VII Cults Deep One Culture The deep ones are an incredibly strange species Though they live undersea, they are capable of operating on land They are unusually fecund and can interbreed with other species, producing (eventually) more deep ones rather than hybrids They are able to grow (or shrink) to different sizes, based on diet They have their own culture, ancient and independent, yet integrally tied to and invested in humanity and other mortal cultures The key to the deep ones' strange nature is that they are an artificial species, created by Great Cthulhu to interact with and possibly supplant humanoids Although not an ancient race compared to many in the Mythos, their culture is older than those of most humanoids Physically, they are roughly similar to humanoids (in that they are bilaterally symmetrical and have four limbs), so that they can interact more effectively They use vocal sounds for speech Deep One Life Cycle resemble deep ones Psychic or emotional trauma or shock can accelerate or stimulate the change The more different the mate is physically from the The deep ones are able to reproduce with almost any deep one (particularly in terms of bone structure), the other species of appropriate size Initially, the resulting longer the metamorphosis takes For example, a dolphin young look like the non-deep one parent Thus, if a may take two or three times as long to complete the deep one mates with a shark, the spawn looks like a change as a human shark If it mates with an elf, the spawn looks like a baby elf Once the deep one change is complete, the entity typically joins the rest of the deep ones beneath Over time, as the spawn grows and matures, the waves Ideally, the deep ones are aware of their eventually it will begin to make the transformation spawn and keep in contact with them, even putting into a deep one In humanoid races, such as orcs, together social constructs to educate and control such humans, or dwarfs, this starts usually a decade or two individuals (such as the Esoteric Order of Dagon) after the person reaches physical maturity and takes a significant amount of time to complete In humans, the hybrids would usually be in their 30s before the metamorphosis begins, and in another decade they Malformation and Error The transformation process does not always go well Some hybrids never manage to complete the change 195