Shar'kai

The Shar’kai call themselves the Vra’tan, and other races call them Tidefangs or Sharkfolk. They are a race of shark-people who evolved from humans in the southern waters during the Crimson Convergence. They stand six to eight feet tall, with sleek, muscular builds, and live about sixty-five years. Their bodies are covered in cartilage armor, which they harden with coral powder, and they have serrated teeth, dorsal fins, and gill slits. Contact with blood sends them into an uncontrollable frenzy. People on land once thought the Shar’kai were a sub-type of the Ipadoras, the tentacled sea people who control every major river and sea lane in Criozevan and tax all water travel. In fact the Ipadoras evolved in the northwest and the Shar’kai in the south, and the two races share no evolutionary traits. The Shar’kai began as nomadic raiders. In recent years, the vast underwater military of the Ipadoras has made raiding alone too costly, so the Shar’kai have joined together in large fleets that can attack ships more easily and defend themselves, and they trade the goods they seize. They are a pirate race: anyone can pay them to fight, but never against other Shar’kai. That is why their loyalties are unpredictable and why merchants fear them. Their surge magic is tied to ocean currents, and all of their magic is as physical as it is magical. In battle they rely on sudden blitz assaults and underwater ramming. They fight with bites and volleys of tridents, using weapons forged from their own teeth and from the teeth of their kills. Their most dangerous attack is the spiral drill: a Shar’kai spins very fast through the water while surge magic speeds it up and drives it forward, hitting with enormous force. Among themselves they speak Ka’torr, a guttural, unwritten language of gestures and pulses of water pressure that works underwater and is also spoken by some deep-sea traders. With outsiders they speak Sailor Speak, the sailors’ trade language, and like many traders they know many other languages. The Ipadoras made a truce with the Shar’kai, and some Shar’kai respect it. It is mostly for show, though, and gives the Ipadoras a justification if they ever attack, so an unofficial rivalry continues between the two peoples. The Shar’kai are scattered across the seas, living in Glaril, Neruvalis, Ipadora, and Akison. Glaril, the largest underwater city in Criozevan, is officially ruled by a faction of the Ipadora family, but the Shar’kai make up most of its residents and follow their own rules there, and it is an unspoken rule that the Ipadoras do not interfere. The most notorious Shar’kai is Rabuka, #4 of the Arashi, a criminal organization. Today the Shar’kai face two main threats. The first is a shortage of coral, which the whole continent uses for technology and which is now running out. The second is fighting among rival Shar’kai pirate factions over underwater technology from Glaril, a center of underwater tech, and Neruvalis, where sunken tech is salvaged.