How's this:
Bornea. An inconspicuous archipelago in the middle of seemingly nowhere, circled by the vast ocean. As dull as it may seem, a legend has been passed on for centuries by the local tribes, the legend of the people of the sea.
The myth speaks of wandering soulless bodies who hadn’t received the proper ritual, thus being unable to proceed to the afterlife. These corpses haunted the living and invaded boats years after their own death, hoping to drag them into the depths. Of course, this was just a legend, and these creatures were merely a way to convince children the sea was dangerous.
Four years ago, two groups of people came to the archipelago to settle themselves. On one hand, the colonists, in search of new land, gold and precious spices. On the other hand, pirates, willing to be at home far from the eyes of authorities, somewhere that was unheard of. The war lasted for weeks, neither side backing down. Anyone who got out of their ships to get to the land was immediately shot down by the enemy. Eventually, both sides, tired of fighting and out of food and water, agreed to take one side each.
The colonists, preferring land, took the north, rich in resources. The pirates, more fond of the sea, took a smaller but warmer set of small islands to the south, where they could hide treasures, open a business or hide.
More recently, the tension being almost totally gone, the two sides began to communicate and started selling things to one another, the colonists selling raw materials, cattle and produce, while the pirates gladly gave gold, various other riches and maps in exchange.
However, since a few days ago, there have been numerous disappearances throughout the sea, boats that never reached destination nights with a clear sky, shipwrecks washing up with no signs of corpses anywhere, people claiming to have heard strange noises when sailing. Each side blames the other, resulting in small conflicts here and there, some people refusing to leave the coasts. Left and exiled somewhere to the west, the locals seem to be the only ones to know what’s going on.
(the creatures are obviously the drowned)
