A'aii'k or "Phinnies" are intelligent dolphin people living in the oceans and estuaries of 25th century March Earth. Their culture and language is widespread and influences the underwater world much in the same way as human culture has influenced the dry world above. Phinnies are generally intelligent, active, gregarious people with their own rich culture and history that blends with the other people of March Earth but still retains its unique core through tradition and family bonds. Everybody knows what a Phinny is.
Why is a Phinny?
Phinnies came about very shortly after the start of the Cataclysm. Their already intelligent dolphin ancestors were boosted into true sapience and awareness of the world by the strange forces unleashed at that time, along with many other intelligent species. These "uplifted" peoples are collectively called "Darwinchild species". Most other Darwinchild species went extinct in the following 400 years or their numbers dwindled to almost nothing, but the A'aii'k thrived (in part due to centuries of ruthless bloodline purity practices imposed by a powerful monarchy) and grew and developed their own nomadic nation and culture.
How is a Phinny different from a dolphin?
If you call a Phinny a dolphin, it's likely some would be mildly offended, in the same vein as if you were to call a human an ape. Dolphins as they were pre-Cataclysm no longer exist on March Earth, and Phinnies know their ancestry but consider themselves quite separate from it. The average Phinny is hugely more intelligent than the average bottlenose dolphin, which is the main and most important difference. Physically and visually Phinnies differ from their ancestors by their genetic variability: The original intelligent dolphins post-Cataclysm were of several different species which hybridised into the modern Phinny, and that background can express itself as a variety of different appearances. Phinnies look the most like a mix of bottlenose dolphins and spotted dolphins, but can also express features that seem to be from common, spinner, striped dolphins, and others from that closely related oceanic dolphin group.
Phinny Biology
Phinnies do not differ very much physically from dolphins. To get a grasp of their biology, one could just as easily read the Wikipedia page for oceanic dolphins. To save you the time, here are the most important physical differences from a human perspective:
Body
Hydrodynamic: A phinny's smoothness is their speed, any chunky gear or accessories represent a willing sacrifice in their ability to move through water quickly and easily. Anything that creates drag is immediately felt, as it changes the way a Phinny moves through the water.
Skin: Dolphin skin is remarkable for many reasons. Firstly, it is extremely thin. This makes it very weak to UV damage and abrasion, both things that a Phinny must look out for if they live somewhere that isn't open ocean. This is balanced out though, by dolphin skin's incredibly fast rate of regeneration. A phinny's injuries heal very rapidly and vigorously even without medical treatment. This rapid regeneration is constant, leading to bothersome problems such as yucky dead skin under harnesses at the end of the day and tattoos that fade annoyingly fast.
Tail: A dolphin's tail is connected by long, powerful muscles to the rest of its body, and the flukes are made of layers upon layers of rigid fibrous cartilage. Aside from being an incredible engine of propulsion that can rocket an athletic Phinny through the water at around 30kph if needed, the tail and lower half of the body is a Phinny's strongest limb for interacting with the world.
Face: Most of a dolphin's face is space reserved for keen senses (see below) but the beak is extremely solid bone and is a Phinny's "hand". Although not as dextrous as a bird's beak due to the limited mobility of the neck, the beak is used for most tasks. A variety of Phinny-developed tool types exist for this, both ones that are gripped in a Phinny's short sharp teeth, and those that fit over the beak in some way. Despite its powerful build a dolphin's beak is very sensitive, with a connection to a dolphin's hearing/echolocation and an acute sense of touch.
Flippers: Though lacking dexterity, a dolphin's flippers are sensitive and still have many of the same roles as forelegs. They are the most expressive part of a dolphin's body and Phinnies use them for all kinds of social gestures from caresses to smacks. The flippers are also crucial to performing the spins and curves that make dolphins so agile while swimming.
Senses
Hearing: Sound travels 4 times faster underwater and with more intensity than in air. All aquatic creatures are sensitive to sound, but cetaceans are an extreme case even among those. A dolphin's main sense for percieving the world is hearing: Not just through keen passive hearing, but active echolocation that creates their image of the world around them no matter how dark or murky the water may be. A dolphin hears primarily through their lower jaw, using fatty pads on the rear insides of the bone that transfer the sound to their internal ears. To listen closely to something, such as the heartbeat of another dolphin, they will press their lower beak or jaw against that surface. Modern Phinnies often have tech that uses bone pins that can augment their hearing or play sounds that only they can hear, similar to headphones. A dolphin's hearing frequency range is very wide, spanning a little lower than human hearing to well into the ultrasonic.
Echolocation: A dolphin "sees" the details of their world through the echoes of clicks. They send them out forwards from their fatty forehead organ called a melon and recieve them through their jaw. This sense however is nothing like "seeing" at all. Colour and tone are invisible. Movement is perceptible only in certain directions. Living things are layered entities of bone and liquid and soft tissue whose shape is less important than their unique density and texture. An opaque layer of mud is a haze with the fuzzy shapes of shells embedded within it. A persistant loud sound is a cloud of darkness. All structures designed for Phinny habitation take accoustics and internal structure into account, and signage for Phinnies can be read by them without light. Echolocation is modified in all kinds of ways by Phinny-specific tech, often via melon implants or bone pins.
Sight: A dolphin's vision is good but limited. With only one type of cone cell, their colour vision is lost but their ability to percieve differences in light and dark is keen. The swirling grey facial markings of bottlenose dolphins, for example, are much more striking to other bottlenose dolphins than to the human eye. Phinnies also have words for particular qualities of colour that humans aren't as familiar with: The light green of bright yellow a few metres underwater appears perceptually brighter than white to the dolphin eye. This colour is used a lot aesthetically in combination with greyscale on Phinny-oriented visual art, and the english word for this colour is "seabright". Phinnies also have a word that translates to "blood-black", which is their word for blood red. The lenses of a dolphin's eyes are designed for the refraction index of water and although they deform slightly to make vision in air less blurry, many coastal Phinnies wear goggles filled with water to see clearly when sticking their heads above the surface.
Brain
A phinny's brain is extremely good at processing large amounts of complex information fast, but somewhat poor at retaining it. A phinny can read and talk at the same time without issue, but might struggle when asked to recall what they just read or said. The average phinny enjoys high stimuli activities, bold patterns, rapid and complex music, etc. Similarly to the human ADHD neurotype however, this means that they struggle to maintain alertness in low stimuli situations. A phinny on a long swim through a calm open ocean is typically in an almost dissociative state unless something interesting happens. Dolphins sleep with one half of their brain at a time, so a zoned out phinny may even have an entire hemisphere of their brain turned off as they snooze while swimming.
The brain's ability to half-sleep combined with a dolphin's excellent echolocation "vision" in darkness means they are typically active at all hours. Instead of a day-night cycle, phinnies have multiple loosely-designated nap times of about 1-4 hours. Often these naps are coordinated with friends or family, but can be any time of day or night for a total of 8 hours stretched across 24.
Phinny Culture
In contrast to the citizen-forward and adaptive culture of Infraflux and the individualistic innovation-based culture of the Trade Union, the Phinny Kingdom and all the people under it are a culture rooted in tradition. Despite only existing for a few hundred years, the Phinny Kingdom leans strongly on familiar ancient values of bloodlines, gender roles, social heirarchies, and ritual. Though the individual phinny may be a wild free spirit, they are born within a framework of context involving their family, obligations, and designated societal role. It can be hard for a phinny to completely shake off this cultural background, especially since phinny children are almost exclusively raised within the nomadic Phinny Kingdom itself.
The Phinny Kingdom is structured as a myriad of small groups called "pods" that are scattered worldwide in warm or temperate salty waters. A phinny's pod is akin to their home town or village, consisting of a large number of family and friend groups who travel together. Family relations are often intricate and widely dispersed, and meticulately kept track of for generations. Once a phinny reaches adolesence they split off based on sex, with female phinnies staying longer with their immediate family and male phinnies breaking off and forming groups with other young males called "friend groups" or "zeets" in english. Zeetmates often stay lifelong friends and may leave their pod together to seek other pods or adventure to other places. For this reason, the majority of phinnies living and working in other nations are groups of 2-7 males.
A Nomad's Life
From a human perspective, a phinny's life is always in motion. A phinny is rarely still physically but also their cultural background is nomadic, which leads to a very different approach to life. Personal posessions aren't very important to most phinnies and are often shared within groups without much thought or care about ownership. Personal expression however is valued, so a phinny's "posessions" might be a key set of symbols they always prefer, such as anemones or zig-zag patterns or certain phrases. Even this will often change during a phinny's lifetime, as they move through different phases of their life. Phinnies are easily swept up by brief trends, leaning fully into them as a lifestyle and then abandoning them just as quickly for something new. Phinny Kingdom traditions are the anchor in this colourful chaos, providing connection for phinnies following even the most contrasting lifestyles.
The Obligations of Sex
March Earth conspires to diversify and reinvent life at every turn, yet phinnies have remained a constant for hundreds of years, vastly outnumbering other remaining Darwinchild species like the Umnthi. The reason is almost certainly the strict cultural laws put in place early on in Phinny history about maintaning bloodline purity. The most important rules are as follows:
A phinny female must have a child if she is able.
A phinny child should be raised among other phinnies.
A phinny female may not have a child with one who is less than fully phinny.
Only pure-blooded phinnies are part of the kingdom. (Recently amended to: Pure-blooded and second generation hybrids).
A phinny must return to the kingdom at least once every 3 years.
The first rule in particular is often a great source of irritation and social conflict for some female phinnies, who would much prefer to do as they please than spend ~10 years raising a calf. Although childcare is very much a communal/family activity, some mothers still find themselves feeling "trapped" in their home pods by this. Having a resentful mother is an unfortunate but common joke among phinnies.
Phinny gender roles are firmly attached to sex. "Transgender" is generally an archaeic term on March Earth, with so many varied biologies and so few gender roles, but it still sees some use within Phinny culture. Transgender individuals are still expected by phinny society to fulfill the social obligations of their biology (artificial or otherwise), and this dissonance often creates conflict.
The Phinny cultural influence
Underwater settlements are often full of people who look like Phinnies, talk like Phinnies, have the same needs as Phinnies, and many who carry Phinny ancestry in their veins. This overlap, along with the nomadic spread of the kingdom's reach, mean that underwater settlements worldwide often are connected to Phinny culture. In comparison to land-based Infraflux settlements, for example, underwater settlements tend to have more traditions, taboos, and local customs, while being looser about social distance and what is considered "private" or "owned". The general global language of communication underwater is phinny, and many infrastructures are built from the ground up with echolocation primarily in mind instead of sight.
Phinnies (WIP)
