgate; Storm Rider and Warden of the Broken Shore. Source of the scent of magic maintaining their bubble. She seemed embarrassed by the apparent embellishment, but her voice in her own mind brays with an underlying thunder. She is hesitant to extinguish her light, but does so at Corus’s instruction.

Torgan Daughter of Yorgun; Tomb Sealer of the Amalgam Hall and Low Seer of Clan Mor’Grackar is the small but broadly built one. Under her unscruitible helm, the voice in her own mind is prim and cheery. She is unbothered by the dark.

Though they are named to you, there persists a wonder within you of how they taste. A thought only intrusive considering the earliest echoes of true hunger rippling through you. The fish you managed to snare thanks to their magical light helped to curb it...but it was not a true meal to keep you sated for many sleep cycles.

“We seek something stolen from Southgate by the Sahuagin,” Amara begins cautiously, you can hear the pause of her forcefully measured breath alongside something else; it elicits a twinge to the natural buzz of the world, “A crystal statue of power, that protects the coast from rare and destructive storms,”

“The sea devils,” curses Corus as he looks over to you, his form a detailed silhouette of grays and contrast to your vision, “I recognized the markings upon their dead as sure as I recognized your call in the dark. They are of the raider tribe near Gatherplace, and I fear they serve a new and potent master to attack so far from home for so useless to them a thing,”

“Useless?” you muse at his suggestion, “You underestimate them. Though now I am curious,”

You had long heard tales in the gloaming above of hooks and nets from the surface. Surely they couldn’t resist something so exotic dead in their lands. More so the thought of a dead Sahuagin brings rise again to that pleasant memory. Perhaps soon…

>>56249421

“If it is rare to see them there,” you question to the surfacers, “how did you find them?”

If they are anything like the Triton, and not you, they probably eat smaller meals with more frequency.

Even with, or perhaps because of, the contextualizing and intention revealing nature of telepathic communication this query gives them pause. And perhaps even concern.

“Zarine, it is taboo in most surface cultures to eat the flesh of creatures with the full mind,” his explanation in turn grants you pause.

After a moment’s reflection you consider this.

“How wasteful,” you muse and continue pressing downward with the swish and force of your tail.

“It is not wasteful!” thinks, with some indignation, Amara, “his body was returned to the sea after the fight. His brethren sharks or the gulls have had their way with him by now. Too good for his like, if you ask me,”

“Meat, is meat,” you consider what little rumors you have heard of their world beyond the familiar deep, and the things you saw on sinking ships, “here we cannot afford to be so picky,”

There is quiet among the group for a time. In the distance of the black, a rainbow of blinking lights breaks the dark as something long and great curls through the black. Smaller flashing lights far away on your other side answer it. This presence was of no surprise to you, but give pause to those you now guide.

This deep, but still above the silt, there are things you would rather go unnoticed by. It is why you had them snuff their light, and it was done rightly.

“Lizard,” snarls the mind of the Madrigal, “Tasted more like lizard than fish,”

“Tamirlo!” mentally cries out Amara, scandalized and disturbed by his stated actions.

“No taboo to my people,” you feel his shrug, and glance back, “Like, it’s not a regular thing either. Sign of respect against strong foes,”

>>56249438

“When, though?” questions Torgan.

“When you had me and Corus dumping them into the surf,” he explains.

“It was just a few fingers and teeth for his necklace,” Corus backs up the accused Slayer of False Gods.

“You knew?” Amara accuses, so exasperated with these circumstances, to your amusement.

“Well, you had asked of me to keep an open mind of surface customs I was unfamiliar with,” the Triton continues to swim toward the depths, “Tamilro’s were just more familiar to me. I thought nothing of it. I now must ask of you, Amara, to keep a similarly open mind whilst we are here,”

She grumbles, with her voice, in the words you do not know. However it will be some time toward the silt, and there is much you do wish to know of the surface.

“If you do not eat them in South Gate,” your thoughts are directed toward the magician though all can hear, “What do you do with your dead?”

There is quiet for a moment as her grumbling stops. You can feel her mind applying context and realizations to the circumstances she finds herself in.

“Well, I suppose that depends,” she begins to explain slowly, “On the faith of the deceased and their family or local superstition,”

Amara, at academic length, describes practices you find confusing and somewhat strange across regions near and around her home of South Gate for creatures of the full mind. Sailors who die on voyages being given unto the sea as a sign of respect. The north men and their funerary pyres to send them to the next world. Inhuming in the dirt of the earth, or in more elaborate casings or monuments.

>>56249454

She ventures beyond what she calls human traditions and further expounds on the traditions of a local tribe of Wood Elves who use magic to place their dead within still living trees. You know of Elves, you have met Elven kin of the sea at Gatherplace.

Tamilro describes his people, called Orcs, and his own faction’s tradition. Offering their dead on raised litters under open sky to be picked clean and scattered by carrion and scavengers.

Torgan further explains her Clan Tomb, how her people under the mountain view bodies of the dead as vessels and anchors for souls in the afterlife. Great care and effort placed in monument, preservation, and the storage of the dead. This practice seems strangest to you, but without being asked of such as Corus had asked Amara, you will keep an open mind.

“Once a necromancer tried pilfering our dead,” she explains thoughtfully, “And they raised many of our forefathers and foremothers as perverted things...it weakened the shine of my faith something fierce, and with mattock I had to put those who would pray for the living back in their place,”

“Disturbing your dead weakened your magic?” you wonder aloud, so she is a wielder of faith.

“Well, if our dead can’t vouch for us next to our gods,” she says rather simply, posing a question that too her seems obvious, “How will they parse our prayers through all the rock? Took a damn long time to put them all back together and in their proper places once I caved that bastard death mage’s head in,”

This prompts Amara to again being an academic explanation on the nature of magics, alongside the differences and similarities between internal and external powers. Of faith and the arcane. How she is influenced by being a conduit for the primal concept of the storm as opposed by external forces like faith in gods and ancestors or pacts with other beings from beyond material realms.

>>56249474

“I know of Pacts,” you think to her, “I know of them well and the secrets to be gained there in,”

The silt waits beneath you. Gaining your bearings when it is within your sight, you veer over and begin leading the troupe over the quiet sea bed. Every so often there are rocks, crabs, and things you think are best unseen by the surfacers.

“What’s that?” questions the underfolk of faith at the semi clear knot of tubes drifting and rolling just above the silt.

So she at least can see in the dark.

“It is many, but it is one,” you explain, “It is best not to linger near it,”

You wonder for a moment, if they would have had to rely wholly on Corus had they encountered too near to something. Surely they couldn’t fight easily in the bubble...by magic maybe, but should their bubble have been popped it would not have gone well.

The swim above the silt doesn’t take long. Soon you see the distant lights of Gatherplace. The upturned hull inlaid with silvery metal and now red bars of iron half gleams in the constructed gloaming. Many sunken surfacer ships rest here, rotting wood and corroding metals forming a city in the depths. The magic and metal here confuse your extra senses, but this close to the place you will not need them.

“Hmph,” thinks the Orc, “A ship graveyard,”

“A city,” you correct, “The Rust King keeps this place,”

“And we will need to petition him for permission to plumb the trench,” Corus explains, “He has long been hesitant to prod and displace the Sahuagin unless a full war breaks out,”

The guards, with intimidating to the surfacer faces and glowing lores atop their brow, bid you entry. Eying the three true outsiders as curiosity, though little other mind paid.

Corus explains his plan to turn in a few debts as means to acquire things that would allow for the surfacers to persist at this depth and lower without the awkward and obvious bubble.

>>56249492

Whilst he goes, he asks you to mind them near the market. Saying it is the thing they will find most familiar and perhaps reassuring about this place. Rather easily you agree, if only for your chance to sate your gnawing hunger now exacerbated by the trip.

Here there are many merfolk like you, with great and hanging jaws and long dark bodies, and merfolk unlike you. Shoal and lagoon merfolk from the surface, with their human faces. Merfolk thick with blubber from colder seas to the north. Flagrant and colorful patterns from warmer waters. Tritons of course, drifting with their natural alacrity for water magic. Elves, graceful and ethereal as they move and trade through the deep. Chitinous and skittering grab folk barter and scuttle whilst tendril wreathed mandibles turn and inspect smaller shelled things in their grasp.

There is one such crab you would speak too. His stall in the market of upturned ship hulls houses many dead things scavenged from the silt. To your delight and surprise he has something to your liking.

Rare at this depth for certain, and still relatively fresh, a number of porpoise rest behind the converted ship’s brig.

It would have cost five of your precious shells from your necklace, had it not been for a shiny bauble Corus had offered to pay for any meals you might want instead, and you eagerly drag the sleek corpse meat in your arms and back toward the waiting surfacers. It is not as large as you, so it will do to sate you for a few days without otherwise impeding you.

Hooking your jaw under its snout, you slowly take in your meal before pausing. They take many smaller meals, but you do not think they have eaten since you have met them.

>>56249510

“This must seem rude,” you offer as the porpoise’s head stretches your throat as you draw your Squid Beak knife from within your own magics, “Would you like the flippers and fin?”

You were going to cut those off anyway, but eat them after. Attached they are a minor inconvenience.

Amara watches you, transfixed with curious awe but palpable discomfort. Torgan, who has removed her helmet to let spill red braids down her back, nods with little care or ceremony. Tamilro offers that he could eat in certain noncommittal term that seems to also indicate he would very much like to.

So you make the cuts, offerings, and return to walking your jaw down your meal with the powerful and satisfying experience of peristalsis .

It is not long before Corus returns. With him he has a leathery cloak, a golden medallion, and a coral helm.

He explains each of them. The helm allows breath but doesn’t do much to enhance one’s mobility in this realm, Tamilro offers to take it since he is already the most agile. The medallion provides a sheath of a tailored environment the wearer would find survivable, which Amara requests since it will interfere the least with her magic, and an apparent need of the air sheath it will create for her storm magics. The cloak becomes a ray’s spread wings and offers speed in water and the ability to breath therein if one normally cannot, Torgan with her heavy armor thinks this would serve her best.

>>56249532

All so equipped, Amara hesitantly and with some fear dispels her bubble. It breaks into millions of smaller copies and foam that rapidly rise into the dark above the city. Its beautiful to watch, you think, as your meal settles within you.

“Thank you, Zarine,” Corus places a hand on your shoulder, “For leading us to Gatherplace. We will trouble you no more with our quest. I can lead us from here to where the Rust King holds court,”

“While I appreciate the sentiment,” you explain, “this matter has my curiosity. And besides that, we are friends,”

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>>56246023
>oarfish

>>56178545
Those games are so fun. But holy hell they are so incredibly loud when you are in the "cockpit" playing them.

>>56249986
Too thick.

>>56250889
>>56249986
Wait, was this by Woot?

>>56252494

Yes!

>>56194275
Shit's like From Beyond

>>56252567
...honestly I’m surprised he doesn’t have more abyssal mermaid stuff. Well, maybe more artic mermaid stuff I guess would be appropriate for his tendencies and preferences.

>>56252494
By who?

>>56253428
Thicc and fat artist.

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>>56244645
>>56246023
A smart deep ocean civilization would figure out plate tectonics long before it started on astronomy, so it would be able to make some interesting guesses at the nature of land. Mountains and other topographical features wouldn't surprise them, and neither would lakes and rivers. If they've made journeys to the ocean's surface before, then they wouldn't find anything about weather or the sky too surprising; they'd know about night and day in any case, because the day/night cycle drives a vast vertical migration in the ocean. A very smart deep ocean civilization could probably make some shrewd guesses about the size and location of glaciers.

So how would they envision life on land? Well, they'd surmise that terrestrial organisms have to cope with bright light, desiccation, and the lack of buoyancy, but the thing that would really concern them would be the apparent wild temperature swings you encounter on land. These have no real parallel in the ocean. There would be a lot of speculation about whether living things could cope with such wide changes in temperature.

I think they'd wind up with a picture that looks a lot like Earth in the early Silurian: terrestrial life is mostly coastal and doesn't extend too far inland, it's made up primarily of arthropods, and what vegetation there is exists in the form of non-vascular plants, sort of like an algal mat. (The Silurian saw the emergence of the first vascular plants, like Cooksonia.) A deep-ocean civilization with modern scientific institutions could get a lot more accurate than that, but I think the Silurian vision would hold for a pretty long time.

Thus, they'd get onto land and be astonished by the existence and abundance of terrestrial tetrapods and vascular plants, especially birds and trees. They'd also be amazed at how far inland life extends, and they might have failed to anticipate the degree of variety present in surface environments.

>>56255248
The more they know about the land, the less funny the expedition becomes.

I like to think of the expedition as less about a modern abyssal civilization making an organized scientific effort, and more like the famous bathyscaphe, a singular project by our valiant explorers to see what no eye has seen ever.

Or in other words, a bunch of horrible deep sea overeager mermaids cobbled together with some funds the best of what the scarce communities of the deep can manage, and decided to go to the surface armed with a mechanical isopod and the latest of scientific knowledge about the surface, which apparently has a thing called weather that could contribute to keep life wet.

Is the "Isopod" a good name for the inverse submarine?

>>56255740
Well, sure, it’s entirely possible that their understanding of the surface world is hobbled by a simple lack of prior investigation. “Isopod” works as a name, although I could see everything from “crawler” to the deep-sea mermaid equivalent of “Enterprise” (which might have a more literal meaning as “Courageous Seeker of Dangerous Prey” or something like that).

They might be frustrated by their inability to catch birds or rodents or other really exciting animals, and have to settle for digging up flowers and putting them in canisters.

Or they could encounter a bear or a moose or some other large animal, which would be a lot like the Greenland shark video.

Nobody would ever believe their giraffe stories. Things like giraffes and elephants are to them what giant squid are to us, only even more mysterious, because giant squid sometimes wash up on land, whereas giraffes never reach the ocean floor.

>>56256294
Crawler is too general, I like "Isopod" because it both describes the vehicle and it's very unlikely anything else shares the name. Having the name be a phrase is just too overdone.

As for what the expedition ends up doing, I was thinking about things like getting stuck in the mud, trying to catch things up with the sub's arms, shenanigans with introducing stuff inside the cabin for further observation, and yes, a moose doing its best greenland shark impression.

Another idea I had was a second group, basically people from the surface, thinking that the inverse sub is an advance party for an ultimate invasion of the creatures from the depths. Of course, trying to stop a several tons highly pressurized land submarine without being detected is easier said than done.

>>56249551
I need more anon. This is a good read.

>>56257388
I've not the energy to really give you all you wish, anon. Would you settle for an outline of the continued story beats and conclusion along with application and notation of game terms?

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>>56216705
>isopodmen

I feel like they'd just be Garthim from the Dark Crystal.

>>56258586
Yeah. I was enjoying it. You can just give me the break down of where it was headed. Short and simple if you want.

>>56259087
Alright, I'm writing my beat list up...honestly I was writing it before you responded. It would have been several grouped updates were it fully written out.

>>56259633
>>56259087

>The gleaming ship, mithral probably ancient elven, is the Rust King’s palace.
>Guard louses that are basically aquatic rust monsters. Torgan expressing annoyance at such frustrating beast. Tamilro almost lashing out when one starts sniffing around his axe.
>Beautiful surface/lagoon mermaids and a few exotic but not monstrous looking abyssal mermaids serving the court as the rust king rises.
>Lithe humanoid body grown into a lovecraftian horror. Half Titan, the son of a Kraken and a mortal some hundreds of years ago. Play up the way the attending mermaids bask in his presence and Zarine being aware of his massive psychic presence.
>Hears the plea of the party, knows of the crystal statue.
>Deigns to allow them to proceed, and investigate why that Sahuagin tribe would dare raid the surface. He will even loan to them a coral seal that if shattered will return them to his court. This all hinges on them allowing him to inspect the statue before their return to the surface.
>Amara defensive about that, the King’s condition is final.
>To the trench
>Combat against Sahuagin with strange living weapons, extending piledriving spears, extending corrosive claw gauntlets with eyes, weird stuff.
>Tamilro is a flurry with the axe. Torgan has to rely on auras and divine power as her mattock isn’t as effective under water. Corus is all stabby and slinky with his spear. Amara has lightning, real lightning. Zarine is chomping tooth and steaming blade.
>No losses on our heroes side here, demoralize their foes with but a few deaths. They retreat with their corpses away from the direction the party descends
>They should be quick, the Sahuagin keep sharks and the bloodshed will call them.
>Amara and Zarine have more conversation on the nature of magic. The presence of Amara’s lightning confused Zarine’s senses a moment. Amara admits she has difficulty speaking to Zarine, between her teeth and watching how she ate the dolphin.

>>56260274

>Tamilro, wounded by a corrosive claw, decides he does not respect the strength of these Sahuagin.
>They pass through an empty Sahuagin caves town deep in the trench, but not near the bottom.
>They find one, crippled from some other fight. Its eyes are vacant, the eye on its weapon watches them, when it moves it leads with that arm. There is a psychic presence there.
>Something passes over in the dark, three red points in the distance appear and dissapear.
>They go deeper.
>Signs of recent rockslides having exposed something.
>Strange, alien to even Zarine and Corus architecture is found as they go deeper. Ruins.
>Empty? Ruins.
>In the center of these ruins, sitting in a strange occult platform and altar is the statue they seek.
>Something is wrong?
>Rising from being somehow unseen are many sahuagin. Cloudy mass descends from above.
>Amara unleashes lightning, enhanced by the presence of the statue.
>Sahuagin going down all over, but their numbers are overwhelming...and unlike those they fought earlier they seem like the crippled one. Their weapons lead them.
>Like a giant dart, a heavy mass drops from the cloud. Three eyes at the front and great many tendrils trailing behind it in the cloud of mucus. An aboleth. Ancient and alien even in the deep, but ultimately still mortal.
>It pulses with psychic or magical force, knocking Tamilro and Torgan into the dark depths and heights respectively.
>Aboleth falls upon Amara, lightning washing over it’s surface, and it goops her with aboleth mucus.
>She turns pale green and begins suffocating within the air sheath.
>Corus realizing what’s happened, the Aboleth being ancient enemies of the Tritons, rushes over and pulls the medallion from her neck, afflicted by the mucus she begins breathing water.
>Zarine is swimming about murdering sahuagin
>Amara gains her bearings, Corus smiles.
>Bishop scene from the end of Aliens. Down to the wishboning.

>>56260298

>Zarine channels arcane force into her squid beak knife and blinds one of the Aboleth’s three eyes.
>It pulses again, sending Amara and Zarine and the split halves of Corus flying
>Zarine coils her tail around Amara to keep them from getting separated.
>Batted around the ruins in the trench, blacking out a bit.
>Zarine comes to, Amara figures the poisons of the Aboleth Mucus is beginning to thin...without the medallion she needs air and doesn’t have enough magic left without resting to conjure another bubble.
>The two find sea caves, following bubble trails to and underwater air pocket that Amara thinks will sustain her once the mucus fully wears off.
>They both rest and metaphorically lick their wounds. Trading stories about Corus and first meetings. Bonding as friends.
>Amara sleeps, Zarine watches the water. Much time passes
>Both regained of their strength and magics, though Amara complains that she has lost her provisions. Amara prepares to summon a bubble.
>Zarine objects, it may be better if she were to polymorph Amara into a merfolk like her.
>They are deep, and this place is dangerous, the bubble will not provide mobility or advantage during combat...which awaits them.
>Amara agrees, lowers herself into the water beside Zarine as she carves eldritch symbols into stone and changes Amara into not quite a mirror image.
>Zarine expresses jealousy that Amara’s jaw is set wider than her own.
>”Is that an attractive feature?”
>”It’s convenient for eating,”
>Team merfolk is go.
>Track their way back to the Aboleth ruins, careful this time.
>Along the way they find the top half of Corus, small fishes have already eaten his eyes. The medallion remains in his grip.
>Both are mournful in different ways.
>Zarine tells Amara she needs her strength for what they’ll face, especially in an unfamiliar body.
>Amara cannot...she cannot eat Corus.
>Meat is Meat, Zarine directs her to honor Corus’s sacrifice.

>>56260318

>Donner Party Moment, first hesitant and then horrifically to we on this side of the fourth wall eager yet descriptively and suggestively charged.
>Sneak back to ruins, with care. The Aboleth floats above the platform and altar. Tamilro is chained between two pillars. His axe held by Sahuagin.
>They have one shot, to try to blind the Aboleth’s remaining eyes and let Amara harness the statues power more than she had before.
>Both unleash magical barrages and AOE’s as they charge into the fray. Zarine free’s Tamilro and gives him Corus’s spear while Amara starts just pouring thunder and lightning at the Aboleth.
>Tamilro chucks Corus’s Spear into one of the Aboleth’s eyes, Zarine sets about keeping the controlled Sahuagin at bay.
>The Aboleth begins ascending, trying to cloud it’s escape with Mucus.
>TORGAN DAUGHTER OF YORGUN DESCENDS AS A BLACK WINGED GLOWING BEACON FROM ABOVE SURROUNDED IN GLOWING GOLDEN SPECTRAL DWARVES PLUNGING HER MATTOCK RIGHT INTO THE ABOLETH’S LAST EYE AND BRINGING IT BACK UPON THE ALTAR.
>Everyone Attacks.

>>56260326

>The controlled Sahuagin go limp with their master dead. They recover the statue and break the coral seal given to them by the Rust King.
>Returned to his court, they allow him to inspect the statue. It is of his long dead mother crafted by his father.
>Remaining party rests as guests of the King’s Court whilst he studies it. Amara turns back to normal and breathes with the medallion.
>Rust King grants new audience and returns the statue. It’s power is the same as Amara’s in that she is a distant cousin, the storm within her a distant touch of the Titan’s fury many generations removed.
>She may return with it to South Gate, with an invitation to return to this court at any time, and the Rust King will bring his power against the ruins below in the trench to prevent any further danger from the only possibly defeated Aboleth.
>Zarine offers to see them back to the surface. She is curious to see it and make sure these friends make it home safely.
>Amara invites her to join them on continuing adventures. With the Medallion, she should be able to breath on land, right?
>And the journey continues.
>The end.

>>56260346
This is great. Really enjoyed this story.

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>>56256588

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp-ICI-9gXs

>In the world far beyond the edge of the ocean, enormous, rigid coral-like organisms cluster together in vast numbers. Though pillar-like at the terrestrial floor, these organisms branch into numerous tough filaments near their tops, each adorned with small, flat protrusions in such numbers that they collectively obscure the sky, creating a realm utterly unlike any other. Almost nothing is known about the creatures which inhabit these strange, otherworldly places. Tonight, join the crew of the Isopod One as they make mermaidkind's first journey into one of these enigmatic "land reefs."

>As for what the expedition ends up doing, I was thinking about things like getting stuck in the mud, trying to catch things up with the sub's arms, shenanigans with introducing stuff inside the cabin for further observation, and yes, a moose doing its best greenland shark impression.
They don't have a good reason to think that land will be muddy rather than rocky, so it's quite likely that they'd get stuck in the mud at some point.

>Another idea I had was a second group, basically people from the surface, thinking that the inverse sub is an advance party for an ultimate invasion of the creatures from the depths. Of course, trying to stop a several tons highly pressurized land submarine without being detected is easier said than done.
Well, of course it's an invasion scout! Just look at the heavy armor on it!

>>56249085
Well, there's always the Japanese spider crab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSf5a3TY-O8

And those lovely bone-eating polychaetes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeZNcDHDMzo

There's probably dozens and dozens more; I'll have to think about it for a while.

>>56250212
Wait, are you saying you've played them in arcades? Lucky... I bought Chronicle Saviours despite having no way to play it.

And I only just realized it's out on the PS4.

>>56260902
Glad it was enjoyed. I had this whole thing laid out in my head, but it was all way too long. It took many posts just to drop these story beats and I dunno. It would probably be a bit different if I wrote it all out, got into the dialogue and descriptives.

I just really wanted Torgan to have her awesome moment, and Amara to get over her hangups with Zarine and become friends...and find herself having to eat Corus.

If I were to write continuing adventures, Zarine would be levitating and simulated swimming on land and exploring its concepts as a rather horrific outsider, perhaps occasionally polymorphing herself to cause less ruckus. And Amara would develop issues stemming from her horrifying yet unique experience gaining closure with Corus's death.

>>56261376
You have a talent and you should use it. Please write more when you feel like it :)

>>56225564
I everything about this piece, but I cannot stop laughing about the way that !cthulhu has his head. Reminds me of the jocular laughs of muppets.

>>56261401
That talent is spent on my tabletop players, my paltry offerings on the DM’s Guild, and right next door on /qst/ where I’m three years in on a labor of Love started on a whim that most would find as pure cancer.

>>56261420
IA IA Q'RMIT FTHAGN

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>>56261943
Thank you for the laugh.

>>56260346
Thanks for the write up. Enjoyed it.

>>56261253
Yeah. Im lucky there is an arcade near me that has 2 of the games.

>>56261253
>Dat stuff
I'd read it, normalcy through alien eyes is something I can't get enough of

>>56148369
They live so long because they're full of urea and are colloquially known as "piss sharks"

>>56268835
The reason they live for so long is because they ahve an extremely slow metabolism (they basically live and move at slow motion). Their meat has large amount of urea to balance the osmolytic effects of TMAO. All sharks do that, but I'm not sure why Greenland shark in particular has such high amount of TMAO and urea in its meat. High TMAO content generally corresponds to higher depth, but while Greenland sharks have been found over 2 km deep, there's other sharks that regularly live at that depth or deeper whose meat wouldn't give you TMAO overdose.

Incedetally, TMAO is the reason why there's a hard cap to how deep fish can live (I don't remember the depth, but I think it was around 8 km). This is because the chemical has two roles; acting as an osmolyte (keeping the fish from dehydrating due to losing water from its cells to the more salty sea water) and preventing extreme pressure from fucking up with the way proteins are supposed to fold. The deepr you go, the more TMAO you need, until eventually you reach the point where you'd need so much of it that the osmolytic effect would actually start sucking water into the cells untill they burst.

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>>56249986
I will improve

Bump cause this thread has made my last week awesome. Love learning about this kind of deep sea stuff.

>>56144646
That gulper eel is a dead ringer for Miyako from Hidamari Sketch and it's wiggin me out

>>56250889

Insulation for the cold.

>>56276005
When you are a deep sea fish you don't really do insulation (or a metabolism worth the name). The cold is your friend, or at least a tolerable neighboor.

Unless you live near the vents, then you thrive in water that would be boiling if pressure was lower.

>>56276113
True merfolk thicc can only be achieved by selfies or artic mammal theme merfolk.

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>>56144646
sorry for the shitty drawing, but i couldnt resist.

those mermaids are total qts

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>>56171566
>>56223947

>>56279068
Meant to say: METAL.

>>56276683
Does this mean I got my first fanart? Cool.
>>56273956
That may have been intentional. After repeatedly failing to get the gulper eel's face look good, I googled "hidamari wideface" and used that as a model. Technically, she's based on an off-model picture from an add to some German kebab place that for some reason ripped the character designs.

I get the feeling this thread will be dead soon. Next one sometime next spring or summer, I quess. If anybody has ideas for more horrible deep sea mermaid drawing, I'm listening.

>>56280658
So is there a story behind using q at the start of your use of the word guess?

Also, have you thought any on Womenz from space? Naked (kek) space I mean.