Deep One, Common
- Armor Class
- 4 [15]
- Hit Dice
- 3+3
- Attacks
- Claw or Weapon (1d6-1)
- Special
- hug, darkvision, amphibious/aquatic traits
- Move
- 6 Swim 9
- HDE/XP
- 3/60
Description
Deep Ones are a race of piscean beings, combining traits of fish, amphibians, and humans. Deep ones revere ancient elder beings of the deep believed to predate the arrival of the gods of humans, dwarves, and the like.
Deep ones will trade and form pacts with humanoids in coastal communities. These pacts inevitably include dark rituals, sacrifices, and even inter-breeding with the humanoid populations. The hybrids from such unions often rise to power within secret cults of dark god- beings.
"I think their predominant color was a grayish- green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked... They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design – living and horrible…"
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth
A Common Deep One is a scaled humanoid resembling both frog and fish. Its huge unblinking eyes give it Darkvision to 60' and superior eyesight while underwater. Its clawed hands and feet are webbed, enabling exceptional swimming ability. As inhuman as a deep one looks, it can produce offspring from unions with various humanoids that look completely normal (for the humanoids).
Communities of deep ones are found far down in bodies of water, but generally within proximity of coastal humanoid settlements. In such a community one will find more powerful deep ones with additional powers.
See Also
Other creatures grouped under Deep One: Deep One, Hybrid, Deep One, Lagoon Creature.
Source note: This creature is converted from The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign – Omnibus Edition, 1st Edition Release 4, © 2010–2025 Chris Gonnerman, R. Kevin Smoot, James Lemon, Matt Sluis, and Contributors. The Basic Fantasy Field Guide textual material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International; this page adapts that creature to White Box.