Pocket Guide to the Empire, Third Edition: Thras

Thras
The Coral Kingdom has been a powerful antagonistic force against the Summerset Isle since before recorded time. As mentioned in an earlier section, the Sload may have at one time even called Summerset part of Thras. For millennia, the hulking, slug-like creatures, notorious for the necromantic mastery terrorized the Altmer, conjuring sea monsters along the coasts and laying siege to Skywatch. For naughty High Elf children, a mother's warning that the Sload will get them is enough to give nightmares for days. Yet, for all the horror and devastation that has come out of Thras, we know relatively little about the land itself.

The first maps we have from cartographers who sailed to Thras and returned to tell the tale show a group of sixteen islands, in a semicircle like a partially a submerged coral atoll. Over the centuries other maps have been charted by spies and the number and size of islands has varied, suggesting that the amphibious Sload have a volatile kingdom which fluctuates in land mass, either by the tides or some other, less natural means. The largest of the islands (called Agonio on the most recent maps) seems the most stable, though later maps show it considerably larger than earlier ones.

The true and permanent aspect of Thras, however, is not something mapmakers would know, merely by looking at the land above the surface. Many an Altmer has been captured by the Sload, and a few have escaped to tell of the brackish lagoon in the center of the island chain. There the buoyant creatures may move about with relative quickness and grace through an intricate network of coral formations and ancient shipwrecks.

The reach of Thras has been felt far beyond its own land. The Thrassian Plague which decimated Tamriel's population in the year 2260 of the First Era was their most egregious attack against the mainland, but other, subtler predations have also been recorded. When the Redguard came to Tamriel in 1E 808, they brought with them a tradition of burying their criminals on islands of their shore, to prevent their evil spirits from disturbing the living. The Sload took advantage of these graveyards off the coast, finding them suitable laboratories for their necromancy. The Redguards pushed back against the invaders, but reports of Sload living near settled lands from Stros M'Kai to Abibon-Gora have surfaced will into the Third Era.

In the past thirty years, things have been quiet in the western seas, and the hero of the Sload, the so-called King of Worms, Mannimarco has likewise ceased to trouble Tamriel. It may be that they slank back into their dark seas together. That is the more hopeful assumption.

Source: The Imperial Libary