Tag Archives: Mermaids

I am in desperate need of a table of various magic princess mermaids

Well you came to the right place, ScrapPrincess. Mermaids are indeed very magical and very princessy.

I don’t know if it’s a chaos thing or a cthonic thing or whatever it is that made vampires, but  it seems that every once in awhile a fish is born incomplete. When one of these fish happens upon a humanoid, it swallows them. While the victim is in the fish’s belly, things start to get squishy and jelly-like. Tendrils grown out of each creature and entangle the insides of the other.

After some time, the human torso begins to emerge from the fish’s mouth and an act of eating has become a symbiosis that has now become a single creature. The fish head remains–the eyes on the side of where the human hips would be still function, the gills of the fish are still breathing (although the whole mechanism works differently as the mouth is sealed at the bottom of the human torso. I promise to let you know how should I ever get one on my dissection table). The human mouth is responsible for breathing air and eating, which is something of a challenge in some cases. Other changes can happen to the human head and torso and I have described some of these below.

I would expect that the majority of mer-creatures would be men, as men are sailors and therefore far more likely to be swallowed be one of these strange fishes. But I have never seen nor heard of a ‘mermale’. Perhaps men are more to the appetite of eating for these fish, while the female is the only sex capable of this merger. There are tales of mermaids falling in love with sailors and rugged sea captains, but I doubt these are true as land-dwellers tell most of these tales. I would not be surprised, however, if mermaids who have a stronger connection to their human side were to fixate on men in general or even particular men who remind them of their human past and of the comforts of human society.

[A table follows these I made up]

“Angie Angler”

Although no one has seen her in her native habitat and lived to tell about it, on two occasions, fishing boats have hauled up a mermaid described as a finned woman with a large mouth with dagger-like teeth, black eyes and a ‘fishing rod’ protruding from her head. This rod was tipped with some sort of magical light, which she could dangle about and flash in patterns that mesmerized the fishermen who found her. I suspect this rod has some sort of magical charm properties, for when she managed to wrest free and escape over the side of the boat, half a dozen crew dove in after her, never to be seen again. (Treat as 6 HD shark with mass charm person, hypnosis and light spell powers, activated at will). She is called “Angie Angler” among the fishermen and the bards of port towns.

Queen Manta

I have heard several accounts of this Queen of the Reef, whose home is somewhere in the Chaos Isles and she seems to be the most intelligent and perhaps most human-like of all mermaids. Her torso is black-skinned and beauteous. Her tail is that of a large manta ray, which is a kite-shaped fish found in the southern seas. She is known to command the allegiance of sea creatures and natives of those isles, although through charm or fear I cannot say. She wields a trident that is said to control the weather and the tides. (Treat as a high level druidess with a magical trident that has weather control properties and which summons giant water elementals.)

Saurys

This not a single mermaid but many tiny mermaids. Of all the mermaids described herein, this is the only I have seen for myself. I was a passenger on a sailing vessel off the shores of Argnac when a large school of these small fish surfaced around our ship. In her excitement, one of my fellow passengers, who I will not name to protect her family, learned too far over the railing to see this school. She ended up overboard and before any of us could attempt a rescue (even by magical means) she was consumed by the school of fish before our very eyes!

There being nothing we could do, we continued on our way, those of us passengers of good class comforting her mother in her time of grief. Within two days, however, we were again visited by a school of saury. The woman’s mother had to be restrained and locked into her quarters, lest she jump overboard herself. All the time, she insisted her daughter was calling her name. When I had secured her door and made my way back top, I brought out a spyglass device and trained it on the fish below. To my surprise, I saw perhaps two score fish among this school with a bare, fare-skinned human torso and long, golden hair. Two compatriots also saw this with my spyglass. Although it is not the strangest thing I saw on that voyage, it was the most chilling. (Treat as water-based pixies with the song of a siren. One typical humanoid devoured by these saury yields 60 saury mermaids).

Princess Portia (Dunkleosteus)

I believe this is one of the few mermaid princesses that was actually a princess. She was aboard a ship that sank approximately two centuries back, en route to a wedding with a prince of Argyle. She has the body of a very bony and primitive fish. As she herself was a tall woman, from head to fin I would guess her about thirty four feet long. She has an enormous appetite and is a top predator. Her skull is about twice the size it should be and her mouth is quite deviated from the human norm. She has no teeth, but a hard bony jaw that opens to almost three feet wide. When she is not hungry, which is rare, she can manage to carry on a conversation and if you are knowledgeable about the politics and court gossip of her time she might be, if not a friend then at least less likely to think of you as lunch when the conversation is over. (Treat as 10 HG giant fish with 12 INT and 11 CHA).

The Jellied Woman

I cannot say for certain that this creature was the same phenomenon as a mermaid, but two captains have described to me a large sea medusa with several living but separated parts of an elfin woman contained in its disc area. The head was speaking, but even those with a knowledge of the elvish tongue were unable to make any sense out of random statements. Reportedly, all about the ship were unable to communicate for a full day after encountering this creature, despite being able to speak and hear normally in other respects. This creature was in the center of a large sea medusa bloom. (Treat as giant jellyfish with stinging and paralyzing toxins on tentacles. At will, creature can cast a spell that undoes a man’s ability to speak and understand language, save at -4.)

Siren

I hesitate to pass on this story, as I find it highly suspect, but I should perhaps mention it as an example of the sort of tales one must sort through when evaluating the tails seamen will tell of their travels in order to find useful information. Supposedly there is, in the seas between the Screaming Straits and the Western Coast of Millas Minor, a mermaid who attempts to entrap sailors for matrimonial purposes. She is described as a beautiful mermaid of the kind depicted in mythological bestiaries of land-locked nations–that is, a beautiful woman with the tail of a fish below her hip. She sings and banters with sailors until some unfortunate soul cannot resist and dives overboard for a kiss.

Supposedly, once the sailor has kissed her, he is hers and her spell over the others is broken, revealing her true form, which is described as a porcine pink fish with small piglet eyes and a doughy body and face. This mermaid takes her new groom below to his matrimonial doom. The same sailors who report these stories also tell of legged fishes walking along land in the Screaming Straits, which they call the children of the siren. (Treat as siren or succubus as desired).