The Lost Isle

Sailors who travel the waters south of the Oroma Archipelago and west of the Great Peninsula of Cemak I talk of a strange phenomenon. The ocean currents in the area make those waters very rich in sea life, and that brings many fishing expeditions each year. This has made the local sailors very familiar with that region of the ocean. And yet, at certain points of the year, once can see outlines of an island behind a screen of fog. Mariners know this island, and stay far away from it every time it is sighted, which has given it a mystical reputation despite stories of the island being well known in all the western seas.

Cartographers have called the island the “**Lost Island**”, or the “**Island of Mirages**”, due to its cryptic nature. During most of the year, the island is seemingly gone, with sailors swearing they could navigate freely through the area the island is supposedly located. However, every couple of years, the island appears, looking like a regular piece of land. And after another seemingly arbitrary period of time, it will disappear, leaving no trace of its existence. Experts have discarded the possibility of it sinking under the sea, since the region’s vegetation and fauna seems unaltered, and many suggest possible mystical causes behind this mystery. Because of this, local sailors consider the island cursed, and will stay far away from the region. Those interested will have to go under their own means, or bribe sailors to go closer than usual. Still, no bribe is high enough to make them actually set foot on the island.

There have been many attempts to study the island, but due to the apparently random frequency of the spawning and the amount of time it stays in the area, they have not been particularly successful or thorough. The few expeditions that have explored and come back usually come back after a couple of days at most, since being there longer than that risks disappearing alongside the island. The reports show a seemingly ordinary place without any signs of sentient occupation, but with a fauna and flora unlike anything seen outside the isle. There have been attempts of taking specimens to the mainland, but these never survive the travel, and thus the experts need either to study the dissected individuals or to go themselves.

## The Merdinen Incident

The strangeness of the island does not end with its random disappearances. The island has also been recorded to experience time dilations, with the passage of time on the island being considerably different than in the rest of the world. This phenomenon was first studied by Dsrvysthian cartographer **Ans Merdinen**. Working as an explorer and a mapmaker for the growing Azan Empire during the 13th Century BBE, he was tasked to explore the lands of the Great Peninsula of Cemak I, at the time in the middle of their conquest by Azan. After studying the western coast of the peninsula, he set sail for the island that he had heard local sailors talk about. The fact that there was no known population there made Merdinen puzzled, and he ignored the locals’ fears for the island, discarding them as simple superstitions. He hired an expedition composed of local sailors to travel to the island, but he couldn’t convince them to accompany him to the island. As such, his ship stayed at a respectable distance, while Merdinen went alone to the island on a boat. While he was only supposed to stay for a day, a storm forced the crew to move away from the area back to the mainland, leaving Merdinen stranded. When the storm passed and they went for him, the island had disappeared.

With the island gone and no form of finding him, the azanese authorities ordered that a search party had to be launched the next time the island was sighted. Around a year later, the island appeared once again, and a ship sailed to the island. When they arrived, instead of the young explorer, they found a wizened old man dressed in rags. After they managed to contact him, they figure out that within the island had passed many decades, leaving Merdinen to survive to his own. He had been thoroughly affected by spending more than half of his life in complete isolation, practically forgetting how to speak, but having retained a great deal of his sanity to the surprise of all involved. He refused to go with the rescue party, demanding them to leave the island and don’t come back. While the leaders of the expedition went back to their ship to assess the situation, the island disappeared once again, leaving Merdinen once again alone in the island.

The next time the island appeared was ten years after the original rescue mission, and another search party was sent. However, they did not find any remnants of Merdinen ever being there, or any other human for that matter. Not even the cottage Merdinen had apparently built during his decades of isolation remained, and as such, everyone agreed that Merdinen must have passed away. Many expeditions to the island were carried out during the following centuries, with all of them lasting no more than a day to avoid the fate of Merdinen. For the most part, however, the island was left alone out of fear of its mystical nature. However, in 2.221 ABE, an expedition organized by the Ancient Order of Most Practical Wizards found an old man waiting on the shores of the island. When the wizards went to see this figure, they discovered to their shock and horror that it was none other than Ans Merdinen himself. When they asked him how he had managed to survive for this long, Merdinen was puzzled by the question, since from his perspective, only two days had passed.

This time, Merdinen was taken to the azanese court, causing quite a commotion within the magical and astromantic society at the time. During his stay at the azanese court, he penned his memoirs and his studies of the island, the biggest compendium about the Lost Island ever to be penned by quite a margain, though a lot of things are of murky validity due to the extreme isolation and the loss of his mental faculties due to seclusion and age. He died in 2.224 ABE, his body being buried in his natal town in the Dsrvysthian principalty of Susar. He is still considered the longest lived human to ever exist without help of necromancy, having been born at some point of the end of the 14th century and having died in 2.224 ABE.