Of the Mer, the children of the salt and sea, not much is known. It is said in a few academic circles that in ages long past, they enjoyed an alliance with the Children when the Tides were a sea-going people. Some even speculate that it was, in fact, the Mer that taught humans how to use the element of water, a claim I find patently fantastical.
At first glance, the Mer bear some resemblance to humans, much as apes might seem kin to us. They possess a head, torso, two arms, and, peculiarly, two feet. However, the similarities abruptly cease there. The Mer are a diverse people, but their features often belong to the realm of nightmares. Some have large bulbous, unblinking eyes, while others have none, relying instead on quivering feelers that sample the air for sensory input. Their extremities are webbed, and some even have sinuous tails. Bony spines erupt along their dorsal ridges, providing an otherworldly contour to their forms. The hue of their blood ranges from emerald green to viscous purples and vivid reds, adding another layer to their arcane mystique. While some are encased in intricate scales, others have skin as sleek as that of eels.
According to seasoned adventurers, on land, the Mer make for fearsome adversaries, which leads me to conjecture that in their aquatic realm, they would be nigh unstoppable. An intriguing yet disquieting footnote: their flesh is considered a prized delicacy in the city-state of Al-Lazar, a detail that reveals as much about the Mer as it does about the peculiar tastes of Al-Lazar’s citizens.
- The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney 376 AC.
The pitter-patter of unsoled feet on smooth stone, came up from where the enigmatic dark sprawled before me. Shapes coalesced into vague mimicries of men, hunched, twisted, and albino pale. From the path directly in front of me they came, holding crude, primitive weapons. They waved clubs and simple spears at me in obvious threat. A part of me noticed that, for the better part, they did not look directly at me. They were all shying away, or shielding their eyes, from my golden light. Then suddenly, the leading figure, stooped, but larger than the rest of them, howled at me in primitive warning.
To their credit, these troglodytes, these crude approximations of the men, did not attack me. Perhaps they were not as stupid as I thought them to be, or maybe they just knew on an instinctual level that I was armored death, come from the surface.
Instead of feeling relief at encountering other thinking beings, if they could be called thinking, I felt only revulsion. A very bad first impression indeed.
Drawing myself to my full height, my head almost brushed the ceiling of the low tunnel, and looked down at them. Seeing them for the pathetic creatures that they were, a flicker of pity stirred within me.
They were lesser and I doubted I could find answers to my quest here.
Still, feeling unusually generous, I decided that I would at least try to communicate with them before I sacrificed them all on the altar for more experience points. I began, as I always did, by casting an Identify on the leader of this ragged assembly. This was soon followed by another cast of Identify on his guttural howls that served as his language.
Glod - Troglodyte Ranger (Human lvl.10)
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Health: 176/180
Stamina: 41/44
Mana: 7/7
What struck me as most astonishing was the classification of the entity as a human, at least within the confines of this game's taxonomy. The revelation piqued my curiosity, for at least in my opinion, the game had a rather expansive interpretation of the term "human." Intriguing, indeed, for with such a loose definition, the term itself could suffer from a wide spectrum of abuse.
The threads of my last Identify spell came back to me, filling my mind with new meaning. With my increased Intelligence, along with the aid of the spell, I would be able to parse most of his words. Vastly improved, I could sense that the spell was doing more than just translating the words and inscribing them upon my memory. To me, it felt that it was searching for the very root, the essence of their communication. Images and sensations of the ancient Troglodytes filled my mind. I saw their brief lives filled with struggle, every day spent hiding from a burning sun.
As the last vestiges of the magic of the spell left me, I noticed that the leader even had the temerity to have a name, Glod. I took a moment to look more closely at this motley group of ‘humans’, noticing the mismatched series of leather strips and rags that served as their clothing, hiding only, for the most part, their genitalia. Of particular note was the curious way that they shaded their eyes with thin cloth. Light, it seemed, was not unknown here in the realm of the dark.
I had been taught in my old world that all cultures were beautiful, all of them equal and special, in their own ways. However, these things in front of me put paid to such fanciful and idealistic notions.
The whispers came and bolstered this view. This was definitely a stark example of an inferior culture. A culture that had no place and deserved only contempt, they said.
I saw the leader turn towards me after conferring with one of his seconds. Feeling that whatever came next might be of some import, I recast Identify to make sure I would understand their words fully.
“You have come from the place of the Darker Dark, Metal Giant. You do not belong here, for you trespass on the territory of the Stone. All must respect the Stone. I say, go back from where you came!” the leader stated, waving a club studded with teeth and claws. For added effect, he puffed out his chest, attempting vainly to somehow look down at me despite the disparity between our height.
Smiling within my helm, I pointed calmly at him with my sword, the smooth motion a juxtaposition against his erratic movements. Metal Giant, he said. I never considered myself to be exceptionally tall, but here I felt like an adult among infants. He looked at me worriedly, fearing a challenge. I lowered my blade to point at the flask I noticed at his hip. Hopefully, it was full of life-giving water.
I felt powerful.
Apprehension danced across his face. It was followed by incredulity, before finally changing into curiosity. Slowly, he understood my meaning and reached for the flask with his free hand, his club finally stopping its motion. Likewise, the others of the group, of whom seven I could see, also stopped waving their primitive weapons.
“You want water? Then you will go back?” he asked, placatingly. The last threads of my spell slowly faded, and the rest of his meaning escaped me. I found a small tick of anger begin to take root in me, for I found the sounds that served as his language offensive to my cultured ears.
Instead of responding, I decided that silence would be the more menacing answer. What came next was a series of nonsensical grunts.
No, that was a lie. The grunts were a part of their language. Thinking myself their superior, I had been closing my mind off to actually learning their language. As my mind puzzled over their gestures, their tone of voice, and the lines of their bodies, I was beginning to understand them. Truly understand.