The Ocean

The greatest expanse known to humankind is the ocean itself--but despite inhabiting it for 12,000 years and worshipping it for almost that long, humans know very little about it. Although Tideriders are intimately familiar with its surface currents and winds, the old beliefs of the Deeps as the place where the dead reside have resulted in widespread reluctance to investigate below keel depth.

Geography

The only known border of the ocean is the Long Coast of the Vastland. Every other piece of land touching it has been circumnavigated, leading to the assumption that the ocean is limitless in all other directions. Portions of the ocean are identifiable by name, such as the Inside Sea, the Cluster's Mouth, and the various Gaps, but the ocean as a whole has no name other than simply "the ocean". Near the Vastland are a few scattered atolls, much less in number than during the Oceanic Era. Farther east, over what used to be known as the Great Gap and is now the Western Gap, lie the Cluster Islands, an actively volcanic archipelago that is now arguably the center of human civilization.

History

The River Culture migration reached the Long Coast approximately two hundred years before the beginning of the Oceanic Era. That timeframe is estimated based on old navigational maps and charts. The earliest maps of the ocean near the Long Coast on record claim to be copies of previous ones, and depict atolls that no longer exist, with long-established settlements on them. Records of trade from the vastland refer to those island settlements existing at least as long ago as 400 Oce. The maps' notations of water depth suggest boats were guided by Tide Readers rather than by stars at the time the original maps were made. Similarly, the earliest known star chart makes reference to changes made to an even older version due to the shifting location of a star that was at the time near the sky's rotational axis, placing the time of the older chart at about 600 Oce.

The last two hundred years have seen a resurgence in ocean exploration. Voyages into the various Gaps have revealed several previously unknown islands, some with new animal species of considerable intelligence. It is likely that the future will see even more ambitious voyages to determine whether the ocean does, after all, have boundaries.

Type

Ocean