Theology

Icthara, the Voracious

Live to eat; eat to live.  Consumption is the basic need of all living things, the act of taking in nutrition to keep the body alive.  It is the current of life, cyclical, that all things need to thrive.  Eat, eat again, eat more, and grow.  Feed, consume, gorge, for you never know when you might eat again.  Next time, it might be you serving as the meal.  Bottom feeder or apex predator, aquatic flora or Vastness aberration, all must obey the most primal of all urges: eat to survive.

All exists to sate the Endless Hunger.  Not just food, but the living are to consume all that can be digested: drink, drugs, even detritus.  She is the Goddess of Gluttony, not Pride.  The sunken bodies of the dead are as much a feast to Her as the freshest roe.  Even the ley line nexuses fall prey to Icthara’s ravening.  She sups upon their puissance; and like ambrosia, She greedily gobbles it down.

The Queen of the Feast single-mindedly travels across the water world’s seabeds, consuming everything in Her wake with equal relish.

Icthara, the Voracious, the Empress of Consumption, Queen of the Feast, the Endless Hunger

Alignment: Neutral Evil
Symbol: Two rows of three orange hooks, facing downward and inward.
Domains: Animal, Destruction, Evil, Magic, Travel
Preferred Unguis (weapon): Claw.
Clerical Unguis of Choice: Prey catcher (man catcher).
Cleric Alignment: Chaotic evil, neutral evil, lawful evil, true neutral.

Biology

Tidal Malaise

Wherever life thrives, other forms of life evolve to prey upon it.  Such is the ancestry of the great oceanic predators like the carcharadons and pleisosaurs, but not all aggressive creatures embraced the evolutionary path that led to massive size.  Some of the most lethal forms of life in Elqua are too small to be seen.  These are the microbes and viruses that take advantage of the ocean currents to travel from host to perspective victim.

Complete submersion makes transmission of communicable diseases easier.  Unlike our world, where the air makes it somewhat more easy to avoid contaminated sources, water flows every where, and eventually through the gills of all pisceans.  Because it is so easy to catch a disease when you float in shared fluid, Elquan society has created social taboos and mores to govern daily life, all with an eye on preventing the spread of maladies.  Dietary constraints are a major deterrent used by piscean life, and especially the Church of Olyhydra.  The lists of animals and plants that are deemed “unclean” by the Olyhydran dogma is long and convoluted.  Further sanctions on where bodily waste may be expelled, avoidance of spawning waters, and a myriad of other laws dictate the life of the devout Olyhydran.  It is no faint claim that Olyhydrans call their diety “the Harsh Mistress”.

Chemistry

The Nature of Kelaguen

Kelaguen is the “wonder yeast” that revolutionized aquaculture (aquatic agriculture) and serves as the basis of the culinary arts.  Used extensively by the toothless Locanth for five Ages, it is a fungal derived substance based heavily on the compound lignin.  Its introduction into early Known World populations was key in the rise of more than one culture into the ocean nations of today.

Sociology

Culinist — Farmers of the Fathoms

Culinists are the farmers of the fathoms, wielding aquaculture to produce consumable bounties for piscean life to thrive.  Through cunning manipulation of kelaguen — the tiniest wonder fungi — they can fertilize barren silt, ferment the ubiquitous ricelqua into alcohol, and infuse the unremarkable acari fruit with wonders of magic.

They are cultivators of magic in the truest sense — they raise crops infused with magic.  The fruit of their art can impart spells upon the consumer much like drinking a magical potion, but only after harvest has produced the ripened bevy.