The Swirl

A strange stretch of land buried off the coast of the southwestern shores of the continent in the shape of its namesake, rising at highest only 1000 feet above sea level. The entire island series is surrounded by dangerous rocks to the north and impenetrable dead water everywhere else. Most of the terrain to the east remains rocky, barren, and uninhabitable as it converges with the Blight. The western strands of land are tropical but frequently sparse of dense foliage. The southern strand however has a deep jungle which no civilization has touched. The strand in the center houses the enormous abandoned remains of an ancient structure that the Blight and time has rendered inoperable.

The sole point of civilization on the island is Haelast Outpost, an exploratory village and fort where it survives mainly off of fishing and rigorous small-scale farming. Adventurers and scholars alike make up the bulk of the population and are frequently tasked with taking over temporary roles as farmers themselves, when they are not guarding against attacks from the various monsters roaming the strands. While Haelast Outpost is technically part of Nashriam, it affords much more independence than normal simply due to the difficulty in reaching it.

Points of intrigue for researchers:

The entryway for water on the northern side of the Swirl causes strange tidal fluctuations. Force moves huge tidal wave sized flows to the center of the islands. The backflow however frequently leaves through the east side, although once a day at high tide for the northern strands the backflow will raise high enough that covers twice the normal height of high tide before draining to normal again.

Several biomes exist on the Swirl, all seemingly disconnected from each other.

The Blighted strand on the east of the swirl has almost no tidal functionality to speak of, and is completely different from the rest of the islands.

Deeper past the eastern shores is an incredibly strong undercurrent, this undercurrent is generated by the tides flowing out of the ruined structure and out into the sea separating the mainland from the swirl. The cyclical current has a nasty habit of taking the denizens of the deep ocean and bringing them into the mouth of the inlet by the northern strands.

Origins:

The Swirl was created by inhabitants of the 3rd Epoch, forming the swirl shape intentionally to channel the power of the ocean and

served as part of a large machine to use water’s properties as a universal solvent to mulch and filter specific compounds into the sea’s depth. And because of the appearance of the Blighted lands, it no longer functions as intended and Karanodrin the sea between the swirl and mainland is quite dead with the exception of a powerfully large vortex near the center. To illustrate the points above:

Biotic life was specially cultivated here to be engineered, bred, studied, etc. The entire swirl essentially worked as a massive laboratory/enclosure, and the whirlpool/inner sea served as an oscillator to break up biotic material into base components to be repurposed.

The energy generated from the intense water flows still powers the machines involved which run on an old form of non-congruence energy. Control over the machines is nonexistent as almost all of the more complex parts used for sorting, filtering, selecting, etc. are destroyed.

Each strand of the swirl was created to form its own self-sustaining biome to house programmed life.

There are rumors among divinities that the now resulting emulsified product of the Swirl are being used as a food source for some unknown horror.

General Locales:

Most varieties of monsters encountered here are completely unique from their mainland variants and will produce specialized cores. Their rarity drives several ambitious hunters to the islands in hopes of fortune. Meanwhile, the centerpiece of the island, the strange ruined structure has intrigued several researchers, who think that perhaps the whole Swirl itself was built for a specific purpose and are keen on unraveling the several puzzles of the islands.

Eastern strand: Blighted land, irregular tide that doesn’t match the rest of the world, purple/brown aesthetic, otherworldly, ominous and sickly. The blighted region remains unclaimed by monsters and people alike, and nothing but death, null daemons, or the occasional wandering madman end up there.

Northern strand: Sandy, lightly tropical, partially submerged, animal light, algae and sea life heavy, strong coral themes

The monsters which infest this region are less large scale land dwelling monsters, and more fish, amphibians, and marine invertebrates that, while not threatening with large teeth and claws, all have some dangerous quirk related to one of the following subjects:
Poison and toxicity
Hallucinogenic emissions
Burial, digging, and trapping
Multiplicative degeneration through corrosive acids, mucous, saliva, or hairs
Transformative effects
Water manipulation
Air manipulation and transformation

These monsters tend to make an appearance on the swirl’s “high tide”, though can be exposed and isolated during “low tide”. None of the monster cores collected in this area have much uniformity beyond brightly neon colors. The northern monsters tend to be ‘safer’ to the few people that live there, as most of the creatures rarely act overtly threatening to them.

Southern strand: Dense jungle, sweltering, oppressive, deadly, green and umbers and patches of vibrance, strange congruence, even stranger creatures

In the southern jungles, the land and beasts within have completely taken over. Strange, wild, thick and dense foliage covers the area, and impossible monsters exist here. This is generally as far as even the bravest of adventurers are willing to travel for its many dangers. An ordinary monster in this area would be something like a displacer beast from dnd or a thought eater of the same. Potential notable aspects for the monsters in here include:
Tough chitin
Natural camouflage
Material melding
Invisibility
Sensory manipulation
Spatial manipulation
Time dilation
Size manipulation
Reactive traps
Paralyzing soundwaves/shockwaves
Emotive sensors
Heat manipulation

The monster cores collected from the southern strand are intricate with helix designs across their surfaces.

Western strand: sparse, open, flat, tropical, most of the more normal seeming monsters and animals live here, dangerous deep-sea things sometimes get swept up near the shorelines

Most of the creatures on the western strand are large and lumbering, usually herbivorous, but similar in size and stature to a brown beast. More seemingly normal animals reside here, and a mix of creatures from the northern and southern strands end up using this as a sort of hunting ground. The real twist to this strand is that monsters from the depths of the ocean occasionally get swept up in currents generated within the bay between the swirl and the continent, and get flung across to the western strand, sometimes beaching them onto the land, other times moving them close to the shores where they are free to hunt the local marine life. Essentially all types of life can be discovered here, making it dangerous for its unpredictability.

Center: abandoned, tunnels, ruins, ancient, empty an intensely sized submerged megastructure

In the center of the island in the destroyed facility, there remains but one hidden caretaker that none who have seen it have survived. An ancient automaton, that looks similar in nature to the Alium, that once served as a maintenance repair unit, now locked in perpetual struggle to repair the facility though out of the means to do so, aiming for new targets that enter its sight not with malicious intent, but instead a drive for parts. The creature is in fact a monster, specially crafted an epoch ago, with a large humming core, and possesses frightening intelligence, though ages of isolation have driven it slightly mad.