Mermaid AU
A World Underwater
There is the Air above and the Deep below, and the Merpeople are their own advanced society. The calendar they follow is very different from the one above because they don’t use the moons for their charting of the passing time, nor the sun. They use the tides and the movement of certain underwater plants to track what they’d call days hours and years.
They have wars, they have conflicts, and overall, they also admittedly have in turns curiosity and disdain for the frailties of the people above. Crossing the species line has happened, though bewilderment over how is more than real enough. That is not to say there aren’t males and females, of course there are, but the anatomy is just different.
Society
The Merfolk, or as they know themselves, the Ulure, are a rather advanced culture. By above standards, they are people who are considered warlike, but this is largely due to the fact that more than one city of them have to contend with hostile, mereating fish. This means that almost everyone in the culture is armed at all times in some way.
They use metals less commonly than above, and building anything at hard angles is not only unheard of but incredibly impractical. Instead, it’s fairly common for homes and furniture to be grown, and for technology to be tucked inside these gardens as is convenient. There are even quite a few people whose entire scientific focus is to find ways to more efficiently grow and give function to their useful item creatures and plants.
There are others, like Tony, whose focus is on things less biological than mechanical, and who have taken ideas from above to sort out their approach to technology and finding ways to use, or even advance that, below the surface. It has made the cities infinitely safer.
Biology
The Ulure have families, children, and a hierarchy just as those above do. They still have attachments and language, but there the resemblances diverge.
While having a similar facial structure to humans, and even patches on their bodies that look like human skin, the Ulure are scaled over their entire bodies, with the areas that look like skin simply having a far finer scale configuration. Eye color varies wildly, and what humans would think is hair is actually a mane of fine spines that have slowly been evolved to something that isn’t dangerous to touch. However, alarming an Ulure can lead to these spines being released and this can actually be quite painful for the recipient.
All Ulure have clawed fingers. Their ears are flexible and mobile so they can be folded down against sand or dangerous materials in the water, much the way eyelids serve. All Ulure also have sharp teeth as they are biased toward eating meat as it is easier to cultivate. Gills can be found in the upper chest region, often hidden among decorative scales within the design of their personal markings. Ulure can survive out of water and breathe air, but they find the experience incredibly distressing and will constantly seem on the verge of having what seems to be an asthma attack.
There are two predominant species of Ulure, with a few others scattered in from other parts of the Great Oceans that won’t be listed here. Of the two species, one more superficially resembles whales and dolphins in their body configuration, and these are the Ulure who have few children with a longer gestation span, with the females as the primary caregivers. They are often more drab in appearance, with no embellishing fins and are known for their maneuverability and efficiency.
The other species of Ulure is flashy, bright, and could be compared to a Beta-fish crossed with a sea horse. These Ulure do, in fact, have the males as caretakers rather than the females, usually having two or three much smaller children that the males need to keep close in a pouch hidden among their far more impractical fins. The females of this kind of Ulure are often much more streamlined, if brightly colored, and are stronger than their male counterparts. The males usually have much more extensive fins, and while fast, are among the most pampered of the Ulure people because of their rarity. Most males of this kind of Ulure are fortunate to have made it to adulthood because natural curiosity and their bright coloration makes them a high-risk target for predatory fish.
This last category is the one that Tony falls into for this world. As seen here.
Personal History
Tony has always been a ridiculously curious Ulure. He is one of those who too often investigates the surface, and who has more than once nearly exposed their people slipping too close to submarines and underwater probes sent down from above. He’s compensated for this with his brilliance, improving and refortifying the defenses of the city he grew up in without any hesitation, and sharing anything he found valuable or mimicable that they hadn’t previously considered. He also was in turns baffled and found it hilarious the things that humans clothed themselves in to come under the water with them.
Born from parents who were a crossed pair of the two predominant types of Ulure, he was an only child and doted on heavily when he was young. As he got older, this tapered off, and his father’s trips away from the city increased. When he was barely full grown, his parents went off on one of their trips together, and they never returned.
After that is when he truly came into his own creating, and he was successful, wildly so, which, unfortunately, in turn, gave him enemies as well. Suffice to say, being under the ocean didn’t exactly change much in the way of that.
Tony’s scales are deep blue, reds, and golds, with bright blue along his chest. He’s strong, in no small part due to his crafting, intelligent, and more than able to fight if he needs to. He also likes to use his flashy appearance to trick predators, be they people or fish, into range so that he can deal with the threat they pose.