The Swordlands

After months at sea the Aurora, and the almost 70 souls aboard her, are destroyed in a sudden nocturnal attack. In the frigid still of night the ship is struck violently, splitting the hull and filling the lower quarters with freezing water in a matter of seconds. Those not trapped below deck at this point frantically made for the smallcrafts, when the vessel suddenly broke across midships and all were plunged into the icy darkness.

A small group of adventurers gather in one of the Aurora´s remaining keelboats, facing no alternative but to make their way onwards looking for survivors. The small vessel, designed for exploration, bears it´s figurehead at the stern, where a bound air elemental can be commanded to blow into the sail and propel the ship forward.

The adventure begins as the players sail through the Nine Mothers Gap, a network of subterranean canals that join the oceans of the known world with the uncharted waters of the Swordlands.

Believed to be all that is left of an exploratory expedition financed by the Royal Geographic Society, the party navigate the narrow channel in search of the legendary Himinborg. The maps they have been given take them this far, and indicate something of what lies beyond the Gap.

The 9 Mothers Gap is an extensive series of natural canals carved through the glacier that seperates the Swordlands from the Auslands. Networks of tunnels and caverns link the labyrinthine waterways, and their openings dot the towering walls of ice.

A dim, frigid blue light pervades the gap, except for occasional swathes of bright daylight that spill across stretches of the waterways as the immense claw-like shards of ice that form the cavern rooves fail to meet. Below the surface of the water can be seen the pale glow of large luminescent dragon fish as they swim through the tunnels.