The Salt Spring Archipelago is an archipelago in the Wounds. Until the arrival of the Fjarri in the late ninth millennium the islands were sparsely populated, though often visited by other Fanakara and Keleta-Ru groups, as well as by the dwarves of Harv Taruhm, who come in search of valuable material like obsidian and bone metal.
Geography
The archipelago lies in the southeastern Wounds, rather distant from any other major island chain. With a reputation for being struck unusually often by bouts of terrible storms, the Salt Spring Archipelago has long been a place to visit but not remain for most peoples of the Wounds, a matter not helped by the presence of unfriendly elementals on many of the smaller islands. As with the rest of the Wounds, the archipelago has a tropical climate with little seasonal variation in temperature, though with distinct wet and dry seasons.
Black Glass Island, in the northeast of the archipelago, is renowned across the Wounds for its large obsidian outcroppings - even with continual harvesting by many across the centuries the material remains incredibly plentiful on the island. Elsewhere in the Salt Spring Archipelago bone metal can be found relatively close to the surface, easily accessible for the dwarves who come to mine it.
The name of the archipelago is derived from the briny springs in the interior valleys of Lanu-Sha, the largest of its islands.
The Salt Spring Archipelago is roughly 500 miles south of the Chain, 1300 miles east of the Angry Kings, and 460 miles northwest of the Frigid Deep.
Inhabitants
Today the Fjarri, descendants of Rothurlandic seafarers, are the only people who have permanent settlements in the Salt Spring Archipelago. Nomadic and semi-nomadic Fanakara and Keleta-Ru also live on the islands, but they do not often remain in one place for long, setting up encampments on the shorelines for short periods of time before moving on once more. Visitors of all ancestries and cultures from across the Wounds come to the archipelago in search of resources yet rarely stay.
Notable settlements on the Salt Spring Archipelago include the following: