The delicate traceries of crystalline trees rise from the glass-covered loam of an ancient forest. They glimmer, refracting sunlight until it dances across the earth around them, shimmering in their vitreous leaves. It is dangerous to walk among the trees with eyes or skin uncovered: many have been blinded by the brightness of the Stone Trees or burned when a leaf’s lens seared their flesh, and the fine-crushed debris of last year’s leaves will shred its way through any foot. On still and sunny days, the land around the Stone Trees smokes and bakes. On windy ones, the rainbows they cast dance.

Meditating in the heart of the Stone Trees’ glade is both a rite of passage and a form of augury for the wise ones of the local people. These practitioners say that the most potent prognostications are revealed beneath the sun’s brightest light, but they caution against the casual pursuit of such knowledge—the Sun-of-the-Trees can take as quickly as it gives, and more than one would-be oracle has fumbled their way out from the Stone Trees blind, bleeding from their dreadful stumbling.

The blood they leave behind soon disappears.

Near the edge of the Stone Trees, the glassine sheets of sloughed crystalline bark lie heavy and still amidst the leaf debris of the surrounding wood. The boundary there, between the old wood and the crystal trees which rise from their midst, is feathery and ill-defined. It wavers back and forth. Those few who’ve tried to track the edges of the stone tree grove within the vast and aged forest all disagree as to where the true edge lies. Sometimes, they even disagree with themselves. The only thing they can regularly agree on is that the boundary seems to move at times, replacing wooden giants of the forest with the refractive stands of the crystal trees. But the border shifts back as well, and a year after disappearing some massive trees thought lost to the stone and glass reappear as they were, fresh with their missing year’s growth. None have seen the border there shift and carried the tale of it back with them, but plenty have disappeared.

Those that disappear have never returned with the massive trees.

The center of the Stone Trees’ glade remains undisturbed, however. While the boundary may waver around the glade’s edges, the center does not shift. The locals say this is because the Sun-of-the-Trees—that refracted kindling glow that haunts the Stone Trees on even cloudy days, rising to blinding brilliance in full sunlight—lives there and holds the grove still in its presence. Those who doubt or discount local stories claim that the phenomenon is astrological and geological in nature, tied to the movement of the stars and the composition of the earth beneath the glade. While some have attempted to dig into the earth beneath the fractal crystal spires, to test their hypotheses, their expeditions have uniformly ended in disaster and failure. Digging through vast taproots harder than iron, facing frequent tunnel collapses as though the earth itself wished to smother interlopers… even the largest projects lose their workers when they hit the first crystals, breaking tools and hopes on the stone trees’ adamant foundations.

Most stories told of those digs ooze with the work’s dangerous drudgery. But some few shed the banal to speak of whispers down in the dark, or to hint at revelations seen in the gleam of a crystalline root. Few who’ve worked one mining expedition will ever sign up for another.

The Stone Trees have proven similarly resistant to attempts to remove them from their glade, though the acquisitive may sometimes depart with bark, leaves, or even a small branch. These artifacts and keepsakes are treasured by collectors of oddities, and have sparked the curiosity of many. But while plenty of the curious have attempted to enter the glade, far more stop at the edges, sit down, and simply listen to the music of the trees as they chime in the wind. It is, they say, the most enchanting sound they’ve ever heard: a portal to a space beyond, and a source of peace in the world.

Out on the edge of Cape Hope, the Breakers’ Strand beckons. It is a dangerous lure, a vast and beautiful stretch of shimmering sands and tufted sea grass, marred by the ruined hulks of dead ships. Though its sands are coveted by Cymearnian glassmakers, it is a desolate place: vessels’ ribs emerge from the Strand’s shoals and sandbars like skeletal fingers, waves frothing happily around the remains of their victims. The Breakers’ Strand claims many lives every year, and sailors sing of its reach. Scared, they compose poetry, odes offered to the Strand in the fervent hope that it will accept their words… rather than clutching and dragging their hulls to their doom.

The Breakers’ Strand runs at least forty miles, but its outer windswept edge reaches even further into the sea. The currents deposit many gifts upon its beaches, and the heavy waves sometimes break through the Strand’s boundary into the brackish bogs and fens of Cape Hope on the Strand’s inland side. Here and there, amongst the Strand’s small occasional inlets, those bogs and fens form estuaries and salt marshes. Locals live in isolated villages, fishing communities sheltered by the Strand, and they sail out from the lees on either side of Cape Hope. None sail the waters along the Strand itself, unless they absolutely must.

Cape Hope straddles the only sea route between the ancient and storied vastness of Cymearn and the burgeoning wealth of the Guild-Cities. All shipping which would travel between them—as indeed most would—must tempt fate and ride the strong winds and powerful currents of Cape Hope to pass the Breakers’ Strand. The only other routes around all put so far out to sea that most journeys run afoul of flukey winds, requiring more stores and fresh water than it’s worth.

Of course, those reliable winds that scour the Breakers’ Strand make it all the more dangerous. Worse, they never seem to clear the frequent fogs which rise from Cape Hope’s marshes. Ships may believe they’ve given the Strand its proper sea room only to be driven onto its shifting sandbars, or pulled into the low fog-shrouded shoreline by the sea’s currents. If such ships are fortunate enough to come ashore in fine weather, they may manage to escape before their ship is bludgeoned to pieces. But few are so lucky: most that run aground on the Strand are broken in rushing seas, beaten apart, their sailors rendered unconscious by vast waves casting them violently, again and again, against the sand of the Strand’s shallows.

Ships’ corpses are not left unattended, of course. Salvage work is common amongst the locals of Cape Hope. Many local homes are built from ships’ timbers-turned-driftwood, and beachcombers wander the Strand after any storm to pick over whatever wrecks they might find. Most finds are small things, useful but picayune, but every so often a salvager may strike it rich: a ship’s pay-chest, or rare luxuries which survived the salty sea. More often, beachcombers are paid by shipping concerns for the slow trickle of their reports or findings—whether that means confirming the loss of a missing ship, or recovering some fraction of the ship’s lost cargo. There are even those merciful (or guilt-ridden) locals who risk their lives to rescue sailors when they may, forging out into the lethal surf to retrieve those blown ashore in terrible storms. The less adventurous or driven are sometimes employed to maintain the lights built by the Guild-Cities on either end of the Strand. Useful though they may be, those lighthouses remain insufficient to their task.

Of course, those lighthouses aren’t the only lights seen at night along the Strand. In fog, or on cloudy or stormy nights, less scrupulous beachcombers turn shipwrecker, carrying lanterns along the dunes to coax passing vessels to their doom. These scavengers would speed along their work, bringing unsuspecting ships into peril at places of their choosing. None of the small fishing villages that pepper the Cape’s coast and rise from its fens boast of these practices, but they are known.

Harder to explain are the lights seen even with no shipwrecker present, emerging from the bogs or riding across the Strand. Local lore warns that one should always flee those lights, whether they are ghost ships or simple lonely spirits. This advice is doubly true for any who’ve pulled a ship ashore to pick apart its carcass. The ire of the dead is not known for fine distinctions or discretion, and enough have died upon the Strand or in its waters to muster centuries of ghosts. For every sailor rescued from being beaten to death by the sea itself, many more are never saved. They instead have added their bones to the beautiful beaches, their last passage unknown.

The last of a string of islands, its land rises from a pebbled shingle beach on the windward side up to a rocky set of cliff faces on the leeward. Three small ruins sit atop the cliff’s heights, each a collection of collapsing fieldstone walls, but the isle’s largest ruin rises in a series of mounds from the isle’s central span. The mounds are crowned by rising stonework which pierces upwards through the earth, a spear of stone for each small hill crest. A few of these rising structures still hold some remnants of roof, but most have been stripped bare down to their narrow stone skeletons. Most notably, however, each mound and each spear of stone runs in a straight line pointing just off windward, aligning perfectly with the smaller islands in the string that runs to windward.

With the exception of large storms’ gusts, the wind always blows from the same direction.

The last people to live on the island might best be described as a dwindling cult, a series of occupants too devoted to their obsession with the ruins and the island chain to care for their own basic needs. The wreckage of their settlement rests near the windward base of the isle’s central valley, weatherbeaten wood and bits of fieldstone foundation. Most houses were constructed from the wooden ships of those who’d sailed to the island, hulls dragged ashore and broken down for shelter from the elements. Perhaps the greatest mystery of the cult was how and why any joined in the first place, with an alarming rate of conversion among those who visited the little colony which died there.

The dead settlement’s small fields have been long neglected, disappearing into the turf while a few volunteer crops persist. The goats brought to the island dot the green slopes, staring at newcomers so bold as to land ashore, watching any who pass nearby through the island’s waters. The goats avoid the central valley. Once cleared for easy passage, it now lies overgrown with long grasses and burgeoning brush.

It is unclear why any who visited this desolate place would have chosen to remain, let alone settle and devote the rest of their lives to tending it. The fact that so many did, that so many set themselves down in a place where the very consistency of the wind might drive one mad, baffles those who’re cursorily familiar with the island’s history. But some few observations made from the sea, or from the pebbled shingle at the islands windward edge, point to a deeper mystery.

The foundations of the old settlement houses, like the ruins atop the leeward cliffs, are fieldstone-built. Such stones are easy enough to find on the island, similar enough to the larger rocks on the pebble shingle as to be easily imagined elsewhere ashore. But the stone spears which rise from the mounds are worked, their stonework well cut and cunningly joined. Moreover, none of those stones come from anywhere nearby. The closest similar known source would require delivery over hundreds of miles, much of that open water.

Finally, each of the stone protrusions is large enough to fit several people inside, and most accounts from those who’ve visited them swear that they are hollow. No one has been down inside them in years, to the best knowledge of the outside world. If any have, they have not shared their discoveries with anyone else… though that is certainly possible, especially given the occasional fresh shipwreck found in the waters near the Isle of Lyn, or beached upon its shore.

The few old accounts of the stone spears’ interiors do not agree with each other, often in such open disagreement as to suggest that the writers were hiding something. This is often argued by those who’ve studied the Isle of Lyn, especially by those who’ve traced how many of the old writers ended their lives on the island as part of that dwindling obsessive cult. Until someone else ventures there, all that remains is quiet speculation about these strange ruins so isolated from the rest of the world.

Blythe’s Keep rests atop a precipice, other stonework peeking through the tall grass beneath the fortified tower, the rugged slope giving way to a half-broken cliff. The cliff descends steeply to the well-traveled road below, giving anyone at its crest a commanding view of the lowland. The road holds traces of ancient highways, massive paving stones laid snugly together, broad leafy trees spaced alongside to shade the path.

Some distance past the cliff, a tributary of those paving stones wend away from the highway, climbing the gentle slopes which rise to the keep’s cliff face. Their old course now lies buried by landslide and overgrowth, and whatever they led to—older than the keep, without a doubt—remains hidden as well. The main highway continues on, undisturbed.

The keep is recent, in the comparative ages of laid stone. Built under the direction of the warrior called Blythe, it rises about five stories from the clifftop and is still broad at its tapered peak. The remains of its sloped roof peek above the weary crenelations of the roof’s edge. From its position at the top of the cliff, any occupant of the keep could interdict traffic along the road as they wished. They could, similarly, prevent anyone from interfering with travelers upon that road.

The stories about Blythe generally agree that he was an affable bandit who rose to prominence by winning over the people living in the lowlands around the cliff and its hills. With their allegiance, he levied tolls on any who passed along the highway that ran below his cliffs, while also running off his more violent or less restrained competitors. The money he gathered with the support of the local folk went into maintaining the road, buying better tools for the locals, and building the beginnings of the watchtower which would become his keep.

It’s also well known that Blythe had an acquaintance, Insuza, with an interest in the old, dead, and arcane. Her particular expertise varies by the retelling, but it’s always considerable. Stories vary on the nature of their relationship: lovers in some tales, comrades in arms in others, sometimes both, sometimes merely professionally connected. Regardless, in every story about his keep, Insuza was consulted early and often during its construction. Something about the keep, something about where it was built—and perhaps what lay beneath it—drew her like a moth to the flame.

At some point, however, she disappeared. The keep was finished, and only Blythe remained. Blythe died a petty lordling, with his own fortified tower that he rarely left, but without any heirs to his name. All agree that he was lonely, that he slept poorly, and that it was best not to mention Insuza in his presence.

Antiquarians argue about what could possibly have driven the involvement of Insuza, and collectors of old tales disagree about what happened to her. Some point to the ancient stones which stick out like jutting teeth from beneath the tower’s feet, and say that Blythe found ruins when he laid the foundations of his keep. According to them, Insuza’s expertise was requested to know where it might be safe to build. When her knowledge was no longer needed, they say, she departed.

Others agree that ruins were found, but say that Blythe and Insuza ventured down into them only to find something horrid. Here the tales diverge once more; one branch believes Insuza emerged from the ruins, while the other claims she was lost below. Regardless, all agree that Blythe blocked off access to the ruins and set himself to guard them with his keep, perhaps patiently waiting for Insuza’s return from her research elsewhere… or dreading the moment when she’d come knocking from below, in some more horrible form.

High in the windswept hills, where rain and fog shroud the grassy slopes and leave dew on brambles and gorse, a vast pile of boulders rises from between the slopes. As tall as the hills around it, taller even, the pile is known as the Cairn of Morag, and it is large enough to bury a giant. Should an intrepid explorer choose to risk themselves, it would be possible to squeeze in through the gaps between the stones, where wet trickles down and the darkness echoes with the quiet rattles of shifting pebbles and small skittering feet.

Mosses and lichens sheathe the outer stones, a green-and-gray coat that hides the cairn from distant eyes amongst the surrounding hills. The cairn is home to birds, snakes, rabbits and other small creatures, but travelers in the area speak of something far stranger: near dawn and dusk, stories say, a red fox prowls the stones with eyes that glow like the sun. Rumor has it that those who’ve seen the lights on the cairn come down with fevers, beset by visions, haunted by the dead. This illness is, perhaps, a judgement; those who’ve killed find themselves hunted in their dreams by the beings whose blood they’ve shed. Those who’ve lost loved ones speak of reconnecting, with all the touching love and horror such a meeting may bring.

The people who live below Morag’s Hills, farmers and shepherds, masons and miners, leave out small offerings to the fox and avoid looking towards the cairn. Some of their stories say Morag was a giantess, a shapeshifting witch who blessed the land around her hills and taught the first smallfolk there to farm. Those stories say that she was struck down by a jealous god, or perhaps a demon, but was too strong to be truly slain. Stuck in the realm between life and death, her old body buried by the smallfolk she had cared for, she took on the form of a red fox with sunlit eyes to watch over her hills until the moon fell from the sky.

Other tales claim that Morag was once human, a sorceress who ruled the nearby land from her hill-keep and drew down the light of the moon to feed her growing hungers. In these stories, Morag feasted on the flesh of her subjects, simmering them in her twelve cauldrons until the meat fell from the bone, reducing the blood-broth to jelly. When the stars could finally watch no more of her profane rites, they sent down servants and maledictions, burying the hungry Morag—and all her treasures—beneath her own tower. These stories say that the red fox, Hale, is the last surviving servant of the stars, and that he continues his watch over Morag’s cairn to be sure she never rises again.

Whatever truly happened, whether those stones cover a giantess, a sorceress, or some legacy more banal, few these days approach the cairn. Only those greedy or desperate enough to seek the truth, or willing to risk their lives to see the dead, travel high into those hills near dawn or dusk.