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This article is about the peaceful sea race. For the vicious winged monsters, see siren. |
Merpeople are a race of intelligent underwater humanoids in the Great Sea. Males are called mermen or tritons, while females are known as mermaids (Skellige jargon: havfrue).
Characteristics
Physical description
Merpeople are a race resembling a half-human (male or female) with fins and a fishtail in appearance. The females are similar to nymphs and stereotypically considered very beautiful.[1] So attractive in fact that their graces are a subject of many sea shanties.[2] They have flowing celadon-green hair, light green nipples, and long fishtails covered in scales.[1] The scales have alchemical properties and can be used as ingredients by mages.[3]
They are able to breathe air but can stay above water only for short periods of time because the sun hurts their skin.[1]
Merpeople are often confused for siren/nixa; a vicious monster.[N 1] A notable difference though is that sirens have large, bat-like wings while merpeople are far more peaceful and always wingless.[4]
Mental traits
The race appears to wield magical power of some kind and rule the undersea world—even the fishpeople respect them. If deemed necessary, merpeople are able to summon krakens, sea monsters dread by humans and fishpeople alike.[1]
History
They're an old race, known to inhabit the Great Sea since well before the First Landing of Nordlings in the 8th century.[5] Although peaceful, they haven't always been friendly to humans,[1] having fought with them at least once during the numerous human-nonhuman wars.[6]
Culture
Like nereids and sea witches who inhabit the same seas, merpeople use an euphonious version of the Elder Speech, which puts great emphasis on melodiousness and intonation.[1] It's said to be related to the dialect used by dryads of Brokilon.[7]
They train dolphins[1] and sharks as mounts in a manner similar to how surface-dwellers train horses.[7] Tritons are alluded to have good relations with hippocampi as well.[8]
Notable merpeople
Notes
- In Crossroads of Ravens, the veteran witcher Preston Holt instructs Geralt that gnomish, dwarven and human males possess laryngeal prominence, while their elven and other hominid counterparts do not. This would imply that tritons-mermen also lack this anatomical feature, but that is yet to be stated unequivocally.
- In Netflix's The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, a water creature called allanorax appears that merpeople also ride on.
Gallery
Footnotes
- ↑ In Polish, "syrena" (siren) can mean both "mermaid" and "siren". It was later clarified in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Artbook, in particular, the Polish version, that the game's sirens are actually nixae and often get mistaken for peaceful sirens (i. e. merpeople).