The Gray Seas

Introduction
The Gray Sea (or Seas) a nebulous ocean of pseudo-reality filled with strange islands, creatures, and even its own pockets of smaller seas.

Everything outside of the Gray Sea is the Known Seas.  The Known Seas are the ‘safe’ places where the rules work right.  The Known Seas are where maps work and routes are charted.  The Known Seas are the waters of your home setting.  You can point to the known seas on your world map.  The Known Seas are whatever you want them to be.

You can easily fit the Gray Sea into any sort of setting, all you really need is ocean.  It could be the areas off of the world map.  It could be an-extra dimensional plain of existence.

The Nature of the Gray Sea
The waters of The Gray Sea are cold and salty, no matter which sea a ship may have come from.  Dense heavy fogs dance over the glassy surface of the water.  It’s rare for crew to see more than a mile in any given direction and quite often captains are faced with fog so thick that it is hard to see from bow to stern.  The sun is but a large pale dot in The Gray and the stars are even more difficult to see making navigation very difficult.

By their very nature it is hard to define The Gray Sea.  Visually the mists are (typically) a dense and heavy fog, thick and Gray, that lies atop a vast blue Gray ocean.  The Gray goes by many names, The Gray-on-Gray, the Aether, the Soul Sea, the Foglands, The Gray Nothings, but most just refer to it as the mists.  The mists are constantly rolling and changing and are home to a number of weird phenomena and creatures.  While constantly in a state of flux, the mists to have some constants and the key to understand the mists is to first understand these constants.

First, The Gray Sea borders all Known Seas on all sides.  While most of the Known Seas transition into The Gray Sea by open oceans, the borders of The Gray Sea can take other forms, like in the case of the Screaming Sands of the Amber Sea - the vast constant sandstorm in its south - or like the Eternal Blizzard, north of the lands held by the Solvang Clans in the Blue Sea.  The borders of The Gray are not a firm thing.  There is no clear defining line between the Known Seas and The Gray Seas.  This nebulous area is known as The Borderlands.  The Borderlands are in a state of flux, constantly growing and shrinking, shifting and moving.  It is never quite clear when one has fully entered The Gray Sea as it always just seems to happen, one moment you are in a vast blue ocean, the next you are in a vast sea of gray.  While the border does flux, it is rarely if ever less than a three day or more than a week’s sail from the border to land in the sea.

Second, time and space does not work in the mists like how it does in the Known Seas.  The mists are not bound to standard geometry and physics.  Distance in particular seems to fall victim to the mists effects. Time often does not flow correctly while in the mists.  The Sun, while dimmed, still rises and sets, however; the speed at which it does is not constant.  Time in the mists has pockets where time travels faster and where time travels slower than in the know seas.  This phenomenon is typically referred to a ‘temporal fugue.’  Ships that cross the mists may have experienced a few weeks of travel, but in the Known Seas it has been only days, or even months.  Conversely the same is true, a ship may experience months of travel, only to be gone a few days.

The temporal fugue phenomenon has a number of strange features and side effects.  Of particular note, people who have spent significant time in the mists and have been affected by the temporal fugue possess unnaturally long lives, if not cut down first by the perils of the mists.  Particular strong ‘gales’ can blow through relatively stable areas wreaking havoc.  Strangest of all is that some fugues are even able to bend time back upon itself, sending one to the past.  There have been very few recordings of this sort of fugue, and most are only a few days at the most.

Third, the mists are home to strange creatures.  Despite what many think, the mists are not empty, nor are they entirely filled with madmen and monsters.  There are quite a few creatures that are docile, but still strange in the mists own way.  Pink eyeless dolphins that play in ships wakes, sharks with long whiskers known as beard-fish, bright blue parrots with three sets of eyes, tumble urchins, jelly slicks, and the great Gray armored whales can all be found in the mists.  The waters are also thick with seaweeds and vegetation.  Large patches of sargassum and thick mats of fungal mycelia can be found floating all over The Gray Sea.

Fourth, the mists are home to strange phenomena.  Rarely if ever do the ships that cross The Gray go without experiences some sort of odd sights or sounds.  These individual phenomena are never the same and can vary in intensity and ominous intent.  Some of the phenomena experienced are people hearing voices; sometimes a whisper, or a distant scream.  Some have seen movements in the corners of their eyes, or have felt rapid changes in temperature, both hot and cold.  Clouds make move in strange ways or take odd shapes, with the features of men and animas and even words.  Strange smells may waft through the air; the scents of burning flesh, of pine trees, of baked goods, of summer rains, of a lover’s perfume, of old books, have all been recorded.  People have noted their skin tingling and a sense of wrongness all over.

This phenomenon is not limited to just the senses, but many odd little encounters as well.  Flipped coins may land on their side.  Six sided dice might roll a seven.  Spoons and cups may not be able to hold their contents.  Ropes may rear up like cornered snakes.  Telescopes might peer forwards or backwards in time.  Small objects may float in the air for a moment then fall.  Sailors have all sorts of charms and rituals designed to ward off these phenomena while in The Gray.

Much of these phenomena however are quite harmless, if unsettling.  The most harmful thing in the Gray Sea however is the fact that healing does not seem to work correctly while in it.  Cuts and scrapes of course will clot, but open wounds will never close.  Unless kept clean infection sets in quite easily and many sailors opt to lop of a limb rather than risk infection.  No matter how much time one spends in the Gray Sea, the never seem to get better, only worse.  This ‘unhealing’ affects spell casters too and even the most powerful of mages and priests can seem to recall only the most basic of incantations and spells.  However this effect seems to be in place only in the open waters of the Gray Sea.  Ghost Islands, some floatresses, and land in the Pocket Seas seems to be immune from this effect.

The lawless nature of The Gray Sea had a tendency to infect those that spend too much time in it.  While this may have some benefits, like longer lifespan, and needing to eat and drink less traveling into the Known Seas for people that have spent too long in Gray Seas is like coming under a great burning pressure.  Those touched by the Gray Sea liken it to an intense headache mixed with sunburn.  Many of the objects that are imported from The Gray Sea have a tendency to fall apart or just stop working if exposed to the Sun of the Known Seas for too long.  For instance, the Paper-Folk of the Origami Isles will turn to pulp if exposed to direct Sunlight for extended periods in the Known Seas.  The Psychoactive Honeys from

Yet all is not water and wind in The Gray Sea, objects and lands exist too.  The Gray Sea seems to have an abundance of wrack and detritus floating in its water.  Anything from simple driftwood, animal carcasses, ships, icebergs, and buildings have been found bobbing in the waters of The Gray Sea.  Much of this wrack drifts aimlessly in the water without any sense of direction, eventually finding its way to The Rat Sea, however this rubbish has a tendency to congeal  into large clusters, that have been given the name of ‘Floatress’ by mariners.

There are also a ‘pockets’ of safe waters, spaces that are solid reality and obey (most) of the rules or reality.  In fact, all of the Known Seas are just the largest of ‘pockets’ in The Gray.  While this may sound welcoming these pockets, particularly the smaller ones are relatively unstable, appearing and disappearing seemingly at random.

One last note, the effects of The Gray Sea often creep into the Known Seas is vast fog banks and mighty storms.  These storms are quite similar in intensity and length of an afternoon’s thunderstorm, but occasional large cyclones will whip out to devastating consequences.  The most minor of these storms manifest as strong winds with an eerie howl or banks of thick fog and have little effect beyond strange behavior for animals and sending strange feelings of dread down ones spine.  Objects can be sucked up from these storms and drawn into The Gray to fates unknown.  The smaller storms are just take debris, unattended objects, and the occasional hat but the large cyclones may take up livestock, people and even whole buildings.  The Gray seemingly has a tendency to draw in objects.  Old salts say that all things eventual get pulled into The Gray's invisible currents.

Many objects found in the Gray Sea have strange, often reality deifying properties.  The floatress of Hoarfrost and the Frostbergs are made of ice that never melts.  Statue Stone, carved from the colossi in the Sea of Statues are made of a stone that is immune to blasting and most impacts.  The psychoactive honeys of the Floral Sea can induce false memories and emotions. These products fetch large price tags in the Known Seas for these strange properties.  However exposure to the Sun of the Known Seas damages the products and if not outright destroying the products begins to degrade them.  This degradation takes place over a period of time

Simply put the best way to understand the nature of The Gray is this: The rules of reality while in The Gray are not hard rules, like in the Known Seas, but merely suggestions.  This lawlessness infects everything found in this vast ocean, from the waters, to its islands, to even its peoples and creatures.

The Deep Gray
The Deep Gray is where the sea starts and the sky ends, or where the sky starts and the sea ends. It has gray water on a gray foggy sky. It is were the weird stuff comes from. Leviathans and Whales come from the Deep Gray. Ships that wander too far from the Known Seas of Gray Ways get consumed by the Deep Gray. Sometimes they come back but all wrong. Ships that sail on the wrong side of the water. Ships made of crystal. Ships that are living creatures like some sort of sick faux-golem. Ships that are alive, their masts trees their ropes vines. Ships that are alive, their masts bones their ropes veins and sinew. This however is nothing compared to what happens to their crews.