Ten Sword Isles
The Ten Sword Isles are a continent-sized grouping of large islands upon which all terrestrial life resides. Bounded on a cosmological scale by the boughs of the World Tree above, the World Roots below, and the fathomless reaches of the primordial sea beyond, the Ten Sword Isles occupy the centralmost layer of The Metastructure and constitute the whole of the known material world.
Geography
The term 'Ten Swords' derives from the ten major mountain ranges that are the defining features of the region. Though it is technically the largest and most important mountain in the region, Sky Mountain is not typically included as the 'Eleventh Sword' because, aside from actually being the living buttress of the plane-spanning World Tree and not a mountain in the traditional sense of the term, its 'peak' does not exist in the material world. Similarly, though some of the Ten Sword Isles are actually collections of islands, they are grouped together in terminology in part because these isolated landmasses represent the peaks of shared undersea mountain ranges that lie mostly submerged beneath the waters of the world.
Nine of the Ten Sword Isles play host to the major polities of humans, near-humans, and other mortal creatures. The southernmost isle along the Sky Mountain's meridian (see Climate) is is place of remarkable geological and climatic extremes that has, until relatively recently, precluded any major attempts to take it into the holdings of any of the other great powers. The numerous tiny outlying islands, such as at Fox Mat and Kapahon, are also often populated.
In several places, within the Ten Sword Isles, cosmological events have shaped the terrain where geological events otherwise would not have. For example, the Fallen Blossom Archipelago was formed when a titanic flower of the World Tree - actually a tiny pocket of the spiritual realm - fell and crashed into the material realm, driving the edges of the resulting misshapen crater up to create ridges that eroded back down towards sea level with time. This impact site is where the enigmatic yokai-folk of nearby Harehollow, alien as they are in culture as well as physiology, are believed to have originated. Similarly, the North and South Meteor Atolls are so named because they are the impact sites of comets that, some sages speculate, may have had something to do with the seeding of life amongst the Ten Sword Isles.
The Ten Sword Islands are surrounded on all sides by the Infinite Sea, an ocean that extends outwards in all directions into the unknown reaches of the greater cosmos. The world on which the Ten Sword Islands rests is known to be curved, with the northern and southern extents even reaching far enough from the sun's arc to crust over in ice sheets, but those who venture too far from Sky Mountain eventually sail beyond the Infinite Sea itself and are never seen again, making circumnavigation functionally impossible. Rumor holds that the Infinite Sea, rather than connecting to global oceans, actually blends seamlessly into the primoridial sea of possibility beyond - and, perhaps, even to other worlds entirely.
Climate
The Ten Sword Isles lie across several climate bands. In general, temperatures are warmest at the equator (at the same lattitude as Sky Mountain) and become progressively colder as the lattitude increases or decreases. Ice sheets grow in winter in the farthest northern and southern reaches, creating glaciers that sometimes calve to create roaming floes during the thawing seasons. In general, the equator and meridian are both defined in relation to Sky Mountain.
Large-scale wind currents tend to flow from the west to the east. Where the islands' eponymous mountain chains extend long distances from north to south, they squeeze moisture from these currents and create rain shadows; thus desert regions are most extensive in tropical and equatorial regions that lie to the east of these ranges. Fierce sea storms and colossal waves driven up by geophysical activity have shaped the landmasses as much as they have shaped the cultures of those who live upon them.
Maps
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The Ten Sword Isles
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