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Sserrin · “Deep Hold”

Sserrin'mor

The deep strain and the heaviest, fifteen to eighteen feet and up to seven hundred pounds, olive to near-black, thick through the body, with skin that takes oxygen from the water well enough to double their time under.

They hold the reef holds, guard the young and the old, and go down after the wrecks. A Sserrin'mor salvage crew works depths no other people on Nu can reach, and most of the metal, glass and coin in a reef hold came up in their hands. They are slow, quiet and physically the strongest thing in the warm water that is not a Shrakur.

Body

Olive to near-black and thick through the body, with the counter-shading of their people and the flank pits that read pressure. The skin is worked through with fine vessels close to the surface, which is what takes oxygen from the water and doubles their time under, and it is fragile because of it; a Deep Hold scrapes easily, bleeds for a long time and is careful around coral in a way that looks like reverence and is caution.

Frailty

The shakes is their disease before it is anyone's, since they are the ones who go deep and must come back. They keep the counted rope, knots at intervals, a hand on each knot and a held breath between, and they bury their own who did not. The crooked survivors are kept in the holds and given the young to teach, which is the strain's whole answer to an injury that does not heal.

Society

The hold is theirs to keep: the old, the young, and the line's share of what it has taken. They plant and guard the reef that feeds the line, they weight broken hulls into the sand to grow it, and they carry the dead down at the Letting Go further than any other strain can follow. They are not the ones who argue with ships.

Faith

Orruthaan straight, without a softening face, and they are the strain most likely to make the Descent one time too many on purpose.

See also
SserrinShrakurSserrinaeSserrinvor