Isles



The Isles are an isolated archipelago surrounded by the world's ocean. Consisting of the four main islands of Gristol, Morley, Serkonos, and Tyvia, as well as a series of lesser islets, the Isles form one of the world's two documented landmasses, the other being the distant Pandyssian Continent. Although human civilization in the Isles spans at least four thousand years, an event known as The Great Burning nearly two thousand years ago destroyed practically all traces of any prior history and culture. At the present time, the Isles are ruled under a united government, the Empire of the Isles, which was founded in the year 1625 of the modern calendar following the War of Four Crowns.

History
Little is known about the history of the Isles before the 1600s. Approximately two thousand years before the Great Burning, a cult called the Envisioned sacrificed a young boy on an alter within the Void, creating the Outsider. The nihilistic era known as the Great Burning which followed centuries later caused the destruction of much of the Isles' original cultures, creating a significant gap in the historical record.

Over time, new cultures arose across the Isles, such as an ancient civilization that formed at the site of the city of Dunwall in Gristol by the 700s, when it invaded what would become the city of Bastillian in Serkonos. This Dunwall civilization disappeared by the 800s, however.

The last known event before the founding of the Empire of the Isles in 1625 was the establishment of the Academy of Natural Philosophy in Dunwall in 1572.

Climate and Geography
The Isles have a varied climate and geography, which each of the four principal islands featuring unique characteristics. In the south, Serkonos boasts a consistently warm, almost tropical climate and forests of towering trees, but is the only island plagued by bloodflies. Gristol, north of Serkonos, is the largest of the four islands and is more temperate, with rolling green hills. Morley lies to the northeast of Gristol and is known as particularly dreary. Lastly, Tyvia, the northernmost of the Isles, is persistently cold.

Trivia

 * Anton Sokolov notes in A Reflection on My Journey to the Pandyssian Continent (1) that cartographers are reluctant to depict the Isles' true, relatively diminutive size in relation to the Pandyssian Contient, and often embellish their works.
 * The exact size of the Isles is not specified, but it takes about two weeks to travel between Dunwall and Karnaca via the Grand Serkonan Canal using an aging steamship, and several months to travel between the Isles and the Pandyssian Continent.