The merfolk did not originate in the Cerulean Gulf. Their ancient homeland lies more than a thousand miles north, deep within the Forgotten Sea. Their homeland, a city called Aegea, was close to the ancient island city Malborn in an underwater realm of drowned mountain ranges and ancient rivalries. There, the merfolk lived in uneasy balance with a powerful kingdom of tritons. War between the two peoples was constant with centuries of skirmishes, ambushes, and full-scale battles. Eventually, when the tide of war turned against them and their ancestral cities lay in ruins, the merfolk fled their homeland in search of safety and renewal.

Their exodus brought them south, to the farthest edge of the known sea. Beneath the waves of the Cerulean Gulf, they discovered the drowned ruins of an ancient sunken siren city, long abandoned. Within those ruins, the merfolk encountered strange, godlike beings. These beings, who the merfolk call the Phaerosians, offered the merfolk sanctuary, power, and purpose, in exchange for their worship.

So, the merfolk settled there, rebuilding amid the bones of a lost civilization. Over the next thousand years, they flourished and named their new home New Aegea, also known as the Sunken Kingdom. Their city gleamed with coral spires and living stone, and their influence spread. Merfolk lords ventured beyond the Sunken Kingdom, founding satellite colonies in reefs, trenches, and lagoons across the Cerulean Gulf. Yet the Sunken Kingdom remained the spiritual and political heart of their people, ruled continuously by the royal House of Galatea. Its current king, Pontus Galatea, is a direct descendant of those first settlers.

But the peace of Aegae has shattered. A century ago, a devout tribe of merfolk known as the Phorcys claimed to

hear the true voice of the Phaerosians. At the gods’ urging, they descended into the Chasm, a rift so deep that no light or sound returns. They vanished. Then, years ago, they returned, but not as merfolk. They emerged as merrow: warped, monstrous reflections of their former selves, filled with hatred and hunger. Without warning, they declared war on the Sunken Kingdom. Their purpose remains unclear, but they are known to drag the bodies of the slain back into the Chasm, feeding something, or perhaps someone, in its black depths.