The Kauvetian Navy
The Kauvetian Navy is an organization that has existed since before the Age of Lavandin, though specific details about the founders and the time of founding were lost in the purge of records that followed the Lavandins' rise to power. It was originally formed as a coordinated attempt to chart the waters that lay beyond Kauvet's shores.
Prior to the Navy's formation, exploration efforts were funded by independent merchants looking into invest in the potential of new buyers who could be willing to pay a premium for the peninsula's unique goods. Few of these expeditions returned. Those that did found the ships battered to their limit, their sailors traumatized, and their efforts fruitless. Exasperated, these merchants petitioned the kingdom to put its resources toward investigating the waters. At best, they argued, Kauvet would have new avenues toward fiscal prosperity and, possibly, a way to expand its borders. At worst, the kingdom's scientists and officials could come to a better understanding of the bizarre, violent weather patterns that form a wall around the peninsula.
The leaders agreed, and formed a navy with three sub-organizations: the Observation Corps, the Exploration Corps, and the Protection Corps. The Observation Corps's mission was to float at the edges of Kauvet's safe waters, attempting to gather information on and find patterns in the winds and storms beyond. The Exploration Corps would use this data to plot courses and attempt to breach the storm wall into the waters beyond. And the Protection Corps would observe and patrol Kauvet's borders, prepared to face any threats that may come from the Exploration Corps making outside contact.
Members of the Navy were almost universally hailed as heroes immediately, as stories of the ocean's dangers had already made their way all the way inland. As engineers attempted to craft hulls that would withstand the ocean's storms, naval sailors were decorated with ceremonies, uniforms, and medals. After all, if they weren't recognized before they left, then there was a very real possibility that there wouldn't be a chance to recognize them at all.
The sentiment proved founded. The reinforced hulls still didn't stand a chance against the storms, and avoiding them was hopeless, as the storms actively defied observation. Observation Corps sailors would spend months watching the storms, finally mapping a pattern, only for that pattern to shift the moment an Exploration Corps ship sailed into their waters. Attempt after attempt to breach the wall failed, destroying countless Exploration Corps sailors and ships.
Recruitment for the Exploration Corps steadily dried up, with most sailors requesting placement in the Protection Corps and the Observation Corps's officer base sustained largely by curious recruits from the Perihelion Institute wanting to study the storms' magic properties. Eventually, the Exploration Corps was disbanded, its mission dismissed as hopeless. However, the ceremony and decoration granted to naval recruits remained, the top brass unwilling to give up on the decades of established tradition.
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