Thalassakles the Crashing Wave

Thalassakles is the god of the sea, aquatic creatures, and the unknown depths. She also holds sway over less tangible concepts such as ancient knowledge, long voyages, and gradual change.
Impassive and slow to anger, Thalassakles is secure in the knowledge that there are no mortals and few gods who can threaten her status. Once her ire is aroused, however, it is as unstoppable as a cresting wave. She often speaks in the future tense, referring to what tomorrow will bring. She seldom laughs, and when she does, it is usually out of smugness rather than genuine mirth.
Thalassakles usually appears to mortals in the form of a female Merfolk with the lower body of a brilliant red octopus and with hair of frilly semi-translucent white jellyfish tentacles with intermittent lionfish spikes/stingers. Her face is framed by finned ears and finned horns and is striated with red markings in the style of a lionfish. Her torso, throat, and face tend to be creamy white in color and are broken up by similar red stripe-like markings. From her back and hips sprout innumerable lionfish-like spines and spikes. In landlocked areas or locations far from sea, she sometimes manifests in a roughly similar form, adopting instead the traits of local aquatic wildlife. She seldom adopts the same size as her followers, preferring to be seen from a distance as she towers over the ocean. When she moves closer to the view of mortals, she takes many other forms, often shifting from one to another: a giant squid, an ocean storm, a school of sharks, a fog bank, or a larger than life lionfish, her favored animal. She sometimes speaks out of the ocean itself, in droplets hissing across the surface of the waves.
To most mortals, Thalassakles is the sea, and the sea is Thalassakles. The wind and waves, the tides, and the ocean's bounty, ranging from small fish to the enormous krakens—all these are Thalassakles' dominion. The sea has many metaphorical aspects that Thalassakles oversees as well: ancient knowledge, long-term change, introspection, voyaging, and repetitive patterns such as the tides. Thalassakles governs the slow changes wrought by the passage of time, such as the weathering of rocks and the erosion of beaches, as well as monitors the flow of time, holding sway over the slow-acting but irresistible forces that alter the world over hundreds or thousands of years.
Krakens and other behemoths of the deepest oceans move at Thalassakles' command. She is protective of what she calls the greatest of her children, and she usually keeps them out of harm's way in the darkest depths. A mighty kraken sighted close to shore is a sure sign of her displeasure.
Most of Thalassakles's dedicated worshipers are Merfolk, and the vast majority of merfolk are wholly devoted to Thalassakles, spending much of their lives in Thalassakles' realm with their god omnipresent. They weave prayers to Thalassakles into nearly everything they do. Among humans, Thalassakles is worshiped by those who rely on bountiful seas for sustenance or calm waters for safety. Sailors, fishers, and residents of Etheria's coasts and islands all pay her at least nominal respect and sacrifice. Thalassakles' most fervent human worshipers offer prayers at high and low tide. If possible, they do so at the water's edge. At low tide they walk barefoot out onto the tidal flats, relishing the touch of Thalassakles' seabed.

Myths of Thalassakles

Dreams in the Deep

While Orodamas the Ringing Hammer and Episophon the Cloud-Gazer are renowned for their endless creations and desires to bring new ideas into being, Thalassakles secretly shares similar creative desires. Endlessly bored with the predictable denizens of the land and sky, in the deepest ocean trenches, Thalassakles wills immortal dreams and nightmares into being. Delicate beauty, undulating grace, and tentacular terrors are birthed in the absolute dark, existing for generations, and suffer swift extinctions at the god's whim, never knowing the sun's touch. Sapient mortals aren't welcome in these maddening ateliers; Thalassakles remains bitterly unwilling to reveal her work until her creations—and the time—are absolutely perfect.

Thief's Fate

According to legend, a mortal sailor once stole Thalassakles' bident and used it to sink an enemy fleet. The Crashing Wave cared nothing for the vanquished fleet, but punished the sailor for his thievery by turning his family into eels. The sailor tried to care for the eels, but they blamed him for their fate and disappeared into the sea, leaving the sailor weeping on the shore.

Every Tear the Sea

Few myths tell of those who escaped Thalassakles' wrath. This isn't one of them. When the infamous explorer Thekua failed to steal one of Thalassakles' Tidelock Pearls, wave-controlling treasures protected by vicious mollusks, she spent years avoiding the waves before finding her way back to the mainland. Although she'd failed to abscond with one of the Crashing Wave's treasures, she'd avoided the sea god's wrath, a claim she valued more preciously than gold. For years, Thekua lived far from ocean or river, making her home in the driest reaches of Etheria. She lived a long life, but on one trip to the nearest town to resupply and brag, she drowned in a bowl of ox stew. Those who found Thekua discovered a pearl, too large to pass her lips, lodged in her mouth. Fearing further reprisal, Thekua's daughters committed their mother's body to the local river and Thalassakles' clutches. The explorer's daughters never forgot that just as countless drops make the sea, so too is every rain drop, tear, and cup part of the Crashing Wave's domain.

The Dakryma Isles

The Dakryma Isles were created when Thalassakles wept over the death of Korinna, a Merfolk queen killed by a human's harpoon. Where the god's tears fell onto the sea there exploded forth an isle suffused with immortal mystic energy and memory. Ages later, the Dakryma Isles—also called the Isles of Enchantment—harbor strange sights and fierce monsters. Thalassakles' power makes it impossible to keep an accurate chart of the islands' positions, which roam as they please. Thus, even the most famed locations appear on no map, and sailors might spot them when or wherever Thalassakles wills.

Divine Domains

Seas, oceans, streams, and lakes; aquatic creatures, travel, and trade; fishing, sailors, and shipwrights; rain, drought, and things lost to the sea depths; and time and patterns such as the tides, ripples, and history.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Sacred Animals: Octopi, lionfish, sharks, jellyfish, dolphins, clams, eels, krakens, sea serpents Sacred Plants: Palm, poplar, daffodil, anemone

Divine Goals & Aspirations

Thalassakles is never satisfied with the status quo, and she also never advocates hasty, uncontrolled change. She constantly resculpts the physical world, altering coastlines and upending familiar trade routes. There is no ultimate goal to this ongoing transformation; the purpose is change itself. Thalassakles believes that change is essential to existence, and she opposes anyone who tries to establish or maintain a permanent order to the universe. She aids and inspires forces of change, the rivers that wear down mountains and the tides that claim whole continents. She sometimes seems disinterested in the intrigues of the present, even in her own current schemes, as her thoughts drift toward what the future holds.

Social

Family Ties

Thalassakles disdains the shortsightedness of most of her fellow gods, many of whom have convinced themselves that they can impose lasting order on the cosmos. At the same time, her realm is unassailable, and she believes that the changes she advocates are inevitable in the long term. So although Thalassakles frequently disagrees with the other gods, she doesn't fear them.
Helionax the Light-Crowned considers Thalassakles his favorite sibling despite her unwillingness to agree with his plan for a permanent order as god of justice and law. Thalassakles, who rules depths that have never seen the sun, considers most of Helionax's schemes pointless and generally opposes them if they seem to threaten harm, which they occasionally do.
Thalassakles took pity on Orodamas the Ringing Hammer when Helionax wooed her lover Kallinephes the Thundering Heart from her and took the celestial love god as his own lover. She aided her in punishing the sun god, and Orodamas has not forgotten it. The two of them agree that old things must make way for new things, but Orodamas's bursts of destructive energy stand in sharp opposition to Thalassakles's gradual alterations. Orodamas regularly makes gifts for Thalassakles in her great forge, many of which now decorate her palace at the bottom of the Cauldron.
Thalassakles has little use for the gods who oversee work she believes best left to mortals: Amaphoron the Herald of Civilization with her cities, Thanatimetra the Merciful Mother with her naive venture into agriculture, Ginnir the Silver-Tongued with his politics and deceit, Akhara the Death-Touched with her medicine and tinctures, Episophon the Cloud-Gazer with his technology and arts, Iroanos the Battle-Wise with his armies. To Thalassakles' mind, her peers are building castles in the sand, unaware or unmindful that the tide will sweep them away as is inevitably bound to happen.

Divine Classification

Deity

Species

Merfolk

Gender

Female

Eyes

Oceanic violet-blue

Hair

Frilly semi-translucent white jellyfish tentacles with intermittent lionfish spikes

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Pale white with deep red striations