D20x5 Mercurial Merfolk

Glub glub motherfuckers

Generator automator here: https://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D20	These merfolk have the lower half (and potentially other features) of
1	pufferfish.
2	jellyfish.
3	octopi.
4	lionfish.
5	halibut.
6	moray eels.
7	lobsters.
8	squid.
9	stingrays.
10	salmon.
11	sea cucumbers.
12	sea scorpions.
13	bobbit worms.
14	nautiluses.
15	oarfish.
16	nudibranches.
17	giant isopods.
18	seahorses.
19	frogfish.
20	dragonfish.

D20	These merfolk are ruled by
1	gargantuan grouper-lords who hold their harem and successors in their own mouths.
2	colony-councils of tunicate-kings who become sessile and atrophy any parts of themselves not suited to wise rulership when they begin their reigns.
3	abyssal leviathans who make their will known through dream-rending songs.
4	the ghosts of nephilim drowned in the Flood.
5	a gestalt trash-god accreted from the discarded idols of centuries of civilizations past.
6	the diabolical noble line of sunken Ys.
7	the dysfunctionally stable diarchy of Scylla and Charybdis.
8	a slow coral super-mind they’ve hacked cargo-cult-style with pheromonal secretions.
9	the fading but still conscious shreds of Tiamat, god of the bitter waters.
10	otterfolk envoys from inland great lakes.
11	a coven of salt-hags.
12	remora-men who cling to their bodies and dictate their actions.
13	a secret police force staffed entirely by water elementals, who might be watching them at any time without them even realizing.
14	an orichalcum-geared Atlantean thinking machine, groaning out commandments from a barnacle-choked throat.
15	the sea-khans who ride with their hordes along oceanic currents, exacting tribute from all those they pass.
16	a demon-shark whose hunger for blood grows with every passing day.
17	theocrats of a faith that abhors stagnation and rigidity, and favours cyclicality and mutation.
18	the oldest and largest of their kind.
19	the dragon-satrap who reigns over their ocean on behalf of heaven.
20	interpreters of the elaborate and comprehensive sagas of their ancestors, sung to echo endlessly on the ocean currents.

D20	These merfolk view the surface
1	as a mythic overworld full of lost souls.
2	as the place where the distant gods live.
3	with murderous xenophobia.
4	as a tolerably alien trade partner.
5	as a prize for colonial expansion.
6	as thieves of the oceans’ bounty.
7	as little more than the beginning of nutrient flows.
8	as a curious, distorted reflection of their own world.
9	as a primitive place in need of marine uplifting.
10	as an unknown territory that must be tamed with canals and inundation.
11	as a suffocating nightmare realm.
12	as a piteous place deprived of the life-sustaining presence of water.
13	as the source of comedic stock characters and stereotypes for their theatre tradition.
14	as an obscure topic of natural philosophy and speculative fiction.
15	as the Eden from which they were wrongly exiled long ago.
16	as a homogenous great rival power.
17	as the antechamber to the elemental plane of air.
18	as the degenerated offshoot of the oceans.
19	as a metaphysically incompatible version of creation butted up against their own, the work of alien gods.
20	as nothing in particular. They are cognitively incapable of imagining a world beyond the water.

D20	These merfolk might be found with
1	sharks they’ve bred and trained like hounds.
2	a twisted knot of kelp that creates a whirlpool which sucks those caught in it down to crushing depths when untied.
3	brilliantly coloured pigment-slugs which exude sticky ooze, one of the few ways to leave lasting writing underwater.
4	a doldrum drum, which stills the winds and waves within earshot.
5	a drill-harpoon designed to bore through the hulls of ships.
6	a trident, the tines of which have been wrapped in live, agonizingly venomous jellyfish.
7	buoyant plate armour crafted from coral and pumice.
8	a scrimshaw knife, cleverly carved to cause the fluids of those stabbed with it to drain rapidly into the surrounding water.
9	mucosal sacs that, when burst, create a cloud that gums up the gills of anything swimming through it, suffocating them.
10	a gold necklace of human make, looted from a shipwreck.
11	a sailor they became infatuated with and enchanted to be able to breathe underwater. The sailor is desperate to return home.
12	a birding kite, somewhat like a fishing rod only the line rises above the water to lure in birds.
13	a three-dimensional map of the region’s currents, which might be mistaken for a complex abstract sculpture by the unfamiliar.
14	fermented fish rations preserved in slime-pockets.
15	a whalebone trumpet which makes beautiful music underwater, but only noises like wet farts above it.
16	a jug of fermented whale milk, as thick as toothpaste.
17	a weapon sort of like a blowgun, which uses hydraulic rather than pneumatic pressure to fire a hydrodynamic dart.
18	a metallic flare which can burn even underwater.
19	an egg, which when ruptured releases a pheromone which attracts a very angry sea monster.
20	a comically inaccurate tablet of translations from their language to yours.

D20	These merfolk are concerned underwater with
1	the inexorable advance of the urchin-thing hordes which is stripping life from the ocean floor.
2	the vortexes which have begun to form suddenly, dragging entire migrations into the deep.
3	a submarine goblin-fleet spreading filth, choking the oceanic currents, and generally being an absolutely disgusting nuisance.
4	a primordial leviathan which has roused from ancient slumber with a world-eating appetite.
5	abyssal knights questing up from deep trenches for a way to extinguish the sun.
6	the acquisition of great quantities of uncorrodable metal, difficult to forge underwater.
7	an immense algal slime spreading an anoxic dead zone.
8	finding a legendary lost city said to have risen above the waves centuries ago.
9	establishing a communications network of sonophone-stations in the Deep Sound Channel.
10	repelling the seasonal invasions of the glacier-elementals.
11	the once-in-a-few-centuries mating season of giant sea serpents which threatens to churn their corner of the ocean to tsunami-level turbulence.
12	a lich whose phylactery was tossed into the ocean to get rid of it.
13	the injustice of their current form of government, which revolutionaries gather in sea-caves to plot the overthrow of.
14	the industries of a coastal city dumping pollution down the continental shelf.
15	mass contamination of their waters from portals to an extraterrestrial ammonia-ocean.
16	a sect of radical transmogrificationists who advocate hybridization of all merfolk with other creatures to adapt them to more environments.
17	a meteor that crashed into the ocean, creating a devastating wave and now leaking mutagenic salts.
18	the popularization of a mystical drug which is supplanting the literal ocean with the metaphorical ocean of the collective unconscious.
19	strained diplomatic relations with their cousins across the open ocean, which might spark into open war.
20	wavefront border feuds with the rapacious gull-men.