Tentaclefolk

Tentaclefolk diverged from merfolk when a volcanic eruption trapped a small city in an enclosed body of water, unable to contact the rest of merfolk society or sustain themselves on the sea creatures in the lagoon. They begged the gods for help, but had been lax in their worship, and the gods ignored them. Instead, they sought help from the nymphs that inhabited the nearby land. The nymphs used their magical abilities to combine the genes of the merfolk with those of the octopi that lived in the lagoon. Their fishlike tails were replaced with the black lower body of an octopus, and they used their tentacles to drag themselves across the land and back into the ocean. Although the journey was less than a mile, many of them died. While the nymphs could have easily blasted a canal for them to swim through, they wanted to test the capabilities of their magic, and saw the desperate merfolk as an opportunity to experiment. The mutated merfolk, now called tentaclefolk, never fully forgave them, and still harbor a strong distrust of fay. They did, however make it back to Council territory, where the Council of Merfolk became the Oceanic Alliance.