Laughter-of-the-Storm-Waves
Ama of Pearl Fortress
Beneath the warm seas of southwestern Torvalen rules Laughter-of-the-Storm-Waves, ama of Pearl Fortress, the most populous of the ulan communes. She is the most well known of the amas to the surface races, due mainly to her many emissaries in the cities of the landwellers ringing the Torvalen Sea. Through this network, she has both expanded the knowledge her people have of the activities of the surface, both good and ill and has fostered good will and respect that protects her people in what is clearly a time of flux and change on the surface.
HistoryLaughter is the daugher of Harmony-of-Stone-and-Sea, who founded Pearl Fortress two millenia earlier, using her unique biomantic artistry to grow the living coral mountain. Her mother was a reserved and careful builder and protector who was careful to seclude her people from those of the surface, but Laughter always chafed at this caution, curious and eager to communicate with the strange beings in their wooden vessels. Her mother cautioned her against such things, reminding her of the ancient histories to which she was a living witness and how surface peoples in the lands to the east twisted the teachings and knowledge they received from the ulan to do great evil whose remnants lasted to the present.
But Laughter was not deterred and constantly roamed beneath the waves on the back of her swift-snake, Shining-Hunter, looking for boats and signs of the surface races, the Talani'i hakanu to the west and varhani tribes to the south. Her favorite times were during the powerful hurricanes that blew in from the Hauauru Ocean in the summer when she exulted in riding the towering storm waves. It was also the time she was able to rescue the occasional hakanu or varhani from drowning. It was during those years that she slowly gained a knowledge of surface languages and body languages that few ulan had possessed in over two millenia.
When she was just past her 130th year, her mother died and Laughter, youngest of her sisters who had gone to found their own communes, received the bite from her dying mother of the biomorphic venom that would transform her, and took on the heavy responsibility of being the ama of Pearl Fortress. Like all amas, she grew to four times her previous size and her new form and her new responsibilities made her care-free adventerous life a thing of the past. Dismayed at first, she gradually realized that the commune was now hers to lead and she could use that power to create connections and learn more than she ever could in her previous life.
Alight with new passion, she began teaching the ulan of her commune to communicate with the surface peoples. This was difficult, since ulan lack the ability to vocalize, though she was able to impart much of her knowledge through water-talk. She also formed relationships through water-talk with amas of far flung communes, including a strange commune that lived in the vast seaweed forest in the Gulf of Nirasa off the coast of Barendar across the sea in the northeast, Green-Purple Splendor. Its ama, Weaver-of-Light-and-Dreams, taught her the techniques she had developed to create her Venom of the Air Breather. With this venom, an ama could permantly transform one of her people to live freely and easily on the land, just as the Venom of the Deep allowed the Deep Watchers to patrol the lightless depths of the Abyssal Plains.
Few of her people wished to undergo such a transformation, but a few did, including her eldest son, Sublime-Joy-of-Seeing, who had inherited his mother's passion and curiosity. She envenomated him, transforming her son into the first of the Changed to be created outside of Green-Purple Splendor. He, along with others of a similar adventerous nature, used their new abilities to become a diplomatic vanguard with the peoples of southern Okaluan and western Kemesh. They could reproduce any sound the surface people could make and could live amongst them and share in their knowledge and customs. Though many were hesitant or even hostile to the strange beings from beneath the sea, others, particuarly those who had heard stories of sea rescues, were willing and friendly.
The first reports of large sailing ships in her waters began coming in a few decades into her rule. She had heard of such things from the amas of the eastern waters over the years, but they had until then not ventured so far west. These people were not like those she had met before. They had no feathers or scales, their skin was thin and fragile and their eyes were small and beady with patches of fine threads growing from their heads and sometimes their faces. Their mouths were filled with white, square teeth, instead of black, sharp teeth. They also spoke in soft, indistinct, murmuring languages, unlike the bright, sharp speech of the varhani and hakanu. Yet they too walked on two limbs, built with clever fingers and minds and explored, and so she sent some of her Changed as emissaries. At first they were met with fear, which did not surprise Laughter. The amas of the southeast had not sought such meetings and so these people had never met ulan and had only heard vague stories.
When the summer storms came and the inevitable rescues of sailors from their huge vessels, their manner quickly changed, especially since a few on board were varhani sailors from eastern Kemesh who could just make out enough of the languages of the western sea varhani to communicate with the Changed. These new people, the humans, proved to be even more curious in nature than any people they had met before. Their leaders especially wanted to know everything they could, and shared what knowledge they had of their people. Laughter's Changed were invited to the courts of their great leaders and unpresented requests were made to visit Pearl Fortress itself and meet Laughter in person.
Thus it was that diplomatic ties were made with the Eshtem Sea Lords of Kalmasa and northwestern Kemesh and a young Eshtem noble, Mahendran bas Urvarem, entered Pearl Fortress accompanied by Sublime-Joy-of-Seeing, to stand before Laughter-of-the-Storm-Waves. He wore a device around his neck created by one of their knowing ones, the Dharmati, that maintained a bubble of air around him. Laughter spoke with him then, through her son's translation from water-talk, and was charmed by his manner and perceptive nature. Yet she saw something eager in him that gave her caution, a sense of desire beyond any she had known before. After their meeting, she considered the young man, his people and how the future may unfold.
In the years to come, her new found caution of these new people and Mahendran in particular proved correct as news continued to arrive concerning their aggressiveness towards the eastern varhani tribes, the strange people who lived near Green-Purple Splendor and even further north to the large humans of the cold northern land. Yet they never displayed this agression to the ulan or those of the Changed who lived in their cities. She made the decision to be more circumspect in her dealings with them, avoiding interference in their activities and being more select in the knowledge she shared. In this, her desire for knowledge and connection was finally tempered by remembered echoes of her mother's wisdom.
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