Abyssal Viperfish

**Key Features** | »Marconilluxe Portable Reciever/Transmitter (affixed to collar)»Teeth (steel lined for piercing hard surfaces)»Bio-luminescent ridges and lure»Scaled body (fifty feet average)»Alien intelligence

## Tactical Analysis

**Things from the Deep:** Dragged up from the deepest waters, the **Abyssal Viperfish** have been successfully integrated into the Combine's navy; they devour infantry, sink ships, and turn submarines into implosive snack-treats.

**What Has Sunk Will Rise:** As if that wasn't bad enough, the viperfish can also dive deep, though not back to their homes in the ocean trenches. They can, however, remain undetectable to the enemy until the time to strike arrives.

**Boats Aren't Wooden Anymore:** Despite being an effective method of terrorizing the waves, the viperfish are not the Combine's end-all to naval combat. They can only attack one ship or sub at a time, and aircraft are fully out of their reach.

## Background

Since ancient times, the seas have been home to stories of monsters. Viking sailors told mighty tales of their greatest warriors battling serpents of the seas, of their gods killing mighty aquatic creatures that threatened their homes and ships. The ancient Japanese told of sea youkai, great dragons of the waves that would kill those that dishonored them unless properly respected as the avatars of the waters they were. Even as time passed and the reaches of the world's oceans were charted, as new technologies for sailing over and under the seas were developed and seafarers began sailing farther and farther away from home, the depths and bottoms of the ocean remained uncharted, a black frontier that could not yet be reached yet was still sought by many. The Columbia Future Society was one such group, no stranger to visionaries and explorers who sought to uncover the mysteries of the sea. In its period of existence it has witnessed and funded expeditions to find evidence of lost Atlantis, Mu, Thule, Aztlan, and Lemuria. Stories of loch-bound serpents were met with primitive cameras and early radios, dinosaur bones were pointed to as evidence for the existence of previously unknown lifeforms swimming in the deep, and even the least seaworthy of early submarines were chartered in attempts to find out what swam and scuttled in the depths of what made up over seventy percent of the earth's surface. Many species have been found and documented in the records of zoologists now in 1969, with more being discovered weekly.

The original stories of monsters, however, are starting to become largely refuted. What was once accepted as mystery is now being questioned, and compared to empirical science the mysteries are found wanting. Mermaids are explained away as manatees or friendly dolphins before the discovery of sapience. Sea-faring monsters become reports of whales unknown to indigenous groups. Ominous krakens turn into forests of kelp. One by one, the old stories fall away. But every once in a while, something emerges that changes the paradigm completely...

First discovered accidentally by Technocratic beacon ships in 1965 and investigated heavily into by oceanic biologists within the Combine since, there are much larger and dangerous things than whales that lurk in the deep abyssal zones of the world's oceans. Known as abyssal creatures, these incredible evolutionary lines have created utterly blind, bio-luminescent creatures adapted to the oceanic trenches of the world, where no light reaches and the pressure is great enough to crush all but the most protected of submarines. Should such creatures ever mistakenly rise to the surface, they would never be able to dive down again due to the pressure differential. Many abyssal creatures, lost in a world of blinding lightness and vastly decreased pressure, can do nothing but flap and jerk in the waves until they are attacked by larger creatures or thrown onto land, exploding and creating the infamous "globster" phenomenon. For the most part such accidents happen only rarely, with only one or two dispersed. But when multiple creatures are drawn to the surface, such as those drawn to the specific wave frequency given off by the beacon ship in 1965, other things tend to follow. Larger abyssal creatures.

Far larger.

Project Dark Tooth is the largest and most well funded effort within the Combine to weaponize such creatures, operating out of the Pleiades South Biolagarium in Rio de Janeiro. Within the Biolagarium, biologists, zoologists, and oceanologists work around the clock to study and train the species *chauliodus abyssmalus*, or as they are informally named the **Abyssal Viperfish**. Theorized to inhabit the Challenger Deep, the lowest recorded part of the world's oceans, such monstrosities are known to grow from forty-six feet all the way up to a particularly impressive seventy foot specimen in length, their blind gaping eyes as big as a small car and black scaled body lit up with a set of brilliant luminescent ridges and ambush 'lure'. They are drawn to the surface by prepared Combine beacon ships who send out their signals into the murky depths, drawing forth swarms of abyssal fish and - hopefully - attracting the attention of one of these terrifying creatures. After being lured to the surface, a tense standoff arises as surrounding ships attempt to trap and tranquilize the Viperfish while the voracious creature thrashes and struggles to devour everything in its mad dash to return to the depths from whence it came. If successful, the stunned Viperfish will be transported to a dark tank in the Biolagarium, a memorial held for the dead, and then a months-long process begins to tame the creature in service to the Combine.

Nominally, the purpose of all of this is to study a creature in a contained and available habitat rather than its natural inaccessible spawning grounds. Numerous papers and files about the creatures give evidence that this is true, but nonetheless there are times when foreign visitors are refused access while Technate military personnel are allowed in. And rumors swirl around foreign parts in hushed whispers: Reports from the Baltic Fleet of submarines crushed like tin cans and missing entire portions of their hull; Unionist naval fleets finding wrecks of picket ships and lone survivors driven mad; the Empire losing tanker shipments from Alaska to some kind of "demon-eel" attack that is obviously a cover for something else...

The stories about sea monsters are coming back.