Sea-dweller

The Sea-dwellers are a fictional species created by Robert Bloch and Henry Kuttner for their short story "The Black Kiss".
==Description==
The Sea-dwellers are a mysterious species that dwells in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Although poorly-known to modern Westerners, the Japanese have known about them for a long time. According to Dr. Makoto Yamada, they have inspired myths about Nereids, Gorgons, Mermaids, and other legendary beings.
Sea-dwellers are vaguely seal-like creatures with a long sinuous undulating neck and an inhuman head. They have scaly skin and veined gills, and are almost entirely white. Even their bulging eyes and strangely human-like lips are white, with no pigmentation whatsoever. Instead of a nose, the center of their faces is occupied by a mass of blue worm-like feelers. They have seal-like bodies with four limbs, which seem to be taloned flippers. They also have sharp teeth, befitting their carnivorous nature.
Sea-dwellers can swim prodigiously fast. Their language sounds like cackling laughter and grunts. Apparently, they can live for much longer than a human.
Similar to the Great Race of Yith, Yekubians, Tunnelers Below, and Minions of Othuum, Sea-dwellers are adept at mind-transference. They long to experience the world through the bodies of other creatures, such as humans, and will forcefully transfer their minds into human bodies, thus trapping the victim's consciousness in the body of the Sea-dweller. In most circumstances, however, forcefully taking over the mind of a healthy human is beyond their abilities. Although they can exert some level of psychic influence in dreams and lure people towards the sea (corresponding to the siren's song of legends), this is rarely enough to claim the victim's body as their own. Instead, they often seek out people who are drowning and incapable of resisting them. Dr. Yamada claims that stories about shipwreck survivors who were "saved" by mermaids are actually about people whose bodies were taken over by them.
After performing the mind-transference, the Sea-dweller's consciousness inhabits the human's body until its natural death, at which point the Sea-dweller returns to its own body, casting out the mind of the human, which has no living body left to return to, and therefore perishes. (: "The Black Kiss")
Category:Sapient Species
Category:Earth-Native Species
Category:Species Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works