The MerFolks, or simply the the Mermaids, or more commonly known as “The Pirate Clans,” are made up of fish and various marine creatures such as sharks, dolphins, eels, killer whales, etc. Except for crustaceans, which are used by the MerFolks as animals to carry heavy marine loads, produce food, or simply as pets.
Originally, the MerFolks were a united people; their capital was Atlantis (yes, that Atlantis), a great city where the sea and surface coexisted peacefully and were protected by two sister goddesses, Mazula and Hakilele. Mazula was the older sister, but she was the classic evil queen: greedy, arrogant, irascible, vindictive, and she saw everyone else as inferior. Hakilele admitted she herself was guilty of greed like her sister, but she was kind, generous, friendly, and understanding. Hakilele had opened the city to other factions and to normal humans, while Mazula disagreed with this and hated the normal humans; because of this, the two sisters often argued.
Over the years, the MerFolk spread across the various seas of the world. There were too many for the two sisters to manage, and they were even in conflict with each other. So, the sisters began creating demigod daughters: the Queens were born. The Queens are all demigods, daughters of the two MerFolk goddesses; they have the serpentine appearance of marine Naga and also inherit the personality of the mother goddess who created them. These Queens are extremely powerful sorceresses, “biologically” immortal: they do not age but can be killed, and when this happens, their goddess simply creates another one. While Hakilele mourns her daughters and the mortal faithful when they perish, Mazula cared nothing for her lost daughters. The Queens served as minor regents and acted as feudal leaders in the name of their mothers, assisting them in political matters to better manage the MerFolk kingdom. To put it briefly, using a Warhammer reference, the Queens are most similar to the Primarchs.
But then, Mazula, her daughters, and her followers took the path of decadence, completely giving in to vices such as alcohol and gambling, also causing serious and fatal accidents, acts of vandalism and public destruction, violent fights, and in several cases, murders. The situation deteriorated: the queens, daughters of Mazula, split into factions and waged war against each other for power.
Tired of this decay, Hakilele took her daughters and her followers who had intact morals and left. Hakilele’s MerFolk were excommunicated by their own kind and changed their name to Tritons.
Now that Mazula was the sole queen of Atlantis, she sank Atlantis and the other cities to keep the “Non MerFolks” away, especially humans. However, Mazula sank the cities while they were still full of non-MerFolk inhabitants, causing countless innocent victims. This act enraged the other gods, who wanted to intervene… but it was useless. Mazula’s kingdom self-destructed, razed to the ground by the civil war among the various queens, and their submerged cities collapsed.
After the collapse of the MerFolk civilization, Mazula created the evil pirates to rebuild her kingdom by stealing from others. Hakilele, on the other hand, took the name Tapu-Hakilele, abandoned her Atlantean aesthetic style, and adopted a new style based on the mythology of the Caribbean, Polynesia, and the Maori. She tried to rebuild the Triton civilization through knowledge and dialogue. She also created a nation of pirates—good pirates—who cooperated with other factions and had a code of conduct to follow. However, their projects were drastically interrupted due to the Fragmentation, when the gods had to separate the worlds. Because of this, much of the original knowledge and culture of the MerFolks was lost; now they are all divided into rival pirate clans.
Mazula’s MerFolks are the evil pirates; they constantly battle each other, and all their weapons and resources are stolen from other factions. The Tritons, on the other hand, are the good pirates who cooperate among themselves and with other factions. They work as privateers and obtain their resources legally, either receiving them as payment or purchasing them from other factions. Without the direct guidance of their deities, the MerFolks live in underwater villages or nomadic clans; there are no more cities.
Both the MerFolk and the Tritons live underwater, in hidden villages on the seabed, and are divided into clans. Each clan is governed by a queen. When a queen dies, the clan falls and is conquered by a stronger clan until a new queen is born, ready to found a new clan. The queens and their respective clans are all in conflict with each other for dominance and wage war against one another.
Regarding Mazula’s MerFolks alone, they are very proud, believing themselves to be the strongest species and claiming dominion over the sea, asserting they are a great and glorious empire. However, their economy is based on stealing resources from other factions; they live by piracy and have no real government. They are not even united into a true nation and are not even called MerFolks but simply “Pirates.” Each clan is led by a queen. Every new queen that appears in the world of Enchandia founds her own clan. A clan falls and is completely annihilated if its queen dies and no new one is found as soon as possible. The mortal members of an annihilated clan either perish or are “converted/recruited” by a stronger clan. Unlike the Tritons, MerFolks’ queens constantly stab each other to take control of the rival queen’s clan or assimilate the inhabitants of that clan into their own, thereby expanding their domain.
The queens also have the hobby of imprisoning their prisoners in statues made in their own image and likeness, posed artistically to decorate the clans' fortresses. The prisoners are magically forced to sing constantly and are even used as magical defensive turrets. The victims turned into statues can be saved if destroyed in time; if they remain petrified for too long, when destroyed they shatter, leaving only their soul trapped inside a gem. These gems must be exorcised to free the soul inside, but some unscrupulous individuals use these soul-containing gems to create magical tools and weapons called “Living Weapons.”
Recently, they entered into rivalry with the Saurians, as they have colonized the seabeds with their underwater bases.