Minor Mollusk Reef

##### Culture

The stragglers are a mixture of every people who have set sail and sailed next to minor molluscoid reef. Although very little of their original culture remains. Their life is relatively easy, as sustenance is provided by their living island in some form or another. This leaves them with plenty of time for philosophical pondering or making war on other islanders or Black sand kingdom pirates who stray too close.

##### Religion

The farmed position of humans living upon their host-islands gives them the overabudance of free time to develope different sorts of belief systems to explain their current position. This, coupled with the complete indifference and silence of their island hosts means that none of these ideas actually represent the wishes of the molluscs accurately. These groups are called Straggler-cults.

###### The singers

The molluscs are a promised land of plenty, and it's a duty to invite others to live upon them as well. The singers try to attract passing ships upon the isles as well as they can, wether by playing the role of shipwrecked in need of help, or denizens of a paradiselike isle. They usually implode rather quickly if they are successiful, as the island gets too crowded.

###### Deathlies

In most cases, the mutated molluscs absorb the corpses of those who die on them in hopes of accumualting enough biomass to grow, and some denizens take it upon as a sign that the island can be fed, and that this feeding is their purpose there. In cases where they don't simply kill themselves, they raid other mollusc isles that stray too near to theirs, or try to lure new sacrifices in the same way as singers.

###### Believers

Simply put, some see molluscs as gods, and try to futilely discern their will. The believers try to interept the will of their island by interepting anything that happen as omen. They usually slowly shift to other types of cults as consensus upon the will of their island forms.

###### Eaters

Some stragglers see themselves as prisoners, and seek out to kill their island. This would normally be quite futile attempt, but most molluscs taht actively hunt for stragglers to repair them are usually mutated to the point where their shells may have weakpoints that can be taken advantage of by shipwrecked who have salvaged a sharp object or two. Only a few of them can transition to the point where they can skip islands after destroying their own.

###### Shipwrecked

Most often recent arrivals, who believe the loss of their ship to be an accident. They try to lure other ships near them as singers do, but in hopes of being spirited away from their unnerving new home. After all they know where the shoals that sunk them are and can surely guide other ships to land safely.

###### Escapees

Ones who try to accumulate enough woodstuff to build crude ships and escape away from the reef. Most often they manage to only change their islands.

###### Players

A small subset of people whose ship had a well-cartographied map of the continent. They believe that they can influence the happenings of the wide world by playing different sorts of games with the aid of this map.

###### The Royalty

It's not uncommon that recently shipwrecked decide to stay on island, and emulate the country they were originally from. There are multiple doges, kings and at least one celestial emperor within reef, although none of them command many subjects.

###### Growers

Are those who assume that they molluscs want to take over the continent. they usually try to decipher the workings of molluscoid life, in order to successifully replicate it so that the minor mollusc reef could cover the whole southern seabed. none know if they are actually successiful in their attempts. Some of them also try to escape the reef with pieces of mollusc shell or some other parts, with the intent of planting those "seeds" somewhere.

Of course this is all without mentioning of molluscs that simply automaticly consume all life that sets their foot upon them, or the ones that have remained relatively unmutated and try to function as normal despite the horde of stragglers crawling on them, or the islands that seem to be moving towards only one direction.

The life of stragglers is often short, and miserable: despite the edible overabudance provided, the molluscs are compeltly barren and leave their denizens vulbernable to harsh weather and sudden death in case the mollusc submerges.

##### Organization

The basic unit of straggler society is a single molluscoid. Usually one molluscoid is inhabited by uniform group of straggelrs who live off it as parasites, and in some rare cases, as symbiots. Geenrally, the molluscoid sustains the stragglers even when tehy don't provide anyhting for it in vain hope that their children will invent a way to improve their size. This coupled with molluscoids inability to communicate with short-lived beings due to not understanding actual language and living on different timescale, usually leaves the stragglers to live in permanent state of confusion.

##### Origin

Unlike their northern major cousins, the minor molluscoids were faced with struggling weather conditions that prevented their growth. At some point in time, unknowable to short-lived history, some molluscs started to lure passing short-lived ones onto them in hopes they could form symbiotic bond which would allow molluscs to grow into the height that was spesified onto them upon their creation. Initial attempts were simple noise-based lures, such as beautiful melodies. Later some molluscs tried to cover their shells with shiny materials that evoked the glow of gold. at some point, molluscs mutated enough so they could move very slowly. If any ships would divert their course towards the suddenly appeared unmapped islands, they would be breached by spiked mollusc shells below the water surface, leaving the seafarers stranded. In time, this population started to grow, as molluscs could provide them with edible material either by becoming their food, or creating habitats for fish and other maritime animals on the underwater parts of their shell.

##### Diplomacy

They do not offically exist, as all who come within the reach of minor molluscoid reef usually join stragglers when a stealthy molluscoid sinks their ship. There are of course exceptions, and they will be described in next post

##### Geography

The minor molluscoids do not appear as intimidating as their major cousins in north. Fro mfar away, they appear as slightly crooked or funny-looking islands. Islands that are conmpiciously unmapped. And if some ship were to observe them for weeks, they would see that they move, albeit very slowly.

##### Economy

The mollusc-island feeds all stragglers above it, and in some cases, the stragglers feed the mollusc. This leaves all trade to be made with items seized from sunk ships. And of couse, the sunk ships themselves - there is no wood or clothing to be found on molluscs. Making the husks of ships and their sails the most valuable commodity of all on the islands.