Is it okay to allow merfolk civilizations to expand towards coastlines?

>There would be literally no reason for them to trade or take anything from the surface.
Are you sure about that? If you're doing a Mer race, there's going to be lots of different kinds of Mer people.

Who's to say there aren't Mer racists who want to toy with the surface? Or want the 'quaint surface curiosities' and 'tribal artifacts'?

>Because they're articulated like dolphins instead of like fish.
I'm not sure you understand how tails work

Why would they need to raid? They have pearls, sunken treasure, coral (which is considered precious material to this day), mother of pearl, and food to trade.

You can't tell me that people don't want that shit, those are all multimillion dollar industries based on the sea.

>those are all multimillion dollar industries based on the sea
And I suppose there are no land based commodities?

>sunken treasure
>implying that's a business that can't be enanched by purposefully sinking more ships

Sure - but what would they need? They don't need food. They don't need housing. The only thing they might need would be weapons, which brings up the raiding scenario, so only idiots would give them those.

>They don't need food.
I mean, you don't "need" anything more than nutritious gruel. You don't have to import any foreign foods at all. But you, or someone you know, probably has.

Also .

You kinda screwed yourself by saying "sunken treasure".

The question isn't what they need. It's what they want. I'm sure there are many luxuries that merfolk would want. For instance, we don't know if the merfolk have access to mining and precious gems and minerals. Also, stainless steel would be pretty useful for merpeople.

Curiously enough, this is something that is happening in my setting, although it's less of merfolks, and more of porpoise people from another plane.
They are cunning merchants and quite rich: they pay large sums to buy coastlines of sort, promising also to sell fish to the locals at reasonable prices and protect the coasts from potential warships.
Ultimately, playing the long game, they end up buying all the coastlines, and end up monopolizing all sea trade for large monetary gain, eventually controlling most of the world's economy flow, and be able to afford to buy out also the territories outside of the coastline with little effort. (although they leave alone deserts and forests)
They "conquered" 4 material planes this way, up to now. They are unsure if starting a fifth attempt.

Sure. All the better to create merfolk farms to harvest their bones and craft them into high-value souvenirs.

We can use the money from said farms to build state-of-the-art childcare facilities!

Where did Mermaid bone farms come from?
It's not the first time I've heard the joke and it seems like an odd joke to make.

It's from an old Dorf thread. Was it on Veeky Forums or the official Dorf forums?

Dwarf Fortress. Somebody noticed that mermaid bones were really valauble for some reason, so he decided to harvest them for money. Catching and killing mermaids, however, proved to be not worth the effort, but he figured he could catch some and start breeding them in captivity and slaughter them for their bones. So he set up an industrial mermaid bone farm, which people apprently considered horrible enough that the creator of the game nerfed the value of mermaid bones.

It was nerfed because it was overpowered as FUCK, not because it was "horrifying".

How does something get called overpowered in a single-player game?

That depends on whether or not you like to eat. Fish population is strained enough as it is, no sense in letting these water gypsies ruin our territorial waters.

When it breaks the game's economic systems over its knee.

Merfolks should not live in civilizations.

>overpowered
You mean unbalanced or bugged or something.

To be fair I wonder if Toady tried to make a sort of reference to mermaid flesh being sought after (it wasn't just the bones that were valuable, but you couldn't butcher sentient beings for their flesh)

Because it greatly disrupts the balance and makes a significant aspect of the difficulty completely trivial?

What merfolk are we talking about here?

Fish populations has always been fine up until the dawn of modern fishing techniques. The introduction of merfolk wouldn't strain shit in a pre-modern setting.

Wasn't the mermaid farm really complex to build, though? It feels like if you were willing to put that much effort in, you deserved to be able to break the game.

it got nerfed because too many people made mermaid bone farms and made their games piss easy and never needing money again. Toady doesn't like people not-losing.

>mer-racists who have no actual need for surface commodities and just want to lay humans low

maybe it's like pic related where the sea is so enormously big that the only really livable places for them are about as sparse as human settlements anyway?

Can I have the name?
Not a sand panda issue, my computer just hates displaying the site right now.

As long as they're cute.

In that case I would have mammalian merfolk who live in and around the coast as opposed to their cousins who are more dolphin like that live further out in water (and would be larger and not as intelligent).

Although I'm not curious what a race of river dolphin merfolk would be like

Do merboys have penises? Would they be able to fuck a human girl?

lmgtfy.com/?q=fish penis

... and why not?

Dudebro party animals that crash your festivals and walk off with all the hot girls, traditionally.

>ywn meet a cute mergirl
>ywn fertilize her eggs

It is if I can get OP pic's fish boipussy

Is that a merboy?
I approve, I really approve, and demand moar!

If they're anything like their oceangoing cousins pic related is pretty good answer.

Sexually liberated chauvinistic sorts who don't see anything wrong with being more then bit forward with what they want?

What about their women? Are they submissive or can they be equally as forward and pushy about getting what they want?

...

Jikyuu 1500 yen!! Gyogyou o Tetsudau Kantan na Oshigoto desu. (Dansei nomi Bashou) Zenpen | Earn 1500 Yen! Help wanted at fishery! Easy Job! (Only male applicants please)

Sounds like it's time for some good old fashioned genocide

That was cute.

Post more merboys

...

All mammal males have penises.

>Merfolk
>Mammal
Are they?

On average, about half.

And the important part is a fish tail. Hence the original question

>rapist ocean jews

>can they be equally as forward and pushy about getting what they want?
Yes and they will force you to cum inside with industrial strength vaginal muscles

They're monotremes

>Make a setting
>Make the merfolk horrible scheming rapist ocean jews
>On the other
hand they all look like >Dare you enter my naval campaign?

>Breasts
>Belly buttons
>Remarkably similar to human physiology
>Can become, were once, and can interbreed with, humans in many myths
>Aquatic mammals of the order Sirenia were called that specifically because they kept getting mistaken for mermaids
Isn't it easier, at this point, to just say the fish tails are convergent evolution rather then the other way around?

Pretty sure they'll take our women, son

Magical Beasts, nigga

What's the best use for merfolk in a campaign? Helpful one-off NPC? Wily antagonist? Cutesy settlement? Besieged community?

Well then we just take theirs user, don't you know JUSTICE?

Good luck taking their women when they've already retreated to their dark fortresses deep beneath the ocean, with your mother, sisters, wife, and daughters in tow, to be twisted beyond recognition into the whore-brides of their dread king and his brine knights.

Seductive fish people that might fug you or might eat you depending on their mood

Is it okay to let a mermale live in your bathtub?

Nope, accommodating merpeople at less 600 cubic feet per individual is considered abuse.

but what if they want it?

Nope, not even then, there's health regulations. Obviously taking them indoor temporarily is ok, but bathtub is not acceptable as permanent solution.

I'm not entirely sure. I like merfolk and all, but they're pretty difficult to fit in your typical campaign. In a nautical-focused campaign, they could pretty easily take the same role as elves, as a mostly benevolent demihuman race that lives in their hidden (underwater) villages and rarely directly interacts with humans but could make allies against the forces of evil.

>That pic
The perfect balance between monster, cute and merfolk

It will interfere with fishing, a necessity to coastal living, and result in conflict eventually,

>Take terror from the deep
>Antropomorphize it
>It's cute
Works for most things actually. Deep sea fish, kraken, giant spiders and even Japanese hornets suddenly become less intimidating if they're intelligent enough to tell you "don't be afraid, friend! I mean no harm!"

>It will interfere with fishing
Not per se. Not if the merfolk are willing to trade with coastal humans. Land goods for deep sea goods sounds like a fair trade.

Frankly, they are porpoises, not dolphins.
So probably not the rapist part. But it does sound like ocean jews, yes.

I wouldn't trust a Japanesse giant horned telling me it means no harm. Fuckers have a nasty temperament.

Cute deep sea horrors are cute, though. Although I also like the ones that incorporate the freaky traits of the actual fish that make them so cool.

>Anthropomorphized sea cucumber

>Implying that's not a thing
user, how new are you?

gambargin.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/&q=cucumber

>TFW no deepsea mermaid waifu

>Antropomorphize it
More like slap tits on it.

All I'm seeing is puppet pal warriors.

My horror is from the idea of anthropomorphic women who defend themselves by turning around, bending over, and shitting out their lungs all over their attacker before reeling their lungs back in.

>stock up on water breathing potions
I'm going in!

I guess then he had to delate the old sketches.

>willing to trade

So they're going to trade with people who live and fish on the coast for fish they can no longer fish themselves in great number because their mere presence depletes fishing stock? It's a matter of food, and for that matter a now alien culture is living right next door. These two things will spark eventually, and it won't take long.

Dolphin tails primarily go up and down.
Fish tails primarily go left and right.

Plus, human legs bend more like dolphin tails than fish tails, so merpeople are generally portrayed as bending their tails up and down.

Well, it's a bathtub, so it's not like changing the water is any kind of problem. Could even show them how to use the drain and tap themself.

Bump for more merbois

Dolphin tails are based on fused spines, and one would imagine that merfolk tails are based on a similar principle.

Spines do not bend that way

If we were talking about selkies, who are based off of sea-lions, then it makes sense

Just stick it into Google next time, edit link to e-hentai if it don't work at first. Search result will gibe the title even if it's blocked from view.

You are now aware that global warming is in reality an attempt to expand merfolk territory.

I did not know that, thanks.

Maybe their tails are more like new world monkeys in their flexibility?
Evolution may have favoured more mobile tails with limited prehensile abilities over stronger, faster tails with limited mobility due to their amphibious nature and general costal dwellings.
The tail may even be akin to a tentacle, especially if cecaelia/octopus mermaids exist in the setting and are closely related to mermaids.

Then there is also 'gods/magic/wizards did it' considering Atargatis, the Ningyo and theYawkYawk all have magical origins and the Sirens and Nereids were children of a god. Even though the Sirens were originally bird-ladies like the Harpies and Nereids looked like beautiful women, legs and all.

So, what? Mermaids are in league with massed polluters?
This is sounding like some Captain Planet plot.

Watch this show OP

You do realise there is more then just one or two animes out there, right?
Now can we have a title?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagi-Asu:_A_Lull_in_the_Sea

Do note this more of a drama than a fantasy show. It runs on magical realism

One of my past DM's made our party investigate a supposedly abandoned mer-village under an island. It turned out that a necromancer gained control of most (if not all) of the residents, so he could steal something from their temple.
Since I decided for my character not to go down and resolve the crisis, I had him fish a bit more. We went by d100 results, so the second time I cast, I ended up catching a mermaid. She was with another, and I had my character jump in and dance with them.
I was to go on vacation during the next meetup, so I left the DM with the hints that my character would make sexual advances with the mermaids. It worked, and I got an inspiration point when the main objective was done.