Pelagios

"The sea may seem safe for now, but only a fool would ignore the darkness encroaching on our shores." -Report from Marri, Daughter of the Tides While most surface dwellers spare few thoughts for the kingdoms sprawling under the seas, the same cannot be said for their aquatic neighbors. Though largely spared the deleterious effects of the spread of darkness through Tya, the oceanids are all too aware that their domains could fall next. Spurred by the fall of Akkadia, Pelagios, The Furious Torrent, has bartered his very soul to build an army capable of protecting his home. There was a time when lawless pirates ruled the seas to the south of Tya. They stole crucial and valuable shipments, destroyed ships unable to afford safe passage, and stole riches and young alike from the oceanids that resided below the waves. A young Pelagios lost his own parents in a desperate attempt to free him and his captured kin from an iron cage. Grief honed Pelagios like a sword. Over the course of decades, he learned to build waves big enough to drown entire fleets. But revenge did not satisfy him. No matter how many pirates fell to his hand, Pelagios still felt remorse for all that had been stolen from him and his kind. He heard word of gods of order seeking justice-minded heroes to join their righteous cause. Though he hardly trusted surface dwellers, he reached out to the Arbiters and found them sympathetic to his cause. For the future of his people, Pelagios allowed his body to be turned into a vessel of divine might. Yet something of him was lost in this exchange. Like all Arbiters, the Pelagios who set out on the path of justice is not the same man who lives to this day. He is empty somehow, more akin to a great statue than a living leader. Though Pelagios may have lost part of himself, his fame extends far beyond the kingdoms of the sea. To sailors and pirates alike, Pelagios is now a force to be reckoned with—a guardian keen on enforcing his strict brand of law and order on all who would cross through his territory. There are tales of unstoppable fleets reduced to drifting ghost ships as punishment for their misdeeds. Pelagios's reputation alone has shaped shipping routes to some of Tya's greatest coastal cities.