Editing LeviathanTempest:AppendThree (section)

== The Depths ==

===The Shallows ===

In the Shallows individual thoughts take life. The variety is staggering, every creature is unique, ranging from entirely natural looking sea life to alien forms never witnessed outside the tribe. Similar thoughts band together in enormous schools, shoals and colonies ranging from a few dozen members to swarms that stretch for miles. 

At a first glance the Shallows are beautiful, with brightly coloured creatures, graceful kelp fields and multihued piles of rocks and sand arranged in dazzling patterns all lit by a roiling light which seems to come from the water itself. Even at this low depth this beauty is just a façade (a popular theory says that like the minds that form it, the Shallows tries to put its best face forward). In the Shallows, the real dangers lay hidden in crevasses or disguised amongst the seaweed. 

Of all the Rift it is the shallows that closest resembles the web of life found in the ocean. Here thoughts of rest, of contentment or of safety form vast coral reefs floating free through the depths. Predatory swarms born from thoughts of hunger are a persistent danger while schools of fear and secrecy watch from hidden recesses. 

A “rift biologist” could spend lifetimes charting the interplay of species, wondering if understanding the ecosystem would reveal the inner workings of the mind, but to most Leviathans the Shallows, for all its teeming forms of life, is an empty place lacking the ancient lore and secrets found deeper within the Rift.

===The Second Depth ===
As a Leviathan swims deeper the light begins to dim. Here impulses make their home, it's a hostile dangerous place for the Tribe's impulses are cruel. Here a Leviathan must beware creatures that embody the tribe's desire for conquest, domination or combat. And yet not everything at this Depth is wicked, the impulse to nurture children, to forge community or find a higher purpose in life than the daily struggle to eat or be eaten, these are all represented here. 

The few surfaces that can be found here most often take the form of floating masses of bleached coral and polyps. While deadly to many of the smaller inhabitants of the First Depth, these tentacled creatures are mostly harmless to any Leviathan that brushes against them; even if it may sting a little. The creatures that inhabit this layer often look unfinished in some way. A long, lamprey-like creature with rows of eyes running along its back appears to lack any means of propelling itself despite the fact it is. A large, star shaped creature covered in flailing hooks might have a large hole that passes straight through the center of its body were a mouth or even organs might usually be. It is not uncommon to find creatures with complementary urges working together to become more complete. An entity created from an urge to protect a loved one might join up with a creature made of the urge to be comforted to become something larger and stronger.

Those Leviathans who seek this layer of the rift usually seek meditation on the impulses that drive them. They hope that by watching each impulse in isolation they will be able to recognise it in themselves and learn to master it; or they seek a positive impulse they can learn to copy and incorporate into their own being. For some it's a religious or spiritual endeavour, for others it's a desperate attempt to regain control over their lives. A successful voyage could justify buying a dot of Resolve, Composure or even Tranquillity. 

===The Third Depth ===

Going deeper into the Rift a Leviathan will encounter self images, if not his own than another's. It's a weird place where individual facets of a Leviathan's personality are distorted through perceptions and given form. One Leviathan's inflated self image becomes a gleaming tropical fish. Another imagines himself to be a just ruler of a noble heritage and so appears as a elegant sea serpent with a crown of golden scales, but he knows this image to be false and so the serpent is marked with weeping diseased sores and it's eyes have the glint of madness. 

Usually a Leviathan's self manifests as many independent beings, one is how he sees himself as a ruler, another is how he sees himself as a fighter, or a lover, or a scholar. Sometimes though a Leviathan's entire self image becomes one creature, these creatures vary hugely but always seem to be the sum of many parts. One looks like a ancient and predatory turtle, not too unlike the Leviathan who created it: The shell shows how he sees himself socially, hiding away from others, the jaws represent his guilt for the times he killed and are chipped, rotten things. Another composite takes the form of organs wrapped around a granite skeleton with flayed strips of flesh reaching out like tentacles to seek and devour. These composites are stronger and smarter than the other creatures of this Depth. 

The practical benefits for a Leviathan to find his own self image are limited though ripping apart a bad image might provide catharsis. Finding a rivals self image however can provide useful leverage, the roll to examine one is Wits + Empathy which may be contested by Resistance. This cannot reveal any information except how a Leviathan sees (this facet of) himself but in the hands of a crafty Leviathan that alone can be invaluable. Seeking out your friends can be just as useful, if they see themselves as alone or surrounded by hidden knives then maybe they might not be as friendly as you thought. Other Leviathan's look for family, with the family dynamics of the tribe discovering how your parents viewed their abilities as parents could be the closest thing to closure a Leviathan can get. 

A rare possibility is for a Leviathan to seek out the self image of long since dead members of the Tribe. It is rumoured that the Progenitors themselves have left remains here, ancient fossilised shards of a long dead monster god's identity stretching for miles, guarded by all manner of strange neuroses and the psychological complexes that gave this long fossilised self image meaning. Even if the Leviathan can't find a remnant of her Progenitor, the fossils or still living identity of a more recent ancestor can offer a glimpse of life in an earlier era. A successful discovery can provide a bounty of information or even the revelation about one's ancestry needed to increase Sheol. Few trips are successful for here every creature is unique and in this dangerous environment lifespans are not long. If a living Leviathan's self image is destroyed it will soon reform but a dead Leviathan's is lost to history.

===The Fourth Depth ===

The Fourth Depth is the Rift's treasure trove, or perhaps its garbage dump. While some of the greatest discoveries have been found elsewhere, it is the fourth depth which consistently delivers its spoils into the grasping fins of the tribe, at least those who can tell treasure from trash. Here the roiling light found above has faded to a dim twilight. Under this faded glow memories take form, but they're not alone. The strongest memories, the ones with great emotional worth are found alongside the psychological complexes that give it value. The desire to keep a guilt-ridden memory a secret snaps its jaws and spreads clouds of ink to protect its charge. Treasuring a memory of happier times forms symbiotic creatures who polish and cherish their charge. 

The memories themselves are slow, sedentary creatures, markers of the turtle, the shellfish and the coral are common. A memory's size is directly linked to how much information it contains--while the memory of a single Ritual will not be very large, a single creature can hold a bounty of closely related information. An old and experienced Leviathan's entire library of rituals could form a immense beast, teaming with symbiotic life, gracefully cutting through the depth. 

The largest and most prized memories, long since fossilised after the death of the Leviathan who created them, are invaluable treasure troves of knowledge and even the smallest memory may contain a priceless nugget of information. It is for this reason that Leviathans brave the Tempest. If you can find what you seek and defeat the creatures which guard it everything from occult knowledge, a taste of day-to-day life in the Tribe to the location of hidden temples is just waiting to be found.

===The Fifth Depth ===

The Fifth Depth is often called the Great Barrier Reef. Partly it's a winking allusion to the other Great Barrier Reef and partly it's a perfectly appropriate name. It's certainly great, it looks like a reef and most Leviathan's going this deep are heading all the way to the bottom, to these Leviathans the Fifth Depth is pretty much nothing more than a barrier. They're ignoring what might be the most useful layer of the Rift. 

The Fifth Depth contains the Tribe's views on itself. Not individual Leviathan's views, but the entire Tribe's views on the entire Tribe. In this it once again earns it's name as a barrier, the fifth depth is the dividing line between the individual and the collective. 

Even the most cursory exploration reveals a great truth about the Tribe, it has defined itself almost entirely by it's relationship to man. The Reef is comprised of untold trillions of living beings, most no bigger than a human finger nail. There's macroscopic amoebas, polyps, tiny fish, coral, crustaceans, aquatic insects, jellyfish, flatworms and infinitely more than can be listed here. To call the Reef static would be a joke, it's teeming with life and energy. The creatures that comprise it give birth, grow, fight, love, die. As representatives of humanity they run the full range of reaction to the Leviathan's presence: they are Beloved eagerly fawning and offering tiny gifts, they are Ahabs and Marduk swarming the larger Leviathan in their millions but mostly they are ordinary humans, seemingly unaware of the Tribe yet shuddering at the Wake's presence. Despite this few Leviathans feel superior to the almost microscopic creatures, not here. They're everywhere, they press against his skin, crawl over his lips, his nose, his eyes. There's no succour, no rest, it's enough to drive a Leviathan to madness, or at least to swim somewhere quieter. 

A Leviathan who wishes to pass through the barrier reef must navigate the many tunnels and caverns that exist within the Barrier Reef. The tunnels are incredibly claustrophobic and poorly lit – the light in the higher parts of the Rift has entirely faded by this point leaving only the Barrier's bioluminescent inhabitants to light the way. – One never knows when the walls might turn against you while hot jets of water and other hazards of the Tempest charge through. Despite this navigation is rather easy, providing a Leviathan sticks to routes that go down there she'll have little trouble finding her way with a minimum of backtracking. 

The real treasures are hidden in odd corners, where the oppressing mass of life fades away. Sometimes they're Doldrums sometimes not but their contents are always valuable. These caverns show how the Tribe sees itself on a different topic to humanity. Here a Leviathan can find where the Tribe considers itself deficient, to correct or exploit, or where the Tribe views itself with satisfaction. The insights gained might be enough to justify buying Sheol, it depends if they're too specific or not, and certainly justify buying Specialties in Social Skills and situational bonuses when the Leviathan brings them into a conversation, knowing exactly what the Tribe considers it's strength or it's weakness when other Leviathans agree but can't quite put their finger on it is a good way to become a respected leader in the Tribe.

===The Sixth Depth ===

As the explorer leaves the barrier reef behind she enters some of the deepest recesses of the Tribe's psyche. No light shines this deep save for what the Leviathan brings herself. The Rift is cold and empty. There are few creatures here and a Leviathan can travel for hours alone with nothing but her thoughts and the Tempest at it's most furious. Yet despite the loneliness there is an omnipresent sense of danger and paranoia, as though some ancient rift monster was waiting just around every corner. 

Should a Leviathan meet a native of these depths they are in danger, for the beasts here are the most ancient, cunning and deadly to be found within the Rift. They are the Tribe's instincts, what makes the Tribe Earth's Most Wicked. Here you can find The Sightless Hierophant, the Tribe's drive for worship tends to it's congregation of symbiotes. The Atoll lives here, few Leviathans who find her ever leave yet many seek her out. The Great Angler is the Bahamatuan's instinct to protect his followers. Each is a unique and terrible creature. It takes a powerful Leviathan to reach this deep into the Rift, and an even more powerful one to challenge the great beasts who lurk in the lightless depths.

===The Core ===

In the Core all space is compressed into one single point. An explorer can perceive absolutely everything in the core, and she can perceive it from every viewpoint: Every angle, every layer of skin, every bone and organ is laid bare. For a Leviathan this is, if not comfortable, at least comprehensible. To a mind outside the tribe, well it wouldn't be pretty. 

Spacial anomalies aside, the core isn't empty. Far from it. The core is the seabed to the Rift's ocean. It is enormous trenches and caverns carved in illegible alphabets, the real truths and history of the tribe lost to Leviathans, who could spend a lifetime trying in vain to read and reclaim them. 

It is a vast and featureless sandy seabed with broken only by slight inclines that hint at continent sized fossils burred beneath the surface. The true form of Tiamat and the nature of the tribe will be revealed to any Levithan that can dig through a thin layer of mud, silt and sand that is infinitely deep.

It is the inside of the Leviathan's own body: Where the tempest beats to the rhythm of an eleven chambered heart. Veins and arteries carry the divine Ichor, life itself turned cancerous, across impossible angles and through obscene geometries while never moving at all. Nerves reach across to strange outer places and return carrying forbidden lore and secrets best forgotten. The lost history of the tribe is written illegibly on the very neurons that hold memory. 

It is the home of the greatest and most terrible creatures that dwell within the Rift, and the home of the Deep Ones. Leviathans who were consumed by their divine nature, becoming primordial gods driven by the madness of the tempest. 

And it is so much more. An infinite number of infinite realms, teaming with life both majestic and terrible, unkowable secrets, and incomprehensible danger. There is nowhere the tribe has a better hope of learning their own nature than The Core, and there is nowhere more dangerous to the tribe than the very heart of their own watery realm. A Leviathan could become lost within The Core, until they came to believe that all the infinite universe is just part of their own divine body and all the people within are just their own thoughts. To be moulded or extinguished with an act of will. There are things living at the bottom of the rift that rank above gods themselves in the food chain, a Leviathan could be devoured alive by strange primordial monsters that may be his own thoughts turning upon him in a realm where the distinction between body and identity is fluid. 

Perhaps one day a Leviathan will master the core, live and grow for lifetimes at the heart of the rift until she returns to the Tribe bearing the truths of their natures. Such a Leviathan would have to be as mighty as the Progenitors themselves were fabled to be, the Tribe will have to wait a while longer. 

===== Sidebar: Navigating The Core =====

Despite the core's unique geometry navigation works the same as in the previous layers, with one noticeable difference. The dicepool is Wits + Composure. Navigating The Core is not about swimming, but changing one's perceptions. Focusing on one of the core's infinite aspects enough to see and sense it. Bonuses may apply when trying to "navigate" to something visually striking (or striking to any other sense) Trying to "navigate" to something that is intentionally attracting your attention always gives a +3 bonus. If it is attacking you that bonus increases to +5. 

No Leviathan can stay within The Core forever, at most they can remain for one chapter per success on a Sheol roll (minimum of one chapter). This is not the nature of The Core itself, rather in an infinite plain it is inevitable that sooner or later the Leviathan will encounter something so terrible that there is no possibility of escape or defence. What qualifies as impossibly dangerous to a Sheol one fledgling may be beneath the notice of a Sheol ten ancient, but even that titan has things it cannot hope to overcome.