The Kreshensage (pronounced KREH-shen-sazj) are a merfolk people who live in the Frigid Deep, an abyssal plain amongst the Wounds, where they worship an ancient kraken called Shemenet. Highly reclusive and with almost no contact with either other aquatic peoples or with surface dwellers, the broader world knows little about the Kreshensage.
Geography
See also: Frigid Deep
Kreshensage settlements lie scattered across the Frigid Deep, an abyssal plain nearly 15,000 feet below the surface of the Na-Gaesa Ocean. In the dark waters of the deep ocean, there are few natural landmarks, as the flat plain is largely featureless aside from some hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. The Frigid Deep is full of life, however, with a huge variety of fish, worms, crustaceans, and magical creatures that thrive in the dark.
The Frigid Deep is roughly 460 miles southeast of the Salt Spring Archipelago, 560 miles northeast of the Vanishing Archipelago, and 550 miles south of the Chain.
Demographics
The Krenshensage are entirely merfolk.
Culture
The Kreshensage are devoted followers of Shemenet, an ancient kraken who they worship as a deity. While Shemenet is a great and terrible hunter who must be discouraged from devouring her followers, should their faith endure she is also their protector against the dangers posed by the deep sea and surface alike. This responsibility falls to the kraken-callers amongst the Kreshensage, who attempt to lead the kraken-god to other sea monsters who threaten the communities of the merfolk.
Isolationist and reclusive, the Kreshensage are often actively hostile to surface-dwellers who attempt to interfere with their underwater realm, but they are relatively open to other aquatic peoples like the locathah, aquatic elves, and even sahuagin of the Wounds. Still, their distance from the communities of any of these peoples means they have few visitors, aside from the occasional passing Angareza band.
Most Kreshensage live in small villages on the seafloor, but they have a few larger cities as well on the margins of the Frigid Deep where the plain rises to a higher elevation. The shell and bone structures of these cities, made of material scavenged across the plain, are arranged into flowing, organic-feeling designs, with the few outsiders who have visited reporting that the buildings themselves feel alive.
Government
Kreshensage villages and cities are theocratic, led by priests and kraken-callers of Shemenet.