In this world some things are the same, yet some are different. I will share with you some of the similarities to give you a taste.

Attire amongst the seafolk is unlike what most would consider the normal for most developing worlds. Rather than dress for modesty, the seafolk will often dress to make a statement, and while this can often leave little to the imagination, it also serves its purposes rather well. So while clothing might not be what one expects, the statement it makes is what the real reason for such articles being worn is. When going into war, most seafolk tend towards light armor, designed to deflect and prevent blows from landing with full force, rather than taking the brunt of the attack and not even cracking. A few seafolk go about this, but they are few and far between outside the specific few races.

Communication between seafolk is a delicate art, far more refined than simple verbal chatter between surface beings. Subtle movements of the body give away a great deal of insight and depth into what the conversation holds, and that is without taking into account the seemingly insensible noises that mean far more to other seafolk when coupled with the body motions and inflections put upon the noises. However, to each seafolk, this is no different than coming across as a normal spoken language, such as English, where to them, it is as simple as an idle conversation is.

When it comes to living quarters and food, the seafolk of Masagera are not nearly as different as one would think. Their diets consist of plant life and non sentient sea creatures, which are treated almost like cattle would be, while plants are raised like crops as well. Living spaces are also like homes would be, however, they are usually coral structures or, in rarer cases, bone. It all depends on the material available to the seafolk in any given area what is used, and what their diets consist primarily of on a day to day basis.

When it comes to a heirarchy amongst the seafolk, it is a simple system. Each kingdom is ruled by the wisest, strongest, or most supported member of its people, and each job that a individual takes meshes with a skill set they possess rather than some arbitrary monetary value. Money does not exist amongst the seafolk, resources are used as needed by the people and money is not a requirement. For some luxury goods, barter is a regular system, but money in and itself does not exist, such a system is not needed or, in some cases, even desired by the seafolk in general.

Life is not all easy and peaceful for the seafolk of the kingdoms, however, for many dangers, massive and tiny, exist amongst the various places, dark or otherwise. Massive goliaths of sea creatures roam the deep oceans, crushing any foolish enough to float into their path unaware, while packs of smaller, sometimes sentient, beings hunt and rip apart the unwary for sport or survival. Even larger beast are known to occasionally meet, and it is these times that danger can be at its greatest, for they do not like to be disturbed, by anything, regardless of what, who, or the reasons that might lie in such an incident occurring.

Empire of Mer: The Empire of Mer is a grand, wide spanning kingdom of a whole conglomerate of races, each having a representative upon a senate which makes the vast majority of the ruling decisions of the Empire, from military and economic to civilian and emergency. Their military forces wear what would be considered a very regimented Legionnare style uniform, their weapons and arms coming from shamans who can, through arcane arts, form their weapons and gear out of the very coral and ground itself. They worship the slumbering Leviathan beneath the sands of the ocean depths, and have a high preistess, a figurehead who can read the future in the patterns of the schools of fish, if legend and myth are to be believed. Considering they build their society on and out of coral, the most natural and effective way they spread their territory is by spreading the coral, molding it into cities and fortresses as needed, always spreading outwards whenever possible.

Hidden Kingdom: Ruled by a pair of monarchs, a king and a queen, these two beings are rumored to be Teuda, although whether these rumors are true or not are completely up in the water. While the Hidden Kingdom holds a variety of different mer folk, like the Empire of Mer, the kingdom abhors and despises the Eomei and Dark Dwellers, driving them out or outright killing them on sight should they dare appear in their lands. Their name derives from the capital being secreted away within massive, towering seaweed jungles, invisible to almost all until they stumble into the streets themselves, and into the waiting arms of their military. This very miltiary is martial and refuses to use any magic to aid them, relying on their rather impressive talent and individual strength of arms to carry them to victory on an given day. Their weapons are forged from shark teeth and sometimes they bear shields of the dead Eomei that they capture, their shells far too useful to waste.

Kingdom of Eomei: The crablike warrior race of the sea, they roam the ocean floor at a slow, steady pace. Their kingdom is built upon the back of a massive crab, upon which their entire civilization lives and thrives upon. Each crab warrior has both his own natural shell and hide to defend themselves, but they can also take their ancestor’s bones to reinforce their own armor to become even thicker and more durable. As generations of Eomei pass on, their remains are normally taken to increase the size and grandeur of their crab mounted city. An overall Warlord of the Eomei leads them, while this warlord is advised by a variety of religious advisors. These advisors speak with the giant crab upon which they settled, the Eomei belief being that they are the children of this ancestral mother. The Eomei skirt the edges of the Hidden Kingdom and raid only far outlying Mer settlements, wise enough to avoid open conflict with either power, which would result in massive loss of Eomei life.

Dark Dwellers: Not so much a organized civilization as a group of sea creatures with a common goal, these monstrous beings live deep in the ocean, deeper than even the Eomei wander, living around the massive volcanoes that they worship as dark gods. The only time Dark Dwellers are seen is when a war party comes up for food and sacrifices and drags them, sometimes screaming, back into the murky depths. The dark magic they employ sometimes is known to seep and erupt from their crevices, corrupting all it touches. Turning the meek into monsters and gentle into gruesome, while sometimes reanimating long dead carcasses which causes its own variety of problems for the other kingdoms, both major and minor.

The Cabal: A neutral territory that, either through luck or foresight, splits up each of the major nations from one another. Ancient, terrible beings control magic that could obliterate each nation from existence, yet all they are content to do is enforce the neutrality of their territory. This territory holds a neutral city that each other nation can come to meet, do business, trade, and discuss a variety of problems and situations that might be facing one another. Beyond this city and buffer territory though, the wilds are not under their protection and are fair game for all.

The Free Tribes: This is not a nation, rather, a term to cover the various neutral states and tribes that exist between the borders of other major kingdoms and empires. They often squabble amongst themselves, get absorbed by larger nations, and otherwise live fairly quiet, autonomous lives without concern with the larger political picture of the interactions between each major state. Their equipment, mentality, and lifestyles vary as wildly as each nation does, so one can be fairly warned to keep an open ear and mind when dealing with new tribes and smaller nations.

Merfolk: Perhaps one of the most common and populated race within the sea are the Merfolk. While they do have several defining traits amongst them, mainly being the fact they are born with the bottom half of a fish and upper half of a human, everything else varies as much as any species would. Hair color, scale color, size, fin shape, everything varies and depends on who they are, where they are from, who their parents are, and a host of other factors that play into their appearances, not taking into account clothing choices of course.



Tueda: They are comparable to the Merfolk in many ways, however, their defining feature is not their fin. They are generally part squid or octopus, with the tentacles varying in function, lethality, shape, color, and the rest of their traits and gender are as varied as the Merfolk are, just with a key difference laying within their difference in lower half. Their population size is also quite large, although not quite as large as the Merfolk, they are still a rather populous group indeed.



Selachi: Much like the Merfolk and Tueda, their properties vary greatly from person to person, from skin design and coloration to size and intellect levels. However, what seperates them from their other seafolk kin are the fact that, as a Selachi, their entire race is made up of a race of carnivore sharks. Beyond this, they are comparable to the Merfolk and Tueda.



Eomei: A race of bipedal, hard shelled crustaceans that maintain a humanoid shape, these beings are generally extremely, unforgivingly racist towards any other race besides themselves. This vicious outlook has seen entire villages consumed when they refused to tribute small numbers as sacrifice to the Eomei people, and they descended upon such rebellious villages to show others that the race of crustaceans are not to be trifled with.

Other: While the above are several of the most well known and populous races, there are plenty of other species wandering the sea, and anyone could find themselves face to face with such beings without a word of warning, depending on the situation.

Name: Orman Leomaris

Age: 47

Gender: Male

Race: Merfolk

Role/Skills: Orman's role within the Empire of Mer is a warrior scout, finding trouble well before it becomes a problem and alerting the Mer military of it before its too late. He can also fight alongside his more regular comrades in arms, in this capacity. As for skills, he has a very small set of skills, stemming from a long, traditional history of his family and military service.

Recon: First and foremost, the Leomaris family has long been trackers and hunters of the Mer empire. Each Leomaris of the family, even those who are not destined for military service, are trained in the art of tracking any query that might cross their path, and getting away unseen. From the safe and risky hiding locations, techniques for outswimming and manouvering larger, faster, or otherwise dangerous situations that warrant a fast withdraw. In these capacities, most of the Leomaris family could be levied as scouts in times of emergency, but for those going on to serve the Empire of Mer as warriors, their training is expanded to include the most potent and well guarded of secrets that the Leomaris use as trademarks of their work, making the few Leomaris that make their choice a military one far too few, and far more coveted than one would think.

Martial Prowess: When pressed into a corner, Orman has his dual training from both his family, the Leomaris, and the Mer military to thank for his talent. From the Mer military, he has learned to handle his hunting glaive, a traditional weapon of his family, with far more precision and defensive posturing, prolonging his staying power in a fight. From his family, he learned how to quickly identify and strike vital points on many kinds of foes, and rapidly learn when facing new or unfamiliar foes, how to strike to hurt. He wears almost no armor, and little clothing beyond that, to land each harpoon he has with precision, and how to give it maximum distance through the water to reach as far as it can without losing too much of its punch, each barbed harpoon capable of lodging and hamstringing the movement of many foes.

Magic: N/A

History: The Leomaris family has a long standing, proud tradition of service to the Empire of Mer, with some historians capable of tracing their roots back as one of the early, if not one of the founding, families that first formed the once nascent Empire of Mer. Acting as the premier hunters and trackers of many Mer operations, a Leomaris hunter is well appreciated, as they often bring in the most non organic food in any given settlement, and help provide some of the rarest delicies known to the Empire, having secret knowledge of old hunting grounds and ancient places forgotten, where only the dead, the prey, and the rare Leomaris hunter might dare swim. Even rarer from the Leomaris are their scouts, the hunters who chose to dedicate their lives to the Empire of Mer military, providing a handful of the finest scouts and, when the need arises, hit and run warriors they might call upon.

Orman Leomaris is a direct descendent of the first known member of the Leomaris family, who held that honor alongside the first frontier scout of the Empire of Mer many cycles ago. Like his ancient forebearer so many years ago, Orman did not feel at ease just being a hunter, as he was raised and trained in the art of the Leomaris hunter. He was too keen to just content himself a hunter. Rather, he was always out exploring the old, forgotten paths throughout the world, narrowly avoiding the enemies of the Empire of Mer countless times, even as a youth. It was this and his near perfect recollection of such events that made the family elders decide the lad had only one path available for him. The Mer military, when Orman came of age and inherited his father's glaive, gladly accepted a Leomaris into their ranks, reassigning him as early as possible to their scouting corp.

Orman excelled far beyond what anyone expected, even amongst the Leomaris who were keeping an eye on the young merman. He was like a seaghost, haunting the places no other dared swim, for fear of their lives or worse, all the while Orman made a name for himself as he grew older and wiser, earning battle scars from skirmishes and fending off the odd Dark Dweller raid. He never speaks of what he has seen from these raids, seeming to grow uneasy and uncomfortable with such topics, citing what they left behind was not pretty. But this did not stop him from doing his job well, growing in increasingly senior ranks and roles within the Empire of Mer's scouts, and once he came of age, was given command of a team of fellow scouts. Although Orman rarely was able to be found, often times busy organizing or scouting on his own, the merman no doubt had the best interests of the Empire in his heart and mind whenever he was on the job, and for good or ill, he would see these through until fate stole his life from him.

Appearance:


Other: Orman is rarely, if ever, parted from his hunting glaive, a weapon passed down from father to son for countless generations now, and the weapon has seen more bloodshed than most denizens of the Empire of Mer could ever remember.