The Cometlands

I had heard of the Cometlands from my crew, many of whom had sailed the skies for many years before I'd taken over The Gull's Cry, but after today I can say that I've seen it with my own eye. And while I hardly think of myself as a poet, I will try to do it justice:
We broke through the cloud layer to see an island suspended, floating on the white fluff like regular islands float on the sea. It was one big peak in the middle, with what must have been a house on the slopes of the mountain. The entire place was blanketed in a rainbow of flowers and the greenest grass I had ever seen in my life. Little clouds, which I later learned were sheep, grazed lazily on the slopes of this mountain, ignoring the mile-long drop to the ocean below. A group of geese suddenly flew into the air, and I saw them spread out across the islands that covered the entire region...It's much more wondrous than my words could ever express.

— A Telmari captain's log

A Levitating Archipelago

A material known as Luftan is the reason that the Cometlands can bob gently on the clouds - this green magical rock drags rock and water upwards and forces it to stay in a certain place. No one is quite sure why the islands don't simply float off into the darkness of space, but that hardly matters in the face of the sheer beauty of the island chain.

Unusual Flora and Fauna

The islands kept much of the vegetation that covered them before the Luftan caused them to float. Most theorize that the clouds keep the soil watered so that the grass and vibrant flowers continue to grow. Trees are very rare on these islands, the cold clime preventing most deciduous plants from spreading.
In terms of fauna, its separation from the mainland and the rest of the Curaith Sea means that the majority of natural fauna here is birds and other flying creatures. The animals introduced by the hermits that inhabit the isles make up the rest, feeding on the plant growth of the islands in a very carefully-managed relationship with the land.

Type

Island, Floating

Location under

The Curaith Sea

Owning Organization

Stellar Hermits

Stellar Hermits

The Cometlands are home to a very strange nation; many of the floating islands are inhabited by one or two singular monks under the banner of the Stellar Hermits. They are mostly Smoothkin from mountainous regions who claim to have arrived on the islands through rituals to worship the stars who create the islands. Thankfully for their continued health, many of them also brought crops and animals with them and formed small farms on the islands. While they are rather solitary sorts, their heads figuratively and literally in the clouds, they have been known to nurse crashed airship crews back to health.

Telmaria

The Telmari homeland is also a floating island, but there is a very different feel to it. First, the island is much larger than the largest of the Cometlands. Second, there is a clear artificial nature to the island's levitation, as the Luftan used to make the island is rumoured to have been pillaged from uninhabited Cometlands. This means that the Stellar Hermits tend to not enjoy seeing the Telmari and are wary of their motives if they are visited expressly.