The Nightward Skerries are a small cluster of islands off the western coast of Ektau. Explorers have been able to get a rough idea of their coastlines, none report any success with the few landing parties sent ashore for deeper exploration. Indeed, many ships that venture too close to the skerries never make landfall again. The precise nature of the danger is unknown, but only the most desperate or best-paid captains will dare sail within sight of the cursed islands.
Alehouse rumor cannot agree on the fate of the vanished ships. One opinion claims that the skerries are home to dragons or other flying beasts that can smash a good sailing junk like a ripe fruit. Others scoff, asking how dragons could possibly find plunder worth their interest in a handful of empty isles. Some mutter darkly of worse things, of rotten barques and bony captains and the true fate of the Night Kings who once tried to conquer the Ninefold Celestial Empire.
Whatever the cause, the skerries would be a valuable strategic base for Xian should they be taken. Shipping could bring troops and supplies by water to the western shore of the fertile great valley, and provide a base unassailable by the sea-shy goblinoids of the surrounding mountain ranges.