The Boreal Shards
The northern reach of the Singing Sea, where the water chills and icebergs grow larger northward until they merge into a solid shelf running out from the foot of the Rimeward. The Selkie live on the ice rather than under it, which every other Undine finds perverse.
The Land
The floes and the shelf carry an ecosystem of their own: surface mammals and birds feeding on the fish and krill beneath the ice, or on each other, and cold-water fish and invertebrates thriving in water that would kill a Merrow within the hour.
South-west the ice meets the cliffs of the Misted Fjord. Everywhere else it meets open sea, and the boundary moves with the season.
The Selkie
Pale-skinned and white-haired, with a natural resistance to cold that the rest of the race regards as a good trick badly used. They swim as well as any Undine and simply prefer not to, keeping homes carved into the ice itself or built from ice block.
They take their name from the sealskins they wear, and from the glamour that goes with them: a Selkie in the water is half-seal more often than not, and the skins are not costume but property — inherited, named, and never lent.
Encounters
Roll d100. The ice is the terrain, the food, and the thing most likely to kill you. Predators come second. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–09 | 1d6 Selkie on the floes in named sealskins, who will trade and will not lend | — |
| 10–16 | 2d8 snow fleas across a thaw patch — a sign the floe is working loose | 0 |
| 17–23 | thin ice: 1d3 travellers through it, and a rescue that has minutes to work | — |
| 24–30 | 2d6 krill-folk under a lead in the ice, hauling and uncounted | ⅛ |
| 31–36 | a calving: an ice-hold's outer quarter goes into the water with the season's stores | — |
| 37–42 | 1d4 springtails, cold-strain, working a wrack line | 0 |
| 43–48 | 1d3 water striders on a meltwater pool, charging across the skin | 2 |
| 49–54 | 1d2 ground beetles under a shore stone, sluggish and still willing | 2 |
| 55–60 | 1d4 diving beetles beneath a lead, and they will follow you up it | 4 |
| 61–66 | 1d3 voles off the Rimeward shore, on the ice and regretting it | 6 |
| 67–72 | 1 shrew, cold-strain, which must eat constantly and is a long way from food | 7 |
| 73–77 | 1d2 newts in a shore pool, slow and poisonous | 5 |
| 78–82 | 1 crayfish in the shallows under the shelf | 10 |
| 83–87 | 1d2 ptarmigan on the floes — no predator, simply enormous and careless | 10 |
| 88–91 | 1 stoat, white and invisible against every surface here | 15 |
| 92–94 | 1 kingfisher working a lead, taking Selkie off the surface | 14 |
| 95–96 | 1 ferret on the shore ice, all the weasel's habits and more reach | 18 |
| 97–98 | 1 goose on open water, territorial past explanation and needing none | 21 |
| 99 | 1 barn owl, snow-white, over the shelf, silent | 19 |
| 00 | 1 great horned owl off the Rimeward cliffs — everything on the ice pays rent | 23 |