Excerpted from the Records of the Seventh Dawn, compiled by Archivist Ophira Reyne of the Lunar Archive.
I. On the Birth of the Deepkin
Before the continents had names, before soil learned the scent of rain, there were the vents.From those crimson throats rose warmth, minerals, and the first Flux currents that seeded sentience into the Cambrian sea.Where ordinary trilobites crept and jawless fish swam blind, the currents touched certain lineages, sculpting them into thinking forms—soft of flesh yet iron of will.These were the Aegir, the Firstborn.
Legends recorded in the Tide-Songs of Skadi speak of a moment when the sea itself became aware—when the pressure of the abyss formed thought, and the thought learned to move.Each Aegir carried within their blood the luminal organs, crystalline nodes that resonated with Flux frequencies.They could feel the pulse of the planet like a heartbeat and steer by it as mariners steer by stars.
II. Physiology and Form
The Aegir's outward variety mirrors the seas that birthed them.Some bear the sleek grace of fish or cetaceans; others the sinuous limbs of cephalopods, the chitin sheen of crustaceans, or the delicate symmetry of jelly forms.Yet all share the humanoid frame that allows life both beneath and above the waves—broad shoulders for swimming, lungs paired with vestigial gills, and skin that glimmers faintly under moonlight.
An Aegir's eyes adapt to any darkness; their pulse slows to a single beat per minute when they descend to the trenches.They age slowly—ten human generations may pass before an Aegir hair whitens.Their wounds clot with silver ichor that hardens to pearl.
When angered, the luminous lines beneath their skin ignite—the "Tide-Mark."In battle, an army of Aegir beneath storm light is said to resemble a field of stars inverted into the sea.
III. The Age of Reef Thrones
During the First Cycle, Aegir civilization rose along the warm inland seas.They grew coral citadels by song, shaping reefs into chambers, towers, and living docks.The greatest of these was Abyss Skadi, whose domes of translucent shell could be seen glowing through the night surf even from the barren shores of ancient Gondwana.
Their society knew no monarchy.Instead they followed the Confluence, a council of Matrons and Navigators who listened to the ocean's voice and interpreted its tides as law.Their art was silence and motion: intricate currents woven to convey speech, emotion, and memory.
The Aegir invented writing not on stone but in harmonic flow, encoding history into repeating wave patterns that can still be found fossilized in Cambrian strata—the oldest language of Earth, mistaken by later scholars for ripples of sediment.
IV. The First Alliance and Its Sundering
The Aegir discovered the early Humans wandering tide-flats, frail yet fearless.Pity became curiosity, then kinship.They taught them the use of coral-glass and the shaping of fire.For a brief epoch the sea and land were one people; together they raised the first temples to the Elders.
But jealousy festered among the Confluence.Some feared that Humans multiplied too quickly; others sought to claim the fertile coasts for themselves.When drought struck and Flux storms raged, blame turned to bloodshed.The War of Depths and Dunes ended with the shattering of Abyss Skadi and the retreat of the Aegir into the trenches.Their cities fell silent; their songs became laments.
V. The Long Hibernation
Through the next three cycles the Aegir endured beneath miles of pressure.They adapted to darkness, their culture folding inward.From each catastrophe—flood, fire, meteor—they absorbed lessons in patience.While surface empires burned, they catalogued history in shells and spores, waiting for the Flux to calm.
When they finally resurfaced in the Fourth Cycle, the land was unrecognizable—forests instead of coral plains, furred beasts instead of scaled titans.The Aegir watched quietly from the surf as new races claimed dominion, neither jealous nor afraid.They became the Memory of the Sea, witnesses who remembered what others had forgotten.
VI. The Recontact of the Fifth Cycle
In the age of bronze and sail, the Aegir returned to trade.Their pearl fleets ventured up rivers to barter minerals for grain.Humans called them mare-folk; the Feline scribes of Alexandria recorded treaties in both ink and saltwater glyphs.The Aegir introduced the compass, the sextant, and pressure-glass that could view the stars even beneath storm clouds.
Yet when Fluxcraft again threatened balance, they withdrew.An old proverb of the Matron Tethya warns:
"When the sea speaks louder than the shore, the next silence will be long."
VII. The Sixth Cycle and the Revelation of the Reverse Side
As industrial smoke darkened the coasts, the Aegir noted an unfamiliar vibration beneath the tides—a dissonance in the planetary hum.Their abyssal oracles, the Choirs of the Trench, declared that the boundary between worlds was thinning.In 1914 their warnings reached the surface too late: the wars of steel had begun, and the Reverse Side tore open.
Sarkaz forms invaded coastlines where Flux resonance was strongest; Aegir defenders fought beside Human fleets in vain.Entire reefs were consumed by dimensional fire.Before retreating, they sent one final transmission into the sea's core—a plea to the Elders and to any listener beyond Earth.
It was the Sankta who answered.
VIII. The Seventh Cycle — Renewal
When the Sankta descended after the cataclysm, they found Aegir enclaves still alive in the trenches of the Pacific Rift.The surviving Confluence pledged alliance to the celestial visitors, sharing their libraries of fossil memory.Together they rebuilt navigation, oceanography, and the delicate equilibrium of Flux.
Now, in the Seventh Cycle, the Aegir dwell openly once more.They serve as historians and keepers of balance, their reef-cities revived in partnership with Human engineers and Sankta overseers.They refuse dominion, for they remember too well what followed pride.
Among them the name Skadi endures—not a person but a title given to those who venture beyond the continental shelves to listen for new Flux harmonics.Their task: to ensure that no tide, however vast, shall again drown the world.
The Aegir were the first to awaken and the last to despair.Their history is our planet's memory, coiled in shell and song.Should future generations seek the truth of the world's beginnings, they will not find it in dust or stone, but in the deep, where the light of the first thought still drifts between silent pillars of coral.