It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the great encircling ocean that miles beneath the wind-whipped waves a fateful change took place.
Mermen and atlanteans traditionally shunned the region, fearful of what lurked in the lightless depths. For in the ancient aboleth city of R'lyeh vast and ageless fish-creatures move sluggishly on the shores of the benthic brine lakes, served by slaves that their loathsome and mercyless minds have bound in unbreakable fetters.
Beneath the dark and cyclopean towers monstrous polypal growths squat, spewing forth a disgusting stream of writhing, tentacled spawn, eel-like scaled things that burrow into the rotting flesh and decaying bones of whales that the detestable aboleths lured into the abyss, that perished singing mindless ditties, alone in the cold and crushing deep.
Since long before man has stared in slack-jawed wonder at his first flaming torch or raised his dull gaze to the uncaring stars the aboleths have lived in their unbreathing city, disdaining the lesser godlings of the sea and land and even the Pantokrator Himself.
Yet now a terrible emptyness yawns in the heavens, and even as the aurora proclaims the Pantokrators disappearance in sickly colours, dancing mockingly over the northern sky, a chill wind blows from the gaps between the constellations. And in the deepest recesses of the hadopelagic zone, something vast and monstrous stirs.
The reign of the aboleths is at an end, yet perhaps their time has just begun...