Sharkkin: the monstrous counterpoint
A new monstrous form in The Silver Seas, built on the Orc body type with gills, fins and webbed hands. It is the melee-first aquatic option.
The Sharkkin are the answer to a simple question: what if the sea had a brute? Where the Aqualon are elegant and near-human, the Sharkkin are big, muscular and openly monstrous, a martial form that Triumph describes as standing shoulder to shoulder with Orcs and Ogres, with a glint of teeth in every grin.
The art diary is candid about the intent. The team felt the Orc proportions had been underused lately and used the Sharkkin as an excuse to give that body type some attention again. Early exploration tried human-shark hybrids; the final design went feral instead, with gills, fins and webbed hands sculpted into the base body rather than bolted on.
Form perks
- A heavy martial silhouette built on the Orc body type, with a full sculpt rather than a head swap.
- Aquatic anatomy: gills, fins, webbed hands, and a face built around a shark snout and crests.
- Expressive sculpting instead of facial animation, so the personality is in the shape of the face.
- The Merfolk option through Children of the Waves, including a unique full-tail model for players who want the shark without the legs.
That last point is worth emphasising: the Sharkkin have a dedicated tail model under the Merfolk transformation, not a reused Aqualon tail. If you want a shark that swims rather than walks, the game supports it visually.
How they play
The form itself does not add a combat rule, so "how they play" is really about what the body suggests and what the traits allow. The Sharkkin are the natural pick for players who want to fight in the water rather than across it, and the expansion gives that instinct several places to land:
- Mercantile (Cartel) turns a shark crew into raiders: hidden routes, Leverage stacking, and a Mage Slayer to remove the enemy's support.
- Any culture with Piracy gives you Ember Dust and Rob, which rewards units that get close and personal.
- Children of the Waves makes the whole faction aquatic, which pairs with the water rebalance: 20 movement points to embark is cheaper for a faction that does not need to embark at all.
| Build idea | Culture | Key tome | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reef raiders | Mercantile (Cartel) | Piracy | Fast skirmishers that rob and explode, fighting from water |
| Brute tide | Barbarian | Eternal Ice | Heavy melee that walks across frozen water instead of embarking |
| Drowned legion | Any | The Damned | Ghostfire front line that spawns wisps from its own kills |
The second row is the interesting one. Eternal Ice's Whiteout turns water provinces into ice and snow, which lets any unit walk across them instead of embarking. For a heavy melee faction that normally hates water, that is a way to bring the whole army across a sea without paying the 20-point embark cost at all.
Appearance and customisation
The Sharkkin customisation set covers snouts, crests, skin decoration and tail variations, with a colour range from reef-bright to abyssal. The art diary shows a sculpt with and without expression to demonstrate how much personality comes from the shape of the brow and mouth rather than animation.
They also get the pirate cosmetic treatment: the expansion adds eye gear, hand replacements and leg replacements as new customisation categories, alongside pirate hats that come with a crow, a parrot or a macaw depending on your captain's personality. A Sharkkin pirate with a hook hand and a macaw is a supported combination.
Where the fantasy ends
They are not a tank culture and they are not a stat advantage. A Sharkkin faction does not take less damage or hit harder because of its face; it simply looks like it should. The mechanical weight comes from culture, tomes and traits, exactly as it does for the Aqualon.
They are also not the "evil" option in any mechanical sense. The form has no alignment, no diplomatic penalty and no restriction. You can play a Heroic Sharkkin Mercantile Barony with a trade empire and a taste for coral jewellery.
Pick or pass
Pick Sharkkin if you want a physically imposing faction, if you plan to fight close and often, or if you want the Merfolk tail on something that is clearly not a mermaid. Pick the Aqualon if you want the elegant version and the wider cosmetic range.
Either way, the form is only half the decision. The Mercantile culture is the expansion's centrepiece, and the Tome of Piracy is the tome that best matches a shark crew's instincts.
The tail, and what it actually changes
The Merfolk transformation gives the Sharkkin a full tail model rather than a reused one, and it changes how the faction moves through water. That matters more after the Manta update than it did before: embarking costs a flat 20 movement points, and a faction that does not need to embark at all is playing a different movement economy from everyone else.
It is not a free pass, though. A tail does not make a unit aquatic in the rules sense unless the transformation says so, and the transformation is a society trait investment. The Sharkkin's advantage is that the investment looks correct on them, a shark with legs is a compromise, a shark with a tail is the point.
