A is for Atilan

From the acquired volumes of Seneschal Aan arul’Drammi, illustrious servant to his eternal highness, Master of the Salt Seas, Lord of the Scorpion Towers, Light to the People, his most excellent Prince of Thirst...

“We know something of oceans, even here in the Salt Seas. The very name evokes images of white waves and vast, sparkling stretches from horizon to horizon, of many-manned schooners braving reaches weeks, even months, from the nearest port, and leviathans seen in glimpsed backs and fins too alarmingly huge to imagine fully surfaced. These images are quite accurate, save that our Salt Sea is quite literally the mineral, sifta as the People call it, in unimaginable quantity, given to a peculiar tide and occasional storms thanks to the pull of the Shattered Moon hung in pieces above all the Wild.

However on the First World, but a blue speck in our northeastern skies during the seasons of the Spring and Summer Courts, oceans consist of that most precious element, wasush, water. To imagine! All that crystal blue, that shifting green, the wet foams and bubbles, cool to touch, snaking over the sands of moistened shores, feet sinking, toes wiggling in the fine mud. Life more varied than we could imagine lurks within the deeps, creatures which breath it, others which keep air in their lungs for hours on end, still others that do not breathe at all! Though its wonders are not so amazing to some, and the naiads would surely berate me for my wonder (if not devour my legs and see if I might enjoy a swim in one), for the People water is more cherished than gold, sustainer of life, cultivator of green, and that which restores those suffering the withered madness of the Scorch.

One particular ocean holds as many stories as all the volumes of the great Ninga’Shizara! They call it Atilan, a timorous deep buffering all of western Othyr, from the jagged shores of ice clattering against the Northland cliffs (I will surely write a separate treatise on ice in the future, my friends, but for now be appeased with the notion it is the frozen or ‘cold solidified’ form of water) all the way to the teeming aquamarine tropics clouded with fish like strewn gems and coral reefs on the southern Sarsarks. Not even the lush greenlands of Annwn or Tuath could boast such a mighty sea, and I doubt there is such a thing as a true ocean in the Wild, rather lakes and meres and rivers of enormous scope, and yet put to shame by the saltwater behemoths.

Yes, oceans on Othyr possess salt, enough to prevent its safe drinking and ruin all green that drinks it, which has sparked my lord’s interest in the subject. And I shall say no more of it.

I came upon a short rhyme in my studies, going something like, “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink”. The native’s ignorance to proper distillation techniques is truly startling, is it not? A little glass, a lot of sun, and time could prove the whole of it drinkable, but, to their supreme leisure, they are possessed of just as many freshwater sources and favor casks and skins to the toil of honest separation.

To regale one with all the tales I’ve read of the Atilan would consume all the pages available to me, and no doubt bore my Prince, but I would say this...

The Atilan Ocean was not always so. In the time before the Wild, or any other world save the First sunned in the light of Gloraya, the land was whole, not unlike the connected realms of what this one understands as the Wild. They called it Pangeal. Its peoples, Men, Elves and Dwarves, and to lesser extents their children the Hobblings and Hav-Elves, lived in harmony, lifting great cities of gold and silver, and while it paled to the abundant majesty my Prince enjoys today, it was the stuff of legend. There was no lacking, no age or death.

Then came the ul’Shai, spawn of Shaitan, one a Black Mother whose infinite womb spawned horrors the worlds fear as demons today, and the other a Gray Father whose infinite fingers pulled on the limbs and hungers of the fallen, raising armies of the living dead, whose curse endures even now in the darker places of Creation. The Divni arg’Shai tore the very world asunder, destroying the unified realm into many fragmented continents.

Many civilizations were washed away in the chaos, among them the great dwarven empire of Grimtand, whose craftsmen forged weapons and armor for the gods themselves, and whose anvils felt the brilliance of glo’fiet, star-fire, and whose meteoric hammers produced enchantments which would leave even the cleverest hags wondering at their complexities. The mountains which served as walls to their immense citadels cracked, the very earth split, and the whole of the west tore away. Great tracts bearing Grimtandian cities and monuments turned skyward and sunk with much frothing and screaming into the swallowing Atilan, forever lost to the lightless bottom. Such impossible beauty, invaluable knowledge and ancient magic was lost.

Perhaps they were the lucky ones. Other fragments of Grimtand fell through the riven separations between worlds, aided, perhaps, by the last efforts by their Rune Kings to save their people. I have heard very little of the results, brief scribblings in tomes and texts, of how these peoples were stranded on shores dark and terrifying. I shall say no more of it.

The Atilan Ocean, much to Man’s shame, has never been fully explored. Were the People able, they would sail with singleminded purpose of reaching opposite shores, no matter the cost! And we would succeed, though many have tried, Liscari and Tolernans seeking new challenges to best, Gloriandelines seeking foreign freedom, Citadeleans seeking remnants of their former glory. The only real headway was achieved by Othyr’s most feared population, reflections of the Morroi Deargd, the vampires.

In the days of the Othyrian Night War, the spirit most unclean and first son of the Gray Father, Rathven the Hunger, commanded his armies to spread across the First World and convert all into living death. Many marched with him against the mortal races, causing untold horror and birthing creatures the worlds suffer still today. Yet even he was defeated, by the most beloved son of Gloraya, Highking Gloriandel, whom all elves revere, and even the People bow their heads in the memory. He summoned a great storm, aided by elder dragons, giant kings and sorcerers of old, which obliterated all in its wake and imprisoned that which endured in the dread Saspish Vale. But not all of Rathven’s forces moved by land, there were ships, evil ships, whose sails were stitched flesh and boards painted in blood, which sought a waterway to pierce the heart of Othyr. Before they could find such a river, Gloriandel’s storm threw them off course, in a hurricane that endured weeks, and which destroyed many of their armada. There were survivors, which landed on a fragment of Pangeal that had survived, a verdant jungle comparable, they say, to the primeval fecund of Juok.

Tirbukk they called it, ancient vampire for ‘second conquest’, though it wasn’t any difficult claim. They found a dead city waiting for them, breathtaking and empty, devoid of any remains, despite an impressive network of catacombs below. And in the jungles beyond them a tribe of Pig-Me’s, pig-headed phooka perhaps, which offered themselves up freely as a slave race. Apparently blood sacrifice utop pyramids to creatures of great power had long been a tradition to the Pig-Me’s, and worship suited the vampires just fine. My studies show they thrive on Tirbukk to this very day, in the dead city renamed Vadenja, and despite their scholars' best efforts, who or what lived in the jungles before them, former object of Pig-Me worship, eludes them still. Just another mystery, like another bauble pinned in the Atilan’s flowing hair, a point of pride and beauty.

Oh the mysteries of the ocean! Tirbukk’s discovery gives this one hope yet other shards of Pangeal endure, somewhere out on that blue immensity. So many more tales, of an island dominated by giant lizards of the ancient past, of sunken doors that rise when the stars are right, of whole civilizations beneath the waves, civilizations the naiads and the nixies do not speak of to the People. This and more above and below that rolling frontier, the Atilan Ocean."