Creature Feature: Deep Ones

This is the first of what I hope to make a regular series on Shoggoth: the Creature Feature. In it, I'll take a closer look at the various beasties that inhabit the CoC Rulebook's 'Creatures of the Mythos' chapter. I'll talk a bit about the creature's history, it's possible uses in the game, and also about its physical appearance: sometimes it's hard to know just what a Thing That Ought Not To Be looks like. So without further ado, I give you:

The Deep One

Deep Ones are without a doubt one of the most iconic creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos. These evil fishmen have popped up all over the place since their initial appearance in 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' by HP Lovecraft in 1931. While Lovecraft seems to have had mixed feelings about the story, it does have the distinction of being the only one of HPL's works to be published as a book (rather than in a periodical) in his lifetime. The story and its monstrous cast of aquatic devils have gone on to spawn an incredible amount of third party sequels and merchandise, from video games to plush toys.

Also worth noting: I seem to live right around the corner from the spot where a policeman fired at one in 1972.

But just what are Deep Ones?

The simple answer is "fish men". Lovecraft describes them this way:
"I think their predominant colour was a greyish-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."

But that's not all there is to them. Reading through the 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' it becomes pretty clear that it wasn't just their fishiness that horrified HPL. Certainly, this was a man who found the sea and all things that lived in it deeply alien and unsettling. Lovecraft's aversion to seafood is well documented. But the deeper horror of the story is that people are turning into these things; that people have produced offspring with them. To HPL, proud xenophobic aryan that he was, the Deep Ones were a kind of shorthand for race mixing and devolving 'racial purity'. Fortunately, we can look past the unpleasant metaphor and work with the notion of a non-human race that is invading and assimilating our own. Deep Ones really are invaders who have Come For Our Women.

Deep Ones in Call of Cthulhu

In the CoC game, Deep Ones are a favorite adversary for investigators. It's not hard to see why.

1. They originate in one of the most iconic Lovecraft stories of all.
2. They're tough, but not too tough. You can use your tommy gun to great effect on these guys.
3. They work in groups. Populate your haunted house or slimy caverns with plenty of bad guys rather than just one Big Baddie.
4. They frequently work alongside human cultists, minions, and other poorer relations. Having low-powered mooks up to no good on behalf of their Inhuman Masters is always a great starting point for an investigation.
5. Deep One involvement is fun and easy to foreshadow. Just mention the cultist's bulging eyes or slightly webbed fingers and watch your players start sweating.

The downside of all this is that Deep Ones can get a bit cliche and predictable. I have some ideas on avoiding that, but I'll hold my thoughts until after I've discussed:



Depicting the Deep Ones

What do they look like? This is always a tricky question in CoC. Lovecraft got a lot of mileage out of describing things as little as possible and letting one's imagination do the rest. But in a gaming situation players often need a more concrete description of what they're dealing with. Literary vagueness can simply equal needless frustration. There's also a lot to be said for holding up a picture or plonking down a miniature during play to get everyone on the same page as they decide how to proceed against the Horrible Thing they've just encountered.

I've put a few images from my sketchbook throughout this article to give a sense of my own approach, but I have to say I'm far from settled on just what a Deep One ought to look like. The first image up at the top of the page was something I whipped out a year or so ago when I was doodling around. I thought it was a pretty credible Deep One until a friend pointed out that I'd subconsciously channeled World of Warcraft's Murlocs. ouch. As I re-examined that drawing recently, I decided that the face wasn't really 'fishy' enough to match up with Lovecraft's description anyway. I did like the smooth look of the thing, as this is something Lovecraft is quite clear about while many Deep One depictions have tended to make them rough and scaly, almost alligator-like in texture. Lovecraft only gives them scaly ridges on their backs. I also liked the usage of the elongated forelimbs in that image: the 'long paws' of HPL's description. Bearing these likes and dislikes in mind, I started looking at prehistoric fish for inspiration. Deep Ones are, after all, an extremely old and long-lived race. This led to the sketches above. While I still think this prehistoric model approach could be useful, I felt that things were starting to lose the distinct fish-look that was required. Most recently, I've arrived at this:

It's still not quite there, but I like where it's headed. It suggests the frog just a bit, without slipping into full-bore 'frogman'. It's got the smooth body with the scaly back ridge. I like the juxtaposition of the long thin arms with thick, stubby legs. We'll see where it goes from here. Maybe I'll nail this look down and make a painting of it soon.

Or maybe not. While working through all these possible features and looks, I was struck with a thought that made me wonder if I was perhaps getting it all backwards: maybe there is no 'standard Deep One look'. Lovecraft's description suggests many common features, but the story also goes out of its way to suggest a bizarre mishmash of disjointed appearances and varying states of fishy de-evolution: it's that 'racial degeneration' thing again. We know that HPL was horrified by 'race-mixing' and the dilution of the 'pure' racial archetypes he admired so greatly. Much to HPL's dismay, humans come in all shapes, sizes, and colors: perhaps Deep Ones should take this variation even further. Maybe Deep Ones should range from small hopping frog-imps to hulking brutes that are almost shark-like. Perhaps their basic form and structure vary tremendously from group to group, or even from individual to individual, with every fish species imaginable appearing in some Deep One sub-species or other. I think this is where I'll take my doodles in the future. Watch this space.

Deep Ones in Call of Cthulhu (again)

With this idea of tremendous variation, we have a new angle for mixing up player expectations in Call of Cthulhu. The next time you throw some Deep Ones into your game, make it a variant your players have never encountered before. If your players are used to thinking of Deep Ones as lumbering and slow, make some that are small and quick. If they're used to Deep Ones lurking in seaside towns, put some in a lake or tropical swamp (would this make them 'Shallow Ones'? Discuss). If they're getting cocky about gunning Deep Ones down by the bushel-load, throw a prehistoric armored fishman at them who is virtually bullet-proof.

The point is that The Shadow Over Innsmouth depicted one particular Deep One colony: Y'ha-Nthlei, off the coast of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. If the Deep Ones really are a global race that has existed longer than man, who's to say what other forms they've taken in other regions? Let your investigators be the ones to find out.