Endless Blue - Week 27 - The Packbreeder, Master of Beasts

Sociology

The Packbreeder -- Master of Beasts

The packbreeder is a master of beasts, raising and training animals of all kinds to fulfill the needs of Elquan society.  These animal servants either perform menial or back-breaking toil or serve as sources of nourishment for the local populace.  Other creatures get trained as beasts of war, massive slabs of muscle and bone frenzied into killing machines and then let loose on the enemy's forces.

Adventurers:  Packbreeder adventurers are a bit of a contrary folk.  The require the heavy resources of a base of operations to raise and breed their animals, but also need the wanderlust of travel and danger of combat to hone their warbeasts.

Alignment:  There is no intrinsic alignment required to become a packbreeder.  The morality of using animals for your own needs aside,  packbreeders range the whole spectrum of alignments.  Alignment is more a function of the society the packbreeder was brought up in than any ethical requirement; if the society expects kind behavior towards animals, the packbreeder's methods will need to match those expectation or else face backlash from offended locals.

            There are as many methodologies for packbreeding as there are cultures.  The Lumulus are very systemic and calculating, requiring near perfect results in as few generations as possible.  Chelon packbreeders focus more on appearance and lineage than brute strength.  And Yaun-Teel are notorious for the cruelty, and are the only culture that allows packbreeding of intelligent races.

Packbreeders in the Known World

            Packbreeders are perhaps the most common occupation short of warrior and farmer, and many times overlap with both.  The need for manual labor is intense, and a skillful  packbreeder can provide for those needs and make a good living.  Quality pack animals, livestock, and other beasts of burden can bring in premiums when a packbreeder's reputation proceeds him.

GAME RULE INFORMATION
Packbreeders have the following game statistics.

Abilities:  The most important skills for the packbreeder are Charisma and Wisdom.  They must have the social magnetism to draw loyalty from their beasts and the willpower to dominate them when his position as pack leader is challenged.

Alignment:  Any.
Hit Dice: d6.
Starting Funds: 5d6x10gp.

CLASS SKILLS
The packbreeder's class skills (and the key ability for each) are Bluff  (Cha), Concentration (Con),  Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str),  Knowledge (animals) (Int), Listen (Wis), Profession (animal husbandry) (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Use Rope (Dex).

Skill Points at 1st Level: (6 + Int modifier) x 4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier.

CLASS FEATURES
All of the following are the packbreeder's class features.

Packbreeder Class Abilities Chart

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Pet	Companion	Livestock	Warbeast	Feats
1	+0	+0	+0	+0	1		1		Wild Empathy, Animal Servant
2	+1	+0	+0	+0		1			Animal Leadership
3	+2	+1	+1	+1			1	1	Pack Dominance, Selective Breeding
4	+3	+1	+1	+1	1
5	+4	+2	+2	+2		1	1
6	+5	+2	+2	+2					Leadership
7	+6/+1	+3	+3	+3	1		1	1
8	+7/+2	+3	+3	+3		1
9	+8/+3	+4	+4	+4			1
10	+9/+4	+4	+4	+4	1
11	+10/+5	+5	+5	+5		1	1	1
12	+11/+6/+1	+5	+5	+5					Bonus Feat
13	+12/+7/+2	+6	+6	+6	1		1
14	+13/+8/+3	+6	+6	+6		1
15	+14/+9/+4	+7	+7	+7			1	1
16	+15/+10/+5	+7	+7	+7	1
17	+16/+11/+6/+1	+8	+8	+8		1	1
18	+17/+12/+7/+2	+8	+8	+8					Bonus Feat
19	+18/+13/+8/+3	+9	+9	+9	1		1	1
20	+19/+14/+9/+4	+9	+9	+9		1			New Species

Weapon and Armor Proficiency:  The packbreeder is proficient in all simple weapons and light armor.

Wild Empathy:  Packbreeders can influence the mood of natural animals.  This works like a Diplomacy check, based the packbreeder's level modified by his Cha modifier and the result of 1d20.  The ability only works when within 30 feet of the subject animal, and the animal and packbreeder must be able to study each other for at least a minute (longer study provides no benefit).  This ability can be used on magical beasts with Intelligence scores of 1 or 2, but it incurs a -4 penalty to the check.

Animal Servant:  The essence of the packbreeder class, packbreeders can gain animal servants of various types to carry out the breeder's will. There are four types of animal servants:

            Pet -- These servants provide little use other than the pleasure they bring to the packbreeder, be it in playfulness, coloration, or rarity.  While they can perform a few minor tricks like begging for scraps or playing fetch, pets cannot perform any significant task or participate in combat.  Treat this as if the animals are only capable of learning Handle Animal tricks with a DC of 15 or below.
            Without supervision, these animals tend to wander off and get lost.

            Companion -- This type of animal is the equivalent to a wizard's familiar or a ranger's animal companion.  It can communicate primitive feelings and basic information such as direction to its packbreeder master.  Companions are capable of participating in combat, but generally expect preferential treatment over the other types of animal servants and only be asked to risk their lives in the most dire of emergencies.  See Animal Leadership below for more details.

            Livestock -- These are the domesticated animals that take part in the everyday life of Elqua, such as farm animals, mounts, etc.  These animals are extremely docile and tend to favor flight when panicked unless the packbreeder or an alpha animal is present.  One benefit of livestock is the production of food.  Some animals, with a modicum of preparation, can be brought along on with a packbreeder as he wanders, providing eggs, milk, or in very dire situations, meat (this is the number listed in the chart above; otherwise, there is no limit to the livestock a packbreeder can care for).  The drawback is the need to provide food, shelter, and protection for the livestock to live long enough to produce their supplementary foodstuffs.  The trade-off comes that animal feed tends to be cheaper than the cost of feeding adventurers, at the cost of needing to account for that extra needed feed.

            Warbeast --  These are dangerous, wild creatures, capture and trained for combat.  They require massive amounts of food applied in controlled manner to maintain handler’s status as leader (a grazing warbeast will soon realize it does not need to depend on a handler for sustenance).  A packbreeder can control a number of warbeasts (dependent on his level) that have a combined HD no greater than his current level.  Example: A 20^th level Beastmaster can have a maximum of 5 war beasts whose total Hit Dice cannot exceed 20.
            Further, war beasts are capricious and jealous of other war beasts, needing to frequently challenge each other for favored status with the packbreeder.  They will defer to their packbreeder's companions (animal companions or piscean ones), though they will not show any loyalties to them.
            See Pack Dominance below for more details.

Animal Leadership:  The packbreeder gains the ability to have multiple animal companions/familiars.  These companions act as both, giving the packbreeder a initial bonus, then benefiting themselves according to the packbreeder's level.
            Packbreeders gain their first companion at 2nd level, then another at every three levels there after.  The companions is limited to creatures of the animal type, and whose total Hit Dice can never exceed one-half the packbreeder's current level.  These companions cannot be dismissed like familiars can, but in the event a companion dies the packbreeder can cultivate a new companion.

Class Level	Natural Armor Adj.	Bonus Tricks	Special
2nd-3rd	+1	1	Link, Alertness
4th-5th	+2	2	Evasion
6th-8th	+3	3	Devotion
9th-11th	+4	4	Multiattack
12th-14th	+5	5	Speak with Master
15th-17th	+6	6	Empathic Link
18th-20th	+7	7	Improved Evasion

Pack Dominance:  A creature must be mentally bested before it will become a warbeast.  It is the act of succumbing to the packmaster's will that imprints him as the alpha beast on the animal.  The packbreeder makes an intimidate check with a bonus of 1/2 his packbreeder levels.  The beast must then make a Will save against that result.  Success means the beast ignores the packbreeder's mental domination and instead becomes hostile; failure means the beast succumbs and recognizes the packbreeder as the pack leader.  However, warbeasts will forever be on the look out for signs of weakness in their leader, and jump on any opportunity to capitalize on the slightest mistake.

            Pack Dominance can be used on any animal, beast, magical beast, or single vermin with a total Hit Dice equal to half the current packbreeder's level.  They are controlled by an applied use of the Handle Animal skill, and must maintain concentration while the warbeast performs the act (multiple warbeasts completing separate acts can be controlled simultaneously with a single roll).
            A warbeast can be dismissed by another Pack Dominance roll, but unless warbeast fails by 10 or more it will become violent, attacking the packbreeder in retaliation, or the nearest creature it sees as a lesser member of the pack.  The newly freed ex-warbeast will flee if faced with death, but may eventually track down the packbreeder in the future to regain its place in the pack.

Selective Breeding:  Starting at 3rd level, whenever a packbreeder is allowed a new animal servant beyond his first of that type, he may choose to have it be a new generation of an existing animal in his pack of the appropriate type.  For example, a packbreeder with a delphis livestock would have the offspring of that delphis as his second livestock animal servant.  This represents the effort spent in selectively breeding certain intended traits into the animal paying off in a new generation of transitional animal.
            The benefit of this is that the new generation can have higher stats than the original animal.  The packbreeder gains an number of points equal to his Wis modifier to be added to the second generation's stats, hit dice, saves, skills, and/or natual armor.  Only one point can be applied per statistic in a generation (but successive generations can apply points to the same statistics).  This process can be repeated every time the packbreeder is allowed a new animal servant of that type, with the effects becoming cumulative.  For example, a third generation delphis starts out with the stats of the second generation before it, then gets the five points of stat increases applied.
            Note that limitations such as maximum Hit Dice for an animal servant type must still be observed.

Leadership:  At 6th level, packbreeders gains the Leadership feat.  Usually this is when a packbreeder takes on an apprentice packbreeder as their cohort to pass on the trade.  The followers gained from the feat are typically relegated to maintaining the packbreeder's farmlands and remaining livestock that is not brought along while adventuring.

Bonus Feat:  Packbreeders gain a bonus feat at 12th, and again at 18th level.

New Breed:  The pinnacle of packbreeding skill is the selective breeding of one species into a new breed.  At 20th level, an animal of at least fifth generation can become a new, self-sustaining breed.  The packbreeder may replace some or all of its animals servants of that type with this new breed (the precursive generations being put out to pasture), which retroactively gain all the benefits from the animal servant class ability.  Hit Dice limitations for animal servant type must still be observed.
 

"The primitive beasts of the wild find benefit in domestication.
The fear of starvation is eradicated, and the cost is simply their supplication."
-- A somewhat totalitarian view of packbreeder philosophy

Endless Blue - Week 26 - The Floating Wheel

Anthropogenics

The Floating Wheel

Perhaps the third most important discovery that enabled civilization to flourish, behind language and fire, is arguably the wheel.  Historians and philosophers can argue the details, but work-relieving potential of the wheel has proven itself indispensible in every culture known.  An astoundingly simply invention -- the simplest shape, found everywhere in nature, and refined to become the greatest mechanical tool to push civilization forward -- the wheel's practicality is a little diminished when you can move in all directions.  Wheels essentially need traction to work, and when held aloft, floating in an endless ocean of water, there is little there for the wheel to roll across.  Even if the pisceans of antiquity kept to the sea bed with their wheels, the topography of the ocean floor is rough, usually steep, and most times less solid than packed earth.

This is not to say that the wheel doesn't exist.  I most certainly does, as there just as many inspirations for the shape under the sea as there are above the waves, and the utility of the pre-historical invention is simply too potent for civilization to have "never imagined it".  But on Elqua, the wheel gives up its prominence as the premiere contraption of the piscean mind in favor of a less tangible, but perhaps more understandable, development: domestication.

The domestication of animals as beasts of burden filled the roll of the wheel in Elquan prehistory.  Harnesses or even basic lengths of rope strapped to dolphins, manta rays, and other strong swimmers with high levels of stamina took advantage of the raw strength the beasts possessed to pull a sled or travois.  When loads were exceptionally heavy, the travois would be dragged across the ocean floor terrain, but with sufficient number of animals using their inate buoyancy, the weight of the load could be over come and the essentially be lifted into the water much like a helicopter might lift its cargo.  The domesticated animals, in a way, served as organic dirigibles, carrying cargo that would be impossible to move by hand.

Domestication is the practice of humans to selectively breed compliance into a species for the intent of exploiting their natural traits.  It is not just limited to animals (as expressed in the Packbreeder character class), but also included plants (as employed with the Culinist character class).
On our own world, domestication is as common as the nearest house pet or backyard garden.  Domestication of canis lupus familiaris (the common dog) took place almost 17,000 years ago, and cereal crops like peas and wheat were domesticated roughly 11,000 years ago.  The piscean equivalents would be delphis (pronounced del-fIz, a smaller form of dolphin trapped in a perpetual state of neotony) and the wonder grain ricelqua.

To achieve domestication in animals, the packbreeder needs to produce six criteria in the species.

Placid Temperament -- An animal must be able to adjust to its new environment and not become startled by any little movement or sound.  Essentially, it must modify its "fight or flight" reflex so that it is not the primary reaction to outward stimuli.  A beast that lashes out at the slightest provocation is better suited to become a beast of war, whereas a creature that is skittish and likely to bolt at any time becomes a burden to simply keep in captivity.

Pleasant Disposition -- Unlike the beasts of war packbreeder guide into combat, domesticated  animals must not pose a danger to their captor when held in captivity.  A dog is docile in comparison of its feral fore-bearer, the wolf,

Social Imprinting -- A domesticated animal must be able to accept another kind of creature (in this case, the packbreeder or owner) as the pack leader of it's pack/herd.  Without this implicit subjugation, a species would never achieve the level of dependency needed for domestication.

Captive Breeding -- If the animal cannot breed under the auspices of piscean packbreeders, there is no hope of selectively breeding the wanted traits.  Many animals reproduce in specific places, such as sea turtles along sandy beaches.  This migratory instinct that forces an animal to travel to a specific place to reproduce/give birth prevents the encompassing control a packbreeder needs to modify a species successfully.

Quick Maturity -- Coupled with captive breeding, if an animal does not reach maturity at a relatively fast rate and reproduce a subsequent generation in the lifespan of a piscean, no single packbreeder can fully influence the artificial selection of its traits.  If it would take multiple generations of packbreeders to produce any significant genetic change,  chances are a more fertile species would be better suited for domestication.

Adaptable Diet -- Animals whose diet consists of a single specific algae or species of fish make poor choices for domestication, as their finicky consumption habits require extra effort to cultivate.  Those species that can survive on the left-overs from piscean meals, or even whatever plant life is chanced upon in the immediate area mean less energy is invested into cultivating their meals and that extra effort can be put into whatever chore they are suited to accomplish.

The product of this intense genetic selection is the creation of livestock (animals that can be used by pisceans as sources of food, beasts of burden, or both).  Some animals make better muscle than meal, like the ever-present dolphins and porpoises.  Others are strictly raised little other reason that to be eaten, like albacore.  Then there are those animals used for their industrial applications, such as the oysters used in nacre production.  These species are bred with an marked increase of whatever profitable attribute in mind.  Finally, some species are bred as effort reducers, meant to take over menial tasks that pisceans are too busy or not well suited for, like pilot fish for cleaning and herding animal packs, or the bioluminescent algae used in bale-lights.

Plants, on the other hand, require much less stringent guidelines for domestication due mostly due to their immobility.  Domesticated plants bred for large-scale food harvesting are called crops, and here a culinist's skill can shine.  The application of a skillful culinist's abilities can breed out physical and chemical defenses (such as thorns or sour fruit), shorten germination times, increase harvest yields, or even create brand new types of plant.  An example in our own world is the root known as the carrot.  While most immediately think of the color orange when the vegetable is mention, the truth is that carrots come in a spectrum of colors, and the ubiquitous orange color is just one.  It is believed that the acari is one such result on Elqua, a carefully crafted species of plant that excels at its absorptive abilities when it is hybridized.  The cultivar (cultivated variety) of acari can be almost unidentifiable when compared to the wild variety. except for the tell-tale rubbery skein and gelatinous pulp.

An interesting effect of selective breeding and societal growth has developed into a class of animal that serves no real purpose other than the joy it gives to its owner.  These animals do not provide food, nor do they complete work.  Instead they exist solely at the whim of their master.  Called "pets", these domesticated creatures are usually the result of generations of packbreeders honing a species of fauna into a source of companionship and pleasure instead of purpose and need.  The plant equivalent would be a garden, and the flora of the deep can come in as varied shape, size, or color as the culinist's imagination can conjure.

Endless Blue - Week 25 - What Use is Shelter when Water Soaks Everything

Architecture 

What Use is Shelter when Water Soaks Everything

An understandable preliminary idea would be "what use are buildings under the sea?"  Is not the purpose of shelter to protect from the elements?  Here on Elqua, the element of water surrounds everything in every direction, with its life-giving yet material-destroying wetness.  There is no rain to keep out when water takes the place of air, after all.  And since life has evolved to live in soaked, cold environment would such protection ever be invented.

While these points have some validity, the need for shelter is still imperative for the growth and maturation of society as well as the protection of the individual piscean.   It forms the foundation from with to build future generations upon, contributing to dependable and stable surroundings.

True, weather like rain cannot function in an environment of tangible liquid.  That does not mean that there are not other sources of danger and risk to life that need to be addressed.  The oceans of Elqua have strong, torrential currents that meander throughout the seas.  No matter how well adapted an individual may be to withstand the temperature, when currents sweep through at speeds rivaling just a category 1 hurricane a hapless piscean will be battered about like a fish out of water.

Regardless of this, just because a species is evolved to flourish in an environment does not mean it is impervious to the fluctuations of temperature that the daily solar cycle creates.  We are perfectly suited to survive in our air-filled world, but spend all day, unprotected, out in the blistering sun or the cold night and your body will suffer from heat stroke or fall into hypothermia.  Even in temperate climate zones, try to sleep out under the evening stars and see how long until you begin shivering without some form of shelter, even if it is just a sleeping bag in which to nestle.

If there is any lesson the Endless Blue teaches, it is that life is eat-or-be-eaten.  Thus the most indispensible utility of shelter is the protection from predators.  Not all aquatic creatures operate on a luminal cycle, and while the pisceans sleep the night away the nocturnal predators are on the prowl.  A sufficiently sturdy domicile alleviates the majority of the need to post guards against the indigenous creatures.  A shut door is often enough deterrent to keep strays from encroaching into our living areas, and this is just as true whether those creatures have legs or fins.

On a more sociological level, shelter provides barriers to others of our own kind.  It draws borders between what is mine and what is yours, and serves as an obstacle for those that wish to deprive me of my belongs without my consent.  Theft is simply an unenlightened extension of foraging, but instead of finding the boon out in the natural habitat, it is found in the possession of another piscean.

Conversely, shelter prevents our property from being lost.  Domestication of livestock was a major contribution to the civilization of the wild, and without an enclosed area to pen in beasts of burden those same animals would wander off in their own instinctive attempt to forage for survival. 

Form and Function

The earliest shelter was that eked out between the coral reefs or the cracks in the rocky sea slopes by the primitive hunter/gatherer pisceans in prehistory.  It was only natural, as it was the same method used by all other animals in the seas.

Well, almost all others.  Many species evolved their own kinds of shelter in the form of carapaces or shells.  Chambered nautilus shells are perhaps the most visually memorable kind of self-produced shelter, where the animal excretes nacre to form a protective barrier around its body.  This shell is slightly larger than the creature itself, allowing it to withdraw into the shell, hiding its whole body from external threats.  As the animal grows, it adds onto the ever-widening open end of the shell, moves its growing mass into the wider section, and seals off a small portion of the opposite end with a wall that forms an anterior chamber -- hence the name "chambered nautilus".  The spiral formed by the circling chambers is a logarithmic spiral that follows the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8...), and is responsible for the inherent strength of the shell.

Piscean buildings follow much of the same pattern.  The most simplistic of buildings is the dome -- a single chamber.  There is little more sturdy than an arch.  Ancient structures in our own world still stand today based solely on the arch dynamic, without mortar to reinforce it.  A dome is simply an arch in 360 degrees.  Instead of adding floors to a building, the buoyant environment allows architects to build chambers in any direction they choose.  While the larger and larger chambers that a Fibonacci spiral entails would make a tower top heavy if built upward, putting the smallest chamber at the top, like a pinnacle, and winding downward is a solid design.

Another facet of underwater architecture is that there is no functional difference between a door and a window when the owner is capable of floating out either one.  Both are simply portals allowing ingress or egress from the building.  As such, portals can be positioned anywhere on a building -- walls, floor, or ceiling -- at any angle.  This can be used to add patterning to a spiraling design, as the chambers need not be placed at right angles to one another as we are accustomed to experiencing. 

Building Blocks

Masonry is not an alien concept in the Known World, and buildings have been constructed and torn down again and again for centuries.  Unless the other races co-opted an existing domicile or somehow coerced the Chelon to build it for them, all buildings trace their history back to early masonry construction.  Segments of coral, shell, basalt, or any other material have been interlocked to provide a barrier between the world without and the contents within, and it all hinged on the tacky material used to glue those solid blocks together -- mortar.

The key to construction has been the invention of hydraulic mortar.  Based on a mixture of ground lime, an aggregate of various corals, and the water present in abundance, mortar produces the permanent cementing of building parts into a lasting creation.  The lime and aggregate slurries are kept in separate containers until needed, at which time are mixed together either by hand (when small amount are needed) or in a mill-like device anchored to the rock or reef and driven by beasts of burden like dolphins.  The mix does not readily dilute in water due to the chemical properties created by the interaction of lime with calcium carbonate, and slowly sets despite the ever-present contact with water.  The curing time varies depending on the proportions of lime to coral and tempered by additional additives that add to the mortar's strength or flexibility.

The invention of this hydraulic cement is often given to the Mer engineer Whitaker Canvass about 120 years previously, but Kouton masons have been utilizing the agent for much longer than that.  Whomever actually discovered the fixative properties of lime, it has proven integral in the growth of civic populations everywhere, save for the few pisceans that prefer to keep themselves closer to the element of water as their precursors were, like the nomadic Locanth or the Narwahl Orcans.

Building design is far more varied than simplistic racial variations.  Architecture is as much an expression of art as it is the deployment of technology.  While the dome is the prototypical basis for all branches of consequent architecture, from that point it diverges in any of a hundred different directions.  Every architect expresses their ideas differently, and when presented with an empty lot and the potential for construction, they will present some unexpected visions.

Modern Examples of Piscean Buildings:

An adventurer can many times be judged on the tools employed in his career, and nothing says experience like owning a Locanthic hut.  Locanthic tents are masterfully made portable shelters, constructed from the rib-bones of whales and other large aquatic vertebrates.  The ribs form a star pattern, with the nexus forming at the top of the tent, and treated hides stretched between the bones.  The hut is easily put together, with the rib points digging into the clay seabed, lashed to coral, or pitoned into rock for anchoring.

Chelon cities are marvels of organic construction, using xanthellea to comprise their buildings, drawing out the coral and knitting it together in vast, interconnected caverns.    Completely mortar-less, the coral walls and ceiling are a solid formation that takes advantage of the coral's natural properties.  It has allowed the race to push the envelop of architecture and produce some of the most intricate and expansive buildings in the Known World.

Those few privileged enough to see a Lumulan settlement tell tales of their opaque glass buildings constructed of volcanic basalt quarried from the thermal vents that proliferate the region.

Endless Blue - Week 24 - All is not Blue Under the Waves

Oceanography

All is not Blue Under the Waves

Contrary to first impressions, terrain under the oceans is not a flat, featureless horizon of silt and sand.  In actuality, submerged land has as varied a morphology as the land above the waves, perhaps more so.  Here, with sea surrounding you in every direction, the currents that affect the formation of terrain consist of water instead of air.

The flow of the currents across the world are subdivided into gyres, large sections of repetitively circulating waters that make up the basis of oceanic climate and provide the impetus for aquatic weather.  As a result of this, the terrain of the Known World is complex, with many different types of habitat overlapping in the same area.

Aquatic Vegetation

Despite being surrounded by the Endless Blue, Elqua's underwater kingdoms are a verdant green.  Great swaths of kelp and seaweed blanket the ocean floor like the timberland and shrubbery of the surface world, with upsweeping and enveloping growths almost re-blanketing the area.  An underwater jungle, with the greens and browns of plant life in all directions, the variety and volume of aquatic plants rivals that of our own -- a rich field of broad leafy vegetation undulating in the ocean current.

It is the kelp forests and seaweed jungles that formed the basis for the nebulous borders of Elquan kingdoms.  Animals cannot exist in the open ocean without becoming easy victims to predators.  They require the dense cover and plentiful food sources the wild areas of aquatic vegetation offer.  To keep this balance intact, the political bodies of water have needed to enforce the concept of "no mer's seas" as buffer zones -- a form of environmental protection.

However, bowing under recent population explosions and exponential consumption needs, piscean cultivation has cleared a significant portion of the wild vegetation in favor of farmland dedicated to acari and ricelqua.  This clearing of sea plants has begun to devastate the natural habitat of ocean life. and for the first time the Known World is looking a little too small for its people, despite being nearly an entire hemisphere of the globe.

Sargasso Seas

Sargasso seas are an evolution of Elqua's kelp forests and seaweed jungles that has adapted into its ecological niche by no longer needing to bury its root system into the soil.  The sargassum's roots eek out nutrients from the water, while the leaves bobbing on the water's surface collect sunlight.  Complete ecosystems can form on larger patches of sargasso, and in many ways become miniature versions of the  mysterious migrating islands.

The godless have turned to the sargassum as possible relief to the increasing needs of the piscean masses, and their culinists have been hard at work trying to develop better hybrids of sea plants that can produce more, faster, and with less stress on the environment.  Unfortunately the unrelenting bias against anything from above the surface of the water, coupled with political fearmongering, has stymied most of the culinists' progress.

Coral Reefs

The great reefs of the Endless Blue are the anchor system for underwater life, providing shelter and food for so many of the indigenous life forms.  What we see as coral is actually a calcium carbonate excretion of the actual coral animal, the polyp, which lives in communities.  Many different kinds of polyps can co-exist in a reef, and each contributes to the beauty and longevity of the habitat.

On Elqua, reefs are much more common that on Earth.  About 10% of the undersea terrain is covered in coral structures, usually (but not exclusively) clustered around intersections of imperceptible lines of energy called ley lines.  These are the areas that Chelon congregate and protect as part of the xanthellae that comprises their civilization.

Oceanic Ridges

These are the hills and mountains of the world, pushing up either through the collision of tectonic plates or by volcanic eruptions depositing new earth from the lava chambers below the crust.  They can reach through all levels of the ocean -- Shelf, Shoal, and Shore -- and even break the surface to form the tiny island chains of Elqua.

Canyon Trenches

The flip side of oceanic ridges are the canyon trenches that line the continental shelves.  These are the deepest parts of the Endless Blue, where the reach of sunlight falters and the cold, looming water saps the warmth from most every living thing.  Ecology here is that of the scavenger, often living off of the sinking bodies of the dead.

A variation of the canyon trench are underground caverns.  Entry to such a cavern can be miles away from the actual cave, and may meander randomly and quixotically, thinning and thickening their width along the raw rocky tunnel walls.

Brine Waterways

The composition of sea water is remarkably saline, but the distribution of that salt is not uniform.  There are places in the oceans where a greater density of salt has made the liquid sink to the bottom and fill in pools, becoming lakes and rivers.  The disparity in diffused material is often so great that you can literally see a difference in the two fluids, the brine possessing an almost oily, greasy-green tint.

These lakes and rivers form waterways just as normal lakes and rivers do on the surface world, with brackish brine flowing generally downward to the lowest depths.  The lower the flow of brinewater, the thicker is becomes from the pressure.

Many piscean culinists use this brinewater as a pereserving agent in food, especially meats.  Brining food draws the water out of the meat, essentially mummifying it so that it spoils at a much more reduced rate.  In conjuction with acari's denaturing acidity, Elquan cuisine is tangy mix of sweet and salty flavors.

Hydrothermal Vents

A hydrothermal vent is a hole in the bottom of the ocean that allows either the water above or underground springs to come in contact with molten rock from the planet's mantle.  This contact immediately flashes the water into steam, which comes billowing as scalding hot water.  They are the closest thing the Known World has to open flame.

While the waters around these fuming vents reaches the boiling point, life still manages to flourish here, in strange forms like tube worms anchored to the sedimentary pillars that form the vent, filtering nutrients from the waters passively.

The Lumulus Basin is renown to be covered in a multitude of these ducts, and it is due to these vents that the Lumulus learned the art of metal-smithing.
Chemical Seeps

Colloquially known as "poison water", chemical seeps are cracks in Elqua's crust that leak chemicals into the oceans.  Substances like methane, sulfur, and hydrocarbons are the most common, but even rarer elements and compounds can be found.  The topography that forms around seep habitats are the most unique in all of Elqua, and are often the sites where surface life re-adapted for underwater life.

Sea Snow

As ludicrous an image as it may seem, it actually does snow under water.  Normally the saline and other trace elements in ocean water prevent the sea from freezing solid, and instead keep the material in a liquid form despite its temperature dropping below its freezing point.  But sometimes the conditions are right for ice crystals to form and be carried by the water currents.
This phenomenon is relegated to the lowest depths of Elqua's oceans, where the gallon after gallon of water pressing downward actually compacts the water into its solid state through sheer force of weight.  At this depth there is little to no light, so consequently not much in the way of heat to melt the newly formed crystals, yet the fluid they are suspended in itself does not freeze.  These particles are then swept up in the ocean currents, whirling, swirling, twirling around in all direction under the grip of flowing water.  More like a flurry than falling snow, these specks can even be seen to "fall" upward as the currents drag them around until they clump together into larger chunks of ice or cling to something they impact during their travels.  Those chunks trapped at lower depths slowly increase in size as they accumulate more crystals, while those free floating ones eventually collect enough mass that buoyancy overcomes inertia and they rise upward, melting in the warmer currents closer to the surface.

Vortices

The technical term for whirlpools, a vortex is a turbulent, spinning funnel on the surface of the water with a downdraft, which may or may not reach down to the sea bed.  The water travels in a spiral pattern towards the center of the whirlpool, and is sucked downward.  They are formed by the complex interplay of Elqua's three moons on the tides of the planet.  Further, vortices have been known to form when sinkholes open up to underground pockets of lesser dense materials, like air pockets.  These are usually the most lethal, as the unfortunate soul trapped at the bottom of such a cavern cannot swim back up the waterfall-like funnel of the whirlpool.

Not all vortexes are manic spirals of circling descent and death.  Indeed, many are quite tranquil drifts, and the more expansive of these vortices are boons to travelers and caravans that can monopolize their currents to speed travel between destinations.

Red Tide

The red tide is a colorful misnomer for a species of blooming single-celled bacteria that appear red with seasonal regularity.  The danger presented by what would normally be a smorgasbord of phytoplankton is the virulent neurotoxin these bacteria give off.  It is a quick and efficient poison, killing most everything that simply swims too close to their infected waters.

Normally avoided at all costs, the currents of Elqua's oceans will sometimes drag the red tide right through heavily populated areas of the Known World, leaving a wake of destruction as they pass.  The civilized races consider it to be every person's humanitarian duty to warn unsuspecting settlements of an encroaching red tide, even in times of hostility.  This is a practice shared by the Locanth, though not any of the other primitive races.

Black Water

Only a rumor, but stories have begun surfacing of a new kind of red tide.  Inky black, as if absorbing all color and light from reality, spreading blobs of oozing darkness have apparently been appearing in the most remote reaches of the hinterseas.  Unlike the red tide, this black water does not kill an unsuspecting prey, but instead slowly engulfs it within it viscous tendrils.  However, no quantifiable evidence of its existence has ever been found, and with the tale's veracity coming from "a friend of a friend", most discount it as superstitious nonsense.

Endless Blue – Week 23 – The Vastness

Aerology

The Vastness

The oceans of Elqua cocoon the world in a thick, cool embrace that nurtures a complexity of life unparalleled.  The majority of the intelligent races are content to swim in their mostly borderless world, encapsulated in their blue underwater haven.  But there are few -- those with inquisitive minds and more daring natures, that seek to peer beyond the one border no one dare to cross: past the surface, into the Vastness.

Above the waves, existence becomes alien.  No longer do the waters envelop you in their comforting currents.  Instead there is only openness, expansive nothing, the vastness of above.  This is a strange world of waterless blue expanse filled with light that slowly corrupts into inky blackness.  When sudden and violent storms rage, their crackling anger fluorescing the sky with whipping curtains of color.  It is  here the Maelstrom resides, its year-long howling fury screeching across the globe as it parts the turbulent waters like a finger scratching in the silt mud, as if searching for some long lost dire need.

The Vastness is an emotionally charged term for everything that is not below the surface of Elqua's oceans.  Through constant religious propaganda anything "upward" has become tainted with images of damnation and suffering, that life above the waves is aberration and suffering.  There is much to be said of that fact -- what little land breaks the surf is a teeming jungle of savage creatures with the sole drive to feed on the lesser being.  The most basic survival law is to eat while not being eaten, and that is monumental achievement in the lush islands that speckle the Endless Blue.

It was from glimpsing these isolated pinpricks of land that Seamus Lorwynn, famed explorer, first pondered the origin of species and brought a new way of thinking, kicking and screaming in protest, to the world of the Endless Blue.

Climate

Climate under the waves is a function of the Gulf Stream as it draws cold water away from the polar regions and distributes it in the areas between the Tropics of Kraken and Cetacean.  Cyclically, it then draws the tepid, phytoplankon enriched waters from the tropics to the temperate regions, and finally back to the poles, where it serves as the basis of all food chains.

Above the waves, the climate is much more stable, with tropic, temperate, and tundra zones very clearly defined.  With such great swaths of water separating the peppered specks of land, climate zones tend to stay very homogenized and ubiquitous.  The banded circulatory air currents keep most equitorial zones an amalgamous equivalent, with variation more the result of the evolution of life forms on land than from the weather itself.  Biomes are predictable to almost the degree of latitude, with altitude being the only variant effect on any particular island.  There is less erosion in this environment than under the sea, and despite planetary age rocks and stone formations have kept a sharper edge.  The sand that makes up the shore is a product of aquatic erosion, the eons of tidal waters lapping at the exposed ground wearing away sediment and  detritus.

This does not preclude the existence of air currents -- a Jet Stream most certainly does exist, but it does not meander over the world, tracing edges of continents and borders of mountain ranges.  Few surface objects affect its constant rolling around the planet, with the volcanic islands of the Spine of the World being the most numerous, and the Maelstrom being the most visual.  These introduce enough agitation into the otherwise calm climate zones to produce a variation of seasonal weather, such as monsoons.  This in turn have, over time, produced landscapes from the hyperhumid to the arid, and has given rise to Elqua's own rainforests, steppes, deserts, and even tundras.  Though rarely are more than two types of terrain ever found on a single island; such a limited space cannot support that level of minute variation without another source of interference contributing to the formation.

Weather

Usually, the weather of the Vastness is relatively calm when compared to our world.   A quick comparison between the Earth and Elqua illustrates the huge difference in storm systems between the two worlds.  This is primarily due to the nearly glass-smooth surface of the water.

Ninety-five percent of Elqua is covered in oceans, leaving only 5% to land mass.  Land mass contributes significantly to the formation of weather patterns by causing turbulence in air currents and providing surface areas of negative albedo for cooler air to shed heat.  By comparisson, our world has mighty continents that shape the flow of air around the land mass, and the variation of land altitudes -- from the deepest valley to the tallest mountain top -- further adds friction and movement to the atmospheric fluidity.

Since Elqua is comparatively a smooth round ball, air currents are not as dramatically excited by obstacles.  The tidal motion of the world, though complex due to the three moons, is essentially less choppy, and storm systems will instead tend to form bands around the planet such as those of gas giants than swirling vortexes between high and low pressure fronts.

This is not to say there are no differences in temperature.  There most certainly are.  Elqua is tilted on its axis, and rotates enough to have a day/night cycle.  This means the hemisphere closest to the sun during daytime absorbs more radiant heat from the world's sun, while the opposite point of the globe sheds heat quite rapidly.  This intake and release of sunlight-born heat is exacerbated by the albedo of the waters and the insulation of the ozone layer.

Remember how much more of Elqua is covered in water?  Nearly ¹⁹/₂₀^ths are covered in pristine waters.  Well, water has a interesting property called albedo, which means the amount of light reflected away instead of absorbed.  While water has a very low albedo, the waves formed by the tidal motion and deep sea currents cause light that shines down on the ocean to become scattered.  This is the familiar "glinting" that waves produce to the observer -- light that would normally be absorbed by the water as heat energy is being reflected back into the atmosphere.  With such a large surface of water to undulate and scatter light,  a much larger portion of light is reflected back into the atmosphere.

The southern polar ice-cap compounds this system.  Ice and snow are high on the scale of albedo expressing materials, so the southern polar region contributes to the heat cycle of the planet.  This is observable by the yearly melting of the ice-caps, where ancient rhodoarchaea bloom as they are freed from their cryogenic slumber, flowing down the newly created arctic rivers in a bright red flow, like a waterfalls of blood.  This jarring coversion of heat to melt the ice results in a lowering of both the gulf (water) and jet (air) streams as cold air and water seep into the heated areas.  As the cycle rotates, precipitation covers the south pole in fresh water, that freezes into ice and restores the extent of the Antarctic covered in ice to previous levels.

What keeps all this heat from escaping back into space is the ozone layer, intermittent cloud cover, and the strange over-abundance of noble gasses in Elqua's atmosphere.  The lower noble gases -- helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon -- make up a significantly larger proportion of the Vastness than they do in our own atmosphere.  Helium, for example, is abundant, at nearly 1% of Elqua's atmosphere (as contrasted by the 18 parts per million in our own air).  Argon, which in our world is .9% of the atmosphere, is over double that on Elqua -- an amazing 2.1%.  The rest of these inert gases exist in a range from 3x to 5x the predominance as that of Earth.

Since helium is lighter than oxygen -- the mainstay of either world's air -- it will rise in the atmosphere, taking its potential energy (as heat) into the upper stratosphere.  The helium is then dragged along the ozone layer by air currents to the gaps in the ozone above either global polar region, and there shed their heat.  The solar winds that form the planet's auroras drag it downward, heightening the colorful curtain effect so much it is visible in pure daylight.  The electrical storms that suddenly spring to life and rage unyieldingly until spent cause the turbulence necessary to disperse the now cooled helium back into the weather fronts and spread it across the globe.  The effects of the other noble gases are similar, but due to their atomic weight provide more impact on the redistribution of the atmosphere than the dispersion of heat.  As a side effect, it provides some strains of aerostat a constant source of light from which to photosynthesize, and a select few the potential energy to maintain their bioluminescence.

Beyond the Vastness

Perhaps the most blasphemous act of the godless is the realization that there is more beyond the strangely colored aurorae that dance at the poles.  The three moons of Elqua -- Oberus, Urowes, and Ymaris -- are well known by the scholars of the intelligent races, even if they hide the suspected effect those satellites have on a rare condition called lycanthrope.  Beyond this trinity of heavenly bodies, the so-called "stars" and the inherent repercussions of their existence, have frightened and angered the devout to very extreme reactions.  It only cements for the them that the godless' twisted fascination with the damnable Vastness is a sign of their degenerate and perverted ideals, and should be stamped out before they corrupt the right minded citizens of the Known World.  Luckily, one burgeoning mind somehow broke free of religious dogma and wrote rhetoric to gift the Endless Blue with a whole new paradigm of cosmology.

Even as a small child, Endira Mundi was fascinated by the hushed stories of twinkling lights in the night sky.  She braved potential ostracization and even death to indulge in her adolescent fancy of star gazing.  With her wide, black eyes peeking out in abject wonder just above the slow undulation of the waves, her nimble mind soared among the clouds and aurorae during the day and danced along the glittering diamonds of far away stars at night.  Eventually as the amazement of youth waned and the intellectual curiosity of adulthood waxed, she began to catalogue the position of the stars in rudimentary arrangements she called "constellations".  She charted the slow drift of these constellations as the seasons changed, noted the frequency of the new and full moons as their bizarre orbital paths criss-crossed the Vastness, and that gave birth to some of the higher forms of math.  It was from her preliminary notes that later astronomers deduced that the ocean-world of Elqua was perhaps twice or three-times the size as originally inferred from holy scripture.

Despite the intrinsic truth of her ideas, Endira's adult life was one fraught with persecution and prosecution.  She faced prejudice and outright hostility in her home currents, and a near constant conflict with local laws and magistrates kept her practically poorer than a beggar.  With the eventual slaying of her family at the hands of murderous zealot Olyhydrans, she eventually fled to a hermetic life in the Lumulus Basin.  While the xenophobic Lumulus shunned her as they would any other race, there she at least could embrace the one remaining love of her life -- peeking above the waves at a world so different, yet so close to her own.


The insert in the map of the night sky shows a to-scale measurement of the depths of the Elquan oceans and the extent of the world's atmosphere, weighted in density between cyan and white.  Almost half of the world's atmosphere is below the 6 kilometer mark, contrasted with 99% of the atmosphere by 38 kilometers.  These blue areas are the habitat of most of the areostats, with only a rare few venturing up higher into the thinning atmosphere.  The air finally thins to the point it is virtually a vacuum somewhere around 110 kilometers up, and at 650 km from the surface of the planet's waters the last vestiges of the stratosphere exist simply as random molecules.  By comparison, the 12 kilometers from sea level to the bottom of the Shelf seems rather shallow, until you realize that at those abyssal depths the weight of the water crushing in on top you is only acerbated by the downward pressure of that much atmosphere.

Endless Blue - Week 22 - Life Began with Water, but Would Not Linger

Evolution

Life Began in Water, but Would Not Linger

The variety of biology in the Endless Blue is astonishing when put into perspective.  With the deeper oceans and wider spaces, life was able to adapt in all directions.  The first unique aspect of Elquan evolution is the development of phytoplankton.  This relatively unremarkable microscopic organism may be the most simple biological life form, but held within it was the potential to populate every ecological niche on the planet.

Sea

Phytoplankton is not a single species, but a multitude of plant types so small it is impossible to see them with the naked eye.  However, their high reproductive rate, in conjunction with their chlorophyllic abilities, means large colonies can be perceived as a fuzzy green haze in the water's currents.  These microphytes -- algea colonies -- still bloom in this same manner today, creating massive swaths of emerald in the azure waters, and serve as the basis of the food chains for every living being in the world.

As plants, they require sunlight to photosynthesize the food they need to survive, so when feeding they tend to be found near the surface of Elqua's oceans.  It is this innocuous behavior that eventually led to the explosion of biodiversity that roams the planet.  The vast, interconnected oceans let the blooming patches excel and spread across the low-albedo waters.  Massive, practically continent-sized algae colonies that dwarf the collected land mass of Elqua many times over could sprout just below the surface of its pristine waters, basking in the life-giving rays of the sun and successfully thrive.

Acting as progenitors, these simple plant-cells multiplied, diversified, become more complex and robust, eventually leading to newer life forms that the phytoplankton then served as a primary food source.  The cycled continued, with those creatures developing more advance bodily systems; organizing cells into organs, creating new senses with which to explore their fertile new world, a bundle of nerves and bones and veins in such infinite diversity that it makes the whole idea of life stemming from a single primitive cell seem ludicrous.  Yet, that is exactly how it happened.

Land

With all this emphasis on aquatic life, one would be led to believe the scattered islands of the world are barren shale and sand.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and life has taken to these new environs just as easily as it did in the seas.  Life, as it is want to do, spreads wherever there is space to exist.  Sometime long in Elqua's prehistory, the predecessor of modern phytoplankton was so plentiful in the oceans that it spread onto dry land, forming a kind of rolling moss, and there began their own digression of evolution.

Elqua became encompassed by an epic ice age, the planet frozen over most of its surface, separating the phytoplankton of the sea from the that on land, and in the ages the frozen environment lasted allowed time for the land locked cousins to evolve further into a divergent life form, a purple-shaded rhodoarchaea that took advantage of the green-hued light that filters through the planet's Sargasso Ring to initiate photosynthesis.  By monopolizing on retinal in the place of chlorophyll, these rhodoarchaea survived in the green hued areas where normal plant life that required red and blue bands of light to survive could not.  With the Sargasso ring circling the globe almost directly over most of the island mega-archipelagos collectively known as the Spine of the World, this ensured a competition-free zone where the rhodoarchaea evolved, and thrived due to the extra concentration of the green light needed for retinal photosynthesis.

These rhodoarchaea reproduced and branched into more complex forms.  However, the cold was not ready to let go if its grip on Elqua.  Slowly the creeping ice sheets that encased the world's oceans began to encroach the lands covered with rhodoarchaea, until its coverage of all the globe was almost complete.  As miles of ice and snow packed over the impotent micro-organisms, the rhodoarchaea fell into a state of stasis, their retinalic  processes slowing down to almost a crawl, preserving the redish-tone plankton until the day would come that the ice shelf retreated and what little land there was could thrive.

Eventually the ice shelf retreated and disappeared, leaving the two ecosystems -- water and land -- truly independent of each other.  Now, where the kelp and seaweed of the waters are a lush green and olive, the plants that thrive in the shade of the Sargasso Ring are purple and violet.  The aberrations the evolved to  live among the magenta leaves are as different from the behemoths swimming amongst the kelp as even the most disturbed mind could imagine.

Sky

But before the total encrustation of Elqua could complete, a second amazing change took place.  An offshoot of the rhodoarchaea began producing methane and hydrogen as a by-product of their retinal-based photosynthesis.  As the life forms multiplied and became more complicated, organelles formed that encapsulated those gasses.  When those organelles became engorged, the lighter than air hydrogen caused these nearly weightless bio-forms to become air-borne, floating a few millimeters above the surface of the land.

The methane was mostly expelled as waste, until a fortunate mutation developed the production of a exothermic acid.  The ejection of the methane, coupled with a squirt of the acid, cause a small combustion and as a result, thrust.  True air-based life was born, the aerostat, and it took the form of organic dirigibles.

As sky life diversified, an organic form of pulse jet arose.  A cone-shaped nose with a sphincter at the tip would open up to allow oxygen into the body.  Inside a heat-resistant organ, the methane is seeped via pores along the chamber's inner surface.  Then two minuscule jets of reactant chemicals derived from the hydrogen created by its retinal process -- hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide -- combine in the oxygen/methane mix and cause a strong exothermic reaction, giving of enough heat to ignite the rich gases and causing combustion.  Another valve on the other end of the creature serves as the exhaust, directing the exhaust through a final sphincter in the rear of the creature.

The amounts of chemicals produced are incredibly small, and it is only the microscopic mass of the creature and the rapid pace of inhalation and emanation that allows this organic combustion engine to even exist.  The squared-cubed law illustrates the larger the creature, the more massive the amount of chemicals required to sustain flight, and with too large a combustion chamber, the chemical reaction becomes uncontrolled and the temperatures generated would cook the creature from within if it did not simply explode.

From those three microscopic life forms -- the phytoplankton, rhodoarchaea, and aerostat -- diversity bloomed like a cornucopia, spilling into every corner of the ecosystem.  The blood-red riverfalls of the southern ice cap, the gargantuan sea sifters of the periphery, the jet streaming helikites swarming the atmosphere, all can be traced back to tiny, humble, simple celled life.

Endless Blue – Week 21 – The Narrowing Moral Compass

Theology

The Narrowing Moral Compass

Through eyes wide with innocence from their ignorance, primitive pisceans looked at the rolling oceans around them and were bewildered by complexity of it all; how the currents moved, how the waters darkened, how life interacted.  As their minds mulled over these secrets of existence, concepts began to fill in the unfathomable gaps of their knowledge with allegory and myth.  They attributed these ideas to beings greater than themselves, to deities that had originally created them and now guide them through the trails of life in Elqua's seas.

Worshipping gods has been common place in the Known World since before the Kraken Empire, and believed even before the little understood Icht Dominion.  But now, theological belief has been fractured into uncountable sects, factions, and even disparate religions.  However, there is one core belief to all these varied theological systems that is shared in common:  Above the waves is damnation; below the depths is salvation.

That intrinsic idea is borne from both fact and fallacy, repeated over the generations, ingrained into the societies, perhaps has even become a racial memory locked away in the darkest pockets of the piscean mind.  There is evidence for some of it being true -- there are aberrations above the surface that are utterly hostile to anything that breaks the wave into the Vastness, things that will hunt, kill, and consume an unwary mer that swims too close to the open sky.

Conversely, it is believed that the deeper you go, the closer to divinity you attain.  Perhaps this belief stemmed from some ancient piscean's hallucinations while suffering from the Pull, a full sensory experience that was mistaken as the touch of god.  It could be from a more visceral fear, that the aberrations in the Vastness will descend down and tear the flesh of a departed loved-one's mortal coil in a frenzy of ravenous slaking.  Even the most primitive civilizations seem to share in this one common practice, even if its true origin is lost to antiquity.

The Source

The most ancient of the theological systems, and viewed as the most primitive by the self-titled civilized races, is the belief in "the Source".  The Source is the origin, the birth, a non-persona abstraction that created all, even the life-giving waters themselves.  It is symbolized by the egg, an image of fertility and potential, warm and bright, glowing with the energy of life.  The Source is believed to be at the core of the world, pulsating in time with its heart, breathing life into the lifeless waters that drown the land.  It is from Source worship that the tradition of consigning a lifeless body to the deep originates, with the intention of returning a wayward child to its birth womb.

Its practitioners are shamanistic at their core, communing with the Source through nature both animal and plant.  The myriad schools of fish, the expansive reefs of coral, even the very water itself whisper the wonders that are the meaning of life and the piscean place in it.  They communicate with the spirit world, with the Source as its heart, the waves as its breath, and the depths as the embrace of holiness.

Examples: The Narwhal Orcans of the Sahaguin Lagoons cling to most every aspect of their ancient barbarian heritage, even still believing in the Source as the beginning of all life. Signs, omens, and portents are important to them, and those that correspond with an individual's guardian spirit animal having nearly epiphanistic transformative influence.

The Chelon revere a variation of the Source as a non-entity, and instead being the origin of the ley lines that criss-cross the globe at certain intervals, invariably where coral reefs are at their strongest.  It is as much a respect for nature and its complexity as it is with a belief in a higher power.

Pantheonists

Pantheonists believe in a collection of deities that oversee every aspect of life.  They tend to share a common well of cultural belief that forms the interactions of the gods.   Many times disparate but co-existing pantheons share some or all of the same gods, some times with different names, or genders, or importance in the group.

Examples: The primitive races of the Yaun-Teel, Locanth, Kouton, and Sahaguin are classic pantheonists, though each race's take on the Eight can vary greatly.  Most vividly divergent is the Yaun-Teel envisionment, which taints each one of the deities with a primal sin:

Luxuria (extravagance, lust)
Gula (gluttony)
Avaritia (avarice, greed)
Acedia (sloth, despair)
Ira (wrath, vengeance)
Invidia (envy)
Superbia (pride, hubris).
Malvy (deceit, superstition)

The Sahaguin seem to be transforming into a monotheism due to persecution by the Church of Olyhydra, elevating their shark-god Sekolah to "Dominar".  Some of the more isolated settlements of the Mer and Chelon pay the Pantheon respect along with Law Mistress Olyhydra.  The Kouton enfold Source worship into their mythology as their genesis myth while paying service to the Pantheons as the eight "First Ones", who in turn have given birth to countless demigods.  Though they go by many names, the following are the most commonly included deities in Pantheonism on Elqua:

Ahto, Eadro, Icthara, Merrshaulk, Sashelas, Sekolah, Suminarae, and Trishna

Monotheists

Monotheism is a devotion to one supreme deity, and steadfastly holding that any other "god" is false.  These religions tend to be less tolerant of the other theologies, as a primary tenant is absolute omnipotence of their deity.  Basic logic tells you there can only be one ultimate force over all of creation,

The major monotheistic religion -- indeed, the most dominant religion in the Known World -- is the expanding worship of Olyhydra.  She is a stern, harsh mistress, demanding much of Her congregation.  Life is strife, life is toil, and She demands utter and unquestioning obedience in all her directives, the Law.

Examples: Mer are the primary followers of Olyhydra, followed by the disenfranchised Ceph, then a smattering of Chelon and Orcan.  A solid monotheistic movement is burgeoning in the Sahaguin Lagoons with strong undertones of intolerance to Olyhydrans.

Elsewhere Servitude

A dying religion that was at its most powerful during the Kraken Empire.  These ruthless despots worshipped a race of other beings from a realm elsewhere.  Elder gods, more primal than the Source, more alien than the Lumulus, antithetical to the nurturing waters of the Endless Blue.  If not for the seeming withdrawal from our world by these alien beings and the subsequent abandonment of the Kraken, the Occupation of the Known World may never have ended.

Perhaps an even more absolute form of servitude than that of Olyhydran worship, it requires devotion of one's body and soul to the whims of these immoral, immortal entities that do not communicate with our paltry minds, and even if ears could comprehend their dystopian tongues we could never hope to glean the truth behind it.

Examples: Though unproven, the Ceph are frequently accused of serving elder gods, to the point of witch hunts which usually end the traditional method of punishment for heretics: drawn and quartering (or eighthing as is distastefully joked).

Atheists

Only a relatively recent movement away from the millennia of god worshipping, a rising number of individual have been spurning the old ways of servitude and praise toward a non-secular understanding of the world around them.  Branded as the "godless" (always lower-case 'g'; capitalization is a sign of respect and credence) by the devout, these individuals have begun a scientific renaissance like never before seen on Elqua.  Perhaps the most famous of these godless is Seamus Lorwynn, the mer explorer and visionary who is credited with the creation of the new science evolution.  The godless are also proponents of exploring the Vastness, an agenda that puts them at odds with all other theological establishments on Elqua.

Examples: Technically, all Lumulus are atheists, though they do tend to put the scientific method on a pedestal.  Many Mer, spurned by or spurring the Church of Olyhydra, turn to the godless, and those Chelon unable to glimpse the wonders of xanthellae likewise choose this theology, many times out of isolation.

Ancestor Worship

Sometimes viewed as a compromise between theism and atheism, ancestor worshipers do not deify some non-corporeal omnipotence, but instead revere those that came before them, honoring and learning from their earlier lives.  They believe that their forefathers watch over their current trials, and will either send boons for the respectful or banes for the irreverent.  Believers in this form of theology can sometimes form strange  dysfunctional relationships with the departed ancestors, just as them might with living kin.

Examples: Orcans typify the ancestor worshipper, believing that venerating their departed relatives will bring good luck and fortune to them.  Many times they will call out to the dead in the heat of battle to guide their hand, especially when the outcome looks bleak and the relation in question added some vital aspect to the pod's martial style.

"Water is the tears shed by the Source when it realized it was alone.
The flow of the currents are the falling of those tears

as they filled the world with life..."
-- A particularly symbolic passage of Source oral tradition.

Endless Blue – Week 20 – Unguis

Combat

Unguis

Just as life of the Endless Blue has revised and improved on its ways to protect itself with artificial nautiluses and aegises, so to have they refined and enhanced its implements of attack, the ungues.  An ungues is a term referring to any weapon, be it held in the hand, strapped to the body, or slung behind a piscean.  Life is difficult on Elqua, and survival is of upmost importance.  This constant effort of protection through passive and aggressive means has led to the development of some uniquely created items.

On a world where water surrounds you on all side like a cool, glassy cocoon, the materials for construction of tools and items are significantly different.  With sea currents swirling around from all directions, methods such as metal smithing and wood working are impractical.  Constant exposure to water and salt corrodes metals, while porous wood crack and rots.  Just as with nautiluses and aegises, ungues are constructed out of more accessible and practical aquatic materials.  Volcanic glass and sea shell, honed to a razor's sharpness are affixed to bone grips and handles.

Of perhaps even more influence that materials and method in developing unguis is the surroundings themselves.  Water slows movement that in air would be lithe or graceful in the air to a clumsy, molasses-like crawl.  Swinging a weapon is essentially moving a lever -- both ends move for the same amount of time, but the weapon head moves at a higher speed than the haft, thus delivering more power to the impact.  The problem arises with the fact that water doesn't compact well, and that forms resistance to the swing, slowing it down and reducing its effectiveness severely.

Warhammers and flails are unheard of in the military histories of Elqua, being unwieldy and impractical to control in the heat of combat.  Longswords like claymores and katanas are equally ineffective, for they deliver their damage to a victim through a slice.  Instead, weapons that pierce through thrusting thrive in aquatic environments.

Knife -- The most ubiquitous tool on all of Elqua, the knife has a sharpened edge meant for severing things apart.  The shortest of the blades, it delivers the most dexterity but the least damage.

Dagger -- A larger, up to 12 inches, version of the knife, usually with a sharpened edge on both sides of the blade which culminates in a tiny point at the tip, well suited for stabbing.

Punch Dagger/Cestus -- This unguis is designed to fit in a clenched hand, with spikes or knife blades extending forward past the knuckles.  Using the cestus is a simple matter of punching with it, striking with the lacerating capabilities of the protruding points followed up with the force of the blunt impact.

Gaff/Hook -- A truly cruel tool, a sharp, curved hook attached to a perpendicular handle.  Like the cestus, it is held in a clenched hand.  The gaff can be used forcibly, impaling a victim on its hook, or more dangerously, hooking into a gill-slit.  A pair of these can be used in a grapple when the condition of the defeated opponent is not an issue.  They dig into the flesh of an opponent, and the natural fist-position give a circumstance bonus to all grapple checks.

Sickle -- The standard sickle is a farming tool for harvesting crops, and as such it is the most prevalent of any weapon.  It has a curved blade with the sharpened edge on the inside, connected to a short handle.  The blade is designed to hook around a mass of plants, bunching the stalks against the keen edge to facilitate their slicing from the roots.

Sickle (Elquan) -- Another agricultural implement, the Elquan sickle at its core is a bar a little long than the forearm, with a perpendicular handle near one end.  Opposite that is a long, shallow, curved blade that follows the length of the shaft..  Where a sickle cuts on an inward swing, the Elquan sickle cuts on an outward swing.  They make excellent weapons for the common piscean, operating naturally as one would use their arms to block a blow or strike an enemy.  This unquis can be concealed on species such as Locanths and Sahaguin due to the fin-like protrubences along their arms.

Short Sword -- Just as the dagger grew from the knife, the short sword grew from the dagger.  Its blade can be up to double the length of its dagger predecessor, but longer than that and it becomes problematic to stab without the use of both hands, and warrior usually graduate to a spear instead.

Half-Spear -- Essentially just a spear with a shorter shaft, the half-spear is a close combat unquis with no reach.

Staff -- A staff is essentially a spear without the sharpened point.  It is used in a jabbing motion, prodding for the tender spots of an opponent where it can do the most damage.  It is wielded in two hands, but underwater it is a poor double-ended weapon.  As an unquis, it can give the wielder greater range.

Spear --  A long shaft with a point or dagger-like blade on the end, spears are a mainstay in piscean forces.  They length of the weapon gives the bearer reach to attack an enemy before they can close in.  Like the staff, it is used with a thrusting motion.  While a spear can be thrown, it has a range increment of 5 feet and thus very inaccurate.

Polearm -- Polearms developed from simple spears, with their head becoming more complex and specialized.  The first polearms were given a curved hook to the spearhead, and in the hands of a proficient fighter that hook could be caught into the gill-slits of a victim.  From there the variations exploded, and now there are a plethora of designs.  In most civilized militaries, the polearm is the unquis of issue, and entire platoons will be entrusted with polearms of the same design.

Trident -- A trident is a multi-tipped polearm, usually with three tines but can vary in number.  It is synonymous with both martial prowess and with agricultural prowess, and as such is the universal symbol of greatness to Elquan civilizatons.  It is the mantle of power for both terrestrial kings and metaphysical deities, and in heraldry is used to note family nobility.

Ranged Unguis

Unguis that work over distance are rare in the oceans.  Spears are useless when thrown more than five feet away, and a hand-held bow cannot deliver the amount of kinetic energy to fire an arrow in a direct line without it veering off in the currents.  The only true form of ranged weapon that exists is the spear gun, a variation of the heavy crossbow that flings a diminutive javelin about thirty feet via an internal spring mechanism.  Since the Lumulus are the only race with metalworkers in the oceans, spear guns must be imported at great cost.

The net is another common combat tool, but unlike the others above it must have two or more individuals to wield one.  Just like range weapons cannot fire ammunition because of the slowing properties of immersion in water, neither can a net be thrown as it can on the surface.  The users must work in tandem to employ a net successfully, both dragging opposite sides of the net through the water (known as trawling) to capture a creature in the tight woven mesh.  In D20 game terms, the first trawler whose action comes up in initiative must hold his action until it is the other trawler's (or last trawler's, if there are more than a pair) turn to act, then they attack in unison.

Endless Blue – Week 19 – Nautilus and Aegis

Combat

Of Nautiluses and Aegises

Life has devised myriad methods to aid the never ending burden of survival on the world of Endless Blue.  Perhaps the most prolific adaption has been the adaption of thickened skin or chitin into armor.  Right behind that, chasing like a predator keyed in on its prey, is the adaption of lengthened keratin and dentin into weapons.  This tit-for-tat dance of evolutionary one-upmanship is primal in the primitive quest to stay alive, and the intelligent races of Elqua have heightened their competition with the application of  advanced tools and technological innovation.

Taking cues from natural development, pisceans have developed their own protection and armament with the creation of the nautilus, the aegis, and the unguis.

Nautilius

Nautiluses are the armor the races of the Known World have developed to cover the soft, vulnerable parts of their bodies from the teeth, jaws, and claws of very hostile monster that swims the seas.  They cover at least the arms and upper torso of the piscean, with various adaptations to help protect the tail.  Swimming in the piscean form places extreme emphasis on the tail of the body, requiring its flexibility and freedom of movement to accomplish the task evolution honed it for -- mobility.  Thus rigidity would be a hindrance to engaging or escape, and attempts to remedy this paradox have had mixed results.

Using armor breaks up the hydrodynamic curves of a swimmer, causing what is known as drag.  Instead of water flowing easily along the contours of a swimming body, its flow is impeded and jumbled by uneven surfaces.  This interruption of flowing water slows down a swimmer dependent on the type of nautilus worn.

The more esoteric and textured a nautilus, the more drag it incurs.  Further, the bulkier the nautilus, the more restricted the movement and the more difficult it becomes to move the body in the systemically timed manner to achieve sustained swimming.  Light armor slows down a swimmer by 1/4th their swim speed, Medium armor slows down swimmers by 1/3rd their speed, and Heavy armor by one-half.  Spikes can be added to nautiluses to help protect against close-range dangers, but these will increase a nautilus' drag by 5 feet (applied after the halving/thirding/quartering of swim speed).

Aegis

Aegises are a supplemental system of protection equivalent to shields.  They are held by the hand or strapped to the body on the forearm, chest, or back.  They compound a nautilus' amount of drag, and are usually only beneficial on a situational basis.  For example, an aegis strapped on the forearm cannot protect  the body if the arm is being utilized to swim. and an aegis on the back provides no benefit against a spear thrust at the ribcage.

Aegises increase drag, usually reducing swim speed by 5 feet (after nautilus penalty has been applied), and are cumulative.  Using two aegises will reduce swim speed by a total of 10 feet, and only one aegis is ever useful at a time -- there is no significant benefit to covering your body with multiple aegises, as the skill in using them depends on moving the aegis to block.  Further, adding spikes will cumulatively add drag to aegises just as it does for nautiluses, and can effectively make some combinations too bulky to swim in.

Light Nautiluses
Woven Kelp -- This is the most primitive kind of armor, and serves as the base form that all other light nautiluses are derived from.  It is a system of padding woven from harvested kelp.  The padded segments are tailored to the wearer, and a re-laceable system of cording keeps the pads tied together and on the individual.
Woven Cartilage -- Woven cartlidge nautiluses are the same woven kelp pads as the above, but have strips of cartlidge interlaced between the weaves in strategic place to help harden the armor.  The spongy elasticity of cartilage helps absorb impacts from blows that might damage the wearer otherwise.  The primary source of cartilage used in these nautiluses comes from sharks.
Woven Bone -- Exactly like a woven cartilage nautilus, but relies on the more resilient and rigid bone inserts harvested from slaughtered domesticated livestock instead of cartilage from predatory sharks.
Hardened Kelp -- This woven kelp nautilus is treated in an alchemical bath derived from the catalystic properties of acari.  It stiffens the fibrous plant material into hard plates which are then corded together.  The stiffened kelp requires a tight yet flexible weave, making the acari process incompatible with cartilage or bone inserts that depend on the friction of kelp ties to keep the insterts in place.

Medium Nautiluses
Hide -- This is the base form of all medium, and subsequently also heavy, nautiluses.  It employs the same corded interlacing as woven kelp nautiluses, but uses the alchemically tanned skins of animals as the plating.  Bone and cartitlage are both used to support the hide plates, but add nothing exceptional to the overall level of protection the nautilus affords.
Shagreen -- Shagreen is a special kind of hide nautilus made from shark skin.  The tanning process is not a thorough for shagreen nautiluses, resulting in an armor that is not as protective but preserves the natural nap of shark skin, excellent in deterring grappling foes.
Shell -- Shell nautiluses employ patterns of small, overlapping shells to cover the wearer's body.  The shells are pierced a few times along their hinge, then cord is fed through and tied to the hide plating.  The sheer variation of shell shape, color, and size can from mosaics in the nautilus, and a skilled craftsman can increase the nautilus' value many times over though just the sheer artistic expression of these shells.
Nacre Chain -- With an extremely expensive procedure to create,  nacre (or pearl) chain nautiluses are the province of the wealthy and powerful.  Small, interlocking rings are first carved from coral, rock, or other hard material.  These are then inserted into domesticated oysters as an irritant.  Placed under the fleshy body, the animal reacts by secreting an substance called nacre.  This nacre slowly builds up, covering the offending irritant in a layer of beautiful irridescence.  The rings are harvest before too much nacre solidifies and plugs up the ring, and then the rings are assembled into a continual fabric of links.
Xanthellae Coral -- Exclusive to the Chelon, this coral breastplate is literally grown on the body of the wearer.  This nautilus is especially beneficial due to its porous nature, allowing it to completely cover the gill slits along the ribs where other types of nautiluses must leave some space open for circulating water.

Heavy Nautiluses
Echinodermal -- An archaic form of nautilus that fell out of popular use millennia ago, it basically uses live giant echinoderms like starfish as a form of living armor.  In a symbiotic relationship, these over-sized starfish latch onto the flesh of the wearer with their suckers, leaching sustenance from the host in exchange for bodily defense.  The dietary demands of the echinoderms are manageable, and rarely has a host died from the relationship short of extended fasting or wounding on the battlefield.  They were used in mating pairs: one latched onto the host's chest, the other clinging to the back.  Fuller nautiluses used the offspring to cover the limbs and tail of the host.
Shellback -- Used mostly by Sahaguin, Kouton, and the more savage Narwahl Orcans, these nautiluses are literally the exoskeletons of Chelon or Lumulus killed in combat and then scavenged from the corpse.  Its use is utterly reviled among the civilized races, and those that wear it without regard in populated areas may soon find themselves attacked by offended pisceans.  Despite this, there are those so enamored with the deep luster and vibrancy of shellback shells that they will pay a premium for a prize they can only admire in private.
Abalone Plate -- Much like its nacre chain cousin, abalone plate is based on the nacre-like excretions of shellfish.  Whereas nacre chain coats inserted rings, abalone plate is carved from the outer shell of mollusks.  A very specialized craft, portions of shell are chipped and grooved to promote increased creation of abalone.  When sufficient thickness has been achieved, the craftsman severs away portions of the outer shell from the animal without harming it (and hence allowing it to produce more abalone).  These cut-away pieces are then further refined, carved, engraved, and polished into full nautiluses of mythic quality.

Piecemeal Nautiluses -- Not actually a type of nautilus, these methods of armoring are comprised of parts of different kinds of armor, almost as if kit-bashed together from a junkyard.  Only nautiluses of the same class (light, medium, heavy) can be piecemealed because each class is dependant on the previous to work -- medium nautiluses have woven kelp and bone supporting it, and heavy nautiluses have hide linking their parts together.  Average the scores of the two types of nautilus (rounding down) to determine their effectiveness.