Underwater Coral Reef - Tatsu-no-Umi-no-Kuni

# Underwater Coral Reef - Tatsu-no-Umi-no-Kuni
Tatsu-no-Umi-no-Kuni (龍海國, also read Ryūkai-koku) is a fantastical underwater kingdom nestled against the volcanic coastal shelf of Aishiji, the great archipelago-realm above. Aishiji is a land of daimyō and shogun, of pine-clad mountains and rice-terraced valleys, ruled until recently by a shogunate whose sudden dissolution has thrown every vassal in earth and sea into uncertainty. The Dragon-Sea-Country is one such vassal, and a most unusual one. For centuries it has paid tribute to the surface throne in pearls, coral, and ambergris; in return it has received charcoal, tin, iron, and the assurance that the surface would not try to fish its waters. With the Shogun's assassination, that arrangement is now in jeopardy, and the realm beneath the storm-belt is deciding what it wishes to be.

The kingdom sits beneath the Amagumo-no-Ikari (天雲の怒), a permanent storm-belt that smothers its skies for weeks at a time in what the realm calls the Long Dark (永闇 or Nagaki-Yami). The reef-realm has adapted: its agriculture is chemosynthetic, fed by hydrothermal vents and cold seeps; its pastures are the sunlit outer waters beyond the storm, where drover-clans herd sardine-clouds, crab-columns, and krill-swarms home along the currents; its forges are built into volcanic fissures, where smiths work bronze and salvaged or traded iron and steel by geothermal heat. It is a genuinely pre-modern polity — bronze-age in its metallurgy, Heian-archaic in its military organization, and deeply ritualistic in its governance. It is an insular and inward-thinking society that has little in common or interest with the Shogunate of the surface save for the continued flow of certain strategic and luxury goods.

The realm is governed from the Pearl-Spiral Palace (真珠螺旋宮, or Shiratama-Uzumaki-no-Miya; Shinju-Rasen-Guu; or Zhēnzhū Luóxuán Gōng) by the Ryūjin-no-Ōkimi (龍神の大君), the Great Lord of the Dragon-Gods, and by his court of some six hundred Ryūjin administrators. Beneath them sprawl four counties — East, facing the Aishijian shore and the salvage-trade; South, the agricultural breadbasket; North, the cold industrial frontier of forges and whale-herds; and West, the mystical shrine-country whose waters face the open ocean and the ancestral Ryūjin homeland beyond the horizon. Roughly two hundred and sixty thousand souls inhabit this realm, divided into five peoples whose fortunes and functions intertwine like the strands of a kelp-rope.

The realm cannot project much power towards the surface, but it is considered a powerful yokai kingdom. Lately, there has been talk in court about inviting and assimilating the kappa (or turtle-folk) tribes somehow.

People:
The Ryūjin are dragon-deities, serpentine and pearl-scaled, capable of assuming humanoid form for court affairs. Every one of them holds innate magical-priestly power through sacramental bond to the Ōkimi, and the caste rules as a collective aristocracy of some six hundred living gods. Most care little for war or the outside world, preferring the pleasures of their palaces and contemplative courts; only a handful take the field when the realm musters. They are creatures of magic, sky, and sea, and can fly or swim at will, even through storms. Each one always carries a pearl of power, which is jealously guarded. Every Ryujin has the power to give worthy surface-dwellers the gift of water breathing. They are flawed creatures, but they are divine beings considered greater than yokai or lay mortals.
A Ningyo Woman

The Ningyo are fish-tailed fey-people, humanlike above the waist and emotionally as fallible as humans, comprising fully half of the realm's population. Their reflective minds make them the natural priests, magi, scribes, and coral growers of the kingdom. They fill every niche of the administrative and cultural backbone, from Palace bureaucrats to village shrine-maidens, and are the least warlike citizens. They can have a variety of countenances and, just like humans, can be comely or uncomely. They can breathe air, but will quickly dry up on land and die. Many learn to sing and become sirens, or professional man-takers, in order to sell men to brides-to-be, given the constant demand for males in the kingdom. They take on the most human form aside from their masters, the Ryujin, and so take pride in having greater sexual dimorphism over the other races, appending the prefix 女 (onna, or woman) to many of their titles and vocations. They are a kind of yokai.

The Kanibito are crab-folk: hard-shelled, methodical, and utterly without fear. They are the realm's engineers, miners, smiths. They form the industrial and martial spine of the kingdom, surpassed in prestige only by the warrior-nobles themselves. They are crabs shoved into semi-anthropomorphic forms and are a kind of yokai. They are terrifying and ugly to humans. They can visit land for extended periods but require lots of water.
An Ebinin Fishmonger

The Ebinin are shrimp-folk: graceful, fecund, and swift. The realm's farmers, drovers, skirmishers, and kelp tenders. They fill the paddies and pastures of the South and ride the outer-water drives as outriders, flashing bioluminescent signals to keep herds together through the long passages home. They are shrimps shoved into semi-anthropomorphic forms and are a kind of yokai. They are terrifying and ugly to humans. They cannot leave the sea.

The Samebito are shark-folk: the realm's warrior caste, samurai in shape and sentiment, and the only people in the kingdom who approach demographic gender parity. A samebito noble family is known by its named ancestors, its retainers, and above all by the salvaged steel blades it carries. The Blue Fang Palace Guard, chosen from their number, are the Ōkimi's personal guard. They are sharks shoved into semi-anthropomorphic forms and are a kind of yokai. They are utterly terrifying and ugly to humans. To the dismay of humans, they seem to have no problem breathing air or being dry for extended periods. In ancient times, feral shark tribesmen raided human villages for pigs and sport until the Ryujin put them to heel.

Leader:
A young woman of courtly bearing, black of hair, styled long and straight as of a princess. She has a bright and cheerful demeanor as she negotiates on behalf of her most esteemed father. Your hairs bristle in her presence from time to time. She will not stop eating.