Order of the Kraken

The Order of The Kraken, or The Order for short, is the smallest, yet most violent denomination of the Deep Sea Faith.

Founding / History
The Order was founded sometime soon after the Valorant War, as 2 consecutive defeats drove Barbossan residents to desperation. At the start, The Order was just a collection of the more radical members of the faith, but as their numbers slowly grew, they eventually made themselves official. For a while, they remained as just a radical deviation, but some members built their own theories and beliefs, some so radically opposed to the primary Deep Sea Faith group that eventually they were seen as outcasts, and soon thrown out of the religion for good. They felt betrayed, and this feeling only fueled their radicalism more.

The Order didn't change much for a while. Only when a young Antonio Rosa discovered one of the Kraken's teeth, did things start to get serious. While he was still just governor of Varina, Antonio was walking along the docks, meeting with a merchant captain when a random member of the crew presented a weird object. It was a huge tooth, and the sailor brought it to Antonio hoping he would know what it was. He also told Antonio he found it along the norther beach of Irulan, somewhere between S'koro and Cascade while resupplying. Antonio spent days looking through archives, both in Port Rosa and the Isle, eventually turning his eyes to Palomara. There, he found a book on The Kraken, where a paragraph explained that the Kraken is said to have lost multiple teeth when it devoured Eldham, leaving them lost to the wilderness. It also stated that only a single tooth was ever found, and it was infused into a sword, granting its wielder mild control over the sea. Those who did not control the blade, but stayed close to it were driven mad, striking out at anyone at random. However, the Kraken deemed the man unfit for the privilege of its use, swallowing him, as well as the sword, whole the second he was on the sea again.

Then, Antonio had an idea. He brought the tooth to the armory, not telling them what it was and instructed them to build a cutlass infused with the tooth. A week later, his blade was ready. He kept it wrapped in a towel, fearing what would happen if he decided to hold it properly. Nothing happened after a month, so he assumed he did something right. He eventually built up the courage to hold it. As he unwrapped the towel, he noticed how light it was, along with a faint orange pearlescent glint in the blade. When he held it by the handle, he felt it instantly become warm, and soon extremely hot. He couldn't bring himself to drop it, though, and it eventually cooled off. He then ran tests, proving that it was lighter, and almost seemed to swing itself in a form so perfect, it would be impossible for a human to recreate. It was also borderline indestructible, never seeming scratched or dented. Even snapping it seemed proved fruitless. He then tried to control the ocean, but after hours of failed attempts, he deemed it to just be a myth.

As days went on, Antonio became increasingly paranoid of the sea, to the point where he would refuse to go near it at all. He also started to notice some of his close members of government start to become short-tempered, as well as new faces striking up a conversation with him, or even just standing near him awkwardly. Exactly 3 months after he first held the cutlass, he had a strange dream.

"I was sitting, alone, in a small rowboat. I was completely surrounded by empty ocean, and a thick fog prevented me from seeing more than a few meter in any direction. The water was unusually dark, almost sticky. After sitting in silence for what seemed like hours, a shadow-like humanoid figure started walking on the water towards my boat, holding the sword outright towards me. It handed me the sword and slowly vaporized into the air. I suddenly felt the urge to look into the water under me, and after doing so, I saw a single large eye staring back at me, just under the surface. After a moment of staring at each other, the gigantic creature rapidly swam off, and a large tentacle rose from the water, slowly coming back down to create a wave that pushed by boat to the shore. As soon as the boat contacted the sand, I awoke."

Immediately after waking up, he threw on clothes and rushed for the harbor. The docks were empty, and not a single ship was in sight. The sun had barely risen yet, and a light fog lay over the sea. Suddenly, a ship pulled into the harbor, and a single sailor got off and met Antonio. It was the same sailor that gave him the tooth. He asked "aye, ye wanna spill some blood?", and Antonio followed him onto the ship. Before he could wrap his mind around what was happening, he found himself in the middle of an intense cannon fire volley between his ship and another vessel. He began to order men around, and personally descended to the gun deck and redirected their aim to below the waterline. Soon, their ships got close enough to board each other, and men from his ship rushed in droves to their opponents. Within minutes, they had slaughtered every sailor from the other ship, and his men began dumping their bodies overboard, laughing wildly as they did and screaming "BLOOD AND BONE FOR THE KRAKEN" and "FOR THE ORDER". Antonio joined in the chaos, shoving numerous corpses into the cold sea. Then, he blacked out, and woke up in his bed again.

He spent hours trying to figure out what just happened, and then he remembered what the sailors were shouting. "FOR THE ORDER", he had heard of The Order before. Then, it clicked. He was being tested by the Kraken, and he had passed. He proved that he was worthy of handling the blade's power. He also began to remember the faces of his fellow sailors. They were the same men who randomly started spending more time around him. They were The Order, and they just made him their leader.

Beliefs of The Order
The history of the Kraken is largely still argued by members, so its story is a bit skewed. What they do agree on is as follows;

"The Kraken ruled the sea. It had full control over the tides, the current, the waves and the sea life. There were gods for everything, yet the god of the land, whose name has been lost to time, would always try to spite the Kraken. For an unknown reason, the god eventually stuck out at the Kraken, leaving a deep gash in its head. This enraged the Kraken, who then proceeded to swallow the god while, flooding most of Eldham in the process. Due to the difficulty of swallowing a literal god, the Kraken lost several teeth, which would eventually be lost to the elements as time passed. While the flooding did recede over time, most of Eldham's land was lost to the waves, leading it to have the odd terrain it has today. After that, the Kraken would remain mostly dormant, only manifesting itself physically to feed. Once humans began populating Eldham, the Kraken would solely target their ships or coastal cities, due to their inability to fight back."

From here, the story remains in line with the mainstream Deep Sea Faith. Where it begins to differ again is their interpretation of the Kraken's wants. While the mainstream belief is that it simply is pleased by violence, members of The Order believe it feeds off violence, needing usual human sacrifice in order to remain satisfied. They fear that, should they fail to satisfy the Kraken, it would resume its ways of attacking Humans. In order to maintain this, they frequently raid ships or foreign coastal cities, making sure to throw anyone and anything they kill into the sea, feeding it to the Kraken. They also believe that Sirens are sent by the Kraken to retrieve the bodies, but if living humans remain when the Sirens arrive, they would be dragged to the depths along with the corpses. This leads to the raiders always leaving before they can see the bodies get taken, never truly knowing if they were right or not. Along with this they believe that Sirens are sent by the Kraken to attack ships, regardless if they are Barbossan or not. So, whenever a ship goes missing, raiding is usually amped up, due to them assuming the Kraken was not pleased enough. Sometimes, raids are not enough for the Kraken, leading to brutal wars.

With the recent events involving Segra, and her destructive nature, many in The Order have chosen to ally themselves to her, with a common consensus being "Segra devastates the land, the Kraken devastates the sea." This caused even more division, and sometimes outright fighting between the mainstream and The Order, due to the mainstream believing that Segra and the Kraken are enemies.

Life as a member of The Order
The Order has no set hierarchy or leadership system, aside from Antonio owning the Kraken's tooth cutlass. Rather, they operate on a basic system of respect, where the members with the most victims to their name are looked on with higher regard, and often have more of a say in how things are ran.