Sites of Interest of the Floral Sea

The Hives: Spread all across the Floral Sea are massive Hives the homes of the Bee-Folk. Scattered all across the sea the Hives dominate the skyline. A single hive might have thousands of Bee-Folk residents. While they rarely war with one another, border skirmishes, mostly involving each other’s Wax Golems are common. The Hives are not built for humans, but many have hostels made from discarded ships and driftwood for visitors.

Jerimiah’s Place: Jerimiah Almsworth was a sycophant, pomp, and all around brown noser of the highest order all across the Major Powers. Chased out from the Known Seas for, in his words, ‘entertaining the advances of the wives and daughters of no less than three counts of the United Empire at the same time,’ Jerimiah found refuge in the Floral Sea where his cog ship got beached on a sandbar.

Jerimiah gets by on selling his skills in royal flattery making himself indispensable for Bee-Folk looking to impress their queens. His advice does not come cheap however, and has netted him large amounts of wax, honey, royal jelly, rare flowers, and four of his own personal wax golems. Jerimiah sells the goods to passing ships and this trade has allowed him to turn his ship into a lavish, albeit lonely, pleasure palace.

Anderson Meadery: Ingred Anderson has spent a small fortune relocation her family’s struggling meadery from the Solvang Clan Holds to the Floral Sea but it has all been worth it. Having the first choice of honey and being so close to the raw product has allowed Anderson Meadery to make more, better, and cheaper mead than any other company. The meadery is a vast complex made of white washed stone, stained yellow from the pollen. The facility is built entirely on stilts and consists of the winery, warehouses, docks, and small village for the hundred or so workers. Around the clock squadrons of Bee-Folk and Wax Golems transport hexagonal wax drums filled with honey here for processing. The import docks are sticky with spilt honey. While the meadery is an impressive feat of architecture, it is not Ingred’s greatest construction. Her masterpiece, and the secret to the meadery’s success, is another structure, the Resplendent Apiary.

Resplendent Apiary: This large wood and wax structure is lavishly appointed with mahogany and wax walls with bas relief carvings of various queens from the Known Seas and serves as a finishing school designed for the princesses of the Hives. Here stern faced headmistresses educate princesses in proper etiquette, manors, and occasionally academics. The young queens also get something here that they cannot from the Hives, influence and connections, both to the other queens and to forces outside of the Floral Sea. The tuition for this school is high, payed in thousands of barrels of honey, but the Bee-Folk gladly pay it, as the alumni of this school are some of the strongest and most influential queens in the Floral Sea.

Assassins Fields: The Floral Sea is home to almost every kind of flower imaginable. Most of these are prosaic, sweet smelling things like wild flowers and roses, the kind of things you might find in a grandmothers garden. There are, however; patches of flowers more nefarious. Opium poppies, nightshade, black lotus, and other flowers coveted for their sinister qualities can be found in small fields all across the Floral Sea. Unsavory types often jealousy guard these patches, using the crops to their own ends or selling them to the highest bidders. Fiercely protective and territorial these gangs will attack anything that gets close to their turf.

The Bohemian Groves: Scattered across the Flora Sea are small communes established by self-appointed gurus, poets, philosophers, musicians, and counterculture youths, drop outs and ‘mind expanders.’ These settlements are ramshackle, made of mostly sail cloth tens and driftwood shacks. They lack any sort of industry and their diets are based off of the flowers, mostly seeds, salads, and tisanes made from boiled petals. These settlements are more than willing to trade, but will only barter, they, like, refuse to use currency, man. There are two reasons why the ne’er-do-wells of the Assassin Fields have not raided or strong arm these settlements. One, they lack anything of real value. Two, the communes all know the secret to making a powerful narcotic derived from flower petals, that when burned and inhaled invokes a wave of blissful complacency, confusion, and a hunger for junk food. If the communes fear that they will be raided, they just burn large piles of the stuff up wind of their settlements.

Terra De las Flores De La Sol: This island is solely covered in sunflowers that arch their heads to following the never setting sun of the Floral Sea. Considered by the Church of The Lightbringer to be a holy spot, a church and a small monastery have been erected in a clearing on the island. The monks here export sunflower oil and large bags of sunflower seeds that are popular with sailors.

Flora and Fauna of the Floral Sea

Wax Golem: At almost five meters tall each wax golem is an intimidating rune carved sentinel against any threats to The Hives and the Bee-Folk. A single cyclopean black compound eye stands out from the butter-yellow wax flesh of the golem, unblinking and ever vigilant, never breaking from their perpetual scan of the horizon. Each golem caries a quiver of nightshade tipped hooked stinger-spears on their back. Bee-Folk pollen harvests revere these guardians, and as a ward against danger and for auspicious pollen harvests, often adorn them with woven flower crowns and multiple leis.

The process to make a wax golem is not an easy one. Wax must be first melted and then shaped into the rough shape of the construct. The melted wax severely burns the bee-folk constructors and most require amputation of their forearms. Gallons of sacred royal jelly and a specialized larva, who’s body will wither and die so that it grows into the Wax Golem's eye, are implanted in the constructs chest. Finally the runes that give the creation life must be carved into the construct. The same bee-folk that melted the wax for the bee golem are chosen for this task, their stingers used to carve the runes into the wax flesh. This process kills the workers. From the corpses the stingers are gathered and treated with nightshade and other poisons and psychoactive pollens to make the stinger spears that each golem keeps on its back.

Honey Bears: Neither honey, nor bear, Honey Bears are golden predatory oozes. Often covered in petals Honey Bears are one of the most dangerous predators in the Floral Sea.

Root Fogs: Root Frogs are massive and their skin has a knotted green designed to blend into the roots. On the back of each grows a large lotus flower. They strike from camouflage with their massive tongues that can shoot out lightning fast to a distance of ten meters or more. Their preferred prey are the pollen harvesters of the Bee-Folk, so the Wax Golems must stand ever vigilant scanning the horizon for root frogs while out harvesting.

Petal Elemental: Elemental is a poor descriptor of what these creatures are. Their most natural form is that of a gust of wind heavy with various flower petals. They however can take other forms including that of birds, fish, and men, all shaped out of petals. They leave a pleasant scent wherever they go and serve as guardians to the flowers in the Floral Sea

Flutter Swarms: Great flocks of shimmering butterflies that shimmer and change color based on the moods of nearby creatures. Their life cycle is unclear, as no caterpillars exist in the Floral Sea.

Bee-Folk of the Floral Sea

Bee-Folk In-Depth

 

what all the buzz is about

The Bee-Folk are tall humanoids that roughly compared to centaurs, with the top half of a man and the bottom half of a bee. On average the Bee-folk are about seven feet tall, covered in bristly fur with alternating bands of black and yellow. Their bottom half are similar to a bee's with a thorax, abdomen, compete with four insect like legs, and a stinger. The upper half is like that of a human with a pair of arm with digits but with a pair of translucent wings. Their heads look roughly like humans, but have long spindly antenna and black multifaceted eyes. The wings of a Bee-Folk are too weak to maintain flight for extended periods of time, however they do allow for long assisted hops. If a Bee-Folk uses it stinger, there is a very good chance that it might die so they will only use them as a last ditch effort if their queen is under attack.


Bee-Folk live in vast wax hives. Each hive is constructed from numerous stacked hexagonal towers made from wax ruled by a singular queen. Towers can be over a hundred feet tall and a single hive may house thousands of Bee-Folk. The Hives lack windows and staircases and are difficult for any non-Bee-Folk to navigate. The Bee-Folk strictly forbid anything that may burn, generate heat, or explode from entering the hives. As such they are a paperless society, and their only form of communication is carved wax tablets.


Bee-Folk society is very rigid with little ability to change station. Most Bee-Folk are pollen-gathers and work the vast flower fields that surround their hives. At the top of the Bee-Folk social order is the queen who rules with an iron fist and honeyed tongue. The Bee-Folk live and die for their queen and the queens live and die for their hives. The greatest honor a Bee-Folk can get is to be selected to become a member of the Queen's Court; an elite inner circle make of a menagerie of the hives best and royal sycophants.


The castes represent the amount of individuality a Bee-Folk has. The queens are full-fledged personalities; one might say hyper-personalities, as their personality that imprints on all of the lesser Bee-Folk beneath her. Princesses are slightly lesser queens, while having their own full-fledged personalities they cannot imprint theirs in the presence of another queen. Nobles have strong personalities but are best seen as aspects or fragments of a queen’s personality. As one might have various inner voices or dialogues the queens have nobles. Every hive has their own system and ranking of nobles each with different titles and honorifics but the common trend is that the higher the rank the more of a personality they have. At the bottom the pollen-harvesters have next to no individuality. They cannot even grasp some of the basic concepts of individuality like ‘I’, ‘Me’, and ‘Mine.’


This personality imprinting makes it imperative that hives have the best most capable queens they can have. A Bee-Folk can never be more capable than their queen. While a noble may seem to be more knowledge or capable at a certain subject or task this is less of being greater than the queen, then it is as removing the distraction from other parts of the queen’s personality. Princesses are educated from a young age and no expenses are spared to give them the best education. Many tutors and educators are hired form the Known Seas to come and educate princess, often at the cost of thousands of gallons of honey. There are however, exceptions. Some Bee-Folk go rouge and develop their own personalities. Too much time away from the hives or exposure to too much royal jelly or psychoactive honey will warp a Bee-Folks personality.


The Bee-Folk believe that exchanging money for honey cheapens both. Only a queen may give out honey on behalf of the hive. They do this quite often, but not as exchange or commerce, but in the form of patronage. The queens long for nothing more than legitimate royal power and are quite easily charmed by anyone treating them as actual royalty which is usually done by referring to them with long winded titles and deep genuflexion, or presenting them with the trappings of royalty. This said the queens when presented with a tiara cannot tell the difference between one made from platinum inlayed with cut jewels to one made from tin with polished glass. Their court however is a bit quicker to catch on.


The hives offer little for public trade, save for wax products and a pollen cleaning service for passing ships. There is a common misconception that the Bee-Folk trade their honey, however; honey has a special place in their society and cannot be bought. The Bee-Folk however are willing to trade the honey. The Bee-Folk do not quite understand the concept of metals or currency, and refer to gold as ‘Man-Honey’ as it seems to attract their attention and they have never seen a man without a bundle of it at their side. While they cannot begin to fathom what sort of flower men gather gold from, they do know enough to keep a cache of it around as it, like no other honey, seems to sooth and pacify man.


Three products from the Hives should be noted. While the Hives produce regular honey they also produce a very potent psychoactive honey as a byproduct. These hones are unfiltered and opaque, coming in strange colors. Consuming this honey causes emotions to be magnified, highs higher, and lows lower. The Bee-Folk do not consider this to be real honey and just throw it away by dumping it into the sea or in pits. A few enterprising individuals have been collecting and filtering this honey, and if rumors hold true, some of the Hives are beginning to sell it as well.


The second item of note is Royal Jelly. This milky white substance is very important in Bee-Folk culture. All Bee-Folk, regardless of station are given this when they are just larvae. How much they are fed determines the caste that they are born in. The more Royal Jelly an adult Bee-Folk consumes the greater the sense of individuality they will have. For humanoids Royal Jelly acts as a powerful healing salve and as a cure for amnesia and memory loss. It is common belief that consuming Royal Jelly extends one life, one dose for one day.


The third item is the Bee-Folks wax. Coveted for use as candles in the Known Seas, they give of a solid and steady light and a pleasant floral smell. They are also remarkably shelf stable and will not melt or warp unless burnt.

The Floral Sea

The Floral Sea

 

kinda like this

The Floral Sea is a vast calm ocean, covered in a vast blanket of every imaginable type of flower. Hibiscus, chrysanthemum, lavender, hyacinth, daffodils, crocuses, baby's breath, tulips, and camellia all flourish in the soft waves. Less pleasant flowers bloom here as well, patches of poisonous and psychoactive flowers can be spotted by the trained eye deceptively bobbing with the other blossoms. More villainous sorts have laid claim to patches of opium poppies and black lotuses.

The soft undulations in the water make the flowers appear to blend into one another, like bleeding watercolors, into thousands of shades of pink, purple, and orange at a distance. Closer up the flowers grow in great patches of singular species and shades. The air here is an olfactory smorgasbord of blooming flowers and while usually pleasant to most, can be overwhelming to those with acute senses or allergies.

There is no distinct night in this sea rather, a prolonged sundown and sunup; the 'nights' here are a period of deep burning orange-red and as such the flowers here are almost always in a state of bloom. The constant blooming discharges large clouds of pollen which can be so thick that they roll like banks of green-yellow fog. Visitors to this pocket sea can find themselves choking to death in these pollen clouds, if caught unprepared. The pollen gives a distinct yellow tinge to the Floral Sea.

The water that makes up this sea is not your typical seawater. The water here is mineral rich, sweet tasting, and has a slight shimmer to it. If poured onto flowering plant life the water acts as a powerful fertilizer allowing the plants to bloom in a matter of days even without access to soil.

Travel in this sea is no easy task, on foot or by boat. On foot many of the flowering plants have thrones so thick armor is a requirement. The dense blanket of flowers obscures holes and quicksand and at what a distance may appear to be roses may be a deadly trap. By boat the islands that make up this sea are sandy and shallow. Sandbars are a constant hazard, and the many petals in the water often obscure the shorelines. Only a few open channels are clear of flowers and petals.

Despite the abundance of plant life in this sea animal life is uncommon. Only those creatures which feed indirectly on the flowers thrive here. Something in the water acts as a natural pesticide so that the many insects that would normally feast in the abundance of petals are nowhere to be found. Butterflies can be found here but not caterpillars. Humming birds, many times the size of those from the Known Seas can be seen darting from flower to flower.

Outside of the Bee-Folk hives and the Anderson Meadery, settlements in the Floral Sea are small and few and far between. Most are communities of outcasts that have escaped the other seas for the bounties of this one. The Floral Sea is rich only in flowers and honey and many traditional trade goods are unheard of here.