Florigins
Flori was born to a loving
Cuttlefolk family, that were themselves part of a small and secluded group near the port city of Manipa, in the Kingdom of
Onetra. The Calmwater Cuttlefolk fished, gardened, hunted, and traded - not quite nomads or settled agriculturalists, but versatile scavengers. Good years, like the first few Flori lived through, had a lot of leeway and bits of extra time, and Flori used this time to satiate his youthful curiosity. The surface dwellers fascinated him, particularly the
Way of the Open Palm monks that practiced along the seaside every morning and night. The young Flori attempted to contact these monks, but this attempt almost led to him getting stranded on the surface. To give him a safer way to learn, Flori's mother (a peddler of sorts, who traded between small cuttlefolk and squiddle bands) went out to find an aquatic master - and was miraculously able to track one down. This strange outsider squiddle went by the name Locklash, and promised to train Flori as her apprentice.
It was all so easy until Flori was under Locklash's care unsupervised. Locklash proved to be a cruel and demanding master, determined to beat a killer instinct into her soft and mischievous apprentice. Flori learned discipline, persistence, and the limits of his body under stress; he also learned that he hated bullies. For over three years the two traveled, gathering information as part of Locklash's mission - and Flori excelled as a fighter even as he swore to go against everything his master stood for. When it was time for Locklash to take her information and students to her distant and icy monastic order to be 'broken and unshackled by God', Flori knew it was time to get out. He ran, escaping his fellow students back to familiar waters.
A lot can change in three years. Good times can become bad times. Schools can be overfished, and waters can be made barren. Flori returned to find his home in famine; they welcomed his expertise and strength back, but they needed him to be more than a mouth to feed. He volunteered to become a petty merchant, like his mother, and to use his newfound speed and power to run into stranger and more dangerous waters. He took what petty baubles he could get and ventured East, towards the rich waters of shining reefs he'd heard so much about.
Tragedy in Izmenet
Flori knew the art of trading, but was less knowledgeable about the minutiae of trade regulations. Rather by accident, he fell into smuggling - it wasn't until he had already smuggled his pittance across the border that he was told how border tariff wasn't the same as banditry. His natural camo, high speed, and natural finesse impressed his fellow smugglers, who quickly took him on as one of their own. Flori prospered as a smuggler; he was charismatic, sly, conflict averse, and good at nonlethal fighting if it came to it. He sent back what profits he could to his family, and had a good thing going for a bit as he rose among the smugglers of Western
Izmenet.
Izmenet was a rising aquatic superpower, which reigned from the Mejika Isles across the waters of Eastern Garadel and Western Larazel - and it was on a militaristic kick when Flori was smuggling across its borders. Quite suddenly, the border went from a lax and open space to a sharp dividing line: the Empire was fighting a scourge of sharks to the North, Squiddles to the West, and was cracking down on Cuttlefolk that were seen as carrying information across the borders. Flori thought he could adjust, but he was wrong. The young monk was caught, and his captors were struck by a wonderful idea: to pin their own corruption on this hapless, mute barbarian. He was framed and sent to the Mejikas to be tried by a military court. The Izmenek judiciary did not value cuttlefolk non-verbal testimony, and the best Flori could do was appear pathetic and comedic to his investigators. This only bought him time - the prosecution was eager to exonerate their allies that had framed him, and slowly built a narrative in which he could be both ineffectual and acutely economically dangerous.
Rather than sit in jail and accept death, Flori broke out of his cell and fled to the nearby Scarletbloom Reef. In Scarletbloom, Flori could have (should have) quietly slipped away. He almost did, blending into the reef's local Cuttlefolk at a local saloon. But in his lonely desperation, he shared to some locals what had happened to him. He heard similarly stories from them, and he came to the conclusion that he should stay and fight, not run! The people here felt like him, supported him, needed his strength to work with their own to strike back against the regime! And as he loudly schemed sedition and called for blood, someone reported him to the guards. The guards rushed in with all the finesse of an airborne steamroller, and turned what should have been an easy arrest into a riot. The riot was brutally suppressed and Flori was forced to flee, injured, with enforcers hot on his tentacles. Rather than a sly slip over the border, Flori was chased out of Izmenet, off the continental shelf, into the Abyssal chasms.
Finding Family
In the Abyssal chasms, Flori found other Cuttlefolk - the ones who had supposedly been undermining the regime. These Cuttlefolk struggled in the depths, against starvation and cold and monsters. He was hardly accepted with open arms - his little scene in the waters above set him up for immediate predation. Flori spent weeks struggling to survive among the Deep Cuttles, but his monastic training served him well down here. He learned much down there in the dark: that there were many more Deep Cuttles than anyone knew, that they had once had a vibrant overarching social structure and system of agriculture, that they had once been close allies with the sharks (which were sentient - reasonable even!). A brush with a leviathan and a bad series of years had seen the old world die, and cuttlefolk all across the Garadek seaboard had been pushed violently down into the Abyss whenever they had been inconvenient for the reigning authorities. Violence outside feeding violence inside. Flori could see his own family being driven deep by the expanding empire. He vowed to save them, his family and the Abyss both, and swam out into the open ocean seeking sharks to guide him home.
Instead of sharks, Flori found a strange floating island inhabited by a squiddle hermit. The hermit took him in, helped him heal. It was the first time Flori had talked about his trauma since he left home with Locklash years ago. The two became fast friends, until Flori was able to catch a shark caravan to head back home. It was a strange thing - islands, after all, don't float.
When Flori got home, there was no family waiting for him. The movements of war had disturbed the bay, and many small groups had fled or been killed - Flori had no idea which had happened to his clan. Truly alone now, Flori went against all rational thought and decided to seek out his mentor, Locklash, to join her group. It was a long journey around Garadel to the far Southwest, to the frigid waters of the Free-Soul Monastery, a journey full of danger and close escapes. Finally, Flori made it to the Temple, maintained by warlocks and filled with children learning those familiar lessons of pain. Locklash could see the Flori's strength and potential, and let him in, to make him an instrument of the
Shackled God yet.
Flori's Return
Flori's time with the monks of the Shackled God were not his unhappiest days, but they were some of his worst. He was put under constant pressure to conform to the monk's hierarchies, teachings, and traditions of punishment, and the worst part is that he flourished. The focus and order gave him comfort, safety, and a sense of meaning, and he quickly mastered all the arts the monks had to offer him. The monks could not entirely extinguish his mercy and empathy, though - he had spent too much of his formative time beyond their grasp, and he worked hard to not entirely lose himself in the order. This became a problem as he stood to enter the leading circle of the monks; he was too skilled (had entered the monastery too skilled!) to be denied a voice among the monks superior, but the elders were divided as to whether he was sufficiently devoted and assimilated. They began targeting him, punishing his kindness and seeking to invade his sense of self. He was shaken into resistance, and he only acted out more to protect the vulnerable trainees and supplicants. He inspired rebellion among the lower ranks and went from an asset to a threat in a moment; the monks knew they had to make a show of knocking him down. The masters fought him together, in a battle of whirling tentacles that no ordinary monk could have won - but Flori had survived worse odds. Through careful tactics, skill, and luck, he defeated the masters using their own arts. Locklash, his original mentor, saw a political opportunity for herself and moved to support Flori as a true master of the Unshackled Fist. He became a vehicle for a deathless coup, and incidentally was promoted into the monastery's leadership
Flori decided that this was his new life's work: reforming the monastery and transforming the order that comforted him so much into something truly benevolent. He spent a year training and reforming, gaining prestige and influencing the monks. That could have been the end of his career, if it hadn't been for an old friend. One day the hermit from the floating island appeared overhead, still on his island. When Flori raced to meet them, the hermit began screaming at him and berating him for not upholding his vow to save the Deep Cuttles of the North. Flori was shocked, still uncertain as to how the hermit was even in this remote part of the world and seemed to know so much about what Flori was doing. When Flori went up to investigate what was going on with this hermit a little closer, a massive current shifted in the waters and flung the curious monks away. In a twirl of debris, the hermit was gone. Flori decided that this was clearly some kind of spirit taking the form of his old friend, and figured that it was worth listening to. He went to his monks, who were also shocked by that spectacle, and asked for any who would follow him to join him North in his sacred quest. Most did so, and Flori led them around Garadel back to the bay of his home, to plan his next move.
Flori set about gathering allies and information. He reached out to the cuttlefolk, the deep cuttles, the sharks, the nearby squiddle tribes, local mercenaries, merchants, and Izmenet imperial dissenters. He learned that Izmenet was seeking to reenact what ancient reef empires had done centuries ago: a conquest of the surface world. The process had already begun. Izemenet was repairing the old foundries, producing its first new metal alloy war machines and building new poison gas factories. If they were allowed to continue, the empire would unleash a wave of violence across the region - but they were distracted. Now was the time to move. He found a squiddle ally, a mercenary captain for Izmenet with close ties to the unconquered squiddles - Korsa - and set into the Abyss to rally support. Flori inspired a Deep Cuttle warlord, Redfiddle, to seek unity among those who would build a new order, and Redfiddle helped find allies among the sharks. In Izmenet, a group of Octofolk tinkerers and philosophers, known as the Sandray Club, helped coordinate imperial rebels from the inside. And from above and below, warlocks of the Leviathan known as Old Skybane reached out in support.
The Destruction of Izmenet
By the time Flori's invasion force assembled, Izmenet knew they were coming. The fighting was brutal and difficult, as Flori's forces struggled to coordinate. The Empire were able to purchase dissent among the deep sea forces, and the sharks seemed to be taking a while to gather. It was ultimately Korsa, the squiddle mercenary, who helped Flori win the day - her military experience was everything Flori didn't have. The Skybane warlocks also proved extremely helpful, as they undermined the Izmenet-Zeshema peace talks and encouraged land forces to rally against the rising aquatic threat. Flori's alliance was able to strike the Izmenet foundries from below as the Zeshem struck from above, and this provided enough of a threat that the reinforcing army was led by the Izmenet emperor himself. This battle, the Battle of Isentin Bay, was a close call - only the last minute arrival of the sharks turned the tide in Flori's favor. Flori made a point of seeking out the emperor and ending this threat to the oceans himself - though fighting the royal retinue was a close scrape that left Flori was a massive scar across his torso.
The new emperor quickly made peace with Flori and withdrew the empire from the surface. To buy off the undersea alliance, the emperor offered Flori and his allies positions in the new imperial government. Flori accepted, eager to bring an end to the terrible warfare. Not all of Flori's allies won as much as he did - the Deep Cuttles and sharks were given formal recognition, but few material concessions. Flori realized that this peace was not entirely fair, and decided to work from the inside - turning the empire's vast resources towards bridging the inequalities of the ceasefire.
Again, after a few months the floating island appeared. This time, Flori watched carefully. While the Hermit berated Flori for profiting himself over the truly needy, Flori quietly maneuvered and conducted tests. He had gathered information on the floating island while making allies, and he finally pieced it together: the hermit was not a person, but a magically disguised appendage of the island. And the island, a tiny scrap of land, wasn't an island at all but a magically disguised leviathan. Flori confronted the hermit, demanding to know the truth. And when the currents came, Flori was strong enough to dodge and resist. Finally, after a long chase, the leviathan agreed to sit down and talk with Flori like a person. Its true name was the Inevitable Maw, or it had been until it had the chance to meet the Dragon-Turtle
Ruko. It had been so entranced by Ruko's aesthetic that it had adopted it for itself, crudely at first. But this gimmick had led to meaningful interactions with mortals, which led to warlocks, which led to Old Skybane - which had taught the Inevitable Maw magic and discipline. The Maw had renamed itself the Yusem, the witch of the isles, though that hadn't caught on because Yusem was too caught up in the mystery of it to tell anyone. Flori and Yusem talked, caught up as people, and remade their friendship on more stable ground. They also agreed that change, if it was to happen from within, must be swift.
Flori called the banners again, not for war but for political coordination. He would create a grand committee of disparate voices dedicated to remaking the Garadel-Larazel oceanscape into something just and equitable, and they would swim together to the emperor and demand that they help implement this new order. The new emperor, acutely aware of what happened to the last monarch of Izmenet, saw this as a conspiracy to take power and immediately sent forces to arrest all involved. Flori and Yusem fought them off, and rallied their allies to take down the emperor together. The grand conference's plans were finished but never acted upon; the ensuing war was too messy and divisive to make any lasting order in its place. Izmenet was dismantled, shattered into seven pieces. Infighting ensued, and Flori desperately worked to negotiate a peace. The resulting new order was tenuous, but stable enough. When it all ended, the old guard was starting to die of old age - Flori's moment of political ascendance was at an end, though his monk powers kept him from aging with them.
The End of a Legend
In retirement, Flori set to work building things rather than destroying them. Around his original home, he settled his loyal monks to help build an inter-species coalition that came to be known as Florinel. In the far North, a massive reef known as Grand Loro called on him to help negotiate a peace - and he oversaw the creation of a grand new state, where he led many Deep Cuttle and shark refugees to participate in. While Florinel was closer to his sense of home, Loro's vast population and potential kept him rooted their for many years. In retirement, Flori set to work building things rather than destroying them. Around his original home, he settled his loyal monks to help build an inter-species coalition that came to be known as Florinel. In the far North, a massive reef known as Grand Loro called on him to help negotiate a peace - and he oversaw the creation of a grand new state, where he led many Deep Cuttle and shark refugees to participate in. While Florinel was closer to his sense of home, Loro's vast population and potential kept him rooted their for many years.
In 1920, Flori was asked by Yusem to help the surface goers negotiate a peace to their great religious war - known as the Dragon Wars. The devastation Flori saw on tour shook the old monk to his core, and caused him to immediately pivot away from organized religion and entanglement with the surface. He began advocating for a separation between land and sea and between the Elemeer priesthood and the state; he also began seeking distance from the religious warlocks of Old Skybane. This undermine his friendship with Yusem and was extremely controversial among Flori's followers, but the old monk only grew more stubborn over the years.
In the 1940s, Flori began to sense that he was becoming a relic to the peoples that he led. He set his sights to new horizons, new missions that would break him out of his old love for established order and ritual. He decided to go deeper into the Abyssal lands, into the great ocean West of Garadel. Somewhat hypocritically, he partnered with the selkies for this venture, and headed off West into the unknown. Flori found a new elder leviathan, The Howling Melody, and new societies in the deep. The Melody initially saw Flori's expedition as a threat: the great leviathan ruled over the cuttlefish of the great ocean as an autocrat, and Flori began disrupting that hierarchy immediately. Eventually Flori was able to convince them to work with him as a business partner, even as the monk scooped up unhappy cuttlefolk subjects as they went. In 1955, Flori officially opened the Westward passage from West Garadel to Nafena. Those cuttlefolk who followed Flori rather than Melody, he taught the Way of the Open Palm, and these monks transformed the aquatic societies of Nafena. From 1955 to 1980, Flori worked to strengthen the bonds he made across the great ocean. But in 1980, he encountered the strangest thing: a cuttlefolk with tales of a flickering island to the North, a secret place of great power in the uncharted vastness of the Northern great ocean. Flori left with this traveler, and has not been seen since. The Lunar Pantheon has not been able to find them or their body, and they are presumed dead. Whether this was a failed goose chase, an attack by one of the infamous leviathans in the area, or an assassination is anyone's guess.
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