Raft People

The Raft People are dark-skinned people who dwell on great rafts made of logs in the Open Sea of the west. Their existence is only a legend to the Archipelagans, and they share very little of the lore of land-dwelling men. The rafts are made of square-cut logs, and have shelters and masts; the largest raft houses a temple called the House of the Great Ones. At the Roads of Balatran, in spring to midsummer, seventy rafts in a circle a mile across cluster together to form a floating town; at this time of the year, the Long Dance is held and people marry before the rafts separate for the rest of the year, following the grey whales (whom they worship as Great Ones). They only come to shore once a year in autumn, at the beaches of Emah on the Long Dune by Wellogy, to cut wood and refit the rafts. They are very slender and only the height of children; some bear tattoos. They speak a heavily accented version of Hardic, are ruled by a chief, eat fish, swim like dolphins, measure time only in days and nights, practise polygamy (the chief has three wives), use whale ivory for tools, and sealskins and a fibre made from the nilgu seaweed for cloth and rope.