![[z_Publish/_assets/Iskavar Isles.png]] # General Info *Continent of [[2-World/Planets/Elandor.md|Elandor]] · the holy isles of [[2-World/People/Deities/Vesharra.md|Vesharra]] · seat of [[2-World/Groups/the Scales of Vesharra.md|the Scales of Vesharra]]* The Iskavar Isles are a scattered archipelago in warm southern seas, and they are the one place in the world where an oath is not just words. Sailors call them *the Weighed Isles*. Everyone who lands there is judged, and the land itself remembers whether you kept your word. ## The Weighing Gate No ship sails straight into the Isles. Every vessel lands first at **[[2-World/Points of Interest/Threshold.md|Threshold]]**, a bare white island with a single enormous gate of white stone. Beside it stands **[[2-World/People/The Gatekeeper.md|the Gatekeeper]]**, an ancient construct of silver plates and hanging scales that has never been seen to move except to speak. It asks each traveller to swear **the Oath of Passage**: to speak no lie and break no promise while on the Isles. Those who refuse are turned back politely and given water for the voyage home. Those who swear walk through, and nobody has ever walked through without swearing. ## The wandering isles The Isles do not stay where the maps put them. They drift slowly across the sea, and islanders say they drift *towards judgement*: islands whose people keep their oaths wander north towards the light, and islands that grow faithless wander south. In the far south, islands sink beneath the waves by night and rise again somewhere new by morning. ## Two shores The archipelago is split in two: - **[[2-World/Regions/The Sworn Reach.md|The Sworn Reach]]**, the northern isles, home to those who keep their oaths. Bright, orderly and serene, and almost too perfect. - **[[2-World/Regions/The Forswept.md|The Forswept]]**, the southern isles, where oathbreakers sentenced by [[2-World/Groups/The Church of the Weighed Hand.md|the Church of the Weighed Hand]] are exiled. Fog, marsh, broken bridges and sinking islands. Between them stands **[[2-World/Hubs/Scalecross.md|Scalecross]]**, the only city on both shores at once, divided down the middle by a white line in its streets. ## The Scales' home The mother-house of [[2-World/Groups/the Scales of Vesharra.md|the Scales of Vesharra]], **[[2-World/Points of Interest/The Bastion of the Open Hand.md|the Bastion of the Open Hand]]**, stands in the Sworn Reach. Every knight of the order sails here once in their life to swear their final vows before the Gatekeeper. ## Trade All trade with the Isles is sworn. When an Iskavar ship docks at [[2-World/Hubs/Thuldrok.md|Thuldrok]], the colourful flags it raises are *oath-banners*: each one is a promise about the cargo, and the townsfolk greet it with ceremony because breaking a banner-oath is a matter for the Scales, not the harbourmaster. ## Peoples - **Humans** of every kind, many of them descendants of pilgrims who never left. - **Sea giants**, who sit as **the Stone Jury** of the Sworn Reach: ancient jurors who wade between the islands and are said to have sat in judgement since before the first ship arrived. - **Naga**, who haunt the marshes of the Forswept and are said to have been the Isles' first oathbreakers. - **Star-sailors**, nomadic islanders who steer by [[2-World/Planets/Lunara.md|Lunara]] and are the only people allowed to sail freely between the two shores. # Region Details **Dominant Races:** Humans, sea giants, naga, star-sailors **Climate:** Warm, humid and subtropical in the north; fog-bound, damp and grey in the south **Biome vibe:** Shivering Isles under a goddess of justice: white-stone serenity on one shore, drowned marshland on the other, and islands that drift between them **Regions:** [[2-World/Regions/The Sworn Reach.md|The Sworn Reach]] (north), [[2-World/Regions/The Forswept.md|The Forswept]] (south) **Major city:** [[2-World/Hubs/Scalecross.md|Scalecross]] # Regions **continent** Places where people live - Cities, Towns, Villages, Hamlets, Encampment, Keeps, Fortresses, Strongholds. - [[2-World/Regions/The Forswept.md|The Forswept]] - [[2-World/Regions/The Sworn Reach.md|The Sworn Reach]] # Capital Cities Groups of people and power - religious, cults, guilds, military