(Note: The species most commonly called the Merfolk is one of many that may be collected under the category of beastmen -- a category defined by certain assumptions about their origins, and already discussed under its own heading. It seems unlikely in the extreme that such creatures would have evolved naturally unless perhaps they were a seagoing people who evolved the human appearance of their upper bodies as a form of mimesis to attract human sailors or coastal people and win their sympathy -- probably a rather far-fetched theory. It therefore must be assumed that sorcerous power and human intention -- or pantheonic intervention based on human mythology or the like -- was involved in their origins. It is nevertheless possible of course that the species has since evolved from the form into which it was originally manipulated; differences between merfolk populations in isolated regions would likely be suggestive if we wish to learn when the species came to be.)
Of the many varieties of beastmen known or believed to inhabit the world, the ocean-dwelling merfolk are the best known to Black Steel personnel, thanks to Daryan's long-standing relationship with Greyilah from the northern sea and -- most importantly -- the sizable merfolk colony in Scabbard Harbor, with which Black Steel has established close diplomatic and economic ties, even going so far as to construct canals within the city to facilitate trade, communication, and commerce in spite of the natural barrier between air-breathing dwellers on land and gilled inhabitants of the seas. Though distant and casual observers -- or lazy ones -- are apt to say that merfolk are human from the waist up and fish from the waist down, those who actually interact with them know better: Though fish-like in appearance, their "tails" spread horizontally like a dolphin's fluke, with muscles arranged accordingly, and attempting to identify the point where their "human" body ends and their "fish tail" begins is essentially meaningless; no part of their body is entirely human in structure or design, from their amphibious breathing apparatus to their long arms and necks and exceedingly flexible spines. Their scales and skin tones tend toward white in front, with the scales often pale green or grey in color, and sometimes even a very pale blue, both but darken toward the backs, where dark green, grey, or even midnight-blue scales approaching black are not uncommon, as well as much darker skin which itself may sometimes be faintly tinted with blue or green. The scales do not end in a neat line above the hips as they are portrayed in the work of ill-informed artists, like the waistline of a dress, but extend around the sides and up the back, sometimes as far as the space between the shoulder blades in back. Merfolk hair is likewise almost always dark in color -- essenitally black -- though sometimes with greenish or bluish tints. The common wisdom around the Scabbard is that merfolk hair is always straight, but Theril isn't convinced; she postulates, "It's always straight because it's always sopping wet."
Among the merfolk of Scabbard Harbor, long hair is a sign of high station in both men and women; the leaders of their small tribe bind back their long locks while hunting with strands of seaweed, with fishermens' lines recovered from snags, or with fine line or wire bartered or purchased from their neighbors in The Scabbard proper. Simple tribesmen, from kelp farmers to fishherds to the soldiers of the village's standing undersea garrison, use stone or coral knives to keep their hair cut short, with craftsmen, war band leaders, and heads of families falling in between -- but commerce with The Scabbard has brought with it a growing sense of egalitarianism, to the point that some "lower-class" merfolk citizens have taken to visiting hair stylists along the canals to crop their short hair evenly or even in complicated styles meant to show off their best features as they swim. Making up for other signs of station, such as jewelry made from shells, corals, and pearls, or even human jewelry worked in The Scabbard specifically for underwater use, is naturally more difficult, but the greatest leveling influence of The Scabbard is simply its elevation of standard of living across the village. Resources and luxuries to which few or none of the merfolk had ever had access before -- ceramics are particularly valued -- have become so readily available that the community's leaders could hardly deny their people access even if they wished to do so. In turn, they provide such resources as they can gather more conveniently than can their shore-bound neighbors, from seafood and sea jewels to salvage from ships that sank off-shore.
It would be a mistake to assume that "merfolk culture" is exemplified by that of the Scabbard harbor colony, either before or after their extensive contact with The Scabbard itself; on the contrary, according to Daryan and Greyilah's testimony at least, distant merfolk tribes seem to have little in common apart from what is made necessisary by their environment, anatomy, and physiology. Though there are many similarities in language between the village where she was born and the one in Scabbard Harbor, they are clearly two entirely distinct languages, though with similarities. For Greyilah, learning to live among the merfolk of Scabbard Harbor -- not only for linguistic reasons -- was a difficult and challenging feat, and it was her eventual success that recommended her as an ambassador of sorts to merfolk communities around Kaiimar, whose language differs yet again from that of Scabbard Harbor's, though with much greater similarities, and whose customs and hierarchies vary from village to village enormously. Overcoming barriers to communication and trust will not be easy work in her situation, and it remains to be seen whether any merfolk support can be had for the battle for Kaiimar. It should be said that Greyilah's travels -- much aided and motivated by surface-dwelling humans -- are nearly unique among merfolk she or Black Steel personnel have met. At least among the tribes she has visited, most merfolk have little or no commerce with one another or other sentient races, and rarely travel far from their home villages. Of course, it may be that there are tribes in other regions of the sea whose tales and traditions are bound up with travel -- Black Steel's contacts simply haven't met any ... or didn't know it if they did.
Perhaps in large part because of their tendency -- among those Black Steel personnel have met -- to live in small, distinct communities, merfolk have never been reported to weave sorceries in the fashion of a wizard. As noted elsewhere, sorcerous potential is so rare among humans, and requires so much training before it can be realized, that a small human village without outside contact would have virtually no chance of maintaining the knowledge necessary for actual wizards ever to grow up there. If something similar is true for merfolk, they might individually be even more likely than humans to harbor sorcerous potential and yet never discover it. Of course, priests and shamans among the merfolk are reputed to wield or to be the vessels for extraordinary and miraculous powers, but the nature of such powers -- and indeed the truth of such reputations -- is the subject of much debate and uncertainty.
