The open ocean is pretty much a desert, with very little life. You have to carry your own food, and parts are considered as hard or harder to cross by mermen as making it across the Wastes is in Genertela.
Much of the ocean is very deep -- parts are even bottomless. Crossing an endless stretch of water with no "footing" below is bad because the mermen get tired swimming forever, and need to rest. They need a bank, or a continental shelf, or _something_ to stop on. If there is none, travel is made far more difficult -- even impossible.
Sea monsters are just as deadly for the mermen as they are for humans. The deeper parts of the oceans have more and worse monsters.
Humans live happily in the fertile valleys, and travel into the mountains to find giants and dragons. Mermen live on the heights, and swim into the deep blackness below to find the lair of the kraken, the sea-serpent, and sea spiders.
Jean Durupt
>It is equally unfortunate for a Brithini and a Vadeli to die.
On the contrary -- I would find it slightly _more_ fortunate when a Vadeli dies. But a Brithini's death is also cause for celebration.
Mike Cule
>The ducks of Maniria got cut off from keet culture and don't know
why they lost >their connection with the Sky Rune and the ability to
fly. They are looked down >on by most other peoples and have to
fight ruthlessly for whatever they can >get. They are bad-tempered,
cranky and talk like Donald Duck.
>The keets are a whole other ball-game....
Well, it turns out that at least the ducks' bad temper isn't solely out of mythic background, because the keets are fairly ill-tempered, too. Think of seagulls, terns, and, of course, ducks. They squabble all the time. But of course ducks wouldn't feel at home without noisy verbal battles. I look forward to some player running a duck on a quest to the East Isles to "find his heritage". I wonder what his reaction will be to the keets, glorious in their vari-colored plumage, respected by humans, and still basically ducks.
>The duck-keets of the East Isles have a mixture of Stygian Western
Malkionism
>brought by Valkaro, the cult of dream magic based on the Mother of
the Keets >and the other East Isles Cults.
As before stated, Valkarism is not really Stygian. I guess it would look that way to an outsider, though. Basically, the Valkarians believe that gods can be converted to Malkionism, and thus they have many saints which are former gods. There is a Mother of the Keets, and the ducks also worship lots of other gods, including Thella, the dawn goddess. The Mother of the Keets is most-worshiped on islands which are solely or primarily keet-inhabited. Note that most keets in the East Isles live on islands with a large human population. But there _are_ some islands that are keet-only. One island is supposedly the original home of all keets, but it is now inhabited by sorns, who also worship the Mother of Keets, as it happens.
Sandy P.
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