The Hamdi Codex in Full

(tagged as a "map" because as a periplus the Hamdi Codex is a kind of "literary map", an account of [literally] "a sailing around" which can be used by a navigator to successfully follow in the wake of the voyage described ...)

After much research, many callouses to pen-hands, and much candle-wax spilt, this codex, purportedly written by the legendary hero Hamdi the Voyager himself in some kind of cypher, has finally been translated in full by the antiquarian team of Razo the Researcher and Hry Haya Yehat (an Alkari).

A periplus following a western voyage from Cothon (? or another great harbor on the southern shore of Dirac's Sea?), the account includes many mildly interesting navigational details, broken up by quite interesting "adventures" had by Hamdi and/or his crew. There are six such "adventures", the first three of which have been previously translated:

1) the island Dar Breni and the hidden fortress Haut of the Bren Grewind. Grewind was purported to be a kind of sorceress pirate-queen with a device to hide her mind from the sorcerers who hunted her.

2) the island of the Sakkan Kukun (under the subtitle Razo), central island of a line of sea-kings (the Sakkans). This main island held the sacred mountain-temple Bey Kor, where the gods were said to dwell, alight with a weird orange glow. Great medicine-men would bathe in the to cleanse themselves, and die shortly afterward leading lives of strict asceticism ...

3) the island of the wizard-lord Morwe and his daughter Altayra and their qumqum servitor Imfawr (the Eye of Morwe). A tempest almost wrecked Hamdi's galley Zourqa' there, and much adventure followed, including a descent into "Forbidden Caverns" with strange ru'un (there is some, *ahem* disagreement by the translators as to how metaphorical this may be), followed by Altayra's escape from her tyrannical father by joining Hamdi on his subsequent Voyages ...

The remaining three "adventures" have been puzzled out by Razo and Hry Haya after much consternation; alas, some of the final pages are damaged, and the language toward the end grows more complex as it describes ever stranger things. It is clear, too, that it breaks off in the middle of things--surely there is another codex to be found? Perhaps somewhere near this first was discovered?

4) a strange pinnacle, standing like a spire out of the middle of an unquiet sea. Strange mists lay upon the water far out in the middle of the sea, "... but I feared to seek them, because they were far out of sight of any land but this strange pillar, and to sail so far thus is to invite Death into your crew."
Nevertheless, anchors were dropped near the pinnacle, and a preliminary exploration was made of it with the ship's boat. They were wary, as the place seemed perfect for sro, and yet something worse seemed to dwell within; for there were old caves wending down into the heart of the rock-pillar, but the air in them smelt of death; and though many gemstones gleamed in the dark glass walls, something else moved in those caves, and at least one crewmen was lost to the unknown creature's depredations. Many teeth of dindin (large carnivorous fish) were found throughout, and rumors of dindin-wraiths were fashionable for weeks after we weighed anchor from that place.

5) off the coast of ancient Viisymel, where the Sakkra once held sway, there is an island temple-fortress. Going quickly through those waters (because the threat of the Yrojen hunter-Sakkra still haunted then), Hamdi and his crew nevertheless sailed near the temple-fortress. From local humans they gathered tales of ritual-sacrifice--of tribes required to give up their seven healthiest youths and maidens every year to be sent to the island labyrinth, there to face either a terrible serudla-like dragon, or to face the Yrogen-hunters in their prime.
But the galley Zourqa' could not come near enough the edifice of this terrible island-temple, as its corners were mounted by dreadful ballistae that hurled thunderbolts at anything that approached too close upon the waves--or anything that moved upon the blasted black stones of the shore underneath the temple's blooded steps!
And so Hamdi moved on without investigating the stepped-temples that rose like mountains upon the island's heights ...

6) far out at the edge of old Viisymel, a temple-city stands in the tide, washed by the eternally turning waters of Ocean. Legends differ as to its construction--carved out of a solid headland? built by successive moles and piles? or did the Demons themselves pluck the stuff out of the Broken Moon above and place it directly into the sea??
Yet more interesting than the sea-washed temple-city is the moon that hangs above it--the "Broken Moon", a curious kind of "mountain in the sky" much unlike the Fortress Moon's great circular shape ... and too, the Broken Moon never wavers from its place above the Sunken City, as the place was sometimes called (even then), unlike the Fortress Moon which orbits regularly over the face of the world ...
Local legends recorded by Hamdi of course describe contradictory reports: the Demons dwell there, just as they do in the Fortress Moon, causing madness as they will; or the Giants (or reptilian Naga-Sakkra) who built the city, watching over it even now; or one of the great sri-Kaas of the Viis was raised there by his heroes to sleep without dying, ready to return when Viisymel fades (or, Viisymel being long faded, a Yrogen hunter-leader, with the same mythic import of a sleeping-king)

Given a fine ship, a good navigator, an accurately recorded account, and the will to seek, these "places of adventure" would all be accessible "adventures" for a player to take up. None are close to Cothon, of course, and so a great deal of time would be spent seeking them out; yet no doubt such locales are just the sort of high danger/high reward kind of places that barbarian-adventurers thrive in!