Deepest one (SLASH'EM)

h deepest one
Difficulty	33
Attacks	Claw 3d6 physical, claw 3d6 physical, bite 5d6 physical

h deepest one
Difficulty	33
Attacks	Claw 3d6 physical, claw 3d6 physical, bite 5d6 physical
Base level	30
Base experience	1188
Speed	15
Base AC	−5
Base MR	70
Alignment	−9 (chaotic)
Frequency (by normal means)	1 (Very rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	3000
Nutritional value	500
Size	Huge
Resistances	cold resistance, poison resistance
Resistances conveyed	poison resistance (100%, SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM) poison resistance (+33%, SpliceHack and Hack'EM)
A deepest one: can swim. can survive underwater. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. has a thick hide. is poisonous to eat. is omnivorous. is an overlord 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. may turn against you when tame.
Reference	SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/monst.c#line843

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

A deepest one, h, is a type of monster that appears in the Lethe patch, SLASH'EM, SpliceHack, SlashTHEM, and Hack'EM. The deepest one is a type of huge amphibious humanoid that is an even tougher variant of the deep one and deeper one: they are strong like deeper ones and thick-skinned in addition to their increased size, and are overlords to their kind. Tame deepest ones may turn traitor.

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

A deepest one corpse is poisonous to eat. In SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, eating a deepest one corpse or tin always grants poison resistance, while in SpliceHack and Hack'EM doing so grants ¹⁄₃ (+33%) additional poison resistance.

Generation

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

Deepest 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

Deepest ones move faster than most unhasted heroes and hit very hard, but thankfully do not appear in large groups like deep ones and deeper ones do, and most heroes will be more than equipped to outmatch it in terms of AC and damage by the time that they normally encounter one. As the deepest one's damage is spread out over three attacks, high AC can be an effective defense against them. Despite being 150% heavier than deeper ones, deepest one corpses give the same amount of nutrition, and are practically impossible for heroes to move under normal circumstances with the possible exception of a hero in SlashTHEM that is polymorphed into most types of nymph.

As swimming monsters, deepest ones and groups of their smaller 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 deepest 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 ]