A Lionfish Type of Merfolk, Skinny, with Red and White Strips, With Sharp Eyes and a Even Sharper Tongue.

Sho, Druid of the Deep and Merchant of Mayhem

Beneath the endless churning of the chaotic southern seas, where the water tasted like blood and old curses, and even the krakens wore scars, there lived a Lionfish Marinefolk named Sho. Not a warrior. Not a priest. Certainly not a hero.

No, Sho was something much slipperier.

He was a smuggler, a conman, a self-proclaimed “Water-Blessed Entrepreneur”, and—according to an old, very soggy scroll tucked in his belt—a certified Druid of the Deep.

Sho didn't worship the ocean. He marketed it. Sold it by the bottle, really. And if someone happened to drown using his services? “The sea accepts all returns,” he’d say, tossing their belongings into his ever-growing hoard.

With fins flared like a lion’s mane, stripes that danced under bioluminescent light, and eyes that gleamed with equal parts mischief and greed, Sho cut a figure few forgot… especially if they’d been scammed by him. His bar, The Sunken Sip, perched on rotted stilts along the coral-spined coast, was a haven for the desperate and the doomed. Refugees fleeing the Genie King's tyrannical domain would whisper Sho’s name like a magic word.

And Sho would whisper back, usually through a peephole, “How much gold you got?”

His special gift? Abyssal Gills, a druidic enchantment that let air-breathers breathe water—for a limited time. The catch? Well, there were many. Sho often distracted buyers with harmless flashes of light, seaweed flourishes, and overdramatic incantations like:

“By the Eight Eyes of the Abyssal Eel, breathe deep and pay deeper!”

He’d even blow bubbles into his clients’ faces and slap a glowing barnacle on their neck for flair. The spell worked, sort of. Long enough for Sho to swim them far enough away to avoid liability. If someone forgot the “expiration window,” that was on them. Not his fault people didn’t read the magically glowing terms and conditions.

And yes—Sho was technically a Druid, though his grove was a trench full of shipwrecks, and his “animal companion” was a sarcastic hermit crab named Crinkle who mostly screamed obscenities in Bubbletongue.

Still, business boomed. He charged extra for “blessings of coral immunity” (colored sand), “kraken repellant” (old perfume), and “invisibility in water” (just made them hold their breath and duck).

But then came Jayson Ferin.

Half-Cinderkin, half-Human, built like a cannonball with a temper to match, and not a drop of seawater in his blood. Sho squinted when he walked into The Sunken Sip, trailing smoke and suspicion.

“You’re either lost, cursed, or too rich to care,” Sho said, polishing a fake pearl. “Which one gets me paid?”

Turns out Jayson was all three. The coin he offered sparkled like starfire, and Sho’s pupils turned into gold pieces on the spot. He took the job without reading the fine print—his own, ironically—and smuggled the flameblood across dangerous waters.

He should’ve smelled trouble when the sea went silent. When even the sharks started hiding.

No sooner had they docked than a shadow descended. The Genie King’s Shadow Army, clad in twisted black armor and bearing symbols that hissed under the moonlight, razed The Sunken Sip to the sand. They flipped tables, gutted barrels, and crushed Sho’s last box of glittery seashell necklaces.

One of them asked where Jayson went.

Sho smiled and replied, “Who?”

Then he kicked a keg into their faces and vanished into the tide.

Now on the run, Sho swims from reef to reef, shipwreck to shipwreck, trying to rebuild his business, collect his debts, and avoid being turned into sushi by royal assassins.

Still, even now, as he sets up a new “sanctified druidic outpost” made of driftwood and lies, Sho hasn’t changed much. He flashes lights, chants nonsense, and sells “tide-blessed enchantments” that mostly just make you smell like kelp.

But when he holds a gold coin between his webbed fingers and watches it glint under the moonlight, he always mutters the same thing:

“Magic fades. Glory sinks. But gold—gold never drowns.”

Pirates & Lowlifes looking for Coin

The Genie King