Been away for a while, working on some map commissions and boring real-life stuff, though i have been adding some notes to my world. Also, I'm planning on starting an evil D&D campaign based in the world very soon, so I'm hoping that gets the creative juices flowing
Merill
The children of the
Demiurge Shibboleth and
the only known aquatic (or semi-aquatic) race amongst the Two-and-Twenty mortal
tribes, the merill’s story is a tragic one, of a fall from grace entiry without
their control.
History: like most
mortal races, the merills origins date back to the Age of Myth and the Forth
Great Act of Shaping. Two-and-Twenty pods were created – one for each of the
Demiurges, in honour of their work crafting the Material Realm. Shibboleth the
Torrent was patron to the merills and, like all mortal races, they shared many
traits with the creator, not least of which was their appearance and
mannerisms.
Each
pod contained seven seeds from which were born, before their time, seven
mortals shaped in the image of their
patron. Where in other races the original seven mortals were made up of four
females and three males, merills are asexual and it is believed that the seven
individuals were identical to one another.
Merills
pass on their memories and knowledge to their offspring in a process known as
genetic memory. As a result, the seven original merills gave rise to seven
distinct lines, each passing on its traits and memories to its descendants,
though of these traits little is now known.
The
benefits of genetic memory allowed merill culture to advance at a level far
surpassing that of any other mortal race. They developed a potent civilisation
with a strong trade network, armies and culture when other mortal races were
living in tribes of hunter-gatherers, though due to their aquatic nature
contact with other mortals was sporadioc at best. They prospered under the
aegis of Shibboleth, who was proud of its children. Tentative contact was made
with coastal settlements and goods were traded between merills and other races,
further strengthening their civilisation.
Their
rise continued throughout the early Ages of Mortal life and they became
legendary amongst the other as-yet developing mortals. An individual merill
carried within him the collective memories of his entire line, giving him an
intelligence and expertise far superior to that of most other tribes.
At
times a merill might get a flash of insight – an echo harking back to a past
life. These echoes often manifested as sudden visions of dreams that felt
all-too vivid. These echoes marked the beginning of the end for the merill
civilisation. Once this phenomenon started it slowly increased, with every new
generation suffering longer and more frequent episodes of increasing vividity. Some guessed at what was happening and saw the only way to stall the
inevitable downfall of the race was by leaving the water, which had since their
birth been seen as a divine link with Shibboleth.
These
individuals would leave the merill civilisation and engineered for themselves
amphibious traits, allowing them to distance themselves from their patron. Some
grew closer with humans, leading to the race now known as selkies.
They
were succesfull in that newly-born merills no longer inherited the memories of
their forebears, though over the centuries their distance from the water
rendered them infertile and the line faltered.
But
their fortunes were not to last. The same genetic trait that saw them rise
slowly took its toll on their minds. The weight of memories and knowledge of an
entire race would become too much for a single mind to bear and the merills
eventually lost their sanity. Every passing generation only deepened their
descent into madness and the merill civilisation collapsed.
Their
fall was quick – taking no more than a few generations to erase everything the
merills had accomplished. In place of prodigious (if troubled) individuals
arose incoherent fools, their thoughts awash with ceaseless reverberations of
thousand-year old stimuli that were more vivid than their own.
Their
patron Shibboleth despaired. It done all in its ken to save them, but it was
for nought. It’s children had dwindled, descending to little more than animals
plagued by nightmarish visions.
Shibbolerh
wept, and its tears filled Elyden in a great torrent that flooded the lands of mortal
races. This time became known as the
Lament of Shibboleth and was ended at great cost to the other mortals when the Demiurges joined up and defeated Shibboleth, weakening it, sending it into
decline. The remnants of the merills were scattered across Elydens’ oceans by
the rise in sea levels, though their descent into madness only grew with the death
of their patron.
Physiology: merills bear
many of the traits commonly attributed to the mortal races, though in many
respects are unique. They are humanoid in form, standing roughly 6’ – 8’6” long
and commonly weighing around 120 lb. They are perhaps the most colourful of
mortal races with individuals found displaying colours from the full spectrum,
though each of the seven breeds tends to gravitate to red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo or violet, and their various shades.
From
the waist upwards they follow the standard mortal template – an abdomen and
torso containing digestive, respiratory and circulatory organs, a head and four
limbs – one pair ending hands and prehensile fingers used for manipulating
tools, and another (analogous to those of ichthons) used for aquatic
locomotion. Merills possess another pair of fins, these dorsal, which are
brightly coloured and aid in stabilisation and orientation.
The
similarities to other mortal races ends from the waist down, where in place of
legs can be found a long powerful suckerless tentacle that makes up almost
two-thirds of a merill’s length. The appendage is leathery in textire and ends
in two long fan-like fins – one dorsal and one ventral – that serve as the
primary source of locomotion.
Their
heads have characteristic deep sloping foreheads, prognathous mouth, and two
large bulbous white eyes. Maxilliary and mandibular barbels, which grow
throughout a merill’s life, frame their mouths. Their heads are crowned by long
thing hair-like tentacles, similar to some seen in large jellyfish. When
submerged the hairs protrude from their heads like a fine mane of hair, though
when grounded they hang limply like wet hair.
Merills
are thought to have some of the most developed sensory organs amongst mortal
races, on par if not superior to those of shie. Their hair contains rudimentary
taste-organs, used to detect chemicals and impurities in the water. Though most
spectacular are their barbels, which are not only highly acute tactile taste-organs
but are also potent mechanoreceptors (serving the same purpose of ears
underwater) and firmamentoreceptors (organs designed to detect the Firmament),
though the original purpose of the latter is unknown. Ironically their large
eyes are not as well-developped as their other senses and are so large largely
due to the lack of light in their ancestral deep-sea habitats. They posess
common ears primarily used above water, though sounds are muffled and
disorienting.
Depite
their fantastical physical properties what is perhaps most fascinating about
merills is their reproductive cycle, which revolves around the river Shibboleth.
Unlike
most mortals, merills are asexual or more precively gynogenic – where a sperm
is necessary to trigger embryonic development though makes no genetic contribution
to the process.
Merills
are born infertile though a metamorphosis of sorts takes place between their 15th
– 20th year (their full lifespan is unknown though thought to be
somewhat longer than that of humans). It is unknown what triggers this or what
the effects are though it is commonly held that a merill just knows when this
point is reached. Like fish returning to the place of their spawning, a merill
that has undergone this metamorphosis leaves its present location and swims mindlessly
for the source of the river Shibboleth, in lake Siballa, northern Rhinocoloura.
Records
from ancient merill society show that this practive originated as a cultural
ritual, likely similar to the coming-of-age quests common to many societies.
The merill genetic memory has likely corrupted this into an inherent action,
its significance and purpose now lost to the mindless merills of the extant
world.
The
river Shibboleth is well-over 5,000 miles long and merills would undertake the
journey as individuals, going upstream to the river’s main source. The voyage
was dangerous and exhausting and most would perish bhefore reaching their
destination. After spending hours in the waters of lake Siballa their bodies
would undergo an unseen change, completing their sexual cycle: the merills
completing the quest were fully adults, able to reproduce. There they would
mate, the male’s sperm fertilising the female’s eggs, which were left there to
gestate.
Scholars
think this is due to certain chemicals in the water or some other physical
effect that causes a metabolic change in individual merills who spend long
enough in the waters.
Sadly
the proliferation of human life and pollution of the region has seen the lake
shrink in recent centuries and few, if any, merills are believed to make the
journey any more. The last sizeable pilgriomage to reach the lake was recorded
by Rhinocolouran monks in 3377 RM, where around two-hunded individuals swarmed
intothe lake. Ancient myths recorded numbers in their tens of thousands.
Psychology: the mind of a
merill is an unfathomable thing and is most easily compared with that of an
Otherworlder rather than any other mortal race. This is due to a genetic trait
where the offspring of an individual merill inherits the experiences and
memories of all its direct ancestors, going back to one of the original seven
merills in the First Age of Mortal Life. With every passing generation more
memories and experiences, increasingly dissonant and distant, are inherited.
This
trait is known as genetic memory and was responsible for both the meteoric rise
and subsequent rapid fall of ancient merill civilisations. Early on in their
culture the benefits of genetic memory gave merills a distinct advantage over
their fellow mortals. Where a human might spend years learning how to craft
weapons or tools, all descendants of a merill who already learnt such skills
would be born with such knowledge ingrained ion their genetic memory giving
them more time to develop other skills or further sharpen those they already
know. In the development of merills as a race, this trait was invaluable,
granting them a drastic boost to their development that other races did not
possess.
While
other races were subsiting through a hunter-gatherer culture, merills had
already settled into a pastoral lifestyle that further promoted a
specialisation of profession amongst individuals. This in turn led to further
advancements that allowed the first major merill civilisation to emerge
unopposed when other mortals lived in little more than lose tribes.
Whatever
the cause was for the turn in the merill’s fortunes can only be guessed at now,
but scholars postulate that at some point the merills reached a natural
threshold in their evolution, beyond which their minds could not cope with the
weight of memories and information bestowed upon them at birth. Their mental degradation
is thought to have begun slowly – generations born with fragile minds, prone to
headaches and vivid waking dreams thought to be echoes of past lives (though some
attribute the latter to the Lament of Shibboleth upon realising what was about
to befall its children). Eventually these affects would exacerbate to the point
of invalidity – the dream-flashes of past lives would increase, pushing aside
the waking mind until they overtook it completely, leaving the merill as little
more than a babbling wreck. And so a great civilisation was reduced within a
few generations to nothing. Most surviving members are mad to a degree that few
others can comprehend, and every generation grows slowly more maddened, or hollow, as some have come to call them.
Indeed, in many respects they are the closest of the mortal races to the
Otherworlders.
What
merills survive today are seemingly vacant beings, the mental excesses inherent
in their downfall muted by untold generations forced to live with the
debilitating mania of their forebears. Any merill alive today can feel the
fear, anger and love of tens of thousands of ancestors at once; there is no
self only the echoes of a unnumbered individual thoughts and memories. This manifests
itself in clouded and nonsensical behaviour as an individual reacts to memories
and sensory stimuli from centuries past that bear no relevance to the present. What
other races interpret as a hollow nature is but a mask hiding the sheer volume
of emotion and passion constantly flowing through a merill’s thoughts;
something manifested in the near-constant flickering of their eyes and twitching
of fingers and limbs.
They
exhibit a near complete disconnect from the outside world and as a result they
show little empathy towards other races, or comprehension of any kind. This was
once thought to be out of the bitterness and jealousy they they were ass umed
to feel towards other mortal races that were not cursed by their burden, though
this is now thought to be a side-effect of their minds trying to cope with the
vast amounts of information, most of it nonsensical, thrust upon them.
Culture & society: extant
merills are little more than automatons cursed by nightmarish visions and flashes
of sensory stimuli from the past, which renders them effectively blind to the
world around them. Because of this they possess little in the form of culture
or society, gathering together in groups of ten-to-tweenty individuals in what
is to all intents and purposes identical to a school of fish.
This
was not always the case as myths from around Elyden can attest to the power and
spread of their early civilisation, which was amongst the largest in the
ancient world. This was late in the Second Age of Mortal Life, which by current
estimates is upwards of 200,000 years past. Due to their aquatic environment
and the vast span of time separating their civilisation from the present few
physical merill remains have been found, so we know very little of their ancient
culture. Though as Elyden’s seas retreat, the soapstone ruins of merill metropolises
have begun to appear in the middle of once-submerged seas, built on volcanic
atolls.
Communication
between merills and other races was difficult, and they were known to have
spoken in a form of stream of consciousness, with no discernable punctuation.
This was rendered all the more difficult for other races to understand as
merill speech was peppered with words and phrases from past lives and stimuli.
Lethean
merills, whose contact with its amnesiac waters, operate on a more cognitive
level to their peers and maintain small cities and towns along the coastal
shelf of the sea’s southern waters. Contact with terrestrial races is uncommon
though trade is not unheard of – with the merills trading items such as nacre
and ambergris in return for items of terrestiralm anufacture, such as worked
metals.
Philosophy & religion:
One can only image what philosophies and schools of thought the ancient merill
race may have developed, though whatever heights they once reached have long
since been toppled, replaced by the waking nightmare that is the torrent of
their genetic curse. As most merills do not function as mortals, it is unlikely
that they live by any particular tenets or beliefs, other than what echos of
past lives they are subjected to.
Very
little is known of merill religion, particularly of their link with the
Demiurge Shibboleth, if such a link remains. Shibboleth was one of the first
Demiurges to diminish into langour and its influence has only waned since then,
with the only records being corrupted references to the Lament of Shibbooleth
and other Demiurges’ retribution at the same event.
Due
to their natures it is unlikely that merills are organised enough to even adhere
to any form of organised religion as practiced by other mortals. Though
conversely, by dint of their generic memory, their closeness to the primordial
days of their race might make them the most likely candidates at remembering
their patron as it existed in its original potent state (their ability to
convey such memories is another matter entirely).
Lethean
merills, who operate on a more cognitive level to their peers duo to contact
with the amnesiac waters of Lethea, are known to worship a dark being equitable
with a god. It is a being of the abyssal oceans, dark and massive and
uncompromising. Ironically sholars identify it with the Demiurge Synchthonith.
Art: next to nothing is known about the
cultural pursuits of merill – both ancient and extant. We have seen examples of
their architecture from ruins exposed by the retreat of Elyden’s seas. Generally
composed of soapstone, with bass detailing, such structures are almost always situated
on the edge of coastal shelves, overlooking the deep waters beyond.
Range: According to
old myths, the merills formed a close bond with their patron Demiurge,
Shibboleth, and though they spread to dominate most of Elyden’s ancient oceans,
they were inextricably linked with the waters of the Shibboleth. In the
ancient world the shibboleth was far larger than today with a course speculated
to have extended for over 10,000 miles – well over twice its current range. It
was there that all merills were spawned and there that individuals would retirn
to reach sexual maturity.
Today,
the influence of industry and the general waning of the natural world has left
the Shibboleth polluted and all but bereft of merills, most of which now exist
in the seas and oceans of Elyden.
They
are commonly found in the waters of Lethea, where its amnesiac qualities alleviate
the symptoms of their genetic memory. Other regions where merills are sighted
include the isles of St. Uallar and the strait of Andas.
The lowering of
Elyden’ seas has disrupted their habitat and coastal raids in the aforementioned
regions are common, as the merills as the merills attempt to adjust to their
diminishing resrouces. Similarly, the ruins of merill settlements can sometimes
be found in recently-exposed coastal shelves, overlooking what had once been
deep sea.
It's funny how things work out. Until recently the merills were one of the races for which I had created nothing. When asked about them I'd draw a blank and wave a dismissive hand, saying 'they're the merfolk of my world'. And to a point that statement was true, though I always knew i wanted something else, something that made them mine. I tend not to struggle too hard to find a niche or flavour for my races and wait for something to naturally present itself.
This happened a week-or-so ago when I met up with some old friends and spend a night on the beach drinking and talking about all sorts of stuff. One subject we touched upon was infinite knowledge. To cut a long story short we were trying to wonder what it might be like the moment humanity passes the knowledge threshold - at the moment we are just a push of a button away from any bit of knowledge we need, thanks to the internet. were are probably a matter of decades away from being constantly plugged in: imagine downloading all of the information available on the internet into your brain. The sum of human knowledge at your fingertips...
Overwhelming! We imagined the first person to be subjected to this would suffer what we lovingly termed a 'brain hernia', something I think encapsulates the probably feeling perfectly.
And so was the gimmick for the merills born. Everything else came as a natural progression of that and i must say I'm pleasantly surprised by the outcome. I think as a race the merills are pretty unique and tragic - two things I'd like to make sure my world is full of.
To those interest in a more visual representation, I think this painting by one of my favourite artists Brom is pretty close to what I have in mind for the merills. No copyright infringement is intended by this, just a quick example of what I had in mind.
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| rootwater Hunter (c) Wizards of the Coast (artist: Brom) |
