Merfolk Empire

The **Merfolk Empire** was a utopian paradise where widespread magic usage, some conventional, and some divine (from the seemingly, at the time, benevolent god Uun) allowed even the common folk to live comfortably with little hardship, while the elite created great wonders the likes of which the world has not seen since.

Despite its name, it was a mostly human nation, and was split up into five kingdoms.

**Mourndaria** was famous for its sophisticated poets and artists, its elaborate social customs, and its obsession with cleanliness. It was a land of beautiful, organized cities, separated by orderly farms and pastures.

**Palazzo** was known for its fondness for discipline, both mental and physical, which lead to it producing many great theologians, philosophers, athletes, and warrior monks. Much of the population lived in isolated monasteries, separated from the wilderness by well kept grounds.

**Solara** was centered on a large lake, kept artificially warm with magic. The people were lax and decadent, living slow paced lives soaking up the sun and the warm waters.

**Leng** was a nation of builders. They pushed their magic to its fullest, making marvelous palaces, massive cities, and exquisite works of craftsmanship. They had a strange fondness for mazes, and many of their ruined cities are surrounded by them.

Finally, there was **Akuwamaden**, the kingdom of the eastern merfolk. A proud, wise, and long-lived race, their magic was exceptional, and they were able to create platforms that would levitate on the surface, allowing them to build cities along the coast, in addition to their underwater kingdom. They were key in ending ancient wars between the other four nations, and as a result, one of their own always filled the role of Emperor, in addition to dominating Uun’s clergy, and filling a number of diplomatic and administrative roles.

The Merfolk Empire’s Golden Age lasted for millennia, and such was their power that no one ever seriously opposed them, though expansionism was not their way.

However, it is said that one day, Uun looked down upon the utopia that he had helped guide and create, and decided he was bored...

For no particular reason, other than to perhaps experience the anguish of others, he punished the inhabitants of the five kingdoms in unique ways.

Sophisticated and orderly Mourndaria was cursed such that all who stayed there for too long became increasingly stupid, short-sighted, violent, and immature. As an added insulted, Uun gave them a compulsions to defy key practices of the Mourndarians regarding hygiene and bodily wastes. Mourndaria became known as the Kingdom of Grobianismus. The peasants live brutal, stupid lives. Those that somehow survive infancy rarely make it past 50 due to disease, accidents, assaults, or persecution. Those that somehow claw their way into positions of relative power (or descend from such individuals) rarely do much better. The old elite of Mourndaria have it the worse. They were transformed by Uun into buffoonish statues, placed in village squares or palace gardens, where they are trapped, conscious, to watch over their moronic descendants further ruin their former kingdom forever.

Disciplined Palazzo was cursed such that all who stayed there would gradually lose all self control and succumb to their vices. Invisible servants constantly create new and irresistible meals, drinks, and other substances, while attractive men and women appear from nowhere to seduce all they see. The original inhabitants mostly died from excess within decades, but new dopes are constantly drawn to her cursed monasteries from the relative safety of the port cities. The elite of Palazzo however, are trapped in a constant cycle of rebirth, and gradual descent into insanity, succumbing to their vices again and again for eternity. This land is now known as Kokaine, for a powder some reckless individuals sometimes smuggle out of the country.

Warmth loving Solara was cursed with eternal cold. A massive blizzard engulfed the region and didn’t leave for months. When it did, the inhabitants had all seemingly disappeared, but they are still there, their invisible spirits trapped in this unnaturally cold region, perpetually cold and hungry. The former kingdom of Solara is now split into several distinct regions, some inhabited by hearty newcomers, others deemed uninhabitable and left to the blizzards, ghosts, and other, long forgotten things. Ironically, this is not the first time such an event happened in the land that was once Solara, and before that something else. Ancient legends say that part of the region was once unnaturally cold, and ever since Uun’s curse, the area east of the lake is far colder than the rest.

Leng’s industrious inhabitants were cursed to become wrinkled rat like creatures, driven by an insatiable need to build, though in their haste they rarely build anything of quality. For unknown reasons, most of them moved to the Dem Helidden Peninsula, which they turned into a massive, filthy cluster of crumbling cities. But a few remain in the core of Leng, or certain other coastal holdings, where they watch from the shadows as newcomers struggle to prosper in the ruins of their kingdom, and sometimes intervene. These rare individuals are in fact the cursed elite of Leng, now immortal, and retaining enough of their former power to sometimes do good, though they usually mop about sullenly in the ruins of their proudest creations, or join their descendants in their wild industry, sometimes for decades at a time.

Finally, Akuwamaden’s proud, wise, merfolk inhabitants were cursed to become strange squid-like creatures. Partially insane, they swing between remorseful and regretful, and frenzied with the desire to fulfill their unnatural needs via unfortunate beings living on the eastern coasts. Like the other cursed elites of the Merfolk Empire, they are immortal, and all but indestructible. Any destroyed via extreme methods will simply be reborn in the foulest manner imaginable.

Having ruined the empire he once guided and helped to greatness, it is said Uun departed this world and was never seen again.