Black Veil Island

Black Veil Island is an island within the Grafcanal in Ketterdam. Now abandoned, it housed the tombs of the city's wealthy.

Layout

Black Veil was an eerie place, a miniature city of white marble mausoleums, many carved into the shape of ships, their stone figurehead sweeping as they cut across an invisible sea. Some bore the stamp of Ghezen’s Coins of Favor, others the three flying fishes of Kerch that indicated a member of the family had served in the government. A few were watched over by Ravkan Saints in flowing marble robes. There was no sign of Djel or his ash tree. Fjerdans would not want to be interred above the earth, where they could not take root. Almost all the mausoleums had fallen into disrepair, and many were little more than piles of slumped rock overgrown with vines and clusters of spring flowers. - Matthias Helvar, Crooked Kingdom

Black Veil is an island tucked into Beggar's Bend in Grafcanal. The island's microclimate keeps the island shrouded in shifting mists, and it is rumored to be haunted. The banks of the island are steep, except for a shallow sandbar that abuts the island where gondels must take care not to run aground. The island features twisting white willow trees and the ground is covered in vines.

The Crows' hideout for the first half of Crooked Kingdom is a large tomb in the center of the island, shaped like an ancient cargo ship's hull. It has stained-glass portholes that cast rainbows on the crypt floor in the late afternoon; on the walls are carvings of palm trees and snakes indicating that the family had been spice traders. Only one vault in the mausoleum is occupied by a corpse. The Crows set up a table and chairs in the stone hull of the tomb. At the opposite end of the entrance is a catacomb. To the right of their hideout, there is a tomb with a big broken mast atop its structure.

History

More than a century prior to the events of Crooked Kingdom, Black Veil ceased to be used due to the first city-wide plague, when the Merchant Council banned the burial of the dead within city limits. There was talk about reopening Black Veil, but the fear of contagion after the Queen Lady's Plague put a stop to the motion.

Crooked Kingdom

Kaz Brekker and his crew use the island as a hiding place after they are double-crossed by Jan Van Eck. Whenever the Crows go off island, they do so in darkness, using their gondels hidden in the willows and wearing the costumes of the Komedie Brute. Kuwei Yul-Bo is forced to remain in the tomb on the island, and the only people besides the five Crows (minus Inej Ghafa) who know they hide on Black Veil are Rotty and Specht. When Jesper Fahey and Wylan Van Eck lead Colm Fahey away from a gunfight in the university district, they take him to Black Veil to meet the rest of the Crows before sending him to the Geldrenner Hotel.

While Matthias Helvar, Jesper, and Kuwei are in the tomb, they are ambushed by Dime Lions. They break the stained glass windows and launch canisters of poison gas to smoke out the boys, then attempt to blow open the tomb door. However, thanks to Matthias's military strategy, they escape from the tomb and run to an adjacent tomb. Drawing on the rumors that Black Veil is haunted, Jesper directs chemical powders to the Dime Lions' torches, coloring the flame, which Kuwei then spreads. To escape from the island, Matthias has Kuwei expand the flames from one of Wylan's hottest bombs into the shallowest part of the canal, and the three run across the sandbar to the main shore.