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QuantumBranching β The Deep Ones Arise
Published: 2009-11-03 03:38:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 20952; Favourites: 127; Downloads: 416
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"I cannot think of the deep sea withoutshuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of
water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind -- of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium."
- HP Lovecraft, Dagon
A pure fantasy map - Lovecraftian, that is.
No fear, though; humanity, as implied by the title, survives. [1]
I'm assuming
1. If Cthulhu awakes, we're boned. [2] But he's still sleeping.
2. The Deep Ones are made of meat, as are their monster servants. The bigger they are, the better military targets they make. And their weapons are mostly of the pointy metal thing variety. There are billions of them, which does give them a bit of an advantage initially in thinly-armed areas.
3. Sure, they have black magic. But Arkham University and various third-world witch-doctors are on that. (Remember in the 'Shadow over Innsmouth" the Deep Ones in the Pacific were baffled by a bunch of Polynesians with star-stones).
4. Shoggoths are, admittedly, a problem - which calls for high explosives followed by flamethrower mop-up. The shoggoths that serve the Deep Ones are neither as smart nor as huge as those under Antarctica. (If they were, it would soon be by bye Deep Ones).
5. The eventual outcome is MAD. We can't find all their cities, and irradiating the oceans would kill us too. Also, they can summon the Outer Gods - which will kill everyone save Cthulhu and any other Great Old Ones lying about. (hey, if a half-non human hillbilly with access to a good library could do it..)
(My assumption is that a modus vivendi will be arrived at before the world is stripped clean and yanked into a violet-lit infinite abyss).
[1] FOR NOW
[2] My personal no-prize theory? If the Big C just needs somebody to knock on his door for him to wake up, why all the elaborate cultist stuff? No, he slept through the rising and sinking of R'Yleh: he just grew close enough to wakefulness to kill the guys who messed up his ressurrection with a materalized dream of himself: just good ol' ectoplasm, not cosmic monster-flesh. The actual Cthulhu sneers at speeding steamboats.
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Comments: 30
Not even the deep ones want to go to east germany (but hey who could blame them 
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As a thought, you have a Saharan zone which is notable for being hot and dry, and thus bad for Deep Ones - but have many desert regions of Australia being DO controlled. I think if you were to look at maps showing the density of human habitation for the time period (which aren't that different to now), you'd have a closer model- Β humans would control more of Australia, but only from the arid regions, while the DO control the coastal margins. One area of contention would be Lake Eyre, which is predominantly dry for years at a time (and turns into an inland sea with heavy rains - it used to be permanent before the Ice Ages) - the DO would perhaps be working to reopen this to the ocean itself as a means to invade into the human lands.
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I know absolutely nothing about Lovecraft, so excuse me if some of these questions are stupid.
What are the deep ones?
What are Shoggoths?
What are the great old ones?
What are Mi Go?
What are the outer gods?
What makes Cthulu so powerful, I thought he was a (mortal) godzila sized squid worshipped by crazy voodoo people?
How is Europe doing
How come China has been doing so well even after they have been devastated by such a huge war?
Is India doing OK and are the Hindus and Muslims cooperating?
How is Canada doing so good.Β
How did the "deep ones" get so far into Africa and South America?
How is humanity getting it's water supply with all of the coasts taken?
Do the deep ones just kill/eat everyone in their occupied territories, enslave them or stuff them in reserves or something?
Sorry about all the questions. You didn't actually give that much information.
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Well, this is for fans of HPL.Β
Deep ones are frog-fish looking deep sea folk originally created as marine servants by the Great Old Ones. They are immortal but killable, live in great cities on the sea floor, and number in the billions. and worship Dagon, Cthulhu, and other Great Old Ones. Due to their unnatural nature, they can breed with almost anything, and the children will eventually come to resemble them more than the other parent regardless of species. This includes humans.
Shoggoths are the creations of the Elder Things, an alien race that settled parts of the Earth about a billion years ago and died out later. They are a slave race, giant shape-shifting blobs with terrible strength and no fixed form. The ones in the deep sea are domesticatable if you know how: the larger, smarter ones that live in the underground Ocean deep beneath Antarctica, not so much
The Great Old Ones are various interrelated immortal alien beings with vast powers which once came to earth and battled the Elder Things for supremacy, establishing themselves as rulers over most of the planet. Unlike the Elder Things, which are at least made of normal matter and have a plausible, if alien biology, the Great Old Ones are made of alien matter which doesn't quite act like anything terrestrial, and they probably exist in more dimensions than we do, and they come in many forms. Mostly they are currently inactive, seemingly dead but still conscious, waiting for the time when they shall return to an active state and rule the world again.
The Mi Go are a very wide-spread alien race which has colonies all over the universe and beyond - originally from a universe where light does not exist, they have no eyes, and they are vaguely crab-like winged creatures with a mass of tentacles for a head and a fungus-like body composition. They have a few small secret mining colonies on earth, but mostly aren't too interested in us, although they do find human brains of some use. They generally don't mess with the Great Old Ones, and some of them worship them.
The Outer Gods are ancient cosmic horrors from outside of our universe, which they have trouble interacting with because they are so alien: they need someone on this side to invite them in. Some would essentially eat the world: other ones just want to strip the earth clean of biological life and bring it back to their universe for some purpose. Other are more like living concepts or incarnated cosmic forces, and really don't care about our world at all. Cthulhu worships some of the more powerful of these: they're the next step up in the cosmic feeding chain from the Great Old Ones.Β
(This is my conception, note, and may not exactly match other people's headcanon. There is no formal Lovecraft canon, since he didn't bother to keep things consistent in his own stories, and neither did all the people who wrote stories based on his ideas both during and after his life.)
Cthulhu is an immortal squid-giant-dragon who is currently in a death-like state in a city at the bottom of the sea, awaiting the time it will rise again and its cultists awaken it. It communicates telepathically with cult leaders in their dreams, and when it arises, its telepathic effects will grow so much stronger that humanity will mostly go violently bonkers before long. It's generally accepted among Cthulhuphiles that if you nuke Cthulhu, it will just re-materialize the next day, only now its radioactive and pissed off.Β
Much of western and mediterranean Europe was messed up pretty badly by Deep One invaders, but the more rugged interior regions did better due to their trouble in getting there, and the combined Red Army, remaining US troops in Europe, and local war veterans (yes, they have rearmed the Germans, although they tend to send the known Nazis in the first wave of attacks 
China has actually suffered terribly: the area the Deep Ones have overrun is where most of the people are, the areas they haven't reached are mostly desert and mountains. India, with its long coasts, has also been hit badly, but they're rallying, and the Muslims and Hindus most assuredly are cooperating: the Deep Ones don't care about human differences, we're all slaves or food, aside from the occasional cultist collaborator.Β
Q: What do you call a Deep One away from water in a Canadian winter?
A: frozen fish
Also, just not that important a target, and right next to the US, so they aren't fighting them entirely on their own.
Following the rivers, and the local military forces are pretty puny. But I probably should have shown more of the desert parts of southern Africa unoccupied: I mean, why bother?
Rivers, lake beyond the reach of the Deep One advance. But in areas with a lot of refugees, there certainly are shortages of clean water
Most are to be killed and/or eaten by the Deep Ones and their monsters, but a lot are to stay alive to work for the Deep Ones, to provide tribute, to serve as breeding stock and sacrifices to the Old Ones, and otherwise spread the power of the Deep Ones from the seas to the dry land, which the amphibious Deep Ones may find an interesting place to visit, but not somewhere to live. Human cultists who worship the same Great Old Ones as the Deep Ones will play an important roles as quislings to keep the human masses under control, along with the increasing number of people with mixed Deep One/human ancestry. Of course, these plans are dependent on total victory, which isn't looking too likely right now...
Lovecraft's work is available online here:Β www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/β¦
(Be warned, he's pretty racist even for a writer of the 1920s and 1930s, and he doesn't think too much of women, either)
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Thank you for all of that information. I found it very helpful.
1) Ok, so they are large underwater alien frogs that eat and kill people, I've herd of a lot weirder but still... wow.
2) I take it that the shoggoths are the reason that Antarctica hasn't been attacked yet.
3) Ok, makes sense.
4) .... Strange
5) they sound like WONDERFUL people (not)!!!
6) So what if you hit him with every nuclear bomb on earth, knocked him into the sun and pushed him into a black hole?
6) I guess that would make sense, and that is a nice effective method of Nazi disposal.
7) Well, as long as Mao got eaten.
8) Nothing unites people more than Gandhi and an army of countless deep ones I guess.
9) The deep ones are probably just so terrified of Justin Bieber that they are avoiding parts of Canada even years before he was born!Β
10) Well that's nice of them. ( :
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Looks like everyone except Eastern Europe, Germany, Russia and America are fucked. Hell even the superpowers are economically boned.
Lovely map.
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In every case, humans are fucked. It's only a matter of time
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Yeah, if we're lucky some of us will be able to make it to other dimensions or other planets before the big C. finally wakes...
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Oh no, I'll stay here and watch them suffer
And maybe I'll meet good old Cthulhu before I'm dead
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Were all the WW2 vets still in Germany when the invasion began?
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Some of them...and of course lots of Soviet forces in the east.
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Good fun -I rather like your Cthulhu suggestion, which also explains his re-forming after being hit by the ship.
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Considering how New Orleans seems to be a place often afflicted with water-related suffering, the fact that the Hydrogen Bomb is first used there is both sad and darkly amusing.
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How does the naval power of humanity fare in this war?
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Did the Axis powers ask Cthulhu for help in this?
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Naah. This is shortly post-war. The Deep ones had been planning to do something about increasingly pesky humanity for decades, and they thought after a long war humans would be exhausted and weakened.
"I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind", remember?
(The Nazis did try to gain the aid of Outer Powers when the war turned against them. But that is another story.
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Oh. Mi-Go involved?
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The Mi-Go are the folks from Yuggoth, aren't they?
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Are the Shoggoths at Antarctica a problem during this war, ask because I believe someone would be willingly to let them loose on the Deep Ones. Also are the Aliens from Yuggoth involved at at all?
This is a really awesome map, good work.
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1. The Allied High Command for some reason decided that a sea full of huge, omnivorous, highly intelligent amphibious Shoggoths really wouldn't be much of an improvement on a sea full of Deep Ones.
2. The Antartic Shoggoths generally pursue a policy of "tear apart and/or devour first, ask questions later" when dealing with intruders in their underground realm. The first successful expedition (first one in which most of the party got back alive and mostly sane, and bearing with them a couple of Old Ones in hybernation mode) was not until after the end of the war with the Deep
Ones.
As for the Fungi From Yoggoth, although they occasionally collect intellectually interesting human brains, they really don't care much who runs the earth as long as their mining operations under New England and Tibet are undisturbed. (Not that the Fungi on earth are that important: they're a bunch of backwoods hicks running some minor mines from the point of view of the ruling class on Yuggoth, which in turn is a back-of-beyond hick town from the point of view of the ultimate parent civilization back home in the dimension of lightless suns).
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Which side has Air-supremecy and does it affect the war?
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They're fish-frog-people from the seabottom: they don't do planes, although their sorcerors can summon up a good plane-grounding fog, if they aren't too far from water...and yes, this is advantage humanity.
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Well, it's not like anyone else is in shape to do the job in the immediate aftermath of WWII...
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