"Dearest Caitlin,

Greetings, oh flower of my life, from the grim Island of the Stormborn! I miss you more than words can possibly say, but fear not, my fragile bird of Maru, because I intend to leave Ysmir before week's end. The thought is not an unpleasant one, I must confess, because the Ysmirod are a gloomy lot. At first, I was afraid they wouldn't assist me with my research, but my fears turned out to be unfounded. A few days after my arrival at the Red Diamond airfield, I persuaded one of the eldri, which I believe means "leader" in the stormborn's guttural tongue, to talk to me about the island's history. Eldri Ulfric Skovald said he'd be delighted to speak with me, and he seemed surprised that a helgus, an Ysmirod word for "outsider," would be interested in such things.

By the by, and I found this quite funny, the tongue spoken by the stormborn is called Ysmirod. Now, there are two types of people living on the island. Stormborn is the name given to those men and women whose ancestors survived an event known as the Hundred Year Harrowing. Ysmirod, on the other hand, is a general term meaning anyone living on Ysmir, including people that originally come from somewhere else. So, the Ysmirod speak Ysmirod. How entertaining!

Tomfoolery aside, it turns out dear Professor Dunwich was right when he hypothesized that Ysmir was originally part of ancient Ghersland before it rose into the sky. Remarkable, isn't it? During my brief stay among the Ysmirod, I’ve noticed many of their customs and behaviors are similar to those of the mainland Gherish, though there are numerous differences as well. For instance, due to the island's fearful proximity to the Ring of Thunder, the stormborn spend most of their time indoors, which lends them an unusually pale cast. I now understand why soldiers facing Ysmirod mercenaries in battle call them "ghosts." Obviously, the stormborn have a language of their own, and I've already managed to pick up a few phrases. For instance, "Jeg nyder ost!" means "I enjoy cheese!" The men and women of Ysmirod may not have the newest automobiles or overcoats available, but their sense of humor is quite perverse. Delightfully so, I assure you, fair Caitlin.

According to Eldri Skovald, the stormborn that invited me into his home so we could discuss the island's history, a dreadful period called the Hundred Year Harrowing followed Ysmir's ascension and separation from Ghersland. You see, my juicy pomegranate, most of this island is covered by the towering peaks of the Utgaard Mountains, and the only habitable region consists of rocky flatlands on the isle's southern tip. I believe the eldri mentioned a swamp of some kind as well, but you get the idea. To make matters worse, the soil is quite poor here, so the early stormborn were forced to rapidly adjust following their trip into the clouds. Perhaps the most noteworthy example I can think of, oh radiant lady of my heart, is they eat rock lichen here. Far too much rock lichen. You have to give them credit where it's due, however, because they've come up with a staggering number of ways to hide the plant's awful taste. Eldri Skovald even gave me a cup of lichen beer before we sat down to begin our conversation. It tasted like cold piss, but I suppose it's the thought that counts.

In any event, the Hundred Year Harrowing was the name given to an event that lasted, well, a hundred years. During this time, the stormborn had no contact with Dover whatsoever. Cut off from essential resources, every man, woman, and child born on Ysmir was expected to contribute to the survival of their people. This attitude has persisted among the stormborn to this day. Whether they're miners, factory workers, or members of the legendary valarjar, everyone must do their part to ensure the stormborn way of life continues. Furthermore, the first inhabitants of Ysmir had to contend with the vicious beasts living in the Utgaard Mountains, which included sabercats and something called a vhargulf. My stormborn companion refused to tell me what sort of creature a vhargulf was, but he sounded terrified when he spoke of it. In order to survive those harsh, bloody days, the people of Ysmir learned how to defend themselves without the aid of firearms, and even their children were taught how to fight with knives and swords. The eldri took pains to tell me that no stormborn child that hasn't survived the Three Trials has ever been allowed to touch a gun. He ignored all my questions about what the Three Trials were and instead began to talk about the end of the Hundred Year Harrowing.

Gherish explorers, led by a man named Wilcott Fisk, arrived on Ysmir and established contact with the stormborn, though they quickly discovered something that would change the island's fate forever. Vast mother lodes of gold, iron, and copper ore were scattered throughout the Utgaard Mountains, and Wilcott was savvy enough to know he'd just made his fortune. Employing the stormborn as miners and builders, Wilcott built the Fisk Industries factory at the base of Ulfrang Peak before sending messages to his financiers back home. There weren't many stormborn left after the Hundred Year Harrowing, and they needed the money Wilcott was offering to start importing goods from Dover, so the natives allowed this to happen. Less than five years later, numerous mining companies, such as the Three Picks Mining Company and Red Diamond Excavations, established a presence on Ysmir, though they often came into conflict with the stormborn. Unlike Wilcott, who'd spent time amongst the island's inhabitants, the soldiers employed to protect company assets didn't know or care about local customs.

The fighting was on the verge of degenerating into all-out war when Sorthar the Wise, a shrewd and respected stormborn, convinced the two groups to form a ruling body that represented both their interests. Thus, the Moot of Ysmir was born, composed of eight stormborn and the owners of the four most prestigious businesses on the island.

Eldri Skovald's expression darkened when he told me this part, and I got the distinct impression he disapproved of his ancestors’ decision. "But," he growled, his voice as hard and uncompromising as the granite floor of his home, "they did what was best for Ysmir. That is all that matters." I'm not sure whether the eldri was trying to convince me or himself, but he moved on to what resulted from this union between the helgus and the stormborn. With the Moot arbitrating disputes and ensuring stormborn traditions were honored, Ysmir began to trade with Ghersland and Canth in exchange for food, clean drinking water, and other necessities. It was a time of unparalleled prosperity for the otherwise forgettable chunk of rock. And then, roughly ten years later, Corwin Fisk, the late Wilcott Fisk's son and newly appointed owner of Fisk Industries, brought an idea before the Moot.

He proposed that both the mining companies and the stormborn should turn their attention towards something more valuable than metal chairs, tables, and ornaments. "The nations of Canth and Ghersland are constantly fighting each other," he said to the twelve members of the Moot, "and we have the finest warriors in the United Isles. The valarjar, the "golden warriors," were once used to hunt beasts in the Utgaard Mountains. Now, they can be used to hunt the enemies of anyone with enough money to hire them. Of course, all Ysmirod would get a cut of their earnings. We could even manufacture and equip our soldiers with guns made from the ore they're still finding in the mountains." The Moot unanimously agreed. That's how the golden warriors of Ysmir became the most renowned fighters in the United Isles.

And that's the way life has been on the Island of the Stormborn for the last thousand years or so, my love. Can you believe it? Oh sure, the eldri mentioned a group of stormborn, calling themselves the Defiants or something along those lines, eventually declaring they could no longer live alongside corporations intent on pillaging their home. Allegedly, they haunt the foothills of the Utgaard Mountains and occasionally launch fruitless raids on company-controlled land, but they're considered a nuisance at worst. Life on Ysmir is better than it has ever been. The mining companies have become influential corporations, producing both peerless metal goods and weapons almost as formidable as those made in Dover. They've even managed to ensure the Island of the Stormborn remains neutral in the ongoing skirmishes between Canth and Ghersland. Even though they sell weapons to both nations. Still, the combined military forces of Dover could easily destroy Ysmir so the Ysmirod know not to get too greedy. On that uplifting note, Eldri Skovald declared that he'd told me everything he knew about his homeland's past. He was apparently due to start his shift at the local Red Diamond mine so he had to leave soon.

I thanked him, of course, and handed him my mostly untouched cup of lichen beer. One thought I couldn't shake as I walked back to my apartment was how strange this place was. A place where crumbling granite statues of valarjar fighting sabercats stood next to shops selling the latest metal gewgaws and furniture. Curious, isn't it? Regardless, love of my life and sun of my sky, I shall return home soon and we can discuss this in more detail. I hope this letter wasn't too long, but I've attached it to a lovely Ysmirod-style dress that I purchased from one of the local tailors. I hope it fits. I look forward to seeing you soon, Caitlin, and be well!

Love beyond measure,

Simon Garret

-Letter found on the corpse of a Maruvian scholar named Simon Garret. The body was discovered outside the Red Diamond Excavation and Armaments airfield with the words 'The Storm Remembers' carved into its chest.

Sigrun "Sigi” Alfhild was born to Svala Alfhild an Tallak, one of the most decorated valarjar mercenaries in Ysmir’s history, and Lorod Alfhild, a talented gunsmith employed by Red Diamond Excavations and Armaments, on a sunny morning in spring. Although she didn’t know it as she bellowed her childish rage to the skies, Sigrun was expected to be as great an asset to the stormborn as her parents. She was raised in a strongly traditional household, learning how to hold a blade at age seven and how to work more efficiently than any helgus. In spite of her parents’ expectations and the intensity of her training, Sigi was a charming, headstrong child who enjoyed learning and seeing new things. She also seemed intent on shoving anything that looked even remotely interesting into her mouth. Thankfully, she grew out of this habit.

A few weeks after her ninth birthday, Sigrun was allowed to accompany her father to his workshop in the Red Diamond Corporation’s gunsmithy. She spent hours watching him craft weapons to the exact specifications of people living as far away as Edgenook. The other stormborn whispered among themselves that this child would surely become a legendary gunsmith, since her combat skills were somewhat lacking, and Lorod loved Sigi for that. He made a decent amount of money, but his wife’s roving lifestyle as a valarjar provided the family with most of its income. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone be more interested in his work than his wife’s stories of bloodshed and glory.

When she turned thirteen, the course of Sigrun's life changed forever.

Like every stormborn child since Ysmir's founding, Sigi was expected to stand before the Moot when she turned thirteen to complete the Three Trials. The Trial of Strength. The Trial of Wisdom. The Trial of Choice. These ordeals would determine whether or not Sigi was ready to do what all stormborn were born to do: help their people prosper no matter the cost. Although the corporations were able to import enough essential goods and services to ensure nobody wanted for anything, they allowed this tradition to continue. It weeded out the weak from the general population. Sigrun's parents and teachers did their best to prepare the girl for the tests, but she walked into the Three Picks Corporation Arena, a gift from the mining company turned weapons manufacturer to their loyal employees, with a feeling of icy dread in the pit of her stomach. The Trial of Strength would pit two untested stormborn against each other, and only one would survive to continue the trials. From the moment Eldri Ulfric Skovald blew the clay horn three times, signaling the start of the test, Sigi was in trouble. Before the gathered Ysmirod could blink, her adversary had pinned her to the ground and was wrapping his hands around her neck. It looked like she was destined to be just another stormborn that failed to pass the Three Trials.

Then Lorod entered the ring and shot Sigi's assailant in the back of the head with a revolver. A revolver that she'd watched him make in his workshop less than a year ago. Blood splattered across Sigrun's pale face and the sands of the arena.

The Moot and the gathered spectators howled in protest. The stormborn members of the Moot wanted to kill Sigrun on the spot and banish her father while Lorod's employers wanted to keep him on the island. His unparalleled craftsmanship was a point of pride and profit for all Ysmir. They didn't care what happened to Sigi. Lorod spoke then, raising his voice above the din and shouting until he was blue in the face, demanding that his daughter be allowed to live or he'd kill himself right then and there. Struck dumb by this shocking reversal, the Moot asked for time to confer and Lorod agreed, cradling his battered daughter and trying not to weep.

After a few tense moments, the twelve eldri of the Moot reached a decision. Sigrun, in defiance of all stormborn traditions, would be declared vrykul, outcast, but she would be allowed to live if Lorod agreed to continue working as before. With tears pouring down his leathery face, the gunsmith bowed his head and agreed. Concerned that other stormborn might try to defy their rulings, the Moot made Lorod brand his daughter's forehead himself later that night. The spiral brand forever marked her as a vrykul. The next morning, three valarjar came to collect Sigi. Lorod gave her what money he could, a bag full of warm clothes and other essentials, a pair of beautiful boots and an iron dagger. Due to her failure, Sigrun would never be allowed to touch a firearm while on the Island of the Stormborn. Svala led the group towards the Three Picks Corporation airfield, her cold gray eyes never once straying towards her shell-shocked daughter. The last words Svala said to Sigi before she left were, "You have shamed us all, vrykul. Do not come back."

And with that parting blow from her mother, Sigrun was exiled from Ysmir and sent to live among the helgus, the "outsiders." She was flown on a rickety, barely functioning aeroplane to Ghersland and dropped off in the city of Highwall. Sigi spent the next few days wandering the inner city in a daze, her eyes wide as she drank in the unfamiliar clothes and bizarre machines. Due to its isolation, Ysmir tended to be behind the times, and this made it difficult for exiles like Sigi to adjust to life in the United Isles proper. Inevitably, hunger drove the vrykul to thievery, and she was pursued by the greencloaks, the mercenaries responsible for keeping the peace in Highwall, for stealing a loaf of bread from a baker's stall. Running blindly through the twisting streets, Sigrun abruptly found herself tumbling forward into a thoroughly dilapidated region of the city. The stormborn girl looked back to see the greencloaks chuckling and shaking their heads as they walked away from her. The little thief was in Beggar's Row now, and it was only a matter of time before she was raped, robbed, and killed. Not necessarily in that order.

Sigrun picked herself up and took a step forward...only to collide with a great bear of a man dressed in a ragged gray suit and an undershirt covered in stains. Panting and drawing her father's dagger, the outcast prepared to make her final stand when she saw something familiar. The man had a scar on his forehead in the shape of a spiral. This filthy, disgusting man was another exile from Ysmir. Sobbing and babbling like a madwoman, Sigi managed to tell the hulking stranger her story, and he quickly ushered her into a nearby shack that stank of sweat and blood. After convincing her to put her knife away, the man introduced himself as Svanrige Grondr, a vrykul just like Sigrun. He refused to tell the exhausted child why he'd been banished, though he admitted it had something to do with the Defiants, a band of vicious stormborn that sought to destroy the corporations draining their homeland's resources. Svanrige ignored the rest of Sigi's questions and gave her all the food and water she could stomach before guiding her to a straw pallet. The girl was asleep in moments.

Seven days passed before Sigi felt well enough to face the man who'd treated her with such unbelievable kindness. The memories of her life before the Three Trials still haunted Sigrun, however, often causing her to wake up in the middle of the night dripping with sweat and screaming for her father. Instead of coddling her as a helgus might have, Svanrige declared that if Sigi was going to interrupt his sleep then she could damn well do some work. Since being exiled from Ysmir nearly fifteen years ago, the warrior had decided to spend the rest of his life healing others, becoming the sole doctor in Beggar's Row. He'd done his best to take what little he knew of stormborn remedial techniques and adjusting them to incorporate the medicinal practices of modern Ghersland. Due to the sheer number of turf wars, muggings, and rapes that occurred in Beggar's Row, Svanrige was always busy trying to help someone. The stormborn offered Sigi a choice: she could either leave or earn her keep as his assistant. The girl chose to stay with her kinsman, though she initially found the work distasteful and the patients utterly deplorable. How many times did you have to get lover's pox before you stopped frequenting seedy brothels?

As the days turned to weeks and then to months, Sigi began to learn more and more of Svanrige's trade, her curiosity peaked by this warrior-turned-healer and his unusual approach to medicine. It felt surprisingly good to realize you had the knowledge to save someone's life. By the time she was twenty, Sigrun was practically running Svanrige's clinic and she never turned away a person in need. As long as they could pay in some form or another. The people of Beggar's Row were still destitute, but at least they had a place to go to receive treatment for whatever ailed them. A month or two after her twentieth birthday, however, Sigi began asking Svanrige questions about his time as a warrior. The older stormborn was flattered by this unexpected interest, but he quickly realized it was more than that.

She wanted to know what lay beyond Beggar's Row, beyond Highwall, beyond Ghersland.

Svanrige tried to ignore this new obsession, but he knew Sigrun well enough to know she wasn't going to let this drop. Besides, she was like a daughter to him, and she deserved to know the truth. A week before her twenty-third birthday, the wrinkled stormborn gave Sigi an old pistol and began training her in its use. The vrykul girl was reluctant at first, fearing the curse that would supposedly descend on children that dared to touch a firearm without passing the Three Trials first. Of course, ten years of living in the poorest district of Highwall had forced Sigi to do many things most of her kinsmen would've considered risky or foolish. With Svanrige's help and guidance, she learned how to properly handle the pistol over the course of a several months. During this period, Svanrige also began telling her stories about the world beyond Highwall, stories about the wonders of the United Isles. And then, on a cold night in the middle of winter, he sat Sigi down and told her about something called an avallach, a "homecoming offering."

If a vrykul managed to find a worthy avallach and bring it to the Moot they might be allowed to stay on Ysmir. Sigrun's mouth fell open and she started to speak, a smile lighting up her pale features, but Svanrige held up one thick, grubby finger. Wordlessly, he pulled off his jacket and undershirt to show Sigi his back, which was marked by three long, ropy scars. He told the girl that he'd brought three different avallachs to the Moot, and they'd rejected each one in the traditional manner. Putting his worn garments back on, Svanrige said he didn't want Sigrun to get her hopes up about returning home, but he thought she should at least make an attempt. He was too old for such things, but she was young. Maybe she could succeed where he had failed.

Sigrun spent a week trying to think of a worthy homecoming offering, but she couldn't come up with anything. The Moot of Ysmir was comprised of the twelve richest and most well-informed men on the island. What could she possibly offer them that they didn't already possess? And then she read an article about the UIS Garrloch in a crumpled copy of the Highwall Herald. Running back to the clinic with the newspaper in her hand, she asked Svanrige if something she found while aboard this ship might appease the Moot. The gray-haired stormborn nodded once, his face tight with a mixture of sorrow and joy, before going into his backroom. He emerged a few moments later with a burlap sack full of money he'd been saving since Sigi's twentieth birthday and a canvas doctor's bag with some basic herbal remedies inside. Svanrige told her she could leave whenever she was ready. The vrykul girl hugged her guardian, her teacher, her friend and said she'd go in the morning.

And she did, embarking on an arduous journey to Canth, the island where the Garrloch was docked. She was ready to go home, no matter the cost.

The Adaptable Brain
At birth, the portion of the brain that deal with vision, hearing, and all other senses are connected. As a sighted child continues to grow up, these connections begin to separate themselves from one another, until eventually independent centers in the brain control each of the different senses that a person can use. In a blind infant however, these connections might remain intact, and the job of processing sound might be shared by both the visual cortex, as well as the auditory processing centers. If a person loses his/ her sight during childhood or adulthood, the connections might have already been separated because myelin (the fatty sheath surrounding affected nerves) develops rapidly in the very young.

Neuro-Imaging
Research into blindness has found that while regions in the brain that deal with vision are smaller in blind individuals than in that of those who still have their sight, other non-visual areas are increasingly larger. Looking into the brain's potential to adapt after blindness, researchers have found that blindness causes structural changes in the brain, indicating that the brain may reorganize itself functionally in order to adapt to a loss in sensory input; the area's in the brain dealing with memory, hearing, and other senses becoming enlarged in an attempt to compensate for the fact that the person can no longer see.

Echolocation
A blind person can become quite adept at using echolocation (identifying an object by the sound or echo that it makes) while moving through the world around him/ her. Children or babies that are born blind use extra hand movements as they crawl, slapping the floor around them to create a kind of auditory and sensory feedback. The use of reflected sound by blind children helps them to explore and manipulate aspects of the sound world, other visually impaired individuals may make clicking noises to note the changes in sound as the distance between them and different obstacles shift; this can also be seen in animals such as dolphins and bats.

Using Touch To Explore The World
The largest area of the brain's surface is devoted to the hand and the sense of touch, the skin being the largest organ of the body allows us to use this sense to the fullest, and the blind child is a "sensation" of information. Many blind individuals can feel changes in temperature as they near a window, wall, and other objects, relying on their enhanced sense of touch to help them explore the world around them.

A Deeper Vision
Before the invention of non-invasive neuro-imaging, people could only speculate and look on in awe at the increased abilities that those who were blind seemed to posses. The well-known painter, Pablo Picasso explored the nature of blindness during his "Blue Period", some claiming that he was able to find an intensity of other senses in his depiction of the blind. Researchers state that what you lose in one place, you gain elsewhere, reinforcing the idea that other senses are not only affected but also enhanced by blindness.