Istraloth

Istraloth

Istraloth is a strangely shaped continent. Most of its mass takes the form of a sea-floor shelf that creates a shallow sea, no more than seven or ten feet deep, two hundred miles out from the coastline. The main body of the continent is a massive lagoon, three hundred miles in diameter. Istraloth’s above-water landmass is relatively small. Much of it takes the form of a ring of jagged mountains jutting straight up from the ocean. This band of mountains is a few miles across and makes a nearly complete circle, punctured by only a few shallow straits through which a shallow boat can, with some difficulty, make its way through. Misty rainforests climb up the rocky precipices, and frightening pathways are hewn into the rocky slopes. One can walk across the mountains, but the path is a series of switch-backs and craggy climbs that can take days. On the outer edge of the lagoon are a smattering of islands, most no more than sandbanks, a few forested, the largest no more than a mile from tip to tip. Within the lagoon, raised a few feet above the ocean level, is a massive freshwater lake, fed by a series of huge springs from which water continually bubbles. The water is murky, and the lake is far deeper than the surrounding ocean, reaching unseen depths of perhaps hundreds of feet. Water from the lake continuously pours down from the lake level into the ocean, creating currents that drag boats or floating objects out towards the sea. The continent is located somewhere to the southwest of the current Althanas map, with a warm and wet climate.

Most of the wildlife of the continent is prosaic. Sharks, stingrays, fish, eels, clams, large manatees and dolphins swim in the shallow ocean. Freshwater seals and large, bony-plated fish populate the inner lake. Bands of monkeys climb around on the rocky slopes of the mountains. Flashy, beautiful birds with luxuriant feathers fly back and forth between the mountains and the islands below. These are the only animals that are very well documented. Other beasts live in the depths of the inner lake, but are poorly described and only appear on the surface sparingly, attacking boats or swimmers in fast, violent strikes. They have very many sharp teeth and thick shining hides, but little else is known of them. The plants of the islands are also rather unexciting. Palm trees and tall ferns make up the majority of the plant life on the islands, while cypruses grow on the inner banks of the mountain rim. Bushy trees make up the mountain forests, creating a canopy of leaves and low-hanging vines above a mix of cinnamon bushes, essentially bushes with spicy tasting leaves and fruit, and plants with red flowers as wide as dinner plates. Tiny bees whose stings feel like hot pins in your skin for days buzz about the forest, and dragonflies who spit acid in dangerous jets zoom across the surface of the lake, sometimes venturing out onto the treacherous sea.

Racially, the above-water parts of Istraloth are entirely populated by humans. Some seafaring folk live on the islands rimming the perimeter of the continent, sailing from island to island on small skiffs, living off the fish and other life that populates their shallow ocean. They never travel further than the edge of the continental shelf, but do trade with sailors and pirates who travel into their sea from outside. These seafarers have no name for themselves, and lack any permanent settlements or writing. Their trade with the outside world is limited to ornately carved shells, the exotic feathers of the birds of the mountains, and the medicinally valuable parts of indigenous fish and eels. As for their appearances, these people are short and tanned, with light brown hair and dark green eyes. They dress in stretched and stitched shark skins, scramble across their ships in bare feet, and pitch tents on the larger, more sheltered islands during the cyclones that strike the outer islands every few months. Every year on the vernal equinox, these people all congregate several miles from the continent’s coast and have a huge bazaar, like a floating circus of lashed together ships, where they decide upon changes to their common law and religious rituals. Although they have no formal rulers, they are loosely bound under the rulings of about a dozen of the oldest and wisest among them. Their religion is based upon the worship of gods of the sea, with whom they commune by eating the psychotropic bladders of giant flounders. There are around 50,000 island people.

On the inner lake live a race of ingenious people. Although they do not write or understand complex math, their genius lies in construction. They live upon giant rafts, woven together from living, growing vines. These rafts are anchored to the lakebed by long, thick roots, and can be miles and miles across. Every few decades, the vines die and must be abandoned before the roots snap and the rafts float to sea. New rafts are created by tying rocks to the huge seeds that sprout from the leafless vines. Soon, tendrils rise from the water to the surface, and begin to spread outward, wrapping around each other, until they produce a thick hammock of rough, brown fibers. The lake people move upon the living rafts and build the frameworks of buildings out of trees they cut down from the mountain slopes. The vines quickly grow up around the frameworks, tying together into sturdy, water-tight walls. Two- and three-story buildings can be built using this method. Veritable palaces can be constructed upon these bobbing rafts. At any given time, four to five cities float upon the surface of the lake. Each is ruled by a mayor, elected by the elder males of the cities. The lake peoples travel on foot across their rafts, and use sailboats or rowboats to get between their settlements. Most of their diet is based on the huge, armored fish that live in the lake. Every day, platoons of men and women row out onto the lake and hunt down the fish, each of which can surpass 300 pounds, bringing them to the surface with chum and fighting them with clubs and spears until they are subdued, and then dragging their bodies back to the raft cities behind their boats. The lake people refuse to eat the seals, which they see as messengers of the gods. When a seal is found dead, washed up on the rafts or bobbing on the lake surface, its body is collected and ritualistically cleaned to the bone. Other than these rites, the lake people have no gods or religion. Generally speaking, the lake people are uneasy around outsiders, but will allow someone from beyond the mountain rim to live among them for as long as they wish, as long as the outsider does not marry a lake person or try to disrupt their relatively peaceful lives. There are perhaps 80,000 lake people.

Generally speaking, the island people and the lake people have little to do with each other. But every few decades, a leader arises– usually a sort of mystical prophet – who decrees that one group must destroy the other, and leads a genocidal war. Usually these wars end inconclusively, with the prophet being quickly captured and executed by the other side. However, one such war, nearly two centuries ago, ended in the near extermination of the island people. Since, the islanders have been the ones to initiate hostilities against the lake people, and hold their quiet grudge in the meantime.

There are few locations of major importance in the continent, due to the fairly transient nature of the island and lake people. There is, however, one major site which is of some interest. It is the expansive ruins of an ancient city, sprawled out on either side of the mountain rim, crumbling into the lake on one side and strewn about the sea islands on the other on the northwest side of the continent. Some spires and towers still stand among the ruins, which are remarkably well preserved despite their location. Most of the buildings, roofless and doorless, some collapsing in on themselves, stand in water. Others are perched atop the small islands, baking in the sun, caressed by the tiny waves of the shallow sea. One can easily pick out the ancient streets and plazas, the bazaars and canals, criss-crossing the ocean, malformed slightly by the crinkling up of hills and islands. The general plan of the city is very clear. A traveler could easily drift about the city in a boat, landing on small islands and entering some of the more intact buildings, climbing up the winding stairs within the sturdier towers, meandering among the bleached remains of statues and cisterns. Many artifacts fill the city, most of which would be undoubtedly quite valuable to a trader, but the island folk dare not enter the ruins. They fear the ghosts that inhabit the shell of a city, and warn anyone who inquires of it to stay away. The lake people are less fearful of the half of the ruins on their side of the mountain rim, but rarely visit it. This may be because it is less interesting than the seaside half, as the lake drops to its full depths rather quickly and far less of the ruins are visible, or it may be that the fearful monsters that prowl the depths are said to make their nests among the ruins.

Two other minor sites are of note. A small colony of monks, long ago pilgrims of the Ai’Brone, clings to the tops of the forested mountains in the south of Istraloth. They live in caves that have been decorated over the four hundred years that they have hung on to life. Since the band of perhaps three dozen men arrived from Corone, none have died or eaten any more than a few leaves of cinnamon bush. Their longevity and continuing lives of privation are a puzzle, but so few men dare make the treacherous, dizzying climb to their mountainous retreat that word of their survival is almost impossible to come by except from the most well-traveled of the lake and island people. The colony is known as Bron’Doth, a word whose meaning has been forgotten by all but the quiet old skeletons of monks that comprise it.

About five miles due east from Istraloth, the continental shelf slowly rises into a broad, about ten-mile-square mudflat, a sort of saltwater marsh with reedy swampgrass and small, dry hills that poke up from the swamp like pimples. There are about twenty of these knolls, which are washed over during heavy storms, but generally are above water. Each is home to a tall, heavy state of the chest, shoulders and head of a man. All the men face back towards the island, and are all about fifteen feet tall. Their eyes are simply hollow gouges, and strangely ferocious smiles gash across their faces.

Because the islanders and lake people have no written languages, their histories are murky. They have strange myths about their continent’s history that vary in many respects, but are fundamentally similar. In all their myths, a great black bird who lived in the sky grew mournful because he did not have a wife. His sorrow caused his death, and he fell to the ocean. When he sank beneath the waves, his immense sadness created the lake, which rose up above the ocean, and his anger created the island people and lake people who live around and upon it. The lake people believe his body became the seals that live in the lake, and the islanders believe his body became a race of spiteful black giants who lived in the now-ruined city on the northwest shore. The giants, they believe, died when their king, who was formed from the bird’s beak, tried to build a tower to return to the sky from which the bird had fallen, and himself fell from its top during its construction. When he died, his people slaughtered each other in rage. Other than that, nothing is clear in the people’s history until the nearly-successful genocide against the islanders of 200 years ago.