There’s a lot of luck in being a sailor. Flying airships is tricky business, even with an experienced captain. —Rue Meridian
or centuries, the Four Lands have existed without exploration or contact with distant lands. In over two thousand years, the immigration of the Elves to and from the doomed island of Morrowindl was the only serious attempt to explore and colonize distant lands. The one major expedition sent out by the Elves to explore the lands beyond the Great Divide never returned. The sole survivor from that expedition lived long enough to bring a map, which, coupled with notes from the Druids, has created a new understanding of the lands beyond.
Flay Creech is a small island located west of the coast. Ten days’ journey by air, the island is small enough that it can be easily missed by any not seriously looking for it. The island measures approximately a half mile across its widest part and is distinguished by a rocky outcropping shaped like a lizard’s head just off the southern coast. The island is gray and barren, its only vegetation a few clusters of scrub trees and weeds. The most unusual features of the island are the distinctive gullies that crisscross its barren surface. The gullies and channels are broken only by shallow ponds of seawater. Initial observers were at a loss to understand what caused the channels. Those who made landfall on the island quickly discovered the cause. They are tracks worn in the earth over the years by the bodies of the island’s hidden protectors, the deadly giant eels. The eels defend the island from anything that seeks to set foot on its surface.
The Giant Eels of Flay Creech
The eels of Flay Creech may use the island as a spawning and feeding ground. Larger than any other known eel, their bodies resemble the sleek, speckled bodies of an ocean eel. Unlike the ocean eel, they average between eight and thirty feet in length and will attack anything that enters their domain. Though they are not poisonous, their sharp teeth can easily tear and shred larger prey. They remain hidden beneath the waters of the Blue Divide until an intruder lands on the island; they then boil out of the water to converge on the hapless victim. When in an attack frenzy, they will often attack each other, and will feed on their own dead or wounded. Susceptible to magic, they are not afraid of it. A deadly predator, the eels are capable of launching themselves from the ground and striking like a snake. The eels have somehow been conditioned to protect the island.
Northwest of Flay Creech, the next large island is Shatterstone. Named for its forbidding mountains and rugged cliffs, Shatterstone is approximately thirty miles across at its widest point. Three small islands arrayed in a row lead to the southeastern edge of the island. Made from the rugged tips of a huge mountain range thrusting up from the depths of the ocean floor, the island consists of jungle-covered peaks and deep canyons. As lush and green as Flay Creech is barren, Shatter-stone’s surface is covered with impenetrable jungle, broken only by small lakes and the bare edges of the windswept peaks and cliff edges. Silver waterfalls leap from the high mountain streams to fall thousands of feet into the green valleys below.
Even the waters around the island abound with life. Pods of whales and dolphins skim the surface of the Blue Divide, while seabirds feed on the smaller fish. On the island, birds, mammals, and insects thrive throughout most of the island.
All the creatures of the island seem to avoid one valley. Even insects avoid it. It is the valley of the living jungle. A power believed to have been created in the time of Faerie guards the valley. Rooted in the soil of the valley and manifested in the jungle itself, the power it wields is greater than that of the Druids. Like the eels, the jungle has been conditioned to protect the treasure hidden in its valley. It can sense anything that moves upon the soil that nurtures it. Its only known weakness is its inability to penetrate rock. Unfortunately, there are very few bare rocks in the valley. It kills with vines that rip its victims to shreds, or with poison brambles that carry a deadly toxin.
Though it has long been known that the Shrikes had a nesting place apart from the Westland cliffs, the location of such a nesting ground was only recently discovered. Shrike Island is a rugged island of cliffs and rocky peaks surrounding a lush tropical jungle and inland lakes. Hundreds of Shrikes and War Shrikes make their homes on its cliffs and ridges. Extremely territorial, Shrikes will attack anything that approaches their island.
Far north of Shatterstone, where the wind grows cold, lies an island that is much larger still. Low and broad, Mephitic lacks the high cliffs of Shatterstone or the rocky shoals of Flay Creech. Its rolling hills, wide grasslands, and thick forests resemble parts of the Westland more than an island in the middle of the Blue Divide.
Though the island is now deserted, there is evidence that it was inhabited long ago. All that is left of those inhabitants is a massive keep, ancient and crumbling. Built atop a low bluff, the castle’s blind windows look out across the plains to the west. As large as Paranor, the keep’s walls and outbuildings extend out across the grasslands for a mile in all directions.
The people who conceived of and built the fortress are gone, but the castle itself lives. A spirit, from an unknown age, infuses the very walls of the keep, protecting all the treasures within with the magic of deception. Anyone entering the keep finds himself disoriented and lost in a puzzling warren of courtyards, halls, and battlements. Though the foundations of the keep are real, as are some of the stone ruins, the castle itself is not as it appears, but rather a vast labyrinth of mirages and illusions integrated into the stone and designed to deceive. Though the protection is largely passive, the spirit can be brought to life by the theft of one of its treasures. The keep then becomes a deadly trap intent on snaring its victim. Pits open up out of solid ground; traps and portcullises appear from out of walls; the very walls move to trap a thief.
Fortunately, the range of the spirit’s abilities is limited. The spirit’s magic does not extend beyond the walls to the plains beyond.
No one knows what happened to the people who initially built the keep or how the spirit came to inhabit its lonely outpost, though it is likely the spirit has survived since the age of Faerie.
Beyond Mephitic, the next large landfall is the continent of Parkasia. Its southeastern tip juts into the Blue Divide in a large peninsula. The outer edge of the peninsula is surrounded by small atolls, most of which are barren, and protected by an impenetrable wall of icy cliffs towering over a thousand feet above the waterline into the clouds above. The steep cliffs are broken by caverns carved out of the rock and narrow fissures covered in mist. The land is called Ice Henge. Shrikes inhabit the cliffs, feeding on the fish and other sea birds. A breach in the cliff wall of the peninsula opens into a large bay. The bay is rimmed by a towering range of snowcapped mountains and glaciers that reach down to the water’s edge through gaps in the rocky peaks. Floes broken off from the glaciers float within the waters of the bay like small snow-covered islands, some rising several hundred feet above the waterline.
The bay feeds into a channel that narrows before opening onto an inner bay. The inner bay, also littered with floes, opens into a narrow channel that leads inland to the towering deadly series of ice pillars called the Squirm.
The Squirm is named for the movement of the pillars, which twist and thrust together in a grinding motion like giant sets of teeth. They guard the only passage inland from the bay. Any unsuspecting sailor who attempts to pass through the Squirm is usually ground into pulp and splinters. The seabirds follow anyone who sails into the channel in anticipation of a meal. No one is certain whether the pillars of the Squirm are a product of magic or of science and technology, though both may affect them.
Beyond the Squirm, the channel broadens, twisting through a bleak landscape of barren cliff walls and dotted with small rocky islands. Trees cling to the ridgeline in small clusters. The waters are curiously warmer here, with no glaciers or floating ice. As the channel progresses inland, the sharp-edged cliffs retreat and soften into gentle slopes covered with greenery and lush forests. Farther inland, the gentle slopes give way to rolling hills as the river splits into numerous tributaries that form lakes, smaller rivers, and streams. The main channel narrows, and the trees on its banks thicken until the river is hemmed in by old-growth spruce and cedar. The river ends inland in a large bay surrounded by forest. Numerous waterfalls feed into the bay from dozens of rivers and streams.
Several miles beyond the bay lay the ruins of an Old World city. Occupying the entirety of a broad valley ten miles long and five miles wide, the ruins gleam in the sunlight. Unlike Eldwist, which also dated from the Old World, before the Great Wars, the buildings in this city are low and flat, with high windows and broad spaces. Believed to be a haven for storing machinery, and possibly for construction, the entire city is made of sheets and struts of metal. Even the streets and passageways are paved with metal, though the grass has managed to break through in places, buckling the rusted metal as nature attempts to reclaim the ground. Holes in the walls of some of the buildings reveal burned-out interiors, testament to the fact that this place did not survive the Great Wars unscathed. There are rumors that a safehold called Castledown may lie somewhere in the city.
Over a century ago, there was another island in the waters of the Blue Divide—a paradise with high mountains and beautiful beaches topped by the lofty crown of an extinct volcano called Killeshan. The Land Elves settled it in an attempt to escape the Federation and the Shadowen. The Elves experimented with old magic while living there, eventually using it to make creatures that were never intended. The creatures were subverted by the magic and eventually transformed into Demons, who consumed the earth magic of the island. The Elves escaped, but the island itself did not. Turned into a place of horrors by the Demons, it exploded as the loss of earth magic caused Killeshan to erupt violently. It was said the Sky Elves could see the island burning from the shores of Wing Hove.