Endless Blue - Week 26 - The Floating Wheel

Anthropogenics

The Floating Wheel

Perhaps the third most important discovery that enabled civilization to flourish, behind language and fire, is arguably the wheel.  Historians and philosophers can argue the details, but work-relieving potential of the wheel has proven itself indispensible in every culture known.  An astoundingly simply invention -- the simplest shape, found everywhere in nature, and refined to become the greatest mechanical tool to push civilization forward -- the wheel's practicality is a little diminished when you can move in all directions.  Wheels essentially need traction to work, and when held aloft, floating in an endless ocean of water, there is little there for the wheel to roll across.  Even if the pisceans of antiquity kept to the sea bed with their wheels, the topography of the ocean floor is rough, usually steep, and most times less solid than packed earth.

This is not to say that the wheel doesn't exist.  I most certainly does, as there just as many inspirations for the shape under the sea as there are above the waves, and the utility of the pre-historical invention is simply too potent for civilization to have "never imagined it".  But on Elqua, the wheel gives up its prominence as the premiere contraption of the piscean mind in favor of a less tangible, but perhaps more understandable, development: domestication.

The domestication of animals as beasts of burden filled the roll of the wheel in Elquan prehistory.  Harnesses or even basic lengths of rope strapped to dolphins, manta rays, and other strong swimmers with high levels of stamina took advantage of the raw strength the beasts possessed to pull a sled or travois.  When loads were exceptionally heavy, the travois would be dragged across the ocean floor terrain, but with sufficient number of animals using their inate buoyancy, the weight of the load could be over come and the essentially be lifted into the water much like a helicopter might lift its cargo.  The domesticated animals, in a way, served as organic dirigibles, carrying cargo that would be impossible to move by hand.

Domestication is the practice of humans to selectively breed compliance into a species for the intent of exploiting their natural traits.  It is not just limited to animals (as expressed in the Packbreeder character class), but also included plants (as employed with the Culinist character class).
On our own world, domestication is as common as the nearest house pet or backyard garden.  Domestication of canis lupus familiaris (the common dog) took place almost 17,000 years ago, and cereal crops like peas and wheat were domesticated roughly 11,000 years ago.  The piscean equivalents would be delphis (pronounced del-fIz, a smaller form of dolphin trapped in a perpetual state of neotony) and the wonder grain ricelqua.

To achieve domestication in animals, the packbreeder needs to produce six criteria in the species.

Placid Temperament -- An animal must be able to adjust to its new environment and not become startled by any little movement or sound.  Essentially, it must modify its "fight or flight" reflex so that it is not the primary reaction to outward stimuli.  A beast that lashes out at the slightest provocation is better suited to become a beast of war, whereas a creature that is skittish and likely to bolt at any time becomes a burden to simply keep in captivity.

Pleasant Disposition -- Unlike the beasts of war packbreeder guide into combat, domesticated  animals must not pose a danger to their captor when held in captivity.  A dog is docile in comparison of its feral fore-bearer, the wolf,

Social Imprinting -- A domesticated animal must be able to accept another kind of creature (in this case, the packbreeder or owner) as the pack leader of it's pack/herd.  Without this implicit subjugation, a species would never achieve the level of dependency needed for domestication.

Captive Breeding -- If the animal cannot breed under the auspices of piscean packbreeders, there is no hope of selectively breeding the wanted traits.  Many animals reproduce in specific places, such as sea turtles along sandy beaches.  This migratory instinct that forces an animal to travel to a specific place to reproduce/give birth prevents the encompassing control a packbreeder needs to modify a species successfully.

Quick Maturity -- Coupled with captive breeding, if an animal does not reach maturity at a relatively fast rate and reproduce a subsequent generation in the lifespan of a piscean, no single packbreeder can fully influence the artificial selection of its traits.  If it would take multiple generations of packbreeders to produce any significant genetic change,  chances are a more fertile species would be better suited for domestication.

Adaptable Diet -- Animals whose diet consists of a single specific algae or species of fish make poor choices for domestication, as their finicky consumption habits require extra effort to cultivate.  Those species that can survive on the left-overs from piscean meals, or even whatever plant life is chanced upon in the immediate area mean less energy is invested into cultivating their meals and that extra effort can be put into whatever chore they are suited to accomplish.

The product of this intense genetic selection is the creation of livestock (animals that can be used by pisceans as sources of food, beasts of burden, or both).  Some animals make better muscle than meal, like the ever-present dolphins and porpoises.  Others are strictly raised little other reason that to be eaten, like albacore.  Then there are those animals used for their industrial applications, such as the oysters used in nacre production.  These species are bred with an marked increase of whatever profitable attribute in mind.  Finally, some species are bred as effort reducers, meant to take over menial tasks that pisceans are too busy or not well suited for, like pilot fish for cleaning and herding animal packs, or the bioluminescent algae used in bale-lights.

Plants, on the other hand, require much less stringent guidelines for domestication due mostly due to their immobility.  Domesticated plants bred for large-scale food harvesting are called crops, and here a culinist's skill can shine.  The application of a skillful culinist's abilities can breed out physical and chemical defenses (such as thorns or sour fruit), shorten germination times, increase harvest yields, or even create brand new types of plant.  An example in our own world is the root known as the carrot.  While most immediately think of the color orange when the vegetable is mention, the truth is that carrots come in a spectrum of colors, and the ubiquitous orange color is just one.  It is believed that the acari is one such result on Elqua, a carefully crafted species of plant that excels at its absorptive abilities when it is hybridized.  The cultivar (cultivated variety) of acari can be almost unidentifiable when compared to the wild variety. except for the tell-tale rubbery skein and gelatinous pulp.

An interesting effect of selective breeding and societal growth has developed into a class of animal that serves no real purpose other than the joy it gives to its owner.  These animals do not provide food, nor do they complete work.  Instead they exist solely at the whim of their master.  Called "pets", these domesticated creatures are usually the result of generations of packbreeders honing a species of fauna into a source of companionship and pleasure instead of purpose and need.  The plant equivalent would be a garden, and the flora of the deep can come in as varied shape, size, or color as the culinist's imagination can conjure.

Endless Blue - Week 24 - All is not Blue Under the Waves

Oceanography

All is not Blue Under the Waves

Contrary to first impressions, terrain under the oceans is not a flat, featureless horizon of silt and sand.  In actuality, submerged land has as varied a morphology as the land above the waves, perhaps more so.  Here, with sea surrounding you in every direction, the currents that affect the formation of terrain consist of water instead of air.

The flow of the currents across the world are subdivided into gyres, large sections of repetitively circulating waters that make up the basis of oceanic climate and provide the impetus for aquatic weather.  As a result of this, the terrain of the Known World is complex, with many different types of habitat overlapping in the same area.

Aquatic Vegetation

Despite being surrounded by the Endless Blue, Elqua's underwater kingdoms are a verdant green.  Great swaths of kelp and seaweed blanket the ocean floor like the timberland and shrubbery of the surface world, with upsweeping and enveloping growths almost re-blanketing the area.  An underwater jungle, with the greens and browns of plant life in all directions, the variety and volume of aquatic plants rivals that of our own -- a rich field of broad leafy vegetation undulating in the ocean current.

It is the kelp forests and seaweed jungles that formed the basis for the nebulous borders of Elquan kingdoms.  Animals cannot exist in the open ocean without becoming easy victims to predators.  They require the dense cover and plentiful food sources the wild areas of aquatic vegetation offer.  To keep this balance intact, the political bodies of water have needed to enforce the concept of "no mer's seas" as buffer zones -- a form of environmental protection.

However, bowing under recent population explosions and exponential consumption needs, piscean cultivation has cleared a significant portion of the wild vegetation in favor of farmland dedicated to acari and ricelqua.  This clearing of sea plants has begun to devastate the natural habitat of ocean life. and for the first time the Known World is looking a little too small for its people, despite being nearly an entire hemisphere of the globe.

Sargasso Seas

Sargasso seas are an evolution of Elqua's kelp forests and seaweed jungles that has adapted into its ecological niche by no longer needing to bury its root system into the soil.  The sargassum's roots eek out nutrients from the water, while the leaves bobbing on the water's surface collect sunlight.  Complete ecosystems can form on larger patches of sargasso, and in many ways become miniature versions of the  mysterious migrating islands.

The godless have turned to the sargassum as possible relief to the increasing needs of the piscean masses, and their culinists have been hard at work trying to develop better hybrids of sea plants that can produce more, faster, and with less stress on the environment.  Unfortunately the unrelenting bias against anything from above the surface of the water, coupled with political fearmongering, has stymied most of the culinists' progress.

Coral Reefs

The great reefs of the Endless Blue are the anchor system for underwater life, providing shelter and food for so many of the indigenous life forms.  What we see as coral is actually a calcium carbonate excretion of the actual coral animal, the polyp, which lives in communities.  Many different kinds of polyps can co-exist in a reef, and each contributes to the beauty and longevity of the habitat.

On Elqua, reefs are much more common that on Earth.  About 10% of the undersea terrain is covered in coral structures, usually (but not exclusively) clustered around intersections of imperceptible lines of energy called ley lines.  These are the areas that Chelon congregate and protect as part of the xanthellae that comprises their civilization.

Oceanic Ridges

These are the hills and mountains of the world, pushing up either through the collision of tectonic plates or by volcanic eruptions depositing new earth from the lava chambers below the crust.  They can reach through all levels of the ocean -- Shelf, Shoal, and Shore -- and even break the surface to form the tiny island chains of Elqua.

Canyon Trenches

The flip side of oceanic ridges are the canyon trenches that line the continental shelves.  These are the deepest parts of the Endless Blue, where the reach of sunlight falters and the cold, looming water saps the warmth from most every living thing.  Ecology here is that of the scavenger, often living off of the sinking bodies of the dead.

A variation of the canyon trench are underground caverns.  Entry to such a cavern can be miles away from the actual cave, and may meander randomly and quixotically, thinning and thickening their width along the raw rocky tunnel walls.

Brine Waterways

The composition of sea water is remarkably saline, but the distribution of that salt is not uniform.  There are places in the oceans where a greater density of salt has made the liquid sink to the bottom and fill in pools, becoming lakes and rivers.  The disparity in diffused material is often so great that you can literally see a difference in the two fluids, the brine possessing an almost oily, greasy-green tint.

These lakes and rivers form waterways just as normal lakes and rivers do on the surface world, with brackish brine flowing generally downward to the lowest depths.  The lower the flow of brinewater, the thicker is becomes from the pressure.

Many piscean culinists use this brinewater as a pereserving agent in food, especially meats.  Brining food draws the water out of the meat, essentially mummifying it so that it spoils at a much more reduced rate.  In conjuction with acari's denaturing acidity, Elquan cuisine is tangy mix of sweet and salty flavors.

Hydrothermal Vents

A hydrothermal vent is a hole in the bottom of the ocean that allows either the water above or underground springs to come in contact with molten rock from the planet's mantle.  This contact immediately flashes the water into steam, which comes billowing as scalding hot water.  They are the closest thing the Known World has to open flame.

While the waters around these fuming vents reaches the boiling point, life still manages to flourish here, in strange forms like tube worms anchored to the sedimentary pillars that form the vent, filtering nutrients from the waters passively.

The Lumulus Basin is renown to be covered in a multitude of these ducts, and it is due to these vents that the Lumulus learned the art of metal-smithing.
Chemical Seeps

Colloquially known as "poison water", chemical seeps are cracks in Elqua's crust that leak chemicals into the oceans.  Substances like methane, sulfur, and hydrocarbons are the most common, but even rarer elements and compounds can be found.  The topography that forms around seep habitats are the most unique in all of Elqua, and are often the sites where surface life re-adapted for underwater life.

Sea Snow

As ludicrous an image as it may seem, it actually does snow under water.  Normally the saline and other trace elements in ocean water prevent the sea from freezing solid, and instead keep the material in a liquid form despite its temperature dropping below its freezing point.  But sometimes the conditions are right for ice crystals to form and be carried by the water currents.
This phenomenon is relegated to the lowest depths of Elqua's oceans, where the gallon after gallon of water pressing downward actually compacts the water into its solid state through sheer force of weight.  At this depth there is little to no light, so consequently not much in the way of heat to melt the newly formed crystals, yet the fluid they are suspended in itself does not freeze.  These particles are then swept up in the ocean currents, whirling, swirling, twirling around in all direction under the grip of flowing water.  More like a flurry than falling snow, these specks can even be seen to "fall" upward as the currents drag them around until they clump together into larger chunks of ice or cling to something they impact during their travels.  Those chunks trapped at lower depths slowly increase in size as they accumulate more crystals, while those free floating ones eventually collect enough mass that buoyancy overcomes inertia and they rise upward, melting in the warmer currents closer to the surface.

Vortices

The technical term for whirlpools, a vortex is a turbulent, spinning funnel on the surface of the water with a downdraft, which may or may not reach down to the sea bed.  The water travels in a spiral pattern towards the center of the whirlpool, and is sucked downward.  They are formed by the complex interplay of Elqua's three moons on the tides of the planet.  Further, vortices have been known to form when sinkholes open up to underground pockets of lesser dense materials, like air pockets.  These are usually the most lethal, as the unfortunate soul trapped at the bottom of such a cavern cannot swim back up the waterfall-like funnel of the whirlpool.

Not all vortexes are manic spirals of circling descent and death.  Indeed, many are quite tranquil drifts, and the more expansive of these vortices are boons to travelers and caravans that can monopolize their currents to speed travel between destinations.

Red Tide

The red tide is a colorful misnomer for a species of blooming single-celled bacteria that appear red with seasonal regularity.  The danger presented by what would normally be a smorgasbord of phytoplankton is the virulent neurotoxin these bacteria give off.  It is a quick and efficient poison, killing most everything that simply swims too close to their infected waters.

Normally avoided at all costs, the currents of Elqua's oceans will sometimes drag the red tide right through heavily populated areas of the Known World, leaving a wake of destruction as they pass.  The civilized races consider it to be every person's humanitarian duty to warn unsuspecting settlements of an encroaching red tide, even in times of hostility.  This is a practice shared by the Locanth, though not any of the other primitive races.

Black Water

Only a rumor, but stories have begun surfacing of a new kind of red tide.  Inky black, as if absorbing all color and light from reality, spreading blobs of oozing darkness have apparently been appearing in the most remote reaches of the hinterseas.  Unlike the red tide, this black water does not kill an unsuspecting prey, but instead slowly engulfs it within it viscous tendrils.  However, no quantifiable evidence of its existence has ever been found, and with the tale's veracity coming from "a friend of a friend", most discount it as superstitious nonsense.

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.