The Sunken Kingdom

Arrival

From the deck of a boat, the Caldera Sea flat and clear, and under the keel a city: towers, streets, a coliseum, fish moving down its avenues, all lit from below by something on the sea floor that glows and turns. A stair comes up out of the water onto a reef, and a crowned figure stands at the top of it, water pouring off him, looking at your dragon.

The feel

The ocean biome as a zone: sailing on top, and, after the deep is taken, walking and fighting under. Coral, drowned marble, air pockets in palaces, pearl light. The one realm with no land but reefs.

The story here

Before the dragons ruled, the Sunken Kingdom did. Its king made the first bargain with the sea-wyrms and broke it, and the sea took the kingdom in a night and left the king alive to do his rounds. He has been walking up the stair every night for three thousand years to find the sea still there. He holds the pearl that lets a dragon breathe under water, the deep, and he will give it to a Dragonsworn who can tell him the sea-wyrms are gone, because then his punishment is over. Thalassa was the last. The player knows what happened to her.

The cast

• King Caradoc the Drowned. Not a villain. A king of three thousand years who broke a promise and has kept the punishment perfectly. Signature: water pours off him and the pool at his feet never grows. Secret: he could have left the stair a thousand years ago and did not, because the sea is the only place his people are. He gives the deep or fights for it; he laughs once either way, when told about Thalassa, and it is the saddest sound in the game.
• Pearl. A living girl who dives the drowned city for salvage and has never been caught by the drowned, twenty, reckless, the best swimmer alive. Signature: she is always wet and never cold. Secret: she is Caradoc's blood, the last of the kingdom's line above water, which is why the drowned let her pass; she does not know until he tells her, and then she has to decide whose she is. Teaches swimming to the cap. Returns at the Throne with the drowned legion at her back, if the king gave the deep.
• The Harbourmaster. A Drowned in a chain of office who checks every boat that anchors over the city and knows the name of every ship that has ever sunk in the Caldera Sea, including yours if you are not careful.
• Admiral Tancred, if he lived, cannot follow you here, and stands on the Isles' shore watching the sea he cannot cross, and it is the closest the Legion comes to pity.

Underground and the boss

The Drowned Palace: the king's own, a dungeon entirely under water once the deep is taken, air pockets as rooms. Drowned, vampire knights of the old court, a Bone Dragon that was the kingdom's guardian and drowned with it, and King Caradoc, who is fought only if the player lies to him about Thalassa. Told the truth, he gives the pearl and walks down the stair for the last time.

Out in the open

The Ghost Tide rises from here. The Coliseum, an event: on the full moon the drowned fight in their old arena and a living champion may enter and win the pearl the hard way. The Glow, the thing on the sea floor, which is the sea-wyrms' egg-chamber, empty, and the source of every light in the kingdom.

The dragon here

Eats pearls, which it should not. Takes back the deep.