30 Kings of the Sea

1-King of Fugu Fish

The Royal Court of the King of Fugu Fish is a very dangerous place for anybody who the King rightly or wrongly believes to be a political threat to him, but rather than having them hauled away and executed or cast into prison, he has them secretly poisoned. And not just his own courtiers, but if the rumours are true, foreign ambassadors and at least one king from another country have been poisoned by his secret agents. Visiting monarchs now refuse to dine with him out of fear and foreign ambassadors bring their own food with them.

2-King of Limpets

When the King of Limpets puts his mind to something, he never ever lets go of it until he has achieved what he wants. He has a very strong attachment to his country and never leaves it for any reason, and if his country were ever to be invaded he would order his soldiers not to retreat under any circumstances. He is rather overprotective of his Queen and his heirs.

3-King of Clownfish 

The country of the King of Clownfish only has a small and largely ceremonial army, which is used as a police force and royal bodyguards, but his country is within a much larger country whose armed forces could deliver a powerful “sting “ to any would be invading army. As long as he stays on good terms with the King of said country, his country is in effect protected from invasion.

4-King of Octopuses 

The King of Octopuses is a very clever monarch who has his “tentacles “ deep in international politics and is very good at camouflaging his real intentions until it is too late for his enemies to do anything about it. He likes inserting himself into tricky situations and normally succeeds in this where other monarchs fail, and he makes a formidable opponent and a worthy friend. Most of the other monarchs like to stay on his good side.

5-King of Giant Clams

The King of Giant Clams has a beautiful and intelligent daughter named Pearl who has pride of place at his court, and many of his fellow Kings want him to marry Pearl off to one of their princes. However, the King of Giant Clams gets very snappy whenever anybody brings the subject up. Pearl loves her father, but she wishes he would at least let her leave the royal palace, but her father will have none of it, as he sees his Pearl as the most important part of his life and can’t bear to be without her. She wants to visit Terraquestone, but her father absolutely refuses to let her, even though she has promised not to enter the Gygaxian Gyre.

6-King of Sharks 

The King of Sharks is hated and feared by his own subjects and other monarchs alike, as he possesses large and capable armed forces and more than once he has used them to aggressively conquer small kingdoms that used to be on his borders until they found themselves unwillingly inside his borders. He wants to get his  hands on Pearl, but knows it would be very hard to breech the fortifications on the borders of the King of Giant Clams. He is a harsh ruler, known for having the homeless beggars of his kingdom put to death.

7-King of Remora Fish 

The King of Remora Fish has attached himself very firmly to the King of Sharks .His own armed forces are relatively small , but by fighting alongside the far larger and more capable armies of the King of Sharks, they are able to plunder plenty of battlefield loot and take everything from the conquered civilians who have the bad fortune to fall into their hands. The King of Sharks finds him to be a bit irritating sometimes, but prefers to have his forces fighting with him rather than allying with the armed forces of some other kingdom.

8-King of Whirlpools

The King of Whirlpools not only allows none of his subjects to leave his country for any reason whatsoever, but anybody who gets too close to his borders- traders, would be tourists, travellers, is arrested by the border guards and dragged into the country, where they either become productive citizens and start families or disappear into his dark dungeons. Once an army from another kingdom invaded, but it lost the war and not one of its soldiers ever returned or escaped from the Kingdom of Whirlpools. Not much is known about his Kingdom, but he is said to have a very strong personality cult and make everything revolve around him.

9-King of Leeches

The King of Leeches is heartily hated by his nobles and his lesser subjects alike because of his hugely high taxes, which suck them almost dry, leaving them with just enough to live on if they are poor and to keep up their noble status if they are noble.

10-King of Crabs 

Nobody ever sees the King of Crabs in public when he is not wearing a full suit of plate armour, and his soldiers are also heavily armoured, even the lowest ranks. Despite his armour it is said that he is a soft man inside, with a rather sweet centre that very few people ever get to see. He believes that to show softness in public is weakness. Recently he has got a bit plumper so his armourers are busy making a new, larger suit of royal armour for him to “moult” into.

11-King of Fire Coral

The King of Fire Coral has a very unpleasant and irritating personality and is quick to make barbed comments and stinging remarks, not just to his underlings but even to other monarchs of equal status to himself. So even the most social climbing nobles don’t enjoy staying at his court much. He once asked a courtier “Do your arms ache from all that social climbing that you have been doing recently?”

12-King of Moray Eels

The feared warrior King of Moray Eels lives in the mountains and he and his soldiers and warriors make lightning raids on the people on the plains in the neighbouring country. It is very hard to deal with him because his country is very well defended, and the cost of an army big enough to block all the passes would be enormous, the taxes hurting the people of the plains more then the raids do.

13-King of Tidal Waves 

The King of Tidal Waves commands a mighty superpower, but he is not into making war unless he either absolutely has to or is grossly provoked into it. If he did make war, he could conquer most of the nearby countries, although the King of Moray Eels would most likely be able to stand fast within his mountain kingdom. However, he prefers trade to war, which is expensive and causes a lot of death and destruction. If he did make war, however, he would be absolutely merciless.

14-King of Herring

Most monarchs want to be known about, but it is said that the King of Herring sneaks out of his palace now and then to blend in with the crowds and find out what is really going on beyond the palace walls. No one knows if this is mere propaganda or if it really does happen, but it is likely to be a bit of both of these. Certainly, he has made some popular decisions recently but it could just be the result of good advice.

15-King of Wrecks 

The royal ancestors of the King of Wrecks only ruled a vast empire the size of that of the King of Tidal Waves, but wars, independence movements, bad ministers and a plague of disease caused most of it to break up violently, and what remains intact is a city state with  enough territory to feed its population attached. His small army, only five hundred men strong, still wears the uniforms and carries the weapons of the legions of long ago, and his small royal court still has the titles and clothing styles of the long lost empire.

16-King of Electric Eels 

The armed forces and the police of the King of Electric Eels carry electroshock weapons, the death penalty is carried out by the electric chair, and on the plus side, the country has a strong electrical grid, and everyone who is not homeless has reasonably priced power, and he is popular because of that.

17-King of Storms

The only legitimate son of the King of Storms died recently in a shipwreck because of a drunken crew, and he is in a raging furious mood as a result. The luckless captain managed to survive the shipwreck, only to be drowned on the King’s orders. Few people, apart from the royal jester, who was the one chosen to break the terrible news, dare to go anywhere near him at the moment, not even the Queen.

18-King of Angelfish 

The King of Angelfish is a reasonable man in some ways , but is very religious as well, with a very low tolerance for heresy, to the point where known heretics, if convicted, are burned alive in the main city squares and their ashes scattered. At first most of his people agreed with him, but they are getting sick of the constant purges, and the occasional Urn Beast that rises as a result of them. Surely, they feel, there cannot be so many genuine heretics around and at least some of the King’s victims must be innocent. If he carries on this way, sooner or later either a palace plot or a rising of the people will dethrone him, but his excessive religious beliefs blind him to this fact.

19-King of Flatfish 

The towns of the King of Flatfish are dug deep into the ground, and in wartime or when tornadoes show up, a siren sounds and a concrete dome covers the cities to protect them. The King stays out of trouble with other countries as much as he can.

20-King of Dolphins 

The King of Dolphins is an interesting and intelligent ruler, and his secret agents have a code consisting of clicks when they talk on electronic devices, that unless one has a decoder, makes it impossible to understand. The King of Sharks once tried to invade his Kingdom, only to find his supply convoys ambushed and looted, and after a few battles retreated.

21-King of Sperm Whales

The King of Sperm Whales has a powerful kingdom that needs a lot of food and trade to sustain itself, and that has recently been interrupted by a war with the King of Giant Squid. The two monarchs absolutely detest each other, send would be assassins after each other, and do their best to destroy each other’s countries.

22-King of Giant Squid 

The formidable King of Giant Squid has his tentacles deep in international politics even more than the King of Octopuses does, and ended up in a war with the King of Sperm Whales as a result, that is doing untold damage to both kingdoms economically, politically, and in sheer loss of life.

23-King of Stingrays 

The King of Stingrays likes making treaties with other countries but there is always a sting in the tale. He is bankrolling the fight of the King of Giant Squid but wants half his kingdom’s mineral wealth in exchange for, threatening to withdraw all aid and military intelligence otherwise, and admires the greedy King of Leeches.

24-King of Seahorses 

In the country of the King of Seahorses, the males have the babies, and the Queen rather than the King has the power. The women are stronger, and whilst most of the males are not treated badly, they are very much treated as an inferior gender. Those males who  disagree are punished harshly, with the scold’s bridal or much worse punishment. The job of the King of Seahorses is to make legitimate heirs,preferably daughters, with his wife.

25-King of Cone Shells

The King of Cone Shells only rules a small walled city state, but he sends out assassins armed with poison needles to kill any rulers who seriously threaten it. That and the fact that his kingdom is too small to take over or economically dominate other countries means that his kingdom is rarely bothered. Even the King of Sharks fears being assassinated if he tangles with the King of Cone Shells.

26-King of Reefs

The King of Reefs welcomes people from any kingdom or queendom that is at peace with him. Trade flourishes, there is a large middle class, and people get along well nearly all the time. He hopes very much that the war between the King of Whales and the King of Giant Squids does not spill over into his kingdom and end up wrecking it.

27-King of Armoured Fish

The King of Armoured Fish is a warrior king with an army where a full one third of it is composed of plate armoured knights. Even commoners in his army can rise to knighthood if they are effective enough soldiers or carry out an act of true heroism. This means there are more lesser nobles in his country then anywhere else, so he needs to conquer more countries to hand out fiefs to his senior officers and plots of land to his knights.

Either he will soon have a mighty empire, or he will end up butting heads with larger empires then his and will end up overthrown and his country either divided up between them, or stripped of any large army so it can never again become a threat to it’s neighbours.

28-King of Sea Snakes

The King of Sea Snakes is another warrior king, but he prefers to send his army to “bite off” relatively small pieces of territory from other kingdoms and then fortify them in the hope of avoiding a full scale war. He is known to be grouchy and bad tempered, and few other monarchs want to risk “treading on” him as that would make him lash out at them.

29-King of Angler Fish

The King of Angler Fish has a daughter named Lucy, whose clever mind and physical beauty are said to outshine even Pearl, the daughter of the Clam King. Like the Clam King he is very protective of his daughter, but unlike the Clam King he has plans to use her in a trap to carry out a Red Wedding style massacre of members of another Royal Family who he hates. Lucy and Pearl met each other when their fathers were on a State Visit, and they are best friends.

30-King of Jellyfish 

The King of Jellyfish is very plump although almost nobody, for obvious reasons would say that to his face. On the surface he seems weak and rather aimless politically, but behind the scenes his tentacles reach deep into international politics and he will happily have political opponents poisoned or otherwise murdered if they get in his way. Underestimate him at your peril. Like the King of Fire Coral he can be unpleasant, delivering stinging remarks and barbed comments to courtiers who displease him.