The Coral Circlet

Impressions: The brilliant blue waters of the lagoon. A shock of bright coral poking above the waves. Ships drifting lazily through calm and gentle waters. Shining violet beaches. Verdant canyons and deep forest valleys. A scimitar-like sweep of cliffs. Crabs pacing grouchily up and down the beach. The feeling you might meet anyone in a place like this.

A ring of five little islands that encircle the warm, pleasant waters of the Mirror Lagoon. Their names: Sentinel Rim, Landfall, Crystal Sands, Crab Island, and The Shroud. Turning their high craggy backs to the open ocean, the islands of the Circlet hide their gentle beaches from the wideness of the world.

This atoll is the heart of an ancient tradition of setting out to sea, a place where ships are made and where they change hands. It’s also home to a tradition of embellished storytelling and gleeful rumour-mongering that is as old as the ocean itself. A perfect haunt for adventurers, in short.

1d6	Anchor
1	Crabs. The Circlet is home to hundreds of species of crabs, from those no bigger than a flea to those that tower over a strider. When the first rainfall of wet season arrives, millions of crabs in every conceivable shape and size surge over Crab Island. This great migration is accompanied by the Festival of the Claw.
2	Setting Sail. The Sky Dancer is the patron deity of the Circlet. It’s considered good luck to assist fledgling seafarers in her name, and bad luck to interfere with a ship. The Circlet’s oldest shipyard, the House of Knots, has been known to offer discounts to would-be adventurers.
3	Tower Wizards. The Shroud is the smallest of the 5 islands, so named because it’s always shrouded in fog. Making up stories about what the wizards of the Shroud are getting up to in their high towers is a favourite pastime of the Circlet. This is encouraged by the inhabitants of said towers; a little mystique is good for business.
4	Orchid Bay. The Circlet’s largest and busiest port. Named for a delicate flower that blooms only on the island of Crystal Sands, which flourishes in the noxious volcanic fog that drifts down from the Red Maw. The fog is unpleasant, but it does little to damp the bustling crowds and noisy markets of the city.
5	Crab Mystics. An order of hermits and seers that mediates the relationship between the people of the Circlet and the beings that inhabit its wild places. They mostly dwell in the Landfall Jungle, which they jealously guard from shipwrights’ axes, and on the beaches of Crab Island, where they preside over the Festival of the Claw.
6	The Landfall Jungle. An ancient forest that sprawls over the mountainous reaches of the island of Landfall, deep and trackless. It’s home to many species that are found nowhere else in the world, but is always under threat by Orchid Bay’s insatiable hunger for lumber. It also holds the entrance to the Circlet’s strider enclave.