When most people think of the planes of Abyss or Hell, they think of an arid, desert-like landscape with cracked earth, fire spouts, and the smell of sulphur. While that may be the popular assumption of the dominant landscape, both planes have other environments within them, from frigid iced-over landscapes, to seas and dark, deep brackish oceans. Furthermore, some demons leave the Abyssal plane to the other elemental planes, to attempt to live and carve out a kingdom for themselves. Demons and devils take all sorts of shapes and exist in many other environments, and a Warlock can make a pact with any of them.
Otherworldly Patron – The Demon Sea
You have made a pact with a fiend from the lower planes of existence. However, the evil being you’ve made a pact with dwells in the seas of hell, granting you powers based on water and creatures of the deep sea. Fiends are mostly thought of as being overly evil that enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on others, but the ones that dwell in the water are different. Like the predators of the deep, they bide their time, wait, and watch. Having a pact with a Demon of the Sea leaves a Warlock always feeling like they are being watched by something cold and inhuman. The powers granted to them are seductive and powerful, but as they draw ever closer to the fiend, they never know if or when it will lash out. The fiend might seek to ultimately destroy the Warlock, or it might be content to lie still and just watch the suffering the Warlock inflicts on the mortal world.
Fiends powerful enough to forge a pact include demons like Aspidochelone, Iku-Turso, Kraken, Leviathan, and Lusca.
Expanded Spell List
Your patron who lives in the Demon Sea lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a Warlock spell. The following spells are added to the Warlock spell list for you.
Demon Sea Expanded Spells
1st – Bane, Conjure Shark*
2nd – Cloud of Daggers, Pass without Trace
3rd – Sharkform*, Water Breathing
4th – Control Water, Freedom of Movement
5th – Boothby’s Biting Jaws*, Hold Monster
* Spells marked with an asterisk will be released in an article next week!
Welcome to the Water
Starting at 1st level, your patron from the Demon Sea fills your body with dark energy, changing your form slightly and making you more at home in the water. You gain a swim speed equal to your normal base walking speed. Furthermore, should you ever need to roll a Strength (Athletics) check to swim, you have advantage on the roll, and you may use your Charisma modifier in place of your strength modifier.
Hit and Run
Once you reach 6th level, become more like the demon predators of the sea. Once per turn, if you hit a creature with a spell attack roll, you may immediately take the dash or disengage action as a bonus action.
Don’t Need Eyes to See
Starting at 10th level, your patron from the Demon Sea allows you to tap into senses of the creatures of the black depths of the sea. Instead of using your eyes, you can sense the movements of creatures around you. As a bonus action, you may open your senses and gain Blindsight 30 ft, for 10 minutes. You may use this feature again after you complete a long rest.
The Crushing Depths
Starting at 14th level, when you hit a creature with an attack, you can use this feature to instantly transport the target to the crushing depths of the demon seas. The creature disappears in an explosion of cold murky water and finds itself in deep, dark waters which is too far down for light to penetrate.
At the end of your next turn, the target returns to the space it previously occupied or the nearest unoccupied space. If the target is not a fiend, it takes 10d10 bludgeoning magical damage as it coughs black water out of its lungs and recovers from the crushing pressure.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
