Something about the expansive "bordermarch" (though in my model I'd call it the wyldsea shallows) that is located to the west of the southwestern Anarchy. It's my attempt to make a wyld playspace that's more interesting and less limited by "oh it can be anything" than the canon bordermarches that tend to show up, by giving it something of a fixed local geography (while it has mutable overall geography) and plenty of reasons for players to get involved in it, or to have it actually matter to them rather than just being fodder for wyld-shaping.
The Dusk Sea and the Mutable Trade
The sun does not hold dominion west of the Sunfall Isles. Past the chaos-washed coast, one enters the ever-changing lands of the Sea. Auroras burn in the sky here, even in the day, and even when the sun can be seen it is the bloody, dim hue of sunset. The moon is uncannily bright, and when the men of Creation venture into these waters they prefer to do it under Lunar's noonday light.
The Dusk Sea is a transitory place, whose isles and landmarks have but a loose relation to each other. Each island or small archipelago is relatively constant over the course of decades, but the horizon is the limit of Creationborn ideas of geography. To travel from isle to isle - or to the Sunfall Isles - requires sea-routes that vary depending on the phase of the moon, the weather, the time of year and can oft-times change from Calibration to Calibration. For that reason, Creationborn traders who venture into the Dusk Sea seldom go anywhere without a dusk-guide - and the cautious seek out a trusty dusk-captain to carry their cargo instead. The insurers of Saata rarely cover a ship bound for this sea, and the beasts of the Debt Court are even more ruinous in their terms for cross-border trade.
Sometimes things wash ashore from the Dusk Sea, leaving Chaos and taking their place under the sun's domain. One hundred and twenty years ago, the giant lords of the Patuali empire entered Creation as their homeland lodged in the isle of Patuali, doubling the size of that island. Other times, islands wander off and become rootless things in the Dusk Sea. Most infamous of the wandering islands is Sargassia, which returns home there after feeding in Creation, but the Sea Dog Isles were once called Shuu Kati and left for the Dusk Sea in the 500s.
The Sunfall Isles have a complicated relationship with the Dusk Sea. Some of the inhabitants of the shifting isles are banes to mortal men, raiding and plundering and taking whenever their passage brings them closer to Creation. The evangelists of Tentis and Spyaja hate the gods only slightly less than they loathe each other. Yet it is also true that the whole region is a borderland where great profit can be made. The shell-island of Metuung grows little wood and has no metal, and so they sell their sheep and goats to traders from the Dusk Sea in return for copper and rainbow-gleaming glass. Spices flow both ways, for many dusk-kin find the immutable tastes of Jati Isle nutmeg and Anarchy cane-sugar to be a rare delicacy just as there are flavours there that make their way to An Teng and beyond. There are moot-princes in the Patuali Empire who buy hobgoblin armies and soul traders in the Sea who purchase men wholesale. And then there is the trade in fish, in rice, in sweet potato and spider-silk and salt and love and a thousand smaller things.
The Lunar Housan Mok makes his home in the Dusk Sea, though not as a ruler. He takes it upon himself to watch over this border-region, and safeguard it from those who would swing the balance too far towards chaos or order. His heart belongs to the wyldsea, but he is a tired old man with no time for grand crusades or holy causes. The Dusk Sea is beyond the hand of the Realm or the Sidereal Exalted, and he will not let the typhoon-wracked waters he loves be turned into a weapon to benefit wicked old men - a grouping he counts himself among. After all, the Dusk Sea washes away many things, but guilt is a leaden, heavy weight.
What follow below are a few locations one might encounter in the Dusk Sea, or which might come into contact with the Sunfall Isles when their nigh-random movements take them close to the border of where the sun shines:
The Sea Dog Ports
Once Shuu Kati sat to the west of Shuu Ranfa. Then mercurial chaos carried it away. Wyldborn diseases wreaked havoc on the human population, but in the borderlands their dogs grew wiser and learned to take over the roles that their sickly masters could no longer fulfil. Now few talk of Shuu Kati, because the sea dogs from there man the ships with nimble paws and in the portside docks they run the taverns and haul cargo between vessels. Few native humans are seen in these ports, and they are usually bandaged and wheeze behind their masks. Sometimes small groups of sea dogs venture to Creation, and sign on with human crews, especially the ronin-hounds who have not been able to find a master to serve in their homelands.
Spinnerinia
Man-sized spiders live on a lush volcanic island. Their myths and legends claim that they were born here on the trade winds, flying on silken parachutes. In appearance they terrify mortals, but in truth they don't like to eat humans - not when the sheep-sized flies that buzz around their island are so plentiful. The spiders here have a great fondness for pigments, precious metals and beautiful glassware, which they decorate their webs with, and they pay in bolts of woven silk. Much of the silk in the Anarchy fundamentally is sourced from here as it passes through Kuati traders, though fine men and ladies down the chain would likely shudder to know that fact.
The Dream Farmers
The turtles in the Dusk Sea never stop growing. Some are large enough to be mistaken for islands, and this one has a small village built on its back. They grow dreams in the fertile soil of the turtle's brain. They have to import nearly everything for there is no metal and little fresh water atop an isle-turtle, but the wyldlife of the Dusk Sea pay well for a bouquet of love or melancholy-barley.
The Chanconarie
These nomadic traders know the hidden arts of coaxing wind and current from the wyld-winds of the Dusk Sea. They are a mercurial lot, living their lives aboard ships and unable to step foot on dry land without their legs catching alight. To breathe so deeply of the twisted winds twists them too. They are distant kin to the Kusaboin, but unlike their Creation-born relatives they have started to turn into dragons in their own right. Some of their ships are pulled by sea-dragon kin who have shed their mortal shapes.
Melatrish's Resort
It is always the height of the Season of Fire at Melatrish's resort! The auroras burn sun bright overhead, and it's always pleasantly hot. A white stone hotel offers guests all its luxuries; fine food, excellent wines, and all the locals are eternally young and eternally attractive - albeit in a fey way. Perhaps it's time for a rousing game of ball sports on the beach, or to smash some juicy ripe fruit, or swim in the crystal-clear waters. All a captain and her crew have to do is relax on the golden sands, let the aurora-light sink into their skin, and forget all their troubles. On the subject of troubles, though Melatrish never brings it up, there's the question of the bill. One should consider that. And maybe consider all the long-abandoned ships waiting in the harbour, often cut up for firewood by the locals. And possibly even think about the Soul Trader ships that show up here periodically.
The Lonely Manor
Five brothers live up in an estate that was once part of a larger island, served by hobgoblins. They are each unalike in personality, yet each is handsome in his own way. Each brother has a thing for handsome sea captains. They buy fripperies and paper; each brother sells curiosities appropriate to his nature. When a captain falls for a brother, he leaves with him. That captain will never find the manor again as long as he lives. But another brother will emerge from the basement, to begin his lonely existence. Waiting for a handsome sea captain to fill the gaping hole within him.
The Cloister Ultima
It claims to be the Westernmost Immaculate monastery in Creation. They lie. It is not truly in Creation and they are no longer Immaculate. The abbess, Sits-in-Harmony, is a raksha princess who wishes to study the theological impulse, obsessed with understanding how it creates such beautiful meaning. It began as a great game for her, a way to toy with the washed up monks and nuns. Yet as she lures sailors to this place, she finds she cannot let go of this habit. Perhaps it is - she reasons - that this goal brings meaning to her life. And yet Sits-in-Harmony has gone on pilgrimage, wrapped inside a mortal's dreams, to sites in Creation. All to better mimic their ways of faith, she reasons.
Steps
Sailors have only found a tiny fragment of the colossal island known as Steps. It seems to be a land of giants, and the only settlement there scaled for mortals is built upon the steps of the quayside. They have great and lucious fields of lichen and moss, and export much bland and simple food to other places in the Dusk Sea. Yet men have only scaled three of the steps up from the water, enough to see mountain-sized houses poking over the top, and the fog-wreathed island is lost when people try to sail around to find another port on the island. Some Dusk-captains reckon Steps was born of a sailor's nostalgia for his home; the way always seen but never reachable.
The Directorate of Leefa
Leefa washed in from the deeper wyld, and is a strange half-flooded island which once had a crystal dome now cracked open like an eggshell. The inhabitants of it are automata; old battered brass armour over twisted vat-flesh, or coral mechanisms made by former inhabitants. They maintain this place as best they can for masters they no longer remember the faces of. On the north side, things have fallen into disrepair and crude mechanisms scribe rote prayers for their missing masters. Those who pretend to be the lost lords of Leefa are subjected to many strange tests with purpose not known; this is the ploy of the great brain that dwells in one of the central towers, ancient and bloated, yet sure that anyone who submits to the tests cannot be their masters as such a master would clearly know the words to command their obedience.
Sky-Scraping Isles
The Shogunate and the ones who came before it built great towers that rose up to touch the clouds. When the Balorian Crusade tore apart islands in what is now the Anarchy, some of them were carried away mostly intact on the wyldtide and lodged in the Dusk Sea. There are great spires where the lower levels are bustling towns and the upper levels catch rain and grow crops. Other sky-scraping isles are boisterous free ports, twisted places filled with maddened wyld-twisted Contagion ghosts, or dens of air-pirates who fly their gulls to raid ships. Then there are the other sky-scraping isles, which were not built by mortal hands. Their shape is off; their lines are softened; the writing on them is twisted and reflected like one would see in a dream. For dreams are the origin of these isles, reflections of the Creation-made ones born from the sleep of those who now dwell in them.
Mysterious Icebergs
No one knows where the icebergs that sometimes drift out of the far West come from. They melt quickly, leaving fog banks that linger for a day or so before they are gone. Some say that there are strange inhuman corpses on them, frozen into the ice, bearing peculiar and arcane treasures that fall apart in the sunlight of Creation.
Soul Traders
In their high ships, they fly many flags, often changing between the peculiar emblems of the fae lands to the west of the Dusk Sea as best suits their convenience. Their captains are of many natures; sometimes disreputable chaos-twisted men, sometimes loyal representatives of their homelands, usually greedy. For the fae princes of those strange lands greatly desire mortal souls and there are always those who will provide them, one way or another. These spiritual slavers will offer glistening and beautiful faeglass for the loan of one's fertility, or simply raid the Sunfall Isles during the new moon snatching all they can find. It's not personal, though. It is merely that creatures with souls are so very profitable, they explain as if it makes a difference.
The Four Manticores
Once, a Raksha lady exiled from Tentis thought to make a symbolic image of Creation that she could deface and so ruin the lands of Shape. Half-way through the project, she was betrayed by her younger sister. Now all that remains of her grand and futile project are four colossal stone manticores that rise from the waters, facing away from each other. One is red, one blue, one black and one green. They are still covered in scaffolding, and her hobgoblins and obsessive cultists still labour to finish her work. These statues are incomplete and buy all the Creationstone they can get, paying in the strange coins from the Tentis Hydrarchy. The wyldtide washes away such stone almost as fast as it can be built. Many Creation sea-captains will sail to this point to sell them the rubble and rock they pay so well for. They gamble that this will have no consequence and that the deceased lady's scheme could never have worked. Maybe; but they still sell Creation's stony bones to the fae for mere coinage.
The Sea Snakes of Burukair
The lagoon-archipelago of Burukair is a foul and pestilent place, where the waters are thick with toxins and diseases. Unfortunately for all and sundry, too many routes through the Dusk Sea take ships close to that place. They must bring water and food enough to last them until they can find another island, but that is not rare in this sea. No, what the real threat is are the many breeds of sea snake that dwell in the pestilence and walk upright upon the low coral reefs, for they are cunning and they are hungry. Some are so poisonous that they can sicken the dead wood of a ship; others have learned to slither up an anchor and tear apart a vessel's sails. And a few have learned to burrow into a man's belly and coil around his spine and puppet him - or so it is said. It may not be true, but many sailors who can see Burukair coat their stomachs in tar or wear copper gut plates out of fear of such things.
The Bat Eyrie
A tall spire of black rock that tends to lurk along northerly routes in the Dusk Sea. Untold numbers of bats dwell in the caves and crevices that riddle it, flying out in swarms so thick that they can blot out the bright moon and which devastate the crops of islands that come too close to it. A few hardy goatmen have a small port down at the foot of the spire, where they trade fresh water for metal. From a distance, a fragment of an ancient Shogunate city can be seen atop the pillar of rock, but how could one climb up to that up a sheer tower smeared in bat fecal matter?
The Gleaming Men
They are the People, in their own words, living around an ancient structure of jade and white stone that rises on poles up from the seafloor. Black oil leaks from the root of their structure and stains the waters around it. They make many strange and wonderful things from this oil, but it has changed them. The oil has replaced their skin, covering them completely; sometimes blood red, sometimes night black and sometimes moon white. Even their eyes are covered, yet this seems to pose them no problems. They are not hateful to strangers. In fact, they love them, and it hurts to look upon someone scarred by disease or crippled by injury. Would you like new skin? It is of no consequence to them, really!
Washed-Up Chierxes
It is said that Chierxes once dwelt in the Dreaming Sea, far far to the East, but the city grew so wicked and rotten in its decadence that the gods turned their eyes from it. Without their gods, therefore, chaos claimed the city and it was taken out into a timeless existence until in time the mercurial borderlands released their hold on it enough for it to lodge in the Dusk Sea. It is a city of declining splendour, great towers whose copper roofs are verdigris and flowering tropical fruit grow from crumbling facades, while the streets are filthy with excess and vice. The locals are heavily twisted by the touch of chaos, and their great port city is a warren of some of the vilest and least stable pirates in the whole Dusk Sea. Yet under the Tyrant Kerocryes, many of the pirate bands that base out of the city have been brought under this self-proclaimed prince's authority and he turns his many eyes in two directions; some towards Tentis and Spyaja whose raksha lords could be sacrificed to the empty altars of the city, and others towards Creation where the gods who abandoned them still dwell.
The Golden Hammer Ruins
A bleach and dead volcanic isle is dominated by a colossal building built into the central cone. Above the grand door, the flaking remnants of a golden hammer are visible. Many venture into its depths, in search of the treasures of antiquity that are said to exist in its depths. Few find ancient treasures, but the staff who still remain produce many cunning and beautiful things with inspiration born of the wyld. Sometimes traders like the chanconarie arrive, and trade food and water for beautiful gossamer weapons and curiosities like square circles. Those who perish in the countless dangers of the ruins wake up in the camp-town in the entrance, having lost something; their name, the colour of their eyes, their temper. They find that the island will not let them leave. And when they venture again into the depths, they may be struck by mad inspiration and be bound within the ruins.
The Sea Maze
The sargasso here is long and hungry. Those who sail down the channels risk tearing open their hull on the hidden rocks and spikes, and must fend off the local hobgoblins and wyld-beasts. Those who can follow the difficult, ever-shifting part find a hidden isle in the centre where dwells a moonlit queen and her wife who holds the power of fecund Wood within her. They have no interest in the outside world, they say - before demanding tales and stories of events in the outside world with yearning eyes. Others venture into the maze not to seek for its ladies, but to try to salvage ships left by those who have met ill fates or gather the rare and brightly coloured fish with strange alchemic properties.
The Respectable and Proper Doctors of Phagia
Founded, or so it is said, by a dragonblooded doctor of particularly depraved habits who fled the world itself to escape punishment for his crimes, this healing order of gluttons has perfected the art he devised. Their practice of medical anthropophagy is almost beyond compare. They can feast on plague, devour depression, make a light repast of a wyld-tumour, and many more things. Their feasting-monastery on the enamel-island of Dantam is wealthy and many traders stop by its stinking docks to bring them the delicacies and treats they need (or so they claim) for their work. Yet when a Respectable and Proper Doctor arrives at one of the other islands in the Dusk Sea, it is never an unmitigated good. Something else is eaten away by their presence. Sometimes it is just their payment, if they are fed well. Otherwise, vagrants go missing. Or things that their patients did not wish to lose. A gullet trained to consume foulness requires an indiscriminate palate.
Fungus Affable
The mushrooms here on this low squat island walk and talk. They are very friendly. They sweep the seas around them for unwanted junk, expanding their isle of detritus. Many things in the Dusk Sea end up at Fungus Affable eventually. The friendly mushrooms welcome guests and will help the search through the massive mounds. Sometimes unwanted memories and the last thoughts of dying sailors wash ashore. From the rot of minds are more fungi born.
The Pure Isle
This isle does not move. The wyld flees it. It is a static place in this ever-changing sea. On this isle there is a proper way of doing things, and that way is followed to the letter. The residents hate anything that is different. They dress plainly here, and speak softly and melodically. They wear undyed cotton and silk, and cover up despite the heat. It isn't proper to show too much flesh. Outsiders are tolerated as long as they follow the rules. It is still part of the Dusk Sea, but they have their own sun who lights up the isle with colourless light from the central mountaintop. They sing songs in Her honour, for she protects them from the madness of the world outside. Hear the song. Listen to Her adore it. Adore Her. Become Her.
The Sugar Kings
The land of the Sugar Kings is close to the edge of the Dusk Sea, and maybe within a few decades will wash up on Creation itself. The routes from the Sunfall Isles to their island are easy and safe, and sugar flows the other way in return for Creation's food and good silver. Some people even call it Shuu Gula, in the style of the western Anarchy. But the Sugar Kings who rule this place fear such an event, and they are right to, because it would ruin this place. There are no peasants here, and no slaves. Instead, the families who have gained such wealth have learned to dream the sugar harvest into being, each taking their turn to sleep for months at a time, fed and watered by their relatives as outside the fields grow and harvest themselves. Their wealth comes from their own will and dreaming work, unlike the sugar barons of the Anarchy who guzzle down the sweat and blood of those unfortunates they treat as chattel. Is this so wrong? Must Creation's laws extinguish this place?
The Debt Court
This mountainous island is heavily overgrown, but among the trees are regularly placed standing stones. The animals who dwell here talk and go about in archaic judicial robes, while the only native humans are soul-flayed and go about like beasts of the jungle, wordless and naked. "Punishment for crimes," is all the animals say. They are very interested in debts and oaths, and their clever eyes let them record all the debts and all the oaths of anyone who visits this isle. This information, they record on the standing stones. There is much to learn here, if one does not mind their own debts being recorded.
The Sighthouse
An ancient lighthouse serves as the approximate southern border of the Dusk Sea, insofar as such a concept applies. It no longer burns. In place of its cupola is a giant fleshy eye, and its heartbeat can be heard for miles around. The eye is bored. Bring it things to read and it will pay in precious tears that burn with captured sunlight and in prophecy of things that are yet to come. If it takes a liking to a guest, it might even provide a recipe to a future; steps that must be followed to make those events come to pass. The Sighthouse is also a border of the dreamers of the Dusk Sea, and its presence is an omen of great things if seen during the sleeping hours, whether for good or ill.
Sargassia
Wandering Sargassia dwells in these waters and they are its home, though it will often venture into Creation when it feels hungry.
The Boreal Forest
Travel far enough west, against a certain cold wind, and the waters cool too. Heavy fogs cling low and close. The sea bed rises. Continue to sail, and you will see the waterlogged trees and feel your rudder scrape against drowned bushes. Continue on, and you will run around among trees as tall as mountains. The cold here is biting. And if you continue further on, you will see the sun rise behind you. You may encounter men here. They do not speak Sea Tongue. They will see you as a wyld-beast who crawled out of the Far North East.
