they are rarely used right
what needs to be utilized to its fullest is their politics
often times, underwater races end up being marine biologists with gills who dole out PSAs to surface dwellers dumping crap into their ocean
if we're going to do this, it needs to be done right.

>>14763831
so how about a race that thinks surface people are gods and treasures all their trash as divine gifts
kind of like... the little mermaid...

I think one of the problems is it's always either fish people or octopus people.

The underwater biosphere is diverse and freaky as fuck. Let's pick a more obscure biological base.

I propose a giant sentient nautilus like creature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus

Look at those fuckers.

>>14763875
Uh, then why not simply crustacean dudes?
A guy made a re-interpretation of gnomes that were an amphibian crustacean race. Used magitek involving bionics and recycling their own shells and corpses into magical constructs. Dudes were pretty weird, and could reincarnate or something, hence their feeling not concerned with their own bodies' integrity.

Okay, remember how Lovecraftian monsters are all tentacular and shit because Lovecraft found sea creatures repulsive? What if we go for the reverse here? The Atlanteans (or whatever) are fucking TERRIFIED of land creatures.

THEY WALK WHERE THERE IS NO WATER TO BREATHE.
THEY ENTER DEATHLIKE STATES BUT GET UP AGAIN
OH SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT A SPIDER SHIIIIT

>>14763831
Depends on your level of fantasy/scifi.

If you want a spacefaring race of sea creatures, cephalopods are the way to go.

>>14763831
How about we subvert it?

The land is polluted by the sea dweller. I dunno how. Maybe magic. Sea dwellers use a lot of magic, but there's excess energy which is dangerous and can't be used. So it's channelled to above sea level and then after that, who cares? Well this leads to adverse side effects to the land.

Or maybe just make them brutal as fuck to their own sea life. Manly slaughtering sort of rituals in their society, like slayers?

>>14763903
Listen, children, and I'll tell you of the land called AUSTRALIA, SOURCE OF ALL EVILS.

>>14763908
Gas eruptions.

The sea-dwellers create great spires that spew noxious chemicals. But if we build them up until they reach the sky, the clouds billow away into space never to be seen again. What geniuses we are!

>>14763820
Making a race of sexually dimorphic Angler-fish people for an upcoming game.

Angler fish people..... Fuck yeah!

>>14763899
>>14763899
Crustacean dudes could be cool. Need to carefully avoid just making them crab people.

How about some hermit crab influence? There aren't any homes in their societies, because they carry them. Live in nomad tribes, travelling, with a few cities where there's some important stuff (cultural importance, religious, military, whatever).

Maybe they also believe in reincarnation? Just as when one home becomes old and run down they get a new one, when the body become run down they go into another?

Lovecraft's deep ones are undersea elves.

In fact they're better than elves because they lack elvish xenophobia, they know that breeding with the "lesser races" is vital to their continued survival. The only problem is they're not attractive.

>>14763948
Yeah, but the old freakish boogeymen elves, then.

>>14763926
>>14763903
>>14763899
Alright, so far we've a bunch of crustacean inspired race. They know only a little about the land but what they do know terrifies them. So they mostly leave it alone, and it doesn't come to mind that the gases created from things like industry and they just float to above ocean level might go there.

You know that old trope with elves, the one about using trees to grow stuff and make wood as hard as metal? Well it seems to me metallurgy is pretty damn hard under water so why don't they do a similar thing with coral? I think doing it with coral is cooler than elves with trees.

>>14763948
>not attractive
Fuck you, dude, those Deep Ones have some fantastic features. I saw one once whose mantle was perfectly proportioned to 1.61803 times the diameter of her eyes in length. It was beautiful.

>>14763956
Like the Koralons from that old wargame?

except less like tyranids/Yuuzhan Vongs, of course.

>>14763963
Been reading any strange books lately friend?

>>14763963

No, dude, he means the surface-things.
Did you know they have HAIR? And WARM BLOOD?
Ugh, makes my gills shiver.

>>14763875
Oh my god, there actually exist clear living descendants of those stereotypical fossil shelled organisms? I am somehow astounded.

>>14763875

Can we at least have some cuttlefish people thrown in there?
Because Cuttlefolk fuck yes.

>>14763986
you're just uncultured. Most people learn about the nautilus/ii/whatever before hearing about ammonites.

>>14763995
Giant cuttlefish steeds, perhaps? Because fuck seahorses.

>>14764001
I don't think that's true, though I admit marine biology to be a weakpoint of my esoteric knowledge banks.

>>14763967
Koralons?

I'm interdasted, I would like to use aquatic elves in my next campaign. High elves use them as a buffer against all of the dirty mud people, and the aquatic elves hate them for it. Though that relationship may change based on this thread.

Hagfish people would be fucking terrifying.

>>14764008

What if the cuttlefish are like dogs? They're meant to be really intelligent, right? They're companion pets. Probably just called Cuttles, since adding 'fish' on the end would be a little pointless.

>>14764001
>Most people learn about the nautilus/ii/whatever before hearing about ammonites.

I dunno...

The problem with deep-sea races is the alien nature of the deep sea. There's a reason Lovecraft's oogly booglies all look like marine life: they're fucking creepy. For that matter, they also have a completely different perception of existence. Flight is something that taunted humanity for thousands of years before the invention of the hot air balloon and later the airplane, but for sea monsters, life has always been three-dimensional; "flight" is as easy as walking, at least until you hit the surface. This means their culture will be enormously different: there is no real sense of land or territory except at the very depths of the ocean, which would not be conducive to agrarian society. Even an intelligent undersea race may have never moved past the nomadic stage of development, since only the most bottom-dwelling of the bottom-dwellers would have space to build stuff.

On the other hand, if you do go with the very bottom of the ocean, then you have an opportunity to introduce a genuinely creepy, alien atmosphere. There's no light, which means the primary sense is something other than sight. You've seen angler fish and all those other weird trench monsters they've got living at the bottom of the ocean; just imagine if one of those things were intelligent.

Above all, don't introduce "sea elves" or something that live under the ocean but are otherwise no different from humanity in any meaningful way. That's acceptable if it's a land race that moved underwater at some point in history, but it's silly for a natural development.

SOMEONE SUMMON A DRAWFAG

WE NEED CUDDLEFISH NOW

>Nautilus
>steeds
Or have them as tanks.

Fuck you TftD.

This is so relevant to my interests that it's crazy, I'm in the middle of trying to build an underwater/archipelago region campaign.

>>14764037

>there is no real sense of land or territory except at the very depths of the ocean

Wrong. If you look at reefs, corals and anenomes, you will find that there are a lot of fish that live in one place, sleep there and will even attack scuba divers that get too near.

>>14764037
There are still underwater structures. Most undersea creatures with legs inhabit them in one way or another. What would be far more common though, is symbiotic relationships.

"property value" would probably be highly related to proximity to some resource- a hot water spring, particularly rich fishing, etc. That being said, evictions would be more common.

>>14764037
You also have the issue of POWER.

Which, for a deep-dwelling series, would come quite handily from thermal vents.

>>14764030
Yeah, that sounds good. Analogous to dogs, first domesticated animals of the crab people.

So for farming, other crabs and shrimp things might be a little weird. Fish..., maybe? Fish seem like they'd be hard to contain. Molluscs might work better.

I like the idea of replacing metallurgy with coal manipulation. Because how're you going to melt the metal underwater? Coral also looks pretty cool.

Mollusc farming makes sense on two levels: Food and shelter, shells could be obtained from them for the big place and if they are hermit crab people as a way for bigger crab people to get new homes. If they are hermit crab people, I imagine a caste type system in nomad tribal societies. Leader gets best stuff, warrior caste next, farmers and then peasants.

you know what this needs?
pirates

>>14764057
>>14764059
So I guess if there are tribes or nations for this race, size of territory matters little. It's the resources you have at your disposal. What's valuable? Thermal vents are one thing, what are others?

I know /tg/ will partially loathe this post but in a way Warcraft kinda did these monster types a little justice. You HAVE giant nautilus creatures and such, as well as general naga and other undersea monsters like leviathans, mutated eels and octopii with their own heirarchy, weapons, tactics and architecture.

The problem is they just made lolrandum evul.

>>14764060
mollusk shells could be used for armor, shields, and the frames of houses. spears would probably be the most common weapons (far easier than trying to swing something) though a coral sword would cause insane wounds which would be likely to fester.

sea weed also has passable nutrition

>>14764049
So far I just have nomadic roman/mongolian bastard-children.

They're supposed to be guarding/standing watch for something, but they've all but forgot what it is...there's a lot of theories though, they're trying to figure it out...hence all the running around.

That, and of course, adequate protections from their enemies are hard to come by since fighting takes place in 3-D.

They do that via magic and caves mostly.

>>14764060
There are underwater thermal vents that reach thousands of degrees or some crazy shit.

But the better question is where the metal comes from. More likely they'd learn to deliberately grow certain forms of aqueous bacteria or tubeworms or something that secrete a chitinous material, or something similar. Heck, you could even produce it in strips and then use the heat from the vents to shape it, but that might not work so well.

>>14764083
Oooh, farming chitinous material also fits. So we've two main ways of developing resources: Farming and coral manipulation.

I imagine this means farmers have a higher stance in society than usual. They're not nobles, but they've the dual job that a farmer usually has and of miners/craftsmen.

>>14764077
I actually agree, I liked a lot of the underwater designs in warcraft. Their societies... not so much.

>>14764037
maybe it does not need to bee the ground
it's a widely spread assumption that intelligence starts with using tools

http://www.ted.com/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html

maybe they build shit like this

huge underwater constructs made out of sticks ( former corals , tang ? ) floating around
they could be intended to domesticate lesser animals akin to the way we hold chicken ?
protection from predators - storing

anything as long as it looks awesome and FLOATS beneath the surface

>>14764079
Another thing I have are some amphibious snakes ala nagas/yuanti that inhabit crystal bio-domed cities.

Tons of magic, everything is grown/manipulated by sculpting live structures, they're pretty much psuedo-hindu atlanteans (except they're obligate carnivores...so...antihindus?).

Not super original I know, but meh.

>>14763908
>Slayers
>Crabs
>Crab Slayers

You want to be a warrior? Well you have to kill the FUCK out of that giant squid. With this spear. Be quick about it now, chop chop.

>>14764106
don't go too deep into the hindu comparison. As you know it, it's far more subtle and complex that that HARMONYYYY OH LOVE thingie.

>>14764106
>>14764099
If you >>14764083 build on this idea that they use what amount to living replicators to build their shit, then all you have to do is construct a framework and then coerce the bacteria themselves to grow in the right way, and they'll construct any object you need.

I'd imagine they'd have a lot of objects fashioned wholly from a single contiguous section of material that would just be downright implausible to us. Like making an earthquake-resistant habitat of some kind that's one single massive globe of keratin.

>>14763986

>>14764105
>it's a widely spread assumption that intelligence starts with using tools

IRL, a great number of sea creatures use tools. Frequently, their tools are still alive.

>>14764121
Oh god no, I subverted the hell out of it. They are at heart predators whose social constructs teach them to value restraint, patience and strength.

So, essentially, a lot of bio-technology? Remember, there's bacteria and things that produce electricity, not to mention the thermal vents, so it's entirely plausible that they could have some strange type of bio-electronics.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30702154/ns/technology_and_science-science/

TV screens have been modeled after cuttlefish, maybe they actually use some sort of bio-engineered creature derived from cuttlefish as TV screens? If they're this heavy into biotech from the get-go, they could conceivably have somewhat advanced technolgy.

Know what I'd like to see? Sea slug people.

>>14764139
I like this. So we've a lot of bio-tech for the technology.

So what's the biology and social side of the race like? So far we've a vague crustacean base, do crustaceans have any cool sense we can use?

>>14764139
I would limit this to things that would be considered novel or magical in a fantasy setting.

Lights audio communication and the like.

>>14764147
pretty

>>14764136
They DO pull the harmony/love/lets get along thing for diplomats though. But again, they're a major magical force- get to the end of their patience and they wreck shit.

"Coastal forces poisoning local wildlife in open act of war after negotiations fell through, what do?"

"We will send their poisons back to them; summon the druids to summon a tidal wave."

long distance travel is not uncommon, traders bring TONS of goods at a time.

>>14764139
Let's keep it to some advanced elements but generally on a sort of low level. Bio luminescence used for light features, keratin for shelter and weapons...

>>14763903
>THEY WALK WHERE THERE IS NO WATER TO BREATHE.
>THEY ENTER DEATHLIKE STATES BUT GET UP AGAIN
>OH SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT A SPIDER SHIIIIT

The concept of sea alien being scared and amazed by the existence of humans, who were first land species his race ever met was explored in awesome way in one short story by Kir Bulychev

>>14764176
This does sound good. Maybe some sort of trained bio-luminescent fish or squid thing, trained to follow people wandering the main roads?

Like a seeing-eye squid, but you know, lamps.

So what do they do for communication? Personally I think a type of morse code might be cool. I don't see them using mouths or things for verbal communication.

>>14764213
Gesticulating, body language and skin pigmentations.

>>14764213
Whalesong, clicks with their serpentine tongues, symbology and a form of contact language (like generating small pulses of bio-electricity when in contact which each other.

So a lot of species of crab fight each other, or have a show of strength, over issues such as territory and females.

I'm imagining a very well respected duelling tradition in their society, for honour and such.

So...some possible sea creature/humanoid things...
>crabs (though I guess WOWs got that covered, I always assumed they were more lobster people)
>Sea-Slugs
> Angler Fish maybe?
>heavily mutated/redesigned urchins
>HAG FISH
>sea horses
>pistol shrimp

Feel free to pick one and fluff it, I'll be trying to do the same, may take a while, I haven't slept lately.

Coming up with combos I missed are also cool.

Politics-wise i'd imagine they have some form of communism. everybody's important as everyone has to pull their own weight to benefit the whole (like an ecosystem has to be balanced)

>>14764224
Body language sounds good. Need to clarify their biology, though.

They need manipulators and traditional crab claws would be unwieldy, I think. DO they have hand like structures? Are they bipedal or still traditional cab biology. If traditional crab biology I image the legs can help with body language.

I described the Aquatic setting I play in a week or two back, in a thread about 'Elven Cities'. There are some really neat ideas in this thread, I might have to steal some of the ones that hadn't occurred to me.

>>14764247
Possible but we need to avoid the whole "HARMONY" trope that sea races tend to fall under. Perhaps corrupted communism, ala Soviet Russia?

Wait, wait...how could I have missed this...

XENOPHYOPHORES!

growing chitinous armor (depending on setting magictek power armor) to protect themselves?

They lurk in the deep, unknown, strange beings...probably take a hard hit to Con in D&D though.

-4? Single celled organisms and all.

>>14764264
I'd give them a hive mind and make reference to some hidden spawning pit for "world ending bbeg" but that seems too mindflayery to me...and I think I'd like them to be playable maybe.

"I am a sentient unicellular being, your argument is invalid" and all that.

>>14764263
Unite through fear, our underwater friends come in a myriad of forms and with 3D movement, defense is much harder.

Unite through xenophobia.

Because fuck mermaids, long live the nautilus/ Humboldt squid master race alliance...

Now if only they'd stop eying each other for a chance to gimp the other.

Maybe not quite like that of course, but again, fear is a powerful motivator.

Babylonian style crab/whatever people worshipping at the alter of some large kraken or sea-serpent/ appropriately mysterious physical, alien sea-god maybe?

>>14763820

How does one archive a thread?
I definitly will be using this for my upcoming campaign.

The Divers have begun to plunge down into our world from The Above.

When we were young and naive, we only saw The Above as a source of light. The Fliers could dance for short moments into the light to avoid predators and they spoke of a void, stretching out in all directions.

We never thought things might live in that void.

Great things, almost as big as a shark, with reaching, grasping limbs. A single trunk from which five tendrils sprouted; two at the bottom, dangling below and tapering off into fins. Two near the top, ending in five, smaller, grasping suckerless tentacles and then a stumpier extremity that would hiss and spit out a roar of bubbles.

I inked as soon as I saw one.

>>14764247
Who's to say they wouldn't run into the same pitfalls humanity does though? Unless they're eusocial it's going to cause problems. It only takes one asshole trying to pull himself up higher to upset the balance.

Hey guys what's going on in this thread? Please come visit me, it's awfully lonely down here.

>>14764008
>>14763995

BEHOLD

>>14764379
Sup/tg/ is a fairly easy archival process.

What kind of polytheistic religion would arise in an underwater setting? I'd guess a sea god would be at the head of any pantheon.

>>14764474

They'd probably worship particularly large specimens of whale or other forms of intelligent marine life. I recall a thread a few weeks back that mentioned that they had created a setting where one of their actual physical gods was, essentially, Moby Dick.

>>14764474

That's like saying an Air God or Land God would be the head of the Pantheon on dry ground. Certainly you do have sky gods in the lead, but that's more because of the fearsome power of that stuff.

Actually, no. A god of the impassible wall of death would be. The god of OUTSIDE. A complete and utterly impenetrable wall that slays all those who cross it. A mysterious force, changing from light to dark, where the tidal forces are in constant turmoil.

THAT would be the foremost deity. A deity so impossible, so utterly alien that no one could understand or know it's ways....and those who do discover horrors beyond imagining. Light that eats things and turns things into silt. A vast, empty silence that no one can hear your weakened cries inside. Creatures of such alien anatomy, such grotesque build that they cannot survive in the life giving depths.

Horrors and monsters live OUTSIDE, and the gods warn us against it.

>>14764474

Saved it here. Please vote accordingly.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14763820/

>>14764474
Perhaps they'd worship a god of currents, the Great Traveller. The mercurial but food-bearing god who is basically an aquatic God of roads?

The God of the Surface is an inexplicably malicious creature who rains down gifts of food, but will uproot the weak and throw them into the alien world of Air.

CIA fact file: Sea Slugs

A race of large 6-7ft creatures with an estimated life span of approximately 90 years.
The first 'giant' sea slug colony was discovered in 1996 near Argentina by Dr. Spitzer expedition to the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge and was first thought to be a new species.

This idea changed when the first ‘colony’ was discovered. According to Dr. Spitzer’s account it was “Roughly the size of New York, the Pacific ridge colony was diverse and highly organised with more than a few intelligent behaviours elicited from the slugs. Some fled at the sight of our shadow, while some more curious creatures stayed and watched. It must have been like a UFO to them. After taking lots of photographs we felt a large bump at the back of the vessel which knocked us off our feet. At that time my team and I decided to take the mini sub back to the safety of the surface.”

CIA fact file: Sea Slugs

One question yet to be answered is how the colony has remained unnoticed for so long. A research ship was sent during the 50s to assess that area for a nuclear test sight. It reported no unusual sightings but declared the sight unsuitable, the hard copy document stating ‘extenuating circumstances’ which were never enumerated.

In 2001 we sent in a UOV developed by DARPA alongside the Air forces’ predator drone concept. We thought gathering information of this underwater phenomenon was a perfect preliminary test for its capability to discover nuclear submarines and underwater ICBM installations. Instead we discovered what appeared to be organised farming techniques in the outlying areas of the colony and noticeable structures which appeared have some designed purpose. At that point contact with the drone was lost.

CIA fact file: Sea Slugs

Since then the navy has reported strong radio wave emissions from this zone. We suspect these to be a form of radar or sonar. Ultra low frequencies have also been detected emanating from this area. For now we have been able to convince the Navy top brass that these are secret tests we are doing. And to stay out of the area. We are still assessing the situation and want to avoid jumping to any conclusions. Still not much is known of the sea slugs behaviour, but luckily this story has been kept out of the sensationalist media. This is aided by the fact that our satellites are able to mask the thermal signature of the city and as of yet no postures have been taken by Chinese or French, indicating that they don’t know, or if they know, that their waiting for our first move.

sharkpeople

because

sharkgirls

>>14764509
>>14764509
Sounds pretty cool. Perhaps it could turn out to be a sort of massive large stinging jellyfish type choral...

>>14764617
I think ANON is referring to the surface world. bright lights which cannot be explained (undersea eyes work differentlly than land eyes, IIRC). Not breathing: there's no water, it's unsurvavable.

Still, this talk of sea jellies makes me wonder: what kind of predators would our races have? What kind of food would they eat? How deeply to they dwell? Depth might bear significant bearing on their attitudes towards their attitudes toward the surface (i.e. 200 feet deep vs 1 mile deep)

>>14764552
>>14764555
>>14764558

Well, sir, that's just fine by me. Is there more pasta, or if it's original, write more now.

>>14764509
That'd make sea to land relations interesting.

Why hello there sea dweller, I reside in the play you conceive as a hell filled with unknowable horrors.

From: KSimmons@Cia.intranetB2.gov.us
To: LauraSW@Cia.intranetB2.gov.us

:\ [attaining network]
:\ [assessing user trueid…1….2…complete]
:\ [setting up secure connection]
12:54 ++Have you finished that section report on the radiowave code breaking we gave MIT as a ‘test’? We just need the sections they managed to break and the sentences we could get out of them.
12:57 ++I really need it for the Harrison report. If their gonna cut our funding at least we can pool our resources with Harrisons’ deep sea project.
12:59 ++Still waiting
13:00 ++What sections are you talking about specifically?
13:04 ++ Just the ones we discussed before. Don’t make me right them here.
13:05 ++ Well I just focussed on the parts we had the most success with. The one that starts hello, and the other testing one.
13:06 ++ What? You mean you haven’t gotten around to the good bit?
13:07 ++ What one was that?
13:08 ++ Kyle, turn on your TV fast. CNN.

>>14764970

>right not write

killed it for me right there

Finfolk.
fish people wit +18 to str?
fuck me! they could row from sweden to norway with only three pulls on the oars and needed no weapons to fight so mighty was their strenght

So, we seem to be working from the assumption that this civilisation is based around relatively shallow water. That creates two possible inhospitable zones - first, the Above, where you can't breath, the Sun burns and everything is impossibly loud.

And things live in it.

Then there's the Black, the water so deep that light cannot penetrate, where the pressure will crush those unprepared for it.

And things live in it.

Either (or both) could serve as a source for their equivalent of Outer Gods. One could be Heaven and the other Hell?

motherfucking were-shark

I think if this were to be a real /tg/ game, let's face it - it would have to take place at least in part, on the surface. The whole moving in 3 dimensions thing is a bit hard to imagine constantly.

My Idea would be a mixture of the following;

Amphibious humanoid creatures (crab-people, slug people, and nautilus people) begin living in small damp caves (out of the water). They begin forming a real society there and their counterparts under the water are not cool with this. Humans are caught in the middle of all this and oh, yeah - there are were-sharks.

Jellyfish men. Like hippies but they're kill you if you come too close.

>>14765802
>Weresharks

What would happen if they transformed while on land though? Although I'd imagine that only people that live close to the short would be at risk of being turned though.

bump

Oh hey this thread is still around.

>>14765012

Water is much more viscous than air if you haven't noticed. In order to move around in it easily, it would make sense that the average fish person would be a lot stronger when compared to an average human.

I mean, you've seen videos of sharks or dolphins jumping out of the water? Think of how much speed they would need to build up to be able to do that, then try to imagine a human doing the same. It's pretty much impossible.