Mer-fae

## Introduction

Mer-fae/merfolk include a white variety of sea fae, particularly mermaids and types of shifters. Although there are a number of mer-fae or merfolk in the canon, only three are named: Queen-in-Waiting to the merfolk Alysia mer Malakhy, Oura Selich, Queen of the selkies/finfolk seal-shifters, and Alysia's daughter, Mera-Alane mer Malakhy.

## Physical Description

A group of warrior mer-fae attended Stertes as part of his retinue: they had powerful tails and carried spears. Their helmets were 'made from some deep blue metal, fins flaring deeply at their necks and the sides of their heads.' They could shift into human-form.

Mer-fae can have webbed fingers and pale green hair. Mer-fae generally favor 'short, jagged' hair cuts.

## Abilities

While in human-form, mer-fae can walk across waves without sinking.

## Characteristics (culture, habits)

Alysia wore 'a long, jewelled earring that hung from her left ear that indicated she might be merfolk royalty.' Mer-fae have their own kingdom, where they have princes and princesses and other noble classes. Pale green streaks on a mer-fae's fins likely indicate that the fae in question is mer-fae royalty.

Augus notes 'it was a more cut-throat world beneath the sea', which could help explain why Alysia and Oura were so sharp.

Mer-fae can likely be of either alignment: Alysia, Mera-Alane, and Oura are all Seelie, but Stertes' retinue was likely Unseelie.

## Folklore/Mythology

Merfolk are typically people who dwell underwater, and often are part animal (particularly fish or sea mammals).

'Depictions of entities with the tails of fish, but the upper bodies of human beings appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onward. These figures are usually mermen, but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been *kuliltu*, meaning "fish-woman". Such figures were used in Neo-Assyrian art as protective figures and were shown in both monumental sculpture and in small, protective figurines.

The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria c. 1000 BCE. The goddess Atargatis, mother of the Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal (a shepherd) and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid—human above the waist, fish below—although the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian god Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo.'

Different kinds of merfolk include sea people in *One Thousand and One Nights*, the merrow (an Irish mermaid), mermaids in English, Korean, and llocano folklore, water elementals, Melusine (a freshwater mermaid-like creature who is sometimes depicted with two fish tails, or the lower body of a serpent), the sirens (Byzantine and Ottoman Greece, though these depictions switched between avian and sea-dwelling creatures), russalkas (Slavic counterparts of sirens and naiads), the jiaoren or shark people of China, the Japanese ningyo, the mermaid princess Suvannamaccha in Thailand and Hinduism, or Sovanna Maccha, as she is known in Cambodia, Nyai Roro Kidul in Java (or Nyai Blorong in her mermaid form), the Binalatongan mermaid from the Pangasinense, the Magindara of the Bicolano, the Mambubuno of the Sambal, Mami Water in west, central, and southern Africa, the njuzu from Zimbabwe, the Aycayia from the Neo-Taino, the Haitian vodou loa called La Sirene, and the jengu of Cameroon.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas*, Chapter 13: The Glory of the House of Atros. Accessed 29 April 2021.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *Game Theory*, Chapter 28: Underfae. Accessed 27 March 2021.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 *Game Theory*, Chapter 39: Alone. Accessed 20 May 2021.
4. ↑ *The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas*, Chapter 13: The Glory of the House of Atros. Accessed 29 April 2021.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Mermaid". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid. Accessed 19 May 2021.