Mosor Tropical Archipelago

Place

Place Name:

Mosor Tropical Archipelago

Biome:

Tropical Archipelago

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Halbrust, the greatest city built in Mosor, covers the entire island it stands upon. Most of it’s been destroyed and rebuilt many times, during the course of its long war with itself and with pirates. Every stretch of coast that even a small boat could safely beach on or even approach has been thoroughly fortified and is always being watched — assuming the guards aren’t drunk and asleep, which they are, half the time. Still, the illusion of vigilance tends to keep pirates at bay. The pirates it doesn’t keep at bay mean to attack and break down the walls and would do so even if there were twice the number of men guarding them.

The building that takes up the majority of the island of Halbrust is what used to be the government building. It’s now the palace of the leader of the Ight’turu clan, and the vault of the clan’s most precious treasures. Naturally, it’s also the primary target of every pirate in Mosor; it has been broken into and ‘redistributed’ no less than seven times. The leader of the Ight’turu has a tendency to demand in a fit of rage that the vault be redesigned every time this happens. It hasn’t yet prevented pirates from breaking into it.

The eighth and current design of the vault of Halbrust is sturdy and simple, since the over-elaborate traps of the seventh design necessitated hiring more men to work on the vault and thus necessitated spreading the information on how the vault worked to more ears than prudent. This eighth design consists of three great gates built deep underground. There are guards in front of the first set of doors, but they are not allowed beyond the first set, nor are they allowed to witness the opening of the second pair of doors, still less the third.

The secret is that the second pair of doors is never opened: there’s a secret door in the room between the first and second pairs of doors, and this door leads to the vault. The other secret is that the third pair of doors, when opened, trigger a simple collapsing floor trap. There are other cities in the Mosor Archipelago, but there are also many pirate forts. The greatest of these forts is Bitterheart, which has long since stopped trying to be a secret pirate fort. On the throne of Bitterheart sits the reigning pirate king; the only requirement for being the king is hating kin’toni.

Bitterheart sits on a large island on the western end of the archipelago. It’s a fort made of caves and timber, and it is surprisingly difficult to conquer. It has a hundred secrets that pirates know well and will abuse to their fullest extent, such as the sluice gate that can literally start up a whirlpool in the harbour, or the zipline that lets them get from one end of the island to the other in a matter of moments. Bitterheart’s been conquered a few times, but the Ight’turu have never held it for long.

Plants

Every island in Mosor is covered in jungle — even the islands covered in buildings haven’t been able to get rid of the jungle entirely. Halbrust itself is still covered in vines and occasionally has whole trees sprout in the cracks between abandoned buildings. Explorers find the vines particularly annoying. Have you ever tried to walk through a jungle, and suddenly find this thing like an overweight snake hanging down in front of your face, or sneaking between your feet? It takes a great many whacks with a machete to get a vine out of your face.

And that exertion makes you hotter than you need to be in this already boiling climate. They don’t even smell that nice when you cut them. And somehow, despite seeming as heavy as a tree themselves, they don’t even make reliable ropes. Yeah, actually, everyone hates vines. The trees themselves are a little better: they’re extremely useful for building ships. And as one might be able to guess, ships are an extremely valuable commodity in Mosor. They also seem to be slightly fire resistant, which is generally seen as a good thing, unless you’re trying to build a fire.

Many islands in Mosor are populated with men who have struck a sort of bargain with the pirates: don’t plunder me, pay me some gold every so often, and I’ll be able to keep growing food for you. For some reason, these farmers tend to be charismatic enough to pull off the deal. Woe to the man who thinks that he can become one of these farmers and pull off the same deal as so many others have — he’s likely going to become a slave. The farmers of Mosor typically grow all kinds of fruits.

But they also grow a special kind of grain which can be baked into a sort of hardtack. The hardtack tastes horrible but it also lasts pretty much indefinitely even if it gets wet. There’s one peculiar farmer, an eccentric fellow, that has decided to grow foods that most people wouldn’t call exotic, like ordinary grains, apples, carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables. He also raises cattle. While these things may not be exotic to the rest of Taerel, they’re certainly rare in Mosor. The pirates take extra care to protect this farmer, since milk, steak, potatoes, and all the other non-exotic things are quite tasty.

(If you pay him a little extra, he also cooks meals.) In the jungle grows a herb that’s common enough here, but it’s quite valuable and would fetch a good price elsewhere. The peoples of Mosor are typically too busy fighting each other to raise up much of a market for this herb. It’s called mosoria, after the place where it grows, and while it’s among the deadlier poisons known to man, it tastes exactly like the common herb called sage. Quite the number of assassinations could be made effortless with this little plant…

Animals

ukonanas really like the waters of Mosor for some reason. And they taste awful, so nobody hunts them, either. If you’re just a solitary fisherman, admiring your catch from the safety of your rowboat, you might notice some cheerful faces hovering around your boat, hoping for a treat. Fishermen typically give the guts of their fish to the ukonanas; it’s considered to be good luck if they do tricks for you after you feed them, and nobody has much use for those guts, anyway. ukonanas love zu'aan. Though every attempt to tame them has failed, ukonanas will save drowning sailors.

And bring them to the nearest island. (Sometimes this island is the exact opposite place of where the sailor wanted to go, but it’s the thought that counts, right? They couldn’t possibly know that the people who live here wanted your head.) If you’re a drowning man hoping for rescue, however, it’s always a gamble to swim towards the dorsal fin sticking up out of the water, because that fin could belong to a yalca, and your death will be painful if you do decide to swim that way. The seas about Mosor are full of all kinds of fish equally delightful to eat.

And there’s plenty of them! There’s also plenty of fish that aren’t nearly so delightful to eat, but some pirates make a point of eating them and then calling themselves ‘cultured’. This ‘culture’ thing has caught on so much that fishermen have stopped throwing away the ithma and iythna they catch, instead selling them to pirate lords for extravagant prices. Fish are so common in Mosor, in fact, that pirate crews can be completely self-sustaining without having to farm or work. It’s the lazy man’s dream! Of course, pirates also put a lot of work into obtaining gold and storing it away.

So maybe it’s not so ideal for lazy men. If you’re on an island, and not at sea, you still have to watch out for predators. yalcas aren’t the only danger in Mosor, there’s also idlais and srua-aldia. idlais eat fish and men, and they much prefer to eat men when they can get them. This necessitates extreme caution when wandering in the jungle, since these blasted vines seem to be no hindrance to those big fat shadowy cats from the underworld. It’s all too often that whole pirate crews have been picked off one by one as they try to build a fortress on an island that they didn’t know was inhabited by one of these idlais.

Of course, idlais can swim short distances, so this particular idlai picking off your crew might live elsewhere. Srua-aldia are a little less hostile to zu’aan than idlais, but they absolutely despise kin’toni for some reason. They picked the tougher fighter, since it takes about three times as much sea snake venom to kill a kin’toni than a zu’aan. Still, watch out when swimming, no matter your constitution: srua-aldia often travel in packs of far more than three, and woe betide the man who steps on one of them.

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Ight'turu Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Mosor Tropical Archipelago

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This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.