====== Bengal Isles ======

>''“Nothing is born whole in the Bengal Isles. Power is taken, burned clean, and taken again.”''

Once scattered atolls lost to storms and monsters, the Bengal Isles were lashed together by The Meteor into a single, violent landmass of jungle and fire. Volcanic ridges split steaming forests, black-sand coasts grind beneath endless surf, and the sky itself seems perpetually bruised by ash and storm. The Isles are alive with motion. Ships, beasts, mercenaries, and ambition all circling a land that rewards strength and devours weakness.

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The Isles produce little of their own beyond blood, monsters, and raw shard-tainted resources. What they possess instead is position. Sitting astride the Arctican Ocean near the equator, the Bengal Isles command shipping lanes, salvage routes, and the flow of stolen technology between continents. Those who control the Isles do not need innovation. They need only to take what others build.

In the Bengal Isles, ambition is currency. Children grow up learning which banners to fear and which to betray. Markets sell stolen arcanotech beside caged beasts and shard-dust by the scoop. Duels on rope bridges above lava pits are public spectacle, and executions are entertainment.

The Emperor’s emissaries recruit freely, offering gold, plunder, and rank. Those who refuse may find themselves hunted instead. Salvage crews delve wrecks and ruins, racing rivals and monsters alike. Some seek the Emperor’s hoarded technologies, whispered to rival even Atlantean craft. The Bengal Isles are not stable. They are not safe. They are not just. But for those who survive them, they offer something rarer than peace: power taken by force, and the chance to hold it before the next power-hungry soul wrests it from you.

==== An Empire of Claws and Fire ====

The Bengal Isles are ruled by the Bengal Empire, an autocracy unified not by institutions, but by fear and momentum. At its head stands Emperor Razaq One-Eye, a Tabaxi warlord forged in the American Foreverwar and returned home with the discipline of empire and the brutality of piracy.

Razaq rules from the volcanic capital of Chagos, enforcing loyalty through hostage-taking, public execution, and the promise of plunder. Pirate lords, clan chieftains, and mercenary captains serve as vassals so long as they deliver tribute, technology, and bodies for the Emperor’s wars. Those who fail are made examples of. Often in full view of the skyharbor crowds.

The Empire has no codified law beyond the Emperor’s will. Disputes are settled by duel, decree, or disappearance. Order exists only so long as it is profitable to maintain it.

==== Cities Carved from Chaos ====

^ Location ^ Summary ^
| **Chagos** | Volcanic capital of the Empire, built into the caldera of a still-smoking mountain. Rope-bridged skyharbors span the crater, while forges and markets cling to terraces above molten rivers. The Emperor’s fortress-palace crowns the northern rim, bristling with captured cannon and crude shard wards. |
| **Port Serpentis** | A coastal city built among the bleached bones of ancient sea monsters. Its docks and streets are formed from leviathan ribs and vertebrae, and its markets trade in toxins, hides, and alchemical reagents harvested from the ocean’s dead. |
| **Blackwater Haven** | A lawless port city rising on stilts above a mangrove delta. Bribes open any gate, and every faction maintains a foothold. It is the easiest city to enter and the hardest to leave cleanly. |
| **Iskara** | A jungle fortress clinging to cliffs above crashing surf. Once a Cordoban outpost, now a pirate stronghold. Its massive coastal cannon still guard the bay, firing now in service of plunder rather than empire. |
| **Havana** | Across the world on the Caribbean island of Cuba. While not officially acknowledged as any nation's territory, it is all but accepted that whoever sits on the throne in Chagos rules over Havana |

==== A Sea of Raiders and Monsters ====

The Bengal Isles sit at the heart of the Arctican Ocean, a warm, shallow sea wracked by shardstorms and hunted by leviathans. Shoals rise without warning. Coral ridges glow with exposed [[..:..:shardisite]] veins. Storms roll in carrying green lightning that cracks hulls and breaks souls.

Pirate flotillas roam these waters in constant, low-grade war. Allegiances shift with tides and profit. Sea monsters surface without warning, some so vast they dwarf even the most fearsome vessels. Entire settlements have vanished overnight, crushed beneath scale and shell. To cross these waters is to gamble against titans. The Isles ensure that few do so unchallenged.

==== Wonders and Perils ====

The Bengal Isles thrive on danger.

  * **Volcanic Forges:** Unstable foundries powered by magma and shard-dust produce weapons of fearsome potential and questionable reliability.
  * **Beast-Blood Lineages:** Tabaxi, tortles, kenku, lizardfolk, and other beast-blooded peoples trace their origins to the Isles, shaped by shard mutation and relentless selection.
  * **Shard-Tainted Jungles:** Forests crawl with feral magics, mutating flora, and predators that learn quickly.
  * **Pirate Empires:** Fleets rise and fall within a season, their captains crowned in blood and unmade just as fast.