Bulun

Piracy in and around the Southern Ocean is a constant problem, and it was long belived that the salt-tales of the pirate safehaven of Bulun, a floating island as unmappable as mist, were as substantial as mist also. Anecdotes and stories featuring the elusive island are common among both the authorities who struggle to protect their shipping, and seafaring communities from Iasteron to Xohura.
Until little over a century ago, it was believed that these stories were a combination of lies, credulity, and hope. Even now, reliable information about the town is as hard to is difficult to find as the town itself.

Facts

Bulun is a floating town based in the Southern Sea. Believed to be built on top of an accretion of flotsam and jetsam, the bulk of the island comprises a warren of wharves and jetties, to which are moored active and abandoned ships. The town is not a true cosmopolis, as its permanent residents are exclusively esaanla, though it has a sizeable transient population as ships and their crews dock.
As an unmappable island outside any legal oversight, Bulun is, inevitably, a hub of illegal activity. The first hard proof of its existence came from a set of watercolour paintings seized in 5.817, during a raid on the pirate ship Sea Wolf, attributed to a painter known only as O. Tl-. These were later corroborated by sketches in the marginalia of a Kovarstani smuggling ledger, and similarities in the landmarks suggest that they are likely to have been drawn from life. The drawings show a unique architecture unlike any known civilisation.
Fuelling legends of the island, the Quartermanster's accounts of the pirate ship Lightning Strike showed multiple resupply stops which could not be accounted for through raiding, nor did the travel time or navigational readings correlate with a land-based port. When a combined naval expedition sailed to the given longitude and latitude, they found nothing but open ocean.
Of note is that stories about Bulun always come from surface-dwelling sources. Esaanla traders and travellers have a network of underwater and semi-submerged settlements for intra-species trade, and do not recognise descriptions of the island from a surface-dweller's point of view. It is possible that Bulun, with a reputation for vice and criminality, is simply not part of their trade network.

Rumours

While facts about the island are thin on the ground, rumours are readily available, with greater and lesser degrees of believability. Most common are:

• Bulun hosts a magical black market where an unethical witch or wizard might buy souls - and other, even more valuable, commodities
• The town's location only appears on a map drawn from the blood of a sea-dragon harveted under a Foul Moon
• The island can only be found via a compass and sextant made from star metal
• The walls of the harbour form a portal, with the town itself located in the stars or in an alternate dimension
• The foundation of the town is constructed entirely of magic
• The town is the physical embodiment or the creation of a trickster god, and its unmappability is a divine trait

Type

Trade post

Inhabitant Demonym

Buloi