"It may look pretty safe, especially from your little rowboats. Remember though, that even if you avoid the rocks that stick out of the water, more lay just below the surface. Those ain't the only things waiting either. Chachren's beast, his rage manifest, waits there to swallow intruders whole."
The Anger of the Gods
When the
Heart of the Sky chose another over him,
Chachren's rage brought him to punish her and also the people of the
Geetan Archipelago who worshipped her. He cursed
Astrenza into the form of a fish and destroyed several ships turning their crew into sharp rocks preventing passage by ships.
While
Astrenza eventually regained her true form the people who were cursed remained so - not even the
Astrensea, the tears of the goddess herself, could wash away their misfortune. Still in the present the dangerous region remains, now called the Hulltear Spines, and any sailor with a sense of self preservation gives it a wide berth.
The Long Way Around
The Spines don't prevent travel from the
Salt Flats to
Seaside but instead force vessels to take the longer route on the skyward side of the
Astrensea that goes around the larger islands of the
Geetan Archipelago.
Over the years many have attempted to find a way through the Hulltear Spines, to make navigable the old passage would ensure one's place in history. There is no known route but there is one ship that made it. In 32EX - as part of that year's
Salt to Stern competition - the
Lady Jubilant became the first vessel to successfully make it through the Spines though the captain and crew would never tell anyone how they did it. Few members of the crew remain most having passed away from age in the intervening years to the present. Before long they will all have taken their secret to the grave.
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Every Spine a Grave
Sailors say that every time someone loses their life in the Spines they become a new pillar of rock and the hazardous region grows in size.
If one could swim all the way down to the bases of the stone spikes the legends say that they will find the faces and bodies of the sailors contorted in agony as their bodies were stretched upwards from the seafloor - see the pain in their faces forever engraved in stone.
"Chachren was a jealous god and in a fit of anger he punished many who loved she who scorned him. Ships and people all lost and those who relied on them struggled to eat back at their homes."
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