Sōnu Archipelagos

Carved from the edge of the ancient sea and shaken by fire from below, the Sōnu Archipelagos form a ring of humid continental island chains east of Amlawé. Known to the High Elves only in fragments as drift-lost lands, these islands are home to the Sōnu peoples: salt-light navigators, cliff-whisperers, and breath-keepers of the Maŋgwəta macrofamily.  

Geography

  The Sōnu Archipelagos lie scattered east and southeast of Amlawé and Teimi, atop ancient and active subduction arcs. Each chain is defined by wind-scoured peaks, deep moss forests, and cold spring-fed estuaries. While they share similar humid continental climates, the islands vary widely in volcanic age, soil fertility, and fog cover.   Each of the five principal chains supports a distinct Maŋgwəta-derived language, with no overland contact between groups. Travel is done via outrigger rafts, smoke-signal canoes, and clifflight relays.  

Peoples and Languages

  The islanders call themselves Sōnu, meaning "salt-light ones" or "those who walk in mist beneath stars." Their cultures emphasize silence, distance, breath, and memory. Social groups center around tide-camps, fog-lantern rites, and seasonal convergence drums.   Each island hosts a distinct people and language:  

• Erhaka – Known for spiral cairns built along wind-ways. They move seasonally between forest peaks and blackstone beaches, harvesting reed-oil and nightfish.
• Mbesani – Masters of wind-channel rafts and basalt netcasters. They etch sea-stories into driftwood and read cloud shadows as omens.
• Tozekwe – Deep-cove foragers with tidal fermentation pits. Their woven kelp-baskets hold song-shells and sacred marsh bulbs.
• Ilaro – Fog-peak climbers and smoke-callers. They use beacon fires and whale bone drums to signal between settlements.
• Duluni – Tide-gardeners who carve stone anchors and speak their names in rope-knots. Their knowledge of coastal rhythm is encoded in patterned kelp lines.

 

Lifeways

  Sōnu dwellings are ephemeral: bark domes during warm tides, stone hollows in storm season, suspended reed-pods in tree-limbs above cliffs. Most tools are made from fishbone, wood, hide, and volcanic flake.   Ritual and orientation are built around:

• Salt tides and lunar bone calendars
• Echo-chanting into fog to locate kin
• Name-hollows, where breath and memory are stored in shells
• Mirror pools used to forecast wave-shift and spirit drift

 

Fauna

  Native animals include:

• Cliff-dwelling glider reptiles with sun-sensitive throat fans
• Nocturnal scavenger marsupials adapted to fog vision and ledge nesting
• Forest lizards that mimic Sōnu breath patterns
• Kelp-sifting tetrapods used in ritual dances
• Migratory scale-birds (non-avian), hunted with scent-spears

 

High Elven Contact

  The High Elves have no formal record of the Sōnu chains beyond a few drifting stone fragments bearing voice-line carvings. These fragments were catalogued as "origin unknown, possibly dream-script from eastern fog lands."   To Elven cosmographers, the archipelagos are sometimes referred to in poetic atlases as "The Lands of Vanished Breath."   Though small in number, the Sōnu peoples represent one of the most finely tuned adaptations of Mesolithic foraging lifeways to volcanic island terrain on all of Erthas.