Sunken Expanse
The Massive, Haunted, Gyrating Ocean at the Heart of Waking Materia
The Sunken Expanse is the enormous, gyrating, slightly bulging mass of haunted ocean at the centre of the plane of Waking Materia. The only landmasses that remain on the plane are the upland peripheries on its outskirts. It is the result of a bizarre and catastrophic event known as The Deluge, where millions of tonnes of demon-infested brine welled up seemingly from Materia's centre and radiated outward in a literal explosion of storms and tsunamis, destroying or submerging nearly two thirds of the plane.
Properties
The Expanse is filled with all manner of wildlife, both mundane and monstrous, with the uncanny, likely Duskscape-aspected behemoths called kaiju at the apex of the food chain. (Though experienced teams of humanoid monster hunters—particularly cedas of the Stormlords—can hunt and kill kaiju, the fatality count is still very much in the sea monsters' favour.) In addition to the dangers of the kaiju, the Expanse is also riddled with bizarre and erratic weather phenomena, making distant nautical travel on Materia almost impossibly dangerous. Even short sails between nearby islands is much riskier than most planes in the Mareltian Universe.Travel
The above notwithstanding, things are slowly changing. As the Veil between Waking Materia and the Duskscape weakens into the Early Third Age, the Expanse is receding, not only revealing new landmasses but also creating new nautical routes, less exposed to the dangers of the haunted oceans. As such, exploration has increased and cultures are once again interacting after centuries of isolation.
To be sure, travel is still extremely dangerous, and the most skilled of ships' escorts are well-compensated in most cultures. These escorts are often weather- or travel-based mages called cedas, usually stormblooded sorcerers or clerics of the Stormlords, Ronom & Ranarim. Occasionally evil clerics of the goddess of sea monsters, Shelas Ob'Silexia, will also act as cedas, instead acting to placate or even recruit kaiju to keep host ships safe. Demand for their services alone makes the Silexians one of the more common, even tolerated, evil-aligned cults on the plane.Geography
Material navigation is generally measured by two axes:
- Degrees of rotation from a reference point, which is usually clockwise from the mysterious, basalt-tower islands of Stargrave (effectively '12:00' on a standard Earth clock). Clockwise is always called "West" and Counterclockwise is always called "East";
- Horizontal distance from the central point of the Sunken Expanse, until reaching the Void at the outskirts of the plane.
To give an example, the Ruskanseyrie in Valamon City is about 290° clockwise from Stargrave and about 822 km from the centre of the Sunken Expanse (and therefore the centre of the plane). Thus its location could simply be written as simply as {290 / 822} or something similar. If one travels Clockwise from a given point, they are traveling "Westward", and "Eastward" if Counterclockwise. If one travels inward toward the centre of the Expanse, they are traveling "Coreward", and "Voidward" if traveling the other way. These may be combined, e.g. "Voideastward" or "Corewestward".
Rule
The Sunken Expanse is allegedly "ruled" by the insane god Ina'ut (sometimes called Ina'ut-in-Mourning in its current form), however theology varies considerably on what this actually means.
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