Mesdrada, the Rolling Isle

The Great Rotation

The Plane of Mist is a truly beguiling world: picturesque islands float across a sea of fog, beneath a twilit sun whose rays shimmer with a thousand vibrant colours. In this realm, there are no shortage of peculiar places, but arguably none are as unique as Mesdrada, the Rolling Isle. Cast adrift in the endless cloud ocean, Mesdrada constantly threatens to toss its denizens from its back and into the depths below. The Rolling Isle tilts with neither rhyme nor reason, and never offers any indication of which way it will lean next. Thankfully, this rotation is not fast. Those living here have ample time to adjust and prepare, but they cannot afford to be lackadaisical.

Since the islanders cannot predict the land's movements before they happen, they must be responsive. Many basins are placed across the island and filled with water. When Mesdrada begins to roll, this water will be spilled, alerting the inhabitants that they must prepare. The first step is for everyone to move to one end of the island to act as a counterbalance. Whilst this does delay the revolution, it does not prevent it. In this time, the natives will gather their belongings and clamber upon small vessels and briefly set sail into the misty waves as they await what happens next. Over the following days, they will watch as their homes are flipped upside down and plunged into the void below. However, this is not a time of despair. On the underside of the island, they will see their second hometown.

The Things From Below

For many millennia now, the Plane of Mist has been slowly dying. Where there was once countless islands atop the misty oceans, now only a few hundred remain. The others have sunken beneath the tide, into the endless abyss below. Those who were stranded on sinking lands were dragged into the darkness and corrupted by its fell influence; the colour and joy that they once possessed having been stripped away and replaced with malice. Usually, these monsters cannot climb above the fog. Unfortunately for the Rolling Isle, its Great Rotation offers a way to circumvent this difficulty.

The tainted creatures will cling to the submerged twin town and wait for Mesdrada to spin. As it does they will be freed from the darkness below. They are not content, however, to live alongside the native Fey of the land. Instead, they seek to exterminate and supplant them. Their methods for this process vary: sometimes they lurk in dark corners and ambush unsuspecting folk, other times they wreak havoc on the settlement to provoke a rushed defence effort from the returning inhabitants. Thankfully, such events are uncommon, though this does lead to the invaders sometimes catching their quarry off-guard.