#askmrkraken

"Gentle giant" is the perfect way to describe him! Yeah he's enormous, his people believe he's some kind of great warrior-demigod, and he slaughters giant squids on the reg, but that's just how he feeds himself. There is no real malice in this guy. He just wants to be loved and accepted for who he is.

He makes up little stories and casts magical projections of light on his own belly for people to watch.

He shares pieces of the squids he kills with his tribe, even though he desperately needs every calorie he can get.

He sits in the center of the city and watches over all the little people around him, reaching down to help them when he can. He helps build and demolish things, intervenes when he sees people fighting, finds lost children and pets, and offers advice to all who approach him in search of answers, for he is their all-seeing god. He tries so hard to be a fair and benevolent one.

TL;DR: Mr. Kraken is wholesome as fuck. He is a big sweetheart and we all stan him 'round these parts. B) Sovereign can get bent, he pissed away an awesome ally when he banished this guy!

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Giants were once their own species in the old lore, but that lore was changed so that giants are now just unusually large variants of existing creatures.

But what exactly causes a creature to be a giant? A lot of things, but the culprit is usually magic.

Mr. Kraken is an example of a giant. In his case, his mother took a mysterious cocktail of magical herbs while she was pregnant, and it resulted in him being born with an extreme form of gigantism.

Not every giant is born that way though. It's pretty common for normal-sized people to get cursed by mages, and those curses can make them grow huge. Usually these spells are temporary, but sometimes they can be permanent.

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Lore Masterpost

(Translated with Google Translator)

What are some great ancient Aquarian cultures? That is, cultures of the aquatic races before the time of Sovereign, or long before his birth

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Currently I only have one example developed enough to share, and that's the abyssal cecaelia tribe that worships Mr. Kraken.

Sovereign hasn't conquered them because they live in a very deep, remote part of the ocean. Frankly, he just can't be bothered because they don't really have anything he wants to take from them. Their culture is also so alien from others that he knows trying to assimilate them would be a nightmare. They're just not worth it to him, so he leaves them alone. This means their culture has not been influenced by outside forces much.

This tribe is constructed around underground "meat mines". They are literally caverns full of meat that can be mined and eaten. The meat is preserved by the salt, magic, and the high pressure of the ocean. Where all this meat came from is a mystery, but World Athenaeum researchers suspect that it may be the remains of a kraken who died long ago. The tribe has been subsisting off its corpse since ancient times, tunneling through its tough, barnacle-encrusted exterior to reach the edible meat inside. These mines also attract many crabs and other critters, which the tribe hunts and eats as well.

The abyssal depths of the ocean are basically uninhabitable due to the lack of food. Only because of this dead kraken can the deepwater tribe survive here, so moving is not an option. This is unfortunate, because this dead kraken is located very close to a live kraken, which is currently lying dormant. One day it will awaken to feed, and the closest thing to feed on is the remains of its dead kin and the cecaelia tribe.

That is why they worship Mr. Kraken, as they are counting on him to fight off this kraken one day and save them.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Mr. Kraken's age hasn't been finalized yet, so for right now we don't know! Maybe 600-ish? It's very up in the air right now.

I think Queen Machine would be totally shocked that he was still alive, but even more shocked by his colossal size. She would have so many emotions; pride that he was able to take care of himself and even find his place in the deepwater tribe, sadness that his condition causes him so much anguish, guilt that she caused his condition in the first place, anger that Sovereign banished him...But most importantly, she would not love him any less.

He may be the size of a kaiju, but Mr. Kraken will always be his mother's precious little baby! She would learn how to communicate with him using his language of magical glyphs.

His size aside, Mr. Kraken is just a normal dude who wants love and friendship just like everyone else. Okay, maybe he has some abandonment issues as well...he never stopped missing his parents since he was sent away, and always dreamed that one day they would allow him to come home. I think he is actually a big softie, a real emotional and tender guy. So, he would be eager to accept his mother (and his father, surprisingly) back into his life and have a loving, normal relationship with them. Or as normal as a relationship with a giant can be...

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

This dude is like a cryptid, no one can get a decent look at him because he's always hanging out in the abyssal sea, and on the rare occasions that he does surface, it's only under the dark of night because his eyes are not accustomed to light at all. He's just so damn big that he's hard for smaller characters to perceive clearly, like an insect trying to perceive a human.

We will also never "hear" him speak, because his voice is so deep and slow that his words just sound like a rumble. He has no intelligible dialogue, and characters can't understand him either. He must be spoken to via telepathy or illusion magic.

I think these aspects add more fun and mystery to him!

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Nope, divinity would actually freeze his body in whatever state it was in when he was blessed. So, if Gaia granted Mr. Kraken divinity, this would stop his growth completely. Then if he died, he would keep resurrecting at that same size.

I wrote more about this phenomenon in this older post.

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Questions/Comments?

First of all, this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my inbox.

Second of all, GOD YES I WISH.

There is only one problem...All Tekeetians must promise to never kill another Tekeetian. Sovereign and Mr. Kraken are both Tekeetians, so both of them are bound by a promise they made as children to never take the life of the other.

This is why Sovereign never kills his "defective" children, he only banishes them. This is why he never killed Mr. Ocean to steal the throne, he only crippled him. He can kill foreign cecaelia, but if he considers them a fellow Tekeetian, they are protected by the promise he made to his ancestors. Anyone blood-related to Sovereign is a Tekeetian by default.

This traditional pact was meant to prevent civil wars from breaking out among the Tekeetian people, and also to prevent treason and betrayal. Obviously it's not 100% effective, but it at least throws an obstacle in the way.

Now, there are plenty of sneaky ways to get around this pact. Mr. Kraken couldn't make himself crush Sovereign directly, at least not on purpose...but should he be intoxicated, should it happen by "accident", should he knock over something heavy so it falls on Sovereign...well, there are a lot of possibilities here.

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He actually has many different names, but I think he earned the name "Mr. Kraken" simply because he is often mistaken for one! Marine researchers from the World Athenaeum actually discovered him (and his deepwater tribe) because they thought he was an active kraken at first.

They just could not make sense of him because no such condition had been recorded before in a cecaelia. They monitored him from afar for many years, believing they were gathering valuable research on the rare and mysterious kraken...only to realize he was no kraken at all.

But the notes they gathered weren't totally useless. The researchers eventually made contact with Mr. Kraken and learned quite a bit about his tribe. Deepwater cecaelia tribes are usually too hostile to study, so the World Athenaeum has always struggled to learn about them. But Mr. Kraken was friendly to the researchers, so his tribe followed his example and welcomed them into their territory.

Mr. Kraken thought it very funny that these top-of-the-line scientists mistook him for a sea monster for so many years. As a Tekeetian, he did not have a permanent name, only different titles depending on who was addressing him ("Friend", "Cousin", "Son", "Large One", etc.).

Someone at the WA referred to him as "Mr. Kraken" and the name just kind of stuck. It's the name they ended up using for him in their official documents. These researchers are probably his closest friends outside of his tribe. I imagine the WA sends submarines down there once in a while to keep tabs on him and update their notes on the tribe. His condition in itself is definitely worth studying.

Not to mention, they need to keep tabs on the real kraken hibernating nearby. Whenever that thing awakens, many Great Kingdom trade ships will be in danger, and the world economy could take a nasty hit.

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Questions/Comments?