On the Hermitage Island Fellowship

Hermitage Island Fellowship Flag by BCGR_Wurth

Physiology aside, one of the surest signs of a shared heritage among all sapient hominids is, in my opinion, the fact that there are some drives that seem to transcend culture. Much like the freelanders of Craterhold, the Hermitage Island Fellowship arose out of a desire for a unique freedom from the larger, more structured society from which it drew heritage. Moreover, just as in the case of the 'noble' families of Craterhold, the Fellowship seems to have cast off the comparatively light yoke of the Rostran Archipelago Confederacy only to find themselves under the sway of moneyed oligarchs rather than a traditional familial caste. One's opinion may vary on whether this state of affairs is preferable to the alternative...
...On top of the hot, salty air that bore down upon me for the duration of my visit to the Kokiu Chain, my visit to the Hermitage Island Fellowship was further complicated by the difficulty of travel. Each tiny island and flotilla is like a micro-state unto itself, each with varying levels of infrastructural development, customs laws, and assortment of palms to grease. Moreover, there are places in Western B where my guides reasonably informed me that I would be 'brined and shucked bare' for discourtesy or should I deign to travel alone by my mere nature as a verdial, and, therefore, as a curiosity. I gather that there are parts of the Fellowship even more lawless than the already arch-libertarian 'core' regions - places like Still Atoll, where slavers and even the Avarix Corps pirates carry out their trade in the open and with the full blessing of the local officials... ...Still, the journey to the Chain was not entirely a waste. As it turns out, the Fellowship is one of the last places where authentic Low Rostran culture can be experienced in its rawest form. Back in the Archipelago, the Low and High Rostran cultures have cohabitated for so long that cultural cross-polination has occured; before long, I suspect, a pan-Rostran culture will emerge, probably first in one of the cosmopolitan urban centers like Eudoxia or Exivaun, and the previous folkways will become so muddled together as to be indistinguishable from one another. In the Fellowship, though, the Low Rostran way of living - a life filled with a striving for intense sensation, both pleasurable and painful, in full communion with the sea and its spirit, Ixaumosana - is awake and vibrant in ways it could never be under the eyes of its more stoic mountain-dwelling neighbors. That zest for life speaks to me, and, though I suffered in the learning of it, I should like to partake in it again someday...

— Dr. Cynaro Thorne, in his memoirs entitled A Rake's Guide to the Manifold