Pelagic

"These salt-soaked caverns are teeming with pelagic nightmares - they must be flushed out!"

Perhaps abominations created by an ancient curse, perhaps the spawn of an eldritch god, whatever they may be the pelagic fishborn are hunters and predators who feast on blood and bone as they seek to expand their coastal empire. They are hunched and have twisted skulls, specifically the jaw which is more fishlike than human. Some have dorsal fins and webbed toes and fingers. Their eyes bulge from their heads like bloated corpses and they seem to be covered in barnacles pulsating like parasites. Water-logged nightmares and pelagic horrors, these mutated creatures of the deep stalk damp corners and caverns of the lands, seeking to transform the unassuming into more of their kind.
Pelagic Drowned

The pelagic drowned are the common mutants of their kind. They exhibit physical abnormalities including baldness, narrow heads, bulging eyes, fishlike jaws, scaly skin, and an intense fishy body odor. Because of their mutated genetics, many undergo a strange metamorphosis, twisting into a sinister hybrid form. After some time, they begin to change, taking on myriad forms depending on their physical and mental capacities, and the amount of pelagic genetics in their blood. Lowly drowned fisherfolk become stranglers, gaining gills, tentacles, and claws. Physically impressive specimens grow in form, becoming hulking thralls or trawlers, while the magically gifted become shamans.

Pelagic Strangler

Stranglers are warped drowned fisherfolk bearing a bizarre resemblance to the writhing cephalopods that hide under the water's surface. They are able to cast off their human facades and reveal blade-sharp fins, beaks, powerful tentacles, or a variety of other bizarre mutations, descending upon those who threaten their solitude, and choking the life from their lungs.

Pelagic Thrall

Shamblers are tough and hardy, morphing from the strongest and most rugged sailors and drowned. Their prodigious strength allows them to effortlessly carry their victims to their fisheries, where they gutt their bodies and haul them off for disposal in sheltered waters, where bobbing piles of rotting flesh allow the blue algae to bloom into great agricultural farms. These giants are bloated with pelagic genes, to the point where their inner blood can barely hold within their bodies when punctured.

Pelagic Shaman

Pelagic shamans metamorph from those who are gifted in the arcane. Stinking of salt and damp, the shamans bridge the gap between the common folk of their society and their ancient deities. Still capable of some level of human speech, they speak the forbidden whispers of their ancient gods to their attentive congregations.

Pelagic Abyssal

Abyssals are the most common of the pure-blood species forming this eldritch society. As with all of their kind, they are servants of their deep lords, working fastidiously to carry out their higher power's unknowable wills. They often assist the misshapen pelagic hybrids, adeptly navigating the jagged reefs to drown passerbys in blood and gather the bloated corpses that collect on the rocks.

Pelagic Trawler

Trawlers come from similar stock as the thralls, though their mutations are far more advanced, likely due to higher concentrations of pelagic genetics. They weaponize their old fishing hooks and nets, dragging in their victims and embracing them with their tentacled faces, showing them a glimpse of the true horrors that lurk beneath the waves.

Pelagic High Sirenum

Pelagic Guardian