Selkie

Slightly shorter than humans, with similar builds. Covered in fine fur. Webbed hands and feet ending in tough clawlike nails. Pronounced canine teeth and large dark eyes.

~ Can hold their breath for up to an hour.
~ Swim speed is double their pace.
~ Resistant to cold temperatures.

It is said that selkie get their opinions from the tide. They don't think long or hard about any topic and after making a decision they are just as likely to choose the opposite within the hour. This is reflected in their stilt villages, which often appear to landlocked mortals to change significantly between visits. However, this is more likely due to selkies building on sand bars and the surf zones of constantly changing coastlines than any fault in their mentality. Buildings are forced to relocate, additional supports are added, and the village grows and shrinks to match the lay of the beach. Most visitors never notice due to the tranquil beauty of selkie structures of wood and palm, decorated with flowers, shells, and polished stone.

Selkie communities are highly adaptive and practical. houses are designed to be disassembled or floated short distances, communal platforms can be shifted with the tide, and docks are intentionally modular. Their daily routines, economic strategies, and holidays all follow lunar and tidal cycles. Selkie settlements can be found scattered along tropical and warmer coastlines with wide beaches and calm surf. They act as intermediaries, trading between merfolk and humans, ferrying information, rare sea-sourced materials, and the diplomacy that keeps coastal communities mostly peaceful.

Siren

The mutated kin of the selkies, sirens are superficially similar to them, especially when encountered under water. Of approximate size and form, but with gray-black fur, large eyes that shine with hunger at night, long, thin claws, and a mouth filled with 3 rows of razor-sharp teeth. Siren live in small hunting tribes, making their homes in hidden grottos, marine caves, and hard to reach coves. Surprisingly, they are not as strong swimmers as the selkie or merfolk, preferring to cling to reefs and surf rocks with their strong claws. They do this to ambush prey that gets caught in dangerous surfs, as they are ravenous carnivores and prefer the taste of mammal flesh above all others. To aid their hunts they perform trickery in the manner of mimicry and ventriloquism. All sirens are capable of perfectly mimicking a wide variety of sounds, including voices and music. Their favorite tactic is to lure sailors into shallow waters with strong underwater currents, after which they detach from their rocky hiding places and capsize their prey's boats, letting them drown or be bashed against the reef.