The Saltmarch and the Thousand Isles

Arrival

Reed marsh to the horizon under a white sky, then the marsh breaks into water, and the water into a thousand islands, each with one tree and one wreck. A boat with a red sail beating between them, and something with a fin longer than the boat following it.

The feel

Two places in one realm: the fen inland (knee-deep water, sedge, eels, will-o'-wisps) and the archipelago beyond it (sand, palms, coral, the first open sea). You get a boat here. Sailing is a zone.

The story here

The Isles are the pirate republic of Brackenwake and the only people on the continent who do not fear the Legion, because the Legion cannot sail. Their queen wants the dragon for the same reason: a dragon on a mast would make the Isles unbeatable. The Sunken Kingdom's ghosts rise on certain nights from the deep water between the islands, and the Leviathan that follows your boat is the dragon's cousin: the last of the sea-wyrms, dying, and it has something for the dragon.

The cast

• Queen Maravel of the Isles. Pirate queen, forties, one eye, the best captain alive, funny, ruthless, likes you immediately, which is the danger. Signature: she settles every argument with a coin toss and the coin has two heads. Secret: she is dying of the sea-rot and the Isles do not know; the dragon is her succession plan. Gives you the boat. Returns with a fleet at the Throne if you did not take her deal, or against you if you did and broke it.
• Aldo Reeve. The fen's eel-man, sixties, has never left the marsh, guides the paths with sticks only he can read. Signature: he never looks at the water directly. Secret: he is the last keeper of the sea-wyrm, feeding it a sheep a month for fifty years, and he knows what it carries for the dragon. He walks you to it. He dies doing it, of old age, in the boat, and asks you to put him in the water.
• Little Sorrow. A Drowned girl who walks the tide line on the largest isle and leads boats onto the rocks. Signature: she hums a song the Isles have forgotten. Secret: she is Maravel's daughter, lost at sea at eight, and Maravel does not know she walks. The player can tell her, or not, and what Maravel does about it is the realm's ending.
• Grey Tancred. The Legion's admiral, who cannot sail and has come anyway with a barge fleet across the Caldera Sea's calm shallows. Correct, seasick, brave. Signature: he is always green. A rival to Vane, and the two of them do not agree about you. He drowns at the Isles if the player sides with Maravel; he lives to command the Throne's outer wall if not.

Underground and the boss

The Leviathan's Rest: a sea cave under the largest isle where the last sea-wyrm lies. Crabs, drowned, a Mire Troll, and Thalassa the Sea-Wyrm, a Hydra promoted with a name, who is not fought unless you fail to bring Aldo: with him she lets the dragon close and gives it the tail, and dies. Without him she is the realm's boss.

Out in the open

The Ghost Tide, an event: on moonless nights the drowned of the Sunken Kingdom walk up out of the sea between the isles in ranks and board any boat at anchor. Long Sarah, a Bog Crawler grown beyond its kind in the fen. The Red Sail, Maravel's own ship, which challenges yours to a race once and pays in charts.

The dragon here

Eats fish and crab, and learns to swim. Takes back the tail from Thalassa.