The Skri‘zzk trench dwellers (Skrisszk)
"I tell ya!
I saw em, strange beings from the deep emerging in the night turning the sea black.
I spotted em with me very eyes!
Spawns of the deep hiding in the Sri'zzk trench!""Sure you aren't drunk, oldtimer?
Last night was a moonless night. How could you have seen anything at all?
Also . . . I can smell the liquor.""Glowy eyes, shimmering tentacles; strange lights!
The sea is haunted!"
Summary
In the sea surrounded by the isles of the Squa'osa Archipelago got located one particular spot a long time ago.
The levelled seafloor retreated making way for a trench reaching far into the underground.
Exploring the Skri'zzk trench dubbed after the first victim trying to venture into the unknown proved to be impossible with the technology of today.
Those, who prematurely returned, described the trench to be a labyrinth of caves one can't explore with a submarine alone.
The expeditioners additionally reported strange behaviour of the water.
Changing suddenly its pressure level, turning briefly pitch black in the worst situations, where sight was key to not impale the submarine. Myths rose, told by the survivors, that they spotted strange beings they couldn't identify at all.
Something or somebody was definitely down there in the deep unwilling to make contact with the above world.
With everybody demoralized by the many failures the last expedition crew ventured down into the deep 4761 AD. They never returned and neither their submarine nor the crew got ever located again. They vanished.
The trench got declared to be a danger for any living beings and got set off-limits for everybody; visitors and locals alike.
But curiosity remained and probes got sent down into the abyss. Not a single one ever returned in one piece, only demolished by what seemed to be claw-marks and acid. The only thing the many attempts to remotely unlock the trench's secrets were traces of radiation that got measured in the upper caves. Theories rose of disfigured monsters, who were living down there up to crazy theories, that the survivors of an atomic bomb eradicating the merfolk dynasty of Linnaei as a whole retreated in shame of their failures to a place, where only they can survive devolving into shadows of themselves, in the millennia since the catastrophic event happened.
In 4900 AD interest in the Skri'zzk trench diminished and fewer and fewer people tried their luck. The abyss successfully kept their secrets.
The levelled seafloor retreated making way for a trench reaching far into the underground.
Exploring the Skri'zzk trench dubbed after the first victim trying to venture into the unknown proved to be impossible with the technology of today.
Those, who prematurely returned, described the trench to be a labyrinth of caves one can't explore with a submarine alone.
The expeditioners additionally reported strange behaviour of the water.
Changing suddenly its pressure level, turning briefly pitch black in the worst situations, where sight was key to not impale the submarine. Myths rose, told by the survivors, that they spotted strange beings they couldn't identify at all.
Something or somebody was definitely down there in the deep unwilling to make contact with the above world.
With everybody demoralized by the many failures the last expedition crew ventured down into the deep 4761 AD. They never returned and neither their submarine nor the crew got ever located again. They vanished.
The trench got declared to be a danger for any living beings and got set off-limits for everybody; visitors and locals alike.
But curiosity remained and probes got sent down into the abyss. Not a single one ever returned in one piece, only demolished by what seemed to be claw-marks and acid. The only thing the many attempts to remotely unlock the trench's secrets were traces of radiation that got measured in the upper caves. Theories rose of disfigured monsters, who were living down there up to crazy theories, that the survivors of an atomic bomb eradicating the merfolk dynasty of Linnaei as a whole retreated in shame of their failures to a place, where only they can survive devolving into shadows of themselves, in the millennia since the catastrophic event happened.
In 4900 AD interest in the Skri'zzk trench diminished and fewer and fewer people tried their luck. The abyss successfully kept their secrets.
Merfolks?
It is no secret, that the current population of merfolks is in an odd place. Their count is only in the thousands and they still managed to not go extinct since their kingdom fell aeons ago. In the 4760s rumours rose of them not being what they claim to be. Mers got called out for having an unusually high amount of wounds spread across their whole body. Wounds that got burned out to prevent stuff growing out of it?Mutations?
And why keep Merfolk families their offspring away for multiple weeks after birth? Never go to any hospitals but private ones?
This strange behaviour, which got up until then brushed away as odd but non-harmful behaviour by minorities, got in the 60s connected to a popular theory of the expeditioners of the Skri'zzk Trench.
These reports of beings looking like mutated merfolk living in the abyss under Squa'osa might have been only reported by survivors suffering from nitrogen narcosis, the rapture of the deep, but they got used by extremists as reasons to oppress the Mers living within their societies.
It was not until the Eternal Counsel itself leaked writings from their very own library located on Konesans a few months after first incidents of discrimination rose.
Documents disconfirming possible relations between the Merfolk societies and the 'trench dweller'.
Thanks to divine intervention the rising discrimination got snuffed out before the first serious cases happened.
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