Selainta

Selainta is a term used in fantasy and speculative fiction to denote a cluster of related concepts that authors assign to a fictional people, their language, and their cultural practices. In many world-building depictions, the Selainta are an island or archipelago civilization with a strong maritime tradition and a social structure based on kinship ties and elder councils. The Selainta language, often named for the people, is described as agglutinative and tonal, with features such as root-based nouns, complex verb morphology, and evidential markers that indicate the source of knowledge.

The culture emphasizes storytelling, carpentry, navigation, and textile arts. A notable craft is selainta weaving, a means of encoding genealogical and navigational information through patterned textiles and color symbolism. The community typically marks life stages—birth, coming of age, marriage, and death—with rites that incorporate song, ritual object exchanges, and seasonal migrations.

The term's etymology varies by author, with some writers linking selainta to a root meaning shore or light, while others treat it as an ancient ethnonym preserved in fictional histories. In some stories, selainta also refers to a ceremonial instrument or a ritual role within the society. Because selainta appears in multiple works with different settings, there is no single canonical description, and details differ across authors and series.