Long Sea V Mountains
East of East Colassia's eastern shores there is an undersea mountain range that is roughly parallel to the coastline. West of West Colassia's western shores there is mountain there is an undersea mountain that is roughly parallel to the coastline. These two mountain ranges come together in a V. The mountains bulge and bunch a bit at the point of the V.
The Long Sea is the second least most most populated sea besting only the Dark Sea which is both much smaller and much colder.
The Long Sea is long, but it's also quite deep, most of the ocean floor receives no sunlight at all, and the Long Sea has very few life giving chemical at the bottom of the sea. This means very few advanced lifeforms can survive on the sea floor, usually but the V mountains bring the sea floor much closer to the surface along its full range.
The Long Sea is mostly populated by nomadic tribes of Merfolk and Karakhai with few supposedly civilized Scaraquans. Almost all non-nomadic or semi-nomadic sea peoples that live in the Long Sea dwell on or near the V Mountains.
The Scaraquans of the Long Sea have access to resources on the V mountains that they don't have elsewhere: mineral resources, a higher variety of sea plants, and fish and other aquatic beasts attracted to these sea plants. They can also build (relatively modest) permanent structures here.
The V-dwellers are generally wealthier and better equipped than most other Scaraquans in the Long Sea, but compared to the underwater civilizations of the Inner Ocean and even the Sea of Taedi, the V dwellers are both noticeably resource poor and more than a little technologically backwards.
The V dwellers are not an especially unified group. They have some group identity with each other, and they often cooperate and trade with each other, but they also are almost as likely to quarrel and fight with each other.
Also, some the V dwellers have peaceful trade agreements with nomadic swimmers from the rest of the Long Sea, and sometimes the V dwellers are fending off raids from these nomads.
The Oshamni Empire has probed the V for a potential conquest, but they have suffered some embarrassing military defeats here.
This has convinced most Oshamni that expanding into the Long Sea, either outside or inside the V is a waste of time and resources, so a lot of groups on the outs with the Oshamni Empire have migrated to the V Mountains though a few especially bold or desperate Oshamni merchants swim these waters.
What do Scarterrans know about the V Mountains?
Not much. If a ship with a deep bottom is sailing across the Big V they might scrape the top of a mountain during low tide but this is unlikely and they are even less likely to get stuck or damaged. More likely, a sailor near the deck might look into the water and notice a relatively shallow spot in the Long Sea, known for generally being very deep but they won't deduce that there is a giant mountain underneath them. There is not a lot of ship traffic over the Long Sea, so not enough sailors and cartographers from different ships and nations have compared notes to let them deduce that "these random shallow areas" are part of an inconceivably long V-shaped mountain range just barely out of their range of sight. The overwhelming majority of commercial sea traffic occurs in the Inner Ocean because this is where sea traders can find the most demand for their services. the Long Sea is only slightly more dangerous to sail than the Inner Ocean but it is a lot less profitable, so you don't see many sailing routes traversing it. There are some sailors that will traverse the Long Sea between the eastern shore of East Colassia (mostly controlled by the nation of Kahdisteria and the western shore of West Colassia (mostly controlled by nation of Kantoc, but there are not many sailors taking this route. Relations have improved in recent years, but relations between Kantoc and Kahdisteria are not especially warm, so they don't have much interest in trade, but there is some trade. Sailors from Elven Empire and Colassian Confederacy can and occasionally sail the Long Sea as part of a long distance trade venture but both of these groups are fighting a sort of cold war with the dark elves of Kahdisteria so any trading ship has a small but real risk of running into a hostile dark elf warship or team of privateers. Likewise, an unarmed Kahdisterian vessel might bump into a rival warship or team of privateers sponsored by one of their enemies. The danger of rival warships is exaggerated somewhat. Scaraquans living in the Long Sea V Mountains are on average, more xenophobic than Scarquans living in the Inner Ocean. Occasionally, Scaraquans here will sink a Scarterran ship crossing near their settlements either out of paranoia or to loot the sinking vessel. When a Scarterran ship is lost due to Scaraquan aggression, the loss is often blamed on enemy warships or bad weather. Sometimes, Scarterran sailors have successfully fought off Scaraquan attacks and lived to tell about it, but this has not happened often enough for Scarterrans to deduce a pattern along the V. Ships on the Long Sea are still occasionally attacked by nomadic Scaraquans by outside the V, so any attack near the V just looks like random attacks from hostile Scaraquans endemic to the Long Sea. Not all of these attacks are lethal and involve Scarterrans drowning. The seas above and near the V Mountains are teeming with fish and the locals don't want to share with surface dwellers. They will frequently sabotage the fishing nets of any Scarterran vessels near their territory. They are subtle enough that it usually looks like the net damage is from natural causes and not Merfolk saboteurs.
Type
Mountain Range
Location under
Included Locations
Related Ethnicities
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