Azure Expanse
"The sea that remembers what mortals choose to forget"
The great ocean that dominates Arcadia's eastern reaches, whose tides answer to divine emotion as well as to the moon. It cradles the eastern coast of the kingdom of Atheria, whose fisherfolk and seafarers live by its bounty, and in its deepest trenches ancient leviathans dream.
The Living Ocean
The Azure Expanse washes the eastern shore of Atheria, the human kingdom that lies east of the Verdant Veil, and the sea is that kingdom's lifeblood. From the harbor of Freeport, Atheria's capital, weathered fishermen haul in nets of glistening silver fish while merchant ships rest at anchor with furled sails, hinting at journeys to faraway lands; the Atherians are renowned seafarers, their vessels dotting the horizon like seabirds on the wing. Atheria is called the breadbasket and fishmonger of the east, and even the reclusive Dawnseekers of the Verdant Veil, who will not clear their forest for farmland, send delegations across its waters to trade rare fruits and herbs for Atherian fish and produce. South along the coast lie the forest town of Rivenglade, whose ancient woods reach down to the water, and, further out to the southeast, the secluded island of Sommer Isle—known before the Divine War as the islands of Fayespire, home of the divine-blooded Vaelari.
Yet the Expanse is more than a body of water. Its tides answer to divine emotion: when the god of the moon and tides rejoices, the sea surges against the cliffs with unnatural force, and when the balance of the cosmos is disturbed, ancient creatures stir in its deepest currents. There, in the deepest trenches, swim the leviathans, dreaming dreams that would shatter mortal minds.
The wind remembers; the sea remembers. The ocean-bound bards who still sing to the dusk carry a mournful song they claim is older than the city of Atheria itself, passed down from the time when the land was still called Quenos, a quiet village by the sea where gods once walked beside mortals—the tale of Elodias, god of moon and tides, and the seven days he is given to love.
Denizens of the Deep
The ancient powers that dream in the deepest trenches of the Azure Expanse
Ancient Leviathans
Colossal creatures that swim in the deepest trenches and currents of the Azure Expanse, dreaming dreams that would shatter mortal minds, and stirring when the cosmic balance is disturbed. On rare occasions one beaches itself, its colossal body left to decay on the shore while no scavenger will touch it, and a temple claims the skeleton as an omen. Their bones seem to hold something of the creature's spirit—a loom crafted from leviathan bone pulses with faint internal light, as if that spirit remained trapped within its ossified remains—and it was on such a loom that the lunar seer Malritha wove fate itself.