The Triton

Mermaids do not exist. Beneath the roiling waves of the oceans of our world, there are no peoples, no creatures that resemble us, nor are there great cities built into the coral reefs or mountainous trenches of the seas. The humanity of our world is strictly ours: there is nothing else quite like us, no species that wars from within, no species that speaks and lives and fights and struggles and thrives and prays like us. The tyranny of power and its rigid hierarchies occur within human society and human society alone.

Magic is not real. The laws of physics command our world, along with those of other sciences: chemistry, biology, botany, astronomy, and so on. There exists no force beyond our understanding, no supernatural power that can be wielded to alter the world around us beyond the limits of human comprehension.

Most people live an unexceptional life. They are born, grow up, raise a family, and pass away. Our lives are a set of circumstances, an infinite series of consequences by our ancestors and their ancestors and the world and the stars and nothing, nothing in it matters. Only the chosen few among us will ever touch this godlike, esoteric thing that is greatness.

Or so we're told.