Southeast of the Nekanzi Jungle, where the coastline curves inward, lies the body of water that foreign sailors call Swindle Sound. The name comes from bitter experience: treacherous currents, hidden reefs, and sandbars that seem to shift between voyages have wrecked dozens of ships over the centuries. Captains who thought they'd found a shortcut around Tyunigogo's tolls discovered instead why the Neka don't bother patrolling these waters.
The Neka call it Zend-Kulam, roughly "the patient water"—patient because it waits for ships to make mistakes, then collects them. They don't fish here; the currents make small craft as vulnerable as large ones. Occasionally valuable salvage washes up on the jungle's southeastern beaches, but more often it's just wreckage and bodies.
Smugglers still try. Some even succeed—there are channels through the sound that skilled pilots can navigate, though the knowledge is closely held and expensive. The Neka are aware of this traffic and largely ignore it. Anything that makes it through Swindle Sound and into the jungle still has to deal with the jungle, and the Neka would rather let the sound do the filtering than waste hunters on patrol duty.
Hooks:
- A ship carrying something valuable went down in the sound—someone might pay well for its recovery
- A smuggler claims to know a safe route through and is selling passage
- Something in the sound has started actively hunting ships rather than just waiting for wrecks