The Green Sea

When describing something as “supernatural” we draw attention to qualities that exceed the natural world. While the Green Sea is still a highly fantastical world, to call it “supernatural” would be a disservice to one of its guiding themes. Nature, and its many personifications (which we often see ourselves as disconnected from), is the single most powerful force that we come into contact with on a daily basis. It feeds us, it fills our lungs, it shapes our cities and finds new ways to grow in all spaces we make. Despite this we often see ourselves as shepherds to it, herding and destroying as we see fit.   The Green Sea is a setting that asks the reverse, “What if nature did to humanity what we so often do to it?”. This is a setting of the “Overnatural”, a world that over-adheres to the laws of nature in exaggerated ways. Here, the forests cut down humanoids with vines made of razor sharp needles, emit sap full of symbiotic bees to sting at those that wish to tap it, and mortalkind must persevere between the roving territories of gargantuan over-evolved predators. In this world, the enemy is a silent one. A force always present and always growing, with machinations spoken only in a language of leaves. The smallest trees in the Green Sea grow to a height of 500 feet, the circumference of their trunks in excess of 150-200 feet. The largest tree ever recorded was 7 miles high from where the trunk exited the ground, easily piercing the treeline with mile long leaves that unfurl from the trunk at midday to soak up sunlight and cast shadows so wide, it blocked out the sun for hundreds. Nature comes in familiar and strange forms, but all dwarf mortalkind 20 fold over. The trees have long since consumed all standing bodies of fresh and sea water, growing into the places where trenches once stood. They in return flood the world with incredible volumes of oxygen and water vapor from stomata that plume like smoke stacks, making only the highest mountain peaks in the world habitable for mortalkind to live without the aid of oxygen filters. The deeper one ventures into the sea below, the higher the oxygen content, until every breath becomes a battle that inevitably will end in delirium, hallucination, and death.   The trees in this world grow incredibly quickly, some of the 500 foot trees when cut down have been found to be in possession of a single ring. This boon of speedy growth extends to all wild plantlife. It isn’t uncommon to return to a mountain face and find the terrain completely changed after just a few week’s time. Others have reported instances where trees sprung up from the ground so quickly, that one could blink and find themself looking at wood where at one point there was none. The increased growth and vitality given to the trees extends to the animals that roam the base of their trunks and fly in the sky above. Most animals sport forms similar to ones we know, adapted to the higher content of oxygen. It is considered common to see bears three times the size of a mortal, or a deer double the expected size with horns growing all along its spine. Yet as one ventures deeper into the woods and the oxygen increases, the larger and increasingly mutated creatures become. Sporting more horns, quills, and horns growing from the quills, covered in exploding warts full of acidic pus, shedding skin that breaks into dust sized particles and changes color based on airborne chemical emissions to create hallucinatory visions to lure prey- nature is never ending in the tricks it will employ. Ever Evolving, creatures outgrow mortalkind as they compete with predators and environmental changes, manifesting adaptations that makes every encounter with a beast unique.   Most importantly, all beasts in the Green Sea are omnivorous. Though some may prefer plants to animals, all can and will consume mortals- and creatures of this size are always hungry. We name things to distinguish them from others, but when the concept of a civilization exists in only one place, you just call it what it is-Abhaile, Home. Abhaile [Uh-Wah-lay] is the Stone city of 1,500 years, a city of 80,000 people corralled into 3 square miles of land at the top of an enormous mountain peak. Its people look out from crumbling towers over a sea of roiling clouds that gently mask the canopy below.   Abhaile has only survived thanks to a species of horizontally growing trees known as the Barrier Woods. These trees grow straight out of the mountain face directly beneath the city, their roots carving deep into the stone. The roots of this species intentionally burrows towards others of its kind, interlocking roots deep in the mountain for additional support. This iron-like tangle has a two fold effect; they prevent other root-borne trees from digging up to the mountain's peak, but they also prevent mortal excavation further into the mountain. No tool produced has ever matched the strength of the Barrier Woods bark, forcing all exploration to be surface level. In addition, the branches of these trees grow into tough thickets, preventing other trees from thriving in their shade and blocking the path of animals looking for an easy meal.   Abhaile has a saying in a tongue long forgotten, that was later updated to the current Abhailian tongue in the Saga of Lost Teeth by Graínn Farseid in 1020:   “Stone, Wood and Spirits, our founding Three. If it cannot be made from this, then it simply cannot be.”.   Since the beginning of recorded history, Abhaile has struggled to acquire any advantage over the wilds below, but with limited resources they have had to become creative to survive. Making wooden weapons as hard as the metals they lack using a centuries old smoking technique. Utilizing a berry that grows on charmed mistletoe to satiate their hunger to make up for the food they must carefully and slowly grow, lest it grow wild and consume the city itself. Developing specialized techniques to take down Beasts 3-8x their size, mortalkind has always struggled to survive, and somehow they always have succeeded. The Saga of Lost Teeth ends in the phrase:   “To inscribe my challenges to stone Before I find Pale Wood Bless. As I peel to ash and pass, Finding beetle heart in beetled rest.”.   The story teller Vrashati in 930 describes to the reader "The World Before was an inverse of ours. They could tame trees as if it was their birthright, grew metal spikes to scrape the clouds untouched by sugar, and conjured food from free space. They were a world Post-Want".   Abhaile is not the first civilization to exist on this world. The crumbling ruins that float in the Sea whisper of a world now known only in myth to the people of Abhaile. A people who lived in a “Post-Want” society. Whether or not that claim is true is unknown, but it is known that the world was not always held hostage by nature-and someone must be to blame for the world's current state. Even past this however, Abhaile has forgotten its own past countless times. The city clings to its history as best it can but people wonder just how long before they forget who they were once more. Will there be anyone to remember them?         This is a tragic world still recovering from the apocalypse of wood 1500 years ago, and thus their knowledge has declined, limiting the technology they can create with magic. It is often stated "If it cannot be made from stone or wood, it is made from magic. If that fails, it cannot be made at all." In this world, mortalkind is not the apex predator, that role is played by a passive all encompassing enemy-the trees that encroach ever closer with each passing season.