The Great Storm

(...) And this sea (The Stormy Sea) is only navigable a few hundred miles out to sea, because something extraordinary happens there, since a great storm that never stops occupies a large part of the sea and it is impossible to get around it. Many people once tried to cross it, without success, as far as we know, and if anyone managed to cross it, they certainly never came back (...).

— Atlas of Toriël (written in the 7th century BP)

The Great Danger of the South Sea

Of all the great seas known to the inhabitants of Yeia, the Stormy Sea is the most famous for its perils. Ironically if you travel near the coast, you have the impression that it is a very calm sea with turquoise water and white sand beaches. But if you go deeper into it you'll see one of the most inexplicable phenomena in Yeia, the Great Storm. A gigantic, scary storm that never ends, that can be seen from the coastline and that is as wide as the whole continent of Teria.
Its area with incredible violent storms, hurricanes and some people say giants monsters that are said to be capable of swallowing an entire ship!. However, there are people (some would say brave, others, mad) that tried in vain to cross the storm or to go around it losing their lives in the process or being forced to return to the coast. Some of the later gave us useful descriptions of the events that happen inside the storm or very close to it.

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Description of the Storm

The first descriptions of the Great Storm dates from the 8th century BP by an elven sailor called Yarell of Orey who tried to sail across the storm but was forced to turn back almost losing his ship in the process:

We approached the storm, we could see clouds as dark as night and bright thunderbolts, we began praying to the goddess of Thunder for her protection and began sailing towards it. The day was sunny and clear, but as we get closer and closer to the storm the wind increased and the sea began to get a little rough.
We entered the storm, and that's when things got more dangerous. The waves were very strong and it started to rain. We could see the lightning bolts coming closer and closer to us, and some waves even looked like they were going to swallow us up. The winds were so strong that they seemed to push us towards the coast, so I decided to turn around and save both my boat and my crew.

— Extracted from Yarell's Diary

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In the 400s BP the Kingdom of the Green Elves send another expedition to try to study the Great Storm and try a possible a path to go around it. The fleet was commanded by one of the king's nieces, Telmari the Courageous. She sailed Westwards, along the coast, until the fleet reached Cape Gris, beyond the Parana River Delta. The fleet anchored in the port of Troypet, where it spent the winter, and then continued north towards the ancient Republic of Cragrade, where they obtained the necessary provisions and went further into the sea, but in vain, the storm continued to appear on the port side. And faced with the danger of winter coming and the sea freezing over, Telmari decided to return home.

Your majesty, We sailed the seas known to our ancestors as well as the northern regions where the humans live, we defied nature by going out into the great ocean, but the storm was still there and did not seem to end, the winds became more and more violent and pushed us inland, back to where we had come from. Because of this, my lord, I believe it is impossible for any ship or fleet to cross this storm, much less go around it, since its width is equal to or greater than that of the continent.

— Telmari's Report to the King of the Green Elves

200 years later Telmari tried to go the other way around, sailing to the East, but the outbreak of the Civil War in the kingdom as well as the Seris-Ikarian Intervention made it impossible to send another fleet.

by John Clark Ridpath

Telmari's plan was continued by an Ikarian navigator named Septimius of Vegus who, in 292 BP, commanded a fleet of 20 galleys and 5 carracks across the Inland Sea to the south seeking an alternative route to outflank the storm in that area. However, Septimius lost part of the fleet to the storm and powerful hurricanes, and only 5 galleys and 3 carracks made it back to the port of Blati. It was the greatest non-military naval disaster in Ikarian history.
From that moment on the Ikarian, and later on Blatian and Valian navies would not dare to try to go into the storm, preferring instead to sail around the coast of Seria and then head a little further out to sea, but still away from the storm to avoid the dark elf fleets.
But who knows? Perhaps if the storm does disappear in the future a daring Blatian admiral could explore the area and see what lies beyond.

The last attempt of crossing the Storm was ordered by the Stormitian King Nearchos I in 703 AP. This fleet commanded by a certain Lysias was composed on 30 carracks lightly built, without military equipment to be faster, but three ran aground near Cape Grey, another was struck by several bolts of lightning that damaged the rudder and sails, and another five were lost in the storm without a trace. Including the flagship and Lysias himself.
One of the captains of the surviving ships claimed that they had managed to get quite far into the storm but that the waves there seemed as high as the Lighthouse in the capital, Boria on the Delta, and that they decided to turn back. By the time they emerged from the storm, and to their amazement, they realized that they were off the coast of the Kingdom of the Green Elves, quite far from their homeland

Blatian carrack by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Mythological explanations for the origins of the Storm

During millennia, multiple peoples have tried to give an explanation to this unending storm since, to this day, there is no reasonable scientific explanation for it. The Storm is explained in the early Elven myths as a storm created by the Evil Spirit Pura to prevent Prince Arjuna from finding Princess Sita and being forced to return to his kingdom by the storm. According to this myth, Aryas, the god of wind, drove the storm out to sea, where it remains to this day.
An Oronai myth tries to explain the origin of the storm by saying that is was created by Zerah, goddess of Storm and Thunder either to protect the first Tieflings of Light from Khair, the god of evil and death, or to hide the prison where some Sphenetai (half-human, half-lizard monsters) were imprisoned after the War of the Gods from Khair, here the versions of the myth differ. Both the elven and the Oronai myths agreed that the storm was somehow created by very powerful magic.

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Is the storm weakening?

This is what some scholars and scientist at the Academy of Boria on the Delta claim. Although the storm seems to be dangerous as ever, the area of the storm is said to have been decreasing in the last 100 years, although many of the universities and scholars across Yeia have not confirm this statement yet .
If that is true then, the origins of the storm might be different from a supposed "magical origin", or it can be that the gods are slowly making the storm disappear because of unknown reasons.

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