The Pariah's Tides

Welcome to the Pariah's Tides! Something along the lines of fifty or sixty years ago, in an event known as the Great Storm of 1783, several large chunks of the British colonies in North America were torn off the face of the earth at the end of their ill-fated rebellion, and deposited in a strange, shadowed sea known as the Pariah's Tides. Apologies for the lack of chronal specificity, time doesn't exactly... work here. Neither does space, for that matter. Honestly, most natural laws are at least a little bit off. On one hand, this means that you might get three Saturdays in a row, or that dreaded dinner with Aunt Sally might have actually already happened twelve years ago, so you don't even have to worry about it, but on the other it means that you could get lost on your commute to work and end up on a mystical, several-year journey through twisting, mazelike streets. If the fact that you live on an ever-shifting island in the middle of an ever-shifting sea wasn't enough, there's also the fact that the Sun isn't there, and while the stars are quite a bit brighter and quite a bit closer, most tend to keep too far away to be of any use. That means light is quite the problem. Luckily, the ocean is populated mostly by ravenous monsters that could only be vaguely called "whales," which can be juiced for their oil, so long as you survive their gnashing fangs and mincing beaks. Did I say luckily? Must have misspoken.   Also, porcelain men stand at street corners and will buy your hopes and dreams off of you for a buck fifty. I figured I ought to mention them.