The Deep Warp

The Darkest Storms

The risks? Certain.
The costs? Enormous.
Odds of catastrophic failure? Quite high.
The possibilitles? Endless.
And the reward? Even more so.

— Remarks attributed to Admiral Bak Daesun, F.O.C., Warp Fleet, on the potential of Deep Warp capable vessels.

The Warp, to say the least, is a rather dangerous place. Air that chokes and blinds with fog, waves that crash and tear, winds and storm ceaseless in their violent roaring. It takes courage, experience, professionalism, and a great deal of luck to make it through alive here, where the sky and sea are all intent on ripping you into your component essence and reducing you into nothing at all. Ships that sail these not-quite-waters have lifetimes in the handfuls of years, often less, due to the sheer toll exacted upon them.
The Deep Warp makes the rest of that hellish realm look the child side of a swimming pool.

The Hellsea

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On the whole, the vast magical realm known as @[The Warp] (location:3d752dfd-5de5-492a-b8b2-abf94b8a2c88) is divided into planes known as "Layers". Layers are distinguised by their "depth", itself measured in terms of the distance between the various Transit Zones on these layers. Serving as the only method of Inter-World transportation, there has hence been an unending pursuit for the ability to access ever deeper Layers, and so ever faster routes for the vast streams of trade and commerce. As technology developed, it once seemed as if shipping times halved every other year, as shipbuilders carried out a "race to the bottom", to be crowned the makers the fastest vessel possible.

Passage

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However, this great reward comes at an incredibly steep cost. The deeper one goes within the Layers of the Warp, the harder it fights back. Where in the shallower depths one can find at least a few places of respite from the harshest onslaughts, and often find a Contour] through which they'll find passage as smooth as a calm Worldly ocean, in more torturous layers of the Warp they would only find another vast wave to break upon or another tempest to dive into.
And in the Deep Warp? The hurricane and the cyclone could hardly compete with the Storms of the Deep, and while they may peter out or drift away, Warp Storms persist and linger in their churning might, proving impassable walls of fury to all comers. Waves, the tallest said to tower some 20 metres above the surface, are an endless occurence across the entire surface of these Layers, threatening to drag all around them into oblivion.

Entry

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And all this is assuming you are even able to enter the deepest depths of the Warp. A single Navigator, would already face great difficultry transiting across the moderately intense Layers, and still requires substantial technological aid to make the jump. To access the Deep requires teams of half a dozen Navigator at the least, manning advanced Warp Skippers, on a ship equipped with high grade Bender Bracing, Storm Shields and other such systems to pierce through the veil between the Layers and propel a vessel within them. To put it simply, there is known to only be but a single group that holds the key to this turbulent realm, and the United Commonwealth Navy is not one to share its prizes.

A Commonwealth Lake

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At present, and for the foreseeable future, the one and only force capable of exploiting the seascape of the Deep Warp is the United Commonwealth. They alone have the ships, the sailors, and the technology to bend and break the storm to their will, and they have made great use of it.
Even with the might of the Commonwealth put towards the Deep, access to it is still limited to a single class of vessel, the

Type

Dimensional plane

Location under

The Warp