The Unrun Sea

Overview

The Unrun Sea is the open ocean that lies seaward of every known water on the far side of Caeldon: past the farthest current roads of The Tidebound Reaches, past the outer isles of The Tidelace Coasts, and past the fog banks off The Soundchain Roads. The name is a Thaluren way of speaking. A run is a path laid by those who swim it and remembered by those who come home, and no run has ever been laid through this water and come home.

Lay of the Land

The Unrun Sea lies north and east of the far side, beyond the last beacons of the Tidelace Coasts, the fog banks off the Soundchain Roads, and the Far Set, the outermost current road of the Tidebound Reaches. Lastlight's beacon on its outer isle is the last light before it, and its fogs and storms come south onto the coast. How far it runs, and what lies beyond, is unknown to anyone on the far side. Across it, months of open water away, lies the Dawnreach, which no far-side people has seen; see The Lay of the Land.

What Happened Here

Nothing that anyone wrote down, and that is the point. The peoples on its edge each have their own reason to stay out, and their own reason to distrust what little comes back.

The Thaluren live for the return, and their faith, The Way of Return, asks only whether a return is rightful. A run that does not come home is not a run, and their custom has nothing to say about water that leads nowhere they can rightly reach again. The Outer-Route lines go farthest, and their memory keeps runs that pressed past the known roads and came back late, scattered, or not at all. What those who did return could tell was seen by too few to be believed, and in Thaluren custom a tale with no one to vouch for it counts for nothing. Still the tales are told: of water so deep it glows, of a current that ran uphill, of a shape beneath a run so long that it passed for a whole day.

What Is Known

Very little, and most of it is memory.

• The Far Set. The outermost current road the Thaluren know, ridden by Outer-Route runs on their long way home.
• The Long Grey. The great fog belt of the outer Tidelace rolls in off this water with little warning and can shut the outer roads for days, and with it come blooms of stinging fogbells.
• The great ones. Thaluren ocean memory places great whale-like deep-witnesses out here, said never to stop growing.
• The devourers. The same memory places squid-like devourers out here that break routes.
• The Unreturned. On the farthest roads, Outer-Route runs feel the Unreturned keeping pace with them in the dark water: the presence of runs that never came home.

Settlements

Nobody lives on the Unrun Sea. The last settlement facing it is the outer-isle harbour of Lastlight on the Tidelace, whose beacon is the last on the coast.

The People

Nobody lives on the Unrun Sea. The last people facing it are the few dozen island Gnome households of Lastlight.

What Is Not Known

Almost everything is deliberately left open: how wide the Unrun Sea is; how deep it goes and what lies on its floor; whether islands or other shallows break it anywhere, and whether anyone lives on them; what the deep-witnesses and devourers actually are, and whether anyone has met one closely and lived to say so; whether any god holds it, since Maris of the Tides is honoured on the Tidelace as a guardian of the deep but draws her strength from the coast; and how many nameless hulls set out from the Dawnreach for every one that reaches the Tidelace.

Tensions

• Runs that never came home. Outer-Route memory keeps runs that pressed past the known roads and never came back.
• Where the Unrun begins. Storms off the Unrun Sea break current roads and scatter runs.
• The locked instrument. A Truesound sounding family has asked the gauge house for the brass instrument no Gnome made, meaning to fit out a craft and follow its readings past the last beacon.
• Past the light. A craft in trouble just beyond Lastlight's beacon is in water no Gnome pilot will enter and no harbour claims, and Lastlight's households can see it from the isle.