Long torsos, short legs. It's an essential life skill, given that so much of their diet comes from the sea. Hobbits are both Green and blue water sailors. Foreign to Mela, they tend to wind up on the coasts and inner isles of the middle sea, which is most reminiscent of their home isles. Sometimes derided as 'midget pirates'. Aboard a bobbing boat, a low center of gravity counts for more than arms reach.
Most of the raiding/piracy/cannibalism that goes on is between hobbits. The far isles are too far from the ocumene for regular contact. Only when the currents after right is a voyage feasible. Resulting from a climactic oscillation, this happens every seven years or do, or about twice a generation.
Hobbits are considered to live 'over the horizon' and the far isles are effectively part of another continent, half an ocean away.
It's a big archipelago. Like earthsea, or Kuala Lumpur. Small islands by far the most common. Sunken mountains, rather than volcanos. Poor soil as a result. Hobbits intensly parochial. Each island had its own village (or villages, for larger islands). Not tribes, per se.
Their water craft look like proas or long ships, depending. Of the raid/trade/protect trifecta, different groups do all three.
Hobbits are foreign to Mela. As foreign as someone from Cathay in Europe. Plenty of individuals, left behind from raiding or trading parties (or just out to explore) but very few hobbit communities.
