Merfolk
They're just humans! You know what those are, I'd hope. But the humans squatting on Inom are notably a little more than human, so I can't just stop there. By the time humans had entered space, humans (mostly furries) had begun to modify the human genome for both aesthetic and moral reasons.
The first humans to crash down onto Inom were prisoners, numbering in the thousands, aboard a shuttle escorting them to a prison colony on a standard route. This prison was tailored to their physiological needs-- wet climate & humid air inside, desert all around the facility-- as, to varying degrees, these prisoners had, at some point in their family tree, fish DNA spliced into their genome. "Merfolk" is a term they took for themselves to define their communities, before they were the only humans around on Inom. When confronted by their singularity, they dropped the word "human" and took "mermaid" for the name of their kind (except to sticklers about Earthly mythological physiologies, who insist on calling them "fishwomen").
They've taken to the nigh-constant rain of Inom just fine.
Basic Information
Anatomy
You know humans? Give them fish scales, fish tails behind their legs, gills, and any other fishy accoutrements depending on their specific imitated species. Unless they're not actually based on fish.
Biological Traits
Hair color, skin color, eye color... actually, you know the ocean? You know how biodiverse the ocean is? Take that biodiversity and apply it to this one species.
Genetics and Reproduction
It varies. Many of them give live births, while others have been modified to lay fish eggs. It depends on how much they or their ancestors were willing to commit to the bit. Those who lay eggs tend to still incubate the child for some time within their body, however. It makes laying tougher and clutch sizes smaller, but it's a far safer bet when it comes to protecting and nurturing an infant of human stock.
Growth Rate & Stages
This is another place where it varies significantly between merfolk, depending on their genetic modifications. Unmodified, it takes just as long as it does for the classic human to go from baby to adult. There are, however, illegal modifications which cause one's children to grow to adulthood much faster at the cost of needing much more food and being very socially immature. Being that the merfolk on Inom are prisoners for some reason or other...
Ecology and Habitats
Merfolk can live anywhere a human can, but they need more water than humans and tend to prefer wetter climates.
Dietary Needs and Habits
They need food like humans do, be it fruit or flesh.
Unlike most species cohabiting Inom with them, merfolk have a reasonably high tolerance for alcohol. Only the assyliads can handle alcohol better, and those wild dames can east arsenic without problem.
Biological Cycle
The dry months tend to be a bitch.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Humans are social creatures, and normal merfolk are no different. A little less social when you're sampling prisoners, however.
Domestication
"Cattle" are kept sedated on box-of-lips from birth. It's less cruel that way.
Uses, Products & Exploitation
Merfolk are the staple crop of Thriving's slavers, both because Thriving's slavers are mostly merfolk thus merfolk are what they know how to maintain but also because they can breed faster than most other species of their size.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
The merfolk of Inom primarily inhabit the Jungle of Queens. None have been able to venture beyond Anicoja.
Average Intelligence
Varies greatly. The prisoners were a real mixed bunch.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Merfolk are capable of just about anything anything a human is (fair color vision, acclimation to light levels, hearing within a range conducive to interspecies speech, weak sense of smell, alright sense of taste, and sensitivity to temperature, heat, and pressure) and more. Most have sensitive noses, particularly in regards to blood or fish oil, able to smell such spills from football fields away. Some even enter a state of blood-drunkenness if overexposed to the scent, attacking and devouring everything the can get their hands on, though usually it's gotta be fresh blood in order to activate this state; not dried, settled, or cooked.
Many merfolk are also capable of electroreception while even partially submerged in any water-based liquid or even encased in a heavy fog. This allows them to sense any other submerged living beings as well as any insulated electrical wiring.
Civilization and Culture
Major Organizations
Thriving is their main city, diverse of species though it may be; Empress Idony Blaine rules the city by metrics most convenient to merfolk.
Beauty Ideals
Refer to the individual ethnicities-- the rayfolk in particular.
Courtship Ideals
Appeal to greed or appeal to lust and you got yourself a wife. Maybe not a faithful wife, maybe not a wife who won't backstab you, but you got one. Usually. Not all criminals are assholes.
Relationship Ideals
The only thing everyone agrees on is is that you oughtta have one. This isn't a good way of going about it, but at least it's accepting of many different ways to structure it.
Average Technological Level
Thriving has reproduced reliable manufacturing methods for practical firearms in the last year or two, albeit those restricted mostly to the keepers of interests. Commoners still mostly use their hand tools for self-defense.
The fastest travel is either by riverboat or by woman-cart. All coal is pledged towards manufacturing, so there's nothing to power combustion engines.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
The merfolk of Inom speak English for the most part. Since there's a voice from every system in this corner of human space, the dialects have mixed together into what the few linguists among the merfolk call "Yansow English"
Common Etiquette Rules
Don't get caught, or at least be ready to suffer the consequences of your actions.
Common Dress Code
Most of them don't like jumpsuits. The Penitent do, but that's there prerogative.
Common Taboos
Lawbringers are seldom loved and every new rule they try and instate is met with the steel wool of scrutiny. Whether justly or unjustly, the law did wrong by every single one of the original crash survivors except the transit crew. Other than that, though, do as you will.
History
Humans fucked their planet up. There's no way around it. Ain't a species on Earth wild now at all. It's a planet of steel, zoos, and pets. Which is better than a sweltering dead ball bathed in a nuclear glow like it was on course to being, but it still means hundreds of species the people of, say, the twentieth century are familiar with have gone extinct.
When the rich abandoned Earth to climate annihilation and uncontested warheads, the ones they left behind gradually fixed shit. This was a slow process and many animals and plants perished. Most were, however, immortalized in the genes of spliced women. The fishfuckers got their gene mods later in the game than most furries but by that time, there were more than a couple hundred billion humans alive, and now there's trillions, so there's quite a lot of merfolk out there.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
The merfolk of Inom are a threat and a friend to everyone around them. They disrupt the status quo, at least. Being rather mundane compared to some of the species on Inom encourages merfolk to play nice and exploit the abilities of their neighbors, either as slaves or contractors.
The assyliads are a bit afraid of them, principally because of stories about how many human worlds have been rendered uninhabitable by idiocy, greed, and malice. Those slimefolk will survive anything; they're afraid for all their nice neighbors who didn't grow up on a post-nuclear hell planet.
Scientific Name
Earthly fishwoman
Origin/Ancestry
Rayfolk (bony fish), sharkfolk (cartilaginous fish), barelies (mostly-human), whalefolk (aquatic mammals), squidfolk (squishy invertebrates), crabfolk (hard invertebrates), frogfolk (amphibians)
Lifespan
Humans live forever if you don't kill them these days.
Conservation Status
Humans breed fast, even ones with gills. That's sorta their edge in the world of Inom; they have among their number many bearers who can just birth triplets or even larger batches in the span of less than a month. Humans far more threaten the survival of other species than is their own threatened.
Average Height
5'6'' to 6'0''
Average Weight
130 to 185 lbs
Average Length
Varies wildly, actually.
Average Physique
There's a tendency for hardened, muscly bodies, although the whalefolk pose a notable exception due to the nature of their stock.
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Colorful as fish are. Especially fish that have had icthyophiles' artistic liberties applied.
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