Wilderness Lair
Wilderness Lair was a safe place for sky pirates during the First Age of Flight. They would flee there during times of persecution and attack, and they would also gather there to organise for larger scale battles. When sky pirates met at Wilderness Lair the atmosphere was typically party-like, with people swapping stories and meeting old acquaintances once again.
Wilderness Lair was located vertically along the cliff-face beneath the Gloamglozer Rock in the northern Edgelands. The sky ships of the Leagues of Undertown couldn’t reach it because they weren’t built for it and their captains lacked the skill. Wilderness Lair was constantly bombarded by the eerie shrieks and howls of the Edgelands and by unpredictable winds from beyond the Edge. Sky ships docked at Wilderness Lair with the mooring-rings that were attached to the rock face or with their own grappling-hooks and fasting-spikes. Sky ships were linked together with gangplanks and rope-bridges so that people could walk from one ship to another, but the connections were often flimsy and risky to traverse in bad weather.
After the sky pirates scuttled their ships together in the Armada of the Dead, Wilderness Lair was abandoned. However, the mooring-rings still remained, with ropes, chains, and the shattered remains of sky pirates ships still hanging from them, even into the Second Age of Flight when the Third Great Migration passed by.
Role in the Edge Chronicles
In Cloud Wolf
In Cloud Wolf the sky pirate fleet led by Ice Fox gathered at Wilderness Lair before setting sail to participate in the Battle of the Great Sky Whale.
In the Quint Trilogy
In Clash of the Sky Galleons the sky pirates retreated to Wilderness Lair after a purge of sky piracy began. However, they soon abandoned the safety of Wilderness Lair to engage in the Battle of the Bringer of Doom.
In the Rook Trilogy
In The Last of the Sky Pirates, Twig, Rook, and seven banderbear volunteers journeyed to Wilderness Lair to retrieve the Skyraider, the last sky ship left with a flight-rock unaffected by stone-sickness, for the Second Attack on the Tower of Night. In Freeglader the path of the Third Great Migration passed by Wilderness Lair, and Rook was almost blown off of the cliff by a sepia storm right above Wilderness Lair.