[Wendigo]

I wouldn't say that R'lyeh is a very analyzed nation, in this forum it has not really been discussed to much, apart from the Void gate novelty.

I'd rather say it is however a difficult nation for a newbie, because her biggest strength lies in her Starspawn mages, and playing those right requires a good knowledge of spells & magic items.
The military in itself is kind of weak, & the Void Gate is a gamble. Being underwater & the magics are the real (& always reliable) strengths that make R'lyeh IMO one of the top nations.

On the matter of your pretender I prefer a combat oriented one for R'lyeh, for 2 reasons:
-My general rule when choosing a pretender is to go for multiple complementary magic fields when playing nations with narrow magics, and to go with a SC when playing nations with powerful & broad spellcasting choices. R'lyeh is definitely one of the 2nd.

-In MP there is a high probability that you might end up fighting Atlantis (or even Ermor) for the seas early on, and a SC adds some much needed muscle here while you develop your magics.

Your scale choices are very good for a noob. I would have done some things differently, but that's more because of my personnal style of min-maxing the scales to get more design points, which might not really be for everybody. Heh, I am playing a MP game as R'lyeh right now and if I were to start another one I would change half my scales with new ideas!

Maybe you can get Nagot to chime in, he can give you the best R'lyeh advice as far as I know.