Early in the history of the Underworld, several groups of Ferrymen set forth to explore the deepest regions of the Tempest. After several years of exploration, they returned to the Isle of Sorrows. There, these missionaries told the wraiths there of the Far Shores, where all the paradises of the afterlife were. These Ferrymen, afterwards called Shining Ones, became the leaders of the Far Shores, a separate organization within the original Stygian mechanism.