For centuries, the Mirrordeep has been avoided by sailors both sane and superstitious. Within its depths lies the volcanic caldera of Pyraspis, an ancient guardian and primordial behemoth – colossal in size, with scales like forged metal and a domed shell harder than any known alloy.

Legends say that, in ages long past, Pyraspis once rose to stem a tide of horrors from the Abyssal Rifts, shielding land and sea and driving back the ivaders before succumbing to grievous wounds. To heal, Pyraspis descended into an undersea volcano, where rivers of magma run beneath the waves. There and ever since, its scales are being heated until they glow, allowing the strange, iron-and-basalt-covered Marrowclaws that serve him to mend its wounds as if mending the cracks of a mountain, and to reforge the damaged plating of its body.

However, Pyraspis’ slumber has not always been peaceful. Pained by its wounds and plagued by the ceaseless nightmares of war, its monolithic body stirred and heaved, disturbing the fiery depths of the ocean. Worse still, its dreams spilled into the material world, molding imitations of the horrors it had once faced from earth, fire, and underwater life – and birthing a few new ones.

Aware of this fact, Pyraspis reached out to the peoples of the depths and asked for their best and brightest amongst those versed in the healing arts. Many answered the call - the one chosen was Carcinoe.

Pyraspis then poured its pain and nightmares into its left eye and removed it: a perfect, radiant sphere encompassing the darkness that tortured the behemoth, like the roiling, beating heart of a dark star. Then, with Carcinoe’s help, Pyraspis devised a ritual that would suppress the darkness, keeping it in peaceful slumber while its body mended, preventing the upheaval of the Trench and the birthing of any more horrors.     

In the centuries since, Carcinoe has been visiting Pyraspis and performing the ritual, “The Balm of Mother Sea,” thrice a month – on the new moon, the full moon, and the vanishing moon – keeping Pyraspis calm and the Mirrordeep safe. This honored duty has not been without cost. While centuries-long exposure to the energies of the Eye has rendered Carcinoe virtually immortal, they have also distorted her beyond all recognition. Still, apart from the occasional bout of loneliness, she has remained unflinching – that is, until relatively recently.

Nearly a decade ago, the famed corsair Reeftail Jack led his crew into the crushing depths of the Mirrordeep, where Pyraspis lies, and stole the Eye from its pedestal in the caldera. Unable to pursue the thieves on her own, Carcinoe laid an archaic curse on the captain and his crews, that they may “wander the Mirrordeep thrice three years without the shore’s reprieve,” so long as they do not relinquish the Eye, in the hopes that its curse or their death at sea would lead to its return. In the meantime, her long centuries tending to Pyraspis had provided her with alternate means of maintaining the behemoth’s peaceful sleep, even without the Eye – at least temporarily.

Carcinoe could not anticipate the corsairs’ stubbornness, compounded by the Eye’s distorting effects. As the nine-year curse upon Reeftail and his crew comes to an end, her soothing magics begin failing and Pyraspis stirs in restless pain. The caldera and the surrounding ocean floor quake, while the behemoth’s nightmares begin spilling into the waking world, beyond the confines of the Mirrordeep.

In the midst of this upheaval, the characters find themselves compelled to help to avoid disaster or forced by personal jeopardy.