Silkie

Silkies

Silkies are mystical shapechangers of the sea, known for their dual existence as sleek, intelligent marine beasts in the water and eerily beautiful humanoids on land. Rooted in ancient seafaring folklore, they shed their glistening seal-like coats to walk among land dwellers—though they always remain creatures of the ocean at heart.

Aquatic Form

Body: In their natural form, Silkies resemble large, elegant seals with luminous, intelligent eyes and fur that shimmers with an opalescent sheen, often echoing the colors of coral reefs or stormy seas.
Coat: Each Silkie’s seal-hide is unique and sacred, bound to their identity. Without it, they are trapped in human form—vulnerable and incomplete.
Movement: Beneath the waves, they move with otherworldly grace, using strong, flippered limbs and powerful tails to slice through the currents.

Humanoid Form

Skin: Upon shedding their coat, Silkies become humanoid, but retain subtle marine traits. Their skin remains soft and slightly slick, with a hint of seal-like texture. It often bears patterns reminiscent of their fur—spots, streaks, or wave-like markings.
Eyes: Large, dark, and liquid, their eyes betray their oceanic origin—reflecting moonlight like deep water and retaining a seal’s soulful gaze.
Hair: Silkie hair is thick and sea-salt coarse, flowing like kelp and ranging in color from storm cloud gray to brine-washed brown or pearl-white.
Features: Though otherwise human in structure, their faces often seem ethereal—serene, smooth, and subtly otherworldly, with rounded cheekbones and the faint scent of salt.
Hands and Feet: Even in human guise, their fingers are faintly webbed, and their nails often resemble tiny shell slivers. Their steps are quiet and strangely fluid, almost as if the sea still pulls at their heels.

Transformation

The transformation requires their physical seal coat. It is an emotional and mystical act—deeply tied to their identity and autonomy. Theft or loss of this coat renders them unable to return to the sea, making them the subject of many tragic ballads and whispered island legends.

Culture and Habitat

Silkies dwell along the Mercian Isles, often in semi-submerged coastal grottos or hidden isles cloaked in sea mist. They are known for haunting songs, traded stories, and the rare beauty of their sea-bound cities, which rise and fall with the tides. While some travel far on ocean currents or personal quests, most remain fiercely tied to their kin and the call of the waves.

Silkies of the Mercian Isles

Culture and Ethnicity of Local Peoples

Silkies are an ancient and enigmatic people native to the Mercian Isles and the surrounding seas. Though capable of assuming human form by shedding their sacred seal-like coats, they are fundamentally oceanic beings. Their society values fluidity, loyalty, and ancestral memory, passed down in song and tide. Though biologically distinct, Silkies consider themselves part of the broader “Mercian Sea-Kin” cultural sphere, alongside the mercian humans and Shontati coastal dwellers, though they maintain a mysterious and slightly aloof posture toward land-dwellers.

Physical Description and Geographic Location

Aquatic Form: In the water, Silkies resemble large, intelligent seals—sleek, swift, and able to communicate through body language, song, and expression. Each has a unique pattern to their pelt, critical to identity.
Humanoid Form: When on land, they assume a lithe, vaguely ethereal humanoid appearance—retaining webbed fingers, sea-textured skin, and seal-dark eyes. Their form is attractive yet uncanny.
Location: The Silkies reside in kelp-rich shallows, cliff-sheltered coves, and the submerged cave-cities of the Mercian Isles. Their settlements blend naturally into their environment, often carved into sea walls, coral formations, or hidden lagoons accessible only through labyrinthine underwater passages.

Gods and Heroes (Silkie Tradition)

Silkie spiritual life is shaped by the old rhythms of the sea and the ever-shifting boundary between shape and spirit. Though they pay distant respect to the major pantheons, their deepest reverence is given to three figures: one of mythic ancestry, the other two of fragmented memory.

The Tide – Nerina of the Deep (Old God)

Nerina, one of the destroyed Old Gods, is considered by the Silkies to be their original divine mother. Though shattered and lost in the Demonic Wars, her consciousness still flows through the deepest ocean currents and cold trenches. Silkies believe their coats are fragments of Nerina’s own divine essence—making each individual a bearer of a sacred legacy. While surface religions have largely forgotten her, Silkie songs still whisper her name on moonlit tides.

Silkie druids and shamans meditate in deep, untouched caverns to listen for her faint pull, claiming her spirit speaks not in words, but in pressure, current, and silence.

The Voyager

The Silkies hold The Voyager in high esteem as a rare land-born god worthy of reverence—not for his power, but for his perseverance, cunning, and respect for the sea’s will. Known to surface dwellers as Odysseus, the Voyager was the human king who helped forge peace with Mercia, but to the Silkies, he is remembered as Wave-Friend—the one mortal who endured the sea's trials without defying it. During his ten-year exile, it was a pod of Silkies who guided him through drowned caverns and starless straits, teaching him to read currents as language and tide as prophecy. In return, he safeguarded their secrets and upheld their honor. His cleverness and humility in the face of oceanic power became a tale of balance—land and sea walking together, neither conquering the other.

The Story Teller– Sulimon

Though not a sea deity, Sulimon is revered by Silkies for his role in transformation and narrative redemption. Many Silkie bards consider themselves disciples of Sulimon, especially those who live among land-dwellers, carrying stories across both shore and sea. His tale—of power lost, love betrayed, and fate rewritten—mirrors the Silkie experience of shedding identity and reclaiming it with grace.

Heroes of the Silkie Folk

Silkie history remembers its greatest figures not as gods, but as Ebb-Bound—legendary spirits that now ride the currents and guide their people invisibly.

Selkaar the Twice-Drowned – A Silkie who lost his coat to a surface-lover, drowned himself in despair, and was reborn by finding a way to breathe the tide without his skin. He is now the guardian of wayward Silkies who have been stranded or stolen from the sea.
Aelra of the Kelp-Spire – A matriarch who tamed a leviathan through song and founded the hidden city of Caernu’mai. She is remembered as a judge and peacemaker, her spirit said to calm tempests when her name is sung in harmony.
Molrin the Keeper of Coats – A silent warrior who guarded the sacred Vault of Pelts during the Age of Betrayal, when surface kings hunted Silkies for their skins. His name is used as a blessing of protection, especially among Silkie youth.

Modern Religious Practice

Most Silkies do not worship through temples or offerings. Their devotion is expressed in rituals of shedding, transformation, and remembrance. Sacred caves, moonlit shallows, and coat-gatherings (when young Silkies are first entrusted with their sealskin) serve as holy events. Songs, tides, and the stars form the triune lens through which they understand the divine.

Defining Cultural Aspects

Underwater Settlements: Unlike humanoid cities, Silkie underwater settlements reflect their seal form—domed grottos, spiraling tunnels, and airless stone chambers where sound carries and murals tell ancient stories. Entrances are often small openings only a Silkie in seal form can pass through.
Submerged Agriculture: Silkies cultivate vast seaweed gardens on rocky slopes, tending beds of bioluminescent algae and shellfish colonies. Their “terraces” are vertical reefs, and their agriculture emphasizes ecological balance.
Leadership and Lorekeeping: Rule typically falls to the Coat-Bearers’ Council, composed of the eldest and most respected Silkies who still possess their original coats. These leaders serve both as lawmakers and lore-keepers.
Trade and Contact: Though rare, Silkies do trade with the surface—primarily through trusted intermediaries in their humanoid forms. Their goods include polished coral instruments, rare bioluminescent inks, and psionic shells used in storytelling or magic.
Warfare and Defense: In times of need, Silkies defend themselves with coordinated pod tactics. Their “navy” is less about ships and more about domesticated sea creatures, trap-laced trenches, and ritual duels in moonlit shallows.
Art and Performance: Silkie culture is rich in oral tradition. Songs sung underwater resonate through coral amphitheaters. Their art is tactile—carved shells, flowing kelp-woven tapestries, and scent-trails left on sacred stones.

Relationship with Other Local Ethnicities

Mercians: Silkies coexist with coastal Mercian fishing communities, though they maintain a cautious mystique. Romantic tragedies between Silkies and Mercians are common in both cultures’ folklore.
Shontati: These coastal traders often barter with Silkies, though never see their true cities. Shontati respect the Silkies' autonomy but are wary of their secrecy.
Lindus: On the fringes of Silkie range, Lindus naval explorers sometimes encroach into Silkie waters. Relationships are tense, marked by both alliances and incidents of captured coats.

Other Notes

Silkies fear losing their coats, which renders them unable to return to sea. This vulnerability is sacred and guarded fiercely.
Some exiled Silkies, unable to reclaim their coats, live as melancholy sea-walkers—unaging and estranged from both land and sea.
Silkies do not form permanent marriages. Romantic pairings are fluid, like tides, and raising young is communal.

History of the Silkies

I. The Tides Before Time (Prehistory & Mythic Origins)

In the dawn before memory, the oceans were ruled by the Old God Nerina, the Tide Mother. Her will shaped currents, birthed leviathans, and wrapped the world in a rhythm no landborn heart could follow. From her deep-wombed caverns beneath the Mercian Isles, she birthed the Silkies—first as beasts of the sea, then gifted them sacred coats woven from her essence so they might walk the shores and know the world of men.

This original gift, the Coat of Duality, symbolized not just transformation, but trust. The ability to move between worlds—seal in sea, person on land—was a sacred duty, not a right. Early Silkies lived in harmony with the tides, their cities formed from coral and bone, hidden deep within kelp forests and volcanic reef-caves. Their language was gesture, song, and ripple.

This era is called The Dreaming Deep, a time when Silkies claim to have spoken with whales, sung with storms, and communed with the scattered minds of other Old Gods still slumbering beneath the waves.

II. The First Sundering (Rise of Surface Civilizations)

The rise of human and elven civilizations brought new dangers. Land-dwellers saw the humanoid Silkies as beautiful, exotic, and tragic—often romanticized in surface folklore. Over time, legends spread: of men who stole Silkie coats and took them as wives; of women who drowned lovers to return to the sea; of shimmering coats worth a kingdom in gold.

This era became known as The Age of Sundering among the Silkies. Their people were hunted—some tricked, others caged, and many exiled after losing their coats. In response, Silkie society grew secretive and nomadic, scattering their deepwater cities and training guardians called Tidewardens to protect the sacred Vaults of Coats.

It was during this age that Molrin the Keeper of Coats became a hero of legend, defending an entire sanctuary of skins from human pirates who sought to enslave his kin.

III. The Surface Accord (Temporary Peace and Diplomacy)

Roughly five centuries ago, an effort at peace was brokered during a rare celestial convergence. A Mercian king named odesseus (also known as the The Voyager )was helped by a group of Silkie during his quest to get home. Inexchange, upon his return he called for a ceasing of hostilities and compensation to the silkie undersea kingdoms.

The Surface Accord was forged—an agreement between certain coastal communities and the Silkie enclave of Caernu’mai. It allowed for open trade in pearls, driftwood relics, and bioluminescent inks, while strictly outlawing the sale or possession of a Silkie’s coat.

For nearly a century, Silkies cautiously mingled with surface peoples. Many bards and historians acted as liaisons, recording Silkie stories and learning their strange fluid songs.

IV. The Age of Betrayal (The Breaking of Trust)

Peace was not to last. A Lindus merchant-prince, Tarn Velvyr, betrayed the Accord by capturing an entire Silkie pod during a diplomatic visit and smuggling their coats for arcane use. Silkies believe his actions cursed his bloodline, and within two generations, Velvyr’s family was reduced to madness, drowning, and ruin.

The betrayal shattered trust. The cities of Caernu’mai and Elaradune sealed their passages. Tunnels collapsed. Songs fell silent.

Only the most daring or exiled Silkies continued to walk among humans. Even today, most coastal people fear Silkie wrath, or whisper of cursed romances and ghost-song beneath the waves.

V. Modern Day (A Time of Shifting Currents)

Today, the Silkies remain reclusive but not stagnant. The tides are turning again.

Whispers tell of young Silkies questioning the old ways. Some have taken to land for good, blending with coastal societies as secret storytellers, healers, or spies. Others seek lost coats from generations past, hoping to return wandering souls to the sea. A new sect—the Tide-Broken—calls for permanent unity between sea and surface, willing to sacrifice secrecy for survival.

Meanwhile, deep in the trenches, Old Nerina’s voice grows stronger. Some believe her shattered mind is reforming, stirred by unnatural magics and the return of other Old Gods' fragments. Should she fully awaken, the ocean may rise not in anger, but in judgment.