Nereids are one of the weirder bits of lore in the comic’s universe, so I made this page for answering common questions you may have about them, and where they live.

Q: What are Nereids?

A: Nereids are a race in the comic that live in their own little dimension. They appear as fish – people with female features.

Q: Can nereids shapeshift?

A: Nereids can appear as squidlike mermaids, fish – women, or human women, each with specific circumstances for when each appearance is used. As the author, I don’t know if Akila physically grows tentacles to change, or if it’s all in the mind of the viewers.

Q: Are all Nereids female? If so, how do they reproduce?

A: All Nereids are female. How nereids come to be is unknown (even to most nereids), and if a nereid does know, it is impossible for them to say how, due to a mental block.

Q: What is the nereid “mental block”?

A: Nereids are extreme rule-followers when it comes to nereid law/rules, making them physically unable to do or say certain things. To a nereid, it is more or less a state of enforced hesitation, similar to the feeling you get when you want to tell someone something personal (e.g. a confession of love), but can’t bring yourself to. This comes from the Nereid queen, who more or less enforces these laws mentally.

Q: Does the Nereid Queen control the Nereids?

A: No. She merely enforces the rules, which are rules she must follow as well.

Q: What kinds of nereids are there?

A: There are three types of nereids, each with their own mental restrictions and conditions. There are normal Nereids (such as Akila, who recieve the abovementioned mental block but do not enforce it), The Singular Queen, (who both recieves and enforces said block), and Nereid Priestesses, (Who do not have the mental block, due to them tending to the things the nereids keep secret. They, however, never leave the Dream.)

Q: Do nereids form relationships?

A: Yes.. While nereids do keep to themselves, they still can develop affections for other nereids (and humans), form friendships, and dislike each other. Just because they are under a sort of minor mind control does not mean they are mindless slaves – they (as shown in comic) are surprisingly humanlike.

Q: Why do nereids resemble humans?

A: This is something most nereids either don’t know (and don’t really care about), or are forbidden to speak of. As of now, there is not 100% canon answer. You might be able to figure out my headcanon based on some stuff on this page, but there is no concrete answer.

Q: Do Nereids know magic?

A: Most do in some capacity. Nereids in general are very gifted at forms of mind control and mind manipulation. Nereids cannot gain magic from killing human magic users, and vice versa.

NEREID’S DREAM FAQ

Q: What is the Nereid’s Dream? Is it real, or is it literally a dream? If it does exist, Where?

A: The Nereid’s dream is the term used to describe the space the vast majority of Nereids live. It is real, but it exists in a space outside our plane of existence, where certain fundemental laws of the universe act differently or do not exist at all. For example, time acts strangely – it passes like normal, but humans and other living things do not age while visiting, and as things do not change, time is very difficult to measure.

Q: How do humans arrive in the Nereid’s Dream?

A: Humans can visit the dream by being “escorted” by a Nereid that has the ability to teleport. This most often takes place while a human is asleep, hence it being called a “dream”.

Q: Can the fact of time not passing be exploited to gain immortality, or even time travel?

A: Humans are immortal during their time in the dream, but age when they arrive back in our world. Time travel is impossible, due to time not passing in the real world while you are there, making you arrive the instant you left. In a nutshell, while a human is in the nereid’s dream, time does not pass in the real world. (From their point of view. Time passes as normal for everyone else.)

Q: Does time not pass in the real world for nereids as well? Is this what causes their immortality?

A: Yes. Time does not pass for them while living there is well, but nereids are immortal regardless. This is what makes Akila’s age so hard to nail down – she could either be 5 (her age in time spent in the real world), 16 (her unchanging physical age), 21 (her physical age plus her age spent in our world), or many millennia (Her total time living, including time spent in the dream).

Q: Upon coming back to earth, do different nereids visit different times in the past (and future)? If so, could they change history and cause our events to change?

A: Yes, different nereids go to different time periods in the real world. However, they cannot change the past. Here’s an example: Let’s say a nereid that corresponds to the past goes and kills Theo’s grandfather. In order for Theo to exist, his grandfather had to exist, meaning in the comic’s universe this event did not happen. If a nereid does kill Theo’s grandfather, that universe cannot be the one in which Theo lives, so in the universe of the comic nothing changes. basically (if that was hard for you to understand), the nereid killing Theo’s grandfather was in a sort of alternate reality, allowing both events to happen, but separately.