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Deep One

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This article is about the Cthulhu Mythos creatures. For the X-COM alien race, see Deep One (X-COM race).

The Deep Ones are fictional creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The beings first appeared in Lovecraft's novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1931). The Deep Ones are a race of frog-like, ocean-dwelling creatures with an affinity for mating with humans.

Numerous Mythos elements are associated with the Deep Ones, including the legendary town of Innsmouth, the undersea city of Y'ha-nthlei, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and the beings known as Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. After their debut in Lovecraft's tale, the sea-dwelling creatures resurfaced in the works of other authors, especially August Derleth.[1]

Summary

Lovecraft provides a description of the Deep One in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth":

I think their predominant color 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 ... They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design - living and horrible.



The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Lovecraft describes the Deep Ones as a race of undersea-dwelling humanoids whose preferred habitat is deep in the ocean (hence their name). However, despite being primarily marine creatures, they can come to the surface and can survive on land for some time. All Deep Ones are immortal; none die except by accident or violence. They are said to serve the beings known as Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, as well as Cthulhu.[2] They are opposed by mysterious beings known as the Old Ones, whose powerful magic can keep them in check.

Deep One hybrid

The backstory of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" involves a bargain between Deep Ones and humans, in which the aquatic species provides plentiful fishing and gold in the form of strangely formed jewellery. In return, the land-dwellers give human sacrifices and a promise of "mixing"—the mating of humans with Deep Ones. Although the Deep One hybrid offspring are born with the appearance of a normal human being, the individual will eventually transform into a Deep One, gaining immortality—by default—only when the transformation is complete.

The transformation usually occurs when the individual reaches middle age. As the hybrid gets older, he or she begins to acquire the so-called "Innsmouth Look" as he or she takes on more and more attributes of the Deep One race: the ears shrink, the eyes bulge and become unblinking, the head narrows and gradually goes bald, the skin becomes scabrous as it changes into scales, and the neck develops folds which later become gills. When the hybrid becomes too obviously non-human, it is hidden away from outsiders. Eventually, however, the hybrid will be compelled to slip into the sea to live with the Deep Ones in one of their undersea cities.

Father Dagon and Mother Hydra

Father Dagon and Mother Hydra are both minor Great Old Ones; though it is possible that they are merely Deep Ones that have grown abnormally large. Together with Cthulhu, they form the triad of gods worshipped by the Deep Ones. (The name is inspired by Dagon, the Semitic fertility deity.)

Mother Hydra is the consort to Father Dagon. The Call of Cthulhu role-playing game suggests that Mother Hydra may not be a Great Old One at all, but merely a gigantic Deep One.

Y'ha-nthlei

"Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei"[3] is the only Deep One city named by Lovecraft. The name may have been inspired by the Lord Dunsany character "Yoharneth-Lahai", "the god of little dreams and fancies" who "sendeth little dreams out of PEGANA to please the people of Earth."[4]

In "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", it is described as a great undersea metropolis located below Devil's Reef just off the coast of Massachusetts, near the town of Innsmouth. Its exact age is not known, but one resident is said to have lived there for 80,000 years.[5].

In Lovecraft's story, the U.S. government torpedoed Devil's Reef in 1928 as part of a raid on the town of Innsmouth.

Other authors have invented Deep One cities in other parts of the ocean, including Ahu-Y'hloa near Cornwall and G'll-Hoo, near the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland.[6]

  • The movie Dagon, inspired by "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", features Deep Ones hybrids as the primary antagonists. The Deep Ones hybrids in this movie resemble the more tentacled Cthulhu and lack the piscine features of the Deep Ones in the book. The movie moves the action to a small coastal town in Galicia in northwest Spain. The town is named Imboca ("boca" is the Spanish word for "mouth"), though the main characters are American tourists. One of them wears a sweatshirt from Miskatonic University.
  • Toy Vault, Inc. released a Deep One plush.
  • The second season of the Digimon anime series featured creatures that resembled the Deep Ones. Nicknamed the Digi-Deep Ones, they worshipped a greater being called Dagomon, their "Dark Undersea Master" (explicitly referred to as a god in the Japanese version). Similar to their mating with humans, they attempted to capture Hikari Yagami in order for her to mate with Dagomon (Japanese version only) but failed due to the rescue by Takeru Takaishi, Patamon and Tailmon. This episode was written by Chiaki Konaka, who is himself a fan of Lovecraft's works.
  • Comic artist and author Mike Mignola is an avowed Lovecraft fan and his Hellboy and B.P.R.D. series feature multiple attempts by strange, god-like entities called the Ogdru Jahad to transform the population of Earth into frog-like beings almost identical to the Deep Ones. Abe Sapien, one of Mignola's characters is more physically similar to a Deep One, being part fish, but exhibits none of the malevolence generally associated with the creatures.
  • Deep Ones are featured as adversaries in video games like Alone In The Dark, X-Com: Terror from the Deep, NetHack, and, of course, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the decrepit xenophobic town of Hackdirt has a strange cult dedicated to the "Deep Ones". In the underground section of the town, there are townspeople who bear striking resemblances to Deep One hybrids (most notably the enlarged eyes). The particular quest pertaining to the town is named "A Shadow over Hackdirt", in an obvious reference to Lovecraft.
  • D&D's kuo-toan race is ostensibly based on Deep Ones. They are evil fish-men who typically worship Blibdoolpoolp, the "Sea Mother" whom they appease with human sacrifices. Some actually worship an ichthyoid demon prince named Dagon and interbreed with humans.
  • The Murlocs of the Warcraft universe are almost identical to the Deep Ones of Lovecraft's stories. They are a minor enemy in (And an unofficial mascot for) the popular MMO, World of Warcraft, and recent updates on the game's website suggest that the Lovecraftian connections will be further explored, with the Murlocs worship of ancient aquatic "gods" being a primary feature. One particular quest involves slaying a murloc-worshipped being by the name of Dagun, the whole questline being strongly Lovecraftian. Also, they are said to be connected to Old Gods, Warcraft-universe's evil beings whose concept greatly resembles that of Great Old Ones.
  • At a certain point in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, the player has to fight a battle against an aquatic creature called 'Dagon', which is referred to in the 'Enemies' section of a menu as 'a creature of the swamp'.
  • In the popular anime and manga Saint Seiya one of Hades' warriors is Niobe of Deep, and his armor when not being used takes the shape and pose of the illustration of the Deep Ones.
  • In the CthulhuTech RPG published by Mongoose Publishing, the Deep Ones and the Esoteric Order of Dagon have become a powerful faction in the Strange Aeon, to the point that they field their own lovecraftian war machines.
  • In the Book I of the Serenity Falls collection by James A. Moore, Writ in Blood, one of the protagonists, Jonathan Crowley has an encounter with a Deep One.
  • Deep Ones are an important part of the Charles Stross novel The Jennifer Morgue. They are stated as having involvement in, among other things, Minoan civilization, the Special Operations Executive, and Project Jennifer. They are also responsible for the Bermuda Triangle and the Witch's Hole in the North Sea are caused by the Deep Ones releasing methane clathrate from the sea floor, causing massive bubbles that sink ships intruding over their settlements. British Intelligence gives the Deep Ones the code name "Blue Hades". They are mentioned as being locked in a Cold War type struggle against the Chthonians.
  • In Kim Newman's short story "Richard Riddle, Boy Detective", a Deep One is captured by English militia during the Napoleonic Wars. They first assume it to be an agent of Napoleon preparing for a French invasion, but later believe it to be a living dinosaur sent by Satan to trick them into embracing Darwinian selection and repudiating God. The titular boy detective and his friends eventually free the Deep One, who slaughters its captors before thanking the children and returning to the sea.

References

Primary source

  • Lovecraft, Howard P. (1984) [1931]. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". In S. T. Joshi (ed.) (ed.). The Dunwich Horror and Others (9th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-037-8. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help) Definitive version.

Secondary sources

  • Harms, Daniel (1998). "Dagon". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. p. 73. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
—"Deep Ones", pp. 81–82. Ibid.
—"Hydra (Mother Hydra)", p. 143. Ibid.
—"Y'ha-nthlei", p. 340. Ibid.
  • Petersen, Sandy (2001). Call of Cthulhu (5th ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. ISBN 1-56882-148-4.

Notes

  1. ^ The Deep Ones are a popular fixture in Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos fiction, appearing in about half of his tales. ("Derleth's Use of the Words 'Ichthic' and 'Batrachian'", Crypt of Cthulhu #9.)
  2. ^ Robert M. Price suggests that "Dagon" and Cthulhu are actually the same entity, Dagon being "the closest biblical analogy to the real object of worship of the deep ones"--The Innsmouth Cycle, Robert M. Price, ed., p. ix.
  3. ^ Lovecraft, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".
  4. ^ Price makes this suggestion in the introduction of Dunsany's "Of Yoharneth-Lahai", The Innsmouth Cycle, p. 1.
  5. ^ "For eighty thousand years Pht'thya-l'yi had lived in Y'ha-nthlei" (ibid).
  6. ^ Brian Lumley, "Rising With Surtsey".
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