Been thinking about Etrian Odyssey since the day before yesterday and had the urge to draw something.
So I drew an explorer getting turned into a Deep One from EO3. I think the idea of merperson race is kinda cool and wish they could have done more with them other that being enemies you fought.
Since this character is supposed to be human (Buccaneer Class), instead of just turning them into one of the enemy types, I merged features together to create something new for them. (He also gets an extra finger. Bc, I forgot how many fingers they had when I drew this. Lol)
(Deep One enemies were gendered for some reason? Muscly, more animal-like warriors that seemed male and dainty, humanoid-looking "magic" users seemed to be female. Honestly, I'm just annoyed they have the magic ones have boobs. They're fish! They don't need those!)
Buccaneer is not jiving with this. Not a bit. Pretty sure he isn't even doing it willingly. This could be a "we gave mercy on you by turning you into one of us instead of letting you die" situation or it could be a "we decided that we might be able to spare some humans from being killed in our war, but only to force them to be assimilated instead" situation. Idk, I just wanted to draw someone after they'd been turned into a fish person.
Okay, so, I mentioned stuff about a crossover between EO3 (specifically the thing with my Deep Buccaneer) and PLA before and I think it's time I chattered about it a bit.
Especially in the wake of mermay and all the fun of fish people dealing with non-fish people.
((Read at your own risk! There will be spoilers for universe stuff involving late game eo3. I’m going a bit of the rails with some in-universe stuff they mention there, so it might be spoilery/confusing if you haven’t played (or read about it in the wiki). If you don’t care or wanna know what this au idea is all about anyways, go right ahead! I won’t stop you! Also, this got really pecking long.))
Basically, Deep Buccaneer (whom I've named Renato Delmar and will refer to as such) gets turned into a Deep One after a near-death experience in the Labyrinth. By chance (or by the mercy of the Deep One that changed him) he stays himself after the physical change.
(Death was possibly a self-sacrifice thing to give his guild the chance to escape a FOE, and the FOE (or another Deep One that was nearby) decided they didn't want him to die and force-fed him a piece of their body to change him. Might have wanted to save him for either showing mercy to a kid of their species by sparing them (bc killing a kid is just cruel) or bc they couldn't understand why he'd fight a losing battle to save his team and wanted to make him stay so they could find out.)
His guild, after finding out that he was not, in fact, dead and definitely wouldn’t be able to return to normal life, manages to smuggle him out of the labyrinth and set him loose in the ocean where he would be (marginally) safer. (bc if the yggdroids/other adventurers would probably kill him if they found him due to the whole "secret war" going on in there)
Ren, while unhappy with all of this (and mildly traumatized by everything that's happened to him), agrees that one near-death experience was more than enough for him. He bids a reluctant farewell before swimming out to the open seas and trying to figure out what the hell to do with himself now.
This is... Not easy, despite Ren being a Buccaneer Class.
He doesn’t really know the abilities/limits of the new body he has and a lot of the stuff he does is basically him trying random things and hoping they work. (Some stuff was auto-planted into his brain, but all of it was intense combat stuff and not day-to-day survival.) So he’s actually struggling a bit to do things like hunt and figure out how to safely take care of himself.
It’s frustrating and stressful and he really wishes there was some way to return to being human, but as far as he knows there isn’t a way to do that.
And he gets more than a few close-calls from both monsters and humans alike while in the open waters. And he’s sure he’s running low on luck to keep himself safe.
Cue a fragment of Giratina's Rift breaking through to a reality it doesn’t belong in to suck him up and spit him out right in the middle Acreus' Private Realm/Domain.
Arceus, after using his Divine Sight* to figure out what the hell the thing that popped into existence where it really shouldn't have is, looks at Ren and goes "Oh hey, maybe this could actually be helpful."
*Divine Sight is basically how I depict gods who seemingly know “everything” but aren't explicitly omniscient or clearly have things happening in the world that they don’t know about. They can look into the history/memories of a thing/person they're focusing on to learn about it and where it came from. If anyone want’s me to go into detail about this, let me know.
He sees that Renato is a seasoned adventurer/explorer, with all the hard-earned skills that would come with that. Stuff that would be perfect for his champion. (or a perfect helper for them.)
So he pops up, gets the panicking fish-man’s attention and goes, “Hey, I know you don’t actually belong here, but you’ve got a problem and I might be able to help you with it. If you’ll help ME out with something.”
Arceus lays out his problem for Ren, which is that Humans and Pokemon (the magical beings of his world), used to be really close/similar to each other and lived really well side-by-side.
Until one of his Deputy Gods that he made to help him keep everything running smoothly had a major, violent freak out in the past and ended up killing a bunch of the mortals they were supposed to be helping/protecting. He had to banish them to stop them from wiping them out, and tried to stand back for a bit and hoped things would mend on their own while he tried to sort his godlings out.
But he stepped too far back for too long and now any chance of them going back to “normal” was pretty much gone.
However, one of the humans in his world had an idea for how to start bridging the gap again by making an index of pokemon to help humans understand them again. And it would work! Arceus looked through time and the creation of the index worked perfectly!
At least. it’s SUPPOSED to work perfectly.
Something is screwing around with time and space, messing up how they’re supposed to flow and putting that really good future at risk. Not even getting to it dragging in things from places that it shouldn’t reach and spitting out things that don’t belong there. (Like Ren.)
Arceus has a plan to fix that, by pulling a champion/hero to help finish the ‘dex and hopefully make sure the future follows the path it’s meant to. But he’s worried that the person he picked might not be enough to make things right again. What if the problem attacked them before they could finish? Or tricked them into making things worse? Or set off the political powder keg that the area where the ‘dex is being made is?
All of those are really bad and could be a disaster in waiting.
So he needs someone to keep an eye out for them. Help them stay safe and healthy. Make sure they’re ready for anything that happens. And just, be in their corner when things get to be too much to handle.
Which is where he’s hoping Renato might be willing to help, by being that person. Arceus knows Ren’s not happy with his current situation (forced transformation and loss of previous life/support network) and, as a Creator God, Arceus may be able to help him out with that.
He can’t promise that he can make him fully-human again, but he can probably get him human enough to make a new life in Arceus’ world. (Form Changes are a thing, after all.)
“You don’t need to be the hero. You don’t have to take charge or have everything fall to you. You just need to be there for them and help where you can. And that will be enough.”
Ren, though hesitant to take the word of a “god” after everything he’s seen and been through in the Labyrinth but desperate to reclaim even a fragment of his stolen humanity, accepts the deal being presented.
And prays that this won’t come back to kick his arse later.
