The Isle of Whispering Sands

To the west of the Alderworth Kingdom, away from the well-trodden trade routes that bridge the nation to the Oxze Empire, there exists a newly mapped landmass: the Isle of Whispering Sands. It was rumor only, whispers told by wrecked sailors and half-demented discoverers, until a bold expedition funded by the College of Arcane Lore in Veldonia recently returned from their journey. The question in everyone’s minds was the same one, though: how could an island remain hidden for millenia, in the middle of one of the world’s most navigated maritime trade routes?

The isle itself is a location of harsh beauty. Towering dunes of uncannily fine black sand writhe and moan in the wind, lending the island its moniker. There seems to be more to this breeze, though: members of the expedition reported that the wind itself appears to vibrate with a jarring chorus of whispers, thin and overlapping, enticing some to the edge of knowledge and pushing others to the edges of insanity. The origin of these whispers remains a mystery, although it is theorized that it has a connection to the island's endemic plane instability.

In contrast to the sharply defined plane encroachments of locations such as Arus Mountain, the Isle of Whispering Sands seems to be a tumultuous intersection of several, usually incompatible, planes. Isolated pockets of the Material Plane coexist within areas where the veil thins to provide a brief view of the Shadow Plane's eternal twilight, explosions of intense heat similar to the Plane of Fire, and patches of land that change and reform as if determined by the Plane of Earth. This constantly fluid motion renders traveling the island extremely hazardous and unpredictable, and is probably how the island remained undetected for so long.

Life on the Isle exists in a sparse and adaptively unique form. Vegetation, when it occurs, tends to have the properties of many environments - think cacti that cry icy tears or flowers that have shadowy, illusion-based petals. The wildlife is also fantastical; the species that have been spotted include crystalline scorpions that phase in and out of the Material Plane, and giant, silent birdlike hunters that have feathers which glow with infernal light. The whispers seem to have a varied impact upon the local wildlife, some becoming more aggressive while others have a curious passive sentience.

Scattered throughout the island are the remains of a civilization older even than the Vaelorian Ascendancy. These edifices are constructed of an unknown obsidian-like material that absorbs both light and sound. Interestingly, as is the case in Jhasari, the Isle of Whispering Sands also has a curious Aetheric drain, making most think it was the same people who inhabited it millennia ago. Magic isn't completely suppressed here, though, but it behaves in a capricious and often unpredictable way. Aetheric energies tapped by casters are readily devoured by the environment, sometimes causing uncontrolled magical outbursts or complete spell failure. The ancient peoples might have known or even brought about the phenomenon because inscriptions in the ruins (if not very decipherable) suggest that the chaotic planar energies were to be either tamed or appeased through ritual.

Aside from being an interesting place for scholarly study, the island is placed in a strategic location, which makes most political savvy people suspect one of the three nearby nations (the Kingdom of Leoriel, the Kingdom of Breccia, and the Alderworth Kingdom) will attempt to lay claim to it. What happens after is yet to be determined.