Selkies

A sea people who live in the North Sea near Blackbay. They are often blamed for sinking and looting ships that come into the bay.

Considered thieves at best and murderous savages at worst, the selkie tribes around Blackbay make their living by scavanging the remains of sunken ships. Whether or not the selkies have anything to do with the fact that the ships sank in the first place is up for debate, and many an unfortunate merchant has repeated this tale...but only after paying the selkies handsomely for salvaging his cargo (most of it, at least).

Society and Organisation
The Selkie are formed in groups of generally nomadic tribes. As they are relatively shalow water creatures (staying in depths where the sun still provides light in the water) they stay to coastlines and rarely venture into the deeper sea. Old stories exist of tribes that did live in the deeper oceans but that those tribes were driven mad by the darkness they lived in and would only swim back to the shallow waters to take other Selkie and drag them back to the depths with them.

The Selkie tend to spend most of their life underwater. Though there is exceptions to this it means that most of their crafting is restricted to that that is possible underwater and their nomadic behaviour means that they rarely accumulate more items than they can easily carry on them. Most selkie swim armed with small curved knife (generally the only weapon Selkie ever use). It is common to see them adorned in jewelry made of shells and a simple clothing that doesn't drag through the water. As they tend to move around and books do not survive their natural habitat their history and knowledge is passed on through oral traditions. When tribes meet they tend to share tales and move on. There are too few Selkie to engage with other shallow coast tribes hostilely; when they do have disputes a champion from each tribe is chosen to face a series of challenges against each other and the winning tribe generally stays in the location and the losing tribe moves on.