Bay of Sleepers
Off the northern edge of Herja, where the relentless sands of the Kartegis Desert surrender to the festering expanse of the Bleeding Mire, there lies a gulf both feared and coveted by those who sail the seas. The Bay of Sleepers is no ordinary inlet; it is a graveyard of lost ships, a place where the dead drift beneath the waves, and where the past whispers to those who dare listen.
A Graveyard Beneath the Waves
The currents of the Scareguards Archipelago draw lost things toward the bay. Wreckage from battles, storm-stricken vessels, and bodies unclaimed by the sea all find their way here. The bay is said to never give up what it takes, its depths holding relics from centuries past, untouched and unseen.
On still nights, some say the water murmurs, not with the sound of waves, but with the voices of those who perished below. The air carries a salty stillness, broken only by the groaning of old timbers shifting on the seabed. Few dare to dive here, for what sinks beneath these waters seldom rises again.
The Surrounding Lands
To the south, the dunes of the Kartegis Desert stretch like an unbroken sea of gold and dust, their endless shifting masking forgotten ruins and the bones of those who dared cross without preparation. The desert is a land of extremes, where the heat of the day can strip a man to nothing but brittle bones, and the night can freeze the soul. It is a place where caravans travel in long, cautious lines, keeping to the safest routes lest they be swallowed whole by the sands. Many have set out for the Bay of Sleepers from these arid lands, lured by promises of riches, only to vanish before ever reaching the shore.
Beyond the dunes, where the land turns dark and wet, the Bleeding Mire festers—a place of decay, where the ground itself seems to resist the living. The air hangs thick with rot, and strange mists coil around the blackened trunks of trees half-sunk in the mud. The mire has long been a natural barrier between the living and the damned, a land where the water runs red and the dead are said to rise when the moon is full. No roads lead through it, and only the desperate or the mad dare cross its stagnant pools and shifting bogs. It is said that the mire and the bay are bound by something older than time, a force that ties the dead to the water and the land alike.
Legends and Superstitions
Sailors whisper of the Sleepers’ Curse, a fate that befalls any ship foolish enough to drop anchor in the bay. Many have been found drifting, their decks eerily silent, their crews vanished as if plucked from the world by unseen hands. The locals speak of the Sunken Fleet, a great navy swallowed whole by the bay, their ships frozen in time beneath the waves, waiting for a call that may never come. And then there is the Tide That Calls, a strange pull in the water that comes at certain times of the year, dragging even the sturdiest of ships toward the heart of the bay, where the sea is said to be bottomless and the voices of the lost call for company.
A Hidden Opportunity
Despite the fearsome lore, the Bay of Sleepers lures scavengers, pirates, and scholars alike. Many believe its depths hold artifacts of great value, relics from sunken vessels, or magical treasures lost to time. Those who return from the bay often do so with gold, knowledge—or a silence they refuse to break.
But for every ship that sails back into the known world, there are others that vanish, leaving behind nothing but whispers on the wind and the endless, undisturbed water of the bay.
"To sail the Bay of Sleepers is to sail the border of the living and the dead. Some return with riches. Others return with nothing. And some... do not return at all."
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