Zelix (cradle)
20 miles by 40 miles, low elevation 3,394ft, high near 9,000ft
Geography
Zelix is roughly rectangular, twenty miles wide and twice as long, with the western third of the Island housing an arid desert, filled with little but rolling dunes and thorn trees, which gradually transitions into low scrubby hills punctuated by fetid bogs. The hills rise eastward into a rocky plateau, its windswept top nearly two miles higher than the western desert.
The Gate and Traverton on Zelix are in the western desert - the ruins are mostly crumbled stone and the area beyond the Traverton home to nothing but small lizards and occasional Zelixan nomads.
Across the Island from the Gate, up on the plateau, most Zelixans live in The City, a roughly ten square mile zone of miraculously tropical warmth on the otherwise windswept and cold heights. Within the zone life abounds, with profuse gardens of fruits and vegetables fed by vast stone cisterns. The City houses an utterly unique Ruin, unlike those of the Ancient Race, which the locals call the Rainbow Gate. Its attendant guardian is a massive, hundred foot statue of jade depicting an obese humanoid in interlocking armor like the carapace of a millipede, the feature-obscuring helmet rising into a blade-like crest edged in gold. It is known as Zelix, from whom the people and Island take their name.
People and Culture
The population tends to be dark-haired and olive-complexioned, with rangy physiques and lean features. Those living around the Rainbow Gate tend to be physically larger and more robust than those living elsewhere across Zelix. Fashions also vary widely between one end of the Island and the other, with the Rainbow Gate inhabitants favoring brightly patterned robes made of a light linen-like fabric, well suited to their tropical climate. Men and women alike often go topless, wrapping their robes around their waists like kilts, and usually wear their hair cut short and colored with powders derived from the local flowers. The desert dwellers are more subdued in their coarse tunics of brown and green and plait their long hair into elaborate braids decorated with various baubles.
Most of the Island worships Zelix, the guardian of the Rainbow Gate, as a god, and Zelixans are by and large a closed off people and do not interact with other Islands or other Islanders.
Local Authority
The rule of Zelix is given to their priests.
In addition to the Arcanists at the western Gate, the Flower Market also houses an official Arcanist contingent dedicated to studying the Rainbow Gate and its Guardian—the so-called Zelix Inquisition—that is widely despised by devout Zelixans.
Language
The Zelixan tongue contains lots of “zee” and “ex” sounds and hard consonants, and even the simplest words are usually multisyllabic. It’s a clipped, hissing language, formed almost exclusively in the front of the mouth, with very few guttural sounds. It is the most difficult of the Cradle languages to learn for non-native speakers.
Traverton
The Zelixans call the Gate ruins the Hephrolusk, and most of them view it with deep dread and superstition. Most travelers using Zelix as a transition to other Islands keep to the shabby but functional Traverton by the Gate, and try to wile away their time on entertainments run by foreigners.
Nonetheless, a number of less superstitious Zelixans serve as guides and caravan trains to escort outsiders across the Island to Zelix City. Despite the wonders of the place non-natives are quite strictly confined to the Flower Market in a vast ruined courtyard on the outskirts . The Flower Market sees a lucrative trade in certain Zelixan flowers and other exotic flora that grow in the area around the Rainbow Gate, much of which is found nowhere else in Raeluna and some of which can be harvested for considerable gain as ingredients in magical potions and powerful poultices. The flower trade is one of the few industries tied to greater Raeluna that has found some support among the native community.