Fallen City States of the Coastal Forests of Kaendor

[flyinglemur]

I think it also makes isolated islands great candidates for being very strange places. They are different worlds from the familiar world of the mainland. They look like land, but they are rising out of the sea. You clearly can not trust them.

It’s always nice to see more posts from you Yora. This is an interesting setting and it’s cool to its progression.

If the sea is its own alien place, then maybe islands can be like the safe areas in the coast, a small place where the spirits have allowed mortals to live. This could make for a really interesting relationship.

Spirits already have all the power in their deals with mortals, if you displease them than you’ll lose your meager villages. This could be even worse for islanders. If they displease the ocean spirits, then they will just sink the island back into the sea, a la Atlantis.

I imagine this could make for very paranoid and xenophobic villagers. At least the villagers on land might be able to find a new spirit in the wilds willing to accommodate them, islanders will just drown.

An interesting idea to go along with this would be a group of Viking-esque raiders who assault the coastal villages of Kaendor, who assault the villages not because they want to but because their spirit has ordered them too. The particular sea spirit hates the coastal spirits, and would love to sink the coast into the sea, but the spirits are too evenly matched. So the spirit cultivates an island of mortals, and commands them to assault the coast, as a way of harming the land dwelling spirits by proxy. Maybe the fish-men are just normal humans, transformed by their spirit in order to terrify the populace. Maybe this is a way of making the insult stick, since you said spirits don’t normally recognize mortals, without a mask or some such.