Misty Isles

The Misty Isles appear on only a handful of maps, which put them far out in the Forgotten Sea, remote from any other land. Sailors venturing past the Fangs of Lemuria have occasionally spotted them or even gone ashore, the latest such encounter nearly a century ago.

Every account describes the same shape: two big islands and seven lesser islets, all of which can be seen from the summit of the largest. The group is volcanic, centered on a pair of huge conical peaks that were erupting according to at least two of the most believable reports, and a haze from geysers and steam vents cloaks it at all times. Plants grow there, yet the sole animals anyone has noticed are a scattering of stray seabirds, and a strange silence, heavy enough to feel, lies over everything.

Where the stories part ways is the location: no two vessels have ever arrived by the same route. About a hundred years ago a captain who had visited once before hunted for the isles until his crew forced him to give up. He insisted until he died that on that earlier voyage he and his sailors had buried an enormous treasure on the northern beach of the biggest island, recovered from a Sheban ship lying half-sunk nearby whose crew was never found, and he would often produce an ancient Sheban coin as evidence. Hardly anyone credits such stories today. The group also goes by two other names, the Wandering Isles and the Isles of the Lonely, and certain sages identify it with the Isles of the Lost, which are generally believed to have sunk during the Great Cataclysm.