Deeper one (SLASH'EM)

h deeper one
Difficulty	18
Attacks	Claw 3d4 physical, claw 3d4 physical, bite 4d6 physical

h deeper one
Difficulty	18
Attacks	Claw 3d4 physical, claw 3d4 physical, bite 4d6 physical
Base level	15
Base experience	388
Speed	12
Base AC	0
Base MR	30
Alignment	−7 (chaotic)
Frequency (by normal means)	2 (Quite rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	2000
Nutritional value	500
Size	Large
Resistances	cold resistance, poison resistance
Resistances conveyed	poison resistance (100%, SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM) poison resistance (+22%, SpliceHack and Hack'EM)
A deeper one: can swim. can survive underwater. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. is poisonous to eat. is omnivorous. is a lord to its kind. is normally generated hostile. can follow you to other levels. is strong. likes gold. likes gems. can pick up weapons and food. can pick up magical items. has infravision. can be seen through infravision. normally appears in small groups. may turn against you when tame.
Reference	SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/monst.c#line834

For the monster in dNetHack and its derivatives, see deeper one (dNetHack).

A deeper one, h, is a type of monster that appears in the Lethe patch, SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM. The deeper one, h, also appears in SpliceHack. The deeper one is a type of large amphibious humanoid that are tougher variants of the deep one: they are strong in addition to their increased size, and are lords to their kind. Tame deeper ones may turn traitor.

Deeper ones have two claw attacks and a strong bite attack, and possess poison resistance and cold resistance along with a vulnerability to fire.

A deeper one corpse is poisonous to eat. In SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, eating a deeper one corpse or tin always grants poison resistance, while in SpliceHack and Hack'EM doing so grants ²⁄₉ (+22%) additional poison resistance.

Generation

Randomly-generated deeper ones are always created hostile, and can appear in large groups. A deep one can grow up into a deeper one, and a deeper one can grow up into a deepest one—in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, the change in body size for each growth stage will not break any currently worn suit of armor.

Deeper ones can appear among the random h that are part of the first quest monster class for Cavepeople and make up ²⁴⁄₁₇₅ of monsters that are randomly generated on the Caveman quest.

Strategy

Deeper ones move as fast as most unhasted heroes do and have the potential to hit quite hard—they can also appear in large groups, making them deadly if they catch the hero in an open area and surround them. Players are advised to stick to corridors when fighting deeper ones, and encounters on earlier floors may require several rounds of fight-retreat upstairs-heal for a hero to take out the entire group. As the deeper one's damage is spread out over three attacks, high AC of -10 or more can be an effective defense against them. Deeper ones leave corpses that are nutritious for meat-eating heroes and pets with poison resistance, but they are also very heavy: getting the most sacrifice value out of a deeper one horde all but requires killing them on or near the altar, which in turn requires good AC and damage output.

As swimming monsters, groups of deeper ones and their kin are very likely to generate on the Plane of Water, and may warrant a preventative genocide upon entering the level in order to avoid being thoroughly swarmed—if the hero is not a dwarf or hobbit, then a blessed scroll of genocide may be worth considering if they have not already used one to eliminate mind flayers.

History

The deeper one first appears in the Lethe Patch, and is added to the base bestiary of SLASH'EM.

Origin

The Deep Ones are creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The beings first appeared in Lovecraft's 1931 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth, but were already hinted at in the 1917 short story "Dagon". The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy appearance, and the males would regularly mate with human women against their will, creating societies of hybrids along the coast.

Despite being primarily marine creatures, Deep Ones can survive on land for extended periods of time and possess biological immortality, never dying except by accident or violence. The Deep One portrayed in Dagon is of a vastly larger size than the roughly human-scaled beings seen in Innsmouth, and the wider Cthulhu Mythos implies that Deep Ones continuously grow throughout their lives, hence their size changing when they grow up in SLASH'EM and other variants.

Encyclopedia entry

For eighty thousand years Pth'thya-l'yi had lived in Y'ha-nthlei,
and thither she had gone back after Obed Marsh was dead.
Y'ha-nthlei was not destroyed when the upper-earth men shot death
into the sea. It was hurt, but not destroyed. The Deep Ones
could never be destroyed, even though the palaeogean magic of the
forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them. For the present
they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would
rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved.

[ The Shadow Over Innsmouth, by H.P. Lovecraft ]