#Aquatic Horror

[goryhorroor]

horror sub-genres • aquatic horror

aquatic horror is something that draws its power from the sea and the terrors that lurk within it. sometimes outlandishly fictitious, sometimes something that genuinely exists in the world, the variety of aquatic monsters is as vast as the sea itself. some scarier are than others, but all equally utilizing that same fear of the unknown: the fear of that what swims underneath your feet. thalassophobia helps create an environment that amplifies the fear. a watery location of horror movie does not equal aquatic horror as they can fall under other sub-genres.

[interact-if]

Hi I was wondering if you had any sea based horror recs.

Hi Anon,

While we have a few rec lists for Horror, we didn't find many for Sea-based ones:

Bycatch by VOWTogether

The Edge of Dawn by @elysianfiction

No Demo:

Let Me Drown by @letmedrown-if

Waterbound by Waterbound-Interactive

[girlfromthecrypt]

The sea breeds giants. So did I.

(TW: forced impregnation; non-graphic, basically implied. Also non-human.)

When I was young, I became aware of a peculiar talent of mine. When in the sea, I can dive as deep as I want without ever having to come up for air. The pressure seems to have no effect on me, either. The ocean turned into my playground.

I was born and bred in a small coastal town. Growing up, I came to know by heart the sound of the waves crashing against the rugged shore and the smell of salt carried across the land by every breeze, hanging in the air with every breath. My parents were never reluctant to let me go swimming by myself. Whether that was out of faith and trust in nature or simple negligence I'll never know, but I was grateful for it nonetheless. I wouldn't have had it any other way. When I went down to the beach, I would always go alone. I'd always return to the same desolate little spot that was all my own. Nobody ever found me there. Nobody ever wandered by.

I started, quite literally, testing the waters. I'd stay under for longer each time, exploring new depths at every opportunity. The further I swam, the more I saw of the world below. The masses of water didn't crush me as they would have a similarly unprotected body.

The volume of air in my lungs never seemed to decrease with my descension, and I never felt so much as a hint of pain when surfacing. I could open my eyes and my vision would be just as good as on land. Furthermore, I could swim faster than what should have been possible. Occasionally, I'd get so lost in the motion that I'd swim for a couple minutes only to then come up, turn and find that I couldn't see the shore anymore.

I did encounter a bunch of creatures that had intentions of eating me, but I was able to escape every last one of them, always getting away without so much as a scratch. Sometimes, I actually found it exhilarating. I know just how dumb I was being, willfully putting myself into danger, but at the time, I felt invincible.

There I was, a tiny human exploring the dark, vast expanses others were so intimidated by—all on my own. It was a deeply spiritual experience. I was by myself, sometimes so deep underwater that I could hardly see the light from above at all anymore. It was these pitch-black spaces that truly intrigued me. While I could see much better in the darkness than most people, it was still kind of… off-limit. These areas somehow struck me as distinctly more threatening, more dangerous and unnerving than just the wide, open sea.

They were yawning, abysmal maws, practically brimming with mystery. Then one day, I just… did it. I swam further and dove deeper than ever before. I plunged into the darkness, into the murky cold. I had never minded the freezing temperatures, and I didn't now. I was solely focused on what was below, without a clue on what I expected to find. I figured there had to be something amazing. Or perhaps there was nothing there for me to see. Maybe I was simply doing it to prove to myself that I could go the distance.

Perhaps I really didn't think I would discover much. Which made it all the more surprising when I spotted a greenish-blue glow in the distance. It immediately drew my attention and I started moving towards it, slower than before but just as deliberate. While a primal sense of dread began to creep further up in my chest with every stroke that carried me closer to the unearthly light, my curiosity far outweighed my apprehension. The colder and deeper it got, the brighter it became. Where in the world was it coming from?

I kept steadfastly heading towards it, until I could finally make out the source. When I realized it, I stopped, freezing mid-movement. Floating in the dark masses of water, seemingly endless widths and depths both above and below me, I was hovering motionlessly in the void of space. And staring at me from within the blackness beneath was an enormous glowing eye.

It sat within a horrid face, above a mouth so big it could have easily swallowed me whole, and a dozen people more. It opened its maw a mere slither, revealing rows upon rows of needle teeth, each one longer than I was tall. The body this head was attached to was so gargantuan that the better part of it remained invisible to me, hidden in the nebulous spheres of the bottom. I cannot describe to you the fear that I felt in that moment.

It wasn't just the terrifying sight in front of me, not just the teeth and glowing eyes; it was the sheer size of this monstrosity. I suddenly felt like I was merely a grain of sand on a big, long beach—a tiny speck among billions so easily carried away with each lap of the tide. If I was the grain, then this was the wave. Hulking, mighty, boundless; unaware of such a minute little being as myself, unaware and uncaring. If this creature were to swallow me, I would forever be forgotten, and it would live on none the wiser of my panic in the face of its vastness.

I stayed perfectly still, floating in place despite the icy currents pushing and pulling at my body. Stayed perfectly still, my blood frozen, my heart in my stomach as the snake's giant eyes bored into me. I knew then and there that I had been wrong.

This being was aware of me. And when I heard the voice in my head, the tiniest of whispers, I realized that it was even more than that.

"You are very small for a thing with purpose."

I don't know how I responded. I suppose I simply thought the words, but somehow, the Ancient did hear my question.

"What are you?" I asked the thing in the dark.

"I am."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"Not if I can help it."

Despite the relatively soothing nature of these words, there was an undertone to the murmur they were spoken in. There was calculation there, raw and vicious.

"Will you let me go?"

"Afterwards."

I kept staring, my thoughts racing as I feverishly contemplated whether to flee or to linger. Something told me that if I moved a single muscle, I would be sucked into the space behind those needle teeth within a heartbeat.

"I have a need for you."

My throat constricted when a strange fog seemed to ooze from the creature's body; swirling, misty tendrils mixing with the water and enveloping me in their strange pale haze.

"What is this?" my mind cried out in terror.

I struggled, kicking and flailing to maneuver my rigid form out of this strangely contaminated zone. For the first time in my life, swimming did not come effortlessly. Through my clouded vision, I could see the unearthly green light slowly fading as the Ancient shut his eyes, masses of water shifting as it sank down to the very bottom once more.

I was then hurled up to the surface by a current that dragged me almost the entire way back to shore. I was swept onto dry land by the waves, and on the beach I laid, trembling in the summer sun as my eyes gazed into the far too bright sky. When I was found, I was burnt and blistered and covered in my own vomit. A group of surfers happened upon me by chance and took me to a nearby hospital. It took three of them to carry me. My stomach had swollen to the size of a beach ball.

The doctors couldn't explain it. Neither to myself nor my parents. Without ever having known intimate human contact, I was pregnant. The unborn baby was growing rapidly. I was rendered immobile by its weight and size merely three days after the conception. A week later, I gave birth. I don't remember any of it, having been sedated during the process. But I can still see the faces of the medical staff looming over me, the last image from before I fell asleep etched into the folds of my brain. Their eyes wide open, features contorted in shock and disbelief.

My daughter was released into the sea a couple weeks after her birth. I hadn't yet regained my ability to walk, so my father carried me down to the shore to watch as my baby slithered into the shallows and disappeared in the waves. During her brief time on land, her weight had already doubled and tripled. Nobody had any idea what to do with her besides letting her go.

It's been two years since then. I haven't set foot into the water since I met the Ancient, and I avoid the beach however I can. But yesterday was different. Yesterday, something enormous washed ashore. I recognized the Ancient by the form of his severed head and his lifeless round eyes. I recognized the father of my child. There was no trace of the rest of his body, except the red that tainted the shallows. I don't know if the Ancient had envisioned this end for himself, but whatever the case, I felt light as a feather gazing upon his mangled remains.

Thank you, baby girl.

______

OOC: Hi! Followers of mine who have migrated from nosleep likely know this story already, but since I'm still getting the hang of this whole Tumblr-thing, I figured I'd post it here, too. Basically as a test, though I guess I'll pull a lot of other stories from there over here, too. Either way, this is a a dark one I'm rather proud of. I hope you guys enjoyed!

[ecoevoexo]

wow! all of a sudden i'm a published writer!

i've had two stories come out in print in the past three days.

check out "Everything You Dump Here Ends Up in the Ocean", a story about lesbians, pollution, mad science, and the end of the world as we know it in the aquatic horror collection Fish Gather to Listen from Horns and Rattles Press

and also! check out "A Mistake You Can't Ever Come Back From" in the collection That Old House: The Bathroom presented by Voices From The Mausoleum

finally, reminder that every tuesday Hungry Shadows Press is posting (for free) a 100-word story for Deadly Drabbles Tuesday, and you can catch my story "Bare" on December 5!

thank you and have an eerie good time!

[cannibalspicnic]

I love horror so much it is my comfort genre

[brokehorrorfan]

Bright Light Media, the makers of Mixtape Massacre, are back with Float: From the Deep. The aquatic horror survival tabletop game finds 2-5 players lost at sea, battling creatures, and attempting to survive.

The game includes 102 Out of the Blue cards, 30 health tokens, 25 water cubes, 20 Castaway cards, 20 Daily Status cards, 20 From the Deep cards, eight This Is the End cards, eight Leader cards, 5 Danger Meter trackers, 5 player stations, three dice, one calendar tracker, game board, and rule book.

Float: From the Deep is available now for $39.99. A bundle that includes a booster pack, mini upgrades, red dice, and an exclusive From the Deep card is also available for $70.96.

When a mysterious explosion sends a cruise ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean, five groups of survivors band together in lifeboats and set sail in search of land.

But what seemed like an easy expedition, quickly goes south with food and water shortages, treacherous storms, and desperation taking over. Worse yet, the creatures from below are beginning to surface... and feed.

Float: From the Deep is a fast-paced tabletop game where players find themselves lost at sea, battling ferocious creatures from below and attempting to outsmart and outlast their fellow players. With only 7 days to make it to the island in the foggy distance, its sink, swim, or be devoured by the next monster from the deep.

[ashersbraincell]

“Come with me to the deep dark emptiness,

to try to understand it’s ways

and though it may take our children,

you’ll understand the beauty of the stinging burning pain that will rain down upon us

As it fills the deep dark emptiness

As you learn to fly

As you learn there is another layer to reality”

had a very odd sort of eldritch aquatic themed dream that inspired this little cryptic free-writing piece

If you’re curious at the “end” of the dream it turned out it was a movie I was watching, though most of it I experienced from the POV of a father, who finds himself dragged in by his wife into the business of preparing “the emptiness”(a dark, void-like lake) for “the arrival”, by removing various aquatic life from the lake, which then attacked our two boys, who seemingly were erased from existence by the end of the film. “The arrival” consisted of many a huge glowing jellyfish raining down slowly into the lake from the sky, but as this happened we learned that the lake we were standing in was just a separate layer of water and that we too were submerged, and could thus swim upwards towards the sky, avoiding the stings of the jellyfish.

[bornulhuu]

Bhelnesse is an ancient deity of the water. Whatever body of water it resides in, is of twisted space and time. As when entered it's infinitely larger and darker than from the outside. Prehistoric and future sea-life swims in the murk and Bhelnesse swims on towards some unknown goal or destination. It sometimes communicates to people through dreams, calling them to join it. If they do, they are turned into aquatic reptile-men and swim alongside it, serving it, cleaning it, bringing it prey. And when its their time to expire, their god devours them.

[igorlevchenko-blog]

Icewind dale: Portrait of an aquatic troll (a.k.a. scrag).

A scrag is a marine troll, a gilled form of the common troll. A scrag is found in a large body of water, as it needs considerable room to hunt. The coloration of a scrag runs from blue-green to olive, and its forelimbs are shorter and weaker than ordinary trolls. The freshwater scrag is smaller than a normal troll and has heavy scales and less formidable claws, but its enlarged lower jaw bears many small, very sharp fangs.

[ketchupandaxe]

hello ! could you do jellyfish npts ? like the sea creature

*Jellyfish NPTS!

Names/Nicknames

Jello, Jell, Glen, Gell, Jelly, Veil, Bubble, Jule, Gem, Sea, Sean, Shaun, Aqua, Reef, Coral, Moon, Zap, Ocean.

Pronouns

Jelly/Jellyself, Fish/Fishself, Jellyfish/Jellyfishself, Ocean/Oceanself, Sea/Seaself, Reef/Reefself, Coral/Coralself, Bubble/Bubbleself, Zap/Zapself, Sting/Stingself, 🪼/🪼self,⚡️/⚡️self, 🫧/🫧self, 🌊/🌊self.

Titles

Electric (pronoun), One Who Resides In The Ocean, One Who Lives In The Sea, Electrifying, Swimming One, Jellyfish Soul.

[silvantransthranduiltrash]

Hc that different types of elves are able to use magic in different ways/to different levels.

I will be focusing more on the avari and silvan elves as i am known to do:

Magic, in this sense, is more like the life force that flows through everything and everyone. Elves generate an extra amount of it which, they then can use through pathways in their body. Humans and dwarves, etc, are rarely able to use magic to an effective result bc they don’t generate as much as elves and aren’t built with the pathways to access it, though dwarves can occasionally channel the magic around them into the objects they create.

Silvans actually have a surprisingly high level of magic usage, even more than their valinorian counterparts, though most of it is passive. A surprising amount of people will hear “silvans can communicate with trees” and then never proceed to link it to magic usage. Of course it varies silvan to silvan, but a well trained silvan can actively use magic to protect and defend and lay down wards. Their link with the world around them through trees also allows them to boost their own magic when they need it. It’s because of this especially why silvans do not like being underground. Thranduil and Legolas are actually rather adept magic users, though they don’t show it off.

There’s also a type of elf that cannot use magic at all. These are the Fawneli elves. They are considered the strongest elves in the world, to the point they can pick up boulders the size of a palace and toss them about without breaking a sweat. They’re fast and their hardy. They are also referred to as “mini-giants” because it is as if someone took a giant and shrunk them, but kept all their strength in tact. However, in return for this strength, they are unable to use even the slightest bit of magic and are completely cut off from it. The Fawneli are mostly desert elves, and nomads. They don’t have a governing body and sadly most of them were hunted down and enslaved, which was made easier due to their vulnerability to magic of all kinds. There’s only a few dozen left in the world by the end of the third age.

If silvans were magic positive, and the Fawneli were magic neutral, than the Okreans are magic negative. Not only are they capable of seeing through any magic disguise of anyone, including maia and vala, but they are also mostly immune to any and all magic thrown at them. Whenever they are around, magic actively deteriorates. As a result, they are elves of science. And, as a result, the Valar do not like the Okreans as they see them as a threat bc of this immunity. Because the Vala saw them as a threat, they massacred the Okreans, with Tulkas and Orome themselves coming down to kill off these elves, during the second age. Only 8 Okreans surivied, including Kleoyia (though she was only 8 at the time), and they were cursed by the vala to live in agony untill they either killed themselves, or lost themselves to madness.

The Atric Elves share their magic with the forms of beasts. Individually, they cannot cast it the way most do, but rather they obtain the form of animals with their magic and get power through that. The Atric elves live in the the far north, mostly in the arctic circle, and thus tend to share the forms of arctic animals, whether they be from the land, air, or sea.

Aquatic elves are, as the name describes, elves that live in bodies of water, emphasis on in. Way back at the lake, they decided that the water was much safer than land, and so they took a plunge and never looked back. Aquatic elves are often refered to as mer-folk or sirens. Parts of their body take on shapes of aquatic life, and they come in many shapes and sizes. They have abit of a rivalry with the Atric elves, specifically the Atric elves that shape-shift into aquatic animal forms, as they compete for food. The silvans, however, they have a good trade relationship with. The Aquatic elves will provide silvans with good seafood, and in turn the silvans will give them a lot of land meat and vegetables the Aquatic elves can’t reach.

Sucian elves are probably the most common of Avari elves. They are also referred to as spiritual elves. Their magic mostly comes from their own power, and many will use tools in order to aid themselves. There are two major Sucian elf empires: the Bali’tsa empire and the Qitian empire. What is unique about the Sucian elves is that they can pass on their power to others, though it is extremely difficult. It is also the most diverse of the magic types, and tends to be more unique to each family.

Lastly you have the Agpetian elves, who get their power assigned to them, assumably by Eru himself. As far as i’m aware there’s no rhyme or reason as to why they get the magic they get, but when a child becomes 100 days old, their magic will display itself. As a result, they tend to be a little more…. Religious? Than other avari, though they do not worship or care for the valar at all.

[p4ll3t]

been thinking up some more rotpocalypse scenarios with my own scugs and environments after the new video/animation on Rotpocalypse

[maelstromshelm]

Spooktober: Ghost ft. My rpg protag’s mother

Aquatic worms go crazy I fear

[cfstuff]

28: Bloop Creature

[cragelekker]

An infected Piscciss Volann can swallow a whole prey alive, taking it to the nest to have more hosts, in addition to being able to tear flesh with its several layers of teeth like a blender. Not even land is safe, as these monsters can now crawl out of the water

[kittypyuun]

Yall wanted dondon but TOO BAD!!!!!! SURPRISE LEON MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!!!!!