Strait of Gehenna

While the swift flow of tidal waters through the Strait of Gehenna did allow it to carve a gap in the mountain range that includes the Hellsgate Peaks and Infernis Isle, even the inexorable patience of water has been unable to defend the strait from the constant effects of the region’s volcanic activity.
At least once per month, and sometimes even several times in the same week, lava, hot ash, and boiling mud are known to pour into the strait from volcanic activity of the Hellsgate Peaks and Infernis Isle, oftentimes lasting for days at a time. But the current between the mainland and the island is so fierce that even this continuous influx of sediment and volcanic rock cannot clog up or dam the Strait of Gehenna. Instead, volcanic detritus is spread over the seafloor all the way to the northernmost and even the easternmost coasts of the Crescent Sea.
Between the powerful current and the constant heat, the Strait of Gehenna is entirely impassible by nonmagical crafts, and nothing nonmagical is known to live here. In the protected heat of eddying harbors, however, many heat-loving magical creatures can be found, including one sauna-like seaside village of fire giants in the largest of these harbors.
In addition, rumors persist of strange, alien species making homes cut into the smooth, volcanic stone that lines the central strait’s narrow walls and deep floor. These rumors have been difficult to verify due to the strait’s unusual weather patterns. The constant influx of superheated materials into the water fills the strait with an ever-present cloud of steam. This uncomfortably warm fog does at times drift southward or northward with the wind, or wear thin at the edges along the coastline, but it has been seen to fully dissipate only during the most violent of storms. For this reason, visibility into and within the Strait of Gehenna is all but nonexistent. If something alien does make its home in these fast-flowing waters, no one has ever seen it and lived to tell the tale.
Strange creatures, however, are not required to make the Strait of Gehenna impassible. The fierce current is difficult to steer against and likely to smash boats against the strait’s rock walls, and after every lava flow new jagged teeth of broken volcanic rock are left behind to claw the undersides of craft that attempt the voyage. Such spears of rock are always worn away to smoothness in time, but since new hazards appear with every eruption, the only constant is the absolute unknowability of where it is and isn’t safe to steer one’s boat. Even the fire giants who live on the strait’s shores do not put craft into the central current and instead trek by land to and from their village through the Hellsgate Peaks for any needed trade.

Type

Strait