MERFOLK-SAILORS
Keywords:
MERFOLK-SAILORS, SAILORS_MERFOLK
The merfolk have a long and storied history with the seafarers of land-walking races: the sailors and pirates of the legged world. Merfolk children are known to be especially keen to interact with these legged sea-wanderers, and as the most mischievous age-bracket in the species the bulk of these interactions tend to be less than kind, though very funny to the merfolk child. Fishing nets are tangled or cut, ships are rocked or damaged; sometimes even compasses are tampered with to confuse and bewilder their navigators, drawing their ships into pranks and traps. That any number of these actions may lead to the ship and its crew meeting a watery end fails to register to the merfolk as important. They are more likely to be confused than horrified when a ship sinks and the crew goes with it, merely left wondering why the silly sailors didn't just swim away.
Lonely, adult merfolk are the second most likely to be encountered by land-walking types at sea. The iconic image of the mermaid lazing upon a rock in deep waters, singing to lure the unwitting ship of sailors to their deaths, is an accurate if somewhat misunderstood form of encounter. While it's quite possible that a merperson has historically done precisely that and for no other reason than to see what might happen, it's far more common for the merperson to be merely minding their own business. What sailors do upon seeing them is ultimately down to them.
The last and least common reason land-walkers tend to encounter merfolk over the oceans are for the purposes of fulfilling merfolk superstition. It's considered good luck to travel to the surface and touch a passing ship, so long as no one on board witnesses you doing it. If you are witnessed, bad luck will follow you for a year.