Endless Sea

  The Endless Sea, also called the Ocean, the Cosmic Waters, and Apsu, is an infinite saltwater ocean that surrounds the Morning Realm. The further out from the continent, the deeper the seabed, until it eventually becomes too deep to measure. Some speculate that far enough out, there is no bottom. Plateaus, sea mounts, trenches, and underwater floating islands interrupt this trend.   There has been no sighting of another continent, but the arrival of the halfling Seasteader Fleet around 380 WE suggests there may be other realms somewhere far across the ocean. The evidence is not strong, the halflings aboard the Seasteader Fleet could not recall any former home, only that they had lived upon the ships for generations.   The Cosmic Waters contain many great dangers, especially further out from the realms. Leviathans, sea serpents, and krakens are only some of the dangers that lurk in these impossibly large waters.  

Depths

  The depths of the Endless Sea are generally divided into three zones based on illumination: Sunlight Zone, Twilight Zone, Midnight Zone, and the Abyss.  

Dangers of the Depths

Water pressure increases as the depth increases, and conversely, the temperature decreases. Both can prove dangerous to divers. As most humanoids cannot breathe underwater, many are forced to hold their breath or use magic. Recasting a badly constructed waterbreathing spell while deep underwater can cause severe internal trauma as the pressurized gas is simply too much for the lungs when it expands.   Body heat is also lost much faster in water, and hypothermia is a real risk for divers.  
Objects and Water Pressure
MaterialDestructive Depth
Glass, crystal, ice 100 ft.
Wood, bone 500 ft.
Stone 1,000 ft.
Iron, steel 1,500 ft.
Mithral 2,000 ft.
Adamantine 2,500 ft.
 

Sunlight Zone

The Sunlight Zone is the topmost layer of the ocean, where the sunlight levels matches that of the world above sea. It extends to a depth up to about 650 ft, depending on the clarity of the water.   Most of the life in the Endless Sea exists in the Sunlight Zone. As life here dies, it sinks as marine snow to feed the zones below.  

Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone is beneath the Sunlight Zone. A dull dim light suffuses the Twilight Zone during the bright day, and darkness claims it when the suns dwindle. It is between 650ft to 1000ft deep.  

Midnight Zone

Sunlight never reaches below 1000ft. The beings that exist in the midnight zone may have no knowledge of the sun whatsoever. What has surfaced was eldritch-looking: pale, translucently so, with bulging eyes.  

Abyssal Zone

The pressure of the Abyss swells to intense degrees, until it doesn't. Patches of the Abyssal Zone are weightless rathed than weighted, and strange underwater dust storms swell.

Endless Sea

 
TypeOcean

Starfalls and Godfalls


When a star falls into the Endless Sea it distorts the waters around it and creates a complex localized ecosystem as it falls. The magic changes the waters in strange and unpredictable ways. Some have reported Starfalls where any spells cast caused flares of wild magic, one where the water becomes magically breathable by all, and another where the water begame gelatinous and thick enough to walk on. A Starfall lasts for about a month until the depths claim it for good.   Far out at sea, Godfalls from ages past can still be found. They can be recognized by blooms of golden ichor in the surface of the ocean. These pillars of dangerous ichor rise out from the corpse all the way from the depths.

Creatures of the Endless Sea




Comments

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Dec 22, 2021 11:11

Nice article. Really liking the different zones of the sea and especially that there is a weird abyss layer at the very bottom. How deep you can go with each material before it being destroyed was also a cool addition. :)   One remakr though, I don't know what you mean with this sentence :p perhaps accidental wrong order? "What as surfaced is eldritch-looking, pale, with bulging eyes and bioluminescence."

Feel free to check my new world Terra Occidentalis if you want to see what I am up to!
Dec 22, 2021 11:20 by Annie Stein

Thank you. Yes, that's a typo, I'll go fix it!

Creator of Solaris -— Come Explore!
Dec 22, 2021 11:48 by Amélie I. S. Debruyne

Oh it's fascinating that you have gods and stars just falling like that in the ocean! I need to know more about that, that ichor and the ecosystem that builds around it!   I also really like how your ocean is still very mysterious and seems so vast? I remember from your ship article that your ocean really spreads very far. Is your world actually a spherical planet of is it flat and without end? Do the ocen floor really goes deeper and deeper without end at all???

To see what I am up to: my Summer Camp 2024.
Dec 22, 2021 12:00 by Annie Stein

Thank you so much! I definitely want to write more about ichor eventually! So much to do!   The world is not a planet, it's a single continent floating in this ocean that stretches out infinitely wide. I wrote about the cosmology, and I'll attach the article below for you! I imagine that when you travel out far enough, the water truly is bottomless. I tried to suggest this with the Abyss almost becoming space-like at the bottom, that maybe it's as if the world eventually wraps around if you go deep or tall enough.  

Cosmology
Physical / Metaphysical Law | Oct 4, 2022

A mostly dead Creator floats in an Endless Sea. Stars dot the void above the Morning Realm, and underneath the Realms, deep down in the Cosmic Waters, the Abyss yawns.

Creator of Solaris -— Come Explore!
Dec 22, 2021 12:17 by Amélie I. S. Debruyne

ah yes, I read your cosmology but couldn't remember the details, sorry :p You did well with the implications in this article and I just wanted to check. Infinitely deep and wide ocean is is really a cool concept, you can have so much stuff going on under there with nobody knowing about it!

To see what I am up to: my Summer Camp 2024.
Dec 23, 2021 01:29

Cool article! I like your description of the different zones and debt descriptions! I'm curious about the Godfalls and Starfalls. How often do they happen? Do they only hit the sea, or do they occasionally hit the continent as well? Do people try to travel there to see these things for themselves? Or is it impossible?

Check out my On the Shoulders of Giants article: Satlonia
Dec 23, 2021 11:05 by Annie Stein

Thank you! Starfalls and godfalls are very rare. There's never been any record of a sun/god falling, but the effects of what must have been a godfall have been found. There have been expeditions out, and one godfall is used as a landmark when navigating.   The sea is so much larger than the continent that it's far less likely to happen on land. A star falling on land would be a meteorite. Ichor has scarred parts of the landscape of the Morning Realm, but there's no dead god still bleeding there as there seems to be in the sea.

Creator of Solaris -— Come Explore!