You're Forgetting Something In Your Worldbuilding... 

So they're water kenders, 🫠 Great that's all we needed Could be worse, they could be like the gulls in Finding Nemo and think everything belongs to them.

I recommend not making such broad assumptions when majority of your claims are made from the view of D&D's world. Most fantasy settings either don't touch the subject of marine sapients so the consumers don't know what is going on there, or DO actually go into detail and tell you why they are as they are presented. Some even have such great underwater empires you described in the video (due to atlantis it was a pretty popular trope in early fantasy). So no, FU, 70% of "our" worldbuilding doesn't suck (also FU for the clickbait title). Now to deconstruct your fantasies: There is still inclement weather underwater, and in fact it's very much prevalent on continental shelves. Torrential waves can and do easily pick up creatures not affixed to the ground or deep beneath it, and during floods and the like, they get deposite on land, where a large chunk of them get stranded and die. This limits how close to the shore merfolk will be willing to go, as getting beached would probably be seen as how early sailers felt about drowning in the great blue (egypt reference). You said something about carving long whalebones into spears to fend off dangerous sea creatures. Whilst it's not a terrible idea if given enough whales, the problem is if they are to have a neolithic (or calciolithic in this case) revolution, they would hunt whales to extinction before having their first cities. A better option at this point is to gang up on such large predators with coral shanks and the like, and just take the casualties. It's gonna be hampering population growth but on long term hunting predators to extinction is a better call than bottlenecking themselves before they become a civilization. Domesticating marine wildlife is SIGNIFICANTLY harder than what you make it sound like. Whilst humanity has a limited understanding on the topic, since we have only started messing with deep marine life for a few hundred years, what biologists learned is that things are either too smart to be domesticated, or too stupid. There are very few animals that could provide useful work already, and most of them are in the too smart category, like octopi that would make good cat-equivalent pets to hunt vermin, or sociable dolphins that whilst would be a good dog alternative, they are known to bond too hard and become useless if it's broken, or aggressive if threatened. All in all, I'd wager animal husbandry on the continental shelves would be much less intense than it was on land. Roman concrete is not a wonder material, and worst of all it's quite bad from the standpoint of a marine lifeform, as just like any other concrete, it needs to set, and whilst it's capable doing so underwater, it still needs said water to be either shallow enough so it doesn't exert much force, or calm enough so it's not dispersed. Continental shelf is neither, especially if merfolk are avoiding the closeness of shore due to fear of beaching. In fact, structures underwater are kinda hard in general. Organic matter rots faster due to high concentration of decomposing agents, and even if they start using overworld materials, the constant waves will slowly tear apart most structures that isn't "mobile" enough to move with them (which is nigh impossible without organic materials). This means the size of communities is significantly hampered, and no civilization larger than a couple hundred individuals can exist simply due to the fact they have no way of administration besides the leader or their close cronies swimming up to people and asking what's what (don't even make me start on the inability for written language for underwater dwelling civilizations). They will also probably have a tribal level of property, as in folks are concerned and protective of the tribe's assets, but would see it as common property that should be used for the tribe's survival and prosperity, with private property being limited to what one can carry on themselves. I'd guess that merfolk would get to and stay on the level of neolithic farmers like the linear pottery culture and it's direct descendants, situated along well maintained kelp forests that the tribes are constantly warring over for (especially if they had a bad harvest), and when a tribe becomes too big to be ruled by a single charismatic leader and their close allies, they'd send expeditions with the excess population, probably closer and closer to the shore as the best and safest forests would be already claimed by long established tribes. This would go on until they make contact with civilized land dwellers and have their lives turned upside down by it. After such event it's hard to speculate since the nature of the contact would determine what happens to them. They could be shocked by the land dwellers trying to hunt them with higher quality tools and weapons they can ever create, and thus never go to shore again. Or maybe if they made contact in the bronze age, probably via sea trade strating to boom, they may be uplifted and given metal tools, allowing a large chunk of population to stop chipping stone and start wrecking ships. Possibilities are endless, though most variations seem to end in rivalry or attempted genocide between merfolk and land dwellers.

​@@kovi567 tldr: someone got mad because his elf fantasy doesn't work out because of marine communists 😂😂 Hilarious to insult the channel host for disagreeing to your make believe. Go and cry in the corner.

I agree with this, at least to a degree. I can see them having a concept of property, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to hoard items. Not only do they not really need shelter, but in most scenarios food is going to be more plentiful as well. So between not having to worry about food and shelter, and long term storage being a pain, there isn't a great need to own a lot. Though I can see a person owning things they carry on them, especially if they wear clothes and stuff.

@@marks7037 I insulted him because he is making broad statements (and clickbait titles) even though his views are limited to D&D. I don't give a damn if he disagrees with my notions, that what fantasy speculation is for, which is the main content of his channel. I know thinking is hard, and jumping off your ego would leave you dead, but at least try to get areaction out of me with RELEVANT bullcrap. Childish remarks are boring.

I mean, if you’re patient you don’t need magic to coax coral into the shape you want. It’d take generations but you could fairly easily get them to grow how you want with fairly primitive tools.

@@Forsworcen True, but who's going to want to wait that long?

I'd argue that Quaggan architecture (Guild Wars 2, at least, I haven't seen the original game) is probably very close to what you're describing, even. Highly recommend giving it a look, coo!

@@chameleonx9253 People that live on a civilizational time scale, rather than a two-year or three-month one. Or biweekly.

​@@chameleonx9253note that some of the buildings we have were constructed over centuries. Someone had the patience for that.

this might have just solved a question about currency that i’ve been pondering for my setting 👀 if merfolk control much of the sea trade, their coins would likely be used across the world, as tended to happen before modernity

Things aren't quite that simple, but it is a fair enough simplification for folks just wanting to dive into writing stuff. For instance equatorial oceans are indeed deserts in some ways but also if you have nutrient inflow you get great more or less transient plancton/algae blooms which can nurture population of life of all kinds, not to forget the complex and productive coral systems which can sprout up in the right places of such a stable area. Meanwhile oceans nearer to the poles might suffer in productivity in the darker time of the year. There are also downwellings and general currents to consider if you want to paint a map of the ocean of equal detail as we often aim to do for the land.

Going a bit more in detail here because that is literally what I just did the last month. My world feels greatly enhanced now, yet I feel like it definitly isn't something every creator of fiction needs to focus on in even near such detail.

@@sizanogreen9900 yes corals are born in shallow equatorial places , and like rainforest they have lower biomass but higher biodiversity than the higher latitudes , kelp forests are basically monocultures compared to coral reefs , but kelp plants are just soo massive and entirely edible by sea urchins , it's some incredible amounts of avialable biomass ... also river estuaries are incredible for that aspect ...

@@davidegaruti2582 You are completely right in every regard. Just one thing, like rainforests, coral reefs also are great at ceaselessly gathering and recycling what little nutrients they have, leading to a biological productivity greater than what one might expect in a less complex & well established ecosystem. Adding something more you might also want to add aerosols blown in from dusty landscapes as well as vulcanic nutrients coming from such regions in various ways.

productive waters are shallow OR cold the main problem is that, in deep warm waters, nutrients sink and stay at the bottom but just take a look at Indonesia if you want to see what happens if you have large stretches of shallow waters (it's extremely productive)

There are some great undersea novels set in Faerun

Please tell us more! =)

I am writing a story about merfolk and most of them do have smaller hand weapons for the reason to mention. And it is similar to the idea of how people always carried knives and stuff back in the day. However, I gave people in the 'military' spears. No matter how you look at it, having a long spear to skewer your enemy with gives you a massive advantage over any smaller weapon. If a merfolk is swimming at you at full speed with a 6 foot long spear, you are not stopping them with a kama. Which leads to the other thing, the most threatening person to a merfolk, is another merfolk.

@Lilitha11 yeah definitely agree with the spears for the military. It was a prominent thing in our military for a reason. Its only issue will be that a spear might limit you to a thrust in one direction. For a range option in line with the spear would be the harpoon, the barbed hooks ensuring that the other merfolk would bleed out and have their movement limited. When not used as a projectile, it can be used as a one-handed spear, tucked in close to the body. Kamas and Sickles would be reserved for melee and grappling when spears fail, last resort scenarios, and the like.

@@taranis9848 I sort of imagine the merfolk might be like knight's with lances, where they just swim full speed towards the enemy and try to skewer them. You are sort of restricted in going more or less in one direction, but the water resistance would be greatly reduced and it would have the most impact. A backup weapon would definitely be required if they got in closer than spear length though.

@@Lilitha11 True enough on the impact side of things. Plus there is one point of combat to think of that a lance could be very fun, at least for the merfolk: anti-ship weaponry. Get a couple of merfolk to ram into a ship with sharp lances tipped with metal to puncture holes into the ship, do it at the right times and the ship will sink before the crew even knows they'll be drowning shortly. You know, with the reverse fishing scenario and this one, plus the fact that merfolk would likely live in areas where seaweed and kelp to hide in would be common, merfolk could easily become ambush predators. Merfolk knights are well and good, but mermaid assassin? Ninja mermaid? The trashy B movie writes itself.

@@taranis9848 I think that no matter how you look at it, humans are just screwed trying to fight merfolk. Humans will never be able to compete in the water, and on boats they are at a huge disadvantage. They sort of need magic to have any hope of stopping merfolk from messing with their ship.

Like beaver lodges

They could make "pens" for the animals by using nets staked to the ground, or use a series of weights and bladders to suspend them in the water column and then tether them to their house. Homes could be made of the skeletons of whales or sharks, lashed together and with walls made of hide. Air-filled bladders could be used like ballist tanks to keep the house floating at a preferred level in the water.

@@chameleonx9253 Yeah that's a good idea like how people have fish farms irl

@@zacharyweaver276 Exactly. If they're in the photic zone, maybe they also could have a floating disk or something that's encrusted with barnacles, oysters, and other sessile animals that they grow. Like a little "garden" of tiny sea critters stuck to the rock.

@@chameleonx9253 I mean they could just have rocks that they grow those on don't need a floating disc

Walls still have some limited use underwater, especially in regards to heavy non-bouyant things or specific terrain features. Towers and domes/caves are definitely the real MVP in terms of aquatic fortifications

Now I’m just imagining a weird mix of Sebastian, the crab and Jordan Peterson.

Kuo-Toa are the believers traditionally

@@McHobotheBobo yeah, you're right, that's what I meant to write, I just mixed it up

@@GooseEnjoyer I've been running an aquatic campaign for a couple years so I got all the aquatic species on lock lol

@@McHobotheBobo I really like aquatic campaigns, hope you're having a good time

Diving like a sperm whale

Also why would they choose to live underwater if they were amphibious? Making an underwater society is so dependent on the terrestrial society and the gods of the world. There's really no reason to choose residence under the ocean if you have a terrestrial mindset of conquest and land administration instead of a more sensible mindset of living in harmony with one's environment. At the end you're saying there would be no doors. Why would there be cities at all? What do the merfolk need protection from? They're not going to die from exposure and they're presumably the apex predator under the waves already.

I feel like trying to explain why mermaids look like half human and half fish is a lost cause. Just accept the mermaids look how they do and focus on the world building and make it as plausible as possible. People will accept how they look, because they generally like 'mermaids' over ugly fish people.

There are a number of undersea novels set in Faerun. Mel Odom's "Threat From the Sea" series is most prominent. Could well be worth a read :)

I do feel that predators wouldn't be as big of a problem as people might think. They would likely view merfolk as predators, due to them having used tools and weapons for a long period of time. By the time we are talking about, merfolk likely could of hunted sharks of hundreds of thousands years. It is likely they would be very weary of merfolk, especially if they were in a group.

grand floating farms in the middle of the open ocean might work in very cold waters, but anywhere somewhat warm, it'd require either large amounts of fertiliser or massive pump stacks getting nutrients from the sea floor so not happening before at the earliest a mid 20th century equivalent technology level it would be cool though I also feel like if they normally breathe saltwater, freshwater would probably be dangerous to them

@@yjlom there are some species that can adapt to both, perhaps they can close off their gills and gulp air like a lungfish allowing them limited access to land too making them more amphibious, even better if their tails are more serpentine for limited land locomotion without sacrificing aquatic mobility. perhaps they could solve the nutrient problem by having an area dedicated to sea birds as a yearly nesting ground and harvesting their droppings

As a bit of extra information. The planet in my fantasy book is a classic super earth with almost double earths mass but is also less dense making it much MUCH larger so that the gravity is similar to ours. This also made me consider the size of geological features would be fucking enormous with mountains that put Everest to shame. I’d assume the abyss would also be much deeper as well but haven’t really considered it until now

Monsters are one thing, but I don't think animals would be as big of an issue as you suggest. After several hundred thousand years of orca's having spears jammed into them, I think they would naturally be weary of merfolk. They would definitely had been a major issue early on in merfolk history, but by the time they have advanced tools and stuff, most predators would realize they are not worth the effort.

@@Lilitha11 I can agree that an advanced merfolk civilisation with bronze weapons and armour would probably be able to fend of orcas(though I maintain it would be difficult given ancient armies problems with elephants and orcas are the same size but with none of the weaknesses). The problem is earlier than that in the hunter gatherer period. Jamming a spear in to an orca is much easier said than done and even if you succeed it is unlikely to die from a single wound so you will probably die as well. In our history are ancestors solved this problem by using fire to scare predators and by using gravity and ranged weapons to kill animals in the orca size range such as mammouths, none of these work if you are a mermaid. Orcas are also far larger, smarter and unlike most large predators on land actively target prey in the human size range. They also show very sophisticated tactics being able to set traps, use water pressure, coordinate attacks and pass this knowledge onto the next generations, I mean they literally learnt how to disable ships for fun. While you are right most orcas would avoid the mermaids, if mermaids become a large enough food source there are definitely orca pods learning how to use water pressure to break up phalanxes or at the very least sneak into the kelp farms to steal livestock(they might be the mermaid equivalent of goblins) One way to put it is while I believe humans are more than capable of becoming top predators in the age of dinosaurs, I think it would take longer than it did us, hence my point about mermaid empires being newer prowers on the scene rather than ancient empires.

@@locky7443 The one weird thing about merfolk is that evolutionary they make no sense, like half human, half fish doesn't seem possible to naturally evolve. However if we gloss over that little bit(because of the rule of cool, and we want pretty mermaids or whatever), I imagine that merfolk would have evolved from dolphin/whale like species. So I would imagine, they were like orca that evolved arms and started using tools. The use of tools and having hands would of given them a great advantage and they would settle down and start growing food and slimmed down over time. In this case, millions of years ago they were already apex predators. Of course you could go the total opposite approach, where they were humans who went into the sea. Early humans in the sea would of had a horrible time and likely would of been killed by everything as they slowly evolved tails and adapted to living in the water. We are going into deep speculation here, and since fundamentally merfolk don't make a lot of sense, you could go many different ways. Realistically mermaids would be more like monster fish people, or big chunky boys with lots of blubber and stuff, so getting slim and pretty girl mermaids require some sort of stretch of your imagination. So it might be good to decide, were they apex predators, or hunted prey, and just go with it.

@@Lilitha11 I can agree that as they are often presented there is no way mermaid could evolve naturally(though them being the result of magical gene manipulation is an option).If they did evolve naturally you are right that they would likely look very distinct from humans as the evolutionary pressures would be very different. As for how they would evolve, I think it would be unlikely they would evolve from whales(or similar animals) as fins are very specialized and revolving arms would require going through a weird mid stage where the forelimbs are not really good for anything. Instead A scenario of humans or other primates going into the sea seems more likely. I see them starting as semi aquatic animals using their more developed forelimbs and tools to access food that other animals can't and retreating onto land to avoid predators. Eventually becoming good enough swimmers that they can survive purely in the ocean. There is some precedent for this with certain island peoples having better lung capacity and increased webbing on their digits. You could even make it an atlantis scenario except with the sinking being slower. If they would be apex predators or not is up ton the author as you said but it is not necessarily a binary. They could be the of buffalo to lions or gorillas to leopards, where most leave them alone and only specialists populations hunt them at great risk. There could also be both friendly and predatory orca groups, with friendly orca pods helping on hunts(much like real life orcas and whalers) while other pods raid farms and kill mermaids.

@@locky7443 I was actually thinking about this recently, as I was writing a story about merfolk. I was thinking, if the merfolk came from humans, then wouldn't they likely breath air from the surface, like whales or dolphins? If they had gills, as often is the case, then that sort of implies that maybe they didn't come from human or land mammals. It seems kind of silly, but perhaps they might of even evolved from like crabs or maybe a sort of starfish. It might be a case where you just want to leave it to people's imagination. In which case the most important thing is to be consistent.