Endless Blue - Week 05 - Elqua

Oceanography

Deceptively tranquil, the wide blue swaths of Elqua’s oceans belie a complex geographical system beneath the surface of the Endless Blue setting's water world.

This holomographic view (Mollweide projection) shows the scattered links of island chains on Elqua and areas of the Shore around them in cyan, a rough approximation of the Shoals in light blue, and the Shelf in deep dark blue. The intelligent races of the Endless Blue setting straddle these zones in a precarious attempt to not encroach on other’s territory, but still need their own room to grow. This tangled web-work of sub-aquatic sandbars and islands make the division of living space somewhat hazardous and quite complex.

The major geographical feature that can be seen is known as the Spine of the World, a series of mountain tops peaking out of the seas, forming several island archipelagos in an almost complete circle around the globe. Despite the continental drift of the eight major tectonic plates (and four minor), these chains of tiny islands are still roughly synchronous with the world’s planetary ring, fating these areas to an ever-present semi-green dusk known as the Sargasso Ring. This shadow does move slowly with the passage of time, but a clearly identifiable range has been determined by the natives, who live accordingly.

The arctic and Antarctic circles are defined by the 30° longitude (or represented with the sigil λ) from each pole. These mark the circle around Elqua where the sun begins to stay above or below the horizon for a full 24 hours. The southern circle is dominated by a massive polar icecap. A humongous permafrost monolith that nearly fills the Antarctic Circle, it is a solid slab of ice from surface to ocean floor, and acts like a barrier along the borders of the southern nations, preventing migration in that direction. Its northern parallel lacks a similar sheet of ice, but does have one of the world’s largest land masses nearly at the magnetic pole – an islet with an tapering peninsula pointing eerily, almost accusingly, toward the north pole…

At about 9° λ each are Elqua’s breath-taking aurorea, made much the more spectacular due to the high levels of noble gases in Elqua’s atmosphere that fluoresce greatly as the ionized oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere give off light, and can easily be seen from beneath the shallow waters of the Shore. The wavy, cascading undulation of the aurorae have been likened to gossamer seas overhead, and have been dubbed The Tides Above and The Currents in the Sky for the north and south poles, respectively. It is one of the few phenomena from above the waves that possess anything close to a positive association, in the face of the hellish damnation that Elquan religions have reinforced in the populace.

The tropics of Cetacean and Kraken lie at approximately 64° λ. The Tropic of Cetacean is the line of longitude that circles the globe at the northernmost point where the sun is still directly overhead at noon, usually on the summer solstice. Conversely, the Tropic of Kraken is the southernmost point on the winter solstice. The area between these two circles is the tropics, and serves as the best place for horticultural harvesting. Both longitudes are named after the nations that are bisected by the lines of longitude.

The Prime Meridian is defined as the line of latitude (signified with a symbol φ) that runs over the deepest known point on Elqua, in the Cetacean Ocean. It was chosen arbitrarily (some would say disparagingly) by the Chelon, whom are credited with the creation of the geographic coordinate system. Modern cartographers argue that the point in question is hardly the deepest point on the ocean floor, giving the Abyss in the Chelon’s own sea as just one example. Despite this, Chelonian oceanographers remain steadfast in their reason and shut-mouthed in the face of contrary evidence, and the Orcan resolutely refuse to allow any outsider that far into their borders.  Along with the 180th latitude, the prime meridian forms the boundary between the western and eastern hemisphere.

Continents
Unlike our world, where the ocean’s edge helps form the shape of continents, Elqua’s tectonic plates are more eroded from constant ocean currents. To complicate this, sometime in the world’s past the planet was bombarded by meteoric activity, as evidenced by the plentiful number of crater basins forming the deepest depths of the world. Most likely the planet was impacted by multiple comets of massive size, fracturing in the unique atmosphere and filling the planet with its immense oceans with water. As a consequence, the national borders of Elqua’s countries are defined more loosely than those of our own. “No Mer’s Waters” exist between nations, serving as both buffer zones between expanding populaces and also as a kind of national park, where wildlife has ample opportunity to refresh its numbers from the predations of homo Pisceans.

Crèche of Civilization

One specific crater is of special significance to the denizens of Elqua. It is called the Crèche of Civilization, so named as the intelligent races trace back their history to this relatively shallow but wide basin as the birth place of Piscean life. It is here it is believed that the now-extinct Icth originally rose to prominence, and most every race calls it their mother sea.

Maw of the Kraken

A ring of islands formed by a crater that once delineated the Kraken homewaters, the Maw looks like the distended, wide-open jaws of a gargantuan megalodon breaking the surface to feed. While most of the occupied seas were reclaimed when the Kraken Empire fell, the waters inside the Maw are still avoided at all costs as it is believed that much of the Kraken’s foul magics still permeate the ruins.

Migrating Islands

One of the strangest geological formations on Elqua is the rare, solitary floating islets. While most islands are either formed by volcanic eruption or tectonic pressure pushing the seabed to the surface, there are a handful of large islands that are not anchored into the sea floor. Like icebergs made of rock and dirt instead of ice and snow, these islands float slowly on the waves of the myriad seas independent of tectonic plates and continental drift. Just like icebergs, the larger volume of these floating landmasses bobs beneath the surface, just as clustered with wildlife as any reef or shoreline.

Endless Blue - Week 04 - Cooking without Fire

Biology

      Most animals of the world can eat their meals raw, be it chewing up plant matter or gulping down other animals in parts or in whole. Humans are different, however. While we can eat many things raw – such as salads and sushi – we actually thrive better on cooked foods – like potatoes or roasts. Cooked meat is easier for the body to process the vital proteins and vitamins necessary in the large dietary intake required for development of the brain. But in a world where water surrounds you everywhere, you cannot light a match and set the campfire necessary to cook a pot of stew or roast a coney. Further, our smaller jaws, mix of teeth, and narrow larynges make swallowing things whole difficult at best and dangerous at worst. And even if such harder foods could be swallowed, our dedicated digestive system is ill prepared to efficiently break these hardy products down into usable bits we can easily assimilate.

      Where as we cultivated fire, the civilizations of Elqua instead developed a method of food preparation based more directly on chemistry than as a result of physics. Cooking produces an irreversible change in food with the intention of making it both easier to digest and more palatable to the consumer. Raw meat changes from red to brown when baked, and the transparent whites of an egg turn opaque after it is cooked. It was discovered that foods immersed in citric acids become denatured in much the same manner as normal cooking – essentially becoming pickled in a cooking process independent of heat. This way the foods are sterilized from bacterial infection and also preserved for storage (an essential need for civilization to flourish) just as their temperature-processed parallels become with normal cooking. With high-calorie food transformed into a state that is easier to masticate, we spend less calories chewing cooked food rather than raw. Spending less energy collecting energy means more can be spent else were, giving us a surplus of caloric energy to devote to cultural growth.

      One of the drawbacks of chemical cooking is one of time – it takes hours for a meal to finish “cooking” before it reaches its most edible state. In our own world, cuisine such as ceviche is prepared via citric fruits like lime, but require significant lengths of time for the food to marinate – from a little as four hours to as long as overnight – to allow the chemical process the opportunity to permeate the meal. As a result, mealtime has become an event that must be planned around to such a degree that it is intimately ingrained into society. So much so, that cooking has become the basis of time measurement in zones of Elqua’s ocean depths where light cannot penetrate.

      Another drawback to cooking is again the medium in which it is prepared. Water currents are constantly moving, be they gentle trickles or dangerous torrents. Biting into a plant or animal breaks the outer skin and allows its inner fluids to escape, bleeding into the surrounding water that is dragged along with the flow. The very act of eating leaves traces of food in the currents that can be carried for long distance and still be picked up by predators and prey with tracescent. With an animal’s attention piqued, it will not be long before the individuals that just recently fed may themselves become a meal for something else.

      In terms of the D20 rules set, Alchemy replaces Craft (cooking) as the skill to denature food. Advances in alchemy led to the development of consumable catalysts that aid and speed up this process, called kelaguen, and is a vital portion of the culinist character class’ abilities.

Acari

      One of the rare contributions to modern society by the undeveloped races (the northern Locanth and Kouto), the acari is an aquatic vine that produces a grayish fruit with a translucent, rubbery skin and gelatinous insides. While the melon fruit possesses a poor, gruel-like taste, the plant’s benefit stems from an innate ability to absorb nutrients that will affect the pulp of the fruit. It’s this ability that makes the acari fruit indispensable to culinists. Through alchemical and agricultural means, nutrients can be mixed into the fruit pulp, providing a storage medium for later consumption.

      A mer trader is given credit for its discovery, but the truth is he procured it by trading with the primitive races, which had used it for millennia as a luxury indulgence. It flourishes best in the shore due to the unfiltered sunlight, but can also grow (albeit, with tougher consistency fruit) around sources of heat such as the thermal vents of the Lumulus Basin.

Ricelqua

     The food staple of the world, ricelqua is a hardy, short plant that produces a grain full of vital nutrients. However, the plant can only grow in shore areas, where sunlight can shine down almost directly on the broad, lily-like leaves that float just beneath the surface of the water. With its root system deeply entrenched in the shallows’ soil, it’s supple stalk uncoils upward and spreads it’s broad leaves just below breaking the surface. The crop will sway in a mesmerizing pattern as the gentle action of the tides sweep the plants back and forth.

     Ricelqua requires little in the way of active cultivation other than protection of incursive fauna until harvest time a scant three to four months after planting or ratooning. This makes ricelqua farming a dangerous endeavor, as predation by surface abominations becomes a significant threat. So shallow are the waters in a ricelqua field that there is barely enough room for a mer to swim, with is belly along the fertile loam and his back skimming the water’s edge, that they are vulnerable to any passing land-based predator that turns it’s attention to the paddy.

     Refinement of ricelqua produces a mash with alcoholic properties. It can be chewed raw for a slight inebriation (though this is considered extremely crude in many elitist circles), or further refined and used as a base ingredient for various intoxicating acari-based concoctions. Subsequent aging of these alcoholic fruit can bring out exotic flavors, but storage and protection of these luxuries is the province of the affluent.

Endless Blue - Week 03 - The Piscean Form

Biology

Unlike the world we know, life on Elqua mostly remained in the oceans. This results in a few common traits that are universal to all creatures, player and non-player characters alike. These “genetic constants” are just that – traits that evolved into the species from the first single cells that populated the planet’s waters.

Water breathing is the primary genetic constant. Never emerging from the palpable fullness of the seas into the intangible emptiness of air above the waves means the organs that extract oxygen from the atmosphere and infuse it into our bloodstream never developed. The lack of true air-breathing will result in some slight re-definitions of the various animal phyla and orders. Amphibians, for instance, are mainly defined as life forms with a water-breathing larval state and an air-breathing adult state. With the genetic constant of water-breathing only, amphibians may be relegated to a sub-class of reptile whose main differentiating aspect is the lack of scaly skin. The extent of these changes is perhaps better addressed at another day.

Not having evolved lungs means native life kept the pre-existing method of aquatic organs known as gills. Gills are an anatomical structure of microscopic filters that extract oxygen from the water and excrete carbon dioxide out of the body. Of the sea creatures we know, most vertebrates (biological organisms that posses a spine) have their gills located either side the larynx, with the “gill slits” exposed to the environment. To breathe, the organism opens its mouth and swallows an amount of water, which is then squeezed out through the gills by the muscles in the throat instead of the peristaltic push downward into the stomach as with the eating process. This is what the well-known gaped, gulping action of the mouth is that we associated most vividly with fish.

This would be simple enough to translate into the biology of an aquatic humanoid. Instead of respiration being dependent on a diaphragm in the torso, it would rely on thicker neck muscles. The problem, though, comes from volume. Compare the size of the chest cavity that houses the lungs to the small surface area of the neck. The lung has a network of divergent structures called bronchioles that terminate in alveoli. These work just as the filaments in a gill do, but with immensely more volume. If a humanoid was dependent on such smaller gills for respiration, they would constantly be gulping water to keep up with their cellular need for oxygen.

A further drawback to this form comes from a more artistic perspective. This form of respiration would make small things we recognize in our own behavior that convey great amount of emotion quite difficult, such as simply sighing. Strangulation would also prove nearly impossible, as the grip of the would-be attacker would need to press down and shut all the gills on either side of the neck, instead of simply shutting the wind pipe. Choking an opponent is such a primal, visceral image that it would be a great shame to lose that narrative tool, so some kind of change had to be made.

To resolve this, humanoids of Elqua will instead have “embedded gills”, a form of lung/gill hybrid. The bronchioles will connect to the gill fibers in lung-like organs that are controlled by the diaphragm. This wall of muscle will contract, forcing the water through gill exits located on either side of the rib cage. These groups of three gill exits will be lined under the bottom three ribs, with the muscle flap anchored to those ribs allowing the slits to be closed in cases where the individual will attempt to hold his breath. With this arrangement, putting pressure around the neck will still block the intake of water and result in strangulation, and the slow exhalation from the chest still achieves the non-verbal sigh.

With this second pair of bodily orifices, the need for a nose is greatly diminished. Thematically, the structure we know of as a “nose” will not exist in the evolution of Elquan life. This will not diminish the sense of smell’s role in the setting. Our sense of smell is strongly linked to our sense of taste, and it greatly enhances our experience when eating. Anyone with a strong cold or the flu can attest that food tastes much blander with their sinuses are clogged and preventing the odor receptors from interacting with the scents wafting in the air.

Scent and taste are intertwined for many denizens of our oceans. Sharks are notorious for their ability to detect the faintest trace of blood in the currents from far away. Elquan life will smell things much the same way, expressed by abilities like tracking by tasting trace elements in the sea currents.

What now comes into question is the ability to communicate through sound. Speech is an invaluable tool for the evolution of civilization, and without the ability to convey even basic need or emotion most animals would be helpless. Roars to frighten off encroaching challengers, whinnies to panic other herd animals, mating calls to facilitate reproduction are all facts of life dependent on the ability to not only produce sound, but to also hear it. This is where the lung/gill hybrid will help, by acting as a resonance chamber.

Much like the hollow body of a guitar, sound enters a resonance chamber and bounces off the internal structures, amplifying the intensity (volume) of the sound. With a stronger intensity, sound waves can be propagated through the water’s natural quality to impede motion. Humans do much the same thing when singing “from the diaphragm” – their chest cavity acts like a resonance chamber, aiding in the projection of sound. Despite the fact that the air is being pushed out the mouth (or out the rib cage in the case of Elquan natives), the sound is still intensified by the reverberation back into the body. The vocal chords of humanoid Elquan life will remain in the larynx, but speech will posses a slight triphonic aspect – much like a surround system’s left, right, and center speakers -- as sound will escape not just the mouth but the gill slits on either side as well. Some intelligent species, such as the Orcans, will be able to take advantage of this to a great degree, giving them echolocative abilities and a unique mode of speech.

With this in mind, the image of aquatic humanoids begins to solidify perceptually. The removal of the nose serves as a visual distinction in the look of the Endless Blue setting that will hopefully add a level of alien-ness without losing the sense of empathy from the players. The position of the gills gives a reason to realistically leave the sides of the body relatively bare, playing well into the artistic interpretation that aquatic life would tend towards being scantily clad. Still identifiably human but sufficiently distanced by biological evolution, life on Elqua begins to take on a shape that will allow players to explore this new blue world.

Endless Blue - Week 02 - Bigger Blue Marble

Cosmology

The world of Elqua is a world of endless cerulean, truly a big blue marble in space. Nearly all ocean, its surface is almost utterly swallowed up with a single massive, liquid, living ecosphere in the form of a vast ocean that wraps around the planet. Placid and pristine tides belie the deep currents below, a blossoming flowering of flowing fluid, surging across the world like the pulse of a living being.

Elqua (the native language for “water”) orbits at about .92 AU around a G3 class star. A cooler yellow star than our own, it is the planet’s larger size that allows it to absorb more of its sun’s radiant energy. While the high albedo of such a large body of water would usually reflect most of the sunlight away, the high levels of carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere maintain a balance that keeps the ball of liquid from freezing over.

The circumference around the world’s equator is roughly 53,229 km, with a 8482.8 km radius of the geothermally-active molten core. This results in a surface area of 904,249, 587.8 sq. km, of which 95% is covered in the life-giving liquid. That comes to about 1/3rd the amount of solid surface above the waves that Earth posses.

While life has flourished in those 45,212,479.4 sq. km. of dirt and rock, it is the 1.82 billion cu. km. of ocean volume that serves as home to intelligent life. With so little contiguous land except for the plethora of archipelagoes, the opportunity for primordial creatures to crawl up out of the murky aquatic depths and onto the dry, open land rarely mattered. Instead, life flourished under the waves and mostly remained there. Creatures great and small grew and diversified, migrating to fill the empty world, dispersing across the currents and finding homes in every niche of the sparkling, virgin waters

With all extra accumulation of water above, pressure at the sea floor would outstrip anything known on Earth if not for Elqua’s lesser gravity. The water world’s mass is 1.7445 of our own planet’s, or almost 6x1024 kg. With more water and less iron contributing to the planet’s density, Elqua has a density of about 4.1 grams/cm³, resulting in a gravimetric pull just 19% shy of Earth’s own. This has helped life to reach further down into the abyssal trenches of the planet, as well as allowed for much larger organisms to develop.

Despite the preponderance of a single ecosphere, Elqua’s axis is tilted by 25°, therefore resulting in a variance in temperature and season when coupled with its orbit around the sun. The tilt of Elqua is just a degree and a half greater than that of Earth, which produces a slightly more extreme winter and summer, but a year is shorter. Cloud cover is rare during the months the hemisphere is closest to the sun, and the climate is for the most part calm due to the significantly low amount of surface land interfering with air currents. During the summer, most all cloud cover dissipates until only a few wisps are left (though the Maelstrom continues to rage on strongly, but with little visible fanfare).

This world has three satellites orbiting its peaceful surface in the form of moons, and a planetary ring. The moons are known as Oberus, Ymaris, and Urowes, genderless siblings in the seas that are the sky. Because of the innate fear nearly all life on Elqua has of the surface, very little research has been done on the triptych of satellites. Scholars of the Godless, be they brave or simply unperturbed by the legends of damnation above the planet’s waves, have begun to examine the complex clockwork of lunar orbits. The average denizen knows at best a passing reference to the moons in the narrative of mythology, while the current standard of cosmological knowledge knows little more than their waxing and waning cycles.

Ymaris is a close approximation of our moon, Luna, except for its brownish-yellow rust coloring. It has an orbit of about 20 days, a diameter of 3,443 km, and a density of 3.125 g/cm³. It has a slow, chaotic rotation due to its occasional passing through Oberus’ closer, strong gravitational field, which imparts a minor spin that fades as Ymaris circles around Elqua to meet its larger sister again.

Oberus’ orbit is further out and much slower, thus it will remain in the Elqua sky for nearly two and a half days before vanishing for the same length of time. It takes nearly 108 days for this pale moon to complete its cycle from new to full and back again. It has a diameter almost 1/3rd larger than Ymaris’ and a density of 3.586 g/ cm³. Most likely Oberus was an inner planet of the system that knocked from its stellar orbit by some type of large-mass collision and was caught in the gravity pull of Elqua. Oberus is tidally locked, meaning it does not spin, and one hemisphere always faces Elqua.

Conversely, dark Urowes rotates around the planet so quickly – and in the opposite direction that Elqua rotates (a “retrograde” orbit) -- that it will rise and fall twice in a single day, harkening the dawn and heralding the dusk. This means Urowes will be in the sky for 7 hours of the night and 7 hours of the day, with the other hours spent going around Elqua for it to rise again. Urowes is a little over 2,200 km away from the surface of Elqua, literally defining its Roche Limit (the closest a natural satellite can orbit a planet without falling back in on it due to the effects of gravity).

With its orbit so close that it practically skips along Elqua’s “event horizon”, it is this powerful velocity that prevents the tiny satellite from being drawn in by the water world’s greater gravity. To exist so close to the planet, the density of this satellite must be five or ten times that of Oberus, yet it is nearly one-tenth the size of its largest sibling. Urowes’ diameter is about half that of Ymaris, and faces Elqua on it’s wobbling axis. This makes the pivot of Urowes appear to spiral in place as its pole revolves in a whirling pattern.

Urowes is the inner guide satellite for Elqua’s planetary ring, and Ymaris is the outer guide. It is the rotation of these two “shepherd moons” that keeps the debris rings of Elqua constant. Any materials that would fly off into space or be pulled down into Elqua’s gravity are instead intercepted by the two moons. The pockmarked surface of the two satellites attests to the frequency and violence of these impacts.

Urowes is too small to block out the visual disk of the system’s sun, meaning it cannot cause a solar eclipse. However, its transit across the sun is noticeable as a black sphere skirting a quickly curved path across the yellow disk. The other two siblings are capable of eclipses – even concurrently, an event that produces a spectacular double “diamond ring” effect.

The planetary ring around Elqua is euphemistically referred to as “the Sargasso in the Sky”, and mythology equates it to the same entangling mass of seaweed that endangers those foolish-yet-inquisitive individuals to peek out of the enveloping embrace of the ocean and gaze at the ring’s hazy green tint over the constellations.

Endless Blue – Week 01 – The World of Endless Blue

Expansive oceans forming an endless horizon, Elqua is a swath of pristine blue waters. Seas teaming with varied life ranging from the microscopic to beyond gargantuan, races of intelligent life both clinging to archaic ways and embracing new concepts, and island archipelagos sparsely dotting the world, Endless Blue will be a distinctly different world with boundless potential.

The purpose of the Endless Blue campaign setting is to provide a truly aquatic-themed world for players and game masters to explore. While most ocean-themed supplements are more a conglomeration of sailing ship rules spruced up with water-breathing analogs of surface races and a little pirate slang thrown in for atmosphere, Endless Blue intends to present a true "underwater world" designed from the bottom-up.

To accomplish this, there will need to be a few intrinsic rules that will help define the mood and direction of the setting:

1. No Air-Breathing
All life in the currents of Elqua is solely water-breathing creatures, especially intelligent life. On this world, intelligent life sprang up beneath the expansive waves. It grew and evolved without breaking to the surface due to nearly borderless seas and bountiful ocean resources. Crossing the boundary from the water onto land is fundamentally the quickest way to violate the integrity of the Endless Blue setting. This means that even if a creature is mammalian based (such as the Mer) they will lack the ability to extract oxygen from air. Though this may cause some anachronisms further along in development, it is perhaps the primary, most fervent law.

2. Life Is Not Always the Same
As a fan of speculative evolution and role-playing games, I hope to marry the two together into a relatively seamless whole that balances the species we already know with new ideas that will give Elqua a significant feeling of an alien ecosystem. There are volumes of folklore pertaining to the denizens of our own world, and it would be a shame to waste that communal knowledge and symbology. But that doesn’t preclude the addition of new creatures and new associations. The intent is to develop animals and plant unique to the setting that, through text, come to be identified on their own merits.

3. Genre Neutral
The majority of information on Elqua and the Endless Blue setting will be done in a genre neutral way, eschewing commitment to any one rules-set. Some things will be presented in fantasy game terms (such as classes) and others in science fiction terms (satellite orbits and planetary ring), but overall no text should be too heavily enmeshed in rules text that its basic information cannot be extracted to other game systems or genres. This may result in sections of information that will be useless in a fantasy game or inapplicable in a science fiction game, but overall should provide a more rounded, more vibrant setting.

4. Magic Exists, But Is Not Prevalent
While most of the setting presented will try to be genre neutral, there will need to be some concessions in order to effectively integrate the use of magic with a scientific world. The power of magic will be lessened, limited to a more direct, personal interaction instead of the wide swaths of destruction that has become expected from practitioners of the mystic arts. Sea monsters of epic capacity will roam the oceans, but sylvan spirits like nereid or fae will not exist. As a result, the Endless Blue setting will have a low magic yet high fantasy feel.

5. No Need For Fire
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the formation of civilization, fire does not "exist" on Elqua. Instead, other methods will need to be used in order to achieve the equivalent end result that normally would be achieved with fire. Manipulation of heat and chemical reactions will be the tools of progress for underwater races, and will affect countless aspects of daily life such as shelter, construction, and even cooking. But even those methods pose unique challenges when the surroundings are completely submerged.

6. Single Races are Multi-Cultural
A distinct attempt will be made to present races as more than a stereotypical caricature. Ethnicities are an imperative for all races in a setting where diversity in flora and fauna is as extensive if not more so than on our own world. Just as species of fish have become numerous and varied, so should the intelligent races. Most will have at least two ethnicities if not more, and culturally they will have complex political and religious histories. Even the “human-equivalent” Mer will have multiple ethnicities, with visible differences that make them distinct.

7. Combat
In nature, the predator vs. prey dynamic is constantly in effect. As civilized as any race may be, invariably there will come a time when one individual will need to fight, be it for protection, survival, or simply to feed. Beyond tooth and claw, weapons will be the next most common tool used for this result. However, due to the properties of water, soldiers swinging swords and warhammers is difficult and hampers the effectiveness of the weapons. Thus, combat will be limited to weapons that can be thrust with relative ease in the various vectors around, above, and below the individual.

8. The Rule of 8
More thematic than anything else, there will be a cultural emphasis on the number “8”, from the eight notes in musical notation, through the spectrum of visible light under the waves, to the eight vertices in a mathematical cube of three dimensional space. The Fibonacci curve of a nautilus, the radial symmetry of octagrams, the number of bits in a byte, the cardinal and intermediate directions of a compass, even the Kraken/Ceph themselves, all will have strange connections to this numinous value.

These inviolable laws have many repercussions that will be addressed more closely in subsequent posts. Over the next year I intend to regularly publish material pertaining to the world of Elqua and the Endless Blue setting. My vision of this water world has some concrete concepts, some nebulous ideas, and some gaping holes that will be explored in enough detail to entertain but not give away all the secrets. Hopefully future submissions will bring my ideas together into a fully realized world that intrigues and challenges the imagination.

William James Cuffe