Balmach
64 miles wide, average above surface 4,850 ft.
11.5 years between Core Island connections.
Geography
With the longest orbit of any known Island, nearly a dozen years between Gate openings, Balmach remains one of the most mysterious and least explored places in all of Raeluna. A narrow ring of rocky lowlands some two hundred miles in circumference surrounds an inner area of vertiginous highlands, its mist-shrouded peaks among the highest ever discovered. The climate in the lowlands is uniformly cool and damp, a perpetual drizzle that periodically strengthens to soaking rains, with only occasional glimpses of watery sunlight through the clouds. Civilization, such as it is, remains isolated to the area around the Traverton, a motley collection of miners, adventure seekers, and mystics dubbed Howler’s Outpost, after the sound the wind makes through the nearby crags. The environment is notorious for its inhospitability, the relentless damp giving rise to constant fungal infections and respiratory ailments, the days plagued by swarms of biting flies, the nights by terrestrial leeches that rise from the sodden ground as if by magic. The interior of the Island is little explored, partly on account of the steep elevation, and partly because of the presence of a mysterious predator that dwells in the rocky wastes above the tree line, striking only at night and making a sound like a mewling baby as it hunts. Numerous caves penetrate the lower cliffs, and a small scale mining operation exists in the area around Howler’s Outpost, renowned for the hue and rarity of the emeralds it produces. In fact, Howler’s Outpost itself is built atop a series of caverns that are in the process of slow collapse, eaten away by the constant saturation from the rain and cliff-fed streams above. Sinkholes have already encroached along the outermost edges of Howler’s Outpost, and despite various engineering projects, both mechanical and magical, currents estimates place the collapse of the Gate itself within the next fifty years, threatening to cut Balmach off from the rest of Raeluna forever.
People and Culture
Balmach’s isolation and inaccessibility make it the source of many strange legends and exotic rumors. Most prominent among them is the belief that a second Gate exists somewhere on the Island, and various individuals and organizations have over the years mounted extensive expeditions in search of it, thus far without success. The Arcanists have had a permanent detachment stationed at Howler’s Outpost for centuries, their numbers growing in recent years ahead of the projected collapse of the Gate. Indeed, the last couple of Gate openings have seen the largest influx of population into Balmach in its history, as ever more miners and explorers and magi scramble to discover whatever they can before the Island is cut off. This increasing effort is funded almost exclusively by the Baron Ordano, generally believed to be the wealthiest individual in all of Iradel. Renowned for his ruthlessness and intractability, it is no secret that Ordano has for the last twenty years applied his considerable fortune to uncovering Balmach’s secrets. He controls the majority of the mining operations on the Island, and is even rumored to guide the activities of the Arcanists, despite their assertions of independence. The population of Howler’s Outpost has swelled to some six hundred individuals, from every corner of Raeluna. Miners and engineers make up the vast majority, followed by a smaller number of explorers and fortune seekers, and then by a contingent of scholars of various sorts. There is also a small but well-established cadre of entertainers and prostitutes, most of them headquartered in a gigantic ramshackle rest house called the Green Gem.
Local Authority
Historically, there has been little in the way of official authority on Balmach. The population’s small size and isolation meant they were largely left to themselves, and a kind of rough frontier law asserted itself from the earliest days. Violence was the commonest way to settle disputes, although the Island’s harsh environment tended to encourage cooperation among its inhabitants rather than dissent. Competition over mining rights was traditionally the source of most conflict, an issue that has all but disappeared in recent years as Baron Ordano has consolidated his grip on the various operations. Indeed, the Baron and his operatives have become the de facto legal authority on the Island, backed up by the bottomless Ordano coffers and a willingness to do whatever it takes to further his own ends. The Baron’s current head of operations is an Anvardi woman named Losh, apparently of the Grovan clan, who dispenses bribes and beatings as circumstances warrant, all while presenting a face of cold impartiality to the settlement. It is also known that one of the magi on the Island, an Iradelli man by the name of Pullos, is the Baron’s own nephew.
Language
Being a hodgepodge of largely unrelated groups and individuals, the population of Balmach relies on the common tongue of Travit to communicate.
Traverton
Howler’s Outpost is the sole permanent settlement on Balmach, though various mining camps, research bases, and isolated hermit huts exist throughout the lowlands. The ruins around the Gate are in a much more decayed state than those on other Islands, with several of the buildings having collapsed into eroded piles of rubble, particularly around the northern edge where the largest series of sinkholes have opened up. The settlement’s layout has changed over the years as the ground becomes more unstable beneath it, and portions of the Traverton have been long abandoned for fear of further collapse.