LORE: The Seastress: Protector of the Yggdrasea

There are pieces of the Monster Coast that have seemingly been there forever. Stories that date so far back no one can remember a time where they hadn't already been cast into legend.

The Yggdrasea, the ocean tree, is one such piece of the Monster Coast. No one has ever seen it, but everyone knows someone who knows someone who has seen it. And it's never a clear picture. It's always when sailors are tossed overboard in a storm, as they're trying to get back to the surface they look down and see something... impossible. Just a glimpse.

Accounts differ, but the Yggdrasea is believed to be an anemone-like tree made up of pure energy, over a dozen stories tall, floating through the dark depths of the ocean, filling the waters with new life. Sailors have devoted their entire lives to track it down, but it moves with the current (or maybe it moves against the current... or maybe it just goes wherever it would like), making it nearly impossible to find. Some have sought it out for glory. Some for power. It is said that the magical properties of the Yggdrasea can heal any ailment - sailors have claimed of falling into waters near the Yggdrasea and coming out completely healed (but those could just be stories).

Over a hundred years ago a new creature emerged from the waters, something sailors had never seen before. It was a girl who kept changing shape: starting as a fish in the morning, then changing to a seal in the afternoon and then a stretch of seaweed in the evening. When pressed on who this child was, she claimed to be the daughter of the Yggdrasea. The Yggdrasea was known to populate the ocean with new life - crustaceans, algae, plankton, etc - but it had never been known to create life like this...

This little girl popped up everywhere on the Monster Coast - as a shark, a mollusk and even a great big whale. And slowly the folks of the Monster Coast started to learn more about her. She claimed that the Yggdrasea had created her to be a protector... that something was coming in the next hundred years or so that would mean the girl had to protect the tree.

Many years passed and the girl was spotted as fewer and fewer things until eventually she took on the semi-permanent form of a woman. Having had a chance to try out being everything in the ocean, she decided it was time to settle down into her true form. Sailors had taken to calling her the Seastress and now she officially adopted that moniker.

Evil-doers on the Monster Coast have always sought the Yggdrasea and now the prospect of someone actually knowing its location was too strong. The Seastress found herself constantly under attack. But she was far from helpless...

The Seastress is routinely attacked by the Angler-Bot of the Chaos Urchin Order (you can see him if you look closely)

Since the Seastress was born of the Yggdrasea, she holds a special connection to its life-giving powers. Every living thing on the Monster Coast has ingested or come in contact with the Yggdrasea's essence at some point or another - even just in the water they drink. The Seastress is able to manipulate those particles, pulling them out of her enemies and stealing their powers... momentarily changing herself to match them. It is a terrifying power to behold and one that keeps her feared amongst her enemies.

But the winds have started to change. More and more sailors claim to have seen the Yggdrasea... or perhaps it's just visions in their minds... but it has been about a hundred years since the Seastress was born and it might now be time for her to protect the tree...