Twilight archipelago

The twilight archipelago hovers like a bad thought in the sea fog north of Olim in the center of the frozen sea. This archipelago consists of four major islands and a few small rocks. Only two permanently host humans, the other ones are only roamed by animals.    

Geography

Known for their bad weather and uncomfortable climate they have long been ignored. For the first and second era the islands were completly uninhabited. The whole archipelago is of volcanic origin.  

Qal

Qal is the biggest of the islands. Since the cataclysm its home to the cult of Qal, an ancient and malignant god of the seas. During the cataclysm his cultists tried to establish a kingdom on the landbridge between Bregen and the north, but due to their gruesome rituals and hostility their neighbours made short work of them and slaughtered them in three rather quick battles. Most people thaught they were all dead but one priest took off to the archipelago and builded a secret homestead for the cult and their god.   The island itself consists mostly of basalt, high cliffs and eroded mountains. Remarkable on Qal are the basin in the middle that now host a settlement. Its completly surrounded by mountains with a glacial lake in the northern end and a river that leads southwards to the biggest fjord of the island. The fjords walls are steep and high and for most people it feels like sailing into a black pair of jaws with teeth consisting of black basalt dotted by guano that is swallowing them, while the millions of seabirds fill the air with their strange and alien songs. Quite a sight to behold. Other unique features of Qal are the boiling crater in the central north, the big chasm in the north-west and the hardwood forest in the central valley. This forest with all its lichens and undergroth feels like a journey into a time before men, elves, orcs, demons, or dwarfs walked the earth. A strange smell fills the air during dawn and dusk and visitors seem to connect deeply with nature underneath the old trees. Worthy of mentioning is the small lake in the south of Qal, its a shallow lake with nearly no vegetation and only a few small fish.   The Island is covered in grass and herbs in most places, like a cold tundra steppe, but near the mountains you will find vast coniferous forests of frost-pine as well. During the short summer when the sun heats up the pines the smell of resin washes over the entire island.   True to its volcanic nature it is hard to access the island since most of Qals coast consist of steep basalt cliffs. Only in the end of the southern fjord and in the north you can easily access the island via a beach. Otherwise you have to look out for small opening in the otherwise unaccessable cliffs.   Brokefoots chasm in the north-west is a dangerous place. A lot of strange creatures live in the chasm and some of them even climb out of it at night or when the cloud cover is thicker than normal. Especially during the long night of the winter nobody should go near the chasm. And if you do, beware of the rim. The stone there crumbles pretty quickly and its a long fall until you reach the ground.  

Abol

The second largest island. Like the rest of the archipelago, Abol is characterised by steep basalt cliffs, polar steppe and frost-pine. The great bay in the middle of the island each year turns into a nursery for whales who make up for the biggest part of the nutrition for the few people that live on the island. Abol is dryer than Qal and the other islands which makes it hard for plants, animals and humans to survive here, only underneath the mountains exists a big reservoir of freshwater.   West of the island the northern one of the two rocks has a cave that is home to a marine dragon that likes to hunt in the waters around the islands and sometimes even on the coasts of Abol and Qal.  

Trel

Trel is the second smallest of the islands. This islands shores arent as steep and most of the inland is covered by a lush hardwood forest that hosts an abundant amount of mammals, the icefoxes being the top predators here.  

Zil

Being the smallest and most inaccessable of the islands, Zil has no mammals or trees. Just a tiny lake in the middle and multiple nesting colonies of seabirds who meet here every year to nest and hatch their chicks, far from predators.  

History

The archipelago has a very interesting history. After being abandoned and ignored for most of Nandaahrs known history it was a temporary home to a group of whalers in the late third era. But after they have set up a camp in the southern fjord of Qal they abandoned their harbour roughly 4 decades later and the archipelago laid undisturbed again.   In the later years of the cataclysm the cult of Qal (who later was the reason for the main islands name), an ancient god of the sea that tried to establish a kingdom on the land bridge between Bregen and the far north moved to the archipelago. His cultists tried to use the chaos of the cataclysm to take the land, but their gruesome rituals and their hostility towards their neighbours eventually broke their back when they set out and butchered them in three swift and bloody battles. Most thought they were all extinct but one priest and his followers set sail for the archipelago to build a refuge for them and their god and slipped out unnoticed. These first settlers set up a camp on the plains in central Qal, now a summercamp under the name Duk. Later they builded a more permanent and fortified settlement in the central basin in the middle of the island. When you enter the valley you will be greeted by multiple statues of Qal and some of his creatures that seem to follow you on your way to the settlement which is also named Qal. Over the time multiple smaller camps followed around the island but during winter all of the cultists gather in the village of Qal. After some time, after some intern trouble a group moved over to Abol to live a hard and dire life as hunters and gatherers. They live in the cave system under Rubars spine in the winter and gather as much food as they can during the summer season to store in the deep caverns under the mountains.   They lived here for a few centuries until they started to lure traders and fishermen to the shore with fires on the cliffs to murder, eat and plunder them. When more and more ships went missing around the archipelago the traders guild of Olim and the shipowners of the north had enough and sent out a small fleet to investigate. They were surprised when they found a nicely grown population of cultists on the islands and tried to anihalate them one more time. But the cultists knew the island way better than the intruders and hid in the vast cave systems and lava tunnels that run all across underneath the islands surface. After a few weeks of guerilla war the commander of the fleet decided to negotiate and made a peace agreement with the islanders. They were to recieve goods from the mainland - namely iron, crops and some other luxury items, but they have to tolerate a harbour and small outpost of the traders guild in the southern fjord as a safe harbour for all kinds of ships that may cross these waters. For circa three decades this agreement worked, but one day without warning the islanders murdered everybody who was foreign in their sleep. When the next ship arrived the harbour and outpost were gone and they barely made it out alive.   But since the islanders toned their piracy down the guild tolerated them and after a while the whole archipelago was forgotten again and belonged solely to the cultists again.   At this point the only thing that was known about the archipelago in the outside world was that there lives a bunch of cannibals and the islands hold nothing of value. Exept one thing - soul-crystals, a gem essential for a lot of dark rituals.  

Culture

The cult has its roots in the culture of the far north. Qal was one of the highest gods in the old far north, but he was and still is one of the sinister ones. Every year during the long dark of the winter he tried to escape his dark realm and expand his influence over the real world. But everytime he was defeated by the other gods that were strengthened by the sacrifices made by the people. This way he was driven back into the dark again and again and a new spring came each year. But his whispers trickled into the dreams and minds of men and women and his followers grew in secret. One year, at the break of winter a great war rose in the far north, long ago. Qals wariors nearly won, but were defeated. After that the cult was forced to continue as a secret society. But I dont want to dive into the history and religion of the north, this is about the twilight archipelago.   The religion determines the whole life on the islands. The highpriest is directly nominated by Qal himself, the other priests are called by the highpriest who directly answers to Qal. Every winter, on the shortest day of the year the islanders sacrifice a bunch of human sacrifices and flood the red mirror with their hot blood. This way the allow Qal to take temporary form in this world and to speak directly to his followers. Preferably they sacrifice outsiders, thats why they most of the time keep sailors, traders, whalers and whoever ends up on the islands shores alive instead of eating them - eventhough that happens as well - meat is rare in these lands. Apart from that the highpriest and his minions live like kings in abundance. The society of the cult has a very strict hirarchy with classes you are born into and you can only rise and fall by the will of the priests. Everybody works like a mindless drone for the priests and hope they will let them rise, while the priests like to toy with their underlings and orchastrate drama among them to find out who is the most cunning to put them into positions of power. There are few things Qal enjoys more than drama, intrigues and backstabbing - and sacrifices of any kind. This way the structures work like a self-sustaining system.   Every job here has its own clear expectations. Genderroles are strict and just as strictly enforced. While the women are expected to bear the children of the man they are assigned to by the priests and raise them in the ways of Qal, the men are expected to work the job they are given. The most common jobs are fishermen, whalers, lumberjacks, hunters, farmers, gatherers, builders and warriors. The temples and shrines have their own servants they pick themselves who are treated as some kind of elite by all people - but in turn they must obey their superiors completly. If a priest tells the foreman of a shrine to gut his firstborn infront of his wife the only thing the foreman asks for is a dagger... Apart from the cleric positions the warriors hold the most prestige in the society of the islands. They are responsible for plundering the ships that venture too close to the islands or to fight other groups on the islands - the highpriest encourages war among his follower to strengthen his own position.   The warriors get the most women which led over the course of the years to a lot of inbreeding because only people who accomplish something for Qal can procreate - which are most of the time the commanders of the warriors, because the warriors tend to die of poisoned arrows, fewer and other injuries while the commanders survive and procreate with multiple women. At the same time the amount of children allowed to be concieved per year is limited. Qals cult has limited ressources so in order to keep the society running on sparse ressources they have to keep the number of children down. This way in some years all children in a village or tribe have the same father.   This is also driven by the fact that people with mutations like webbed hands or feet, fisheyes, gills or other mutations that are liked by Qal are treated like royalty - this way the inbreeding and damaging hereditary diseases are spread even further. Its not known why the mutations most of the time - when they occur - seem to resemble fish, but some believe its Qals doing as a marine god.  

Wildlife

Most bigger animals live on Qal and Abol, the bigger islands. Both host a small population of dwarf-reindeer which represents most of the meat in the diet of the islands. But only the higher ups and warriors get to enjoy red meat. On Qal you can also find some dwarfed bears that live of berries and a reindeer every now and then and a species of giant rats that hunt in packs and are the apex predators of Qal. They are nowhere to be found on Abol or the other two islands. Icefoxes are found on all three islands, exept Zil, but they are extremly rare on Qal and Abol due to exessive hunting.   All four islands host an enormous amount of seabirds, especially Zil serves as a prime nesting ground which leads to millions of birds filling the air from dusk until dawn with their strange and otherworldly cries and sqawking. During breeding season many islanders collect the eggs of the cliffs, a dangerous adventure that in many cases leads to a fast decend into the deep that ends deadly in most cases.   Eagles and vultures build their nests high up in the mountains of the islands and prey/scavange everything across the plains of the two bigger islands. Trel, due to it being mostly covered by forests has no bigger birds of prey.   Apart from the giant rats the most dangerous animals on land are the beasts that live in the chasm in the north of Qal. At the bottom are some caves in which you could find a lot of giant roaches, spiders and other nasty critters who grew to ginormous proportions. Nobody knows why, probably the volcanic gasses have something to do with it. During the day it is completly save to explore the region around the chasm, but as soon as the sun touches the horizon these creatures will crawl up the walls and out of the chasm to hunt in the sorrounding open pinewood forests and plains further south. Even the cultists avoid this area at all costs.   Underwater it looks quite different. Ocean currents from the depths of the frozen sea that are brought to the surface here wash an abundance of cold, rich deepsea water on the archipelagos shores so the islands waters carry an abundance of different fish species, sharks, seals, whales and other ocean dwellers. During the whales mating season they gather in the main bay of Abol to birth their calves in the calm, shallow waters that are mostly protected from the strong currents between the islands. Just the dragon that lives in a cave in the rocks of the two brothers poses a constant threat - alongside the islanders who hunt the whales in small boats.   The biggest predators without question are the krakens that live in the deep sea around the archipelago. The big ones rarely come to the surface and even more rarely come close to the islands, but it happens. Even the dragon disappears when he senses them coming. Nobody knows for sure how big the krakens can get but apart from the Leviathan, there is nothing they have to fear.  

Vegetation

Most of the islands are either covered in a tundra steppe consisting of herbs and grass or an open pinewood forest with huge spaces between the individual trees, giving it rather a feeling of a meadow with trees than a forest. Just on Trel and in the Valley in the east of Qal can you find actual dedicious forests with trees you might know from the mainland. Just that they are crippled and smaller than on the mainland and covered in lichens.