Freshwater Merfolk
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| The river had been silent for hours, too silent. My dugout slid along the current, the paddle dipping with barely a sound. The jungle pressed close on both sides, thick with vines and the cries of unseen birds. I was beginning to think the tales were lies, that no people lived here at all, when the water rippled. |
| A head rose not ten paces away, hair clinging like moss to pale skin, eyes as dark as the depths. Another surfaced beside my boat, then another, their tails flicking beneath the water with quick, darting strokes. They said nothing, only watched me. |
| I fumbled for the pouch at my belt and lifted it high, spilling out the gifts I had brought: copper spearheads, a roll of bright cloth, a knife with a bone handle. One swam forward, seized the knife, and turned it over in long fingers. She hissed, and another laughed, a sound sharp as cracking wood. |
| In an instant they were gone, vanishing beneath the current. My heart hammered as I searched the water. Then my boat lurched. Something pulled me sideways and I nearly toppled. A spear haft thudded against the wood, a warning. I gripped the paddle and let the current take me, not daring to turn back. |
| When I finally reached the open bend, the mers were gone, but I still felt their eyes in every swirl of the river. |
The freshwater mers are a people of shifting moods and shallow roots, neither as kindly regarded as their sea-born kin nor as feared as the dreaded sirens. They resemble the sea mers in form, with scales that glimmer like wet stone and long tails patterned in greens and browns that blend with the river weeds. Yet their eyes are watchful and less inviting, and their voices rarely carry the same enchanting song. Their minds are closer to that of humankind: varied, unpredictable, and colored by individual will rather than a shared temperament.
They dwell in the Tarnixian and Caruvalas rivers as they coil through the jungle, and especially in the Mire of Vines. Their homes are drifting things: reed shelters that can be abandoned in a day, or caves beneath the waterline, forgotten as quickly as they were found. They live by the spear, short hafted weapons of riverwood tipped with bone or stone, or with iron heads traded from strangers who dare venture into their waters. The spear serves them for both fishing and the hunt, thrown from the bank or driven like a harpoon. They eat what the river offers: fish, turtles, river deer, even the unwary that drink at the shore.
Religion
Their faith is simple yet deeply rooted in their world. The river itself is a god of life, flowing through every breath and every heartbeat. Its spring is the deity of birth, pure and untainted. The river’s endless course leads to the sea, which they believe to be the god of death, an all-consuming hunger where every soul must someday flow. The land beyond the banks is the unknowable, where reality thins and what lies beyond sight cannot be trusted to exist at all.
Society
Freshwater mers live in groups seldom larger than a dozen, bound by the moment rather than blood or law. They have no leaders, no lasting partners. Bonds form and dissolve like ripples on the water. One season they may dwell together in harmony, and the next they scatter, drawn apart by quarrel or whim. Their tools are few: simple spears, woven sashes, and the occasional knife or point bartered from outsiders.
Because of their mercurial ways and their hidden domain, they remain little known. Traders who seek them out often find frustration, for one day’s welcome may turn to hostility the next. For this reason, few make the journey, and fewer still return with tales that do not carry a warning.
Trade
Trade is uncertain. They may offer bundles of rare shells, feathers, and herbs in exchange for metal and cloth, or they may vanish without a word. Trespass, however, is never forgiven. To swim too far into their lakes or to build too close upon their rivers is to invite a sudden rush of spears from the shadows.
Possible Secrets
The hidden currents
The freshwater mers know of underground rivers that connect far-apart lakes. They can vanish from one body of water and appear in another hundreds of miles away. To outsiders, this seems impossible, and it fuels tales of their “vanishing” nature.
The drowned city
At the bottom of a deep jungle lake lies the ruins of a city long lost. The mers guard it fiercely, claiming it belongs to their river god. Some whisper that the city once belonged to humans, who were punished and drowned for breaking a sacred pact.
A blood oath with sirens
Though they seem far removed from the sea, certain clans of freshwater mers are bound by an ancient pact with the sirens. In times of need, they can call to the river, and sirens will come up from the coast to aid them. The mers never speak of this, for to be seen as kin to sirens invites fear and mistrust.
The spring of immortality
In the deepest part of the jungle, where a river is born from a sacred spring, the mers claim that drinking from it grants life unending. They guard it even from their own kind, killing any who stray too close.
The river’s hunger
The mers know the river god demands sacrifice. From time to time they must drown a living being in its current, human or beast, to keep the waters flowing clean. Without these offerings, they believe the river will dry and the land will die.
Shifting loyalties
Though they live in small groups, there are whispered tales of great gatherings, entire rivers’ worth of mers uniting as one. When this happens, whole settlements vanish along the banks. Some say these gatherings are led by unseen leaders, river spirits that rise in times of upheaval.
Adventure Hooks
The fisher’s debt
A lakeside fisher promised the freshwater mers a share of his catch each season. Now he has failed to deliver, and they have begun harassing all boats. The adventurers are asked to settle the dispute.
River of bones
Travelers find entire schools of fish washing up dead along the banks. The mers are blamed for using forbidden hunting methods. If the adventurers investigate, they may uncover something else entirely.
The storm’s aftermath
After a great flood, freshwater mers begin appearing in places they were never seen before, driving off locals and seizing drowned livestock as their own. The adventurers are hired to restore balance.
A bride of the river
A jungle tribe intends to give one of their daughters to the freshwater mers as an offering of peace. The girl begs the adventurers for help to escape, but doing so could cause open war.
Songs in the reeds
Travelers report hearing strange, unsettling songs echoing from the rivers at night. When villagers vanish after following the sound, the adventurers must track the source.
The river market
Once every few years the freshwater mers gather at a wide lake to trade openly with humans. The adventurers arrive just in time, but so do thieves and rivals eager to turn the meeting into bloodshed.
Spears against the village
A group of mers begins attacking hunters who cut too deeply into the jungle. The villagers beg the adventurers to stop the raids before they lose their homes.