If there’s one thing that’s true of
deep-dwelling sea creatures, it’s that they take the familiar and turn it up to
11. Starfish go from five arms to north
of a dozen. Eels become gulper
eels. Sharks become frilled, goblin, and
ghost sharks. And that’s not even counting snaggletoothed horrors like
anglerfish and dragonfish.
So deep merfolk are merfolk…but even
more so. Even more xenophobic. Even more difficult to find. Even more beautiful and exotic. Even more deadly, if you cross them (and
given how many undersea terrors a party of bumbling adventurers could bring
down upon a merfolk tribe, simply entering their territory could be considered
crossing them).
Also, deep-sea creatures tend, to our
surface-dwelling eyes, to be exaggerated to a fault. So too might deep merfolk—particularly as
different tribes dwelling in isolation along different crevasses and continental
shelves might have wildly different cultures.
You can play them as consummate illusionists, fearless hunters, resigned
Dagon cultists, bioluminescent-painted ravers, petroglyph-carving mystics, and
more—and all in a single campaign, if your adventurers travel widely
enough. The oceans are vast, leaving
room for a panoply of deep merfolk tribes and individuals as diverse as anything
humans have to offer…perhaps even more so.
An illusionist is
working on a prestige effect—a specialized arcane discovery similar to a
bardic masterpiece. To complete it, he
needs to study with a particular master of illusion he’s found named in a
single water-stained scroll. It turns
out the illusionist is one of the deep merfolk.
Getting to the master will be its own adventurer, as a kraken has
stationed minions up and down the canyon where the deep merfolk mage resides.
Adventurers have been
treated well by a deep merfolk tribe on previous visits. This time, though, their reception is
strained. The merfolk are
Dagon-worshippers, and his priests have demanded a price—the head of the
party’s paladin or a night of coupling with Dagon’s servants in the spawning
grounds—that the merfolk feel obligated to pay.
Adventurers are planning
to heist a magical font from the Malachite Magister. Breaking open the vault means navigating a
series of traps, including some on hostile demiplanes. A source informs them that to traverse the
third door they need to be able to survive a watery chamber with the crushing
pressure of the bottom of the ocean. A
deep merfolk rogue would be the perfect accomplice for the job, assuming one
could be hired.
—Pathfinder Bestiary 5
172
Deep merfolk are found throughout the world’s oceans. The harsh conditions of the ocean depths leads to them being desperate and utilitarian, freely embracing whatever powers will help them survive; unfortunately, this means they frequently turn to fiend-worship, and such merfolk are the most likely to make their way to the surface on missions of blasphemy and bloodshed.
Shores of Swords 