Carnifex
First Post
The Pyrelands:
The Pyrelands is a small, shallow sea amidst the rolling oceans, created when the meteors fell to earth and caused great ruptures in the world to open up. At no point deeper than one hundred meters, the waters of the Pyrelands is thick with cloudy ash and chemicals, not lethally noxious but not healthy for most sea-dwellers either. The source of all this is the rents and tears in the surface of the seafloor below. Fiery volcanic vents open directly into the water, causing columns of heated water to stream up, carrying swirls of minerals as they go.
As a result, the sea here is a maze of ruptures, ridges and mineral growths reaching towards the surface. In some places the vents rise up out of the sea into the air above, creating a myriad of tiny volcanic islands covered in black ash and cooled lava. At times there are surges in volcanic activity, causing the vents both above and below water to spew out fresh torrents of magma and creating more of these islands, and enlarging those that already exist. Myth says that this is the action of the world itself, trying to recreate a balance between land and water by slowly birthing a new continent from the Pyrelands.
The heavy chemical and mineral saturation of the water may not be hospitable to most advanced forms of life in the sea, but there is a super-abundance of adapted algae and bacterial colonies, especially clustering around the vents. Crustaceans, molluscs and fish suited to the perpetually warm waters live their lives in the Pyrelands, and people have reported something more; sightings of some sort of red and orange-skinned sahuagin, probably a mutant strain that has evolved to live in the volcanic waters. Whether they are sentient, or what their civilisation is like, is as yet unknown, but there is talk of mounting expeditions into the Pyrelands. Many valuable minerals and gems created by the fiery heat of magma can be found there, sometimes just lying around, and such reports by brave prospectors are already bringing the greedy flocking to the borders of this strange place.
The Pyrelands is a small, shallow sea amidst the rolling oceans, created when the meteors fell to earth and caused great ruptures in the world to open up. At no point deeper than one hundred meters, the waters of the Pyrelands is thick with cloudy ash and chemicals, not lethally noxious but not healthy for most sea-dwellers either. The source of all this is the rents and tears in the surface of the seafloor below. Fiery volcanic vents open directly into the water, causing columns of heated water to stream up, carrying swirls of minerals as they go.
As a result, the sea here is a maze of ruptures, ridges and mineral growths reaching towards the surface. In some places the vents rise up out of the sea into the air above, creating a myriad of tiny volcanic islands covered in black ash and cooled lava. At times there are surges in volcanic activity, causing the vents both above and below water to spew out fresh torrents of magma and creating more of these islands, and enlarging those that already exist. Myth says that this is the action of the world itself, trying to recreate a balance between land and water by slowly birthing a new continent from the Pyrelands.
The heavy chemical and mineral saturation of the water may not be hospitable to most advanced forms of life in the sea, but there is a super-abundance of adapted algae and bacterial colonies, especially clustering around the vents. Crustaceans, molluscs and fish suited to the perpetually warm waters live their lives in the Pyrelands, and people have reported something more; sightings of some sort of red and orange-skinned sahuagin, probably a mutant strain that has evolved to live in the volcanic waters. Whether they are sentient, or what their civilisation is like, is as yet unknown, but there is talk of mounting expeditions into the Pyrelands. Many valuable minerals and gems created by the fiery heat of magma can be found there, sometimes just lying around, and such reports by brave prospectors are already bringing the greedy flocking to the borders of this strange place.
