Seas and Oceans

The world is awash with water, oceans and seas making up seventy percent of Layonara's surface. They provide a lifeline between the continents, and merchants and pirates alike, ply their trade on these vast expanses of water.

The seas and oceans teem with life. Many creatures inhabit their depths, and their diversity is immense; the numbers and distribution of sea creatures is staggering. Sailors have always told tales of mythical creatures rising from the depths to pluck the unwary and unsuspecting from the shore and from decks of ships.
Many disappearances have been attributed to these creatures, and with the emergence of the sea elves from the oceans, people are only now beginning to realize that there is much about the sea that they do not know--and that some of the sailors' tales might well be true.

Until recently, only limited resources were allocated to oceanographic cartography, and plotting a course between continents was based on experience and rudimentary navigation. However, with the publication of The Principles of Stellar Navigation for the Seafarer (a concise work on using the stars for navigation at sea), sea travel became less of a journey of uncertainty and more of a precise science. Sea journeys can now be taken in relative safety, and boarding a ship at your port of departure will generally ensure your arrival at your destination, though unexpected winds, currents, and storms can still bring swift ruin and death. Even with the publication of this work on navigation, old sailors' wisdom still holds true: 'Only woe will befall those who tread lightly in domains of Mist and Shindaleria.'

Under the Ocean

If the seas and oceans were to be drained of water, the newly revealed landscape would closely resemble that of the surface lands. Mountain ranges, canyons and caverns, great volcanoes, vast plains and desert-like expanses of sand and stone all exist below the ocean's surface. The scale, however, is immense; the mountains are higher, the canyons deeper, and the plains are more vast. Once filled with water, the seas and oceans become almost another world, totally alien to the surface dwellers. There will always remain mysteries and questions as to what truly lurks in the ocean's depths.