Homebrew Bathynomus Humanoid Species Details

Giant isopod folk crawl out of the ocean's depths to stare in awe at the light of the sun--or terrify hapless fisherfolk who snag one in a net. Down upon the gloomy sea floor, these clicking horrors form alien societies dedicated to the great old entities whose dreaming frequencies spill out in those watery fathoms; it's a harsh life in a realm with little to eat and the constant ripples of a slumbering, nightmare mind. Most giant isopod folk see little reason to change anything; those who end up on the surface usually do so as a result of misadventure rather than a specific desire to escape the warlock-elders of the deep cities. That exposure to the world above, though, leads to massive culture shock followed by rapid adaptation; faced with a land of relatively plenty and, for once, calm dreams, giant isopod folk will rarely return home to the hadal reaches.

The surface is still dangerous, of course. Giant isopod folk look like aberrant monstrosities to most surfacers, what with being humanoid isopods, and they bear the warping marks of the great old ones in whose name they labour upon the sea floor. It's a tall order for most surface-dwellers to get over the instinctive sense of repulsion they feel at the sight of a giant isopod person, and this often results in outright persecution. Giant isopod folk are hardy sorts, but they satisfy their needs for social contact and fulfilment through working as a group with others on a project--the culturally-instilled communal mores of their servitude to dreaming, alien entities--and so they do desire the companionship of others, regardless of isopodity or otherwise. As such, giant isopod folk feel the desire to seek out the very communities where they will likely be met with disgust, hoping to find someone willing to work with them on something, anything, to give greater meaning and purpose to their new existence.

Most giant isopod folk are warlocks, fighters, or rangers. Warlocks draw their power from their bonds to the great old ones that lie beneath, or perhaps dimensionally perpendicular to, the silt-slick ocean floor; while giant isopod warlocks may not want to return to those stygian depths, they usually do not view their alien patrons as sinister, evil, or oppressive, and indeed the great old one in question might be happy--inasmuch as such a being can feel an emotion equivalent to happiness--at the prospect of a useful pawn upon the surface world. A few giant isopod folk, overwhelmed by their exposure to the giant glowing ball of fire that is the sun, seek to become clerics of whatever deity of the sun may exist, and are unusually fanatical and devoted in their praise of the light-giver--a particularly bizarre juxtaposition of faith and isopod.

Bathynomus Humanoid Traits

Giant humanoid abominations that creep the depths of the Abyss.