Geography
The Northern Isles are a broad, fragmented archipelago occupying the northeastern waters of Clueanda, scattered across the Ocean of Azeros. The island chain resembles the Canadian arctic archipelago—a wide, tall region of relatively large islands broken by narrow, icy straits and channels.
Position and Extent
- West: The Frostmarch Peninsula forms the mainland anchor, transitioning from continental land into the island chain
- South: The Ocean of Azeros separates the isles from the Celedrim Plains coastline
- North: The Ocean of Azeros extends beyond the islands toward the polar ice
- East: Open ocean
The Ocean of Azeros surrounds and permeates the archipelago, stretching from north of the Celedrim Plains across the entire top of this region.
Climate
The islands are uniformly icy, though conditions worsen progressively toward the north. Even the southernmost islands remain frozen year-round, with ice floes clogging the channels between them. Navigation is treacherous—shifting pack ice, sudden storms, and the ever-present cold claim many ships.
Major Islands
- Pherezi Imnuttut: The massive eastern landmass, roughly 1000 miles long, containing Blizrynthine, Giantfell, the Hills of Insanity, and the Timeless Wastes
- Aknimchuk: Northwestern volcanic island with the Ashy Mountains, Scheyolonae, and the only ice-free harbor in the archipelago
- Potalaptuk: Central island where Bzulakar's Keep dominates the landscape
- Soki: Island south of Potalaptuk
- Friursus: Northern island in the Iceberg Isles chain
- Zemkachi: Eastern island near Lightning Strait
- Moon Dog: Small island cluster in the central archipelago
Seas and Straits
The Northern Isles are threaded with named bodies of water:
- Whispering Sea: The central waters of the archipelago, named for the unnatural quiet that Bzulakar's power has imposed—waves lap silently, and even storms seem muted here
- Bruthweur Sea: Eastern waters between the central islands and Pherezi Imnuttut
- Iron Strait: Southern passage connecting the Northern Isles to the Frostmarch Peninsula's northeastern waters
- Lightning Strait: Eastern passage near Zemkachi, known for sudden electrical storms
- Passage of Hagol: Western strait separating Aknimchuk from the mainland
The Iceberg Isles
A chain of smaller, heavily glaciated islands stretching across the northern archipelago. These islands are essentially floating mountains of ice with rocky cores, calving massive icebergs into the surrounding waters. Navigation through the Iceberg Isles is nearly impossible—the shifting ice, hidden rocks, and freezing temperatures destroy most vessels that attempt it.
Political Climate
The Northern Isles have no unified government and few permanent settlements. Power here is measured in individual might, not political organization:
- Bzulakar dominates the central archipelago through sheer magical supremacy. No one challenges him; no one could.
- Gelnor keeps the Shroud Isles fog-bound and himself with them, a self-exile atoning for a crime he buried centuries ago
- Pherezi Imnuttut is essentially lawless—whatever creatures inhabit Giantfell and the Hills of Insanity answer to no authority
- Aknimchuk's small trading settlement operates on frontier justice and mutual necessity
The isles attract those who wish to disappear: exiles, criminals, mad wizards, and others who find civilization intolerable. They come here knowing they will likely die, preferring that to whatever awaits them elsewhere.
What Makes It Interesting
The Northern Isles are a place of extremes and contradictions:
- Fire leylines creating infernos in frozen canyons (Blizrynthine)
- Time flowing wrong in the Timeless Wastes
- The most powerful lich on Alaria living in a 2-mile ice tower
- Volcanoes providing the only warmth for hundreds of miles (Aknimchuk)
- Magical amber washing up on frozen beaches
- A fog lich atoning for ancient sins in perpetual mist
For adventurers, the Northern Isles offer treasures and dangers found nowhere else—but the journey alone will kill most who attempt it.
What Will Go Wrong
- Bzulakar decides to expand his influence beyond the isles
- Something stirs in the depths of the Timeless Wastes, where time has pooled strangely for millennia
- The Thermarifts of Blizrynthine grow unstable, threatening to crack Pherezi Imnuttut apart
- A new power arrives in the isles, challenging Bzulakar's dominion
- The creatures of Giantfell begin migrating south toward inhabited lands
The Shroud Isles
The most densely fog-bound islands in this half of the world, named for the shroud of mist that never lifts from them. The fog is not weather. It is held in place by Gelnor, an old Tuktuk paragon of fog and water who has lived here in self-exile for centuries. He is a lich, and he does not leave. See The Shroud Isles for the islands themselves.
Giant hermit crabs work the shoreline, grazing algae off the rocks.
Potalaptuk
The central island of the Northern Isles, forever in the shadow of Bzulakar's Keep. The 2-mile ice tower dominates the landscape so completely that the island barely has an identity beyond "the place where the lich lives." The ice around Potalaptuk never melts, never shifts—Bzulakar's power holds it perfectly frozen, a demonstration of control that extends for hundreds of miles in every direction.
No one lives on Potalaptuk who hasn't been permitted by Bzulakar. What that permission requires, and why anyone would seek it, are questions best left unasked.
Bastard's Keep
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Friursus
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Peyleten Peninsula
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