Beneath the waves - Kohura reef community

second humanoid design for artstation's beneath the wave creature design challenge
www.artstation.com/contests/be…

moving on from the cold open expanse of the raiders sea to the  warm great reefs of the coasts where the colorful reef communities have lived for generations in their ancient towering coral villages. 

so in designing this second humanoid, i paid attention to several important keywords of how i want the design to look: tribal, colorful, primitive. i used a lot of Oceania and Maori people images as references for their culture, since they live in small islands and coasts, fitting the sea theme, instead here the small islands are 'small reefs' where many tribes and communities live, including the kohura community (kohura being the maori word for coral) . the maori people seem to use lots of natural plants and thatches for their clothing but since those don't exist in the sea, the reef natives use weaved sea weeds instead, their weapons are also more heavy crude looking and club-like, unlike the spears and swords of the cetans because the reef natives are more used to handling club type weapons, they have more powerful muscles to fling their fin/arms and tail to deliver powerful blows. although they are advantageous in that regard, they still can't match the speed and flexible maneuvers of the cetan raiders nor do they have the technology to create armors rivaling the strength and flexibility of the cetan oyster armors. most of the reef weapons are made out of corals and carved rocks, most handles are made out of long stalky corals that act like the 'tree and woods' of the sea, tooth from predatory fishes are also used a lot, strapped on the clubs as well as razor clams and barnacles that simply grew on it. although the reef has rich resources, the reef natives tend to use things in a more natural way, preferring to let things happen the way nature meant it to than conquering nature. which is incredibly infuriating to the cetans who often use this reason to legitimize their raids on the reef, "all these resources the barbarians are wasting are better off in our hands"

as for food producing, most reef communities are agricultural, growing their staple food, sea weeds on large nets spanning across the corals, they still hunt most of their meat, aside from their clam farms, from small to large fishes, giant morays or crustaceans that are more dangerous to hunt, unlike the cetans who breed and herd smaller whales and sunfish like cattle on the open sea. 

another detail that is probably not that important but i still want to find a solution for is how these humanoids reproduce in this world.

so as mentioned above, the reef natives are very diverse, almost hundreds of different colorations, different fins, body forms, heads, beaks, lips, eyes. it looks as if they are as diverse as the hundreds of tropical reef fishes, so the question is can they reproduce between 'species'. 

short answer is yes, long answer, the success rate varies wildly between different varieties. but generally only couples that are on the same exact variation is guaranteed to have an offspring, reproduction between two different varieties are harder depending on how far genetically they are between each other, in some cross genetic breeds it is easier, in some others it is almost impossible, some reef tribes are very strict with letting their members marrying other breeds, other tribes are open to everyone. hybrids are also a thing, but it is way more likely that a crossbreed offspring only has one of their parent's traits with some minor traits from their other half, true hybrids that mash the two parent traits they have are rare, and it is even rare for those hybrids to have a hybrid offspring instead of the offspring reverting back to their original grandparent breeds. this insane amount of variation is what's keeping the reef communities from merging into a single race, while for the cetans, even in their early primitive days the variation between their race can be counted by hand, the orca-like people or dolphin-like and narwhal-like people, so it is almost set in stone that their people is bound to converge into one race.

even rarer than that are hybrids between cetans and reef natives because the cetans are more sea mammal like than the reef natives, it is so rare that one can say it practically never happened seeing the cetans are constantly raiding and killing the natives. 

Though i actually find this to be an interesting possible story based in this world. say you make the protagonist to be a cetan and reef hybrid born in the reef, or in the cetan homeland, making them truly unique, and so many points of interesting conflict can arise from this background, how will they face their mixed heritage, how the natives or the cetans will treat them, etc