Boneshroud

The boneshroud is a billowing cloud that surrounds the pelagic realm and causes skeletification of those in the realm upon death. The cloud has violent reactions with organic and inorganic matter, it splits wood, rusts metal and is asphyxiating in nature. It also raises the dead as skeletons.
== Origins ==
Merfolk statues were originally created in order for other sentient species to join the merfolk by transforming them. They were later made to regrow the crustaceans numbers after their war against the mer. The use of these statues created the boneshroud. However, their dependence on crustacean anthroids as weapons of war meant ever more boneshroud emissions, which affected the fertility of merfolk, until they themselves had to use them to replenish their numbers. The reason for their falling numbers became their salvation. 
With the industrial scales merfolk statue production took, the merfolk started pumping the boneshroud encased in ice into the seafloor, later known as industrial pockets. Sometimes accidents occurred where an industrial pocket ruptured, but these were largely ignored by the leadership as accidents. Since the released boneshroud only affects the surface, the mer kept using them en masse.
At some point , contact between boneshroud ice and a deep sea volcanic seam caused a fissure and the chain reaction of ice meltdown blew the pelagic into the weltan atmosphere. 
== The Pelagic realm ==
When the pelagic stabilized in its orbit around the Weltan system, the entire realm flooded, from the ice reserves that melted due to the increased heat from volcanic activity. As a result, the main inhabited land masses are the remains of the highest peaks of a former landmass. The main theory is that the entire area collapsed on itself below sea level, releasing the boneshroud from merfolk industry pockets. The boneshroud serves as the realm's upper atmosphere, where it once was the atmosphere having killed the survivors of the collapse which turned into skeletons. The society doomed itself by digging for gold too deep into the realms depths.
The removal of the realm from Welt released the boneshroud, which remains above the hole in the shell as well as in the atmosphere of the Pelagic realm. Pelagic then became an aquatic realm of Welt whose sparse islands on the surface hide a rich biosphere underwater.
== Craniums ==
Obviously a curse, the roots of the cranium's existence have yet to be discovered by any of the factions. It is thought that Craniums are the result of extreme exposure to the boneshroud.
== Ocean whispers ==
A mystical substance from which thalassa gems are made. The substance prevents anima from escaping and reaching the ghostmaker, but also radiates boneshroud as a result, implying that should a merfolk or its servant die, it will return as a skeleton.
Category:Pelagic Realm
Category:Phenomena
Category:Gas
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