Deep Lord

Description

Deep Lords are related to mind flayers in a broad sense, perhaps distant cousins. Once at home in the vast world ocean of Thagril, ranging everywhere from the deep abyss of the seas to the surface, over coral reefs and former mountains, they were once fairly unintelligent squid creatures. Similar to the ammonites of Earth's past -squid that live in tightly coiled shells - they were curious creatures, and often scavenged along the bottom to find food to eat.

Many cities were destroyed in the cataclysm on Thagril, resulting in huge urban areas, entire nations, buried beneath the rising seas. In the dark cold depths many things were preserved, including vast magics. The time of the cataclysm was a time of wild magical experimentation and use of magics, and some of these magics - perhaps items or potions or the like - were to be found in the sunken cities. The proto-Deep Lords, fairly harmless though with the glimmer of intelligence, came across these forbidden elements of the arcane art, and became vastly changed.

Growing in size and becoming evil, these Deep Lords sought to become still more powerful. They scoured the seas looking for still more ways to grow in power, extremely cooperative with their own kind, but unremittingly hostile to all other races. City after city was churned up looking for ways to add to their powers.

After the human cities had been thoroughly examined, they then turned the cities of the Aquatic Elves. The elves fortunately by this time had developed into powerful nations, particularly over the former continental land masses. They fought numerous wars with the Deep Lords. Though many elves perished from their terrible dark magics, they were able to greatly reduce the numbers of these sinister and intelligent cephalopods. Some went off into dark corners of the ocean, in areas that were deep even when the seas were at normal levels. Others buried themselves into the mud, awaiting a better time; perhaps to later catch their enemies off guard.

Today there exist two groups of Deep Lords. Those in the oceans are starting to grow in power, but will no longer try the frontal assaults against the various races, having failed in their attempts before to obtain powerful magic. They instead work behind the scenes, and have developed powerful abilities to obtain others to work for them.

Anyone encountering a Deep Lord today, even upon seeing one at long range in the sea, have to save versus death magic at a -4 penalty or be charmed for 1 year. This is a special sort of charm though, as the unfortunate victim does not know that they are charmed. Generally they will see the Deep Lord a distance, and then it is gone, whether they are an Aquatic Elf or a fishermen at sea.

Later, over the courses of the year to follow, they will receive dreams encouraging or ordering the victim to perform activities to advance the Deep Lord's agenda. These dreams are generally oriented around three main goals; eliminating the enemies of Deep Lords, obtain new magic for them of any kind, and rise the oceans once again. Sometimes the dreams will be a gentle push towards something - say make life difficult for a nearby Aquatic Elf community, perhaps working with existing prejudices in the victim. Many times though it will be a specific action, the information for doing so is obtained by the Deep Lords from the victim's own memories and thoughts. Perhaps steal a new wand from a local wizard and cast it in a certain spot in the ocean, or to search some ruins that were just discovered on a new caravan route.

The victims do not get a save per se on the "gentle push" dreams, but they do get a save for each dream that orders them to perform a specific action. Further, if they make their save, they can then make another save (both are against death magic) and see if they realize that they are under some sort of magical control. Otherwise even though they are under compulsion and resist every time, they are still under its grip. Remove Curse, Alter Reality, Limited Wish, and Wish are required to remove the compulsion or special charm.

As for the population that buried into the mud, many yet survive in the new drylands. Deep beneath the surface of Thagril they plot and scheme. They are quite aware of their predicament, but given their powers can survive for thousands of years if necessary perhaps, certainly many hundreds. Buried as they are, they don't have the charm on sight ability of their maritime brethren, but an altered version of it. It works in the same way once it takes effect, but is method of delivery is different.

These marooned Deep Lords continuously mentally and magically scan the area bout them. Varying with their individual strengths, this can be between two miles and fifty miles. Any sentient being has a cumulative 10% chance per day of being detected by the buried Deep Lord. Further, they get a stronger save, at a +2 bonus.

Though this is weaker, some buried Deep Lords have been able to obtain control over entire communities this way; at least one farming village and an unfortunate nomadic group that camped in a valley one winter. The goals of these Deep Ones are similar to the oceanic ones, but center more on either getting them back to the sea, or raising sea levels again. Since they enjoy commanding humans, elves, etc, they will try to do this in such a way to preserve their followers.

All Deep Lords have the abilities of 30th level magic users, and are immune to all mind affecting spells, including sleep, and charm. The marooned ones if discovered are essentially helpless, as they have only magical abilities. Further, for the land bound ones fire is at a 4 penalty on their saves and does +2 per die of damage. They have no movement, so their AC is effectively 9.

At sea if forced to they can attack with their tentacles and beak for damage detailed above.