Captain Cuttle (his/her true name is beyond human perception but the parts we can see are so beautiful that after seeing everything afterwards would be so ugly that you would gorge our own eyes out) is a cuttlefish and captain of the HMS shippymcshipface (also the only ship named by the public).

All cuttlefish on his/her planet are sapient one of very few species that are consistently sapient as individuals. Cuttlefish very very rarely from groups of more then a couple of hundred, they simply never developed the systems that a society needs to function long term with more then that human of members in constant contact, they know about them but regard them as a silly surface stiffy idea. Using rapid colour changing cuttlefish can assume almost complete command over non sapient beings in seconds. Sapient beings require longer several sessions and can be resisted by have a strong and active superego or by wearing kaleidoscope glasses. Each cuttlefish maintains control over as many animals as they area can support. This means cuttlefish clans effectively control the sea around wherever they are.

Cuttlefish society is very diverse in every way but they are a few things that are consistent. Cuttlefish was a unassailable sense of racial superiority, there no hatred in it, we are simply not worthy of hatred. The other things is that they always pay there debts. If they have been wronged they will go to great length to take revenge. If someone does them a favour they always play it back. A long time ago every escalating revenge and counter revenge was getting to such as level it was effecting the ecosystem in response to this a special class of cuttlefish emerged you recorded exactly who was in debt to who for how much. This class is sacrosanct, to stop them from doing there work is punished by death. To help everybody up to date this class, informally down on the surface as debtsingers, each have Blue whale under there control (which only they are allowed to do), the whale song enables them to communicate quickly and over a long distance. There is presumed to be some central list but this is only theorised. It is widely believed that if a cuttlefish dies with debts to pay to revenge unenacted that they will faces the gravest punishment imaginable of being reborn as something other then a cuttlefish. There strictures against being in debt combine with their unassailable sense of racial superiority to mean that any debt involving another species, for example a human, have to be repaid several thousand times over to make an equal payback. So if you save a cuttlefishes life they will save the life of your kin several thousand times, even if it takes generations. If some were to kills one (a fortunately rare event) many thousands would killed in revenge. These debts are very exact when killing they will kill an exact number and immediately stop when it is reached, whilst they are many a warlord that have come to a bad end when the debt is repaid and the protection of the thousands of creatures even a single cuttlefish can command is suddenly and instantly withdrawn.

Captain Cuttle once took command of a band of Somali Pirates though a combination of hypnotism, intimidation and being a very successful pirate. He/she/it insisted they look and act like the idea of pirates from the golden age of piracy, up to having legs removed just to put a peg leg there. When the Royal navy arrive to deal with this he/she/it immediately switched sides because the navy had a cooler ship and more snazzy uniforms. Due to captain cuttle's crazyiness, possible mind control and the fact that they didn't kill anybody meant that the pirates managed to get away with long a few months in prison. Due to not wanting to cause diplomatic incidences and the valuable intelligence provides Captain Cuttle Joined the navy without incidence. In a few years he/she/it worked up his/her/its way up to captain. He served with distinction during the handist insurrection blow up several giant tentacle monsters.