Mediogalti Island

Mediogalti Island (pronounced med-ee-oh-GALL-tee) is a small nation located off the western coast of Garund, and is home to the Red Mantis Assassins. It is also a haven for pirates who sometimes bury their treasure in the island's interior.

History

Thousands of years ago during the Age of Serpents, Mediogalti Island was part of the northwestern part of the cyclopean empire of Ghol-Gan.

Long after the Ghol-Gan empire had come to end and the last of their empire now nothing more then ruins, the Mediogalti islands that make up the archipelago off the western coast of Garund were frequently visited by pirates. They used the main island's northern lagoon as a convenient location to anchor and re-supply, and found its interior an excellent place to hide buried treasure and bury their dead. Control over the lagoon passed between numerous pirate captains over the years, but none established any permanent settlement there.

This changed at the imminent end of the Oath Wars in Rahadoum left the Red Mantis assassins in need of a new home. Following a vision from their god, Achaekek, they relocated to Mediogalti Island, and began to build their Crimson Citadel in the deep jungles of the island's interior.

Once the Citadel was completed four decades later, the Red Mantis established what would become the city of Ilizmagorti, which they intended to be a convenient place for them to meet and assess potential clients. They built it beside the northern lagoon used by the pirates, and it soon became a popular "free port" for pirate vessels seeking to avoid the tiresome laws and taxes in place in other ports. The fearsome reputation of the Red Mantis has also so far deterred foreign navies from launching punitive expeditions against Ilizmagorti's pirates.

The appearance of the massive, permanent hurricane called the Eye of Abendego a little over a century ago has forced the traditional trade routes along the coast of western Garund to relocate further west, greatly increasing the amount of trade which passes by Mediogalti Island.

Government

The civilized parts of Mediogalti Island are run in an extremely laissez-faire manner by the Red Mantis; they allow the pirates to go about their business unmolested as long as they do not interfere in the assassins' affairs. The Red Mantis in turn are ruled by the Vernai (or "High Killers"), a council of (mostly female) senior assassins who are in turn led by the Blood Mistress who acts as the unquestioned voice of Achaekek. They keep the location of their headquarters, the Crimson Citadel, a well-guarded secret, so that anyone who wishes to hire them must go through intermediaries in Ilizmagorti. Since the assassins wear full-face masks to keep their identities secret, anybody in the street might be an assassin, which keeps crime relatively low for such an otherwise lawless place. In addition, the Red Mantis allows and even encourages the use of their signature sawtooth sabres by non-members to maintain the atmosphere of uncertainty.

The only other government figure is the mysterious Mayor of Ilizmagorti who lives in the topmost room of the otherwise unused lighthouse overlooking the harbor. Any citizen is able to gain an audience with the mayor, day or night, without an appointment—those who wish to do so simply stand in line and will be seen once the mayor has dealt with earlier arrivals.

Inhabitants

It is sometimes said that Mediogalti Island was uninhabited until the Red Mantis settled here. In fact, the interior has long been home to tribes of Lizardfolk and kobolds. The former occasionally raid the outskirts of Ilizmagorti, whilst the latter engage in sporadic trade with the city. In addition to these two, there is also a sizable population of goblins who fiercely defend their arboreal village of Ganda-Uj in the northwestern third of the island. These so-called monkey goblins are expert climbers and are skilled in the use of poison and the net, making the territory around their settlement a dangerous one to explore. Lastly, the island's most dangerous inhabitants are a variety of dinosaurs that have been known to attack the city when hungry. Other dangerous denizens include cyclopes and even rarer weretigers.

The island's lagoons and outlying waters are home to an adaro tribe called the Kaneano. While they may occasionally aid shipwrecked sailors, there are plenty of incidents where they have been accused of devouring them instead. Despite this, many of Ilizmagorti's citizens appreciate the Kaneano, as they are believed to keep down the populations of other aquatic predators.

The seas around Mediogalti Island are haunted by Coath, the Wight Whale, the hateful ghost of a whale that was slaughtered by whalers based out of Ilizmagorti. Now on moonless nights Coath stalks the waters, a patch of strangely radiant darkness that roams the seas and is believed to be responsible for the disappearance of countless ships.

Dinosaur Graveyard

It is believed that the dinosaurs of Mediogalti Island are led by instinct to a specific site within the jungle interior when it is time for them to die. This dinosaur graveyard is said to contain countless dinosaur bones, which supposedly animate and attack intruders. Some legends claim that all of the island's unclaimed buried treasure has somehow found its way to the graveyard, where it lies among the bones.1