From the Introduction:
Why an Alternate Ierendi Gazeteer?
The original Ierendi Gazeteer has a variety of problems with it, the biggest being that it leans too much on pop culture references and on the existence of a tourist trade that seems implausible given the condition of the nations around it; Mystara has plenty of room for humor, but it just seems to go a little too far in that direction. Only Alphatia could really sustain the level of tourist visitation necessary to make it function as it does and it's too far away, beyond Thyatis, to get many Alphatians.
This is an effort to recast Ierendi more in lines of a cross between Hawaii and the Caribbean in the Age of Piracy taken seriously, though hopefully not stodgily. This is a rather darker vision of Ierendi than the standard, but hopefully a playable one.