Sei - Seishan Ethnicity
“I once asked a Sei scholar from Komi why their people record so obsessively, even the most trivial of deeds. She clicked her frills, as if frustrated by the question’s inefficiency, and launched into a monologue so rapid I had to transcribe it in shorthand: ‘Because memory is function, and function decays! What endures must circulate. Dead knowledge is rot. Ancestral value is transmissible asset, lineage must compound or collapse, no stable middle. You track bloodlines in surnames? We track them in convergence of merit and result. Every clutch must optimise. If we do not know what our ancestors did, every trade, every oath, every failure, we cannot iterate! You cannot optimise what you do not measure!’”
“She paused after that, realising, I think, that I was still digesting her first three clauses. Then she blinked and added, with faint exasperation: ‘Also, stories are nice.’”
, From On the Shorelines of Memory, by Magister Alren Vos of the Carthian College of Ethnography
Introduction
The Seishi, or Sei as they refer to themselves in everyday speech, are an amphibious people native to the eastern seaboards of Erothi and the surrounding island realms. Though they are often admired for their agility, rapid innovation, and cultural refinement, any serious ethnographer must quickly move past the romanticised image of “sea-poets” and confront a far more complex, and at times exasperating, civilisation. The Sei are short-lived, politically intricate, and ruthlessly meritocratic. What they lack in physical robustness or lifespan, they compensate for in sheer informational density: they speak quickly, decide quickly, and expect others to do the same. Those who cannot keep pace are dismissed, politely or not, as non-functional appendages to the process of progress.
Every Sei belongs to a clutch, a kinship unit closer in function to a mercantile dynasty than to a traditional family. Lineage is tracked through both maternal and paternal lines, charted across tightly maintained genealogical scrolls, echo-archives, and mnemonic rites. Status within society is neither static nor sentimental. A clutch may rise to political dominance within two generations and vanish from public memory just as quickly if its members fail to maintain contribution metrics. Love, art, and ritual exist, certainly, but they are always subordinate to function, legacy, and optimisation.
Much is made of the Seishi’s aquatic adaptations and poetic tendencies, particularly in the travelogues of Valenfaran scribes and Evraxian exporters. Yet to understand the Sei requires attention not to their aesthetics but to their systems. They build networks, not nations. They embed law in song because it is easier to memorise and recite under pressure. They do not organise by race, class, or ideology, but by usefulness, debt, and record. Their cities hum with layered transactions, overlapping pacts, and ritualised exchanges that to outsiders resemble religious ceremonies, but are, in fact, legal proceedings disguised as music.
If there is one constant in Seishi life, it is pressure, temporal, social, economic. The brevity of their lives drives them to early specialisation and relentless self-measurement. A child not singing their family’s debt and merit ledgers by age six is already considered at risk of underperformance. By twenty, most have made or broken their clutch’s prospects. By thirty-five, many begin grooming replacements. The idea of leisure exists in Seishi culture, but it is typically framed as structured recovery to ensure future productivity. Even their myths serve didactic purposes; one does not sing of beauty unless it imparts a tactical lesson.
The Sei are at once admirable and deeply frustrating. They master trade routes and diplomatic nuance with astonishing speed, yet cannot sit through a ceremonial dinner without trying to renegotiate the seating order for efficiency. They compose elegant harmonies, but only after optimising them for mnemonic durability and performative cohesion. Their genius is undeniable. So too is their impatience. They are, in short, an entire civilisation that thinks faster than it speaks, and speaks faster than most can follow.
“Your architecture is... quaint,” said the Sei diplomat from Midang as we passed through the stone arcades in Vigil. “Static load-bearing. Very... sentimental. Why not modular? Replaceable? Collapse points? Storm shelters at minimum? Artisanal masonry is... admirable, yes, but inefficient. Function defines form, no? Ah, perhaps not here. Curious.”
She paused, gently rapped her knuckles on the foundation stones, and muttered something that translated loosely to, “Still standing, surprising.”
, From Observations on Cross-Cultural Infrastructure Design, by Magister Alren Vos, College of Ethnography
Appearance and Lifestyle
The Sei are physically adapted to the intertidal zones they call home: lean, smooth-skinned, and shaped for motion in both air and water. Their agility is not merely evolutionary but cultural, they move fast, work fast, live fast. Yet despite their reputation for restlessness, they maintain an exacting standard of personal presentation. Appearances matter, not as ornament, but as signalling: the frill is trimmed for clarity, skin cleaned for scent, posture aligned to communicate intent. Every Sei is, in effect, a message in motion.
Their cities, strung across the coastal regions of Evrax, Komi, Midang, and the shores of Tianjin, follow no unified aesthetic, yet all adhere to common principles: flexibility, access to water, and embedded acoustics for communal resonance. Structures are modular, often collapsible, and designed with salt, wind, and flood in mind. Homes are typically communal, clustered around central song-chambers used for rites, conflict mediation, and data retention via harmonic chant.
Daily life is highly structured, particularly in the core city-clutches of Komi and Evrax. Schedules revolve around tide charts, trade rotations, and memory sessions. Work begins at dawn, peaks during the high tide, and tapers off after communal recitations in the early evening. Every Sei is expected to contribute to the clutch’s output, whether through trade, knowledge, diplomacy, or reproduction, and idleness is considered a mild social failing, sometimes warranting corrective guidance from senior kin. Even in leisure, a Sei will often be found training, composing, or archiving.
The Sei sense of taste is muted, but their olfactory and aural perception is acute. Meals are designed more for efficient digestion and hydration than for flavour, with strong emphasis on shared preparation and consumption. In larger clutches, kitchen roles rotate daily to prevent monopolisation and maintain flexible competency across domains. This, as with many Seishi customs, is less about egalitarianism and more about optimising resilience against disruption.
Sei typically range from 1 to 1.4 metres in height, with a slight, sinuous build and digitigrade legs. Their musculature is lean, optimised for burst motion and efficient swimming. Skin is smooth and moist, retaining a faint slickness even on land, with tones ranging from dull grey-green to speckled blue and pale sea-glass white. Some exhibit faint bioluminescence in youth, which fades with age.
Eyes are large, lidless, and covered by a transparent membrane, well-suited to both low-light underwater vision and the reflective glare of coastal sun. Ears are internal, with tympanic ridges capable of interpreting a wide frequency range. Many Sei possess gill ridges along the neck or jawline, though these serve more as water-holding folds than active respiration organs in adults.
Frills, dorsal ridges, and crests vary by clutch and region, with certain forms (spiral crests, backward-swept ridges) considered indicators of line purity or historical distinction. These features are not purely cosmetic: they are used for display in courtship, emphasis in argument, and sometimes literal resonance in the Seishi harmonic register.
Sei skin tones often indicate regional ancestry. Those from Komi and Midang tend toward darker hues: deep grey, storm-blue, or tide-mottled patterns. Evraxian Sei exhibit more muted, almost translucent greens and blues. Island-dwellers between Komi and Skrul often display iridescent flecking or tidal striping, with some coastal Tianjin clutches developing broader fin-ridges along the calves and forearms, attributed to stronger tidal currents in that region.
Hair is absent, replaced in some clutches with vestigial soft spines or ciliated ridges. Adornment is typically in the form of coral-glyphs, frill-dyes, or woven sea-silk bands, each encoded with genealogical, professional, or philosophical meaning. Cosmetics are minimal: presentation must clarify status, not obscure it.
Clothing is functional, hydrodynamic, and symbolic. Wraps and layered tabards made of quick-dry fibres dominate formal attire, with sea-silk and fermented kelp-leather used for ceremonial dress. Patterns denote clutch affiliation, political allegiance, or status. Clothing is often minimal in private or aquatic contexts; full coverage is reserved for diplomatic functions, urban formality, or exposure to unfamiliar climates.
Tools and accessories are designed for multi-purpose use and quick deployment, a reflection of broader Seishi design principles. For example, a ceremonial sash may unfold into a data-scroll, flotation wrap, or compact sling. The aesthetic here is not beauty, but adaptation layered into symbolism.
In Evrax and Komi, Seishi settlements form tight clusters of modular pods arranged around central song-chambers and trade docks. Architecture is largely circular or domed, prioritising sound resonance, wind deflection, and water capture. Komi cities are more vertical, using cantilevered shells and cliffside stacks; Evraxian ones are lower, flatter, woven into mangrove systems and coral platforms.
Midang, further north, is colder and more mountainous. Its Seishi enclaves burrow into coastal cliffs, combining thermal sink chambers with open storm-shelters. Here, aesthetic minimalism reaches an apex, ornament is rare, and the focus lies on survivability and acoustic clarity. In Tianjin, Seishi build stilted halls above tidal rivers, often interleaving with lowland Varlimni clans via trade bridges, though cooperation is heavily structured.
The islands between Komi and Skrul, administratively part of Komi but culturally distinct, produce Seishi famed for aggressive mercantilism and diplomatic manipulation. Their cities are itinerant, modular flotillas tethered to seasonal anchor-points, shifting with monsoon and trade current alike.
Subtle physical variations carry immense cultural weight among the Sei. Gland prominence, frill sharpness, and skin clarity can imply generational vitality, disease resistance, or maternal-line viability. These features are recorded, tracked, and referenced during mate-pairing negotiations and inheritance rituals. A Sei with unusually broad cheek crests might be assumed descended from a clutch of prominent vocalists; one with dull eyes might be judged a poor candidate for diplomatic grooming.
Unlike some species, these judgments are rarely sentimental or bigoted: they are clinical, standardised, and often internalised. A Sei who knows their dorsal fin has poor tone resonance will train harder in gesture-based dialects or written archive-keeping. Physical variance is a dataset, not a stigma, but its implications are enforced with quiet, impersonal precision.
A typical Sei day is broken into tight performance blocks. Work, rest, and personal development cycles are tracked via tone-chimes keyed to tidal shifts. Tasks are not assigned by command, but by consensus among clutch-elders, who weigh each member’s aptitude, fatigue, and relevance to the day’s needs. Deviating from one’s assigned focus is not punished, merely noted. Repeated deviation, however, lowers one’s prioritisation index, reducing access to clutch resources and advancement pathways.
Leisure exists, but it is often indistinguishable from training, crafting, or rehearsal. Communal chant, tide-dancing, coral-painting, or wind-harp composition are favoured recreational activities, but even these carry evaluative weight during communal song-days, where individual performances are archived as metrics of personal and ancestral honour.
Seishi cuisine favours high-protein, mineral-rich foods with mild hydration boosts. Algae loaves, sea-egg gruel, pickled tide-fruit, and fermented sponge-meat form staple fare. Cooking is often done communally, using circular hot-stone arrays or flame-free chemical heating stones, reflecting fire scarcity in many aquatic or partially submerged cities.
Meals are brief and rarely social in the human sense. Eating is a functional act. However, certain ceremonial meals, such as the pre-Voicing Feast before a public dispute resolution, are elaborate affairs, filled with layered symbology and meticulously timed gesture sequences, often held in near silence save for rhythmic utensil-clinks meant to reinforce the meal’s ritual cadence.
“There is no Seishi word for faith. There is no need. The tide does not require belief to rise. It moves. It pulls. It drowns. To stand against it is foolish. To move with it, that is the closest thing to wisdom they allow.” , From The Ebb and the Ledger: Interpretations of Seishi Cultural Psychology, by Magister Alren Vos
Beliefs and Values
The spiritual life of the Sei is less a matter of creed than of calibration. Their central religious concept, the Nameless Currents, is not a pantheon nor a code, but an abstraction: a vast, impersonal force encompassing fate, probability, bloodline, and consequence. It is neither benevolent nor cruel. It simply flows. To align with it, through action, breeding, trade, or ritual, is to survive. To act against it is to be swept aside.
This belief manifests as a practical, often transactional spirituality. Offerings are made not to please a god, but to adjust the tide of future outcomes. Harmonisation rituals, tide-chant meditations, and ancestral name recitations are tools of course-correction. Those who act impulsively or emotionally without recalibration are seen not as wicked, but as misaligned, and thus dangerous to themselves and their clutch.
Yet this rigid internal order is not accompanied by external dogma. Missionary activity is virtually unknown. The Sei do not expect others to understand their faith, only to stay out of its path. However, the recent spread of the human-derived Taro Pantheon has introduced discord, particularly among younger Sei exposed to foreign institutions. Where the Nameless Currents offer neither justice nor consolation, Taroism offers narrative, roles, and moral scaffolding. This has led to a slow schism between the conservative Harmonists and the emergent Taro-Syncretics, especially in Komi and Tianjin.
Sei beauty is calculated rather than aesthetic. A well-proportioned frill, even skin-tone, or resonant voice is not merely attractive, it is indicative of genetic stability, clutch honour, and physical health. Scars, deformities, or faded markings are not necessarily stigmatised, but must be accounted for: either excused by proven utility, or offset through achievement in other domains.
Courtship is deliberate, often orchestrated by genealogical committees or clutch-elders using ancestral trait charts and projected aptitude matrices. Spontaneous pairings are rare and usually discouraged, unless both individuals possess exceptionally strong reputations. Displays of affection are functional, often consisting of echo-mimicry (the replication of another’s speech patterns or movement cadence) and co-choreographed swimming or singing patterns designed to demonstrate compatibility.
Gender is biologically present but socially de-emphasised. Sei are sexually dimorphic, but their reproductive systems are minimally visible and functionally irrelevant to most roles in society. Names, tasks, and titles are non-gendered. Identity, for the Sei, is defined not by internal feeling but by role, function, and contribution to clutch resonance.
Those with unusual hormone cycles or intersex traits are neither celebrated nor marginalised, they are annotated. A Sei whose body defies reproductive norms is simply assigned tasks that suit their aptitudes and entered into breeding algorithms only where medically optimal. In most cases, gender presentation is omitted from formal records altogether.
Marriage does not exist in the traditional sense. Instead, the Sei form reproductive compacts: fixed-term agreements approved by clutch authorities in which two or more individuals agree to produce offspring and share nurturing duties for a designated span. These compacts are dissolvable and often expire automatically unless renewed. Emotional bonding may or may not occur within them and is neither expected nor required.
Child-rearing is communal. Infants are raised in song-halls by dedicated educators until they pass their First Resonance Trial, typically at age four. At that point, they are evaluated for aptitudes and rotated through apprenticeships under various elders. Parental contact is optional but not prioritised, biological linkage is one of many data points in the child's developmental portfolio.
Rites of passage occur at fixed developmental thresholds. The most significant is the First Resonance, in which a young Sei must synchronise with a standardised harmonic pattern before an audience of elders. Failure results in additional conditioning; success triggers formal entry into clutch record-keeping and duty rotation.
Later rites include the Voicing (permission to speak in council), the Naming (assignment of a full adult name upon successful completion of one’s first trade or treaty), and the Drift (permission to operate independently of clutch oversight, usually granted only to Seishi assigned to diplomatic, mercantile, or exploratory roles abroad). All rituals are brief, focused, and designed to evaluate rather than celebrate.
Death is neither feared nor romanticised. Upon confirmation of cessation, the Sei body is typically dismembered, rendered, and either consumed communally or returned to the water in calibrated nutrient bundles designed to sustain nearby ecosystems. Emotional mourning is rare, though data-memories (song-fragments, speech-patterns, motion profiles) may be archived in ancestral caches and referenced during certain rituals.
Only those who have achieved clutch distinction, as proven by treaty, birth, invention, or leadership, receive name-carving on tide-stones. These obelisks, placed in storm-prone surf-halls, serve not as memorials, but as historical indexes. A faded or worn tide-stone is a sign of obsolescence, and is typically erased to make room for newer entries. The dead do not linger in the Sei worldview. They are processed, catalogued, and ultimately, forgotten.
Social norms among the Sei prioritise functionality, calibration, and precision. Lying is not taboo, but inefficient. An inaccurate statement is tolerated if it produces useful outcomes. A truthful one that causes confusion is criticised. Clarity is the highest communicative virtue; failure to achieve it is regarded as a social misstep.
Taboos include falsifying genealogical data, impersonating another’s harmonic signature, and acting out of emotional impulse alone. Even in social gatherings, excessive verbosity is frowned upon, brevity signals competence. Where humans offer compliments, Sei offer calibrations: “Your speech rhythm is 9% improved from last quarter.” It is not sarcasm. It is approval.
“They do not paint for memory, nor sing for beauty. Each sound, each shape, is a vector, data, significance, function. A spiral is a current. A rising triad, a lineage. You may see art. They see a map, a ledger, a warning. And they wonder how we manage to remember anything without such systems.” , From Across Salt and Signal: A Treatise on Seishi Cultural Modelling, by Magister Alren Vos
Culture and Expression
The culture of the Sei is simultaneously austere and deeply coded, structured less around aesthetics than function, though function, to a Sei, may include resonance, repetition, and recursive symbolism. They do not express for the sake of expression. Every song, carving, or pigment trace is a communicative act. Art that does not inform or instruct is considered a luxury, permissible only after other metrics have been fulfilled.
Performance and tradition hold great weight, particularly in ritual spaces. Storytelling is not linear or emotional, but modular and harmonic: a Sei history song may span centuries in four refrains, each containing tonal data, symbolic motion, and referential silence. Outsiders often misinterpret this as abstraction; in truth, it is dense encoding. Interpretation requires training, not imagination.
The Seishi speak a family of closely related tonal languages broadly referred to as Seisic, Regional variations exist, most notably Komese (dense and ceremonial), Jipi (sparse and fast), and Mida (heavy use of dorsal gestures and vibration). All dialects rely heavily on pitch, tempo, and phase-harmony. Words alone are insufficient. A statement spoken in incorrect rhythm may be meaningless or offensive. This, unsurprisingly, renders linguistic exchange with non-Sei cultures a fraught affair, often requiring mediators or trained choral translators.
Written Seishan is rare outside of trade contexts. It uses spiralled line-graphs and acoustic notation glyphs that represent movement and modulation rather than phonemes. These are most often seen in tide-logs, alliance codices, or encoded treatises carved into coral, shell, or salt-hardened parchment. Most personal communication, even over distance, is performed via harmonic echo-devices or memory recitation through secondary singers.
Seishi arts are functional, but not without beauty, their elegance lies in information density, not ornament. Shell-scribing, motion-gesture weaving, harmonic sculpting, and tide-painted echo murals are common artforms, each used for record-keeping or social signalling. Dance is analytical, often used to resolve disputes or transmit historical data across clutches without recourse to writing.
In Komi and Evrax, city-choruses maintain elaborate public chantworks known as Currentsongs, which archive genealogies, treaties, and civic events. These are not artistic performances, but civic maintenance acts. Failure to maintain a region’s Currentsong is viewed as a breakdown of social responsibility and may result in fines, downgrading of clutch status, or even ritual dissolution.
Seishi myth is structural rather than narrative. Their most revered origin motif, The Spiral Descent, recounts how the earliest Sei emerged from the crushing dark of the Deepward tomb-cities, guided by vibration and tide, following ancient tonal sequences until they breached into shallow light. The story is not told, but intoned, each clan performing a distinct variation.
Legendary figures such as Karesh of the Nine Breaths, Seluun the Chorist Who Turned the Storm, and Vash-Ten of the Oblique Current are less characters than archetypal harmonics, invoked during rites, referenced in disputes, and modelled in youth education. Each embodies a dynamic: response to uncertainty, correction of imbalance, or adaptation to catastrophe. Myths are mnemonic: designed to align behaviour, not to inspire.
In place of saints or emperors, the Sei venerate Echo-Bearers, individuals whose lives produced measurable impact across multiple generations. Echo-Bearers are not worshipped, but referenced. Their tonal signatures are preserved, their dispute logs and decision matrices studied, and their descent lines monitored for recurring aptitudes or anomalies.
Current Echo-Bearers include Iren-Tesh of Komi, the tide-architect who reengineered the coral-basin circulation system that feeds half the peninsula’s agriculture; Seruvai-Mi of Midang, whose recalibration of clutch inheritance protocol resolved a fifty-year treaty deadlock; and Taless-Varn the Outer Negotiator, whose controversial syncretic adoption of the Taro pantheon allowed for interfaith convergence treaties with human port-clans in Akra and the Medu Sea.
The early history of the Sei remains partly speculative, even among themselves. Their emergence appears to postdate the Mni civilisations by several centuries or even millenea, likely tied to a return from subterranean or subaquatic shelter complexes built during the Era of Darkness. These Deepward tombs, scattered across Evrax and Midang, are both revered and largely avoided, except by sanctioned resonance-divers and harmonic historians.
Early records suggest gradual settlement along the coasts of Komi and the upper islands, followed by rapid technological advancement and maritime expansion. The Seishi displaced or assimilated local aquatic fauna, avoided large-scale terrestrial conflict, and instead focused on trade, resonance diplomacy, and knowledge cataloguing. Their rivalry with the Varlimni, particularly over access to Tianjin's coastal territories, cooled only in recent centuries due to structured territorial accords enforced by oath.
Today, the Seishi dominate eastern coastal trade, exert soft power through diplomatic networks, and increasingly influence inland economies. Political intrigue is constant, often incomprehensible to outsiders: clutches rise and fall not by assassination or war, but by invalidation, name-erosion, and strategic manipulation. Even their failures leave no corpses, only silence where once a song stood.
“Names are not decorations. They are not tokens, not indulgences. They are architecture, load-bearing structures. A name must withstand pressure. It must encode function, precedent, trajectory. If it cannot, it is replaced. If it endures, it is echoed.” , Excerpt from On Nomenclature and Continuity: A Treatise on Seishi Naming Protocols, by Tolen Vess of the Komi Collegium
Naming and Lineage
To outsiders, a Seishi name may appear lyrical, arbitrary, even decorative. This is a grave misapprehension. Within Seishan society, names are records: functional, symbolic, and often burdened with expectations. The structure of a name encodes a Seishi’s ancestral vector, expected resonance profile, and in many cases, the nature of their birth (timing, location, omens). No Seishi name is given casually, and none are kept unless warranted by action.
A Seishi name typically consists of a personal syllabic core (often two or three syllables), followed by a clutch-name or locational vector, and optionally appended with a honourific earned through trial, office, or lineage impact. Naming rites are overseen by specialists in genealogical memory and tonal assignment. Children are assigned provisional names at birth, formalised only after the successful completion of the Early Harmony trial around the third or fourth year.
Family names, in the human sense, are inaccurate terms for Seishan lineage tracking. The closest analogue is the clutch-vector, a multi-generational mapping that assigns identity not by surname, but by one’s harmonic fit within a defined kin-resonance system. A child may be raised by one clutch, gestated by another, and still carry the lineage-echo of a third. What matters is contribution, not genetics alone.
Clutches are not fixed. Clutch affiliation can be restructured after rites of divergence or upon the formation of a new resonance unit. In cases of dishonour, a Seishi may be stripped of clutch designation entirely, a state equivalent to civic erasure.
Feminine names often include sibilants and flowing vowel structures, with strong melodic arcs, examples include Suliin, Nevai, Taless, Alinai, and Voshema. These names frequently reference traits of observation, memory, or harmonic subtlety.
Masculine names tend to incorporate harder consonants and shorter intervals, examples include Karesh, Marosh, Tiroka, Veleshi, and Kelrun. Such names often signal kinetic traits: negotiation, endurance, or innovation.
Unisex names are extremely common among the Sei, particularly within clutches that favour rotational role inheritance or maintain high resonance variance. These include Shiru, Ralev, Vosha, Calun, and Senrai. Unisex names often carry broader symbolic profiles, representing environmental factors or temporal patterns rather than personal trait forecasting.
It is customary for a Seishi of high accomplishment, particularly one whose actions alter the trajectory of multiple clutches, to adopt an echo-honourific, a phonetic marker appended to their name indicating legacy impact. For example, Taless-Varn carries Varn as the honourific denoting success in high-coastal integration diplomacy. These markers are never self-assigned and must be verified by a clutch adjudicator or civic chorus before being formally recognised.
Equally, names can be stripped. Dishonoured Seishi may be reduced to numeric designations or assigned harmonic dissonance markers. Such individuals, called Nulls, are forbidden from civic ritual, clutch propagation, or formal memory transcription. Most vanish quietly. The rest do not last long.
“The salt settles in the stone, and the stone settles in the current. Ask not where the Seishi live, but where the tides return. Our cities do not endure, they reoccur.” , From Currents Without Anchor, by Way-Keeper Shiru Nalen
Geography and Demographics
The Seishi have not formed a single centralised empire nor adhere to fixed national boundaries. Their dominion lies in harbours, estuaries, and trade hubs, anywhere the ocean reaches and routes converge. Though some realms claim to rule them, this is a legal fiction maintained for diplomatic convenience. In truth, the Seishi owe allegiance to clutch and current first, city or realm second. Their presence is strongest in Evrax, Komi, and Midang, the eastern arc of the Sianic coast, but they are no less significant in Tianjin, and are rapidly establishing new enclaves along the contested western shores of Skrul. Island chains and reef-sheltered archipelagos provide ideal anchor points for their expansion and sustain their influence far beyond what their population numbers might suggest.
Evrax is the ancient heart of Seishan emergence, a spined island scattered with vault-bays, warm tidal pools, and cliff-ringed channels thought to be sites of their earliest resurfacing after the Era of Darkness. Though small, Evrax carries immense cultural weight. It houses the Grand Harmonic Archive and the Chamber of Precedents, institutions whose rulings and records dictate naming practices, lineage recognition, and legitimacy of clutch-merge treaties throughout Seishan society.
Evrax maintains independence through inertia and sanctity. Few dispute its authority, even those who chafe under its bureaucracy. Its population is moderate, but the density of scholars, ritualists, and regulatory officiants makes it disproportionately powerful within Seishan political culture.
Komi is the logistical spine of Seishan trade, spanning a crescent of port-cities along the east-facing edge of Siana. Its cities are efficient, unsentimental, and critically networked, designed for throughput, not beauty. Komi is where decisions are made, ships are built, and treaties are drafted, often before other parties realise they were under negotiation.
It also serves as the administrative nexus of the Collegia: decentralised guild-networks that standardise Seishi education, law, and resource allocation. The Komi Collegium is both feared and resented among neighbouring peoples for its cold leverage, and within Seishi culture itself, it is often a subject of fierce clutch-internal rivalry.
Midang lies to the north, where cold waters breed tougher tides and tenser politics. Its cities are more militarised, more xenophobic, and host a larger number of mixed-population enclaves, primarily Varlimni minorities under negotiated protection. Midang’s relationship with Komi is one of strained necessity. It resents Komi’s legalism and cultural dominance, but relies on its shipping routes and diplomatic cover.
Midang’s Seishi are often considered ‘cold-blooded’ in Seishan idiom, less interested in art or heritage, more focused on resource control, route taxation, and environmental hardening. Still, their navigators are unmatched, and many great expeditions are charted by Midangi fleets.
Tianjin is unique among Seishan holdings: a realm where the Seishi now likely outnumber their Varlimni neighbours. The river-mouths and estuarial zones of Tianjin are perfect for Seishan aquaculture and ritual basin-work, and a century of quiet settlement has yielded a complex hybrid society. Co-governance treaties with Varlimni clans are common, though deeply contentious. Seishi dominance in trade and infrastructure planning has bred resentment, particularly in forest-interior communities.
Tianjin’s political climate is volatile. Clutch-priests warn of future rupture, and many mid-tier lineages have begun shifting investment to Komi and Skrul in anticipation of unrest. Still, for now, Tianjin remains a vital node of Seishan cultural and material output.
The western coast of Skrul is a battleground, though not in the traditional sense. Here, the Seishi and the Alemni expand in parallel, carving enclaves from Arcus Korlum territory in a slow, competitive drift. Seishan settlements hug the tidal zones: fisheries, trade-halls, and clutch-crypts dug into sediment cliffs. Their rapid adaptation and modular architecture have made them difficult to dislodge.
Conflicts remain largely economic and rhetorical. Clutch-councils in Komi have issued formal denouncements of Alemni encroachment policies, while Alemni bureaucrats accuse Seishi settlers of undermining regional census integrity. In truth, both sides are negotiating through population density and trade imbalance, not violence, yet.
The islands that scatter the Valennic Sea between Komi and Skrul are legally part of the Komi Empires sphere, but many of their inhabitants consider themselves culturally distinct. These islanders, often descended from shipwrecked clutches or early tide-prospecting outcasts, maintain unique dialects, rituals, and even resonance protocols not recognised by Komi’s central authorities.
Their independence is tolerated, barely. Komi has little incentive to exert direct control so long as shipping routes remain secure, but disagreements over ritual succession, resource extraction, and clutch legitimacy flare regularly. Some island clutches have begun corresponding more with mainland Skrul than Komi, a potential shift that Komi auditors are monitoring closely.
Diaspora Seishi are found wherever trade routes thread the continents. In human cities, they serve as translators, contract arbiters, or anatomical consultants. In Varlimni ports, they handle exchange goods deemed too impersonal for forest-bound traders. Diaspora clutches maintain strong genealogical tracking, though often less rigidly hierarchical than homeland lineages.
The spread of the Taro Pantheon among diaspora communities is significantly higher than in coastal Seishan strongholds. Some attribute this to shorter community memory or hybrid household structures. Others suggest it is deliberate, a form of cultural inoculation. Diaspora Seishi walk a delicate line: necessary to Seishan power projection, yet dangerously susceptible to external acculturation.
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