Aquatic Societies and How to Make Them Interesting (please tell me!)

[Everyl]

Short version: How do you handle aquatic races in your fantasy settings?

Long version: In a world that has many sentient races, how do you make aquatic races such as merfolk, locathah, sahuagin, aquatic elves, and/or homebrewed aquatic races seem as diverse and interesting as land-dwelling races? What sorts of technology do they use, how do their cultures vary by geography, and how do you make multiple aquatic races seem distinct and unique from one another besides just "they tend to fight each other often?"

I have a setting where I'm trying to embrace the diversity of by-the-book D&D (3.5e, at least for now), and part of that means having quite a few races available - 15, plus a number of cross-breeds. About a third of those races are aquatic or have aquatic members. I've been going out of my way to try to make all the land-dwelling races seem unique and distinct (this is what led to my thread about re-imagining gnolls on this forum a few months back), but aquatic races, being even more alien to the real world than land-dwelling ones, are more difficult to come up with ideas for.

My first instinct is to divide the races by undersea geography. Merfolk live mostly on the shallow continental shelves, locathah and sahuagin in the deeps, etc. This walks into a problem that I'm trying to avoid with the terrestrial races, though - that of geographic pigeonholing. Humans live in a huge variety of terrains and climates, and I'm trying to make it possible for all of the other races to have access to, at the very least, a significant range of them. So I'm a bit hesitant to tie the aquatic races to specific kinds of geography; it seems too much like an easy, lazy solution.

And on top of that, I'm somewhat stumped for how to make aquatic technology seem to be on par with terrestrial technology. A lot of what has driven human society over the years has been advances in metalworking, whether in making arms and armor, superior tools, or, ultimately, complex machinery. Underwater, land-based concepts like paper and metal are impractical or impossible to make/use, leaving me at a bit of a loss for how to replace them, or how to build a reasonably-advanced society that doesn't have them and doesn't obviously suffer for the lack.

So if anyone has thoughts on this subject, I'd love to hear them.

[Jendekit]

I haven't used aquatic races in my games before, so I can't help you in that regard, but I do have an idea for the metalworking problem. Have there be a type of coral that adopts the properties of whatever it grows on. Have it grow on two kinds of metal results in an alloy, having it grow on flint stone results in it flaking like flint, etc.

Or if you don't want to do that have them get access to metal through trading with the surface races. It would need to be a special king of alloy though to avoid rusting underwater though.

[micahwc]

Metalworking would be difficult, but in a magical world everything is possible. Geothermal vents are sufficiently hot enough to work metal. I would guess working it underwater would make some shapes more possible than they would be on land. If not this would give a good reason for underwater races to have trade with above water races. There are plenty of things below the surface of the ocean that the land races would want. Body parts of rare animals for spell components, pearls, sunken treasures, minerals found more abundantly under water, etc.

Paper wouldn't work as well but writing would still be possible. You can easily write in sand or on walls. The "writing" process would be different, it would be more like leaving physical impressions in a medium rather than adding ink on top of the medium.




The only advice I have it to think three dimensional. Humans typically dont think this way when it comes to our environment.

[GreenSerpent]

I'd like to recommend the 3rd party book Cerulean Seas Campaign Setting - it talks a great deal about this subject area of underwater races and campaigns.

It's Pathfinder, but you should be able to scavenge some ideas from it~ I have a copy and the information is really quite good.

[Yora]

In my setting, there are three aquatic races.

The Deep Ones live at the deep bottoms of the oceans, which no surface people have ever seen, and very few have been able to get any information about their homes out of them. Occasionally they create temporary camps in coastal shallows for raids on the land, but those are only outposts inhabited by hunters and warriors and don't reveal anything about their native places.

The merfolk are actually dolphin-people instead of fish-people, but they have a limited ability to get oxygen from the water in addition to breathing air. However, CO2 slowly builds up in the blood if they don't breath, and they become letargic after a few hours and lose consciousness after about a day. They also don't tollerate pressure very well and live mostly directly at the surface, just far enough from the coast to not be bothered by land predators.

There is also a race of half-elementals who have the ability to breath water, but are otherwise not particularly adjusted to aquatic life. While they spend many hours per day in the water hunting and gathering food, most crafting of tools and preparation of food is done in stilt houses standing above shallow water. They mostly live like other coastal humans, they just can stay underwater without drowning.

Essentially, I approached aquatic people by having them come to the surface and ignoring underwater civilization. There simply are not many plausible ways to get PCs down there, and there isn't much to do there anyway. It doesn't seem worth the trouble of dealing with that.
Deep ones and merfolk use basically stone age technology, but in the late neolithic, that can already get you quite civilized societies. You don't really need metal weapons when nobody has armor, and you don't need metal tools when you don't mine ores or quarry hard stones. Corral, sandstone, and whalebone can be worked with harder stones well enough.
The most crucial technology would be pots to store about everything. Baskets made from water plants won't have anywhere near the durability. Though I think there are some cements that harden in water, but I am not sure if they require being prepared in air. If nothing else works, they might find ways to build sealed chambers and fill them with gas, which would at least allow clay to air-dry in a kind of underwater kiln. I think with a bit of fantasy physics, something could be done there.

[Dusk Raven]

My first instinct is to divide the races by undersea geography. Merfolk live mostly on the shallow continental shelves, locathah and sahuagin in the deeps, etc. This walks into a problem that I'm trying to avoid with the terrestrial races, though - that of geographic pigeonholing. Humans live in a huge variety of terrains and climates, and I'm trying to make it possible for all of the other races to have access to, at the very least, a significant range of them. So I'm a bit hesitant to tie the aquatic races to specific kinds of geography; it seems too much like an easy, lazy solution.

Thing is, I actually think dividing it by undersea geography is... kind of reasonable. In real life, biomes vary quite a bit depending on how deep you go, and it's a little more difficult (though still possible, as those living in Tibet and the Andes will attest) to adapt to differing pressure levels. Of course, I'm no expert in marine biology, but it might be the case that the differences from depth to depth are a little too vast - less merfolk versus locathah and more merfolk versus aboleth.

[redwizard007]

Just some quick thoughts based on MM entries and light googling. There is a large concentration of life around the coastal zones thinning as one passes the continental shelf, but Merfolk and Kuo-toa would exist in the open ocean with the later along the sea bed and the former near the surface. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it should get the ball rolling.

Sahuagin: Coastal to medium depth dwelling Aztec-ish. LE conquerors who sacrifice their enemies to dark gods. Feudal kingdoms stretch many hundreds of miles.

Kuo-toa: NE. Deep sea dwelling, often partially (or mostly) in dry caves. As prolific slavers and traders it is tempting to look to England or the Netherlands for inspiration for part of their culture. Barter for slaves with primitives or even raiding themselves when times are leaner. Their society would be trade based with expressions of wealth important to social status.

Triton: NG Coastal to medium depth (could go deeper but why) NG (I would tweak to LG) Kingdoms with high degrees of organization and militarization. Think Aquaman's kingdom from DC comics.

Aquatic Elf: CG. Coral reef dwellers. Sprawling kingdoms artfully worked into living coral.

Locathah: N. Coastal crustacean gatherers. Isolated tribal society. More likely to migrate than fight.

Merfolk: N. Open ocean migrant hunters. Each clan has traditional camps of coral or stone refuges scattered along the migration routes. I would base their culture off one of the native american tribes and replace buffalo with whales.

One could of course go even further and detail regional differences within races as the environment and neighboring powers influence each group in various ways.

You are on your own for rationalizing their tech. Most of it is pretty off the wall.

[brian 333]

Some technologies that come to mind are the use of fish and whale bone for toolmaking, the use of living organisms to create and store alchemical preparations, (think ant colonies which stuff some members with food and hang them on the ceiling for later use,) or the replacement of what we consider common items with items more common to the sea.

Coral was mentioned by a previous poster as the building material of Aquatic elves. Fine, but this limits aquatic elves to tropical and sub tropical waters. But there is a lot of stone underwater, and no reason aquatic elves couldn't build elaborate castles of dressed stone laid in interlocking patterns to prevent currents from disturbing them.

Nomadic locatha could hunt along colder shores, living in kelp forests in houses woven of living seaweed, sort of like tents, or more precisely like the nests of weaver birds or red-winged blackbirds.

Deep dwelling Kuo-Toa could inhabit volcanic rifts and create maze-cities among the pillow lava fields, living inside lava-tube communal homes they create by diverting lava flows and directing them where they want them. While metal working is possible in this scenario, using lava rather than fire for the heat source, I don't really like my aquatic races armed with metals.

Merfolk living in hunter-gatherer groups and migrating all over the coastal seas would find items of opportunity for shelter, so giant snail shells, (after they have had a feast on the former occupant,) or the shells of giant crustaceans could form the typical house. As migrant coastal dwellers merfolk have the best chance of finding and using tools of wood, and scavenging from surface dweller shipwrecks would afford them access to metal tools, but these items are short-lived in the salt seas, so their technology revolves around stone and bone.

So, let's create a sample society:

Aquatic Elves

Their shallow water homes are elaborate, low-lying castles of dressed stone encrusted with barnacles or coral which to the untrained eye look like random shoals or reefs. The trained eye will notice that one must pass by many observations posts to get to the central entrance, and from there many passages branch out into the structure.

They live by farming and husbandry of the animals in their region, and will go out of their way to create suitable homes for their food animals. For example, octopus is a favored food, and the upper surfaces of their castles are often riddled with crooks and crannies suitable for octopus dwellings. In fact, some octopus are kept as pets and when neutered can grow to giant sizes to serve as guard animals.

Sea grasses and seaweeds are used as crops, or as fields for their livestock. Crabs, reef fishes, and shellfish are often cultivated and harvested. Sea stars and urchins are nuisance animals, so aquatic elves will often domesticate otters to help keep their predation in check, but otters do have a tendency to raid their abalone cultures.

Sharks are a dreaded peril; those elves who hunt sharks are venerated by the community. Shark teeth will find their way into many tools, including oyster shucking tools, spear tips, use as knives, etc. Shark teeth are also a kind of currency, and when one wishes to display either his prowess as a hunter or his wealth, he wears necklaces of shark teeth.

Straight hafts for spears are rare and prized. Giant fish bones and whale bones are used for this purpose, but harvesting them is dangerous work, unless one happens upon a carcass. Scrimshaw, or the carving of bone, is a revered art form.

A more domestic occupation is the tending of the fields. While not really apparent to the surface dweller's eye, the regions around an aquatic elf castle are ordered and free of untrained monsters. This allows women and children to work the fields in relative safety while the men guard the perimeter for prowling predators.

Unlike human farms, the storage of food is not as important for the aquatic elves. Their plans include sustainable harvests year round, but in times of stress quantities of stores, primarily live shellfish, are hoarded in their castles for emergencies.

A necessary and prestigious occupation is potionmaker. While there is a complete absence of containers suitable for liquid potions, the aquatic elves have adapted. Sponges both living and dead can be used as storage vessels easily transported and used at need, and rather than bandages, live sponges specifically bred and enhanced by magic are used. Sea cucumbers and jellies also provide useful means of containing substances for magic and other domestic uses. Soft-bodied corals also play an important part in storing materials, and an aquatic elf spellcaster's home is often lined with various colored translucent globes, as common to the mind of an aquatic elf commoner as the sight of a wizard's laboratory would be to a commoner on land.

Aquatic elves are on friendly terms with the nomadic merfolk who bring news of distant seas and gossip from their neighbors. The outskirts of aquatic elf castles often have many abandoned giant snail shells as temporary residences for visiting merfolk, and the elves happily engage in trade with them. A visit from merfolk is an excuse to party, and aquatic elves do enjoy a good oceanic hoedown. Indeed, some merfolk pods can be considered akin to traveling troupes of bards, going from castle to castle singing for their supper.

Aquatic elves resent the violent incursions of the locatha, who raid their fields and, if they can, capture aquatic elves for food, fun, and religious observances, all of which are detrimental to the welfare of the elves....

From here one may extrapolate in many directions. Aquatic elves do not require a marine environment; freshwater lakes of substantial size may be their preferred habitat. In this case they never encounter the marine merfolk, for example.

[micahwc]

Worst occupation ever: Octopus Neuterer.

Giant octopi already exist without this. Pudget Sound in Washington state has giant octopi. Granted, they are cold water dwelling.

[Stellar_Magic]

Don't forget the Selkie... Generally among the various aquatic races, I tend to think of the Selkie as being the species with the highest level of technology since they can easily move from sea to land. Imagine a sea-side cave that has been transformed into a small village and you get a general idea of how that could work, and as a race that can live up on land they'd easily be able to produce metalworking.

In which case you could have it so most of the other races get metal weapons through trade with the Selkies or other amphibious species like them.

Other alternatives to metalworking could be things like obsidian weapons or some form of magic. Hell, you could use the barb of a stingray as part of a merfolk's spear and have a pretty devastating weapon considering it's poison does 1d2 dex and 1 con damage. For a low level warrior, that's a pretty nasty weapon.

[Everyl]

Thanks for all the input, everyone! You've given me some great ideas to work with. Brian 333's vision of a shallow-water aquatic society with territorial aquaculture is just about perfect - there will probably be communities that look a great deal like that in the appropriate latitudes. And now to reply to a bunch of other posts...

Worst occupation ever: Octopus Neuterer.

Giant octopi already exist without this. Pudget Sound in Washington state has giant octopi. Granted, they are cold water dwelling.

I'm not an octopus expert, but I know I've read before that at least some octopi tend to be highly solitary, prone to only meeting to fight (often to the death) and to mate, which also leads to death. If the species that has been domesticated is like that, then neutering them could be a way to extend their lifespan long enough to make them more useful as pets/guards and also to make them less prone to killing one another, so more livestock can be raised in a given area. They would be an animal that is raised for both their usefulness once trained and their nutritional value, like horses in most non-European cultures that raise them.

As an aside, thanks again to Brian 333 for bringing up the subject of domesticated marine life. That's something I hadn't even thought about before, but it fits very well into the kind of culture I'd like to create.

Thing is, I actually think dividing it by undersea geography is... kind of reasonable. In real life, biomes vary quite a bit depending on how deep you go, and it's a little more difficult (though still possible, as those living in Tibet and the Andes will attest) to adapt to differing pressure levels. Of course, I'm no expert in marine biology, but it might be the case that the differences from depth to depth are a little too vast - less merfolk versus locathah and more merfolk versus aboleth.

Yeah, that's probably the more realistic way of things. It is a fantasy setting, though, and for reasons related to the setting's cosmology, mortal sentient races that can readily increase their numbers through breeding are basically all humanoids. So, for my purposes, depth adaptations for aquatic folks are going to be somewhat comparable to high-altitude adaptations in real-world humans. And thanks for that comparison, by the way - that gives me a good basis of comparison to use when I tweak the races to make them prone to living in certain depths without being absolutely limited to them.

Thinking about that also led me to ponder how the land-dwelling fantasy races are adapted to various climates and biomes. The biggest differences tend to be sensory - surface-dwelling races tend to have low-light vision or no visual adaptation, subterranean ones tend to have strong darkvision with light sensitivity, and ones that spend considerable time both above and below ground tend to have weak darkvision, but no light sensitivity. I'll probably tailor the aquatic races a bit, giving races suited to the shallows strong low-light vision but weak or nonexistent darkvision/blindsight, while races native to the deeps would lack low-light vision but have good darkvision and/or blindsight, possibly with light sensitivity. This would give different races favorable adaptations for certain depths, but not rule out the possibility of them traveling or settling at other depths if needed.

Essentially, I approached aquatic people by having them come to the surface and ignoring underwater civilization. There simply are not many plausible ways to get PCs down there, and there isn't much to do there anyway. It doesn't seem worth the trouble of dealing with that.

I have a few reasons for going to this trouble.

First, one of my goals with this setting is to make a "crowded world" where every group within it still feels unique and interesting. I want all races to be well-developed, so I chose a large-but-finite list of races (15 plus crossbreeds) and I'm building from there. Several races are aquatic, so that means developing aquatic races to an extent.

Second, knowing about the aquatic races helps to develop their relations with their land-dwelling neighbors. Particularly in the case of shallow-dwellers, there is plenty of room for conflict with drylanders over control of resources that are accessible to both air- and water-breathers, such as oyster beds or certain kinds of seaweed. Knowing what the aquatic races need, want, and have to trade will affect the culture of coastal air-breathing races, as well, since they'll have ready trade access to undersea resources that might otherwise be difficult to acquire in a medieval-with-some-magic setting.

Third, I had an aquatic elf player in a game I ran with an earlier draft of this setting. This led me to develop their culture a bit, albeit in a haphazard way, and to tie them in a bit to some of the major historical setting events. Now that I'm rewriting the setting again, I want to make sure that all of the "fringe" races are developed and integrated into the setting from the beginning. Just because air-breathing adventurers don't see them often doesn't mean they don't do things that affect drylanders' lives.

And last, if I like the results well enough, I might just try running a mostly or entirely aquatic campaign someday. It would certainly be an interesting change of pace.

[brian 333]

Air-breathers have a number of ways to access underwater societies, especially in a magical world.

My favorite was the 1st ed. AD&D artifact known as the Apparatus of Kwalish. It was essentially a giant lobster shaped submarine, with various benefits to the party that traveled in it. Of course it only gave access to the sea floor.

My home campaign saw the invention of the Iron Fish, a gnomish device which was essentially a submarine with eyes for viewports and the mouth as its access point when underwater.

Then there are water breathing spells, which in my campaign also deal with issues such as the bends.

Of course, magic items such as a Pearl of Water Breathing would come in handy, and why not an inverted fish bowl helmet for some Jacques Cousteau scuba action? (You will need a giant snail shell to carry your air supply...)

Of course, one must not forget the potential for those submarine dwellers who trade with land dwellers to provide sanctuaries for air-breathers in their cities. A small village may have a natural cave which traps air bubbles for use of their visitors, while a larger community may have an air-breather wing of the royal palace set aside for guests.

[Gogolski]

Here are a few technological trinkets that might aid surface dwellers (and the aquatics as well!) in their underwater encounters:

Submarines:
A submarine is any vessel that cruises under water. The important thing is to try to visualize something different than nuclear submarine that is most common in our world.

The gnomish submarine is a contraption quite similar to what we know as a submarine. It's a motorized submersible generally made of wood and iron. It might contain a steam engine or something similar.
The carriage is just that: an airtight carriage that is not pulled by horses, but by dolphins, walrus, manta ray or other animals. The carriage can be metal, wood, turtle-shell or whatever, but some are quite exotic and are made of seaweed and have no real fixed form, but are a sort of tough supple sack sometimes with some kind of frame or cage inside.
Riding the giant means that someone is riding that manta ray over the bottom of the ocean Maybe they're in hot pursuit of a foe riding that giant crab. Surface dwellers will need some underwater breathing gear or spells to ride the giant, unless they can squeeze in the giant turtle shell (or that crab's shell or inside the octopus) and use the air bubble inside to breathe. The carriage can also be build on or in such an animal to have the necessary air pocket.
Squirming the tube is not the jerking off business it might sound like at first. Indeed, because for those who're not claustrophobic can descent the deep through the inside of the giant hollow seaweeds. The tubes are normally squeezed flat by water pressure, but 'the walls' of these plants are very tough and slightly supple and easily a foot thick, so there's no way of easily puncturing them. These giant plants have giant air pockets where certain air breathers have even constructed dwellings... (These plants are used in the construction of a lot of diving gear before they reach their super-giant size of course)

Diving and breathing gear:
Diving gear is needed for air breathers that go under water. It comes in many different shapes, but is mostly quite straightforward as it often resembles diving gear that we know in our world.

First and foremost, inevitably, there's the snorkel. It's usually made from corral tubes, but some have a more exotic design and are made from the tubular seaweed. These can be very long (up to 10 meters!) and have an air pocket that acts as a buoy that keeps the air vent above the water surface. Notice that the very long ones are more difficult to breathe through.
Notice that these long snorkels are sometimes taken to their extremes to provide a snorkel (or more likely several snorkels) for providing the air for a submarine. A ferry that goes up and down to some underground caves in an under water abyss for example could grow these snorkels and use them. These snorkels/air vents have been known to be several hundred meters long!
Diving cylinders or air tanks are of course the next logical step and you know what? They exist! The tanks are made of metal, wood, glass or coral. The air-valves used to keep pressurized air in the bottle and release it while breathing range from mechanical over magical to biological with an actual animal or plant acting as the valve. The mouthpiece is usually coral or seaweed but sometime it is said animal that acts as the valve. Many divers are quite uncomfortable inserting a live creature in their mouth and nostrils to take in air.
The water breather is a contraption that gets the air out of the water and into the diver's lungs. They come as magical objects and as biologicals, be they plants or animals. There's a tube-weed variety that has an extreme rate of sucking oxygen out of water. Normally it releases a small constant stream of bubbles and it is therefor often used to make a jacuzzi. By using their vents as mouth and/or nostril piece, the air sacks of the weed fill up and and give the breather an air reserve that is constantly replenished. There are animals that do the same. The diver wraps the lower half of his face in an octopus-like creature and it latches on and grabs your head and neck. The diver now has an air sack around his mouth not unlike the feeding sack sometimes used for horses. Sometimes this method of breathing is called "french-kissing the octopus". Most of the animals use their limbs that aren't need to latch on one's face to swim with their breather, giving him extra propulsion under the water. Some divers use fish so large that they are hardly seen after it's wrapped around them, but most of those have some way of communicating their directions to the fish. Their under water speed is ridiculous and unmatched by any other land dweller
Oxygen generators needed for submarines or even for creating air pockets in underwater environments are of course fashioned with these plants and animals if they are not constructed magically or mechanically.
Flippers are hand- and footwear to increase swimming and diving speed. They're made of weed, wood, metal, leather, anything and a combination thereof. Most often consisting of a frame with some sort of canvas. Some can close up and spread out as needed. Some act like actual fingers and can be used to handle objects and stuff even with the webbed features between these extended fingers.
Rotors are a motorized swimming aid. It is essentially a flipper or rotor strapped on ones back and powered mostly by magical means. The biological flippers have already been mentioned and are just fish strapped on or wrapped around the body. These mostly need communication between wearer and gear.

Underwater magic:
So a lot of the under water stuff for surface dwellers relies on magic. Other stuff relies on animals which will often be animal companions of magic users.

Words don't often work well under water. Gestures also find more resistance in water that in air. How does one use the spell-components when they are wet and try to drift away? This means that a lot of spells need meta-magic feat preparation or have their underwater variant which must be studied before it can be used properly...

Underwater communication:
I mentioned words not working very well under water. I also mentioned communication with animals several times.

There's sign language (if in visual range, which can suck massively under water!) and telepathy. There's also touch language. This could be Morse-code tapping on someones back or another language with taps, strokes, pinches, slaps and whatnot.

Handle animal is probably a good skill to have in an under water adventure.



I hope these tips and ideas can help you out a little...

[Carl]

Regarding pressure adaption the increase in pressure is very dramatic . At the average ocean depth of 14,000ft the pressure is 420 atmosphere, or in really simple terms an area the size of your thumbnail has as much force pressing on it as the combined weight of 3 cars. Sperm whales only go down about half that and they have to have rib-cages and lungs that can actually collapse under pressure so that it doesn't kill them, and many animals that live at those depths, if raised to the surface explode on the way up as their internal pressure their own flesh exerts on their own skin causes them to rupture like an over-pressurized football. You might be able to get humanoid life at those depths, but without direct magical effects they'd never make it to the surface, or even far enough to see daylight without dying.