This map does not show innumerable smaller islands.
The archipelago is roughly six hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide, and consists of thousands of islands, a mix of coral atolls and rocky volcanic mountains. To the north is the mainland, the south is the Boundless Sea, from which no explorers have ever returned. Within the arc of the archipelago and moving back up to the mainland is the Inner Sea, a safer place than the Boundless Sea and somewhat more travelled.
The archipelago is a chain of volcanic islands resulting from a geological fault, generally moving slowly westward (and a bit south). Thus, the islands to the east side of the chain tend to be dormant or collapsed volcanoes, and atolls that sprang up near them. The western side of the chain, on the other hand, tends to be more active volcanoes, and the water there is not hospitable to coral – which means no atolls.
The climate of the archipelago is basically tropic. It is warmest to the north, and coolest at the south, with the very southern tip of the archipelago, exposed to the colder currents from the Boundless Sea, being more sub-tropic than tropic. It is a humid area, with frequent rainfall, and storms come and go with regularity and swiftness. During the spring and summer (almost indistinguishable from the other seasons), hurricanes are a possibility. In general, if it is not actively stormy, it tends to be hot in the islands.
The archipelago is on the continental shelf of the mainland to the north. As such, its waters do not run terribly deep (generally not more than three hundred feet), and the area is extremely dense with islands. In general, any given island is not likely to be more than four or five miles from another island of decent size. There are a few more sparse areas, particularly around the more geologically active southwest part of the archipelago, but it is still rare not to be able to see at least one island while standing on a beach.
Most of the islands in the archipelago are quite small – ranging from a few miles in radius to twenty miles in radius. However, there are seven much larger isles. Five of them are clustered in the north-east of the archipelago, and are the foundations of the nations Epokavaa and Li'i. One of the islands, called Venaka, is in the southeast part of the archipelago. And the final large island is the Fire Island, the home to the archipelago's two most active volcanoes.
The Fire Island is active enough that it's actively dangerous to live on, wracked by eartquakes and magma flows. In addition, its spirits are particularly active, strong, and dangerous. For obvious reasons, it's largely shunned by the islanders – only the desperate or the crazy brave its shores. This, in turn, only increases the dangers of living on or around the Fire Island.
The archipelago is home to a colorful assortment of tropical life. For the most part, animals and plants are what one might expect from tropical islands – there is the usual assortment of reef fish, turtles, rays, shorebirds, and the like.
Land animals have, for the most part, not penetrated the archipelago. There are vermin like rats, and humans have brought enough small dogs and cats (generally to deal with the vermin) to the isles that small feral populations have developed on some islands. There are a few snakes, but no poisonous ones.
On the big islands of Epokavaa and Li'i, agricultural life has enough of a hold that there are small domesticated populations of sheep and cattle. Horses are unknown in the archipelago, as are deer and most other large mammals.
In contrast, plant life is abundant. The volcanic soil on many of the islands is extremely fertile, giving host to a wide variety of trees (including both palms and deciduous trees, and also a very small smattering of evergreens), bushes, vines, creepers, grasses, and the like. Constant rain keeps the islands fiercely green except on the mountain peaks of the volcanoes.
Atolls have much poorer soil, and are often more sandy than populated. However, the tougher plants provide a fair amount of color even there.
The sea, of course, is filled to the bursting with life. The archipelago is shot through with coral reefs near to the shores, and the deeper channels provide a slightly cooler ecology. It is impossible to overstate the amount and variety of sealife, from sea grasses to coral to jellyfish to crustaceans to fish to rays to dolphins to octopi and squid.
Notable in their absense are large sharks – there are a few species of sharks that are less than three feet in size, but the larger sharks have been pushed out of their ecological niche by the far more successful sea serpents.
Sea serpents are high-food chain predators that fill the same ecological niche as some of the larger sharks. Sea serpents are about six inches long when they hatch out of soft, oblong eggs, and grow slowly but steadily throughout their lives – which do not naturally end. Thus, there is no theoretical upper limit to the size of sea serpents. Of course, the vast majority do not live long enough to become of a size that's dangerous to humans, as they're frequently eaten by any variety of predators, ranging from fish to other sea serpents to humans.
Sea serpents are potentially intelligent, but only the larger ones are actually intelligent. In general, a sea serpant that's grown to be about eight feet long is getting to the point where it can display cunning equal to a primate, and one that's about 30 feet long is as intelligent as a human. Sea serpents are magically active, and generally have innate water and air talents that they can't use until they achieve sapience. Despite their intelligence, sea serpents are feral and alien, and are, as a rule, not trainable.
Sea serpents are about as common as you'd expect, given that they're high-food-chain predators, but in a food-rich environment. The cunning-but-not-intelligent six to twenty foot long versions are a danger, but not an omnipresent one. The larger ones are very rare.
Sea serpents generally tend to migrate to deeper waters as they get larger, as one might expect. Thus, the shallows between reefs and islands tend to be quite safe from sea serpents – unless there's one that's willing to make a concerted effort to get over the reef and terrorize some humans. The deeper waters between islands are less secure, but the big serpents are still not a huge threat. In general, serpents recognize that humans are not the easiest meal, and tend to sate themselves on fish. However, they are predators, and have certainly been known to attack humans.
Serpents that get much longer than about 30 feet almost invariably migrate out of the archipelago entirely, to the far deeper, colder waters to the east and west. Truly titanic sea-serpents have been glimpsed out there – hundreds of feet long, and apparantly capable of speaking (a serpent with sufficient air talent can talk, despite not having the vocal chords necessary to do these things, and serpents' magical abilities increase as they get older). There may well be a community of sea serpents in the deeper oceans, and perhaps even one of other magical sea beasts – it is not outside the realm of reason to suppose that there might be kraken or the like in the exotic deep-waters. Archipelago-dwellers rarely venture out there, as their boats are not well-suited for the truly open ocean, nor is there much incentive to go out there in the first place.
Sea serpents are not intrinsically hostile to humans, but neither are they particularly well-disposed towards them. In general, most humans would consider it a very good idea to steer well around any sea serpent they saw. Since the sea serpents which regularly dwell in the archipelago are not obviously intelligent, most humans regard them as animals, but cunning ones. There are stories of the larger sea serpents (including very big ones which have come to the archipelago for unknowable reasons), but they are the sort which are dismissable by skeptics.
Physically, sea serpents are usually shades of blue, green, or silver. They have sharp, overlapping scales. They are proportioned more thickly than snakes, but less thickly than most fish – a six foot long serpent would generally be eight to 16 inches wide through most of their bodies. They have a wide variety of external appearances – some have long tendrils that look something like kelp strands (presumeably camoflage of some kind), while others are very sleek. Some have small fins, others are appendage-less. All have wide mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. It is not known whether the various appearances of sea serpents are indicative of different breeds of them, or whether the species has some kind of magically variable morphology.
Sea serpents can easily survive out of water for thirty minutes to an hour, and move on the ground like snakes. They do not usually do so unless they're intelligent enough to have a particular goal – they find being out of the water unpleasant and clumsy.
The archipelago has been inhabited by humans for longer than anyone's history extends. The "natives" of the islands are typically extremely dark-skinned people, with ethnic features similar to what Earth humans might associate with an african tribe. However, for the last several hundred years at least, ethnic mainlanders have lived in the islands and freely interbred with the natives. The mainland race is a bronze-skinned, dark-haired group that Earth humans would regard as similar to Persian stock.
The end result of the highly mobile population of the archipelago and the interbreeding is an thorough mix of skin tones and ethnic features, ranging from people who are indistinguishable from the mainlanders, with bronze skin and straight or wavy black hair, to the dark black skin and kinked hair of the island natives, and every possible range in between. Though it is impossible to totally generalize about the archipelago, the vast majority of all communities within it do not make a big deal of a given individual's mix of racial features.
The population of the archipelago hovers at around 60,000, and is relatively steady, with high infant mortality preventing significant further growth. The average lifespan is about 60 years for men, 70 for women who do not die in childbirth, and the principle killer is disease.
Continue on to the society of the archipelago...
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