After the Breaking of the World, the single landmass was no longer anchored to the world’s core, so the eight separated Isles began to move within the shift cycle, a process similar to our plate tectonics.
With their political borders no longer connected, the Isles are each surrounded by ocean, and the shift cycle either sends the lands so far apart that there is no other land in sight from any coastline, or brings them together in a Collision, similar to our earthquakes.
The motion of the Isles is slow but steady, and after decades of close monitoring, the Agori managed to record the pattern of the cycle, thus making the locations of each of the Isles predictable down to the second and to the inch. When it comes to navigation, the majority of the world has to rely upon those tricky and precise calculations, but the Agori have since developed satellite technology, giving them live global positioning systems, thus rendering the complex mathematics obsolete (though they are still taught as a backup in case of satellite failure).
G.R. LYONS, AUTHOR 