File: 1468023139397.jpg (166 KB, 800x1256)

166 KB JPG

>>49905799
Now, when talking about the deep sea, I primarily refer to the area of the ocean below 1km (3300ft), known as the bathypelagic, or upper midnight zone (aka. underwater vore hell; and yes, there is also a lower midnigth zone. We don't really go to lower midnight zone), although the area above it, the mesopelagic (or twilight zone), will be relevant as well, as the zones kind of bleed into one another and a lot of the deep sea traits are also found in animals living there.

In any case, the "normal" ocean, with coral reefs and kelp and fish that didn't swim out of H.P. Lovecraft's nightmares, only really extends to the upper 200 meters (650ft). Below that it gets too dark for most plants to photosynthesise (the twilight zone), and eventually all light disappears completely (the midnight zone). These areas account for about 98% of the volume of the oceans, and while sparcely populated, their sheer volume means they contain around 90% of the oceans' fish.

For a long time it was thought that nothing, aside from bacteria and maybe some hardy invertebrates, could live below the twilight zone. After all, what would possibly live in the crushing pressure and eternal darkness, where sunlight never reaches and thus the basis of the ecosystem, green plants and algae, could not exist? Life, however, is very persistent. If there's an empty niche, it will get filled with something, even if that niche is "lives in a functionally endless abyss of eternal darkness".

File: 1447952538840.jpg (843 KB, 1280x3982)

843 KB JPG

>>49905988
So, how do you survive in an environment where there's no light, temperature hovers around a chilly 4 degrees C (39 F), pressure is high enough to crush all but the sturdiest manmade objects into unrecogniseable pulp, and the odds of you encountering another living being are faint at best? Turns out a lot of time the answer is "by becoming as horrifying as biologically possible".

There's a reason for the "underwater vore hell" nickname. Because there is no primary production (ie. no plants), everything in the abyss is a scavenger or a carnivore (or both). And because of the rarity of food (the abyssal ecosystem mostly runs on scraps drifting down from the surface waters) and the resulting low population density, you can't be very picky about what you eat. As such, the food chain in the deep sea is less of a chain and more of a nonsensical jumble. While you have some animals (primarily invertebrates and small fish) that feed exclusively on marine snow (pieces of organic matter drifting from above) and occupy the lowest rung of the food chain, above that level you've mostly got everythign trying to eat everything else at the same time. Being able to swallow creatures your own sized or bigger is a very common adaption among deep sea fish because when you encounter something theoretically edible for the first time in months, you're not going to be able to afford letting it pass by just because it's bigger than you and wants to eat you.

Other common adaptions are pitch-black or blood-red skin (to better hide in the endless darkness), ridiculously long needle-like teeth (to better catch prey), bioluminescense (to attract prey or mates, or simply light your way), attrophied muscles and skeletal structure (to save energy), and jelly-like tissue with similar consistency to surrounding water (necessary to not be crushed by the water pressure).
As such a lot of deep sea fish tend to look like some kind of weird alien horrors.

File: deep-sea-angler-fishes.gif (48 KB, 314x430)

48 KB GIF

Now we'll finally get to the deep sea horrofist themselves. I'll start with what are probably the most famous, the deep sea anglerfish (ceratioides), also known as sea devils. They're pretty much your generic deep sea fish, with all the standard deep sea fish traits, but they're plenty interesting on their own right as well.

Your standard anglerfish is roughly spherical, with a big toothy mouth and a dangling lure (esca) at the end of a "fishing rod" growing from its back. Quite a lot of variations exist, though, including more streamlined ones, ones where the lure is growing from the roof of their mouth, and ones where the upper jaw can bend like some kind of organic beartrap. Anglerfish lures are actually very complex, with lenses to amplify the light, as well as a system to let the fish turn it on and off at will. The ligth is generated by bioluminescent bacteria, but the exact mechanics are unknown (so far, attempts to get the bacteria to produce light once harvested from the anglerfish have failed).

Another famous trait of the deep sea anglerfish is that in some genuses the male (which is far smaller than the female, and doesn't even have a functioning digestive system) will bit onto a female and secrete and enzyme that causes his body to fuse with the female, over time atrophying into little more than a pair of testicles. Small, short-lived males are common among deep sea fish, but this kind of "parasitic mating" is unique to anglerfish.
Interestingly, some species of anglerfish often have multiple males per female, while others never have more than one. No idea how or why they prevent males after the first one from attaching onto the female, but I suppose it's nice to know some deep sea horror fish enjoy monogamous relationships.

File: Representatives_of_cerati(...).jpg (31 KB, 254x393)

31 KB JPG

>>49906376
Pictures of some actual specimens. As said, they come in many shapes, although mostly spherical and universally ugly.

How did you feel about the Biology represented in Shin Godzilla?

File: deep_sea_mermaid_by_nakan(...).jpg (484 KB, 613x900)

484 KB JPG

Because they're the "standard deep sea fish", most pictures of deep sea mermaids I have are based on anglerfish.

File: Spoiler Image (855 KB, 964x974)

855 KB PNG

>>49906426
>most pictures of deep sea mermaids I have are based on anglerfish.
Same here.

File: Spoiler Image (751 KB, 973x934)

751 KB PNG

>>49906472

File: Spoiler Image (700 KB, 957x888)

700 KB PNG

>>49906487

File: Metia.jpg (508 KB, 1500x2121)

508 KB JPG

contribootin!

File: gulper-eel2.jpg (58 KB, 640x292)

58 KB JPG

>>49906424
Haven't actually seen the movie. Not sure if it's even out in my country yet (I'm too poor to go to movies a lot, so I don't pay close attention to what's running). It had deep sea gribblies? Might have to shell out for a ticket now.

Next I'll like to introduce one of my personal favorite animals, the magnificent Saccopharyngiformes, aka. the gulper eels and pelican eels. Look at that thing. It's pretty much what you get when you take a fish and start removing every feature not necessary for life in the deep sea. It's got no scales, no ribs, barely any eyes and teeth, and even its muscles are simple in structure than in any other fish. One related genus even completely lacks upper jaw bones.
It's quite literally nothing but a huge mouth, a stomach, and the bare minimum components needed to keep the animal moving and operational. I find it quite beautiful in its own way. It's a very streamlined design, with a certain "purity of purpse", if you will.

The gulper eel's (and pelican eel's; they're closely related and very similar genuses, but slightly different in appearance; this picture might be mislabeled as it looks to me more like a pelican than a gulper) most notable feature is, of course, its mouth. Unlike most other deep sea horrors, the gulper has only very small teeth, although it more than makes up with the size of its gape. The mouth functions essentially like an organic trawling net. The gulper slowsly swims around with its mouth open, or waits in place with the glowing lure on its tail held in from of its mouth, and anything that swims into its awaiting jaws (the inside of its mouth is also black to make it very hard to spot), be it a whole school of small fish or copepods or another fish larger them the gulper itself, gets swallowed whole.

Gulpers are quite large for deep sea fish, with the largest specimens reaching length of 2 meters, although most of their length comes from the long tail.

>>49906651
Please keep it up deep sea anon. I am interested.

File: deep_sea_eels_by_eurwentala.jpg (54 KB, 800x629)

54 KB JPG

>>49906487
That's probably the only decent gulper eel mermaid I've seen (their defining feature doesn't really lend itself well to humanoid structure), although even that kind of misses the mark by having the face extand in the wrong direction. A gulper eel's skull is actually very small, but the jawbones extend backwards from the skull several times the length of the skull itself.

>>49906651
Since I brought up the different kinds of Saccopharyngiformes, I might explain the differences in more detail.

Gulper eels (Saccopharngidae) consist of multiple very similar looking species of varying sizes (some might really just be juveniles of other species, since many are only known from a single specimen caught decades ago before DNA testing was a thing), including the largest specimens of the order. They're slightly less extreme than the pelican eel in that they have more of a distinct body (which, admittably, is mostly a huge sack-like stomach) and teeth.

Pelican eels (Eyrypharyngidae) are composed of one species, the pelican eel. It's smaller (0,75 meters long, so abour 2.5 feet), with an even larger mouth in relation to its body, and an even simple body shape. It also has no teeth.

Onejaws (Monognathidae) are also composed of one very poorly known species, Monognathus. It is very small (largest individual ever encountered was slightly over 6 inches, with most being at most 2/3 of that size), and as the name might suggest, has no actual upper jaw (that is, the upper jawbones have completely attrophied).

The 4th fish in the picture is also a Saccopharyngiformid, but of a different suborder (Cymatoidei instead of Saccopharyngidei). It's the bobtail snipe eel, a member of a genus of two very similar species. Compared to the "proper" gulpers it's pretty dull, but it does have nice set of really long and thin jaws covered with lots of tiny sharp teeth. I believe they're used to entangle the legs of copepods and other similar invertebrates.

File: blackdragon_by_eurwentala(...).jpg (99 KB, 600x1129)

99 KB JPG

Next up is what I'd consider the third member of the "holy trinity" of stock deep sea fish, the order Stomiiformes, composed of fish such as viperfish, dragonfish, loosejaws, bristlemouths and stareaters. The fish in the picture is a dragonfish, and yes, the jaws on the actual animal actually do open 180 degrees. Stomiiformed have multiple species that do funny things with their jaws.

They mostly come in essentially two body shapes: long and serpentine, and what I can only describe as "torpedo-shaped" with enormously huge heads.
Dragonfish and viperfish are of the serpentine variety, and probably the most "typical" of the order (Stomiiformes are also known as "dragonfish and allies"; dragonfish is clearly them main character of this team). The largest species is 0.5 meters long. Viperfish in particular have extremely long needle-like teeth, and have to have special "sheathes" in their upper jaw to not accidentally stab themselves in the brain when they close their mouth. They're quite active for deep sea fish, capable of short bursts of comparatively high speed, and are known to rise closer to surface during the night to feed.

Larval viperfish and dragonfish have their eyes at the end of long stalks. As they mature, the stalks are reeled in inside the skull, and their remnants are still present in the adult. Some members of the order begin life as males and turn female after mating.

File: Stoplight Loosejaw (2).jpg (23 KB, 736x370)

23 KB JPG

>>49907083
Example of the other type of Stomiiformes bodybuild, the stoplight loosejaw. And again, yes, the jaws of the actual fish really do that.

The stoplight loosejaw is an interesting creature for a few reasons. First of all, its jaws can do...That thing, and secondly, it produces red light. Extremely few bioluminescent animals can do that (only other fish being a cople of closely related species). Red light is the first to be absorbed in water (that's why some deep sea fish are bright red instead of black: it's virtually the same thing when it comes to blending in), so most deep sea fish don't even bother developing receptors to see it. The stoplight loosejaw, however, can see red, and uses its red photophores to illuminate its surroundings with light that is invisble to potential prey or predators.

While the loosejaw possesses huge jaws with long sharp teeth, and can swallow fish of its own size, it primarily feeds on small copepods which are also the source of the pigment it needs to generate red light. How it catches them, considering the lower jaw has no floor so any small animal should be able to just swim out of its mouth, is anybody's guess.

File: Hatchetfish.jpg (19 KB, 120x276)

19 KB JPG

>>49907183
Not all stomiiformes are horrifying-looking deep sea predators, though. Some merely look like the agonised souls of the damned.

This is a marine hatchetfich, which is also a stomiiformed. It's a small fish that, lacking the standard deep sea fish "swallow whole" ability, it feeds on small invertebrates like a fish of its size should. Dragonfish probably considers it that one relative nobody talks about, or the comic relief character of Team Dragonfish and Allies.

From the side the marine hatchetfish actually looks pretty normal, but the body is very deep and narrow, making its profile look kind of like a hatchedt (the tail of the fish being the handle, and the body the blade). Narrow profile and photophores in its underside allows it to use counter-illumination to blend itself with light filtering from above, allowing the fish to remain invisible to predators lurking below.

File: viperfish_mermaid.jpg (85 KB, 800x1000)

85 KB JPG

Viperfish mermaid. Or maybe a dragonfish. I'm not really entirely sure of the exact differences between the two.

This biology lesson is giving me so many ideas on refining my subterranean/deep sea monster biology.

One question: why do any of these creatures have eyes? Cave-dwellers tend to have atrophied sight in their dark environs, but all these things have huge-ass eyes. Is sight the only sense that can guide you when you're submerged in water? Do none of them use echolocation?

File: Chiasmodon_niger.jpg (97 KB, 600x500)

97 KB JPG

The posterfish to why the deep sea is known as underwater vore hell, Chiasmodon niger, aka. the black swallower (or, informally, the horrible vore-fish). Now, we've already established that the "swallow whole" ability is a standard part of of "horrible deep sea fish" template, but the swallower takes it to the extreme. While it might look relatively normal compared to the likes of the gulper eel or the anglerfish, the swallower is capable of swallowing a fish over twice its own size and ten times its weight, and has been know to swallow even bigger prey. The one in the picture has eaten a snake macrel over four times its own length, although this appears to have been too much as the fish's stomach has burst (although that could have been caused post-mortem).
In fact, most specimens of the black swallower have been recovered after the fish swallowed a meal so large that it couldn't finish digesting it before it started to rot in its stomach, and the gasses generated by decomposition lifted the swallower on the surface (unfortunately for the swallower, it is not equipped with means to burp, or otherwise release gasses building in its gut).

It is fortunate, then, that the swallower only grows at most 0.25 meters (about 10 inches) long.

>>49907457
Photophores are why. Also, echolocation is a mammal thing. Fish aren't complex enough.

>>49907183
>And again, yes, the jaws of the actual fish really do that.
What *are* they doing? Pic is weird.

File: Chiasmodon niger.jpg (980 KB, 1419x1800)

980 KB JPG

>>49907478
There's surprisngly very few mermaids based on the black swallower. You'd think it'd be a hit with vore fetishish or something. Instead, here's a nice looking old fashioned picture plate. Not entirely sure how accurate, as I can't really imagine a situation where the swallower would manage to swallow a whole school of small fish (that's more of a gulper eel's thing).

>>49907457
There's pretty much two "design schools" when it comes to eyes on deep sea fish. Either they're huge to bette catch any light cause by bioluminescense or filtered from above, or they're very small and atrophied. Very few have completely nonfuctional eyes, though. It seems having at least simple eyes is a useful trait to have.
The fish living in the twilight zone are more likely to have big upward-facing eyes, since there is still some light coming from above, letting them spot outlines of prey or predators swimming above them.

I don't think any fish use echolocation, but many have very developed pressure sense. Many deep sea fish have an exposed lateral line (the organ fish use to detect movement and vibrations in water), some anglerfish are covered with pressure-sensitive hairs, and the whalefish has large amounts of pressure-sensitive pores around its body (but extremely small and atrophied eyes).

File: Stoplight Loosejaw.jpg (30 KB, 318x300)

30 KB JPG

>>49907559
The lower jaw springs forward like the bar of a mousetrap to grab and impale prey. The lower jaw even lacks a floor to reduce water resistance and increase the speed at which it can strike.

>>49907575
>There's surprisngly very few mermaids based on the black swallower. You'd think it'd be a hit with vore fetishish or something.
Do I even want to know just how many vore fetish sites you researched for this statement?

File: DeepSea_Mermaids.png (217 KB, 800x800)

217 KB PNG

>>49907607
None, actually, but I've never really seen a deep sea mermaid specifically identified as Chiasmodon. I think the artist of this one might've mentioned that it's based on C. nigar specifically, but it's ultimately quite hard to tell (C. niger is ultimately a very generic-looking fish for most part).

File: Whalefish_dimorphism.jpg (59 KB, 450x543)

59 KB JPG

While anglerfish is the most famous example of extreme sexual dimorphism in deep sea fish, it's hardly the only example. In fact, it's very common for male deep sea fish to be small and short-lived, often lacking even the ability to feed upon reaching adulthood. Some species don't really have separate sexes at all, but are hermaphroditic instead.

Whalefish is a case where the larval form, the male and the female were though to be separate species until DNA testing was invented.
Female whalefish kind of looks like you started drawing a fish but got bored halfway through and didn't add any details. It's a pretty standard deep sea fish with a gaping mouth and elastic stomach, swallowing anything roughly is own size or smaller it comes across. The male on the other hand has a very well-developed sense of smell, but its jaws are fused shut and it survives entirely on nutrients stored in its large liver. It uses its sense of smell to find a female and mate before starving to death.

Deep sea fish in general usually have a larval stage that lives close to surface, usually feeding on small invertebrates. Upon reaching maturity, the larval form migrates to the depths and undergoes a transformation to adult form.
It is thought that many common deep sea fish traits, such as the simple bone- and muscle structure and gelatinous flesh, are neotenic traits, ie. traits normally found on young animals that usually disappear by adulthood. In this case, however, they're useful adaptions in the deep sea and thus persist to adulthood.

File: 1467410522370.jpg (31 KB, 1127x709)

31 KB JPG

Taking a break from posting actual information, and just going to go through my image folder for a bit.

File: Sea Devils.jpg (91 KB, 736x1242)

91 KB JPG

"Lantern-Bearing Sea Devils From Station 74" is the name of the best B-grade science fiction movie never made.

File: Argyropelecus_hemigymnus.jpg (6 KB, 250x156)

6 KB JPG

Marine hacthetfish from the side. Considerably less creepy than the same fish from the front (see >>49907284).

File: deep-sea-fish-illustration.jpg (37 KB, 660x371)

37 KB JPG

Note the gulper eel skull at the bottom. Its entire skeleton is incredibly simple.

File: Nami_Splash_7.jpg (340 KB, 1215x717)

340 KB JPG

Obligatory Nami pic

File: Abyssal Doodles.png (2.93 MB, 2114x1817)

2.93 MB PNG

I drew this one myself juts now, but while I am many things, I am not an artist (I just sometimes get the urge to doodle things).

Reposting my favorite non-Lovecraft Lovecraft story, Maybe the Stars by Samantha Henderson:

http://www.drabblecast.org/2012/08/23/drabblecast-253-maybe-the-stars/

The captain of the tramp steamer has sometimes smuggled some odd cargo, but nothing like the creature he's got caged in the hold this time.

File: cookie_cutter_shark.gif (68 KB, 413x280)

68 KB GIF

Cookie-cutter sharks are small sharks that use their oversized teeth to take bites from whales, big sharks, submarines, and really anything else.

File: CookicutterSharkMermaid.png (747 KB, 870x886)

747 KB PNG

>>49908063
Now also in mermaid form.

Bump in the night

Something keeps me from posting. Error of some kind. Hopefully my phone's connection still works, although I have no pictures on it.

File: 0ba30f802fe251da32a27d34b(...).gif (4.61 MB, 470x257)

4.61 MB GIF

Need some .gifs up in here.

Probably the most iconic, in my mind, deep sea luminescent jellyfish.

I wonder if anybody could find, or know what I'm talking about, this video of a bright red and ugly as fuck deep-sea fish. It was just sitting there, immobile (possibly stuck in some kelp or something) and it was just letting smaller fish swim in and out of its mouth.

File: whalefish.jpg (69 KB, 700x236)

69 KB JPG

>>49908365
Haven't seen that video, although based on the description it sounds like a whalefish (bright red, ugly as fuck, deep sea fish).

Here's another cool video, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tInHUbz3B_Y

That's the only video I've seen of a pelican eel, albeit a dead one (very well-preserved, though). I didn't even know they have huge ventral gill-slits until I saw it.

File: Deep Sea Merfolk.pdf (2.27 MB, PDF)

2.27 MB PDF

For something a bit more /tg/ related, I did at one point write rules for deep sea merfolk in DnD, including subraces for most of the fish mentioned so far: http://pastebin.com/y0041Yjm

I also did a 5th edition version, which is actually part of a large ocean-themed homebrew thing (they're a subrace of merfolk there, but in this version I just combined the racial and subrace traits to one profile; I think the version I used in the full document is slightly edited, though).
I'd kind of want to go all out and write a fully deep sea themed thing, but that probably wouldn't really work very well.

File: Deep One.jpg (2 KB, 97x125)

2 KB JPG

And yes, the connection error resolved itself. I'll probably be off soon, though, but if the thread is still around tomorrow, I'll see if I have more to post.

>>49907833
Awesome quality thread anon. Can you tell me what the floor is like when this snow hits it? Are their crabs or some sort of bottom feeder? Any sort of deep sea fungus?

Also, given magic, what do you think diving suits should look like? Obviously can't go twilight deep.

File: Abyssal_SeaCucumber.jpg (133 KB, 600x334)

133 KB JPG

>>49908904
Flat and featureless mostly. Flattest place on Earth, actually. Countless miles (50% of total surface area of Earth) of flat expanse covered in thick gray ooze composed motly of dust and remnants of organic matter that's difted down over millions of years.

There's a vast variety of microbes living down there, as well as invertebrates like abyssal sea cucumbers (a "herd" of which is seen in the picture), giant isopods, and clams. They feed on the marine snow, as well as carcasses of animals falling from above. Depending on the depth, you can also have fish (there is a hard limit below of which rules of vertebrate biology simply prevent fish from existing: some fish appear to be able to live at depths of over 8 km, but most stick to shallower depths), such as hagfish, tripod-fish, lizardfish and cusk eel.

Things tend to be less interesting, at least as far as weird horrorfish go, down here, as you actually have an abundant if nutritionally poor foodsource in the ooze itself (it is composed mostly of organica matter, after all, even if it's probably been through the digestive system of multiple different creatures), so you don't need the kind of extreme feeding adaptions deep sea fish often have. Although hagfish and tripodfish are weird in their own right.

File: tripodfish.jpg (107 KB, 490x350)

107 KB JPG

Tripodfish stand perched some distance over the sea floor on elongated fins. Apparently this is just the right height to catch small fish and crustanceans swimming by. The fins are flexible when the fish is swimming, but it can make them stiff to act as "landing gear" when it settles on the seafloor.

Tripodfish are hermaphroditic and even capable of self-fertilisation if they find no mate.

File: coelacanth girl 4.jpg (36 KB, 500x500)

36 KB JPG

Kore wa Mermaid desu ka?

File: 398px-Scaphandre_Carmagno(...).jpg (45 KB, 398x599)

45 KB JPG

>>49908904
>Also, given magic, what do you think diving suits should look like? Obviously can't go twilight deep.
With magic, you can jsut go with "whatver looks cool". Personally, I'm rather fond of the old-fashioned armoured diving suits (there's modenr ones as well, which are pretty much underwater space suits, but they don't look as cool). A magical version of something like this wouldn't seem out of place in a fantasy setting and looks like it could hand deep sea pressure without breaking suspension of disbelief.

File: xlg_one_man_sub.jpg (150 KB, 628x1024)

150 KB JPG

>>49909203
Here's a slightly more modern (although probably still from the 1950s or 60s) take on the same concept.

As my deteriorating spelling might suggest, I'm getting a bit tired, so I'm heading off for real this time. I'll see if I have more stuff to post tomorrow.

>>49907926
What's with the stitches?

File: dead gods at the bottom o(...).png (218 KB, 1875x737)

218 KB PNG

bumpan with some worldbuilding you inspired me to write in your last deep sea thread

Huh. Apparently, I've just discovered a phobia of the ocean.

Neat.

>>49907575
>>49907607
>>49907715
Well, I guess you could use them as a sort of organic submarines if you really need too, but probably should play up the absurd comedy side of how fucking fat the black swallower mermaid is in just taking the party from point a to point b safely

>>49909806
>phobia
>def: an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something

there's nothing irrational about it, the ocean hates you and wants you dead

File: 1432677941871.jpg (121 KB, 685x838)

121 KB JPG

>>49910881

I think hate is being to generous really. The ocean is cruel, and unthinking, but most most importantly completely, dreadfully, uncaring wither you live or die.

Why do you think horror writers like HP Lovecraft use sea creature features for their cosmic horror monsters?

Because the only thing more utterly alien, unknowable, and pervasively darker then the ocean is the endless void between the stars themselves.

File: greetings have you heard (...).jpg (29 KB, 400x257)

29 KB JPG

>>49909806

File: hqdefault[1].jpg (20 KB, 480x360)

20 KB JPG

>Deep Sea Anon is back

Yay!! For some reason these threads are very comfy for me. I enjoy curling up in warmth, light, and dryness and reading about cold dark wet horrible things.

OP/anons, do you think this is a valid/good idea for a horror setting?

>PCs are placed in hyper advanced exo suits which can somehow, maybe magically resist the pressure of a trench... for a while
>PCs lose contact with/are separated from their research submersible. Each one of them has a limited power supply and oxygen supply, but their suits are too heavy to simply float or swim out.
>They must walk out of the trench.
>Every inch of it a trackless wasteland with surface debris, whale deadfalls, and endless plains of white silt that is in fact the decayed/broken down bio matter "snowing" from above
>Apart from radio contact with each other (which consumes power) the game is utterly, horribly silent
>Players can navigate "dungeons" such as ruined subs, abyssal caves, or other perils to gain Power or, in very rare cases, Oxygen

Basically I'm imagining a horror game where despite their borderline magic tech they all die one by one, suffocating or freezing to death when the suit runs out of power. Eventually there's just one diver left, just walking
and walking
and walking
...

And then the lights on his suit start to go out one by one. He has plenty of oxygen, because he cannibalized it from the dead players. But he can't see.

He's blundering blind through a horrifying night-world of silence, swirling water, and every few days a horrific bioluminescent creature.

Imagine the silence around that table when the final player escapes or meets his end. And then one player goes
>"Fuck you, Gm. Just... Fuck you, man."

>>49911527
i'd love to play that kinda game, though i imagine it'd be hard to find enough players

>>49909806
>>49910881
>>49911334

I'm a little tired of that part, honestly. The deep sea is weird and alien, but it doesn't have to be totally hostile to humans, aside from the obvious physical difficulties H. sapiens would encounter trying to survive there. My favorite idea related to deep-sea mermaids was that of the civilization that arose as a result of the surplus food provided by a magic gruel-generating spoon (or several). I liked the notion of them losing their spoons in some sort of underwater disaster and subsequently mounting a perilous expedition to the surface to find more before their society collapsed.

I also think it'd be really fun to run an exploration-focused game where the players visit the poles, climb the world's tallest mountains, journey to the heart of trackless jungles, and descend to the bottom of the sea, but I'd rather make it more about the thrill of exploration itself rather than a standard quest to thwart a world-ending evil. However, I have pretty much no idea how to get players interested in the thrill of exploration per se.

File: 1453695311692.jpg (535 KB, 4037x2020)

535 KB JPG

>>49911691
>I also think it'd be really fun to run an exploration-focused game where the players visit the poles, climb the world's tallest mountains, journey to the heart of trackless jungles, and descend to the bottom of the sea, but I'd rather make it more about the thrill of exploration itself rather than a standard quest to thwart a world-ending evil.

The setting you're looking for is called "Eberron," the continent is Xendrik and there's literally an explorer's handbook splat that encourages exploring. Get on it.

amazing thread

File: hazem-ameen-331.jpg (800 KB, 1920x2610)

800 KB JPG

op from the first thread here,
damn you guys really ran away with this. you guys should archive any of your ideas and stuff to https://1d4chan.org/wiki/merfolk. it has a merfolk page.

>>49907575
>You'd think it'd be a hit with vore fetishish or something.

It's because furries are uncreative fucks who only care about foxes, wolves, cats, and hybrids. It's why preg fetishists ignore the kiwi bird.

>>49912715
Well what about those Gnoll freaks?

>>49912757
Gnolls are the wannabe hip outcast rebels of furrydom.

>>49911527
I can see this working, maybe make the suits powered by generic magic/power points. When you venture out you have a stock of points, these points need to be expended every arbitrary period of time to keep you breathing, keep you from being crushed, and keep you moving. Swarm of fish attack your breathing line? You gotta spend more points every time period to keep your air up. Maybe you need to huff it to the next waypoint so you start spending less energy on your oxygen, choosing to take the penalties (say skill check penalties and potential hallucinations) to move faster for a small period of time. Is one of your friends not acting like a team player? Why not just steal some of his energy for yourself so the mission can succeed.

>>49907715
>>49907575
Well, congratulations, you've intrigued the fetishist. Tell me more about my new waifu.

>>49910735
Pressure would still fuck you, though. It would be an interesting smuggling, though.

>>49912927
Think it's more gnolls wanna be femdomed

>>49913393
Wannabe badasses are usually into the weak overcoming the strong.

>>49911334
I bet the ocean thinks the same of us. they would know of the surface as a boiling, dry nightmare in which they can only escape horizontally rather than the 3d space they are used to. They would think of our limbs of hideous and strange even by deep sea standards

>>49913567
Not to mention all that searing, blinding light.

However they are somewhat right. The deep ocean is a brutal place compared even to the upper ocean, and an environ - much like space - that humans have absolutely %0 evolutionary basis for surviving in. Combined with the fearsome and odd features of its denizens, it makes for some A+ fantasy inspiration.

>>49913393
Spotted Hyenas get a bad rap. Their social structures are actually very developed, resembling more old world primates than other carnivorous predators.

But nooooo, everyone always wants to focus on the psuedo-penis instead. Hell, only the dominant female even uses it to hump the others into submission.

Furries ruin everything.

>>49913567
>>49913798
This would make a great story:
>Deep-mer decides to find out were the ever-food-rain comes from.
>After many hours of swimming they notice they can perceive much further than usual, and a great abundance of strange wildlife.
>They continue upwards, the fauna growing increasingly outlandish.
>The world becomes more and more open, you can see for meters! And you're surrounded by alien creatures with vibrant colors, colors shouldn't exist.
>But it doesn't stop, there's too much information. To much light! It hurts! it BURNS!
>On word and on word you go, and it all just gets worse. is there no end?!
>Until at last, you brake the surface. There's too much light, you can barley see. What is this burning all over skin? So dry. Why can you go further? You find you can still move horizontally though.
>But wait, there. On that frozen brown wave. What are those? You can't quite see, so you move closer.
>Those...things! Those monsters! They're too horrible to fully describe, something out of a sleep terror. Thick wobbly things, moving about on two spines.
>You flee. You must excape. Past the alien creatures, beyond the reatch of those bayfull rays, into the cool black emprase of the sea.
>No one will believe you, labeled insane or a liar, you are ostracized
>But you know, you know what you saw.
>Conjugated on the edge of the brown wave, an army, an unstoppable tide of monstrosities. Seeminly waiting for some signal, or a barior to be lifted. And you know, someday, that time must come.
>And you you pray you will be long dead when they come. Come in their multitudes, jibbering down from the burning bright above.

>>49913567
>>49913798
Oh yes. The hard, bulbous shells recovered from presumed surface dwellers (colloquially known as "surfacers") are a testament to the harsh environment they must endure. These extreme adaptations are required for survival in the hot, arid environment above the ocean's surface: they retain water for respiration, prevent desiccation, provide the structure required to move against the unceasing pull of gravity, and deter predators. However, it is thought that these shells must be very heavy in a non-aqueous environment, so surfacers are most likely sluggish ambush predators, waiting for prey to wander near them rather than actively pursuing it. They probably do not venture too far from the sea, as it would then become difficult for them to refresh the water within their shells. The soft parts of surfacers are presently unknown, but it is possible to make a few guesses about them. For example, eyes are most likely useless in the overwhelmingly bright surface world, so surfacers may lack them; alternatively, they might be small, or vestigial. Rather, the surfacers probably rely on a keen sense of smell, as chemical cues would diffuse swiftly in their gaseous environment.

But there is much that we may never know.

>>49914015
>Colors *that* shouldn't exist.

>>49907983
cute

File: Anglerfish Housewife & Hu(...).jpg (121 KB, 972x1748)

121 KB JPG

Thread looks neat. Will read up on it in the morning.

>>49914015
I wonder if this is why we're not actually doomed by elder beings and such in lovecraftian stories.

Who the fuck want that Euclidean nightmare shithole filled with asymmetrical beings of madness?

No better stay here by the stars, fuck that shit.

>>49905799
Thanks OP! It was delicious.

>>49911334
>>49911691
True. As somebody who has always lived within sight of the sea (granted, now I kind of have to crane my neck out of the window and wait for the leaves of the trees to have fallen off), has spent a lot of time on the sea from young age, and come from a famility with nautical history, I can say the feeling one should have for the ocean is awe. In both senses of the word (the older definition of "awe" is more like "terror").

The sea is vast, beautiful, and full of amazing creatures. But it's also a very alien and hostile environment to us, and we land-dwellers are never more than visitors there. If the ocean so chooses, it will fuck you up, and there's nothing built by man that can really survive the full fury of the ocean if you're caught in the middle of it. At that point you just hope you can get back to shore before your boat sinks and leaves you stranded in the middle of somewhere you're not at all equipped to survive in.

>>49915386
The artist makes it look less like its attacking and more like its making silly faces behind his back as he goes "Are you sure it was here?"

>>49906376
Theyre also generally very very small and would be harmless to a person

>>49915386
>>49915456
Or that its behind a glass wall and he's just cleaning up tank number 2.

>>49914337
Well, the Mi-Go canonically set their colony on the solar system on Yuggoth/Pluto, and all their stuff on Earth are mining and scientific outposts and the like, so it's entirely possible they treat Earth as that weird place with way too hot and dense atmospehre, filled with weird creatures with too few limbs and no knobbly things (they communicate though sound, rather than altering the colours of their knobbly things! How odd!). The ones that are here are either scientists who want to study the Earth-creatures, or miners who have to be here to operate the equipment but probably hate it (it's the equivalent of being stuck in an oil rig, or a mine in the middle of siberia: nobody probably want to be there, but at least the pay is really good).

>>49914046
Fun fact: most deep sea creatures can't perceive the colour red. For all intents and purposes red doesn't exist for them. Stopligth loosejaw is a notable exception, though, being able to both see and generate red light. Other deep sea mermaids would probably find the stoplight mermaid very weird, talking about a colour nobody else thinks even exists.

>>49905799
do waifus live in the deep ocean

y/n

>>49915610

Yes, but you cannot obtain them because they explode if you bring them to the surface.

File: another_deep_sea_fish_by_(...).jpg (65 KB, 1095x730)

65 KB JPG

>>49915623
Not necessarily. This is a fangtooth or ogrefish, winner of the longest fangs relative to body size competition ever since the sabre-toothed tiger dropped out of the game. It's also notable for being tough enough to not only not explode on surface, but to survive for several weeks after being taken out of its native environment.

No idea if a fangtooth mermaid would make a good waifu, though. Probably not. They look rather rough and brutish. But maybe she has a hidden sensitive side?

>>49915648
>She's got teeth that can stab through a lion, but she's a real nice girl once you get to know her!

File: DeepSea_Mermaid2.png (231 KB, 1200x800)

231 KB PNG

>>49913056
Not much I can say I didn't already mention in >>49907478
It's a fish that, while relatively normal-looking (ie. it actually looks like a slightly more nightmarish than average fish, rather than an angry football or a giant disembodies mouth at the end of a long tail), can swallow even bigger things relative to its own size than most other deep sea fish.
If I were to make an antropomorphised version of one, I'd probably work in the fact that they're known to screw themsleves over with some regularity by swallowing too big prey. Clearly she'd have poor self-control or inability to judge how big meal is too big (just because you can eat it, doesn't mean you should).

The artist who draw the picture also drew another one (based on the fact that for some reason in one of the previous deep sea threads "she could swallow a cow" became the stock phrase to describe the deep sea fish ability to swallow things bigger than themselves scaled up to a human-sized mermaid), but I don't think they've drawn any more, or given the mermaid in the picture any character beyond "it's a picture of mermaid based on deep sea fish, with all the weird traits that implies".

>>49914015
This is precisely why it's so hard to run underwater games. It's really hard for us to visualize what it'd actually be like to live underwater.

>>49914015
You gotta give it to the deep ones, they sure as hell took the weirdness of the dryworld well enough.

Then the creepy fetishy ones had to start breeding with the shuffling horrors of above.

>>49915623
This is a myth. Deep sea creatures that are adapted to high pressure are not so because they have internal pressure pressing out- it's just the makeup of their tissue that does it. When brought to the surface they remain as intact as anything else.

So this thread has discussed the many different horrors found in the deep. However, is there anything that lives there that we would consider beautiful? I'm thinking stuff like >>49908365. Actually, any more information/pictures about bio-luminescence
would also be cool.

>>49916063
But the consistency of their tissues means they just sort of slosh when hauled out of the water.

>>49916143
There's quite a lot of bioluminescent jellyfish and the like that are quite pretty. It's mostly the fish that tend to look nightmarish with their gaping mouths and huge teeth.

File: F1.large.jpg (238 KB, 1280x1100)

238 KB JPG

>>49916143
There's a whole host of bio-luminescent deep-sea creatures.
Imagine drifting through the darkness. Suddenly you think you see stars around you.
But they're not stars, they're jellyfish.

>>49911334
This. For me there's nothing more frightening and intimidating than being alone on deck on the Atlantic beneath a moonless, cloud-covered sky. I can't swim and I smoke more than twenty a day and I fucking hate having to do what I have to do.

>>49905799
>Horrible Deep Sea
>Horrible
Rude

>>49915863
How much could a black swallower mermaid, well, swallow? I may need to know because of reasons.

>>49911527
See if you can get a few closed bike helmets. Play that clip with the diver who drowns, etc

>>49916863
According to >>49907478 the maximum amount appears to be a little under 4x their actual size. So if you could figure out the mass of the swallower mermaid, that's what you'd multiply it by.

>>49916863
>>49916914
Think of it this way, in D&D terms a black swallower mermaid could gulp down something two size categories larger than itself
Enjoy that thought
I do

>>49916592
Imagine being a deep-mer going up during the night, all around you dark shadows, to you clear as day, but lacking the light, their very being lying to you, unnatural. Then you break the weird portal and for a moment think yourself back at your old sea, far away you see the welcoming lights of the sensible beings, but it is wrong, it feels empty and as much as you push you wont move, like its pushing you back.

Then you see it, the most horrifying sight in the pale darkness, a great light hanging there, a beast of unimaginable magnitude, sitting there, hungering for you and in your mad gibbering you throw yourself back into the sea and back towards your home, crying and laughing all the way.

The surface is horrible, ever changing. Pray that it takes not a more terrible form.

>>49917596
I like the idea of deep mer finding the surface as alien as we find the deep sea. On the other hand, not everything is trying to eat you, but everything looks really alien, with stuff like colours other than black and bluish, not mention all the light. The sun would probably be horrifying to them Imagine how big a creature must be to generate so much light it completely removes darkness in the entire area! All surfacers must be hiding during the time the beast passes by, or they'd be sure to be spotted and eaten! At least it only seems to be around half the time, with things looking almost normal when it's not present (although even then there's usually one giant light hovering above, but far less bright).

File: 1469401572225.png (1 KB, 200x200)

1 KB PNG

>>49915863

>Magical realm engaged

I would love to see a party of deep-sea mer-PCs, one of which is a black swallower and her only motivation is to eat stuff.

The others have reasons for exploring the upper levels of the ocean: the stoplight lantern jaw girl is curious, the angler girl is ravenously hunting for a mate etc. But the swallower just want to nom everything.

>No, Blak, you can't eat that
>Not that either
>STOP TRYING TO SWALLOW THE SUBMARINE DAMMIT

File: Chiasmodon_niger (2).jpg (221 KB, 500x498)

221 KB JPG

>>49916863

Wikipedia mentions that they can swallow prey twice their size and 10 times their weight (and since I don't have a license for journal of marine bilogy or whatever, I'm just going to rely on that), but they have been known to swallow things a lot bigger. I'm not entirely sure what the maximum size is, but the fish in >>49907478 is 4.5 times the length of the swallower and while it has succesfully swallowed it, the stomach has ruptured. So around 4 times its own size is probably a reasonable upper limit. How much that would be in weight units would be hard to say, since weight depends on volume, not lenght. If the "4l" fish would have the same dimensions as the "2l 10w" fish (with l being the lenght and w the weigth of the swallower) aside from the length, then it would weight twice as much (20 times the weight of the swallower). But if it would also be twice as wide, then it would weight 8 times as much (assuming here that fish have roughly cylinderical body shape), or 80 times the weight of the swallower.

So assuming our swallower-mermaid weights, I don't know, 50kg (that's a nice round number, and I for some reason envision the swallower-mermaid being quite small and lightly built: the fish itself is small and unremarkable, and since its defining trait is the absurd size difference between it and its meal, making her small would highlight that), she should easily be able to eat half a ton of food, and if she stretched her stomach to its limits, she could potentially eat several tons.

>>49917036
This also works, since in DnD going up a size category is equal to roughly doubling in size. So a Medium-sized (size of most humanoid creatures) swallower mermaid would be able to swallow a Huge-sized creature, which includes giants, giant squid, non-sauropod dinosaurs, and adult dragons (elder dragons, however, are Gargantuan-sized and therefore too big).

Either way, she'd probably get banned from any restautan with an "all you can eat" offer in short order.

File: pic148345[1].jpg (224 KB, 940x1200)

224 KB JPG

>>49918332

>she should easily be able to eat half a ton of food, and if she stretched her stomach to its limits, she could potentially eat several tons.

That's pretty hot, anon. 10/10 would date and probably get eaten by.

Has anyone actually run an underwater campaign using aquatic race PCs? I always wanted to do one, but it was mechanically very difficult to work out. I think 5th ed D&D would work okay, though, because it just throws disadvantage on underwater combat if you're not aquatic by nature, and calls it a day. None of that fumbling with physics that should be ballparked, not put into the crunch of the system.

>>49918085
>Her first first question, and answer to every problem, is "can I eat it?"
>Her face the one time when the answer actually is "yes"

>>49915863
>>49918085
>>49918332
I wish I could draw, because I want to see this. Absurdly gluttonous black swallower mer-girl (and friends) sounds cute.

File: Basalt King.png (3 KB, 65x73)

3 KB PNG

What kind of magic would be used in the Abyss? Water magic is kind of a given, but I do like the idea of mastering magma from the volcanic vents along the ocean floor.

File: tumblr_inline_ncwklnNg2s1(...).png (98 KB, 500x469)

98 KB PNG

>>49918999
Some kind of shadow- and light-magics probably as well, given how it's very dark in there and bioluminescense is kind of a big deal. I could see a magical version of the stoplight loosejaw's trick with the red light (ie. creating light only you can see to), and the like.

>>49918999
definitely necromancy; you're surrounded by the falling corpses of life from leagues above in a permanent rain, why WOULDN'T you use it?
Like, necromancer turning the marine snow into a swarm of grey-goo like locusts.

File: anonspls.png (34 KB, 201x160)

34 KB PNG

>this entire thread

File: Angakok.png (3 KB, 54x63)

3 KB PNG

>>49919056
I'd imagine some kind of magical flashbang would be devastating for a species that lives its life in complete darkness.
>>49919063
Jesus Christ, that sounds terrifying. I actually recall coming across a concept that boiled down to a sort of hive-mind somewhat similar to that. Perhaps the corpses of colossal crustaceans could be used as some kind of transport?

>>49919063
>>49919092
Since forging anything is kind of hard underwater, even if you take into account volcanic vents (most of them just spout superheated water, rather than having exposed magma, and even if you have actual magma getting close enough ot it to smelt metals would also kill you from the heat of the water), I'd imagine the abyssal civilisation would use a lot of stuff fashioned from organic matter. Weapons and armour made from bones of colossal sea monsters, and the like. Throwing in necromantic magic to animate and reshape the bone would make sense.

>>49919092
>Jesus Christ, that sounds terrifying. I actually recall coming across a concept that boiled down to a sort of hive-mind somewhat similar to that. Perhaps the corpses of colossal crustaceans could be used as some kind of transport?
Possibly, but can you imagine it?
>you're swimming with your cadre of hunters; some bastard has reportedly learned necromancy, and as per law they must be killed
>they cannot be allowed to live with so much material to hone their talents
>all of a sudden as you search, the water changes. It's clear, clean, there's no snow
>you try to scream for your team to fall back, but it's too late
>a column of solid detritus shoots out from the dark like a worm, the razor sharp edges of the chitin and scales its formed from cutting into you deeply
>you're pulled into the maelstrom into an instant along with three of your team, the last two trying to find the nearby necromancer
>your body is shredded to a fine mist in moments, even your bones redcued to dust

File: Warrior of the Deep.png (2 KB, 38x46)

2 KB PNG

>>49919137
What about sculpting volcanic stone? It'd be somewhat common, sturdy, and sharp. Given the pressures at that depth, anything that lived down there would be significantly stronger than the average human, so it wouldn't be all that hard to chisel it into shape.
>>49919149
Anon, my sleep was significantly less troubled before I imagined that. Well done, absolutely terrifying.

File: o-PYROSOME-570[1].jpg (35 KB, 570x380)

35 KB JPG

>>49919149
>>49919179
Basically, one of these things but made out of the whirling corpses of fish, plankton, and any other form of life you can think of.

>>49919149
>>49919210
>cabal of necromancers finally unleashes their master plan
>countless abominations formed from the mat of detritus, with the constant snow adding to their power
>deep sea is rendered uninhabitable even by those adapted to it
>deep sea merpersons flee to the surface, as even its horrors are easily conquered compared to the death below
>humanity et al begins fighting a war against these horrors from the depths
>attempt to bring their war against what they believe to be their seat of power
>unleash giant biomass worms onto the surface
>team up with the deep mer to defend against the nigh-unstoppable beasts
I'd play that campaign.

>>49919179
Realistically speaking, the reason why deep sea fish tend to have very soft, jelly-like flesh is because of the pressure. You can't really resist the kind of pressure you find at those depths, so instead the fish have flesh with consistency close to the water to avoid pressure differences. It doesn't matter if the surrounding water pressure is a thousand times that near the surface when the same pressure applies equally from all directions, including inside you. Manmade submersibles, on the other hand, need absurdly thick steel hulls to dive that deep because they must be hollow on the inside and thus have pressure applied to them from the outside.

But in fantasy it probably makes more sense to go with the "Aquaman" route than deal with stress fields and differences between virgin- and induced stress.

Volcanic stone (especially obsidian and trachylite, which forms when lava cools quickly) is a good weapon, though. Quite durable and readily chips into absurdly sharp edges.

>>49918332
>swallow adult dragons

Something tells me it is not a good idea for her to swallow Water Dragons. She might as well try to swallow the ocean.

>>49918374
Pathfinder has an entire 3rd party campaign setting for this (Cerulean Seas).

>>49917036
>>49918332
According to that one pastebin doc ( http://pastebin.com/y0041Yjm ), "generic" abyssal mermaids can swallow one large creature, two medium, and so on. Black swallower girls double that (one huge, two large, etc.) but have to make a Con check (Fort save?) to not rupture their stomach if they exceed the "standard" type's capacity.

File: rifters.jpg (30 KB, 511x650)

30 KB JPG

>>49908588
>Rifters

My nigga

Lennie Clarke did nothing wrong

>>49919290
>Weird flesh-snow necromantic blob monsters
Jesus christ

File: Azure Abyss.pdf (5.51 MB, PDF)

5.51 MB PDF

>>49919572
I actually have one of the books (the most relevant to this thread) as a pdf, which should be small enough to upload here.

I also wrote those abyssal mermaid rules you posted. Not really sure whether it should be Con check or Fort save, as I'm not really particularly familiar with 3.PF (in 5th edition it would be Con check, as they're no separate Fort/Will/Reflex saves).

File: WAKE ME UP.jpg (58 KB, 722x349)

58 KB JPG

>>49919630
>it's a literal grey-goo scenario, but instead of being made from nanites, its made from the animated remains of microscopic and macroscopic marine life.

>>49916143
If you want to just look a shiny things for an hour, there was a documentary produced by the BBC and David Attenborough recently. "Life that Glows", or words to that effect.

>>49919630
>>49919823
If that's not horrifying enough for you, imagine what happens when one of the necromancers starts getting creative, like taking all the teeth, spines, et c from the fish they've been killing and making a building-sized flesh chainsaw (or 2, or 20, or...) out of them.

>>49905799
>implying there's a non-horrible deep sea

>>49920422
>inb4 lewd of sea creatures

>>49920359

Could these things survive out of water, though? Wouldn't the dead matter dry out and become useless, decaying quickly?

That was my issue with that Junji Ito story--the damn fish should have rotted long before they got to kill anyone. God, that comic was dumb. Great atmosphere though.

>SHHHA
>SHHHA

>>49920359
>the necromancer are constructing a massive maw at the bottom of their trench
>when activated, it produces a massive gyre up to the surface
>entire coasts of life are scoured as they build up their store of biomass

File: Spoiler Image (92 KB, 589x419)

92 KB PNG

>>49918947
five billion years in photoshop. Spoilered for fat Deep sea fish, which is not everyone's cup of tea.

Once upon a time the black swallower mermaid was quite possibly what we would define as thin. Strictly speaking, this time was about five minutes ago, and she will possibly be thin again in a few hours, provided she eats very little (highly unlikly). Her belly is translucent for the Coral Reef Submarine Tour experience. Has tits so that Bards can become frequent customers for whenever they want to write songs about the ocean or how there once was a mermaid who swallowed a fish.

>>49920466

that documentary was pretty cool

>>49920438
Considering that necromancers don't have any trouble with skeletons, I can't imagine that it would be too difficult to take it to the next logical step.

>>49920453
Include in the depositing of "small", autonomous fleshbeasts (I feel like we should give these things a name) on the beaches attempting to grow when it activates and you've got a top-quality doomsday device.

File: 1477081667382.jpg (32 KB, 750x561)

32 KB JPG

>"I need about tree-fitty."

>>49920466
>>49920504
What documentary?

This thread gets me thinking. As much as underground caves and shit are done to death in fantasy, I feel nothing truly does justice to actual cave-dwelling lifeforms.

>>49918332
>ooh yeah i'm gonna swallow the biggest fish i can find! it's gonna be great!
>i've made a terrible mistake

File: Abyssal Doodles 2.png (1.32 MB, 2093x812)

1.32 MB PNG

>>49918947
I can't actually draw either, but I tried.
Don't ask how they're playing underwater. Or where they got the dice and the papers.

>>49920433
>implying those aren't also horrible

>>49920552
Alien Planet, I think it was called. Based on a book called Expedition by Phil Barlowe, I think. Basically a nature documentary about an alient planet.

The things in the picture are sea-striders, enormous alien molluscs that stride on top of the Ameobic Sea, a "sea" composed almost entirely of gooy mass of single-celled organisms.

>>49920509

"Onward, chums! To the butthole, and ADVENTURE!"

File: 872a9dc4fa5685041ff914f97(...).jpg (29 KB, 550x412)

29 KB JPG

>>49920613

This. A correctly done Underdark cavern adventure would be a goddamn horror fest the likes of which you've never seen. And that's WITHOUT things like Torog or The-God-That-Crawls getting involved.

File: 1447197515270.jpg (160 KB, 1920x1080)

160 KB JPG

>>49920908

This is adorable. 10/10 for effort

>>49920499

I'm not sure the style is my cup of tea. But the idea and corresponding text are hot as fuck. I am half tempted to make a xenophile wizard who ventures to the bottom of the sea just to magical realm with a deep-mergirl of his choice, and start a kingdom. Hell, that could be your BBEG.
>"So he's conquering the ocean floor. Big deal. Why, what's he want?"
>"He wants to fuck the ocean, milord."
>"Excuse me?"
>"You heard me. The ocean. He's casting spells to make everything down there fuckable."
>"Well, sooner or later he'll die trying to fuck a shark, so--"
>"All his creations are sentient, milord.
>"FUCK"

>>49915863

This right here. This is my jam. Hnngh, dat body horror. Dat belleh.

File: Blobfish.jpg (89 KB, 300x300)

89 KB JPG

>>49921166
>This is adorable. 10/10 for effort
Thanks. Horrible deep sea things are suprisingly cute, and I kind of want to keep drawing them, if I can think of what to draw.
If I do, black swallower girl would probably get a new hairdo at some point, as she's currently sporting my "generic female hairdo when I can't think of anything else" look. I kind of wanted to give her twintails, but couldn't get the look right.

To keep things vaguely on topic, have a blobfish. This is what they actually look like in their native environment. The more famous "sad blob" look is what happens when you bring one to the surface, as their flesh is so jelly-like it can't maintain its shape when removed from water.

>>49921676

Awww, it's kind of cute. I imagine Blobfish Girl would be very slow and speak gradually due to her jelly-like flesh, and maybe be the group's spiritual guide. "Rise too far, and you will frown. Lots!"

(The generic haircut actually it's that bad. She'd look a little silly with twin-tails, you may as well keep it.)

>>49921676
>horrible deep sea things are surprisingly cute

I have an hypothesis. The cutest things are those that can fit both in a horror movie and a children show.

>horrifying creature, barely a shadow of a fish stripped to the basics for survival and armed with teeth bigger than their own head. It hungers
+
>little grumpy hungry fish with cool teeth!
=
Cute as fuck.

It works wonders with my girlfriend. I always run that test when I´m not sure if she´ll like something. So far it hasn´t failed a single time.

>>49915863
I sort of want to include her in a giant tank in a mage college somewhere.

File: Spoiler Image (168 KB, 869x1268)

168 KB JPG

>you will never get to be lured in by a angler fish girl's illicium

>>49908588
>>49919601
I'm glad I'm not alone. Rifters is the shit.

If anyone here is looking for inspiration for an abyss setting, I would highly recommend that you check out the Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts.

>>49917966
It would be the Cthulhu of the surface to them, clearly the reason the surfacers and all its creatures aren't dead is because its asleep, but when it wakes up it is going to come down, with all its terrible servants to destroy mer-kind as we know it.
Meanwhile a bunch of frisky humans with deep diving gear has come to visit one of their settlement for some fun times.

>>49921094
I'd love to see what horrible things would live in the Chthonic realm beneath the ocean floor. Not some underdark where there's thousand foot tall cave ceilings full of plenty of space to run around and have merriment but claustrophobic tunnels and deep, narrow ravines crawling with blind, hairy predators.

>>49919063
But that sounds boringly fucking expected because ooh its a dark and creepy place they must clearly use the creepy dark magic ooOo. And not to talk about how every race tg does gets necromancy pushed in.

Honestly I just want something refreshing. Like, why can't they be good clerics and priests, underwater settlements in stories are always said to worship some fucknut god stuck down there.

>>49924248
Why can't there not be a god stuck in the bottom of the ocean?

>>49924248

>City of deep folk worships Pelor
>They will never see the sun, sunlight would kill them
>But they worship him anyway, keeping the faith for a thousand years, through uprisings and heresy
>Because no one is exempt from salvation, not even in the darkest of abysses

Sad but I like it.

>>49924271
It doesn't have to, something other than the genericness of fucking necromancy and turning a pile of corpses into the blob.

File: 1476851933022.png (166 KB, 232x328)

166 KB PNG

>>49924444

>based quads

I just realized these guys could use portal magic to end surface civilization

>Open portal at bottom of ocean
>Other side let's out over a major city
>Cut off portal once floods have destroyed the mainland

Goodbye surface worlders

>>49924507
Well actually, all you'd do is create a vortex, destroying most of your civilization as you suck your people into the heart of the lightness itself.

Meanwhile, you'd create a small flash flood of salt water, maybe flood a valley but it would instantly all flow back into the ocean, until someone dispels it. The lower ocean would be constantly fucked over by it sucking them in but the above ocean and the surface world would be just like "Huh."

Who else is fuckin pumped for the Xcom terror from the deep remake when it finally comes?


What are you hoping is in it?

File: tatiana-barbesolle-leia-siren.jpg (409 KB, 1920x2715)

409 KB JPG

>>49905799
this isnt scary deep sea but here is a slave leia mermaid waifu

>>49924770
>What are you hoping is in it?
waifu simulation

>>49924248
>subverting tropes for the sake of subversion

>>49924770
Sea Snayyks

>>49924073
Plot twist: the merfolk are right. The sun is a sleeping beast, and it will swallow us all when it awakens.

>>49924444
It seemed implied that necromancy wouldn't be common, but banned because fuck anyone able to turn the entire land into a death vortex at a whim.

The tendency towards bio-luminescence could be mirrored into their worship of a light deity, whose touch could destroy the ever-present threat of necromancy (as they know it) forever, but who forsook them as penalty for some slight, and their religious life is based around trying to win back their value in his eyes.

Maybe give their cities some Egyptian-Greek fusion aesthetic, with their structures mostly unpainted stone, but with the intricate carvings and statues. It would also be a good base for a magic-hating civilization, excepting the divine magic of the priests and holy warriors, since any caster but them might be able to destroy their civilization with a few years' work.

>>49921166
I'm a bit ambivalent on the body horror, but I wholeheartedly agree on the belly. There's just something about a girl with a full stomach.

>>49923719
This thread actually got me thinking about this manga, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called.

File: high terror.png (604 KB, 600x833)

604 KB PNG

>>49924770
Revamped ayys

I feel like we ought to archive this thread.

After 2 straight weeks of playing Subnautica this thread came at a perfect time. Now reading Heavy Gear "Life on Atlantis" and "Life on Eden" as well as as the Blue Planet books.

Any other rpgs based on ocean/underwater shenanigans?

>>49909022
>The absolute bottom of the sea is a poor mans limbo. Where the seaborn dead await their final judgement and the unworthy languish. Alone, forever in the cold, crushing dark

File: kimg016.jpg (195 KB, 869x1243)

195 KB JPG

>>49925090
same here and here is the secret to how I refound the manga name. Deep sea Mer maid in manga form is pretty much non existant, its that easy to google up. Also you could have used her name 'Anko' which was in the page I posted.

just type Anko San and you will find it.

>>49909022
cusk eel pretty cool. if this thread is still around I can give a shot at drawing a cusk eel girl.

File: oarfish_mermaid_by_w_oo_t(...).png (151 KB, 753x565)

151 KB PNG

>>49925090

>There's just something about a girl with a full stomach.

Amen brother, amen.

File: coming_out_of_her_shell_b(...).png (104 KB, 719x539)

104 KB PNG

>>49925545

Do it

Dooo eeet

>>49925713
>>49926199
woot pls go

This entire thread reminds me of the time I tried to write a deep sea horror story. it wasn't particularly good

>>49926219
>2016
>not liking thicc
Good heavens, man, why?

>>49926684
I do, but woots stuff is pretty meh in all honesty. I just don't like his style.

Deep sea mer-girls i think should come in two sizes:
>Holocaust survivor thin and
>Hideously bloated.
One is before eating, the other is after.
>Local mage college keeps a bioluminescent angler-girl in a large tank in a darkened room of the college
>Students are allowed a strict 30 minute audience with her, where they can question her about secrets of the cthonic deep
>any time over that, by then the tones of her voice and something about the pulse of her lights leads most students into the tank. They had to do underwater extraspecies veterinary surgery to extract a student when she "swallowed him by accident."

>>49927280
>not too mention the one time a student attempted to fuse with her.
>tried telling him she wasn't even one of the species that did that
>poor fool tried with spells anyway, there are just some things even an archmage shouldnt witness in his lifetime and that was one of them

>>49927527
I just really, really like the idea of deepmergirls using bioluminescence to hypnotize males. Not even necessarily for mating or eating. Just to have them around.

>>49927527
Actually would be more horrific if she tricked a student into doing it, because she wanted to reproduce and was desperate enough to try with a human after being stuck alone so long. Turns out despite the species difference and incompatibility, the enzymatic fusing process still works across species. Magic had to be used to physically unfuse the guy from her.

Or alternatively nothing could be done/it was too late, and that's what the vestigial structure about the size an appearance of a child attached to her body is, the physically diminished and comatose student.

File: WAKEUPCANTWAKEUP.png (139 KB, 300x380)

139 KB PNG

>>49927638

>>49927583
same but sadly when u got way too many lonely mage nerds with too much book learning they get stupid ideas. Probably why the university made sure she was not from a species that practiced fusion in the first place

But thats not going to stop young hormonal Wizards from being Wizards

File: Mesmer_Concept_Art.jpg (932 KB, 1920x1080)

932 KB JPG

>>49927583
Not a mergirl but still cool.

>>49925090
Something Anko-san. I should see if there's any new chapters out myself (I read all that had been translated, but that was some time ago). Disappointingly, they don't really do much with her anglerfish abilities. >>49925355
is the only time I remember her actually using her esca, and they didn't even give her pointy teeth (despite the shark-mermaid getting shark teeth). Still, it's cute.

There's also another manga that I've seen a few pages but no translation, where a guy meets a cute girl who's some kind of deep sea fish in human form. That one actually uses the deep sea fish aspect a bit more, with the girl at one point transforming her head into a big cartoony anglerfish-head to grab the guy with her jaws to save him from falling (her hands were occupied), and at one point she swallows a shark.

File: 1476852621742.png (102 KB, 453x443)

102 KB PNG

>>49927876

>implying you wouldn't fuck a humanoid fish

give me a break /tg/, you're not fooling anyone.

>>49929346
>implying you wouldn't fuck a sapient fish, humanoid or not
fixed*

>>49923719
>>49925090
>>49929242
What Manga?

>>49929948
Shinkaigyo No Anko San

According to /a/, a hagfish mermaid shows up at some point, so now I have to read it.

I have no idea what the manga that's been mentioned is.

>>49930037
other manga, dammit.

File: 1476329332195.jpg (196 KB, 533x800)

196 KB JPG

>>49930037

What's with all the monster girl Mangas lately? Was Monster Musume that successful?

File: download.jpg (11 KB, 182x277)

11 KB JPG

To everyone here: Read PIC related. Just read it.

>>49925041
>mostly unpainted stone
>Greek/Egyptian

I bring relatively bad news, anon. The fucking Greeks filled everything with color. Buildings, statues... Red and blue and ocre, mainly, but many others too.

>>49926219
Who is woot?
And why does everyone seems to hate him?

>>49909317
You ever tried sticking a human torso to a fish without stitching, anon?

Jus posted this thread to the Sup/tg/ Archive. Vote it up if you want to.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=Horrible+Deep+Sea+Mefolk

File: 1442071661719917202[1].png (687 KB, 800x429)

687 KB PNG

>>49931033

Big titty oekaki artist/monstergirl/fat girl artist.

I admit his work is a bit too "bubbly" for this thread, but I still enjoy it. Plus, we appear to have run out of horrifying mer-girl pics.

>>49930940
I know, but the two parts are separate. Also, it'd be a pain in the ass to color things down there unless you found stone that was already that color and most of the time they wouldn't be able to see that shit anyways (including most of them not being able to see red, which cuts down a lot of options).

File: Cyclops Sub.jpg (166 KB, 1600x900)

166 KB JPG

I wonder how would merfolk react to a submarine.

>>49933451
Its a big weird fish that has a person trapped inside its head, we must smash it open so he can breathe!

>>49933489
but how do you know the person isn't a lure? you gotta be carefull, it might be making you THINK it's trapped

File: surface kings.jpg (274 KB, 628x1008)

274 KB JPG

>>49933451

>>49930268
Let's see how many I can remember off the top of my head...

T-Rex Kanojo
Centaur Worries
Inumimi is an oldie that I guess counts.
There is also one with a dragon girl maid

There are a lot of manga involving kitsune and other animal demon/spirit people that I prersonally don't feel count. They just come off as more like the character is more like something from Inuyasha. But then again, maybe I am just being overly autistic about it.

>>49934656
>>49933489
>>49933451
>Dive #12
>The she-thing came again, drawn in by the mage-lights glimmering all over my submersible like a wary moth toward a familiar flame. Evidently feeling much braver on this occasion, she approached the magically reinforced window of my vessel rather than swimming around sphere of illumination it cast like in our previous encounters.

>The sight of her now confirmed most of my earlier observations and hypotheses. She did indeed seem to be a type of mermaid, possessing of course the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish, but was a specimen particularly adapted to life in these cold, dark depths.

>Her body was very long and terribly thin, devoid of the brilliant scaling of most merfolk and possessing instead dark grey skin interspersed with oddly translucent areas that shone with oily blues, purples and greens in the mage-light. Her face was humanoid, and though oddly alien in the size of its eyes and toothy maw, was not without its own peculiar charm.

>Placing her large hands, both clawed and webbed, upon the glass, she regarded me for what felt like a long while, her odd, oversized mouth quirking into a curious frown. Eventually she spoke, words barely distinguishable as an ancient and chthonian dialect of the language commonly used by merfolk.

>"Thrice now has this strange beast come, glittering and glistering madly, taunting me with its lights and bearing thee within its belly. Whyfor?"

File: Abyssal Doodles 3.png (3.68 MB, 2406x1834)

3.68 MB PNG

I drew one more round of horrible deep sea adventurers. Black Swallower is clearly That Girl.

I think I've probably milked that scenario for all it's worth now, so I'll just quit while I'm ahead. For some reason I just felt compelled to draw something where I could use the line "I roll the eat the king!".

Bonus black swallower, because I have the feeling that's what people wanted to see.

>>49936217
Very cute drawings, you've done!

I like the personification of the Black Swallower as being immature, impulsive, and gluttonous.

File: Spoiler Image (77 KB, 714x1118)

77 KB JPG

What if the horrible deep sea merfolk are suits of biological power armor by shallow dwellers who were forced to the depths

>>49936895
>image

How about some magical spirits of the deep.
Like some Coral Spriggan/Ent creatues?

>>49936478
Thanks. She kind of stole the show, mostly because I based the thing on >>49918085
so she was the one with most defined personality (if you can call it personality, since she's very much a one-note character).

I'd be tempted to do one more where her player's the DM, but that'd end up being even more inane (It'd either be her DMPC trying to get the players to enter "her magical realm" or just a montage of the players getting repeatedly eaten by every possible variety of deep sea horror).

>>49937147
>"I roll to muster all my courage and attack the leviathan!"
>"Ooops! You get eated!"

>"I roll to convince the Abyssal Queen to hear our pitiful plea!"
>"Sooorry! Least you were yummy!"

>"I roll to... just... I don't know! Swim around until something..."
>"NOM NOM NOM!"

File: seafloorscene.jpg (74 KB, 650x557)

74 KB JPG

bump to keep thread alive!

>>49937332
>>49935670
For some reason, I like both the ideas that Deep Sea Merfolk might speak a more antiquated language or a more primitive one and I'm not sure which option I like more. The second might work better if, as others have said, they live nomadic, tribal lifestyles down in the darkness, but I could imagine the first working out if they were more like the descendants of exiles or survivors of some older civilization from the more sunlit seas.

File: 1.jpg (276 KB, 740x416)

276 KB JPG

actually this thread's direction reminded me of Kameo: Elements of Power

Tldr: the vidya game revolves around summoning spirit animals, which you become, in order to solve puzzles

pic related, but the question is - would anyone want to play Druid if they could turn into Deep Sea Creatues and go on underwater quests?

>>49938170
Why not both? The more mature, intelligent and wise ones are those who remember their old civilization and educate themselves. The immature, dumb and hungry ones have given themselves over more fully to the animalistic necessities of the abyss.

>>49907559
Nah dude, fish is weird

>>49938174
>actually this thread's direction reminded me of Kameo: Elements of Power
really? because it's reminding me of Subnautica.

File: rect2993.png (983 KB, 1897x583)

983 KB PNG

>>49937332
Just for you. Sorry for the extra-low quality, though, I threw this together in a few minutes.

>>49938804
I like the panel-flow! Black Swallower is DEFINITELY That Girl/That DM.

File: 9dots1.gif (23 KB, 888x666)

23 KB GIF

>>49919063
this reminds me of how fucking terryfying undead sealife can be in dwarf fortress
>undead giant sperm whales, 10 times bigger than a normal whale, can walk on land and seek to destroy all life
>undead fish come out of the ocean in groups to sink teeth in dwarven flesh
>due to an infamous bug an undead giant sponge was basically an indestructible death machine due to it's lack of bodyparts or organs and it's sheer size

>>49930817
I agree it's an amazing read. That said it's not really that "deep-centric"

File: Swallower Mermaid.png (225 KB, 984x800)

225 KB PNG

>>49907715
Here's another for you

>>49940789
There's just something bizarrely charming about her design.

>>49940789
How is she both creepy as all fuck but also really cute?

File: giant sea creature monste(...).png (1.05 MB, 1313x1200)

1.05 MB PNG

>>49905799

Maus?

File: dead dying or damaged dee(...).jpg (233 KB, 900x650)

233 KB JPG

>>49940990

>>49940789
>>49940827
>>49940835
>There's just something bizarrely charming about her design.
>How is she both creepy as all fuck but also really cute?

yeah, is strangely charming, also how do they keep fungi and microbes from infesting the surface of their eyes of they don't blink?

File: some kind of giant amphib(...).jpg (217 KB, 1000x520)

217 KB JPG

>>49941032
>>49905799

have airworthy deep sea monsters that dwarf aircraft carriers and battleships.

File: A possible concept for a (...).png (327 KB, 1024x768)

327 KB PNG

>>49941032

File: a vast fleshy beast with (...).jpg (514 KB, 727x1000)

514 KB JPG

>>49941058

I know this thing is invading the land for some reason but I could totally see it being an underwater giant.

>>49940789
See, this is what the fetishists don't get. Those fish have adapted swallow such huge prey because they get to eat so rarely (and have a metabolism to match). If Mer-Waifu gets somewhere where food is more reliably available, she'd probably want to eat a cow leg every week, rather than a whole cow a month. It's just more comfortable for her.

>>49915386

Sup Brooooo!
Turn around bro don't be ignoring me!

File: Dinotopia Submersible.jpg (100 KB, 620x588)

100 KB JPG

>>49935670
What's a good way to do a submersible in a campaign? I feel like the "magic spell/item that lets you act normally in the deep sea" approach is kind of a cop-out; it removes a lot of the risky, exciting parts of deep-sea exploration.

And yes, I know about the Apparatus of Kwalish.

>>49933451
The main thing about them is that they're very clumsy compared to fish. (Or mermaids.) They're also equipped with anomalously intense, bright lights. To a clever deep-sea creature, this fact would be an important clue regarding their origins.

>>49907983
>>49920908
>>49936217
>>49938804
This is amazingly, stupidly cute, anon.

>>49930817
The Scar was great— the best entry in the Bas-Lag trilogy, IMHO—but the only part that sort of resembles underwater exploration was cliched as hell. The bathysphere gets destroyed by the grindylow because of course it does; the deep sea is 2spooky, right?

>>49941472
You can get a lot of good info by looking up old-fashioned submarine designs.

File: SweatingMan.jpg (18 KB, 250x250)

18 KB JPG

>this thread
/tg/, please, I don't need more vices

>>49941124
>If Mer-Waifu gets somewhere where food is more reliably available, she'd probably want to eat a cow leg every week, rather than a whole cow a month. It's just more comfortable for her.
Or get's really indulgent and starts eating a more "human" diet (as in eating like a human, not actually eating humans) I mean, human food is already cooked, deboned, and seasoned, why the hell not? of course having a metabolism meant to consume one huge meal a month to 2000-2500 calories a day means she will balloon to a morbidly obese weight very quickly...

>>49942618
I think that "Abyssal Whale Mermaids" are probably an entirely different species...

These deep sea horror descriptions are very well written. Could I use them somewhere?

File: tg 1460218907359.png (3.2 MB, 3507x2480)

3.2 MB PNG

>>49942461
>I don't need more vices

can you enjoy interesting things without turning them into vices?

>>49943220
Yes, but this thread is making it hard to do so.

>>49940789
I'd really like it if you didn't also have a shit fetish,

>>49942618
>Abyssal mer eats to much human food
>Dies from heart failure
>The abyssals blame humanity for its decadence and gluttony
>Becomes prudish snobs, taking it to themselves to be above the filth that is human society
>Meanwhile smashing fisheads against a wall is still topping the charts for abyssal mer best entertainment

>>49942461
Vices? You mean fetishes, right?

>>49941078
Aw, look, it's a lobe-finned fish! Hello giant cuz of ours!

>>49941032
>how do they keep fungi and microbes from infesting the surface of their eyes if they don't blink
I would assume the same way they keep their skin from being devoured by parasites: symbiotic microbes.

>>49924412
Reminds me of Varchas from Sunless Sea.
Except Varchas is more underdark than deep-sea, although it is on the coast of an underground sea.

File: Ripjaws_2.png (85 KB, 200x626)

85 KB PNG

How does Ripjaws hold up to deep sea biology?

File: Ripjaws.png (387 KB, 479x1094)

387 KB PNG

>>49945489

>>49945489
>>49945505
Not sure how well they hold up, but I like them.

>>49944914
Or they lick their eyes periodically with their long tongues.

>>49942969
The Big Sisters and the Little Sisters are the hungriest.

>>49914023

This. I adore this. Thank you.

>>49907575
HOW THE HELL CAN SOMETHING THIS SMALL SWALLOW STUFF BIGGER THAN ITSELF?

File: sunless_sea.jpg (31 KB, 200x200)

31 KB JPG

>>49944934
Great freaking game isnt it?
At least for me anyways, wish there were more games out there like it

>>49941124
Or she'd just eat normal human-sized meals every day. I'd imagine she'd have trouble with self-control, though, since she'd be used to eating as much as possible when food is available because it could take months before she'd be able to eat again. Leaving food uneaten when you could still eat more would be against everything she's used to, but something that would be necessary to learn on surface.

>>49946934
Dislocatable lower jaw bones and highly elastic flesh Those are pretty common among deep sea fish.
It bites onto the head of the fish and then moves the two sides of its lower jaw independently to sort of "walk" its way to the tail.The prey probably suffocates at some point whiles its head and gills are stuck in the swallower's throat, and is thus unable to struggle for long (most deep sea fish are largely sedetary and have weak muscles, so they can't struggle much anyway, although the swallower can eat more "normal" fish as well).

>>49947572
Jesus Christ, that's creepy and horrifying.

>>49943220
>That pic

Dawwww.

>>49943231
>Yes, but this thread is making it hard to do so

Please explain.

>>49915948
>This is precisely why it's so hard to run underwater games. It's really hard for us to visualize what it'd actually be like to live underwater.

This is why I admire the fa/tg/uys I know who have been collaborating to write a book to help other people do this

>>49948034

They eat like snakes but they do the suffocating with their throat instead of coils. It it more efficient that way since you are combining the act of swallowing with the act of killing trapped prey.

>>49944914

>I would assume the same way they keep their skin from being devoured by parasites: symbiotic microbes.

That seems like it would work against smaller parasites. And for larger ones you have the possibility of things like
>>49945600
>they lick their eyes periodically with their long tongues.

Nice dubs.

That seems more energy intensive but you probably would not have to do it as often.

Thank you both. If others have insights I would love to hear them.

>>49907457
>>49907575

You also have well-developed eyes on creatures that live in the deep
during the day and come up near the surface during the night.

>>49906219
>jelly-like tissue with similar consistency to surrounding water (necessary to not be crushed by the water pressure).

Is this why arthropods, invertebrates, and jellyfish seem to be the creature is most likely to be able to survive in both the deep-sea end near the surface at night?

>>49948256
Sorry that was supposed to say arthropods, mollusks, and jellyfish.

>>49943220

/tg/-tan GMing a game for the neighborhood half-human children.

File: scabbardfish.jpg (89 KB, 900x599)

89 KB JPG

I remember eating this beauty when I was in Madeira
The fishermen supposedly catch them in the night, when the fish go swim up a bit more towards the surface (they can reside as deep as 1700 metres or 5500 feet below the sea level). They use giant cables with lots of hooks attached to the sides. When the cable is pulled out of the water the fish instantly burst due to pressure change
The black scabbardfish is one of the national dishes of Madeira, served in fillets, baked with bananas

>>49940256
>due to an infamous bug an undead giant sponge was basically an indestructible death machine due to it's lack of bodyparts or organs and it's sheer size

At that point, undead were ruled by an HP system isntead of the usual "break brain-run out of blood-suffocate" death conditions. They had a fuckload of HP, but they were all killable with enough firepower.

It was the normal, still alive giant sponges what became unstoppable abominations. So they never got to became undead anyways, because the only way to kill one would have been to throw it into lava or to use an Atomizer.

Still they´ll never cover the true horror in that game: motherfucking carps.

>>49922050
That's because what's cute and what's scary are pretty much the same thing, only scary is the more detailed version of cute.

e.g. by castrating and simplifying a lot of these designs, they become far more cute.

>>49948256
Might have something to do with it. The trick to survive the pressure is to not allow a pressure difference between inside yourself and outside. That's a lot easier for something like a jellyfish, which is 99% water.

Also, there is a hard limit on depth fish can survive in, because at some point their cellular structure can't both maintain pressure equilibrium and osmotic balance with the salt water.

File: tumblr_nn0lqjwXfS1sarj0uo(...).png (197 KB, 1280x640)

197 KB PNG

>>49907715
Yeah she's a chiasmodon, pervo

File: tumblr_nqwhs2rb6r1sarj0uo(...).png (260 KB, 941x800)

260 KB PNG

>>49948513
Unfortunately I'm out of the country and don't have any of my unposted deep sea mermaider/grody mermaid pics on hand, so have these two that don't get posted in these threads much.

>>49924248
It makes perfect sense given all of these things are nearly brainless, focus on nothing but eating each other and the dead, are mostly pale white, translucent, black or red and have massive, gaping mouths with teeth and completely bizarre biology, never mind the gigantism deep sea creatures are prone too.

Whining about things that make sense is retarded. Giving them cold/water/dark/death/light/pressure magic makes perfect sense because those are the most important things down there. Subverting things for no reason isn't clever, it's just tacky.

>>49930817
>>49940556
>>49941472
It's pretty deep centric, considering that's where they get the Leviathan that tows them from, the scenes involving the armoured fish attacking, the frog Remade's journey down there.

>The grindylow
The grindylow were a subversion done right, seeing as they came across as all powerful horrible boogey men who used weird, impossible magics and ignored surfacers due to them being too pathetic to attack the grindylow except if their idols were stolen. When, in fact the grindylow are weird, deep sea creatures with strange magics that are incredibly powerful but they're actually scared of fighting the full force of the surface and don't give a shit about their idol; they want to capture the spy who stole the route/plans to their city to prevent invasion and are pragmatic, intelligent beings.

>>49948534
>>49938208
>>49938170
You make some really good points. I think that there might be room for several factions amongst the Abyssal Merfolk with different beliefs that favor different magics. I like the idea that they all once lived near or perhaps on the surface, but due to some transgression or disaster was banished to the dark depths long, long ago. Some merfolk like the anglerfish, have tried to retain more of their ancient culture and intellect and so gravitate to more arcane or priestly traditions, while others like the Black Swallowers have given themselves over more fully to animalistic need and may lean more toward being shaman or necromancers if they use magic at all.

>>49941110
Nice Musselith.

File: charybdis_2013_01.jpg (27 KB, 400x218)

27 KB JPG

The grand-daddy of sea monsters.

>>49948982
>Nice Musselith.

do you have more media of them? this is the only one I have?

>>49949184
No, I just came up with a name I thought was fitting.

>>49948348
>the fish instantly burst due to pressure change

How and in what ways do they burst?

>>49949452
their bellies burst open if I remember correctly

File: Sunless Skies.jpg (37 KB, 1200x675)

37 KB JPG

>>49946994
I've been playing the hell out of it lately again when they added Zubmarines that allowed underwater travel, underwater settlements and events, and even new events at older ports. I also heard that the developers are kickstarting a sequel to sunless sea: Sunless Skies. Supposedly it takes place in the High Wilderness within the setting and is sort of like a space exploration take on the game.

>>49941058
This is one of those pictures that really get my imagination flowing. For some reason I feel these things are called "storm riders" or something, and only appear during massive storms. Or perhaps they cause them with their presence. Most of the time they just fly around, being weird and ominous but not directly dangerous, but if you see one it means you're in the middle of a fucking hurricane.

>>49939831
>>49941472
Gee, thanks. I'm somewhat thrown off by positive feedback. It's not like I can actually draw or anything, and the whole setup is completely nonsensical.
And yeah, she's definitely That Girls/DM. I didn't particularly intended it, but she manages to commit every bad player/GM sin aside from being "lolrandumb" (she's predictable enough that the character could be played by a flowchart). They probably only keep her player around because they're short on players as it is.

>>49943057
Admittedly, getting the players into a situation where they could feasibly interact with deep sea stuff would be hard, but you can pretty easily steal features and descriptions for other things. Virtually all Far Realms style extradimentional monsters in my setting are based on deep sea creatures.

>>49948513
Source?

>>49948522
that pic. is kinda adorale

>>49949452
Their swim bladders rupture and their organs expand upon rapid depressuring. similar to how mammals get the Bends

File: Myctophum_punctatum.jpg (34 KB, 800x277)

34 KB JPG

>>49951442
Incidentally, most true deep sea fish lack a swim bladder precisely because it causes problems with extreme pressures. Fish living in the twilight zone may have them, though. Like these little guys, who migrate vertically in the water column to feed, and therefore need a way to control their depth. They're numerous enough (as in their total biomass is higher than that of all commercially caught fish combined by several orders of magnitude) that sonar waves reflecting off their swim bladders can create an effect of a "false bottom" on sonar scans.

File: image.png (860 KB, 2047x1535)

860 KB PNG

>>49925545
Dumping progress, although thread is pretty much at its end.

>>49951987
Very nice, so far!

I'm not sure we have enough for another thread, but this one has been really enjoyable. Were we to have another, I think we'd probably get a little mileage out of brainstorming some sort of Abyssal culture or civilization for our Mermaids and figuring or how they interact with other merfolk and surface dwellers.

>>49952358
I have some ideas I've been mulling over on a mermaid civilization that would be more...realistic isn't the right term but less romanticized probably

It includes abyssal mermaids. Anyone interested in hearing about it?

>>49952358
Not sure if there's really enough stuff for a second thread, but it would be interesting to try to flesh out the abyssal mermaid society. Maybe general underwater fantasy civilisation thread could work.

>>49952803
Sure.

>>49952803
Let's hear it!

>>49952956
A thread on ocean-centric fantasy might be a good venue for continued discussion.