Atha'an Miere

The Atha'an Miere are a fictional group of people in Robert Jordan's series of fantasy novels, The Wheel of Time.

The Atha'an Miere, called the Sea Folk by commoners, are a group of people with complex customs that live on ships and on islands in the Sea of Storms. They only showed up on the mainland to trade goods, until prophecy seemed to be fulfilled (see Coramoor, below). They typically have a dark complexion, and are seen as "exotic" by mainlanders. The rank of a Sea Folk can be determined by both the number of piercings (typically ear and nose, with a chain in between for higher ranks) and the quality of the metal used for the earrings/nose rings.

Sea Folk porcelain sculptures, delicate and graceful objects of art, are highly prized by mainlanders, frequently costing their weight in gold to obtain.