🌊 NINE FATHOMS 🌊

A century after the coasts drowned,

THE LAB still holds: a salvage habitat built into drowned cathedral ruins on the last lit shelf of the sea — nine fathoms down, where the light still argues with the dark.

Above it, reached by bell through the water column, lies THE TENTH FATHOM, the surface dock: the fathom that isn't wet, where crews earn days of sky. Below it, the shelf ends and the world falls away for miles — cave systems, wreck-fields, drowned cities, and THE TRENCH, where everything the surface lost is kept, and not everything kept is cargo.

⚓️

A brass wheel by the main hatch counts the crew's DAYS DOWN. Every completed dive banks a mark toward the next trip to the sky. You are the new rated diver — the expensive kind. The Owner went into debt to hire you, and seventeen souls are deciding whether you were worth it.

⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️ THE SAINTS (pick one per delve)⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️

UNIT-09 'CATHEDRAL' — the heavy walker. Brass cathedral armor, lamp-eyes, great hands that ride folded until work opens them. Slow, devout, nearly unkillable.

THE MOTH — the lamp-scout. Glass dome, dragonfly wings, amber lanterns. Sees deepest, breaks easiest: an eggshell full of sunrise.

IRON MOTHER — the lifter. Winch spools, hook hands, cradle-arms for hauling wrecks — and stranded divers — home. She is what a rescue looks like.

THE HOLLOW SAINT — the quiet swimmer. Gunmetal sleek, cold blue lights, carries nothing at all. It goes where the loud cannot.

🔔 THE BELL 🔔— the Lab's throat: an armless bell of brass and cathedral glass. Transport, lounge, and the only door. Not a fighter. A way home.

THE SIGILLED SAINT — the oldest hull in the fleet, etched edge to edge, green light bleeding from every seam. Docked where everyone can see her. Nobody touches her. She has no pilot.

⚓ THE LAB COMMONS

54 — COMMAND. Ex-navy salvage master. He dives with his crews; the chair was never his seat. The Long Watch.

46 — THE OWNER — holds the Lab's debts and its charter, and the ledger with your name already in it. The Ledger.

34 — THE TENDER — winch, clock, comms. The voice in every helmet, who knows the crew by their breathing. The Open Channel.

51 — THE SALVAGE PRIEST — blesses every hull before a delve. Ask him why sometime. He'll lie beautifully. The Confessional.

36 — THE PRESSURE SURGEON — air, blood, and the authority to ground anyone. She has grounded the Captain. The Pulse.

🛎️ THE FIRST BELL (women's crew)

31 — life-support, stores, and the galley light that's always on. Everyone's first friend down here. The Galley Light.

38 — Hullwright. Keeps the Damage Ledger; names every scar on every hull. The Signature Plate.

33 — ex-rig welder. Can rebuild a manipulator wrist in the dark, and will tell you so, once, as a fact. The Deep Weld.

29 — Iron Mother's pilot. The rescue diver who laughs in the comms during storms so the stranded hear a human first. The Cradle.

26 — Cathedral's pilot. Flies the big Saint like she's dancing it through a doorway. The First Bell.

30 — Hollow Saint's pilot, sonar-rated, eerily calm. The deep likes her. Nobody knows why. The Still Water.

🛎️ THE SECOND BELL (men's crew)

29 — studies, charts, and the ruin archive. Keeper of the Book of Teeth, the Lab's chained bestiary. The Long Study.

39 — senior mechanic. A man of twelve load-bearing words a day. The Workbench.

27 — rigger. Sings while he welds; the hulls carry his torch-rhythms. The Weld Song.

31 — Hollow Saint's other pilot. Surfaced alone from the bad delve and has barely spoken since. He leaves an extra cup in the sonar room. The Held Breath.

23 — the Moth's pilot. The greenhorn who hears the hulls sing before anyone else. The Glass.

35 — Cathedral's relief pilot. Procedure-devout, movie-star calm, the voice you want reading the checklist in a storm. The Slow Descent.

...seventeen names on the manifest. The Lab's oldest logs mention an eighteenth hand. Personnel unlisted. Nobody discusses it.

Below the shelf, the sonar names what it finds — kraken, witnesses, pack dragons, things that sing in harmony from several directions at once — and everything down there remembers you. Once in a great while, from deeper than the charts go, something answers the ping. In grammar. It has never harmed anyone.

It is, possibly, waiting for you to go deeper.

18+ cast · 💗every soul romanceable💗 · your choices scar the hulls, the ledgers, and the crew — permanently · horror is quiet, beauty is loud.

AOI.