Setting Information for the solo game with Furious
Imagine for a moment a world, or portion of a world, without continents. Merely hundreds of thousands of islands ranging in size from masses of rock a thousand miles across to small flyspeck islands not larg enough to house a single tree. It has been that way for eons, and it will continue to be an archepelago of immense proportions for years to come. Civilization and the sentient races all developed on smaller islands, for a single simple reason. The bigger an island the larger and nastier the monsters that live on the islands. No one knows exactly why this is, but most of the massive islands are unoccupied due to the ismple fact that all attempts at colonization have been utterly lost, sometimes with no apparent cause. The development of sentient races was not too long ago, maybe a thousand years, maybe two. And their spread has been a long and laborious process. Still today there are hundreds of occupied islands, most of which are self governing.
Now I am sure your asking, why exactly has there never been a centralized government. The answer is simple, none of them can survive. When every major city is a port, and hundreds of trading ships ply the routes between islands, pirates is a common thing indeed. And no government can control those seafaring lanes cheaply. Every single one that tries has fallen apart, and those that don't cannot offer their people anything to justify their existence. So governments tend to be limited to one island, or a group of closely clustered islands. Perhaps some day this will change, but not so far.
And pirates are not the only dangers of the seas. Under the waves are colonies of nasty creatures. Vampire rays, sauhagin, merfolk, aquatic trolls, and an untold number of other races and beings. Trade is a dangerous past time, but one that is as neccessary as fishing for food or reroofing after the summer storms.
Northumbria is a fairly central city in a region known as the Dappled Islands. They are known as this due to the stunningly beautiful cliffs that make up large parts of the islands shore, cliffs that are splotched with multi colored sandstone. Only a few places on the islands could act as harbors, but every inhabited islands had one. A few had been cut out of the rock with a combination of intense physical labor and magic.
