Selkie Culture

"Selkie culture" is a misnomer, but a common one. This is the culture perpetuated by the The Khilaia, the grand federation that claims to represent all Selkies (and to define who is or isn't a true selkie). This culture is performed and reinforced when selkie fleets dock and engage with Khilaian institutions - notably the coming of age ritual for teenagers, which must take place at the Khilaian Isles.
Even with this narrower definition, selkie culture is a broad culture group representing tens of thousands of ships, islands, and outposts around the world. It is also deeply entangled with selkie traditional religious practice, or Hamekun, which can syncretize with other religions in very different ways. Some Khilaian selkies don't fit most of traditional selkie culture, as their religions have demanded cultural conversion or their host cultures have mostly assimilated them. So it would be unwise to use this description of selkie culture as a assumptions with any certainty.
Like many cultures, selkie culture is defined by tension: the tension of the necessary and static role in the crew and the inherently tempestuous and individualistic inner spirit. The Khilaia teaches that loyalty, free spiritedness, individuality, communal support, commerce, travel, cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and learning are all important in being a good person. The ideal selkie is the explorer-merchant, looking for knowledge and the chance to win material gain for their community through individual discovery and diplomacy. They are both in the world and above it, mediating the disputes of foreigners and becoming rich by connecting foreign lands that would otherwise be isolated. They are a global spirit, yet never a member of any landed nation - only the nation of the sea can be their true home. Yet, certainly not everyone can be that, and there are contradictions inherent in that selkie dream.

Selkie Life

It is important, getting into selkie culture, to understand the basics of selkie life. The Khilaia is composed of four major populations:

• Islanders: The inhabitants of the Khilaian Isles, a small minority of sedentary people. Mostly urban, often commercial. Comparatively performative in their traditional culture and religion, and have daily lives entirely dominated by Khilaian trade and institutions. There are social classes within this population, though few of them are truly poor.
• Crew Selkies: Selkie families that live most of their lives on large ships, nomadically sailing the world. Selkie crews are made up of people of several clans, with clans being spread across multiple ships - but while the ship is sailing, crew identity trumps clan identity. Typically 1-3 extended family units per ship. Individual ships often have different minor rituals or traditions. Some crews may actually operate more than one ship - these crews tend to be larger, more stratified, and wealthier - though they retain a primary "home ship". Each crew belongs to a Flotilla of 2-20 crews, which reports to an Admiral of 20 - 100 crews, who report to Armadas, who report to Navies. Crew selkies work trade, fishing, coastal foraging, and sometimes piratical jobs.
• Port Selkies: Admiralties, or selkie ports, are outposts of selkie territory in foreign realms. Often in large port cities, Selkie Admiralties sustain small villages or towns of sedentary port selkies. Port selkies live urban, commercial lives, having to perform selkie culture to maintain their legitimacy with the Khilaia while also grappling with a looming host culture around them. Each Admiralty has a Port Admiral, an autocratic leader assigned by the local Armada.
• March Selkies: Large numbers of selkies live in client kingdoms directly under the control and rule of the Khilaia. The two large ones are the March Kingdom of Arashoka and the March Kingdom of Kakoru. These march kingdoms have their own local cultures, but also need to be able to translate that culture into the selkie mainstream.
• There are also the Peltless, selkies who are barred from or unable to access the Khilaia, and are therefore not recognized as true selkies - but some still keep the culture.

As one can see, selkies are far more often fishermen, weavers, carpenters, hunters, farmers, or other artisans than merchants - but the rise of global trade networks have revolutionized all selkie lives. Selkie education emphasizes the need for cooperation with other cultures and nations for good reason: the ability to work hauling goods between cities or serving as transit for travelers to make money instead of having to forage and make camp in alien environments is a much more reliable and safe way of life.
There are also major lifestyle differences between all these groups, and the performance of selkie culture varies in terms of audience. Islanders perform selkieness for themselves and other selkies, while port and crew selkies also perform their culture for outsiders.
See also the Khilaian Calendar.

Naming Traditions

Unisex names

See Selkie Language for details.
Naming structures of selkies are usually: First name, Family Name, Clan Name, Crew Name. Which two names Selkies show to the public may vary, but use of the full four is typically reserved for formal introductions in Khilaian institutional spaces.

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

Most Khilaian selkies speak dialects of the Selkie Language. Generally speaking, the dialects more or less cluster around certain regions of the world - crews around Desmia and Izekra speak differently from crews in Garadel. Nonetheless, the need for all selkies to navigate the Khilaian Isles and central treaties means that most selkie dialects don't drift out of mutual legibility.  
Rarely does a selkie only speak one language. Multilingualism is considered a sign of maturity, worldliness, and competency, and even homes on the Khilaian Islands typically are bilingual (often with the Emprisaran Language).

Shared customary codes and values

Order and Fluidity

A person, in selkie logic, is really two people: the surface self, who you are to yourself in others in a more rigid social context, and the water self, who you are to the universe and yourself in more abstract, emotional, and magical ways. This is not the difference between body and soul; the surface self has interiority, just as the water self does. Rather, it is a belief in a primordial internal division in both people and the world, between what might be called law and chaos (or even 'civilized' and 'natural' depending on who is saying it). The water world and the surface world are different, but they move into each other; selkies are taught from a young age to feel the water vapor rising in the air, the essence of the water world infused in every breath. For even deeper than the ocean and the land, is a duality in all things ocean and surface: what is magical and dreaming, and what is fixed and focused. This all sounds very esoteric, but it is very real and experiential for a people with two skins. Through the pelts, the ocean teaches us that the surface self and the water self of all things yearn for continuity and connection, and by building a healthy relationship between those two halves, a person or thing can reach their best self. 
This is tied into selkie cosmopolitanism: selkies put on their pelts to enter foreign lands, becoming fundamentally changed while retaining themselves and their selkieness. This is not duplicity, but a part of being a healthy person. Selkie culture heroes, like Daykai, are shapeshifters who become more than just two things. The more "skins" you earn through the trials of being, the greater your power. This is for some simply logic and pragmatism; for others, it is incredibly spiritual and meaningful. 
At the same time, promises made earnestly should come from the fixed part of oneself. The surface self is not less important than the water self. Your position on the crew, your social responsibilties, and your reputation are all very real and essential for a functioning adult to maintain. The institutions of the Khilaia are a similar way: they are water in their organization, light as a feather politically, but firm in their enforcement of treaties and agreements. 

Pelts

A selkie's pelt is earned when they undergo the Trial of the Depths in their late teenage years at the Khilaian Isles. A pelt is a selkie's adulthood and physical connection to the national community. Pelts are a direct tie to divinity as well, and to one's ancestors, and to one's very soul. To lose one's pelt is to lose a vital aspect of self. Pelts are believed to have a magical tie to souls after death, keeping souls safe as they travel whatever afterlife their religion preaches. Someone's selkie pelt worn by someone else after they die is seen as having potentially dangerous spiritual effects on both the dead and the living; only a direct descendent or extremely close friend can be given someone's selkie pelt. Even if someone inherits a pelt, it is considered safe and proper to earn one yourself - but inheritance is an option for someone unable to pass the trial. 
The Khilaia stores millions of pelts of the dead in the Sacred Crypt of Motosui on the Khilaian Isles, keeping foreigners from accessing them and violating the rest of the dead. It is illegal to sell your pelt, and most treaties the Khilaia makes demand that no foreign government permit the sale or purchase of them. To sell your pelt willingly is to sell your soul, and one can expect swift exile from the Khilaia if proven. 

...

As a quick aside, for ritual purposes, the selkie concept of purity is somewhat unusual: purity is described not in a simple spectrum, but on an axis. Purity is understood in water terms. There is pure water, uncorrupted by filth or disease - this is good. But saltwater is different from freshwater, without being less pure. Saltwater is simply pure but for someone else. Malpa is the selkie word for something being "saltwater pure".

Common Etiquette rules

Selkie Etiquette is often somewhat fluid, adapting to elements of local cultural norms wherever the selkies may be. In Khilaian institutions, however:
There is a certain respect for individualism that is expected in selkie circles; tolerance is valued, and overt displays of social policing for superficial things is frowned upon. Greetings vary between crew members and the broader world, and a special series of greetings and introductory protocols are expected within formal Khilaian institutions. Typically, selkies in Khilaian institutions err on the side of caution and distance with displays of affection or greeting to those they don't know well; close physical contact like hugging or cheek kissing is reserved for close friends. Generally, it is expected for people to display however they see fit, but to be cautious and careful in interactions with others. For example, timeliness is important in selkie culture by default, unless a personal relationship suggests otherwise. Similarly, sexuality is considered very taboo when around unfamiliar company. 
Discussion of money is considered acceptable, with an emphasis on frankness and directness.

Common Dress code

Traditional selkie dress is made of wraparound woven skirts and shawls - which evolved over centuries to include a number of robes and dresses. Feather capes and red "horn caps" (silken bonnets with a lump or horn in the back) became common symbols of elite status. Selkie dress has since expanded and grown to become too varied to describe.

Art & Architecture

For architecture, I think this description of Halamahi's architecture should suffice:

Halamahi is a prime example of traditional selkie architecture. The city is full of adobe, brick, and stone buildings with raised curved oval roofs. The ceilings of even common residences are often cross-vaulted (a style reserved in other Samvaran cultures for monumental buildings). Buildings with traditional flooring use a base of igneous rock and coral, layered with sand, packed pebbles, then thatch or thin layered wood, then a woven covering: this provides excellent natural drainage to a house's sewer.
In monumental buildings seeking a traditional style, columns are covered in "Hearthpelts": what one might call a column-sweater woven with neat patterns and knots. According to common knowledge, these Hearthpelts allow the building to transform into a universal home and protect it from curses or supernatural threats. Selkie historians say that it is instead a holdover from the intricate art that ancient selkies used for the knots that supported the columns of their wooden meeting halls.
While these are the standards of Halamahi, there are many places that copy foreign styles or include foreign flairs from around the world.

Regarding art styles, selkie culture traditionally believes that physical art should always have a pragmatic dual purpose. Writing should be useful - a treaty, a law code, information about foreign cultures, philosophy at least. Entertaining writing is acceptable, but tends to be viewed as either excessively erudite or crass. Good entertaining stories are seen as best delivered via oral format; notes are okay, but the performance of the story is essential to it being something more than a guidebook or base pornography. Oral stories, some say, have a shapeshifting quality to them that written stories simply lack; they can grow and change with the audience and circumstance and performer. There is a magic to them. A story is more sacred when it is spoken. 
Paintings and the like are also preferred when they are murals, wall paintings, or etched onto usable objects. Wasting space with statues is seen as garish and amusingly vain.

Foods & Cuisine

Traditional Selkie food was once a lot of variations on seafood, flatbreads, salt, bird, and coconut. Selkie cuisine has long since expanded to immense scale: all the world's foods now collide in every-evolving culinary hybrids. It is not assimilation of selkie culture into a global culture, but a unique example of selkie chefs using their culinary styles and approaches to constantly evolve the craft using new influences. The shapeshifting cosmopolitanism of the Khilaia is perhaps best represented by its food.

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

See Hamekun

Birth & Baptismal Rites

With a selkie crew, the sanctified home vessel must always have a Clean Room: a carefully cleaned and purified ritual and medical room. Birth takes place in either the Clean Room or a designated extra Clean Room for births (if you want to get fancy). Newborn children are blessed with sanctified citrus-water, to ward off illness and welcome them to the crew. When a child is considered healthy and ready, the mother gives them a ritualized tour of the vessel, to be bonded as a crewmate and companion to every member of the ship (except the sick). They are then bathed in salt water, then washed in fresh water, to designate their full status.

Coming of Age Rites

The coming of age ritual for selkies is the Great Journey to Halamahi to undergo the Trial of Depths and be given their pelt. This is usually undertaken in their late teens, 16 to 20ish. Families close by may accompany their children, while distant children must travel by their own over huge distances - some selkie children effectively circumnavigate the world before they return to their parents as a full adult!

Funerary and Memorial customs

Burial at sea or cremation are the typical go-to selkie burial measures. If the pelt can be retrieved, it is to be taken to the Sacred Isles. If not, it is to be kept with the body.

Ideals

Gender Ideals

Every selkie has a surface gender and a water gender, just as they have a surface and a water self. Your contextual surface gender is tied to your assigned gender, your family, your social context - it can be changed, but it is a significant choice to do so for most people. Changing performed genders typically involves a minor ritual, in which the crew or village comes together to recognize and welcome the new iteration of that person into the community. It is the mark of the Hozwi, the Shapeshifter, to change surface genders fluidly, but this is seen as the trait of exceptional individuals. Nonetheless, some people work to maintain a Hozwi gender (what some might call gender fluidity) - some manage it, while the less lucky are stigmatized. Class and social context play a big role in being Hozwi, as it is easier to have the mystique of the shapeshifter when one is a magician, adventurer, or other individual beyond the bounds of static social position.
Of traditional surface genders, there are three (not counting Hozwi): masculine, feminine, and Hemharine. Hemhar means "other gender", and is best understood as a broad category for any kind of gender or sexuality deviance from the norm that has been accepted by the community. In ancient history, Hemhar was not just gender performance, but categorized those in or seeking same-sex relationships - wearing a mix of gendered attire and performing a mix of genders made same-sex relations normal in the eyes of the ancients (the resulting concept didn't quite overlap with modern conceptions of gay/queer, but was certainly more broad than a third gender). Over the centuries, Hemhar as a concept has become more specific, overlapping significantly with the dryad third gender - though using Hemhar as a way of describing unorthodox gender presentation does continue.
As for water gender, which is best expressed while in otter form: water gender is innately fluid, hyper-individualistic, personal, and somewhat mystical. A person's water gender is most relevant in surface life when they are engaging in rituals, as water gender is relevant when performing gendered traditional practice. Water genders have the capacity for immense specificity and go beyond the trinary. While surface pronouns are locked into he/she/they, water pronouns vary according to a vast

Courtship Ideals

Selkie traditional courtship is very much mediated by the community, who filters out candidates and plays matchmaker for single individuals. A ship, for example, will traditionally have a Bachelor List, which is exchanged with other selkie ships over their journeys. Ships will also exchange information and, either right then or upon next meeting, host formal chaperoned dates for the communities and individuals to meet and learn about each other. Ships' crews then make the final decision as to whether they should support a further relationship. If individuals are infatuated or starstruck but their ships refuse to consider this new person, a selkie can elope to that person's ship - but this is generally frowned upon outside of romance stories. 
Ships may support a romance by helping transfer letters to enable the bachelors to talk over time - but a willing exchange of personnel between crews is considered the real significant step into "real dating". A selkie can be pen-partners of multiple potential courtships without violating cultural norms, even if those pen-courtships are charged with romantic or sexual rhetoric - though when a partner joins the ship for a trial relationship, the expectation is for any romantic or sexual elements of those letters-courtships to end. Once a person joins a crew for a trial-relationship, they must prove compatability both aboard the ship with the family and with their partner (with privacy provided at a series of island dates, typically). Joining the crew through citrus communion is typically the last step before it develops into marriage. 
While ship living is only one of a variety of selkie modes of life, it is considered the most "selkie" as well as the most exceptional; other selkies often adopt courtship rituals from their host or neighbor cultures to synthesize in with these elements.

Encompassed species

• Selkie

Related Organizations

• Clan Manuhel
• Clan Woshalui
• Motosui Assembly
• The Khilaia

Related Locations

• Khilaian Isles