Agathion, Squatinial
"American Monster - Lords of Deep Alien" © deviantArt user earthbaragon, accessed at his gallery here
[Lords of the Deep is by no means a good movie. But it is an interesting one. It's an attempt to do The Abyss on a budget roughly equivalent to digging through the couch cushions, and because talk is cheap and monsters are expensive, we don't get to see a lot of the benevolent muppety manta/angel sharks. In the movie, they are aliens from the planet Neptune who want to save humanity from Earth's destroyed ozone layer by resettling them in big organic domes on the sea bed, but they are needlessly cryptic and their actions come off more like kidnapping than rescue. Rather than making my version aliens, I've interpreted them as literal angel sharks.]
Agathion, Squatinial CR 9 NG Outsider (extraplanar) This creature has a flattened body expanding into two large, roughly triangular fins, and a muscular tail ending in a long low fin. Its eyes have black sclera and red pupils, giving it a slightly sinister gaze, but its aspect is otherwise calm and appraising.
If the avorals are the lords of the sky, squatinials are the lords of the deep. These agathions are oversized celestial angelsharks that specialize in protecting people from natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunami. They use their magical powers to avert such catastrophes when they can, but also to create storm shelters where fragile mortals can wait out the worst. Because of their aquatic nature, these shelters are often sequestered deep on abyssal plains and their inhabitants brought there through teleportation. Since the squatinials can only teleport with other creatures if they swallow them and carry them inside their bodies, this can lead to misconceptions of them as violent predators. That said, if a squatinial so chooses, it can shape its body to grow teeth and inflict a vicious bite.
Despite their solid appearance, a squatinial is effectively liquid, being able to loosen the connections between its cells to take on an amorphous shape and flow through the smallest cracks. They tend to fight less to kill and more to buy time for their allies to escape or regroup, using defensive tactics and interposing themselves between allies and enemies. If especially desperate, they may swallow foes in order to carry them away from the battlefield and regurgitate them elsewhere. Only against implacably evil foes like fiends and the undead will a squatinial fight to the death.
Squatinials can move about on land if they need to, but are slow and clumsy as they do so. As such, they tend to be found in the waterways of Nirvana and the worlds of mortals alike. They are social among themselves, living in pods whose members come and go. Squatinials are sometimes found as aides and allies to the larger, more powerful cetaceals. Their ability to read auras and convey large amounts of information psychically sometimes leads them to serve as diplomats or negotiators.
A squatinial is about twelve feet long with a fin-span of about fifteen feet. Because of their fluid bodies, they have surprising reach for their size.
