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→Deep One
''A tall, gangly, hunched fish-like humanoid rears up before you. While it wears the latest R'lyehan fashion, it is clearly inhuman, resembling nothing more than a greenish-blue hybrid of human, frog and fish. Its fish-like head bears four bulging eyes and needle-sharp teeth, and shark-like gill slits can be seen on its neck. It has a long, strong tail with an eel-like ribbon on the top and underside. Its webbed hands and feet resemble those of a salamander, bearing no claws or nails, and its scales are coated with a faint trace of slime.''
Deep Ones are an ancient line of marine humanoids found throughout the oceans of Tellus. Deep Ones are range in height from four to nearly eight feet, and their length from nose to tail is usually six to ten feet, mostly tail. While all Deep Ones possess some common traits, such as slimy skin and limited electrical generative abilities, the extreme age and affinity for abyssal magic have diverged the Deep Ones into a number of related, physically distinct species. The dominant variety is the Anguillian (eel-like) variety described above, but Deep Ones with lionfish, shark, manta, sea horse, angler fish, or barracuda characteristics are also found. Conflicts between different varieties of Deep Ones are very commonand sometimes verge into genocide. Like any humanoid people, Deep Ones vary immensely in their individual personalities and cultural beliefs. Most Deep Ones do share a disdain for younger species like humans and land-dwelling peoples, and an intense hatred of the Fremd, who they hold responsible for the collapse and fragmentation of their ocean-spanning empire.
Deep Ones are an ancient amphibious people whose civilization dominated the oceans of Tellus long before land life prospered. Since nearly four-fifths of Tellus is covered in ocean, the Deep Ones have always had a truly vast domain at their disposal, and even now, the Mer co. At one point, the Mer were once united in an empire that ruled nearly the entire ocean system, centered in the ancient marine city of Apsus. This empire was fractured by the combination of a Fremd incursion and a shoggoth awakening. The Mer have been divided ever since, and the vast timescale of their existence has resulted in distinct breeds or even species of Mer, who regularly war on one another to the point of genocide. It is likely that only the retaking of Apsus will reunite the Mer, but the regular attempts to reclaim Apsus from the Shoggoth have always been costly, brief, and ultimately unsuccessful. The oldest Mer resembled fish-frog beings with shark-like teeth, and fish-like varieties bearing characteristics like such as lionfish, cod, shark, sea horse, barracuda, manta or stingray, are the most common, but those with cetacean, sea reptile, cephalopod, coral, seaweed, crustacean, brittle star, or jellyfish components are also seen. Most players will probably be Mer associated with the city of R'lyeh, since these are more accepting of other species; independant Mer tend to be more xenophobic or even predatory, and cultist Mer are usually insane.
