Editing LeviathanTempest:ArchivedCosmology (section)

=== Models of what's there ===

"You could look at movies such as The Abyss. Make it so that the deeper you go, the more primoridal the Earth has stayed; creatures like giant squid, crazy weird anglerfish, and other monstrosities on the level of the Leviathans' gigantic forms exist there, maybe even Leviathan-created gathering places where, through some eldritch magic, you can shift back to your less-than-monstrous form."

"About the Leviathan Otherworld (I favor calling it the Deep, for reasons you'll read below)...

The Spirit World is ultimately largely bidimensional, i.e. flat. The Hedge is a bit more complicated, but its chaotic nature makes it essentially directionless.

The Leviathan Otherworld has to be three-dimensional. You should be able to go front and back, left and right, but the most important travel you can do should be up or down.

In fact, depth can gradually subsume the other dimensions. That is, the closer you are to the surface of the Deep, the more space there is to do your own thing, almost overlapping with the real world. But whoever goes to the bottom will meet anyone else also striving for the bottom, and at the deepest of the deep, all of space is basically one point.

Cthulhu may, or may not, be sleeping at this point."

"Also as relevant as Depth (related? not related?) should be Tempest (Storm? Chaos?), how chaotic, raging, and maddening, mutating and/or soul-affecting the Storm of the Primordial Ocean is. Also, (related? not related?) is the Brine, the level of sickness, brackish, pollution of the water. Also, "Glow"? The amount of light and heat, maybe?

There are likely Currents that aren't entirely due to the Tempest, as well. Natural currents. Where do they flow? How are they (and all other attributes of the Deep) related to the Mortal Seas and Lands?

If the Deep (Primal/Primordial/Old - Sea/Ocean/Water) is the other world, then there should be islands of rock and substance in it. But what are they made of? How about slain Primordial God Monsters (the masters?), or perhaps the Bones of Tiamat herself? Islands of a great Depth are like meteors in the blackest of space, wereas Islands of a lesser Depth are like Islands in our world, and may in fact phase in and out of the Gatewaters into the regular old mortal world if the stars are right (see the story "Dagon" and R'lyeh? as well as Avalon Lumuria and the Burmuda Triangle stuff?).

At the "Surface" of the Deep, you're not in the mortal world, yet, but it might be easier to cross over not for Leviathans, but for MORTALS. Ships in the Burmuda Triangle often find their way onto the surface of the Deep. At the Surface, you do see the Above- the Sky of the Deep's dimension. Which I'd motion is almost ALWAYS storming or at the very least foggy, thundering in the distance, or heavily clouded. Sometimes at night you can see the alien stars and Moons (plural!), but all told, no Leviathan, Naga, Typhon, Armiger, Sister has seen the Indigo Sun from the surface of the Deep since Marduk... The Rememberers Remember, but that's what they do.

To distinguish the Surface of the Deep from the surface of our world, I'd say that it's not as... defined? The water keeps getting less dense like it does in Depth, but there's not as much of a clear demarcation between liquid and vapor? The whole Surface of the Deep isn't Fog, and you can breach and swim in it like regular water, and their are splashes and tides, but it'd be an easy way to tell the difference.

There are flying things that live in the Deep's Sloudy Sky. Echidna that stuff again, maybe? The Islands that break the surface host cities of thralls, cults, maybe Lahmasu and Leviathans. Naga? Annunaki? The rare very big islands that break the surface may host entirely non-aquatic or non-draconic primordial beasts. Other Cryptids?

Leviathans can walk around on the Deep's Islands fine, but they have to content with the hostile landscape and indigenous creatures.

There's nothing stopping a Leviathan from breaching the Deep's Surface (different from the Gatewaters) and going up into the sky, if they have the means such as blasphemous leathery wings or some kind of Tower of Babel or hang-glider. But like I said it's more often than not at least raining or windy or foggy, if not outright Tempest. But then they have to deal with the Flying Ones."

"The Deep should have Icebergs, or even whole frozen regions. Also parts of it should boil due to the Tempest or maybe Glow?"

"I motion that the Deep does not even roughly resemble Earth's landscape or even size, like the Spirit World Shadow does."

"what lives in the Deep?

I'm still trying to sort it out in my head, but here's what I've been thinking: the deeper you get, the harder it should be to go even lower, like in real oceans. That's the sort of mechanics that already exists with the morality scale in WOD. It's easy to go from 10 to 9, and pretty hard to go from 3 to 2. And you can get derangements while doing it.

So why not reuse a similar mechanic, with a similar set of rules, derangements and all? What if the Deep was actually a mental construction? Not cultural/intellectual like the Astral realms, and not platonic ideals like the Hisil, but a sort of deep id thing? It ties in with the madness and the primordial themes of L:tT.

It would explain why the suface is wide and varied: after all, all the leviathans and their cousins have their own minds and varied points of view, but it narrows down conceptually as you go deeper inside the monster side.

The "Cthulhu" that sits at the pointy bottom of the Deep is the Ur-mind, the original life-force that powers Leviathans. It is also entirely alien to the human mind. 

The various creatures and gibbering things that populate the deep are the cephalopod equivalent of neuroses, unresolved fears, and conflicting points of view on the world. 

The islands in the Deep are indeed made of the remains of Primordial Gods, but more specifically, they are the remains of their identities, their senses of self, rock-hard truths in an ocean of consciousness. That means they sometimes hold very old information or memories, that can be mined there.

It also solves the problem of why Leviathans would go into the deep. They shouldn't cross it often, like werewolves or changelings, because there are actually few things of worth there and many, many dangers, not least the risk of losing track of your humanity as you descend deeper. They should only go there when there is no choice. It should be a momentous event."