False Medusa is a somewhat insulting appellation to distinguish them from the "True Medusa" of Qabalque legend. They have no singular language or endonym (some include: Kuo-Toa, Sahuagin, Trithoni, and Locathah), though recently there has been the formation of a nascent political group identity under the banner of the Ocean People, in solidarity with various other aquatic humanoids.
One of the many demi-humans (if you're kind of racist) or "monstrous humanoids" (if you're extremely racist) of the Underside. They've got dense thatches of long fronded tentacles that trail from their heads, shoulders, wrists, and around their cloacae; these appendages have limited independent motive power and are armed with nematocysts and bioluminescent nodules. Their faces are smooth and sharklike, with folded-over slit nostrils and rows of bristling razor teeth, yet with an odd intimation of feminine beauty (though, in truth, they are genderless and reproduce parthogenetically). Their skin is grey, brown, or deep green; they are covered in tough, leathery scales that show a faint iridescence at certain angles. Webbed fingers and toes, coupled with thick fluked tails, give them powerful and agile underwater movement.
Their eyes are their most notable features. Under normal circumstances they are glossy, depthless black marbles; sloe eyes. Many have written off the famed petrifying glare of the Medusa as an urban legend, a sailor's exaggeration of the arresting beauty of their alien gazes. In reality, their shining black eyes are the product of nictating membranes which possess a natural polarization, like biological sunglasses. Should the film ever retract, their true eyes are revealed, glowing orange-yellow and capable of paralyzing with a glance. Initiates of their most feared and exclusive martial societies peel off their eyelids with a shucking knife as a rite of passage.
Their societies are divided between mostly-settled kelp-farmers, transhumance sturgeon herders, and fully nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Farmers tend to massive rafts of algae, cultivating "food forests" that make use of every part of the complex ecosystems that form around these great drifts. Their primary economic product is umami seasoning, though their business is being undercut by new methods of chemical synthesis. Sturgeon herders subsist on caviar as both a staple foodstuff and a luxury export. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is severely endangered, with most remaining practitioners turning increasingly to commodifying their lifeways for tourist consumption, or else living off remittances from family-members in the commercial diving, whaling, and coral-mining industries.
In addition to their formidable natural gifts, Medusae fight with a variety of hydrodynamic weapons. Their most common tools of war are long, slender finned darts, cunningly crafted to supercavitate upon being launched from an atlatl. In hand-to-hand combat, they wield half-moon ulu blades, which they call "mother knives," and a kind of streamlined monk's spade, which they call the "grandmother knife." They consider these especially suited for underwater combat, as the fan-shaped blades mimic flippers or fins and can be used by a cunning warrior to augment movement or agitate currents. Underwater thunderarms are rare and extremely prized. They often wear armor made of salvaged netting, which protects against slashing and serves as a trophy of successful raids against fishing trawlers, which they see (correctly) as threats to their homes and livelihoods. Their martial arts teach them to maneuver to gain the lower position and strike with the advantage of buoyancy, and to cut with perfect edge alignment, which is necessary to minimize water drag. While they generally shun swords as dumb weapons for losers, they are also terrifyingly good with them.
They are biologically immortal, and follow a logarithmic growth pattern. Their grandmothers are their fiercest warriors and their wisest leaders.
No comments:
Post a Comment