Island Of Freaks

The Island of Freaks is a secret location in Alternate Earth with an area of roughly 20,000 km², and the home to the vast majority of Freaks. It is protected a Magical Barrier that keeps all freaks trapped inside, including Katie, who is responsible for its creation.

## Features

The island is a tropical island with large sandy beaches and some rocky beaches on the perimeter. The island is physically diverse, but tends to feature more plant life that is acclimatized to colder temperatures due to the cold nature of the island.

### Weather

On the surface, the air temperature on the island tends to be cold, ranging from -10 to 21 degrees Celsius throughout the year with few outliers. In The Underground, however, temperatures are more consistently warmer, ranging from 18 to 32 degrees.

The sky is always tinted with a peculiar, magical blue mist due to the partial visibility of the Magical Barrier.

### Natural Ecosystems

The Island Of Freaks has primarily the following types of natural systems:

* **Boreal forest**
	+ The plant life mainly consists of mainly pines, spruces and larches. The soil is not very rich and is not as good for planting potted plants as moister soil in warmer areas. The area has some patches of podzol, which is especially poor for cultivation because of its sandy, nutrient-less upper layer. The ground is often dry and is good for running, unlike other forests where the ground can be slippery with moss or full of things to trip on. During most of the year, the area has a vibrant green appearance, but during the coldest parts of winters, the trees can get covered by snow, turning the whole place into what looks like a tundra with a white mist, but with highly adapted trees.
	+ Due to the lively feel of these forest, there are some vacation homes built in these areas where some enjoy visiting when going on a retreat to relax and meditate. Sometimes, these large Residential Retreat houses are used by clubs, such as the Freak Protectorate, Survivalist Enthusiasts and the Cuddle club.
	+ The wildlife tends to be rather normal and harmless, except for the presence of a few abnormal animals whose presence raises many questions and concerns.
	+ Forest fires are a natural part of the life cycle of boreal forests, with several species of the trees dropping cones that only spread their spores directly after a forest fire. However, due to the limited, closed nature of the island and low trade, forest fires are a big problem because wood is a precious resource. This is the reason that several lightning rods can be found scattered around the denser forests.
	+ These forests tend to be very flat.
* **Deciduous forest**
	+ Large stretches of lands with trees and grass, hills and mountains. These forests tend to have some flat areas and several slopes and hills.
	+ The trees tend to be thin and their leaves do not occupy much space, leaving a lot of natural light able to shine on the ground.
	+ Soil from these areas are a lot more fertile, and more beautiful trees and flowers grow here.
	+ Every "fall", the trees lose their leaves.
	+ There are several paths here built through these forests.
* **Tundra**
	+ Despite the small size of the island, there are some areas which are anomalously cold all year round (-10 to 12), and because of this, not much can be found here other than large stretches of snow, frozen water, and some extremely resilient vegetation - mostly mosses, liverworts, low shrubs, lichens and a few beautiful flowers.
	+ There is often a degree of permafrost, where it is impossible for vegetation to grow.
	+ These areas are hard to survive in without some form of heating and a proper sense of direction. This makes it one of the favourites for the Survival Enthusiasts freak club.
* **Steppes**
	+ Large stretches of flat land with some steep rocky structures and no trees. These are the favourite locations for roads because they are so easily to build a road in. In addition, several Freaks who enjoy travelling as a hobby can often be found roaming in steppes with their vehicles, with Binary and Sir White being examples of this.
	+ Mostly tends to be temperate steppes. There tends to be large amount of black soil in these areas, which is soil with large amounts of humus (chernozem typed soil).
	+ The higher one goes up the steep rocky structures, the more extreme temperatures tends to become, ranging from -20 degrees in the winter to 35 degrees in the summer.
* **Volcano**
	+ There is only one natural volcano on the island - with emphasis on "natural".
	+ The natural, hot volcano is very wide and can easily be mistaken for a hill. However, it is a shield volcano. It has never erupted to this date, but if it were to erupt, the lava would be slow-moving and the eruption would be effusive - most of the danger would come from the fumes. The Freak Protectorate is particularly interested in "taming the volcano", and are coming up with potential countermeasures to contain lava and find out methods to deal with potential fumes that can cause a volcanic winter.
	+ The temperature tends to range between 20 to 35 degrees Celsius in temperature, even several kilometers away from the volcano itself.
	+ The area tends to be rocky with dark gray basalt and other types of igneous rocks.
	+ Even though the volcano is considered to be dormant, there are still no civilizations or villages within the volcano's known effective radius due to fear.

### Unnatural Ecosystems

There are few unnatural ecosystems that can be found on the Island of Freaks that are due to unnatural circumstances or plain anomalies.

This section currently requires further research.