Addendum to Collegium Overlays — “Unregistered Civilian Mandates”
Filed by: Malrix Morvain (1st Chair, Pearlwright Collegium)
Subject: Osmosis Harlet — “Civilian” (self-declared), Protector (functionally)
Classification: Map-Sensitive (do not publish full routes)
“These are not nations. They are shelters with teeth.”
—Morvain margin note
Type: Fortified Island-Compound / Castle-Workshop Complex
Axis: I (Sunlit Sea) with anchored Axis II access
Region: Northern Abyssal Sea — outer trench-shelf, two-day sail from Abyssal Gate if you know the current seams
Visibility: Intentionally mischarted (appears as a dead reef line on most public maps)
What it looks like (navigator’s description):
A black-rock island shaped like a crowned skull-ridge, with “horn” spires and hanging banners that never fully settle in the wind. The main keep is built like an impossible festival-fortress—tiered roofs, heavy beams, and cliffside terraces—yet everything is reinforced like a shipyard, not a palace. At night, the highest ridge glows gold where Harlet’s dread-tips are worked into lantern standards and lightning rods.
What it is (truth):
Harlet’s personal seat: part castle, part laboratory, part training crucible for the Harlet Sixty. It is also a treasury vault, a drydock cradle for pearl-lifter hull experiments, and a civilian sanctuary.
Who lives under his protection:
Shipwright families, pearl-forge apprentices, sealant farmers, riggers, divers
Refugees who paid in labor instead of coin
A rotating “quiet staff” from the Collegium who pretend they’re not employed here
Why Harlet protects it:
Goldtip Hold is the only place he controls completely—materials, security, silence, and standards. It is where he can build without courts turning invention into ownership.
Harlet’s Rule of Entry:
No titles. No chains. No forced recruitment.
If you arrive with bounty papers or court seals, you are treated like a storm: redirected or broken.
Type: Mid-Sea Bubble Haven / Repair Pocket / “Civilians First” corridor
Axis: II (Mid-Sea Labyrinth)
Region: Beneath the Central Sea Spine’s trade latitude — a sidetunnel off a known shipping vein
Visibility: Unmarked except to Harlet-friendly charts (the Reach “moves” on paper due to resonance mirage)
What it looks like:
A naturally occurring oxygen pocket stretched into a long cavern “reach,” lined with salvaged hull ribs and coral-lights. The air tastes clean—almost citrus—because Harlet installed filtration reeds and resin baffles. From above, the cavern ceiling is webbed with rope bridges and slung cargo nets; from below, the waterline is disciplined: no drift trash, no blood slicks, no bait-chum.
What it is:
A protected repair-and-recovery lane for ships that would otherwise die in the Labyrinth. It’s not a port. It’s a survival mechanism—a place where the sea’s vertical cruelty gets negotiated into something navigable.
Who it serves:
Disabled merchant crews trying to limp out of the Mid-Sea
Noncombatant families traveling with pirate fleets (the ones everyone pretends don’t exist)
Pearlwright couriers who can’t risk the “official” passages
The occasional bounty hunter who understands the word neutral
Why Harlet protects it:
Because the Mid-Sea eats people who aren’t “important.” Harlet considers that a design flaw, not fate.
Also: the Reach quietly supplies him with labor, loyalty, and witnesses—the three currencies stronger than coin.
Local Law (“Reach Law”):
No piracy inside the air. No duels on the bridges. No extortion of the injured.
Break Reach Law and the Harlet Sixty don’t arrest you. They remove you from the equation.
Type: Floating Farm-Atoll / Resin Grove / Pearl-Safe Civilian Cluster
Axis: I–II linked (surface atoll with a tethered Labyrinth root-pocket)
Region: Southern Archipelago fringe, tucked behind storm-fed reefs that scramble approach lines
Visibility: Known in whispers as “the place ships go quiet to survive”
What it looks like:
A ring of floating islands lashed together with living rope-vines and hull-beams, covered in dense green canopy and resin trees bred to grow fast and seal faster. From a distance it looks like a drifting jungle. Up close it’s a working community: drying racks, tar pits, pearl-dampening slabs hung like laundry, and small homes built from ship salvage.
What it produces:
Leviathan tallow substitutes (sealant-grade resin)
Hull patch timber that grows in months, not years
Dampener reeds used to calm “phantom wake” buildup
Food—enough to keep Harlet’s protected lanes from starving
Who lives there:
The families of the Harlet Sixty and other “civilian-adjacent” workers who would be targeted anywhere else. They are not soldiers. They are not pirates. They are the reason Harlet can operate without begging anyone.
Why Harlet protects it:
Because a genius without supply is just a hungry man with ideas.
The Orchard is his quiet answer to blockades, sanctions, and “paper wars.”
Defense truth (why no one raids it twice):
The atoll is laid out like a trap that looks like a village. Approach routes force ships into cross-currents that kill speed. By the time raiders realize it’s engineered, they’re already being boarded by people who don’t panic.
They’re new because Harlet makes them hard to record on purpose.
He pays for mischarts the way pirates pay for rum.
He uses resonance dampeners to blur the exact shape of approach lanes.
He rotates logistics so no single route becomes “the route.”
Most importantly: he doesn’t plant flags. Without flags, courts struggle to justify invasion.
“Harlet doesn’t conquer territory. He renders it expensive to harm.”
—Morvain, closing note
If you want, I can do a fourth zone that’s scarier and more secret—an Axis III listening shelf where Harlet tests pearl-lifter stability and trains the Harlet Sixty’s “Mobile Cannon Wall” in total dark.