The Islands
An archipelago east of the known coast of Gildraen – rocky, wind-worn and often dismissed in mainland maps as dangerous or irrelevant.
The islanders call the sea Imbrúa — not a name in contrast to others, but simply what it is: the sea, the vast breath that shapes their lives.
Surrounded by the wild waters of the Eastern Deep — known to the islanders simply as Imbrúa — each island is shaped by wind in its own way:
- Farra – the windiest of them all, treeless and raw. Home to seers, weather-sensitives, and those who understand silence. Its people are loud, sharp, and full of feeling — they speak like cliffs breaking, not to fill silence, but because the truth demands it. Stellan of Farra‘s birthplace.
- Oskerra – stone-veined, cliffed and cold. Known for its silver-bearing rocks, ritual mining, and thread-weaving traditions. Tools are passed down for generations. Thought to be harsh and hard, but never cruel.
- Larne – riddled with springs and caves. Its people are quiet but known for deep herbal knowledge and strange songs used in healing. They claim the springs carry memory.
- Vey – the smallest island, low and always storm-touched. Drenched, dark, half-forgotten. Not many live there now, but stories are still told of its sky-speaking women and the sea-taken men who come back changed.
The People’s Ancestry
The people of the Outer Winds are descended from the Morna, an older tribe scattered long ago after a time of control, persecution, and quiet fear — not for their weapons, but for their ways of seeing. The Morna were known for their rituals, weather-sense, and sky-marking, practices that made them valuable and unsettling in equal measure. Some were absorbed into other cultures. Others faded. A few found the sea.
Those few became the Imbrùans — the Morna who crossed into exile and built new lives in the wind-bound isles. They no longer use the old name, not openly. But it lingers: in carvings, in rites, in the quiet certainty of who they are.
Community and Governance
The islands of the Outer Winds operate as a deeply collaborative network of semi-autonomous households, built on long-standing mutual trust and respect. Their societal structure is matrifocal but not hierarchical: while older women often serve as anchors of experience and memory, decision-making is shared across all residents aged twelve and older. Rules are agreed upon within each household or dwelling cluster, and enforced by communal expectation rather than punishment. Each person has a role, and their autonomy is balanced by shared purpose.
The co-operative approach underpins every part of life — from food to housing to cloth production. Responsibilities shift with the seasons and skills, not fixed roles, and status is earned through reliability and integrity. There is no central leadership across the islands, but the cycle of interdependence is so well-understood that it operates almost effortlessly.
Mysticism and Rites
The Outer Winds share a quiet but powerful mystic tradition rooted in the skies and sea. It is not doctrinal, but lived — based on attunement to astral rhythms, wind, and weather. Stargazing is communal and reverent, often accompanied by hand-holding and chanted tones in low harmony. Those with a gift for reading patterns are listened to carefully: some are known to predict weather shifts with uncanny accuracy, while others sense the hum of stone or storm.
Magic, if it exists, is subtle — indistinguishable from presence. The forces of the islands are so wild and constant that intentional influence feels like shouting into a gale or tossing a drop into the tide: difficult to detect, yet not meaningless.
Rituals are mostly private, seasonal, and unscheduled — such as bathing in cold pools before a long voyage, or burning dried herbs on the hearth when the cloudbreak comes after a long greying. The lifting of storm season or the return of bird colonies might be marked with songs or shared silence. Families may have altars with stones, scraps of cloth, or wax tablets marked with personal symbols. Children are taught to speak kindly to the sea and to thank the stars before sleep.
Skill and Craft
The islands are remote and harsh, but are rich in spirit and craft. The community is not scraping by — they are specialists.
The islands together maintain the full cycle of linen and wool craft, from raw material to ceremonial garment. Flax is grown where soil allows — mostly Larne and Oskerra — then retted in caves or pools and spun. Wool is sheared from hardy sheep and goats kept across the islands.
Larne provides much of the raw flax, grown along its spring-fed terraces, and is known for its mordant knowledge, herbal dyes, and early-stage processing — including retting and drying. Their work is essential to prepare the fibres before they’re spun or dyed.
Vey, mysterious and storm-drenched, contributes rare seaweeds and stormblown lichens that yield inky blues, salt-greens, and weathered greys. They also offer spiritual insight and omen-recording, which in turn leaves its mark on the cloth.
Oskerra mines silver, and spins small amounts into thread to embellish the islands’ linen; embroidery is delicate and spare, often symbolic. The island also keeps sheep on its cliff-grass uplands and produces tools, stone slabs, and woollen cloaks and sails.
Farra, being the most exposed and resource-poor, specialises in finishing: dyeing, softening, embellishment, and spiritual inflection.
Most production ends with a bolt of cloth; linen is only occasionally sewn into a garment for ritual purposes.
Every step happens within the island network, and every household knows at least part of the process.
Trade and Exchange
Trade ships visit only intermittently, stopping at Oskerra, which offers the most stable natural harbour. These include ‘passers’ — travelling traders with goods to offer directly or in exchange — and commission ships sent by the very wealthy to request specific items.
The islanders rarely make cloth to order. When they do, the requesting party must send their own boat. The passers take goods and return later with the agreed exchange — salt, dried fruit, metal tools, hardwood, oil, dyes, and food staples.
Inter-island trade doesn’t exist — the islands function as a single ecosystem, each contributing what they can without barter. But they do send their own traders to the mainland’s coastal markets.
These traders, mostly Farran men — tall, sea-calloused, with wind-darkened hair and deep-lined faces — take dyed and finished cloth in slender boats, single-sailed or hauled by oars. The journeys are long, and the sea is rarely kind.
If the trade doesn’t meet their sense of worth, fairness, or spiritual weight, they leave without a word. They’d rather row home with their full cargo than accept something misaligned. This is known on the mainland by a phrase that carries a quiet sting:
“Sent back by the saltfolk.”
Not insult — but judgment. A reminder that what was offered did not speak true.
They don’t argue. They don’t haggle. They close the bundle, nod once, and go.
And the goods? They’ll wait — dry, folded by the hearth — until someone worthy asks again.
When the boats return, it’s felt in the bones of the household before it’s seen. Children run ahead, shouting, “Smoke from the sea!” Daughters and wives pause on high outcroppings, wool still in their laps, looms quiet, breath tight.
It’s not longing — these are not lost men — but the moment carries weight. What came back? Who came back? What changed?
The bags and boxes they carry hold tools, dried fruit, resin, salt-glass, and gifts tucked under wool — small things with long stories.