JesseLowe/IsleOfShadows
2,318 square miles.
The Isle of Shadows was once a First Age shipyard, but it survived the Usurpation fairly intact. It was the Great Contagion that brought it into shadow and led to its abandonment by the infant Realm.
The shipyard and naval base is located on the northern coast of the island, in a pentagonal harbor. Further south, near the center of the isle, the tomb of the First Age solars stands, in a Shogunate-era maze and garden. On the southwestern tip, a few mortal castaway have made a refuge, warded about against the dead.
A tower over a pit; the lair of Pontoppidan is a vast pit that descends into the Labyrinth; a hundred feet from the top, it is is filled with black seawater. The tower, the temple of Pontoppidan, is a lozenge-shaped spire held over the pit by four great slanted pillars of black granite. These meet in a circle that girdles the widest point of the spire, and each one is a broad stair. Up these stairs march the damned souls that worship Pontoppidan, marching in an endless procession as they circle pit and spire.
Watchful and worshipful are the slaves of Pontoppidan, and the worthiest rise to become its acolytes. They are garbed in armor of soulsteel and jade, and given chains of grief with which to defend the temple.
Vigilant and devout are the acolytes of Pontoppidan, and the greatest rise to become its priests. Garbed in gray robes and masked in silver, they wrap the chains of an acolyte around their bodies and take up as weapons the sacred spears that spread the joy of Oblivion to the world.
Above all these worshippers reigns the Speaker for the Sea, ancient beyond reckoning, a hag and a terror who holds Pontoppidan's heart in her own breast and commands the worshippers in unquestioning obedience to the Void. A ghost of old, she sees truth in darkness and understand the hunger of the sea. In her chest, secured with soulsteel nails and thread, beats the heart of Pontoppidan, a great black pulsing thing. She wears a skirt of chains and no other garment, her sex all but obscured in her self-moliation. Her hands are empty, but she may call to them at any moment spear or chain, or sharp dagger for sacrifice.
And sacrifice she does, for to wake Pontoppidan only blood will answer, and blood is scarce in the Underworld. The acolytes of the hekatonkhire sail out on grim ships, raiding the isles of the West and seizing the living, bringing them back in chains. From these chains they hang upon the lowest levels of the spire, their throats cut when Pontoppidan must awake for the dread purpose of the Void.
All shudder in terror and joy when the great beast of the sea rises, for his bulk is like an island, his maw like the kraken, and his form unto leviathan. Vast in his power and hungry as the ocea, he departs his lair and swims through the Labyrinth, finding through its myriad passages a way into the Sea of Night, and there he may storm, devouring ships and souls. Of his wrath, even the Deathlords are wary, for he is older and mightier than they. At the Speaker for the Sea's supplication, the great sea beast may even travel beyond the borders of the Underworld and hunt the seas of Creation for a night and a day and a night, but he requires oceans of blood ere he will grace Creation with his awesome power.
