Halzan

You won’t find Halzan on any map. That is not an accident. It is the kind of place that experienced sailors know about and experienced sailors avoid — a name spoken quietly over too much alcohol, more myth than fact to anyone who hasn’t seen it, and something considerably worse to anyone who has. The exact location is guessed at rather than charted. No one goes there by choice. The few who have gone there by necessity have largely confirmed everything the stories said, and then some.

Before the God Rain, the island was called Kuldirhold, and it had a history worth being proud of. A clan of dwarves from Grimstone discovered it centuries ago — a beautiful, garden-like island that served first as a wayport between long sea voyages, and later as something far more valuable. Miners on the island uncovered a previously unknown gemstone: a stunning red stone with black veins running through it, unlike anything seen anywhere else on Thanria. They called it Kuldirite, and it made them wealthy beyond measure. The reason Kuldirite existed only on Kuldirhold, they eventually discovered, was that the island sat directly above multiple entry portals to the Deep Below. The proximity to those portals was producing the gems. Grimstone sent military forces to guard the island from outside threats and from whatever might come through the portals — which were, fortunately, too small for anything large to pass through. Unfortunately, the soldiers and miners stationed there began going insane at an alarming rate. No one could determine why. Religious authorities investigated and cleared the portals and the gems of blame. The mining continued. So did the problems.

Then the God Rain came. A military division was stationed on the island when the battle in Tannerian began, and no one had any idea what was happening. What followed was catastrophic in a way that went well beyond what the Rain did anywhere else — because one of the divine energy drops landed directly on one of the portals. The interaction between divine energy and a gateway to the Deep Below was, by any measure, extraordinarily bad. Earthquakes. Fissures. Transformations that defied description. Of the entire division stationed on the island, six made it to the only intact ship and managed to sail away. Four of those six died from their injuries before the ship was found. The two survivors never went back. Neither did anyone else.

What Kuldirhold became after that, the island now known as Halzan, is a place that warps the mind and breaks the spirit of those who set foot on it. The creatures there are not natural. The island itself seems to have a will, or at least a disposition — and that disposition is hostile. People who have gone to Halzan have not come back the same. Most have simply not come back. Whether the Rain-Touched nature of the island itself is responsible, or whether the corrupted portal energy is still doing something no one can explain, or whether it is simply the accumulated weight of everything that happened there — no one knows. No one has stayed long enough to find out.

The Kuldirite still exists, presumably. No one has gone looking for it.