Murphy spent nearly an hour in the reception room talking with Katerina, a rookie Colossal Reef priestess. At last, he finished organizing the rewards for the new quest he was preparing to announce.
He'd needed to learn from Katerina what valuable things the merfolk possessed and how much each was worth. Only then could he properly plan the different tiers in the reward pool for the upcoming catch-up event.
He hadn't known until he asked, and the answer truly surprised him. These mermaid sisters had quite a lot of good stuff.
They had natural Abyssal pearls that could enchant armor with "Underwater Breathing" and "Frost Armor," fine weapons made using their "water-forging method" and designed for underwater combat, and the shipwreck treasures the merfolk found while roaming the ocean floor.
As Katerina explained, the Atlantean merfolk didn't use easily rusted coins in their internal trade, so they didn't have much need for precious metals.
But greedy land-dwellers loved those shiny things, and among the important goods the Kingdom of Atlantis paid in tribute to the ancient Kingdom of Kalem every year were large quantities of precious metals mined from beneath the sea.
It was also thanks to Katerina that Murphy learned the Kingdom of Atlantis lay beneath the Misty Sea, offshore near the border between the Dark Mountains and the ancient Kingdom of Kalem. There, they held a vast and bountiful stretch of ocean, and under the protection of fierce dragonkin and the Abyssal Sovereign, they lived carefree lives with no need to worry about making ends meet.
The merfolk kingdom was a federation made up of seven provinces. Katerina's Great Reef Province lay on the kingdom's frontier, close to the Land of Origins.
It was a standard exclave. The merfolk had long maintained a presence in Great Reef Province