Seishi - Cilanis (Say - She)
“We are not built to last. Our bones soften with salt. Our names fade faster than coral. But while we live, we echo. We move through the world not like rivers carving stone, but like tides reshaping shorelines, not slow and patient, but immediate, overwhelming. Every Seishi is a song, and every generation a harmony rising, cresting, and vanishing beneath the next.
Let the long-lived call us impatient. Let the stone-rooted call us fickle. We are neither. We are fleeting, and that is why we matter."
Introduction
The Seishuri, more commonly known as the Seishi, are a species of amphibious humanoids whose coastal cities ring the eastern edges of Erothi like barnacles gilded in jade. Among Arora’s sapient peoples, none burn brighter nor fade faster. They are a people of water and wave, born for fluidity, movement, and change. Short-lived yet startlingly prolific, the Seishi live not for stasis but for momentum, carving legacies not in marble but in echo and motion.
Their lives are brief: few live past their fifth decade, and most pour their prime into a narrow span of years. But within that span, they achieve wonders. Obsessed with continuity and contribution, the Seishi record, catalogue, and preserve with fanatical precision, not for their own sake, but so their line, their house, and their people might endure beyond their own swift ending. They do not wait. They act. They pass knowledge like flame along a trail of dry reeds, and in that blaze they find their purpose.
To other species, they are enigmas: traders who always seem to know what you need before you do, emissaries who speak five dialects before the hour is out, artisans who design not for beauty, but for use. Among themselves, they are more intimate, more calculating, and far more political than they appear. Mating is a matter of bloodline and merit; a name is a ledger of legacy. Their society is built not on stone or creed, but on resonance, the deep belief that every life, no matter how brief, must add to the greater chord of civilisation.
The Seishi do not build empires of land, but of routes and reputation. Their traders and scholars are found across every coast of Arora, from the high canopies of Tianjin to the pearl-houses of the Medu Sea. They are the lifeblood of maritime commerce, the quiet hand behind countless treaties, the curators of histories no one else remembers. Their past with the Varlimni is complex, a tangle of bloodshed and cooperation, but now maintained with cautious peace, each people content to keep to their own domain: the forest and the shore.
To encounter the Seishi is to meet a paradox: a people at once intensely practical and deeply poetic, whose rituals serve reason, and whose songs record survival. They do not seek to outlast the world. They seek to shape it before their tide recedes.
Mechanics
Uncommon Humanoid Amphibian
Source:Arora Homebrew
Seishi are agile, amphibious humanoids born of coast and reef, known for their short lifespans, sharp intellects, and intensely meritocratic societies driven by trade, bloodline, and ancestral tradition.
Slender, smooth-skinned, and evolved for amphibious life, the Seishi trace their roots to the ancient tidal cities of Evrax and Komi. Their streamlined bodies and webbed extremities make them peerless swimmers, while their exceptional hearing and fast reflexes mark them as formidable navigators, musicians, and diplomats. Their minds burn brightly but briefly, most Seishi live only 50 years, and this brevity lends them a relentless urgency in all things: trade, innovation, courtship, and legacy.
Whereas the Yorimni are wanderers, Seishi are planners. Their coastal cities are hubs of commerce and culture, their networks of ritual clutch-bonding and ancestral line-tracking enabling social mobility unheard of in most societies. Within the span of a single generation, a Seishi clutch may rise from obscurity to rulership, or fall into disrepute and vanish into tide-worn ruins.
Their traditions, especially the harmonising ritual chants known as the Song of the Sea, are at once spiritual and practical, ensuring balance with the Nameless Currents of tide, fate, and bloodline.
You Might...
- Work tirelessly to secure the success and memory of your clutch.
- Strive for swift excellence in your field, fearing mediocrity more than death.
- Negotiate relentlessly and elegantly, whether in trade, reputation, or ritual union.
Others Probably...
- See you as impatient or overly calculating.
- Admire your grace and wit but struggle with your blunt efficiency.
- Assume your calm hides some deeper agenda or blood-feud.
Physical Description
Seishi are lean and sinuous, standing between 1 to 1.4 metres tall. Their skin ranges from slick grey-green to speckled blue or stone-white, often darkening in cooler climes. Their heads are smooth and flat, with large lidless eyes and slit nostrils capable of sealing underwater. Frilled crests, ridged skulls, and subtle throat-pouches are common, with most variation occurring between clutches rather than genders.
Though physically unimposing by human standards, their agility and aquatic adaptations make them swift and surprisingly strong swimmers. They live fast: reaching adulthood in six years, with most dying of natural causes by fifty. Despite this, they achieve in decades what other species require centuries to master.
Society
All Seishi belong to clutches, extended kin groups rigorously charted through matrilineal and patrilineal lines alike. Pairings are arranged based on genealogical optimisation, with offspring raised communally. Reputation, honour, and shared success drive every aspect of their society, where shame can ruin a bloodline, and triumph elevates entire generations.
Trade, diplomacy, and song bind Seishi society. Though formerly in conflict with the Varlimni, modern Seishi dominions focus on commerce and information, serving as mediators between realms. Their mastery of language, music, and law has made them critical players in the affairs of Erothi’s coastal nations.
Beliefs
Seishi revere the Nameless Currents, vast and impersonal forces that shape tide, fortune, and death. Ritual harmony is achieved through offerings, tidesong, and alignment with the rhythms of water and kin. Ancestor veneration is common: Seishi believe the deeds of the dead ripple outward like eddies, shaping lives yet unborn.
However, the recent spread of the human Taro Pantheon has disrupted traditional beliefs. Some young Seishi find solace in its structured theology, while elders fear it threatens the fragile balance between identity, bloodline, and tide.
Popular Edicts
- Advance your clutch’s honour and prosperity.
- Perfect your trade before your time runs dry.
- Negotiate before you draw a blade.
Popular Anathema
- Disgrace or falsify your lineage.
- Waste the gifts of your ancestors or the sea.
- Forsake a debt or treaty without cause.
Names
Seishi names often flow melodically, with rhythmic syllables and sibilant flourishes. Clutch-names are formal, tied to line or region, while individual names reflect aspirations, talents, or omens seen at birth.
Sample Names: Veleshi, Marosh, Suliin, Karesh, Tiroka, Nevai, Shiru, Taless, Vosha, Kalessan
Seishi Mechanics
- Hit Points: 8
- Size: Medium
- Speed: 25 feet
- Attribute Boosts: Dexterity, Intelligence, Free
- Attribute Flaw: Constitution
Species Traits
- Amphibious Physiology: You can breathe air and water equally well, and gain the Breath Control general feat as a bonus feat.
- Webbed Extremities: You have a swim Speed of 15 feet.
- Slippery Skin: You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to checks made to Escape. At 5th level, this increases to +2 if you’re in water or recently submerged.
- Rapid Reflexes: You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Reflex saves against area effects.
- Short-Lived Spark: You gain one additional General Feat at 1st level.
"Flesh is fleeting, but function endures. Let the long-lived call it haste, we call it efficiency."
Biology
To the outsider, the Seishi present a paradox: delicate yet resilient, ephemeral yet endlessly calculating. Their forms are sculpted by the interface of land and sea, their lives balanced between breath and water. Unlike the stoic Mni or robust Urmans, the Seishi have no pretence of permanence. They live with biological clocks wound tight, and they do not waste seconds.
An amphibious species with a lean, digitigrade frame, Seishi physiology is a marvel of aquatic adaptation honed for speed, efficiency, and stimulus response. Their skin, ranging from slick grey greens to iridescent blues, is smooth and lightly scaled, sensitive to vibration, temperature, and salinity changes. Moist but resilient, it enables both efficient heat regulation on land and hydrodynamic flow through water. Most possess vestigial dorsal ridges and bioluminescent patterning in youth, though these usually fade with age.
They breathe via lungs but retain finely ridged gill folds along the neck and collar, allowing for long periods of breath-holding and rudimentary water-gas exchange. Their eyes are large and shielded by a transparent nictitating membrane, perfectly attuned to both dim subaquatic light and the bright glare of coastal sun. Echolocation, low-frequency vibration detection, and acute pitch memory grant them extraordinary awareness, particularly in murky or noisy environments where others falter.
The Seishi are small and agile, typically standing between 1 and 1.4 metres in height. Their bodies are built for flexibility over brute strength, with powerful hindlimbs and tails used for swimming, leaping, and maintaining aquatic balance. Their hands and feet are webbed but dexterous, allowing fine manipulation of tools and instruments even underwater.
Their skeletal structure is reinforced with light but dense cartilage, allowing for shock absorption and fluid, multi-planar motion. This makes Seishi particularly adept at navigating shifting coastal terrain, wave-battered reefs, and steep, algae-slick cliffs. Tail morphology varies between individuals, some are finned, others more serpentine, with subtle differences often reflecting familial bloodlines or regional origin.
Seishi reproduction is clutch-based and biologically urgent. Mating occurs seasonally during synchronised coastal festivals known as the Tidebinds, where compatible partners, often selected through rigorous genealogical scrutiny and social negotiation, come together for fertilisation. Females typically lay between three to five eggs, which are then communally guarded in carefully monitored nurseries along warm tidal shelves.
Once hatched, Seishi young, called sihlun, are altricial, requiring sustained social care. While biologically paired parents take initial responsibility, juvenile rearing is a collective duty, especially within trading guilds and knowledge houses. Though cross-species coupling is rare, it is not taboo; however, no viable offspring have ever been recorded from such unions.
Seishi grow fast and burn bright. Juveniles reach mental maturity by age 7 and physical maturity soon after. Their lifespans rarely exceed 50 years, with most perishing between 35–45, not from disease or frailty, but from the wear of intense metabolic and cognitive load. This brevity drives much of their urgency and culture; where a human thinks in decades, a Seishi thinks in cycles, and spends every moment chasing efficiency, progeny, or perfection.
Age is not venerated but measured in terms of what has been achieved. Those who live past 40 are usually either masters of their domain, or bitter anomalies weighed down by regrets and second thoughts.
Seishi do not follow long seasonal cycles. Their biology is attuned to tidal patterns, moon phases, and microclimatic oceanic shifts. Skin pigmentation and body temperature subtly fluctuate across tidal seasons. Some experience hormonal spikes during spawning tides, altering behaviour and focus, though strict social structures and meditative techniques are used to manage these transitions.
Their cells regenerate quickly, aiding in minor wound recovery but also contributing to systemic degradation in older adults. Signs of age emerge rapidly, dulled skin tone, slowed reflexes, and fading bioluminescent nodes. These signs are neither concealed nor lamented; they are accepted as the cost of a fast-burning life well lived.
Seishi cognition is astonishingly sharp, fast-learning, intensely perceptive, and overwhelmingly focused. They retain information quickly and categorise it with ruthless precision. Memory is vivid and near photographic for the first two decades of life, though it often becomes fragmented or selective as stress accumulates with age. Where humans ruminate, Seishi execute. They make decisions quickly, and though sometimes prone to impulse, their risk assessments are typically correct.
This brilliance is offset by a lack of cognitive endurance. Extended contemplative thought exhausts them. They rely on intuition, social scaffolding, and distributed networks of experts to maintain complex institutions. While rarely philosophical, their scientific and logistical achievements are unmatched among short-lived species.
"The sea leaves no lineage unchanged, it sculpts the flesh and stains the bone, until even kin must learn each other anew by pattern and pulse."
Appearance and Adaptation
To encounter a Seishi is to witness the artistry of the tide made flesh. Their bodies are sculpted for liminality, neither fully of the sea nor of the land, but caught in a tension between the two. Their aesthetic is alien to human standards, yet no less striking: a harmony of streamline and gesture, water-slick grace and analytical poise. Beauty among the Seishi is not soft, but sharpened: angles, ripples, and the clean economy of movement born from generations shaped by survival in the surf.
Across the coastal cities of Komi and the misted archipelagos of Evrax, Seishi lineages diverge subtly in form and hue, tracing the long reach of their spawning tides and ancestral pools. No single Seishi looks exactly like another, yet their patterns, in colour, fin shape, eye morphology, form a codex read instinctively among their kind. What to the outsider seems merely variation is, to a Seishi, a complex language of age, status, and genetic clarity.
Seishi are slim and upright, with digitigrade legs and long torsos. Average height ranges between 1 and 1.4 metres, with significant flexibility in joint structure allowing for swimming, crouching, and climbing. Limbs are narrow but muscular, the musculature concentrated along the thighs, shoulders, and tail root for propulsion in water.
Their bones are a flexible composite of cartilage and hardened calcium nodules, reducing injury from pressure changes and blunt force. While they appear fragile, they are surprisingly robust in motion. Their tails, typically around one metre in length, provide counterbalance and communicative flicks in social settings.
Facially, Seishi possess elongated skulls, flat nostrils, and wide, almost lidless eyes. Their mouths are expressive, lined with fine, needle-like teeth designed for grasping rather than tearing. Cheek-frills and gill crests are common, and may twitch or flex subtly in response to emotional stimuli. These are not ornamental, they serve as both pressure regulators and social signifiers.
Their eyes range from bright gold to sea-glass green to inky black, often with dual irises or slit pupils adapted to changing light. Eye contact is precise and brief, a sign of both attentiveness and controlled emotion. Unlike most races, Seishi rely more on tonal nuance and body posture than on facial expression to communicate empathy or status shifts.
Skin textures among the Seishi vary by region: Evraxian lineages often exhibit smooth, eel-like sheens, while Komi-born Seishi have scale-slicked ridges and subtle bony plating along the shoulders and back. Pigmentation ranges from dusky green to aquamarine, slate-blue, and silvery grey, though brighter juvenile tones dull as individuals age.
Bioluminescent markings are most prominent in youth and ceremonial castes. These can manifest as pulsing stripes, swirls along the limbs, or nodes along the temples and neck. While rarely visible in full daylight, they are vibrant beneath moonlight or undersea, and are used in mating displays, rank declarations, and deepwater rituals.
Seishi do not cultivate companion species in the human sense, but their bodies are host to a number of beneficial microfauna. Symbiotic algae colonies assist in skin maintenance and salinity regulation, especially in youth. These colonies are carefully tended with mineral washes and are considered a sign of health and prestige.
They are susceptible to fungal infections and gill rot in stagnant environments, and thus prefer moving air, flowing water, and environments of fluctuating pressure. Certain coastal medical guilds cultivate tiny crustacean scavengers, known as skerrin, which assist in wound cleansing and are often worn in bracelet-like water cages by physicians.
"The land forgets its travellers; the sea remembers its stewards. In every tidepool and trade wind, the Seishi read the debts owed to journey and to home."
Habitat and Lifestyle
No species is so finely attuned to the mutable rhythms of sea and land as the Seishi. Their settlements cling to crag-bound shores, sheltered estuaries, and island chains where the currents shift in intricate patterns only their keen senses perceive. To an outsider, these towns and harbours may seem haphazard, but to the Seishi, they are symphonies of necessity and elegance, crafted to breathe with the tides rather than defy them.
Though amphibious, Seishi prefer the water's embrace, and few dwell more than a day’s walk inland from a saltwater source. Their architecture, customs, and daily rhythms pivot around tidal cycles, storm seasons, and the migratory habits of coastal prey. Even their commerce, though sprawling across the known world, is rooted in a deep-seated instinct: to move, to adapt, to trade the known for the uncertain horizon.
Seishi settlements are a marriage of necessity and artistry. Structures are built into cliff faces, atop tidal flats, or on floating rafts anchored to the seabed. Materials vary by region, basalt, coralcrete, woven kelp fibres, but all share an emphasis on flexibility and ease of repair.
Urban Seishi communities like those of Evrax are bustling hubs of commerce, ringing with the sharp cries of dock workers and traders. In contrast, isolated coves and smaller villages in Komi and Midang serve as quiet strongholds of tradition, where fishing guilds, genealogy houses, and clutch-vaults maintain ancient customs largely untouched by outside influence.
A constant negotiation with nature defines Seishi habitation. Dwellings expand and contract with the seasons; water routes shift between dry and flood months; communal tide charts are consulted with the same reverence other peoples reserve for religious texts.
Seishi are omnivorous but lean heavily on seafood: molluscs, fish, sea vegetables, and coastal grains form the bulk of their diet. Kelp-breads, fermented coralfruits, and spiced shellfish stews are staples in both rich and poor households. Inland communities trade dried sea goods for fruits, root vegetables, and salt-preserved meats.
Food preservation is a refined art among the Seishi. Drying, fermenting, and salting techniques extend perishable goods across trading voyages and seasonal famines. The highest culinary honour is to present a dish that balances sea and land offerings, symbolising the twin inheritance of their amphibious nature.
Seishi social instincts are communal and kinetic. While humans may form sedentary bonds rooted in territory or dynasty, Seishi loyalty is first to the clutch, the collective of bonded kin born of the same season and waters. Clutches function both as family units and vocational guilds, each tracing lineage and tradition through carefully maintained oral records.
Cooperation is instinctive, but not sentimental. A Seishi aids their kin and their cohort not from idealism, but because it is an ancient, proven pattern of survival. Emotional expression is subdued in public life: commitment is demonstrated through action, precision, and an unspoken economy of obligation and debt.
Their famous "Song of the Sea" traditions, complex choral harmonies that mimic currents and waveforms, are not merely art but mnemonic devices, encoding tide tables, migratory patterns, and historical treaties into communal memory.
The basic unit of Seishi society is the clutch, but beyond this are layered kinships of trade houses, navigators’ leagues, and guild cliques. Urban centres in Evrax may host dozens of overlapping clutches, each maintaining strict internal rites but cooperating pragmatically for economic gain.
Leadership is rarely hereditary. Instead, aptitude in reading the sea, negotiating contracts, or memorising genealogical epics determines social ascent. Positions of authority are assumed through consensus or proven expertise, and are revoked swiftly when competency falters.
Trade is sacred: to barter, to voyage, to connect disparate communities through shared currents, these are considered acts of spiritual merit as much as economic necessity. In this, Seishi differ sharply from many other species, for them, survival is tied not to land ownership, but to the ever-renewed bonds of commerce and oath.
"A lone sail vanishes beyond the mist, yet its echo seeds five more in its wake. To trade is to promise: that life will outpace silence."
Culture and Civilisation
Among the Seishi, culture flows like the tides they revere, ever in motion, ever reshaping itself while retaining the deep channels carved by ancestral memory. Though scattered across myriad coves and city-ports, the Seishi share unifying patterns of art, belief, and commerce that weave them into a singular civilisation without fixed centre or throne.
Trade, genealogy, and reverence for the unseen currents of fate dominate their social consciousness. Where humans build monuments to last, Seishi raise ephemeral shrines of driftwood and coral, trusting that what must endure will do so in the living mind rather than in cold stone. It is a culture shaped less by conquest than by the perpetual dance between scarcity, movement, and remembrance.
Seishi creativity is functional, precise, and often hidden beneath surfaces that seem plain to outsiders. They favour subtlety over grandeur: encoded songs, folding instruments, driftwood sculptures balanced on invisible tides. Their artistic traditions celebrate impermanence, echoing the ever-changing nature of their coastal homes.
Technological and commercial innovation is highly prized. A Seishi who improves a ship’s ballast, discovers a new salt-preservation technique, or brokers a stable trade route is revered long after warriors and singers are forgotten. Conflict, while not absent, tends to express itself economically, through trade rivalries, monopolistic sabotage, or the severing of mutual aid pacts, rather than open war.
Law, where it exists, is codified primarily through contracts, oaths, and clan records. Written law scrolls exist only to enshrine these fluid agreements; the real enforcement lies in reputation and collective memory.
Languages of the Seisic language group are sharp, flowing, and densely patterned with rhythm and tonal shifts, a reflection of their musical traditions and amphibious speech adaptations. Linguists divide Seishi tongues into a handful of major dialectic currents, all descended from Old Seishan:
- Jipi: Spoken in Evrax, noted for its quick shifts in pitch and tempo, facilitating rapid trade negotiations.
- Komese: Dominant in Komi, slower and more sonorous, with a richer tradition of genealogical recitations.
- Mida : Spoken along the coastlines of Midang and Tianjin and influenced by the Varlimni tongue, featuring extensive loan-words relating to commerce and diplomacy.
All Seishi dialects share an emphasis on rhythm and memory. Written Seishan is rare outside of ledgerkeeping; song and ritual preserve far more history than script ever could.
Religious belief among the Seishi centres on the Nameless Currents, unseen forces of tide, wind, and life, not personified as gods but acknowledged as sacred. Rituals aim to harmonise actions with these currents rather than beg favours from anthropomorphic deities.
Ancestor veneration is vital. Each clutch maintains oral epics tracing their lineages back through generations, believing that honouring one's bloodline ensures smoother paths in both commerce and fortune. Ancestral spirits are thought to dwell in specific eddies, reefs, and tidepools, whispering guidance or warnings to those who listen closely enough. The "Song of the Sea" practices serve both spiritual and practical functions, aligning singers with the tidal and migratory patterns that sustain Seishi life.
In recent centuries, the human-originated Taro Pantheon has made significant inroads among coastal Seishi populations, particularly in larger ports where human trade is strongest. While some clutches embrace the Taro deities as additional currents within the greater sea of fate, others view the pantheon as a disruptive foreign current that risks diluting ancestral obligations. Tensions occasionally flare between traditionalist clutches and Taro-converted merchant clans, each accusing the other of steering too far from the true tides.
Certain taboos anchor Seishi society. Foremost is the breach of contract: to break a sworn trade pact or genealogical oath is to become adrift, a pariah whose name is struck from tide-charts and clan songs. Such outcasts are treated with pity but no aid, and often perish within a generation.
Violence between Seishi clutches is rare but not forbidden. However, attacking during negotiations, sabotaging communal tide-works, or harming ancestral shrines are considered unforgivable crimes.
Other taboos vary by region: some coastal communities forbid the consumption of specific reef fish tied to ancestral myths; others enforce strict breeding codes to preserve clutch honour. Yet across all Seishi, one universal maxim endures: "Better to lose face with a stranger than lose honour with kin."</p]
"The reef shelters countless forms unseen from the surface; so too does history veil the true debts between kin and current."
History and Relations
The Seishi have no unified empire, no singular golden age etched in imperishable stone. Their history flows more like their blood and their tides: complex, overlapping, and often only half-remembered. Each cove, city, and clutch carries its own lineage of triumphs, betrayals, and tides both literal and political.
Yet common patterns emerge across their fractured chronicles: a rise from coastal hunter-fishers to preeminent traders and navigators, a long and bloody rivalry with inland peoples, particularly the Varlimni, and an enduring belief that survival depends not upon strength of arms but upon swiftness of wit, loyalty to clutch, and mastery of the hidden currents that move beneath all mortal ambition.
Seishi oral traditions speak of an ancient migration: amphibious ancestors who first emerged from deep inland riverbeds during the world's younger days, following the retreating waters as climate and earth reshaped Erothi. They spread outwards along the coasts of Komi, Midang, and Evrax, building settlements at every natural harbour they could claim and sustain.
Early human and Mni records describe the Seishi as elusive and strange: swift to flee when threatened, but relentless when defending their reefs or trade routes. Clutch alliances formed loose confederations when needed, dissolving again once immediate threats passed. The earliest known Seishi cities, such as Orrisea in Evrax, arose not through conquest but through accumulation: ports where goods, peoples, and promises gathered faster than could be denied.
Seishi civilisations tend to follow the tides of opportunity rather than rigid expansionist ambitions. Major trading hubs rise and fall according to currents both economic and ecological. When fisheries dry up, storms scour coastlines, or human wars disrupt overland routes, Seishi cities relocate or reform rather than cling to dying ground.
This fluid model of civilisation has insulated them from many of the devastating collapses that plague more rigid empires. Instead of long, slow declines, Seishi histories show patterns of migration, reform, and rebirth. Even the oldest port-clans of Evrax can trace at least two or three distinct "foundings" within their genealogies.
Innovation and exchange have driven their prosperity. New ship designs, salt-harvesting techniques, and navigation rites spread quickly across clutches, ensuring that no single community stagnates for long. Trade, not conquest, remains their principal engine of influence, and woe betide any who mistake commerce for weakness.
Relations with other peoples have fluctuated with shifting tides. Historically, Seishi clutches clashed bitterly with the Varlimni over river-mouth territories and sacred fishing grounds. In time, bloodshed gave way to a wary equilibrium: the Varlimni retreating deeper inland, the Seishi mastering the coastal currents. Formal treaties exist along parts of Midang's shores, while in Tianjing, ancient customs alone hold the peace.
With humans, Seishi relations are brisk and practical. They dominate certain maritime trade lanes and broker commerce between otherwise isolated human realms. Humans view them with wary admiration, respecting their seamanship while resenting their aloof mercantile superiority.
The Alemni are treated with cautious courtesy, valued as trading partners when useful but avoided when their political entanglements threaten to snare free clutches into long wars. Relations with the Yorimni, fellow wanderers of the waves, remain complex: sometimes cooperative, sometimes fiercely competitive, always conducted with an undercurrent of mutual respect for the sea's harsh judgement.
With other species, Urmans, Paokus, Kathuri, the Seishi maintain distant but functional ties, guided always by pragmatism rather than passion. They remember, more keenly than most, that currents shift without warning, and the wise mariner leaves many bridges unburned.
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