Deep One, Hybrid

Armor Class: 6 [13]
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: Claw or Weapon (1d6-1)
Special: amphibious/aquatic traits
Move: 9 Swim 6
HDE/XP: 1/15

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 Hybrid Deep One starts off life as a normal member of its humanoid parent's race. In fact, in the beginning it is completely unaware of its connection to the dwellers of the deep. Over time the hybrid slowly transforms into a true deep one as it takes on traits such as glassy unblinking eyes, small or a complete lack of ears, webbing between fingers and toes, or folds along its neck that eventually become gills. As the traits develop the hybrid individual becomes reclusive and of an increasingly alien mindset. The full transformation takes a variable amount time, though not usually completing before the individual becomes middle-aged. When the traits become too obvious to conceal the hybrid departs society to join with the deep ones.

While still within its humanoid community, a hybrid deep one will continue with a traditional trade or profession while operating in secret cults with dark rituals, furthering the sect's vile goals. It is possible that such a hybrid has class-based abilities; as such, the individual may have substantially different stats than those listed above, which represent a basic mid-point in the hybrid's transformation.

Deep One, Hybrid

Description

See Also