The Abyssal Temple

Exterior

Far beneath the rolling waves, the sea floor is savagely split open. From the sprawling chasm, darkness and miasma ooze out, twirling about one another in an eerie mockery of a dance. The sea floor around the chasm almost seems to writhe and bend... as if made of flesh rather than sediment. From the chasm edge and stretching for perhaps far into the wall of miasma, the sediment is filled with bones of all sizes. Amidst the bones, flashes of other materials... perhaps metal? Or perhaps merely another kind of bone? The entire area invokes a sense of uncertainty. The darkness alone sends a chill down one's spine and nausea to twist violently in the gut.

Positioned in the center of the sea floor chasm is a massive, dark monolith that is barely distinguishable from the darkness into which it descends. Draped across the structure is a massive pile of collapsed half-decayed, dark, unsettling flesh. The sight of it – its many unblinking eyes staring blankly ahead – causes one's throat to constrict. What could this flesh have belonged to? It is unsettling that the only thing one can say for certain is that this creature's discarded flesh makes even Omen, Horror of the Depths... seem small.

In a Time Long Past – The miasma fades... and somehow everything darkens. Faint motes of eerie teal, blue, and gray light emerge from the monolith, now freed once more of its covering of flesh. And then the screams – distorted and gurgled – create a horrifying symphony that echoes from all around. Bones still litter the sediment, but now parasitie eels and other creatures are attached as they dig and scrape out the marrow within. Half-decayed corpses have become a feast for the bottom dwellers and some bodies are so densely covered that only a vague humannoid shape remains, defined by the conglomerate mass of vile, writhing creatures. Hundreds of bodies are suspended in the water, bound by heavy shackle and chain that vanishes beneath the sediment. Those with gills are granted air – their body dessicated from the neck up. Those with lungs are drowned – they gargle and choke, eyes bulging out as the suffocate... yet they find no escape. For their bodies jerk back up after a few minutes, screaming once more. A ocnstant cacophany of agonizing screams, wails, and chokes undercut by the harmony of silence bound to be broken.

Interior

The darkness persists within the monolithic Temple, broken only briefly by small motes of faint bioluminscence that drift about the space. With every turn, a vague sense of uncertainty, paranoia, and fear lingers. What awaits around the next bend? Turning left means left, going down means up, and swimming for five minutes suddenly feels like swimming for 10 seconds. The Temple itself adheres to its own rules of time and space. There is no apparent order to the structure.

Notable Locations within the Temple:

Egg Chamber – Beyond a door lies darkness... with small glowing teal motes arranged in clusters within a honeycomb-like pattern. Upon closer inspection, they are not motes of light... but biolumnescent eggs. Small, blurry, unidentifiable silhouettes are contained within.
Abyssal Ray Pen – Rays swim about followed by flocks of small, slime-covered and eel-like fish. Every now and then a ray releases a sharp screech that pierces through the water. Gargled sounds echo from hunched over shrimp-like creatures that dart across the water to separate fighting rays.
Depth Bound Forge – Shelves upon shelves of fossilized spheres surround a large vat with arcane runes. As the vat activates, deposited spheres consolidate and condense in a whirlpool emptying into a mold... of a shackle and chain.
Shrine to Rot and Death – A sliver of light illuminates the silhouettes of rotting corpses arranged in a morbid, yet honorable display. In the middle is a statue made of bone depicting a frail woman clutching the body of a man while holding the decapitated head of another.
Shrine to the Sea – A room is evenly divided into four quadrants with the boundaries marked by curved and wave-like lines. One quadrant is shrouded in darkness and the remaining three are illuminated by teal, royal blue, and pale blue light.
Fighting Ring – An air bubble is constrained within a meshwork of jagged bone, metal wire, and... various bits of stuck gore and body parts that have not yet been removed. Within, an arena is stained with blood and viscera.

The Depth-Bound Chamber

The darkness of the Abyssal Temple intensifies. Vision warps, bends, and twists. The chamber at the bottom of the monolith is formed by walls of undulating flesh, constrained by darkened stone. Wrinkled and warped skin has been pulled over perforated pillars, arranged at haphazard, chaotic angles. Within each perforation is a cluster of bioluminesent orbs. From the screaming mouths of pulled flesh, eel-like, slime-coated creatures twist and bend, darting in and out at their leisure. There is no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of this space. It is all warped and distorted.

A piece of "natural" ground forms an elevated dais in what might be the center of the room. Fossilized or perhaps carved tentacles jut out from this base at various angles. Occasionally, a tentacle seems to shift and move. Atop the dais rests a throne, cushioned with what might be sponge-like coral. And beyond the empty throne lies impenetrable darkness. Dread twists in the gut. Uncertainty finds any who enter like a knife to the back, cold and piercing.