Deep Choir is Dagon’s oldest continuous institution — older than the Veil-Renderers, older than the surface-world cults, older in its current form than most of the kingdoms of Once. It predates writing. Its origins lie in the last days of Mor’Duun, when the city’s theological scholars realized too late what they had unleashed and split into two factions: those who chose to stay and guard the bell as Deep Wretches, and those who chose to follow Dagon’s call into the depths and become his voice in the world above.
Structure and Ranks
Initiates — The Submerged
Recruits undergo the baptism ritual: robed in pale linen marked with spirals and broken lines, they are forcibly submerged by the choir until they stop fighting. A priest then revives them. They walk backward into the waves up to their necks and return without looking back. This is not metaphor. The act of not-looking encodes a specific psychological reorientation — the initiate learns to trust what is behind them in the dark. Most initiates are coastal dwellers who were already dreaming of Dagon before they found the cult, drawn in by years of quiet corrupting contact.
Choir Members — The Resonant
Full choir members wear kelp-draped robes of deep sapphire blue and coral masks. They have undergone partial Riving — enough to carry Deep Speech in their throats without lasting damage, enough to survive at depths that would kill an ordinary person for short periods. The Resonant are Dagon’s ground-level agents: they operate the coastal networks, identify potential Riven candidates, maintain the smuggling operations that fund the organization, and perform the small rituals that keep Dagon’s influence saturating the coastal towns.
The Riven — Deep Servants
The Riven are those for whom the transformation has progressed significantly. They are still nominally human — they can pass in surface society with effort — but they are more Dagon’s than their own. Their perceptions extend into the electromagnetic and pressure-sensing ranges of deep sea life. They experience the surface world as painfully loud, painfully dry, and painfully lit. Many Riven serve as the choir’s intelligence network, infiltrating port cities and coastal courts. Oceana, the young woman the party met in Pegport, is an early-stage Riven — her transformation has been accelerating since her contact with the Veil-Renderers, and she is frightened of where it is taking her.
The Prophet of the Void — Leadership
The current Prophet of the Void is not a named figure in the public record; the role is deliberately anonymous. The Prophet serves as Dagon’s direct interpreter — not merely a priest but a partial avatar, someone in whom the Riving process has advanced so far that Dagon can speak through them in something approaching real time. The Prophet does not experience this as possession; they experience it as completion. They whisper to their own shadow. They believe the Tooth is talking back.
The Prophet who led the Abyssal Trench ritual — the one the party confronted — is dead, rejected and destroyed by the Kraken’s Tooth when his motives were found wanting. Prophets who seek power for themselves are always rejected. The current Prophet, whoever they are, will have learned from this failure. They will not seek power through the seals. They will seek something the Tooth and the Bell and the Throne cannot reject: genuine, selfless devotion. This makes the next Prophet far more dangerous than the last.