Empire of Mer: The Empire of Mer is a grand, wide spanning kingdom of a whole conglomerate of races, each having a representative upon a senate which makes the vast majority of the ruling decisions of the Empire, from military and economic to civilian and emergency. Their military forces wear what would be considered a very regimented Legionnare style uniform, their weapons and arms coming from shamans who can, through arcane arts, form their weapons and gear out of the very coral and ground itself. They worship the slumbering Leviathan beneath the sands of the ocean depths, and have a high preistess, a figurehead who can read the future in the patterns of the schools of fish, if legend and myth are to be believed. Considering they build their society on and out of coral, the most natural and effective way they spread their territory is by spreading the coral, molding it into cities and fortresses as needed, always spreading outwards whenever possible.
Hidden Kingdom: Ruled by a pair of monarchs, a king and a queen, these two beings are rumored to be Teuda, although whether these rumors are true or not are completely up in the water. While the Hidden Kingdom holds a variety of different mer folk, like the Empire of Mer, the kingdom abhors and despises the Eomei and Dark Dwellers, driving them out or outright killing them on sight should they dare appear in their lands. Their name derives from the capital being secreted away within massive, towering seaweed jungles, invisible to almost all until they stumble into the streets themselves, and into the waiting arms of their military. This very miltiary is martial and refuses to use any magic to aid them, relying on their rather impressive talent and individual strength of arms to carry them to victory on an given day. Their weapons are forged from shark teeth and sometimes they bear shields of the dead Eomei that they capture, their shells far too useful to waste.
Kingdom of Eomei: The crablike warrior race of the sea, they roam the ocean floor at a slow, steady pace. Their kingdom is built upon the back of a massive crab, upon which their entire civilization lives and thrives upon. Each crab warrior has both his own natural shell and hide to defend themselves, but they can also take their ancestor’s bones to reinforce their own armor to become even thicker and more durable. As generations of Eomei pass on, their remains are normally taken to increase the size and grandeur of their crab mounted city. An overall Warlord of the Eomei leads them, while this warlord is advised by a variety of religious advisors. These advisors speak with the giant crab upon which they settled, the Eomei belief being that they are the children of this ancestral mother. The Eomei skirt the edges of the Hidden Kingdom and raid only far outlying Mer settlements, wise enough to avoid open conflict with either power, which would result in massive loss of Eomei life.
Dark Dwellers: Not so much a organized civilization as a group of sea creatures with a common goal, these monstrous beings live deep in the ocean, deeper than even the Eomei wander, living around the massive volcanoes that they worship as dark gods. The only time Dark Dwellers are seen is when a war party comes up for food and sacrifices and drags them, sometimes screaming, back into the murky depths. The dark magic they employ sometimes is known to seep and erupt from their crevices, corrupting all it touches. Turning the meek into monsters and gentle into gruesome, while sometimes reanimating long dead carcasses which causes its own variety of problems for the other kingdoms, both major and minor.
The Cabal: A neutral territory that, either through luck or foresight, splits up each of the major nations from one another. Ancient, terrible beings control magic that could obliterate each nation from existence, yet all they are content to do is enforce the neutrality of their territory. This territory holds a neutral city that each other nation can come to meet, do business, trade, and discuss a variety of problems and situations that might be facing one another. Beyond this city and buffer territory though, the wilds are not under their protection and are fair game for all.
The Free Tribes: This is not a nation, rather, a term to cover the various neutral states and tribes that exist between the borders of other major kingdoms and empires. They often squabble amongst themselves, get absorbed by larger nations, and otherwise live fairly quiet, autonomous lives without concern with the larger political picture of the interactions between each major state. Their equipment, mentality, and lifestyles vary as wildly as each nation does, so one can be fairly warned to keep an open ear and mind when dealing with new tribes and smaller nations.
