Lady of the Deep

The Lady of the Deep is a Great Old One that is an amalgam of an ancient elemental beast, potent primal magics, and the willing host (or hosts) that are given to the beast as tribute. She resides in the deepest depths of the Material Plane of Urz, so deep that it borders the Elemental Chaos and the manifestation of Earth.
== Description ==
The Lady of the Deep is a massive worm-like creature measuring some 600 feet in length, though it is typically only ever seen erupting from earth or coming up from the depths of a vast body of water. It has one massive maw with a tongue and two smaller jawless toothed, funnel-like sucking mouths on either side of the main mouth. The scales of the creature fluctuate in color from deep reddish browns to vibrant aquamarines and blues depending on what environs the Lady is found in. Within the main mouth of the creature is a massive shapeshifting tongue that is most often found in a feminine shape with the face of a merfolk woman and a halfling's face grafted to the back of the head. The tongue serves as the proboscis of the creature and can web out into a web of extensions to sweep a wide area for food. The tongue itself appears to be the true focus of the life of the creature itself, as examples in the past have shown that even bisecting the creature has done little to slow it. In fact, the creature is possessed of a hyperactive regeneration on par with the most ancient of trolls and its widely believed the Lady has been segmented into multiples of herself at various points across her long history. 
=== Worshippers ===
The cults of the Lady of the Deep are most common in areas near large deserts or mountain ranges or coastal regions. They form groups that will meet in a subterranean location that is used to perform eldritch rites in hopes of gaining the favor or attention of the Lady herself. Throughout history, a number of cataclysmic events have been blamed on an emergence of the Lady or a vestige of her. Most recently, a vestige was freed from a chronomantic prison by Conglomerate operators and led to the destruction of the city Panacea.
==== Tehrmalia's Pact ====
The most common method of forging a pact with the Lady is the consumption of one of the magical pearls or scales that are left in her wake. Doing so with the goal of becoming servant to and a conduit of power for the Lady leads to changes in the pact-bearers physiology. The most common change is a single eye being changed into a silvery pearl, but sharpened teeth or hardened carapace have also been seen in some.
== History ==
=== Early Life ===
The entity known in the current age as the Lady of the Deep began as a primordial being of primal consumption. It predates the modern concept of history, but ancient cave markings depict the creature very similar to the mark that symbolizes her to this day. Other examples of the offspring and relatives of the primordial being have been found in the archaeological record and it is classified as being a Kirminth, the prehistoric ancestor to the purple worms of modern day. 
=== The Ritual ===
During the Lost Age, a tribe of death-worshipping zealots found a soul well in a rich and bountiful valley and perverted it with the magics taught to them by demons. They acted on behalf of an ancient demon that desired nothing more than to consume. It was the goal of the zealots to have their leader sacrificed in the ritual, allowing them to become one with the primordial worm and act as a source of destruction to be wielded by the zealots. The ritual was stopped by champions of the valley. In the end, the champions went their separate ways after this victory. One champion passed from Urz into a demiplane that would later be dropped deep into the Abyss. One champion went on to teach the importance of teamwork to her people. Another champion continued on to teach the will of the ancestors to her people. Another champion sang her song so proudly she was immortalized by time itself. Yet another went on to become a beacon of early mysticism related to the sidereal powers. And the last of them remained in the broken form of the worm, mourning the loss of her mother. It was this last champion who, by powerful emotional response and self-determination, joined with the broken body of the primordial worm to form the Lady of the Deep.
=== Pattern of Destruction ===
Throughout history, there are tales of attacks by a massive sea serpent upon ships and in some cases even entire fleets. The denizens of the Foul Deep find massive tunnelways left behind by the Lady and refer to them as the Lady's Road. Her attacks and rampages are entirely random and horrifically quick. Attempts by the Grey Order to identify the near-divine nature of the attacks always lead to the aftermath of the attacks, as the Lady would retreat to hid deep in the borderlands of Urz and the Elemental Chaos and was undetectable by even the most powerful magics. 
In this way, she became more of a folk story or myth than a real danger to be feared. That is to say true of any who did not come into direct contact with her. The survivors of such attacks were sometimes seen as mad or false themselves. In some instances, her attacks would wipe entire settlements off the map and erase them from history. The first worshippers of the Lady of the Deep were people who had seen her penchant for destruction first hand and be left in awe of it so fully they formed rites and structure to the worship of her. This worship soon became a means for the Lady to connect with these people and form pacts to have a more direct means of guiding her most loyal worshippers.
Throughout the ages, the Lady would shed her skin. This would involve the sentient aspects of the Lady leaving the massive worm exterior and then entering into a specially bred larvae of the primordial worm and regrowing to her full strength. This process would take place every thousand or so years and was the main reason she would surface, destroy things, and take on followers.
=== Shedding Her Skin ===
In the year 1055 CA, the Lady of the Deep attacked a number of merfolk settlements in the waters around the Broken Blade Coast of Ocyria. She had been summoned to do so by her most devout followers, a merfolk cult in the Tidewatcher tribe of coral merfolk, of which Nimalia Tidewatcher's parents were a part of. In an attempt to widen her influence and to find a means to be reborn, the Lady granted her powers throughout the region, spurring a number of warlocks to be formed with her granted power and given the edict to seek out giant pearls. One such warlock was Terry Silvereye. The followers of the Lady in the region had been motivated by her arrival to continue the right and be involved in her metaphorical rebirth. As it is understood, the lifecycle of the Lady involves her molting her skin and then being reborn by the Lady itself, the mortal entity that was bound to the creature by body and soul. It's at this time that the Lady is considered to be vulnerable and the Lady itself could be cut out from the worm and replaced by another being. While the cult of the Lady wished for her to be protected and reborn as she had dozens of times throughout her history, a death cult in the city of Nock wished to usurp the Lady and place one of their own in a position to gain her power. 
=== The Twisted Pair ===
When the time came for the Lady's shedding and rebirth to be finalized, the death cult was bested by a group of heroes consisting of Sen, Jai Mahknos, Nimalia Tidewatcher and Terry Silvereye. They bested a powerful lich riding a skeletal dragon, they defeated three powerful demons who wished to use the Lady as a new body for one of them to usurp the throne of lust and then all Thirteen Gates, and they came to a position where one of them could free the mortal entity bound to the creature, a human woman from an ancient past that called herself Nama. Terry felt it was his destiny to serve the Lady in this way. Nimalia did not trust that he would handle to power of the Lady responsibly. The two reached for the power at the same time and both fused into one being as the Lady Tehrmalia. This was made possible by Jai taking the throne of the demon prince of lust to remove its influence from the process after it was weaved into it by the three demons. Once Lady Terhmalia was formed, she descended deep into the world of Urz until she was hidden away within her native lair in a space between Urz and the Elemental Chaos. 
=== Buried in the Sands of Time ===
In 1056 CA, an ancient chronomantic prison beneath the tomb of the dead king outside the city of Panacea was breached by a group of Conglomerate operatives. Without understanding the power they were standing before, they unlocked the seals of the prison and released the Lady of the Deep bound within. This Lady had been imprisoned during the end of the Third Age by Pluveshian elves and sealed away to be later used as a weapon against any who challenge The Conglomerate when it came into power. This location was buried away by the remnants of Pluvesh, namely the followers of The Six who built a massive tomb for the King of Six, also known as the Dead King. When the Lady was released, she reconnected with the Lady of the Deep and her form altered to match that of the true Lady, but she was wild and filled with the rage of being imprisoned. This led to her killing two of the operatives and then proceeding to destroy the entirety of the city of Panacea. Among the Conglomerate operatives that escaped was Sinaht who would take on the responsibility of righting the wrong of unleashing the Lady upon the world. 
== Trivia ==
The Lady of the Deep was original created as the patron a character named Terry Silvereye played by Chris C "ChrismanTheGreat". The focus of this pact was a pearl and his quest was to seek out more pearls for the Lady. Beyond this initial creation, a lot of the details of the Lady were worked out by Jon D and also Chad H during the prehistoric short series The Dark Before. The nature of the "pearls" being eggs for the lifecycle of the Kirminth and by extension the Lady was an idea that had a great amount of inspiration from Star Trek: The Original Series 25th Episode of Season 1 entitled The Devil in the Dark.