#askundine

Good question! The undine's transformation spell does a number on a child's developing brain, and this damage can present later in life as paranoia, emotional instability, memory loss, and impaired cognitive function.

Not all mermaids will have these issues, but a significant number of them do. It isn't as much of a problem when they're enthralled and forced to battle, but once they escape thralldom and try to integrate back into society, the issues become rather apparent. The years of soldiering just intensifies these effects by adding a fat helping of PTSD on top.

So, a child who escaped thralldom immediately would not have the PTSD, but might suffer some symptoms of mild brain damage and of course amnesia from the spell.

But under the care of loving parents, I think these children can grow up to be just fine. These are all issues that can be overcome with proper medical care and therapy.

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Lore Masterpost

Killing an undine releases all its mermaids from their thralldom. However, another undine can still come along and enthrall them, so they have to be careful to avoid other undines while they make their escape.

"Chains of Melody" and "Troubled Tides" explore this concept quite a bit.

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Prepubescent human girls seem to be the only ones affected by the undine's cursed song, though on very rare occasions, a human boy will be affected too.

The reason isn't known, but Athenaeum researchers suspect that the undine are singing at a very specific frequency that just so happens to affect human girls in this way.

As people get older, the range of frequencies they can hear diminishes, and girls are known to have slightly more sensitive hearing than boys. Also, humans have their own unique sense of hearing that is not as keen as an elf's, but not as dull as a gorgon's, for example. They hear the song at just the right frequency to hypnotize them.

It's worth noting that deaf children are completely unaffected by the undine's song, which supports the Athenaeum's theory. But ultimately the song is a magical effect, and it's the very nature of magic to defy logic, so reports are inconsistent.

Studying any kind of magical phenomena makes researchers want to tear their hair out for this reason...

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Now that's a good question! Traditionally, an undine is created when a female sirene sings a magical song, which fuses herself and multiple hydriads together into one monstrous titan nymph.

What's really happening here is that the sirene is casting a powerful transmutation spell via her voice. The hydriads' bodies and the sirene's body are transformed into one, and this new undine body houses all of their souls. There was a disturbing bit of dialogue in "Chains of Melody" where an undine said:

“I was once three hydriads and a sirene, but we sacrificed our lives to become this—this abomination—to protect [Gaia]!"

The undine acknowledges that she was once several different creatures, and she refers to all of them as "we". So, does the undine have one brain or multiple? Just one. The personalities of the original nymphs and sirene have been consumed by uncontrollable rage. Undine are violent, unfeeling creatures by nature. They have manifested from the anger and violent urges of the hydriads who grew desperate enough to create them, and unfortunately they are stuck in this mental state until they die.

When they die, all of their souls are released and reaped by the celestials.

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