Zorish Isles

The **Zorish Isles** are a collection of five islands which resemble the fingers of an enormous hand.

## Geography

The Zorian Isles are located close to Anglecynn, off the Bretaigne Continent, in the Bryllyg Sea.

Sulid Isle, home only to an autonomous Entad prison, is adjacent to the Zorish Isles and considered under their dominion; although it isn't one of the five main islands.

### The Fingers

The massive stone fingers which make up the Zorish Isles are inviolable (although, like most inviolable things on Aerb, they are not immune to Void.) Cities are built into the whorls of the fingerprints, while the fingertips have some arable land which is used for farming.

## History

### Earth

Juniper invented the Zorish Isles in the bathtub, poking his hand out of the water. He considered a number of different possible explanations for them, retroactively justifying that image, but found all of them tended to take away from the mystery and grandeur.

### Prehistory

The giant inviolable hand which became the Zorish Isles was created by the ancient Anlasians, who were subsequently wiped out by a fast-acting memetic plague.

### Pre-Uther

The Isles were historically a part of Anglecynn, but declared independence after the Dark King rose to power. Their treaties with him helped to stabilise the region.

### First Empire

Following the death of the Dark King, their political stability was weakened. They presented a barrier to seagoing trade for King Uther's Anglecynn. Queen Zona Delzora of the Zorish Isles married Uther, becoming queen of the nascent First Empire.

### Second Empire

During the fall of the Second Empire, some political prisoners were condemned to the prison on Sulid Isle, such as Fallatehr Whiteshell.

### Third Empire

Over a century before Worth the Candle begins, the increasingly unstable prison on Sulid Isle was abandoned, any surviving prisoners left to rot there.

The Aerbian Juniper Smith based a session on an old misogynistic Zorish legend, which was equivalent to the Earth Juniper's invention of Unicorns.

After the Council of Arches visited Sulid Isle and freed Fallatehr Whiteshell, an expedition from the Zorish government visited and investigated the incident, including interviewing the prison.

## References

1. ↑ I looked at the grass around us, and could just barely see the areas where foundations had once stood. This place had been lived in, once, though it had little in the way of natural resources, and aside from the prison, there wasn’t much point to anyone living on it. With the prison abandoned and entirely autonomous, my guess was that there was a feedback loop of people leaving, which caused a collapse in services, which caused more people to leave, until everyone had gone back to either Anglecynn or the Zorish Isles. - Chapter 57: Place Your Figs
2. ↑ I checked out Anglecynn as well, and saw it mapped in grey, both the country proper and most of the surrounding continent, including the Zorish Isles. - Chapter 69: In Mutual Congress
3. ↑ “Pretty sure,” I replied. “It was originally spread by rat scratch. And the region was, ah, the Risen Lands exclusion zone.” [...] Start with *Diagnostic Manual of Fatal Diseases of the Bretaigne Continent and Zorish Isles.* Come find me if you’re having trouble.” - Chapter 38: Don't Split the Party
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 The five main Zorish Isles stuck up from the Bryllyg Sea. To say that they weren’t natural would be a severe understatement; each was the tip of an enormous finger sticking up from the perpetually cold, dark water. When I’d drawn them up, they had been inviolable, stone so hard that not even diamond could scratch it, ancient things that suggested an entity of supreme power, dead and buried beneath the waves. I’d come up with them when I was sitting in a bathtub, sticking my fingertips up from the water just enough to have them be exposed to the air. But very few things I’d created survived contact with Aerb, and the Zorish Isles had been at least partially excavated using voidtools before the imperial ban. None of that was visible from a distance; instead, it was greenery, most of it cultivated, and cities built into the side of the isles, largely confined to the whorls of the fingerprints to maximize arable land on top.

Sulid Isle wasn’t technically part of the Zorish Isles, it was just close enough to them that they had control over it. On first hearing about it, I thought that it was inspired by Alcatraz, but it was far bigger than that, with less development, and probably took more inspiration from one of the islands of exile. It was mostly barren, but there were spots of green, and at the center of it all, an enormous compound with high walls and a singular building that looked, to me, like a mansion. No one ever came to this place, according to Amaryllis, and the vast majority of the prisoners would probably be dead from old age, because the sentient, magical penitentiary hadn’t been used for that purpose in at least a hundred years, if not more. - Chapter 57: Place Your Figs
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 One of them was Fallatehr, a soul mage, who was imprisoned with a few others on the smallest of the Zorish Isles -- technically not part of them, but under their dominion. [...] ***Quest Accepted: Crimes Against the Soul - Journey to the autonomous prison on Sulid Isle and retrieve the criminal Fallatehr Whiteshell from his confinement there.*** - Chapter 56: Vacation Vocations
6. ↑ The Li’o Temple was inviolable, which was a special term that described a whole host of items and structures on Aerb that couldn’t be destroyed, with a big, fat asterisk for void tools and void weapons. The underwater hand whose fingertips made the Zorish Isles was inviolable, and it was a property of a fair few entads too. Inviolability was both a curse and a boon, because it meant that there was little risk of damage, but also little possibility of modification or change. - Chapter 153: The Temple
7. ↑ “The Zorish Isles,” I said, continuing on. “They were one of those things that would have needed a lot of backfilling. I was sitting in my bathtub and imagining the tips of my fingers as islands jutting up from the water, and when I had it in my mind’s eye, my fingers blown up to ludicrous scale, and the people and life on the islands ignorant of the reality, it seemed so perfect and right. I tried to write up backstory for them, but everything I wrote seemed to diminish them, save for those explanations that raised more questions than they answered.” - Chapter 139: Piece of Mind
8. ↑ “And the other ancients?” asked Amaryllis. “I suppose you must have had access to their books.”

“Pithescenes were turned into obdurite by a still-unknown entity or phenomenon,” said Raven. “Anlasians were hit with a memetic disease that wiped them out within a fortnight, Reshnik vanished without a trace for unknown reasons, and the Frumions, as near as we can tell, simply suffered from supply chain failures and became a feral version of themselves.” Raven shrugged. “The names are probably unfamiliar to you.”

“Uh,” I said. “I know three of them. Reshnik made White Spires, and probably drowned, if they were like in my campaign, Anlasians made the hand whose fingertips are the Zorish Isles, and the Frumions were responsible for the Underhalls. Incidentally, are you sure it was supply chain failures and not the Jubjub bird?” - Chapter 146: Terrors of the Black Age
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 “Zona Delzora was the Queen of the Zorish Isles,” said Amaryllis. “They had been part of Anglecynn for hundreds of years, but declared independence when the Dark King swept in, and made a series of treaties with him as he tried to quell the rebellions. The Zorish Isles presented barriers to trade for Anglecynn -- this was before bulk teleportation -- but they had also been destabilized by the Dark King’s passing. Joining two countries in personal union is never a simple thing, but it was the most elegant solution to their problems for a number of reasons.” - Chapter 55: Bond Girl
10. ↑ “Unicorns,” I said. “It was — Earth doesn’t have unicorns, except in fiction, so I’d put my own version of them into a game, which are, more or less, exactly how they are on Aerb. Why, what was it for you?”

“Penqans,” she said. “They’re a legendary and supposedly apocryphal creature. You made up your own version to put into the game.”

I frowned. “I’m not familiar, either with the old version or the new one.”

She shrugged. “It’s really not important.” She must have seen disappointment on my face, because she continued on. “Penqans are a legend from the Zorish Isles,” she said. “They’re a kind of forest sprite. As the legend goes, a girl who gets lost in the woods will be guided by the penqans, not to her home, but to a good match for a marriage bond. If they come across an adulteress though, they’ll bewitch her and lead her through the forest until she dies of thirst or starvation.”

“Huh,” I said. “I can see how you wouldn’t like that.”

“Can you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“And I suppose my version of them would have been more about leading people to destinies that they didn’t want,” I said. “Something about sacrifice for the greater good? Or rewarding people for falling into social roles?”

Tiff nodded. “It was a fun fight, as those things went. The less we acted like stereotypes, the better we did. As I recall, it took us a few hints to actually get it.” She smiled a little, a soft, sad smile. “I do miss it.” - Chapter 223: A Lost Friend
11. ↑ Phlox continued, “The second piece of evidence I’d like to enter into the record is a report from an expedition to Sulid Isle, one sent out by the Zorish, who now control the land and the penitentiary. It’s brief, but the primary takeaway is that the expedition found evidence of a battle between the surviving prisoners and the prison itself, with the prison reporting that no one was left alive. Conversation with the entad prison is apparently troublesome, but it reported that Fallatehr Whiteshell was seen leaving the penitentiary, accompanied by,” and here, for dramatic effect, Phlox flipped through a few pages to read from the physical document. “‘Amaryllis Penndraig, a dwarf, another human, a half-elf, and most curiously, a bound non-anima’.” Phlox looked up at me. - Chapter 188: Common Law