Re: Chapter 2, Phase 3 Intermission - Hammerhead Chat
The pictures and phrases that form on the pristine white pages of Vedas Arundi tell the vivid story of the pelagials from a First Age perspective.
Their original forms were beautiful, seafaring humanoids, one of the many created races of the distant ancient times before the Primordial War. With hair of blue, green and purple hues, flawless skin, perfectly proportioned bodies and siren-forms (often mermaids, but sometimes cecaelia as well) that allowed them to swim and survive underwater, they ruled the western sea at the Primordials' behest.
When the War happened, they sided with their masters and paid for it dearly, as they died in great numbers with their patron. None, not even Indrid's tome, remember the name of that Primordial who supported them, as that name died with it. The pelagials may very well have gone extinct at this point, but (so the story goes) another one of the Primordials took mercy on them: the Machine God, Autochthon. He reshaped them so that they would survive in the deep water and thus escape most who would attempt to genocide them.
In doing so, though, their forms became twisted and mutated. The pelagials were no longer beautiful, but misshapen blubbery things, half humanoid with the lower body of a giant seal or manatee. Their hair turned thick like seaweed, their eyes pits of deep black, and their hands webbed to help them swim swiftly through the deep ocean. They kept to their deep sea territory, developing throughout the First Age a vast underwater empire, which at its height stretched from the distant Southwest to the deepest rivers of the East. They collected and storing countless numbers of artifacts discarded or lost after the Primordial War, and became increasingly indolent until the later Fair Folk invasion heralded the end of their glory days.
Even so, many pelagial cities and colonies survived. The greatest of these is known as the City of Shining Reefs. Its exact location is unknown, so far as the book's knowledge can recall, but it would definitely be somewhere in the West where the pelagials' empire was strongest. Vedas Arundi also indicates that the Shining Reefs were once a surface city: all white marble and verdigris, lit by glass and adamant towers, a glorious masterwork of architecture. That city still exists somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.
Finally, with all that background information built up, the book sketches a theory as to what Black Rock Chasm may be. The image it displays to Indrid appears to be a watercolor of an underwater chasm of pure black jade (or so the caption states). The Chasm is very likely one of the pelagials' surviving outposts, a location for mining black jade deep underwater -- and an ideal place to hide the ancient artifacts they have developed a habit of hoarding.
[Private to Indrid Cold: Well, 10 successes. I figured you'd find out a lot.]
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:47, Tue 17 Feb 2009.