Maulgr

Maulgr are a giant race of intelligent Shorewalkers that resemble humanoid whales. They are known to roam the shallows of Galimma and lord over tracts of coast, fending off and crushing intruders. Many adorn themselves in the scrap of ships that either crash along the coast or are sunk by the Maulgr themselves.

Prehistory
The exact emergence of the Maulgr is known only to predate recorded history, as is the case with the other Shorewalker races. The Maulgr themselves have little in the way of oral tradition or myth as to their own origins, giving little for historians to speculate on. What is known is that most races that live near the oceans knew of the Maulgr, and knew to avoid them whenever possible. The Maulgr mostly scavenged and foraged in the shallows of the ocean, but were known to wander inland to pillage from smaller races on occasion, carrying off food, livestock, shiny valuables, and whatever caught their attention at the time.

First Era
The Maulgr dominated many of the more remote stretches of coastline of both the warm and cold seas during the First Era, usually too large to oust even when substantially outnumbered by the likes of Kuupali or Lykoth. Shalo Ra in particular was home to many rival Maulgr courts, and court-wars were most frequent in this era. Galimma's intelligent races for this reason avoided naval travel for fear of passing through territory ruled by Maulgr and becoming a target.

Rise of the Great-Queen
The Second Era continued to be successful for the Maulgr, though it came with the first unifying force and greatest political happening among their own race for millennia: the Great-Queen Gogathana. The largest recorded Maulgr queen in the history of the race, Gogathana had both the size to easily attract the males of other courts and the brute force to near effortlessly oust and fend off her rival queens. Eventually she would go on to rule the territory of multiple courts across Shalo Ra, holding more political territory than any before her.

With this however it became evident she had more courting males than she could ever mate with in her life, so Gogathana took it upon herself to create sub-courts where loyal females beneath her and her own daughters could rule within her own territory. In turn, she also had her own pickings among her subordinates' courts, and could freely take from whatever tribute was left for them by their own consorts. With this accumulated mass of followers, the proclaimed Great-Queen now controlled one of the largest political holdings in all of Galimma alongside the Gold Kings and even the Empire itself. Inevitably, this attracted the attention of Gaulmar warlords.

The War with the Empire
In the ages of Gaulmar expansionism, they eventually reached the inner seas of Shalo Ra, confronted with little physical land to work with and multiple courts of territorial Maulgr. Undaunted, the imperial forces led by the ambitious prince Razun established the coastal fort of Sharokar, and set out to engineer the islands into defensible keeps and construct standing bridges to connect them while fending off Maulgr encroachment.The Maulgr had the advantage of being able to use aquatic routes and could approach from any coastal front, and proved very difficult to defend against. The Maulgr used hit-and-run tactics against island holdings regularly, smashing structures, stealing supplies and hauling off slaves back to their own courts across the seas. Gaulmar bridges proved easy for several fully grown Maulgr to smash, and forts could be easily cut off from one another and from mainland territory. Many times the Maulgr came in numbers too great to defend against, and numerous island forts were lost and reclaimed multiple times. So bold did the Maulgr become that eventually they had pushed back the Gaulmar and their forces and sacked the mainland keep of Sharokar, in the process slaying the commander-prince Razun.

After news of a prince's death reached the capital of Earthrym, Gaulmar retaliation and conquest of Shalo Ra as commissioned by the emperor began in earnest. The difference in this campaign was a major change in tactic to gaining and holding territory, where the Gaulmar mages would use magical barriers and pylons to physically push back the saltwater and tides, taking away the Maulgr's main method of approach. Using the newly exposed dry land the Gaulmar could further fortify and shape the land to suit their needs. The keep of Sharokar saw major expansions to it that delved far below the old waterline as it was constructed as a magical epicenter that would power their intricate layout of tide-pushing pylons. The Maulgr found themselves losing ground rapidly and having few openings to counterattack without the sea at their side.

It was only after the intervention of Great-Queen Gogathana that the courts began to strike back. Leading them herself, Gogathana and her closest kin and consorts led an attack against the citadel of Sharokar far beyond where the ocean stopped in a bold attempt to regain all of Shalo Ra from imperial control. It was only through the power of Gogathana's stormsong that they fought further and could make it to the great imperial holding. Gogathana herself brought down the impressive walls in a thundering charge, knocking down a substantial portion of the keep and unleashing her subjects on the exposed Gaulmar sorcerers. In the frantic fighting that followed the Great-Queen crushed a commanding warlord, but not before suffering fatal wounds. As a final act she bellowed out her mighty stormsong and threw her full weight into the main magical pylon, destroying and severing the entirety of the tide-pushing devices and wiping out the entirety of the Gaulmar's presence in Shalo Ra.

Post War
Though able to oust the Empire and their servants, the Maulgr lost their Great-Queen and many of her descendants, leading to a substantial power vacuum. The old ways of rival courts and queens soon took hold, though now the Maulgr contested for both islands and Gaulmar ruin. The race as a whole never reached the same heights as they did in the times of Gogathana, or even before her rule.

Third Era
Diminished by the loss of the Great-Queen and the shattering of her court, the Maulgr resumed their ways of courts and queens in relative seclusion, with the occasional ransacking of coastal settlements. The other mortal races would advance in technology and magical capacity in the absence of their conquerors however, and growing cities proved too formidable to bother raiding after a time.

Appearance
Maulgr are bipedal creatures with thick trunk-like arms and legs, rounded blubbery torsos, and wide heads with pronounced melons. They breathe out of a pair of blowholes near their melon, allowing them to vocalize a variety of sounds that make up the intricate Maulgr language. Beady eyes peer out from either side of their wide mouths full of sharp conic teeth.Their skin is thick with blubber and often covered in scars, barnacles, and other detritus from the ocean. The smaller males are typically 4.5 to 6.1 meters tall, and female queens on average 7.6 to 9 meters tall, though the largest recorded, Great-Queen Gogathana, was according to imperial records nearly 12 meters in height, towering well over even the mightiest of the Gaulmar patriarchs.

Social Organization
Maulgr societies are matriarchal, centering around usually a single breeding age female. These ruling females, also known as queens, lord over large coves where they raise their young and the surrounding stretches of coast. Her owned land, referred to as courts, are usually inhabited by a large amount of male Maulgr that seek her favor. Many will do so by sparring among themselves, offering her large amounts of treasure and food, and displays of virility such as singing and dancing. The queen will take her pick among the competing males and mate with them at her discretion.

A queen may rarely be challenged by another outside female for ownership of the court and the attention of the males. This typically begins with singing competitions between the two females, valuing sheer volume and bombast. When this settles nothing, they will typically resort to physical violence. The occurring fights are often spectacular and bloody, but only sometimes lethal. On even rarer occasion, a court-war may break out, with an invasive queen bringing her own male followers as an army to oust the defending queen and her court. These are especially violent and deadly, but are recorded very scarcely.

Language
The Maulgr language, called Belugon by linguists, is syntactically simple, even described as crude at times. It can however be quite complex in the amount of emotional and contextual tone that can be conveyed by their melon organ, allowing them to nuance a great deal each word and phrase uttered orally. Attempts to recreate the tones are rarely fruitful, leading to very few attempts to interact with Maulgr diplomatically.

Art
In spite of a perceived crude culture, Maulgr have been known on occasion to indulge in aesthetic art, namely crude statues and rock arrangements. The cultural uses for these range from territory markers, tools to obstruct smaller creatures, a means to boast and show off one's accrued loot, a form of tribute for a queen, to simple aesthetically pleasing ornamentation.

The statues tend to be made of debris and trinkets hauled from the ocean floor, torn off of shipwrecks, or stolen from coastal settlements by adult males in an effort to court their queen. Often they start as piles of sand with shells, coral, bones, driftwood, colorful rocks, and other assorted tidal pickings arranged into a base, with centerpieces including chests of gold, substantial ship pieces, stolen statues, and other larger objects. From there the centerpiece is carefully draped in chains, seaweed, fishing net, or sailcloth, usually so as to drift in the wind. Finishing touches often include sprinkling smaller eye-catching objects such as coins, shells, and gemstones over the entire piece.

Magic
Maulgr have little cultural practice of magic among the majority of their population, but the prolific queens are known to have one powerful and unique magical art, known as the stormsong. This spell is performed by loud triumphant singing, usually quite similar to the same kind used by females to attract roaming males to her court. The stormsong is very powerful, able to influence the sky and draw rain, wind and thunder to otherwise clear skies. In the wars against the Gaulmar, a female would often sing her stormsong to cloud enemy fortifications and bolster her males' morale as they breached enemy lines. Powerful stormsongs would bring down destructive lightning where they were sang and flood small valleys, allowing them to be used as a deterrent against invaders or further bombard enemy positions.