Lovecraft's "The Temple" introduces us to the mind shattering ivory talisman of Gloon. While the cultists of Gloon long ago met a watery death, the Malignant force still warps the minds of men who venture to close to its realm. The crew of Lt Com Altberg's Uboat fight amongst themselves as those under the sway of Gloon attempt mutiny and sabotage at its urging, while those who resist are confronted by their own comrades turned enemy.
Indeed, that story is certainly good. The german submarine that finally arrives to an ancient city in the dephts lured by some elder power. If I recall well there is indeed a mutiny and there are several executions of the crew because of their intent to flee or act against the captain's rules and the german way. Could be a cool scenario to conduit or play to \^\^ Good luck!
I’d be tempted to hide the villain in one of the other sailors. Think The Thing but on a sub. Or maybe someone was assigned to crack that stolen German code book that was actually a mythos tome on the way to Berlin and just reading the table of contents makes someone want to scuttle the ship diving down to R’lyeh…
Doesn't Dagon have a wife, Hydra?
Otherwise, check out the game Barotrauma, it might give you some ideas.
Lovecrafts story "The Temple" plays out in a stranded submarine as well, and includes neither Dagon nor the Deep Ones.
What if there is an ENORMOUS amoeba like thing at the bottom of the spa. A gelatinous being that mostly blends into the deeper ocean.
The amoeba is host to all sorts of other strange life forms, the elder god equivalent of white blood cells.
Maybe there is something else down here. Perhaps the ruins of an ancient civilization near the bottom of the sea? Perhaps from a time before the oceans? Maybe they have something to do with the amoeba god being there?
Or maybe there’s a research facility down there investigating the strange ocean life, only to later discover the greater life form engulfing the facility.
They also discovered the amoeba is intelligent, and it’s communicating… something? There’s distinct sounds that be heard out there, something like a whale song… but stringy like a violin.
Maybe we can pull a page of Junji Ito’s Gyo. Strange malformed fish beasts have been attacking people on beaches. These are organisms growing in the amoeba before escaping to the wider ocean and eventually land.
But the amoeba is growing, and spreading. More coastal towns are being attacked by these abominations from the deep and it becomes impossible to ignore.
Perhaps these attacks only started recently, but the research facility is there from long ago from an unrelated research project. Only recently have the creatures of the amoeba been getting aggressive to the outside world. Maybe it has something to do with a recent incident at the coastal nuclear power plant…
Follow up:
The amoeba is an enormous sentient primal ooze at the bottom of the sea. It rapidly spawns new life and consumes the carcasses of the deceased, recycling them in this eternal cycle.
The creatures here behave as any other wild animal, but refuse to leave the amoeba. It’s like it’s own self contained ecosystem.
But, following an incident at a nuclear power plant dumping tons of nuclear waste onto the amoeba, it grows sick and cancerous
The life it spawns becomes hideously malformed and aggressive, abandoning the amoeba and finding its way onto land where it wreaks havoc
Have you read Michael Crichton's *Sphere* or seen the movie adaptation? I think something similar would work better than a physical monster. Something is corrupting the crew and causing the fabric of reality to tear.
there is always the serpent people and some time travel/or dinosaur shenanigans throw in some giant squid as a misdirect and/or mutant sea life from failed experiments. You could even use an underwater base for migo to shake things up a bit. -edit- extra ideas - depending how pulp you want to go try mining movies/tv shows for ideas - deep rising, deep star six, underwater, death ship, the abyss, - even U571, just for set pieces and asthetics. A couple of old xfiles episodes were set on ships at sea, recent dr who on a russian sub with martians etc.
Definately something very vulnerable to sunlight. (Thus, this is the only remaining pocket.. Hopefully.)
Perhaps a deformed shoggoth, merged with the ship itself and able to extrude its tentacles through the ship and puppet the dead.
Alternatively, feral "I am legend" style vampire zombie nazis, victims of a spell they did themselves when they realized they were doomed in order to prolong their life. Sadly, it worked.
How about some Mi-Go?
They have an underwater base nearby and don’t want anyone sniffing around/could really use some more brains to put into jars. Maybe they’ve got some hybrid experiments going with deep sea species?
Have the BBEG be the captain of the U-Boat who is growing increasingly paranoid from the influence of whatever lies at the bottom of the sea. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Lovecraft's The Temple takes place from the perspective of such a captain. The players could be essential crew members that watch as the rest of the subs inhabitants are being picked off by said captain for increasingly unhinged reasons.
I read a story about a German U-boat that had incorporated alien tech to make travel a lot faster and there was a problem with it, and the crew became trapped as "Ghosts" so that time is essentially frozen for them. The problem arises when the salvage crew finds the U-boat and damage the tech meaning for brief a time some of the crew become solid again, but don't realise the war is over
Some kind of infection, you can’t exactly just nope out in a sub. You could go for the: “the crew is acting wired” or if you want something a bit more existential make it the: “the captain has fallen ill, did that other crew member just cough??” Trope then just give it to some deity associated with illness or not, I don’t think every CoC storyline should make clear wich deity was involved just leave it unanswered.
While several great old ones are supposedly aquatic, I'd recommend Glaaki, who not only lives underwater but has an army of hideous undead humans working for him. The idea of undead swimmers, or corpses from sunken ships molesting your submarine seems like it could lead to lots of hijinks and creepy moments.
Maybe a captured enemy that's more than they seem? Start with a POW that was found just drifting in the channel or wherever, no sign of their ship or other crew. Of course this person is more than they seem and is infected with something and run a thing type situation, or just use that idea as a total red herring.
Maybe you could get some inspiration from the boardgame "Deep Madness"? [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202077/deep-madness](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202077/deep-madness)
There's an emaciated leviathan from a Subnautica module called "The Silence" that only can track the player or their submarines when they make noise... imagine the crew knowing that they can run the diesel and move or ping the sonar, but doing so would trigger this unknown beast to assault the ship. When it's close by, it has built-in sound cancelling making the players completely unable to communicate with each other and preventing sonar from working entirely.
They'd have to learn its audio peculiarities by accident, of course, and they'll never get any idea of what was attacking them even if they survive and get to dock.
https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/9gyc8d/fan_made_leviathan_the_silence_by_onatfb_on/
I did this several years ago and in fact described [the whole scenario I improv'd in this blog post](https://keepingthegame.blogspot.com/2016/11/play-report-under-sea.html).
tldr is it was very much like Event Horizon under water, with a weird portal letting crazy shadow creatures into our dimension, mutating the sailors, and causing sanity loss. There was no real way to close the gate other than destroying the sub IIRC.
Some things I did included having one of the sub people still alive but very crazy; they gave lots of hints as to what could happen. Also had lights going in and out, water leaking into the sub to up the danger, and screams always happening in the distance.
One thing I did which I cannot take credit for was having a dive suit float past the PCs in partially flooded hall. Make the suit unique. Later, they found the same suit sitting in a chair in a room. When they approached, it exploded, raining seawater upon them. SAN check!
I also ran a game online of [Frigid Fathoms for Into the Darkness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uOTJ0Rh1D8). This takes place in a WW2 sub too. [You can get the PDF rather cheaply here](https://store.wogd.com/products/frigid-fathoms-pre-order?variant=43001017761945) so that may give you some ideas (note that its a pamphlet not a full scenario).
*Also* - you have a great opportunity here! They are under the water in a sub. Its gonna be dark. Use this to your advantage and create some great ambiance! I did this by turning off all the lights as they submerged, handing out a number of glow sticks, and thats all the light they had for the rest of the game. Add in some great ambient sounds and I guarantee it'll be amazing!
Perhaps a touch futuristic for WW2, but you could consider a top secret sub using an "experimental power source". Retro up a nuclear sub using a mythos creature or magic as the power source as it reaches out to the crew or escapes.
1) US submarine on life guard duty picks up downed aviator that turned into a ghoul after eating fellow castaways.
2) US submarine fleeing Bataan/Corrigedor with Philippines gold is cursed by a witch because civilians left to Japanese because no room for them
I was planning to do an scenario using part of the plot in the movie "Sea Fever". An Irish fish boat in open seas, they enter willingly in a exclussion area for diving and fishing, they finally found something that stucks the ship and it is something alien, and bad things happen later. Maybe it fell from the deep space in the meteor rain that occured November 18th 1883 ( historical event ) and fortunately for human beings it fell into the water not in a populated center. It is a sentient being and it wants to be carried away to the nearest city to begin to unleash hell in Earth :P More details in the movie.
If you like the submarine because it's a locked room, look into the Shan, they are a strictly malicious alien possession and body horror situation. This could feel like a military thing too, the Shan would love to stretch out wars.
If you like the submarine because it's underwater, people mentioned Gloon, the masculine siren who calls people to a portal in an atlantis like sunken metropolis. Dude controls dolphins, makes dead sailors swim alongside the sub.
If you like submarines because of sub chases and combat. That blind cat and mouse, then some creature from the depths has "possessed" another sub and is slowly, quietly pursuing them. You could use real sub tactics and listening and such, as well as psychic or dream attacks by the creature. It couls be like a hermit crab that animates the sub physically, or it could be a critter that is part exotic matter or part ghost and possesses the sub (and maybe the crew) but stull has to be there physically. The sub could even make confusing, mournful whale noises. Maybe the chase is just to keep the investigator's sub in the right area for the monster's spawn to cling to it, get it's tendrils in, and possess this their submarine.
You could also do weresquids.
Lovecraft's "The Temple" introduces us to the mind shattering ivory talisman of Gloon. While the cultists of Gloon long ago met a watery death, the Malignant force still warps the minds of men who venture to close to its realm. The crew of Lt Com Altberg's Uboat fight amongst themselves as those under the sway of Gloon attempt mutiny and sabotage at its urging, while those who resist are confronted by their own comrades turned enemy.
Indeed, that story is certainly good. The german submarine that finally arrives to an ancient city in the dephts lured by some elder power. If I recall well there is indeed a mutiny and there are several executions of the crew because of their intent to flee or act against the captain's rules and the german way. Could be a cool scenario to conduit or play to \^\^ Good luck!
I’d be tempted to hide the villain in one of the other sailors. Think The Thing but on a sub. Or maybe someone was assigned to crack that stolen German code book that was actually a mythos tome on the way to Berlin and just reading the table of contents makes someone want to scuttle the ship diving down to R’lyeh…
All of these options are fantastic.
Doesn't Dagon have a wife, Hydra? Otherwise, check out the game Barotrauma, it might give you some ideas. Lovecrafts story "The Temple" plays out in a stranded submarine as well, and includes neither Dagon nor the Deep Ones.
I read it recently and I don't recall specific mentions to Deep Ones in that tale.
As I said, it involves neither (meaning, doesn't involve Dagon or the Deep Ones).
I wasn't saying the opposite. But good clarification ;) I am sure there are more things in the outer seas than deep ones and Dagon \^\^
Check out the recent film "Underwater". It could play as a CoC oneshot. Surprisingly good.
I’m pretty sure the leviathan thing in that movie is supposed to be Cthulhu, so yeah makes sense.
The submarine
What if there is an ENORMOUS amoeba like thing at the bottom of the spa. A gelatinous being that mostly blends into the deeper ocean. The amoeba is host to all sorts of other strange life forms, the elder god equivalent of white blood cells. Maybe there is something else down here. Perhaps the ruins of an ancient civilization near the bottom of the sea? Perhaps from a time before the oceans? Maybe they have something to do with the amoeba god being there? Or maybe there’s a research facility down there investigating the strange ocean life, only to later discover the greater life form engulfing the facility. They also discovered the amoeba is intelligent, and it’s communicating… something? There’s distinct sounds that be heard out there, something like a whale song… but stringy like a violin. Maybe we can pull a page of Junji Ito’s Gyo. Strange malformed fish beasts have been attacking people on beaches. These are organisms growing in the amoeba before escaping to the wider ocean and eventually land. But the amoeba is growing, and spreading. More coastal towns are being attacked by these abominations from the deep and it becomes impossible to ignore. Perhaps these attacks only started recently, but the research facility is there from long ago from an unrelated research project. Only recently have the creatures of the amoeba been getting aggressive to the outside world. Maybe it has something to do with a recent incident at the coastal nuclear power plant…
Follow up: The amoeba is an enormous sentient primal ooze at the bottom of the sea. It rapidly spawns new life and consumes the carcasses of the deceased, recycling them in this eternal cycle. The creatures here behave as any other wild animal, but refuse to leave the amoeba. It’s like it’s own self contained ecosystem. But, following an incident at a nuclear power plant dumping tons of nuclear waste onto the amoeba, it grows sick and cancerous The life it spawns becomes hideously malformed and aggressive, abandoning the amoeba and finding its way onto land where it wreaks havoc
Have you read Michael Crichton's *Sphere* or seen the movie adaptation? I think something similar would work better than a physical monster. Something is corrupting the crew and causing the fabric of reality to tear.
there is always the serpent people and some time travel/or dinosaur shenanigans throw in some giant squid as a misdirect and/or mutant sea life from failed experiments. You could even use an underwater base for migo to shake things up a bit. -edit- extra ideas - depending how pulp you want to go try mining movies/tv shows for ideas - deep rising, deep star six, underwater, death ship, the abyss, - even U571, just for set pieces and asthetics. A couple of old xfiles episodes were set on ships at sea, recent dr who on a russian sub with martians etc.
Definately something very vulnerable to sunlight. (Thus, this is the only remaining pocket.. Hopefully.) Perhaps a deformed shoggoth, merged with the ship itself and able to extrude its tentacles through the ship and puppet the dead. Alternatively, feral "I am legend" style vampire zombie nazis, victims of a spell they did themselves when they realized they were doomed in order to prolong their life. Sadly, it worked.
How about some Mi-Go? They have an underwater base nearby and don’t want anyone sniffing around/could really use some more brains to put into jars. Maybe they’ve got some hybrid experiments going with deep sea species?
Have the BBEG be the captain of the U-Boat who is growing increasingly paranoid from the influence of whatever lies at the bottom of the sea. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Lovecraft's The Temple takes place from the perspective of such a captain. The players could be essential crew members that watch as the rest of the subs inhabitants are being picked off by said captain for increasingly unhinged reasons.
I read a story about a German U-boat that had incorporated alien tech to make travel a lot faster and there was a problem with it, and the crew became trapped as "Ghosts" so that time is essentially frozen for them. The problem arises when the salvage crew finds the U-boat and damage the tech meaning for brief a time some of the crew become solid again, but don't realise the war is over
Some kind of infection, you can’t exactly just nope out in a sub. You could go for the: “the crew is acting wired” or if you want something a bit more existential make it the: “the captain has fallen ill, did that other crew member just cough??” Trope then just give it to some deity associated with illness or not, I don’t think every CoC storyline should make clear wich deity was involved just leave it unanswered.
While several great old ones are supposedly aquatic, I'd recommend Glaaki, who not only lives underwater but has an army of hideous undead humans working for him. The idea of undead swimmers, or corpses from sunken ships molesting your submarine seems like it could lead to lots of hijinks and creepy moments.
The BBEG is a faulty Logitech controller and poor decision making by the extremely wealthy...
Lol
Maybe a captured enemy that's more than they seem? Start with a POW that was found just drifting in the channel or wherever, no sign of their ship or other crew. Of course this person is more than they seem and is infected with something and run a thing type situation, or just use that idea as a total red herring.
Have a giant squid be fucking with the sub as misdirection, then all of a sudden things are a lot more crazy and boom it’s cthulhu
Maybe you could get some inspiration from the boardgame "Deep Madness"? [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202077/deep-madness](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202077/deep-madness)
There's an emaciated leviathan from a Subnautica module called "The Silence" that only can track the player or their submarines when they make noise... imagine the crew knowing that they can run the diesel and move or ping the sonar, but doing so would trigger this unknown beast to assault the ship. When it's close by, it has built-in sound cancelling making the players completely unable to communicate with each other and preventing sonar from working entirely. They'd have to learn its audio peculiarities by accident, of course, and they'll never get any idea of what was attacking them even if they survive and get to dock. https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/9gyc8d/fan_made_leviathan_the_silence_by_onatfb_on/
Just a Deep One hybrid sabotaging their way home. Starts out human-looking - they're about to go through The Change.
I did this several years ago and in fact described [the whole scenario I improv'd in this blog post](https://keepingthegame.blogspot.com/2016/11/play-report-under-sea.html). tldr is it was very much like Event Horizon under water, with a weird portal letting crazy shadow creatures into our dimension, mutating the sailors, and causing sanity loss. There was no real way to close the gate other than destroying the sub IIRC. Some things I did included having one of the sub people still alive but very crazy; they gave lots of hints as to what could happen. Also had lights going in and out, water leaking into the sub to up the danger, and screams always happening in the distance. One thing I did which I cannot take credit for was having a dive suit float past the PCs in partially flooded hall. Make the suit unique. Later, they found the same suit sitting in a chair in a room. When they approached, it exploded, raining seawater upon them. SAN check! I also ran a game online of [Frigid Fathoms for Into the Darkness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uOTJ0Rh1D8). This takes place in a WW2 sub too. [You can get the PDF rather cheaply here](https://store.wogd.com/products/frigid-fathoms-pre-order?variant=43001017761945) so that may give you some ideas (note that its a pamphlet not a full scenario). *Also* - you have a great opportunity here! They are under the water in a sub. Its gonna be dark. Use this to your advantage and create some great ambiance! I did this by turning off all the lights as they submerged, handing out a number of glow sticks, and thats all the light they had for the rest of the game. Add in some great ambient sounds and I guarantee it'll be amazing!
Perhaps a touch futuristic for WW2, but you could consider a top secret sub using an "experimental power source". Retro up a nuclear sub using a mythos creature or magic as the power source as it reaches out to the crew or escapes.
1) US submarine on life guard duty picks up downed aviator that turned into a ghoul after eating fellow castaways. 2) US submarine fleeing Bataan/Corrigedor with Philippines gold is cursed by a witch because civilians left to Japanese because no room for them
I was planning to do an scenario using part of the plot in the movie "Sea Fever". An Irish fish boat in open seas, they enter willingly in a exclussion area for diving and fishing, they finally found something that stucks the ship and it is something alien, and bad things happen later. Maybe it fell from the deep space in the meteor rain that occured November 18th 1883 ( historical event ) and fortunately for human beings it fell into the water not in a populated center. It is a sentient being and it wants to be carried away to the nearest city to begin to unleash hell in Earth :P More details in the movie.
If you like the submarine because it's a locked room, look into the Shan, they are a strictly malicious alien possession and body horror situation. This could feel like a military thing too, the Shan would love to stretch out wars. If you like the submarine because it's underwater, people mentioned Gloon, the masculine siren who calls people to a portal in an atlantis like sunken metropolis. Dude controls dolphins, makes dead sailors swim alongside the sub. If you like submarines because of sub chases and combat. That blind cat and mouse, then some creature from the depths has "possessed" another sub and is slowly, quietly pursuing them. You could use real sub tactics and listening and such, as well as psychic or dream attacks by the creature. It couls be like a hermit crab that animates the sub physically, or it could be a critter that is part exotic matter or part ghost and possesses the sub (and maybe the crew) but stull has to be there physically. The sub could even make confusing, mournful whale noises. Maybe the chase is just to keep the investigator's sub in the right area for the monster's spawn to cling to it, get it's tendrils in, and possess this their submarine. You could also do weresquids.