Eberron Flashback: Under The Sea

While the sahuagin have been touched on in City of StormreachSecrets of Xen’drik and my novel The Shattered Land, the oceans of Eberron remain shrouded in mystery. With this in mind, I wanted to revisit a post from a few years ago. As always, bear in mind that everything I post here is entirely unofficial and may contradict canon information: this is what I do in my home campaign. With that said…

Are there any aquatic races other than the sahuagin that see non-hostile contact with land-dwellers? I may be doing a pulp game that’s heavier on the Sea Stuff™ than expected, and I imagine the political scene is just as busy below the waves as it is above. Especially curious about kuo-toa and aquatic elves, but anything you have helps.

I don’t believe that any of the aquatic races besides the sahuagin have been mentioned in canon Eberron sources. But I did come up with other ideas when I was developing the world, and I suppose I can mention those briefly. In my original draft I asserted that the two primary undersea races were the sahuagin and the merfolk, with a smaller but critical role for aquatic elves.

In this model, the sahuagin are a largely monolithic culture: a widespread ancient empire older than even Aereni civilization. In this you could see the Deep Ones of H.P. Lovecraft as a model; they worship a deity that others fear (the Devourer), and they have an ancient and sophisticated civilization that is almost entirely unknown to the people of the surface world. While I refer to this as an “empire”, my thought is that its borders have been stable for thousands of year; it’s not an especially aggressive power. With that said, if I was to bring in kuo-toa or locathah, one of the first places I’d be likely to put them is as subject states within the Sahuagin empire.

Now, how’s this work if you want savage or uncivilized sahuagin raiders? Well, while the sahuagin empire might be widespread, there’s always room for barbarians who’ve never embraced it. Furthermore, there’s a lot of room for Lords of Dust / Cult of the Dragon Below action among the sahuagin. Note that per City of Stormreach the sahuagin colonized Stormreach long before humans did, but pulled back after a terrible ancient force corrupted the settlement. You can easily introduce savage bands of sahuagin barbarians (literally) who revere the Overlords of the First Age and seek to restore their dominion.

Let’s move on to the Aquatic Elves. My thought here was that around ten thousand years ago, there was a movement among a number of Aereni lines to colonize the ocean around Aerenal. The original aquatic elves were created through mystical rituals, though they are a self-sustaining race. Thus, there is a significant undersea region around Aerenal that is under Aereni dominion. In my original model the populace was largely comprised of sahuagin, but you could add any other aquatic races you wanted; the main point is that these races adhere to Aereni culture, revering the Undying Court. My assertion was that there remained a long-standing bitter enmity between the Sahuagin Empire and the Aereni Territories. The power of the Undying Court makes it nearly impossible for the sahuagin to reclaim the region… but as that power is geographically limited, the elves can’t extend their dominion further. Thus you have the malenti, sahuagin mystically altered to appear to be aquatic elves; these are covert operatives used in acts of espionage and covert aggression within the Aereni Territories.

The rest of the ocean is dominated by the Merfolk. Where the sahuagin have a vast, monolithic and ancient culture, I’ve always considered the merfolk to be as diverse as humanity and less bound to a single ancient tradition. Thus my original model had multiple merfolk territories and a range of cultures.

In my model, the Sahuagin Empire was concentrated in the Thunder Sea, the region between Khorvaire and Xen’drik; thus you would deal with the sahuagin if you were going from Khorvaire to Xen’drik, and with the merfolk if you were going from Khorvaire to Sarlona. The merfolk are also the dominant race in Lhazaar waters. With that said, the merfolk of the western coast are quite different from those of the eastern coast.

Say you wanted to present sahuagin as a viable character option. Would you have any brief roleplaying tips, suggested classes, and what gods they might worship?
As mentioned about, when I look to a literary analogy for the Imperial sahuagin, I think of the Deep Ones of H.P. Lovecraft. Their god is the Devourer, the embodiment of the destructive power of nature; you see the Devourer’s hand in the tempest and the storm. He is a grim patron who strengthens the faithful through harsh trials; but survive and you will be the shark amongst the prey.
So one part of the Deep One analogy is that their god is a harsh and fearful deity who most people fear. The second is the fact that they are both wise and intelligent; per the 3.5 SRD, a typical sahuagin has an Intelligence of 14 and a Wisdom of 13. In my opinion they have an ancient culture, and have their own traditions of arcane and divine magic. So when it comes to classes, any combination of fighter, cleric and wizard make sense. As they have an affinity both for sharks and for hunting, ranger is another logical choice. From a racial perspective, their only weakness is Charisma… so I don’t see a lot of sahuagin bards or sorcerers.
Looking to roleplaying tips, one start is to look at places the sahuagin are mentioned in canon. Their religion is discussed in City of Stormreach
The doctrine of this sect holds that it was the Devourer alone who defeated the fiends of the first age, and that the force of this battle raised the lands above the sea. The faithful are taught to embrace the fury of nature, preparing for the time when the Devourer will scour the earth and draw all back beneath the waves.
A critical point is the description of the relationship between the sahuagin priests and human followers of the sect…


These priests consider humans to be flawed cousins, stripped of scale and weak of lung, but they pity these humans and consider it an act of charity to help them find the right path.

The key points here is that these Imperial sahuagin who regularly interact with the humans of Stormreach approach them with an attitude of condescension and pity. Compare a typical human to a typical sahuagin. Per the SRD, a sahuagin is superior in every ability score save Charisma; they are smarter, faster and stronger than their human counterparts. The sahuagin has significant natural armor (+5 natural AC bonus) and natural weapons… and again, an average 14 Strength and 14 Intelligence. By comparison, humans are weak, slow-witted and woefully unfit for battle. Add to this the idea that the sahuagin have a remarkable and ancient culture under the waves that humans know nothing about (because your poor little lungs are too weak to endure it… while by contrast, a typical sahuagin can at least survive for 6 hours on land without magical assistance).

So personally, if I was playing an Imperial sahuagin character I’d emphasize the intelligence and ancient culture of the sahuagin and be somewhat arrogant and condescending to my soft-skinned, slow-witted mud-cousins… but that’s me.

Now, two more things you might want to consider. City of Stormreach also notes that “The holy texts speak of devouring the strength of fallen foes…” While this is a metaphor, I have always intended that certain significant sahuagin rituals involve the literal consumption of a thing to gain its strength. My idea of both the malenti and the four-armed sahuagin warriors is that these are accomplished through mystical rituals of devouring… that you become a malenti by consuming an aquatic elf.

With that said, following the model I outlined above, there’s two other paths for sahuagin characters. You could be a sahuagin from the Aereni Territories, who has fully embraced Elven culture and is a loyal servant of the Undying Court. Or you could be a savage sahuagin from beyond the Empire; this would be somewhat analogous to playing an orc cultist of the Dragon Below from the Shadow Marches.

Would you be sympathetic to a little more HPL in allowing “half-sahuagin” (or even half-aquatic elves, come to think of it) to emerge from humans who may or may not know of their ancestry a la “Shadow Over Innsmouth”?

Certainly. I think the most logical path for this would be the malenti. By core rules, malenti are sahuagin that are physically indistinguishable from aquatic elves. It seems reasonable to me to suggest that the offspring of a human and a malenti could produce a creature that appears to be a normal half-elf, but who develops sahuagin traits over time… eventually becoming a full sahuagin. I think you could easily place a village like Innsmouth along the southern coast of Breland.

If you fashion Sahuagin culture as imperial, have you ever given thought or description to the Emperor or Empress? Are they ruled by a singular monarch or a dynasty of imperial mutant families?

Personally, I see it as a dynasty with nobles reigning over different provinces. Incorporating the mutants into this is a very logical step; the four-armed sahuagin could be a particular noble bloodline, with other families having similarly distinctive traits that have simply never been seen by surface-dwellers.

And how many of the themes of Eberron do you think are able to be translated into an under-sea environment? Would you put submarines similar to airships under the sea or have things similar to lightning rails on ocean floors? Could there be aquatic versions of the warforged?

Some of these things already exist. Submersible elemental vessels have appeared in a number of sources, from Grasp of the Emerald Claw to my novel The Fading Dream. Warforged are capable of operating underwater, and The Fading Dream has a Cyran aquatic construct still patrolling the waters around the Mournland.

Looking to the lightning rail, I’m not sure whether you’re asking if humans have created such a thing, or if it might already be in use by aquatic nations. Addressing the first point, I don’t see such a thing happening any time soon… in part because the ocean floor is inhabited, and I don’t see the sahuagin being keen on Orien running a rail through their homeland. As the sahuagin are an ancient and sophisticated culture, they should have their own answers to long-distance transportation and communication, but these could take many forms. They could have harnessed or bred special creatures to assist in transportation… or they may have come up with their own techniques for binding water elementals. As it’s not something that was picked up in canon Eberron, it’s not something I ever explored in great detail.

Are there any long lost civilizations, perhaps currently unheard of in Khorvaire, whose remains are underwater? Apart from giants from Xen’drik, that is.

There certainly could be. In the conversion notes for Lords of Madness I suggest that the aboleths were a civilization that existed during the Age of Demons, so you could easily have ancient aboleth ruins holding remnants of powerful magic… essentially, the undersea equivalent of Ashtakala and the Demon Wastes. Aside from that, this could be an interesting path to take with one of the other aquatic races, such as the Kuo-Toa. Perhaps the Kuo-Toa were once even more widespread and powerful than the Sahuagin, until SOMETHING devastated their civilization; now they are savages and subjects of the other races, and their ancient cities are haunted ruins. If you want to get really crazy, you could have undersea explorers discover a region below the sea that is clearly analogous to the Mournland, suggesting that the ancient Kuo-Toa civilization triggered (and was destroyed by) their own Mourning millennia ago.

Eberron has a lot of interesting features on the maps of its *surface* continents. What sort of variation in environment do you think there would be across the seas and oceans of Eberron?

For a start I’d look to all of the interesting ocean environments that exist in our world, such as the Mariana Trench, the Sargasso Sea and the Great Barrier Reef. From there, I’d consider the fact that there are manifest zones below water as well as on the surface, and manifest zones can create both exotic regions and areas that would lend themselves to colonization or adventure. A manifest zone to Fernia could give you fire underwater, while a manifest zone to Lamannia could be a source of unusually massive sea creatures or dramatic growth of vegetation; I could see a Lamannia zone at the heart of an especially dramatic Sargasso region. Zones to Thelanis would produce regions like the Twilight Desmesne in the Eldeen Reaches, with aquatic fey and water spirits. And so on. Beyond this you could have any number of regions affected by the actions of the ocean inhabitants… such as the idea of a Kuo-Toa Mournland.

How do the Inspired feel about the merfolk or do they even realize they’re there?

I think the existence of a quori client state among the merfolk is a great idea. With that said, I wouldn’t actually connect them directly to the Inspired. The point of quori subversion is to work from within and create a structure within the target culture that supports their rule. So if they conquered Khorvaire, they wouldn’t actually try to impose Riedran culture on it; instead, they’d do something like instigate a brutal civil war that devastates the existing order and then have their own (secretly Inspired) saviors rise up to fix it. That’s how they came to rule Riedra to begin with – the Inspired brought the Sundering to an end. If this sounds like the Last War is a quori plot, it would make a lot of sense; the question is who they would use as puppets in Khorvaire.

So in other words, I think a merfolk-quori state makes perfect sense, but I’d have them be merfolk “guided by the Voice of the Ocean” or something like that… and it would take someone familiar with the Quori to say “Hey, they’re using psionics… I think they’re Inspired!”

Could you elaborate on Sauhagin who are part of Aereni culture? With how tied to ancestors many aspects of that culture are, what are some differences in how Sahaugin experience service to the Undying Court? 

As a question of world design, this is a point where you have to decide if you are creating an idealized world — the way we want things to be — or if you’re going to create a flawed world. Typically, a flawed world presents has more need of adventurers, and that’s the path I followed. So in MY Eberron, things aren’t perfect for the sahuagin of the Aereni Territories. It’s a model of colonization — with the elves justifying their actions out of a need to create a buffer zone for Aerenal — as opposed to enlightened integration. As such, the Aereni sahuagin are taught to respect and serve the Undying Court, which protects them from harm and preserves civilization as we know it… but they are not presented with a path to become deathless themselves. Rather, this is one of the principles the aquatic elves use to justify their rule; they are literally envoys of divine power, and the fact that the deathless are all elves is proof of elven superiority.

Essentially, this is a case where I WANT the adventurers to be creeped out by this society and by the fact that Aerenal condones (or at least ignores) this. I want players to potentially find themselves sympathetic to the Imperial sahuagin and their malenti agents. Following Eberron’s general principle that “the bad guys aren’t always monsters and the monsters aren’t always bad guys,” I like this as a situation where the aquatic elves are in many ways more monstrous that the sahuagin.

Having said that, this is my vision of the society as a whole. It’s also the case that I think the surface civilization largely ignores what’s going on underwater as opposed to explicitly condoning it. So there’s an opportunity for player action to set change in motion… and for the issue to create division within the nation, either above or below. I like the idea that there are sahuagin who have embraced the values of this civilization; sahuagin who despise their elven rulers, and who work with Imperial malenti to undermine them; and sahuagin who are working with sympathetic aquatic elves to create a new united society. And I could see that society splintering off – having a new state formed by aquatic elves and sahuagin seeking to build something together, separate from both Aerenal and the Empire. But I’d prefer to explore that as part of a campaign as opposed to presenting it fully formed.

Is there a cadre of Undying who are aquatic, and if so are any of them Sahaugin?

My thought is that there are a few deathless aquatic elves, and that the governors of the region would be deathless, but that they’re a very small percentage of the Undying Court – just as they’re a small population of elves. And as I said above, my thought is that at the moment there are no sahuagin deathless. But the appearance of a sahuagin deathless could be the spark that sets change in motion!

It has been mentioned that the Dhakaani Empire did not have much in the way of a navy. Were there ever any clashes or agreements between goblin and sahuagin empires?

Do you WANT there to have been? The Age of Monsters lasted for tens of thousands of years. All you need is to come up with a logical explanation. Perhaps a crazy Emperor swore to conquer the oceans and bred legions of Koalinth (that’s aquatic hobgoblins for those not in the know), and fought a campaign that failed miserably and is WHY the Dhakaani weren’t a seafaring nation… because following this failed conflict, the sahuagin would sink any goblin vessels that entered their territory.

Of the surface power groups, who do you think is most likely to be the first to reach out to the underwater nations? Who made deals with the Shargon sahuagin? Galifar, House Lyrandar, House Sivis?

All of the above. Anyone who crosses the Thunder Sea on a regular basis has to deal with the sahuagin. Galifar certainly had an arrangement — though that arrangement was largely establishing a system by which individual captains negotiate passage. So it’s not a formal alliance or especially close bond. Currently the Five Nations are coasting on that casual agreement. If any of them were to want to make a new arrangement it would presumably be Breland, as it shares a border and is responsible for the most sea traffic in the region.

Do you think that the merfolk in the Lhazaar Principalities would agree to being part of the Principalities, in their current state or a unified country?

To me, the question is why. What do they have to gain from it? Sahuagin are at least amphibious. Assuming you’re using traditional merfolk as opposed to tritons, they’re aquatic creatures. In the original Setting Search submission I had three different maps. One was a surface map, with the oceans as vast blue. Another was an aquatic map, in which the land masses were undifferentiated black. Because if you’re casual merfolk, it really makes do difference to you what’s up on the land, because you’re never going to go there. Trade certainly makes sense, but why would a merfolk nomad accustomed to the absolute freedom of the waters bind themselves to the customs of surface-dwelling princes? I’m not saying it’s impossible; I’m just saying that’s the question that needs to be answered to have it make sense. How does it benefit the merfolk to form such an arrangement?

If you incorporate tritons from Volo’s Guide it becomes a different story. It could be very interesting to introduce a clan of tritons who have migrated from the deep sea and who are LOOKING to join a principality — what will the princes offer to earn their fealty, and how will this affect the balance of power? To me, the merfolk are less likely to make such an arrangement because they are entirely bound to the water. Alliances, sure… but formally joining a principality seems less likely to me.

Do you think the Sahuagin Empire has a diplomatic presence on land anywhere?

I’ve always seen Sharn as the primary point of contact. As I’ve said before, my original vision of Sharn included a partially submerged spire in the harbor. With that said, the question is how extensive that contact is… which again should be defined by the type of story you want to tell. Personally, I’m more inclined to say that the Empire largely considers the surface a curiosity and a backwater; the Sharn outpost is about negotiating travel rights, not about deep diplomatic negotiations. The post in Stormreach is essentially a distant foreign mission whose priests feel sorry for the soft-skins. The point here is to leave the sahuagin largely shrouded in mystery so that player characters have a lot of room for discovery. I’d rather have the PCs be the first surface-dwellers to ever visit the Imperial Court than to say that Boranel has a direct line to the Empress. But that’s me; you could certainly posit a closer and more active role if you want to tell a different story.

With that said, I’d question how significant a presence it is. It’s a point of contact for Breland (and previously Galifar) to negotiate passage; but the question is whether they are actually interesting in close contact with humanity or whether they essentially consider Breland a backwater populated by softskinned bumpkins.

How do you separate “negotiating travel rights” to the idea of a least basic “diplomatic negotiations”? It seems to me that the very idea of negotiating travel rights implies a sort of “peer to peer” relationship – the acknowledgement that one deals with another political entity.

Certainly. The point is that the current system was put in place by the founders of Galifar and the Dragonmarked Houses and has been operating for centuries. The first step would be establishing corridors of safe passage, which are maintained by some form of tributary payments. This is the equivalent of a canal: softskin ships are left alone as long as they don’t deviate from this approved corridor. So a casual captain doesn’t even have to negotiate; he just knows that you stay on this course. If for some reason you have to deviate from those paths, you visit the sahuagin representative and present your travel plan; they redirect you as necessary, and charge you a few to outfit you with tokens that will ensure safe passage, or tell you where you’ll have to stop along the way to make those arrangements. Looking to The Shattered Land, it’s established that the sahuagin mark certain points on the surface of the water where ships can call for an envoy or guide to ensure passage between especially hazardous regions.

The critical point is that there was a time when this involved first contact between Galifar and the Empire, when this was a point of tense negotiation. But that was centuries ago, and now it’s the province of the third undersecretary of barbarian affairs. The arrangement is simple: pay your tribute and stick to your approved paths and we won’t destroy your ships. Fail to follow established protocol and we will destroy your ships. This is how things are presented in canon: it’s a well-established and currently stable situation. Could something dramatically shake up that arrangement and require more involved negotiations? Certainly. I’m just saying that this is the sort of thing I’d prefer to make part of a campaign — with the player characters at the heart of the upheaval or playing a critical role in the negotiations.

I’ll also note that this current distant status quo exists because WotC wasn’t interested in developing the undersea civilizations in depth. We know they are there, but we know very little about them. Thus, the status quo exists to justify that distant relationship and degree of mystery. For me, forging a closer relationship requires knowing more about the situation under the sea – the factions, politics, goals; the resources they have and the things they want. That’s something I’d like to explore, but again, it wasn’t in the cards initially – and without having things built out, the distant relationship is what makes the most sense with what’s currently available. Once more information IS available, that’s where I’d personally introduce that information by having a group of PCs get entangled in some aquatic shenanigans — so it’s not simple about dropping new exposition on the world, it’s about it impacting the PCs in a meaningful way.

Post questions or what you’ve done with the oceans of Eberron below!

40 thoughts on “Eberron Flashback: Under The Sea

  1. Could you elaborate on Sauhagin who are part of Aereni culture?

    With how tied to ancestors many aspects of that culture are, what are some differences in how Sahaugin experience service to the Undying Court?

    Is there a cadre of Undying who are aquatic, and if so are any of them Sahaugin?

    Are there any non elven heroes that are respected or even revered by the elves?

  2. It has been mentioned that the Dhakaani Empire did not have much in the way of a navy.

    Were there ever any clashes or agreements between goblin and sahuagin empires?

    • The sahuagin refer to their deity as “Shargon”, but that’s a word that has meaning in their language – a word encompassing the IDEA of the Devourer.

  3. Of the surface power groups, who do you think is most likely to be the first to reach out to the underwater nations? I read somewhere there are trade deals and rights of passage agreements with the Sahuagin in the Straits of Shargon, but do you think that the merfolk in the Lhazaar Principalities would agree to being part of the Principalities, in their current state or a unified country?

    Who made those deals with the Shargon sahuagin? Galifar, House Lyrandar, House Sivis?

    And finally as a thought exercise; why wouldn’t the sahuagin or merfolk have developed a dragonmark? They have lived in the Khorvaire region for longer than humans and elves.

    • The first two questions have been added to the main article. As for this…

      And finally as a thought exercise; why wouldn’t the sahuagin or merfolk have developed a dragonmark? They have lived in the Khorvaire region for longer than humans and elves.

      There’s nothing natural about dragonmarks. They aren’t some form of evolution. The goblins have been in Khorvaire far longer than humans, and they don’t have dragonmarks; likewise for the orcs, as pure-blooded orcs have no mark. Per the canon answer, the marks are tied to the Prophecy. It is an entirely magical and mysterious thing – not based on logic or science. Alternately, you could run with the idea that the Daelkyr created the Dragonmarks as a way of manipulating the Prophecy; if so, they chose the races they marked.

  4. The idea of Aerenal having underwater territory around their island is pretty intriguing. Are there any other nations with their own underwater territories populated by aquatic or amphibious members of their peoples? Is the sea floor around Argonnessen, for example, the domain of bronze and black dragons? Did storm giants expand the giant civilization up against the sahuagin empire in the Thunder Sea?

    • I certainly assume that the dragons have an aquatic buffer zone around Argonnessen, including both aquatic dragons and dragon turtles. The Storm Giants DID have aquatic territories in the past, but I believe we’ve said those were largely destroyed when the dragons leveled Xen’drik; so there are certainly ruins, and you can decide if any Storm Giants have reclaimed these regions.

  5. You mention a few notable undersea locations on earth, but another potentially interesting one for PC’s is a blue hole. They form when a sinkhole or something collapses , are filled with fresh water, & are often free of oxygen among other things. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/blue-holes-some-of-the-least-explored-areas-on-earth-134628763/116987.html

    The Valles Marineris on mars (2300ft/4.3miles/7km deep!)is another massive trench with more pictures of the inside than the (smaller) marianas trench despite being on mars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valles_Marineris

    What kinds of difficulties/opportunities would undersea civilizations in eberron do you think places like blue holes or deep underwater underdark type places like the Marianas trench?

  6. This is completely tangential to this post, but something I noticed nonetheless.

    One thing that’s been mentioned a lot is the elven penchant for genetic engineering (or, at least, they seem to take easily to it). Drow is the notable example, and you just mentioned aquatic elves….is there anything intentional about this? Is elven blood particular mutable, allowing them to change easily at magical prodding and reproduce with humanity?

    It’s not that other races haven’t been mutated, but they’ve always been described as monstrous “failures” that are no longer recognizable as people. Shifters became lycanthropes, halflings became chokers, dwarves became derro, goblins became dolgaunts/dolgrims, etc. Seems like ONLY elves have viable mutants.

    • Per 4E canon, the elves are themselves crafted from Eladrin stock. So it’s reasonable to make the case that they are especially responsive to further manipulation – that they may have even been intentionally designed that way.

      With that said, they aren’t the only oft-manipulated race. As Jarrod calls out, the goblinoids are often presented as having been magebred from some sort of core species. And aside from that, the Dols and Chokers aren’t FAILURES. They were created by the Daelkyr, and may be exactly what they were trying to create. So far we’ve never presented a Daelkyr-modified elf, so we don’t know what that would look like – but it could easily end up being just as monstrous as a dolgrim.

      So I do think it’s logical for elves to be easily manipulated (this also ties to their surprise at being genetically compatible with humanity) – but I wouldn’t hold the Dols as examples that goblins CAN’T be easily magebred.

      • As a followup question, considering the wide rather than high magic approach to Eberron, is there any suggestions to how any of this magebreeding is done? Is it closer to GMOs in real life (e.g. they’d mostly use alchemy to modify fetuses, and conduct extensive experimentation of dubious ethics, etc), or is there any spells or rituals in any of the editions that fits your idea closer?

        Something like the goblinoid castes strike me more as thousands of years of selective breeding, so similar to the different sizes and shapes we have for dogs. But drow are explicitly “imbued with darkness” by the giants if I recall correctly. The process can’t be pleasant (not that giants would care about slaves), so I have a hard time seeing elves doing that to their own people.

        • Is there any suggestions to how any of this magebreeding is done?

          I don’t think it’s done with anything so simple as a traditional spells; I’m sure eldritch machines were involved. Looking to the Drow, I think we named the Sulat League as their creators. The Sulat specialized in elemental binding, so I’d see it as something similar – possibly drawing on energies of Mabar as opposed to drawing fire from Fernia. I do see it as generational – faster than what was done with the goblins, but not the work of an afternoon.

          Looking to the creation of the aquatic elves, that surely involved the Undying Court – who collectively have godlike power. Even there, it could be something done over time – with a line volunteering and being transformed over generations.

        • Maybe this will help. I’m saying heavy duty magebreeding (beyond just the little stuff vidalis does) takes a deep knowledge of draconic magic to both create the needed eldritch machines and skuplt the energies themselves.

          In one of my games, the players are the second incarnation of themselves going back through time wibbbly wobbly timey wimey style to repair the damage done by giving happy endings to all the terrible stuff that happened in the past last time & going back making sure all the horrible stuff happened

          I run my gatekeeper druids as being more of as hybrid draconic/druidic magic than pure druidic magic but never really considered it much before this game. Currently the players are at -81,000 YK trying to convince aurelonstrix to give the giants knowledge of full draconic magic & the giants have not yet differentiated themselves. The idea was to use the draconic magic knowledge to build eldritch machines & such to magebreed themselves & the soon to be captured by pc’s eldarin into drow. Luckily I can do all of that off camera by letting the players jump to see what needs more fixing. If giants are still kinda pleasant folkks not tied to the elements yet, I can’t immagine them perverting the draconic magic to shift dal quor though;)

    • Not Keith obv but interestingly the new book from wotc apperently delves into this on a cosmic/multiversal level. Basically, the elves once possessed the ability, when they were Fey, to change their nature at will. Becoming like drow or aquatic or growing wings, etc.

      This could carry over into Eberron as partial explanation as to why elves are particularly suited to such manipulation, because it was part of their basic DNA eons ago. The Giants may also have crystalised groups of elves into given forms, rather than taking a static form and manipulating it into different forms.

      So, make your elf slave turn “drow”, then use a ritual to lock them in to that form so fully that even their children will have that form, and give each form of elf a role and a caste within the context of survitude.

      Could be interesting, then, to consider what happens when elves of multiple types inter-breed. Could a Drow/Aquatic couple produce an Avariel? Would they have children who range (statistically) from Drow, to aquatic, to a mix of traits, or basically half-elves with the variant traits?

  7. Again, I wanted to thank you for all this stuff, and dearly hope it can sneak into a book someday. The idea of uncomfortably-intrgrated other races living under Aereni rule is a fascinating one.

    Questions: do you think the Sahuagin Empire (does it have a name at your table?) have a diplomatic presence on land anywhere? I’m especially curious to hear your thoughts on them working with the Brelish (as the most visible heirs of Galifar) and especially with Droaam, who I’m not sure if they would view as sympathetic or as naive upstarts.

    • Answered in the main text. With Droaam, the main question I’d have is what would cause them to initiate contact in the first place. Droaam has no navy at all that we’ve discussed and I’m not sure what they’d do with one. What is it that could happen in Droaam that could be relevant to the sahuagin? One possibility would be to say that they have a sudden need for byeshk and that it’s largely confined to Droaam – so they have a concrete reason for making contact and something they actually want from the surface.

  8. (Also, wholly unrelated to all this, but I would love to hear from you about the Venemous Demesne sometime!)

  9. I noticed that you didn’t mention aquatic druids. Do you have any thought about?
    Is the prophecy involving oceans as much as surface world? If the answer is yes, do undersea creatures have equivalents of dragonmarks and of silver flame?

    • It’s mainly there being a limit to what I can cover in a single web post. We’re talking about a diverse range of cultures with a history as long — or longer — than the Elves. There’s certainly aquatic druidic traditions and interaction with the Prophecy, and it’s something I’d love to address at some point when I can explore the topic in full depth.

  10. What might be interesting is a reverse Mournland under the sea, where there is a massive excess of deadly, mutated growth and life. A ‘tropic of cancer’, if you will.

  11. Time to finally justify throwing in an Apparatus of Kwalish!

    Also, is there any chance we could see the underwater map, the original or a modified version?

    • Also, is there any chance we could see the underwater map, the original or a modified version?

      It was part of the setting search submission, so not something I can show unless WotC decides to release it.

  12. Thank you again Keith, gripping read.

    Is there anything of a difference in kind between aquatic magic (and magitech) and that of the surface? Could they be explained by the arcane theories of one or the other side, or do they operate on different principles?

    Would things like Conductor Stones even work underwater, or would they keep grounding and or damaging everything around them?

    A tangent of the above, but do large-scale magics ever interfere with each other? For example, if Breland built an eldritch machine near the coast (to take advantage of a convenient manifest zone) and the sahuagin built one nearby and the two hadn’t informed each other could unusual resonance effects be the result?

    • Is there anything of a difference in kind between aquatic magic (and magitech) and that of the surface?

      That’s beyond the scope of this article. The short form is YES; canon sources have already talked about the ritual consumption spells of the sahuagan. But to answer this more fully I’d want to put more time into developing sahuagin civilization that I currently have.

      A tangent of the above, but do large-scale magics ever interfere with each other?

      Do you WANT them to? There’s no concrete canon rules about this, but it seems logical – and it’s one of the primary theories about the cause of the Mourning (catastrophic reaction to the extensive use of war magicks). So it’s certainly something you can explore as a story.

  13. Do the Merfolk form sedantry societies at the bottom of the ocean (which are very dark), do they form “raft cities” (for lack of a better term) in the sunlit depths, or are they mostly nomadic hunter gatherers? If they live on the ocean depth, could you elaborate om how and why? Also, and this is sort of related, are the oceans as deep as Earth’s oceans?

    • All of the above. The sahuagin have a widespread culture, but even there I suggest that there are barbarians on the fringes. With the merfolk I don’t think they have one monolithic culture; I believe that you have as much cultural diversity as you have on the surface. So I think you have drifters, dwellers in the deep, and everything in between. One crucial question is if those who dwell in the deeps are physically adapted to survive higher pressures and incapable of coming to the surface – or if the Merfolk have an inherent magic that allows them to adapt to any pressure.

      I’d love to explore the full range of aquatic cultures in the future – but it’s not something I have time to do in this article.

  14. There’s another aquatic race with at least semi-canonical backing. Some of the maps of Sarlona show a group of islands off the southwest coast of the Sarlonan counterpart labeled the Aventus islands. I haven’t found the canonical text, but the assumption is that these islands were once part of a larger land mass which sunk, and whose human population was magically transfomred into the wather-brething Aventi. Was this something you created and/or used in your campaign, Keith, or was this an addition by Other Hands? If the former, have you decided for your campaing when and how Aventus sunk, and what role the Aventi play in the grand scheme of things? Allies or enemies of Riedra? Considered kin or alien by other merfolk?

  15. Thanks for this post, bringing out a topic previously only hinted at. As always, it’s all very interesting and inspiring.

    Bit of a late question: I understand your goal when you say you’d prefer Boranel didn’t have “a direct line with the Empress” under the sea, but how do you separate “negotiating travel rights” to the idea of a least basic “diplomatic negotiations”? I mean, there may be ways to justify that things don’t go further than that (it makes sense the Sahuagin feel very little inclination to meddle in the politics of the surface-dwellers, and vice-versa), but it seems to me that the very idea of negotiating travel rights implies a sort of “peer to peer” relationship – the acknowledgement that one deals with another political entity.

    Because who else would the crown negotiate that with? You don’t negotiate with sea monsters: you hunt them if you can, and if you can’t, you try to avoid them and pray for the best. You don’t negotiate with pirates (or at least you shouldn’t): you make war at them and police the sea to ensure safe passage to the legit goods and citizens. Not to mention the idea of a kind of mafia system: “Before you up anchor, don’t forget to go and find some old Sahuagin usually sitting on a bench in the harbor, and give him a bag of gold pieces, so we should avoid problems during our journey to Xen’drik…” – Well, that one may sound fun, but, once again, it doesn’t sound very realistic in the case at hand…

  16. Help me! I accidentally homebrewed!
    My party have just met a Dominion priestless in the Straits of Sha’argon that bares a striking resemblance to Lady Vashj from world of warcraft.
    Here’s my adhoc explanation, what do you think?
    Based on page 135-6 of Exploring Eberron where it talks about the great honor of consuming an Overlord, I’ve decided that a Sahaugin priestess has literally eaten more than a few Merfolk Stormcallers, Marilith Demons, and Medusas.
    Does the consuming ritual only mutate you completely into your food, or is it possible to gradually mutate?

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