Sarakan Jungle

The Sarakan jungle fills a vast valley in central Lemuria between the Tarakan and Golian ranges, and it is by far the wildest and most hostile part of the continent. So hidden a land has drawn few explorers, and the only surviving written account is by Andromelius, a First Age historian of whom almost nothing else is known.

He described a mist-hung valley walled by peaks to the north, south and west, named Sarakan by natives of the Kiowan Islands. It held giant lizards exceeding 100 feet, bat-winged reptiles nesting in the cliffs and snakes as thick as a man's thigh. Plants grew beyond all natural limits: one fruit could feed seven men, thorn hedges became walls of spikes, and a relative of the insect-eating plants was big enough to catch men.

No true humans lived there. Instead, bestial humanoids resembling lemures made stone tools and weapons, built rough straw huts and paddled hollowed logs on the great river through the jungle, which the Elysians later called the Samra. Andromelius warned against contact: his party watched them roast their own kind for a feast, and rows of human-like skulls on some huts suggested that feuds between tribes are routine, even traditional. Carvings found in the ruins of a deserted village hinted that some of these sub-men may know simple magic.