The Babel Triangle

## **A Swarthy Sailor’s Warning**

*“Eh!? Ye wanna sail the accursed triangle? Yer a blasted fool! No amounta coin’s worth traversing those black waters, boy! ’Less ye wish to feel yer tender years meltin’ off ‘til yer nothin’ but an old dog, or watch yer crew wither away to naught but dust while ye stand untouched! Mark me, ye’d be better to cast yerself to the depths now than to but give thought to that place! Now off with ye! I’ll hear no more of it!”*

– A Captain Bart to a young adventurer

## **The Legends**

Much mystery and lore surrounds the area of the ocean known as The Babel Triangle, a place formely home to the Tower of Time. Scores of vessels large and small have gone missing over the years within the stretch of water, even before the tower’s appearance. Those who survive return with haunted expressions and tales more haunting still.

The stories remain as varied and vast as Etera itself, yet a few common themes pervade: temporal anomalies, strange and extreme weather, and horrid beasts from such abyssal depths as to beggar description and defy logic. Sailors of air and seafaring vessel alike tell of days impossibly long, the sun beating down upon them for what felt like months; the sun and moon flitting through the sky at dizzying speed; some returned after months or years trapped in the triangle to find only a few days or weeks had passed on the outside, while others still found the very opposite: years had passed on the outside, their friends now old and decrepit while youth still clung to them.

Famously, Karl Jereth, a simple fisherman from a small coastal village near the triangle, left one day to fish. He claimed a strange twilight took over the sea after a time, the sun and moon absent in the sky. Fearing he’d drifted into the accursed Triangle, he made haste to leave it, yet it was too late. He returned after only a few hours at sea, yet the young man who left came back to find he’d aged fifty years. So the story goes, if it is to believed, or discounted as the addled ravings of an old fisherman, is up to individual discretion.

Some tell stranger tales still, of creatures serpentine or cephalopodian, all silver tendrils and coils roiling in the depths, surfacing to drag down ship and air ship alike. While some tell of size so prodigious as to swallow a vessel whole, others tell of an octopus the size of a man sneaking aboard and changing shape to a more humanoid form to curse and bewitch men, and rarely, by some accounts, offer them a boon for a portion of their life.

It’s unclear from the stories whether this creature is one or many, but sailors simply call it Silver Strand, a reference to the thin glowing sinuous strings sometimes left floating in the air and water behind it.

## **The Facts**

While the stories of frightened sailors offer only the bare minimum of usable information to piece together the truth, their tales offer some parallels along with information passed down from locals in about the area and vanishingly rare scholarly accounts of the area.

The area itself stretches roughly 2000 square miles of open ocean, from the coast near Shilo’s Village out around 80 miles to a small archipelago, to Lalotai, and back again, forming the eponymous triangle.

Records of the triangle date back hundreds of years, though the recent events at the Tower of Time have served to truly thrust the triangle into the spotlight and strengthen its effects. Various names abound for it: Devil’s Triangle, the Silver Sea, Toai’ia Lo, and The Sea of the Lost are some of the most notable besides its currently popular name: The Babel Triangle, given it by explorers from Babel.

The entire area of the triangle rarely remains treacherous at the same time, despite the harrowing tales, and brave sailors pass through unmolested daily.

One such man, a certain Edward C. Deowerth, sailed a small airship (little more than a hot air balloon) over the triangle, gathering useful weather readings. His reports confirmed that the weather remains unseasonable year round, warmer in the winter yet cooler in the summer than surrounding waters, with rapid changes to the weather common and a special propensity towards windless calms and raging storms. Bioluminescence in the water is also common, though unknown why, along with a marked lack of fish or fowl in the area, perhaps due to the presence of the Silver Strand. Young Edward’s only run-in with the creature was brief, his description as follows:

*“An ethereal shimmer took over the air as a gentle timelessness suffused me. Gossamer strands as moonlight swayed gently through the air and a creature of such delicate beauty passed by, as if lighter than the air itself. Its single eye, bluer than the sky, appraised me from amidst its eldritch form, all stringy tendrils and odd angles. Then it was gone, and I scarcely believed I saw it all…”*

Whether the strange magic of the area result from the Silver Strand or from the triangle itself still remains a mystery, as do its origins and purpose, if any.