An Alternate Ecology of Aboleths

The book Lords of Madness, from 2005, by Rich Baker, James Jacobs, and Steve Winter, tells us that the aboleths existed before the gods. That they swam in dark places at the bottom of oceans, in seas deep beneath the earth. Even the current Monster Manual gives them that ancient origin. But, what of worlds made by the gods? How does this information square with more traditional cosmologies that involve the gods creating all that we know?

Like many such stories, it is a matter of perspective. As the Monster Manual says, the aboleths swam in primodial oceans and vast subterranean seas. That doesn't mean such places were in the world as we know it.

Most cosmologies and creation myths, worldwide, posit that before the world was made, all that existed was chaos. In many cases, that chaos is, in fact, represented, by a vast, nay, infinite, primordial sea. A limitless ocean, formless and fathomless. All that remains of this watery abyss, is, fittingly, Limbo, and the Abyss, both of which are still more ordered than their predeccessor. Perhaps the Far Realm of occult legend is simply this distant past of true formless Khaos? At any rate, it was in those darkling depths that the aboleth were born, or rather...were ejaculated?

An aboleth's form is noted to be very different than that of other creatures, with no real solidity to it, extraordinarily pliable and malleable, but resistant to cutting and damage, with hide somewhere between mucous and skin, that somehow protects better than what we would understand as an epidermis. Think of it, instead, like a cell wall. Think of the aboleth, infact, as a massive singular cell, though a complex one. Not an amoeba, or a paramecium...more like a gamete, like something between a sperm and an egg.

Let that sink in for a moment. Consider that the average aboleth is 20 or more feet long. Powerfully intelligent and psionic. If such a creature is, effectively, less even than a larva, simply a single reproductive cell...what manner of creature could have produced it? And here we go back to the Lords of Madness and their supposition that the Aboleth were spawned by a single Elder Evil. And perhaps they were. Perhaps the aboleth were laid, like countless mobile eggs, ejaculated like sapient and evil sperm, into the void of the original Khaos 'ocean'. In the creation myth of my world of Tellus, home of the Successor States of Rega, they would be the true spawn of the titanice dragon-thing Invidia, that which existed before the gods woke, and like here, they swam through the void, feeding on whatever might live before it could gain self awareness, or at least before it could defend itself from their significant might.

But why? For what were they spawned, or ejaculated? Isn't it obvious? If each is a reproductive cell, they were intended to go out and merge with other such cells, or with available entities perhaps, they way a parasitic larva might, to make another entity on the scale and power of their forebears. To make, as it were a new C thulu, or Invidia, or Piscaethes.

An interesting twist, for creatures that canonically remember back to before Creation, to before time itself...it is likely that if this is the case the aboleth do n ot know it. They were never told. The thing that spawned them never even took heed of them, any more than a frog or fish takes heed of ejaculate fluid, scattered over countless eggs. Perhaps the smallest of them are still sperm...perhaps the egg is something else...perhaps the largest are equivalent to tadpoles, and have already merged two sets of gametes and become zygotes...

Which is an interesting thought. What if each aboleth is a multi-valent gamete, and can be both sperm and egg, so that two (or more?) aboleth can merge to become the tadpole that will eventually grow into a newborn Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know? But not knowing this, they operate on instinct, in a world that seems carefully arranged to prevent such an occurrence. And maybe, just maybe, it was. Or perhaps the gods are completely, blissfully unaware of the threat lurking in the darkest depths, that a new Lovecraftian THING might rise from the merging of two or more aboleth...or their merging with other such aberrant creatures instead...Such an abilty, such purpose, known to them or not, partially explains their changing of other creatures to be more like them, perhaps in an attempt, all unknowing, to make the other half of a gamete pair?

This, of course, allows us to conceive of countless other aberrant horrors with which to threaten our worlds and plague our players, and who doesn't want that?

Get Spawn of Khaos here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/413223/Spawn-of-Khaos