Cult of the Deep Ones

The Covenant of the Great One, a cult devoted to the worship of the Deep Ones, was a short lived religious movement in Oldtown that culminated in the brutal murder of the High Septon and three and forty others in the Starry Sept and the square outside of it. The Covenant's preaching of doom and the violence that they brought forth had a significant impact on the collective consciousness of the Southlands.

## History

### Supernatural Sightings, 315-345 AC

Following the War of the Two Dragons and a once in a century winter, reports of strange goings on near the coast of Oldtown were on the rise. The Reach, which saw itself invaded by a woman riding on the back of a creature that many thought a myth and at the head of an army many thought a foreign oddity, was subject to many strange reports of cryptids like unicorns and sentient beings that descended from the sky riding on lightning. Though the maesters chalked up the fanciful claims to widespread hysteria as a result of the uncertainty and residual fear from the War of the Two Dragons, the consistent and increased reports of an old, ethereal force, mysterious and thought long gone, stirred such fear and awe that it resulted in the murder of the highest religious authority in Westeros.

According to the stories that began coming in in trickles between 315 AC and 320 AC then grew more steadily around 345 AC, fishermen that were working in the Redwyne Strait and around the southwestern coast of the Reach started to see strange black skinned, fishlike creatures peering above the ocean’s surface with large yellow eyes. The creatures appeared to be watching them and though seemingly intelligent enough to observe, their eyes were described as entirely vacant, devoid of soul or thought. The fishermen would see the creature, turn away for a moment, and when they looked back it would be gone. Though shaken by their experiences, none of the fishermen went further than recounting the stories in taverns and alehouses. As tales told in taverns often go, however, these strange accounts spread throughout OIdtown and the southern Reach. The region had for centuries told tales of the mysterious Deep Ones just as Northerners tell tales of the Others and, just as reports of Others walking around beyond the Wall went, most ignored the stories or passed them off as a side effect of spending so much time at sea.

The Deep Ones, according to the maesters of the Citadel, are a mysterious race of beings that live below the waves in twisted cities of black stone. Though accounts of the Deep Ones vary dramatically, maesters that focus on folklore have been able to develop an idea of what the creatures may look and act like based off similarities in the many accounts of the creatures. They do not think individually as humans do, instead they share one interconnected mind that dictates the actions of the whole group.

They are said to have the heads of fish, filled with swordlike teeth and a black tongue. They have fins atop their heads and a body covered in slime and black scales. They have legs and hands much like humans aside from the scales and webbing that links their fingers and three taloned toes. They have fins on their forearms and calves as well as large gills on either side of what can only be described as a neck. The single most common, most consistent, and unsettling descriptor of the creature are their eyes. They are said to be the size of a small bowl and devoid of all but their deep, almost hypnotic yellow color. They are said to look like the full moon if it did not have spots about it. They inspire feelings of terror, suspense, and dread.

Supposedly, a man can go mad if he looks into the eyes of a Deep One for more than a second, throwing himself into the water and holding there, gasping for breath in the watery tomb until he drowns or is taken by the strange entity that seduced him. One man, whose perpetual screaming is considered the only account of the aftermath of a close, psychological encounter with the Deep Ones, was brought to the Citadel for study and safekeeping. Three maesters were needed to hold him down so he could be restrained. Once tied, he screamed and tore so viciously at his bindings that the rope cut into his skin and blood poured onto the floor. He spat and yelled before he bit out his own tongue and spat it at the maesters. Those present recorded his words before depriving himself of speech:

After this outburst, the man bit out his tongue. He was left in the room alone and continued his muffled cries well into the night. When the maesters returned in the morning, they found that the man had knocked his chair on its side and beaten his head repeatedly against the ground until he cracked open his own skull and bled to death on the cobblestone, relieving himself through death of the tormented image that had completely and utterly warped his mind to a single image. For their part, the maesters went through their entire archive in search of the strange language that the mad man was speaking and found nothing. Their investigation ended with nothing, though by all accounts the man had been perfectly normal and happy up until he went out to fish in the morning. He was saved from diving into the water by one of his shipmates.

While not all that supposedly encountered the Deep Ones are subject to what the man mentioned above experienced, those who claim to have seen them leave the encounter feeling changed in some way. They often experience varying levels of paranoia, some experience frequent nightmares, among other mental changes ranging from mild and unaltering to their normal lives to extreme, life changing mental changes. All, however, develop a deep fear of the ocean, coupled with an insatiable infatuation with it. Despite their fear, many grow depressed when too far away from the sea and find comfort in immersing themselves, either partially or entirely, in the ocean. Take a step too far, however, to where they can no longer feel the bottom for even a second and a complete, body shaking panic sets in. The individual will grow flush, some scream, and *all* will struggle to the point of exhaustion to reach the safety of the shore once more.

According to Maester Theron, the High Tower itself was constructed by the Deep Ones. In his theory found in a book called *Strange Stone*, he points to the strange black stone that makes up the base of the tower as evidence, noting that it is the same stone that was made to build the Seastone Chair of the Iron Islands. He states that the stone is placed by the Deep Ones as part of a queer religious ritual to some strange god.

### Garth the Gilled, 354-359 AC

As previously stated, reports of Deep One sightings grew steadily between 315 AC and 345 AC, starting as a trickle as the Reach recovered from a costly war against Targaryen pretenders to the Iron Throne, a war where men from Oldtown fought against the first living dragon in centuries. Over the years sightings of these creatures grew so frequent that town criers would come out with daily reports of where the Deep Ones had been spotted, leading fishermen to avoid those areas for fear of seeing them. The sightings were so widespread and the existence of these creatures so widely believed, that the Lord of Oldtown himself claimed to have seen a Deep One surface from his study atop the High Tower.

Such fear, curiosity, and buzz around the Deep Ones led many to believe that the creatures were preparing for some sort of invasion to retake the realms of men and drag the lands above the sea back down below the waves. Talk of the end of the world began spreading throughout the city. In response to this, many of the more terrified members of the public gathered together to start to worship those that they believed would soon be their aquatic overlords. One man, known as **Garth the Gilled**, claimed that he was able to speak the language of the Deep Ones and was told that he needed to gather the people of Oldtown and, indeed, the whole of the world into a single religion in reverence and awe of the Deep Ones.

Garth the Gilled was, like many born in the slums of Oldtown, the son of a fisherman who had been born with a birth defect that caused the left side of his neck to grow folds that resembled gills. Later in life, he would point to this defect as a gift given to him by the Deep Ones that allowed him to understand them and breathe underwater, a skill that he never actually showed any of his followers. Garth lived a rather uneventful life prior to his life as a religious leader. Like his father before him, he scraped by on the meagre profits of a simple fisherman. From a young age, however, Garth believed that he was destined for more than just fishing. As he grew older, and as reports of the Deep Ones grew more common, Garth used his natural gifts of storytelling and persuasion to weave a narrative that the Deep Ones were coming to invade Westeros that spread alongside the possibly truthful tales of strange beings revealing themselves to humans. Part of Garth’s charisma was his nearly inhuman memory; he was capable of remembering intricate details over vast periods of time that helped with both his storytelling and in his seduction of would be followers. Everyone that would go on to devote themselves to him had a story of Garth remembering some intricate detail about him and regularly remarked on the fact that whenever he was speaking to a crowd, it felt to those listening that he was talking to them and them alone.

In 359 AC, after decades of strange tales from the sea and nearly five years of Garth feeding and cultivating his narrative of a watery armageddon, the prophet of the Great Deep One went to the central square of Oldtown and revealed himself to the world dressed in a raggedy, flowing night black robe stained with sea salt. He delivered an impassioned sermon on the coming apocalypse and said that only only through following him could the faithful live on in the watery halls of the Deep Ones, for only through joining their collective mind could salvation be achieved. While most laughed Garth off as a charlatan seeking to take advantage of people’s fears, a fateful few were so seduced by the man that they abandoned their families, their livelihoods, and even their names to follow the man who claimed to be their salvation.

The first phase of joining the **Covenant of the Great One** was the removal of one’s name, former life, and hair. All members were expected to take new names as a sign of their faith and having moved on to a new life. Garth, who claimed that due to the fact that the Deep Ones knew him by the name Garth, kept his original name. Once members had gone through the first rite and gone through a number of rituals that included cutting their hands and then plunging them into the ocean under a full moon, they were ready for the second rite. In the second rite, members of the Covenant had the right side of their necks cut three times so they would develop scars that looked like gills and they were again plunged into the sea, this time so that sea water filled the wounds on their necks. The third and final rite of passage, one that allowed worshippers to become full members of the Covenant, required them to perform a ritual sacrifice to the Deep Ones.

The more costly the sacrifice, the greater the Deep Ones would be pleased. For example, killing a rat and tossing it into the sea would not please the Deep Ones at all and, therefore, the initiate could not enter the Covenant until they performed another sacrifice. A dog would earn you a place in the order but it would not be so pleasing to the Deep Ones and another sacrifice would eventually be required. The ultimate prize, as is so often the case, would be a human sacrifice. The Covenant believed that being sacrificed to the Deep Ones was good for both the sacrifice and the sacrificer as the sacrifice would earn an immediate place among the Deep Ones as soon as their corpse entered the ocean and the sacrificer will have proven his loyalty to such an extent that he would be welcomed into the hall of the Great One upon his death. Garth claimed that he had killed over a dozen people in sacrifice to the Deep Ones and thus would be welcomed alongside the Great One upon the return of his body to the ocean.

The Covenant of the Great One required pieces of the oily black stone associated with the Deep Ones for their rituals and it was their attempts to steal it off of buildings and artifacts was how their network was initially labeled as suspicious by the authorities in Oldtown. The Covenant would send adherents in the dead of night to chisel away at the black stone wherever they could find it. Several buildings in Oldtown were built atop or incorporated the black stone into their construction including the Starry Sept, the High Tower, the guard barracks in the port district, parts of the central plaza had bricks of black stone inlaid in it, and a number of homes of prominent commoners in the city had pieces of the black stone built into them.

The first incident of theft of the black stone were bricks in the plaza which, while irritating, did not warrant an investigation and were simply replaced with normal brick. Eventually, people started noticing small chunks of stone had been chiseled out of homes and out of the Starry Sept. The desecration of the sept deeply aggravated the Starry Septon, who demanded that Lord Hightower investigate the matter. Lord Hightower obliged and nightly patrols began keeping extra eyes on the Starry Sept. One night, the patrol caught a man using the name Pyt’hrahla chiseling at the Starry Sept. Pyt’hrahla was apprehended and, after revealing his scars that indicated his association with the Covenant, he jammed the black stone into his neck, killing himself.

### Holy War

When news of the dead man reached the Lord Septon, he declared holy war on the Covenant of the Great One claiming that they were a threat to the Faith and the people of Oldtown that must be wiped from the earth before more death followed. Some days later, the Starry Sept was broken into and ransacked, its holy relics were stolen and the interior of the sept left broken and covered in shattered glass. A few days later, fishermen discovered a few relics washed ashore on a little visited beach and returned them to the sept. It became crystal clear then that the Covenant was escalating the conflict.

By this point, it had become clear to Garth that the Faith of the Seven was and always would be a threat to him and the Covenant and, if he did not act soon, it would overwhelm them. Garth resolved that the only way to throw the Faith into disarray would be to kill the High Septon, who was recently and fortuitously arrived in Oldtown to confer personally with his subordinate after the unilateral pronouncement of a holy war. Garth gathered the Covenant of the Great One on a beach where he revealed to them that the Great One itself had spoken to him and commanded that they deliver the ultimate sacrifice to him. Garth said that the Great One had been very particular about the way that the High Septon needed to die and that he needed to be the one to do it. To ensure they had success on their mission, Garth raped and ritually murdered three women and cast their bodies into the sea. That same evening a relic was stolen from the High Tower, an ancient dagger made of dragonglass with a hilt made of the oily black stone that had become the subject of a shadow war between two competing faiths.

His plan was set in motion the following day, on the Ninth Day of the Fifth Moon. Garth rose early in the morning and donned his black sea stained robes and went to the beach where the Covenant performed their sacrifices. Once there, he rinsed himself and filled a flask with sea water. He then cut his hands open and dunked them in the water before smearing the blood and sea water on his face. His personal ritual completed, he made for the Starry Sept. When he arrived, there were many guards patrolling the area and he needed to wait for them to step away from a side door. He finally got his opportunity when the guard was lured away by one of his adherents who caused a scene down an alleyway. Garth slipped in the door as three of his followers fell on the guard, killing him without a sound. Once inside, a cowled Garth the Gilled found the High Septon at prayer in front of the main altar of the Starry Sept.

While chanting his strange prayer, Garth stabbed the praying septon ten and nine times in the back with the dragonglass dagger that he had had stolen from the High Tower, allowing his blood to soak the oily black stone that made up the entirety of the Sept. Then, in some cruel, twisted ritual, he disemboweled the High Septon and strewed his innards all across the main altar, creating a sick display. He removed the man’s head and propped him up, resting his back on the altar to complete the sick act.

Head in his hand, Garth kicked open the door to the sept and held the head aloft to the crowd. The time had been specifically chosen so that the plaza would be crowded with people. Screaming his chant with the head of the Avatar of the Gods held above his head, the followers of Garth the Gilled revealed themselves and began stabbing as many people as they could with the black stone daggers that they had made. As the guards closed in to kill the zealots that were strategically placed throughout the crowd, the members of the covenant screamed their strange chant to their cruel, twisted god. Two and forty people would die as a result of wounds sustained in the attack on the plaza and all the members of the Covenant were killed by the guards save for Garth the Gilled himself who guards seized and prevented from committing suicide.

### Mourning and Retribution

The horrid violence that unfolded within and without the Starry Sept left deep wounds in the collective memory of Oldtown. Lord Hightower ordered a moon of mourning for the victims and outlawed talk of the Deep Ones in his domain. He kept Garth alive, though tortured him daily within an inch of his life and deprived him of death’s release, for the whole of the moon of mourning. He then had the half dead man executed by public beating where the whole of the domain of the Hightowers were invited to take part in the death of the monster that had committed such heinous crimes. Thousands of people took a swing or a kick at Garth the Gilled, who succumbed to his wounds after three days of consistent, round the clock beating by people of all backgrounds and ages. He was given water to keep him alive so that he was not freed from his torment by dehydration.

As a final insult to their religion, the bodies of the Covenant were hung from the gates of Oldtown to be picked by birds until they could no longer hang. Knowing the centrality of water and the sea to their faith, the bodies of the Covenant cultists were taken to the highest hill within the realm of the Hightowers and burned. Their bodies were broken down as far from the sea as the Hightower had authority to order. Not wishing even a single ash to make it to the sea, the embers and ashes of the cultists were buried atop the hill where they remain to this day.

The moon and a half that followed the death of Garth the Gilled was one of celebration unlike the one that had preceded it. The Hightowers held nightly feasts for four and forty nights in honor of each victim of the attack; the two and forty that died in the plaza attack, the guard who was killed so Garth could enter the Sept, and the High Septon himself. The High Septon and the three and forty other victims were named martyrs of the Faith and the Ninth of the Fifth is still recognized as a feast day by the Faith in honor of the martyrs.