94828-2 RAA Outer Seas TEXT R1 Proof

The Outer Seas

An Archy in the Outer Seas W hile there are many free spirits who call the Outer Seas home, few embody Ryn’s dynamic, ever-shifting tides as much as the Archy. These delightful denizens of the endless tides are the children of merfolk and those who live above the waves. While unions of any kind can cause joy or division in the families of those who are now joined by the love of others, the Archy are typically embraced by the families they are born into as part of the family unit and treated with the same love and respect afforded to the other children in the family. Now, that is not to say that there is no chance that an Archy could be born to bad parents. Anyone could. After all, my parents tried to sacrifice me to a dead elder god for a net full of gold. The family that found me floating in that sail boat had an Archy daughter who—next to my familiar Az’—is the closest thing in the seas that I have to family. As the story goes, the Chromatic family were fishing the deep waters near the small collection of islands that make up the Vinvok archipelago. They said the evening sky turned a brilliant shade of crimson, and the stars burned like flair jellies. From the direction of the Vinvock archipelago, a strange rolling tide came for nearly six hours. At first it merely carried seafoam and strange chunks of crimson coral, but as the tide continued to roll, it brought scores of dead fish, as well as debris from ships, docks, homes. Then the bodies began to float by on the tides now as red as the sky and the stars that burned suspended within it. I don’t recall much beyond my mother complaining I would not be around to man the nets on the dock, and my father convincing her that once the Teeth of the Deep had seen their sacrifice, they would be showered with wealth. I was pitched off the docks into a school of sharks. There was pain, and darkness, and then light. It was as if the whole sea was warm, and grinning, and welcoming me in. There was laughter, and screaming, and then darkness. I was found floating on a small wooden boat. Az’ was wrapped around my right side, keeping the blood from what was left of my missing right arm and leg from escaping too freely. Lucky Alister Chromatic was not only a deep water fisherman but he’d been a competent ship’s doctor in his younger days, and his wife was a priest in favor with the Deep God. Between their skill with the stitch and healing magics, they nursed me back to health! I grew up playing with their daughter, an Archy named Daphnie, who taught me how to hold my breath as long as most pearl divers, and how to fight above and below the waves. They even surprised me on my seventeenth birthday with a relic from one of the Three Moon Bazaars, a prosthetic crafted from a wandering construct—and now I am able to make use of it as my right leg. They gave me a home, a family to count on, and the means to leap and jump again. In the truest sense, they made me whole. While some travelers new to the Outer Seas see the people of mixed melodies a bit confounding, those who call the endless waters of Ryn home—at least those worth their salt— understand that the people who can thrive above and below the waves, who are fearless in their joy, powerful in their passions, and love life with their whole being, are a true benefit not a burden.

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