Glálasn

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Octresday, Avonslau 32, 1134 LE

The Deep, the Blue, the Violet. Sixth of the Dream-Children of Regalion. Once barren and clean, now crawling with corpses in the guise of land. Impure in the way a lake is impure for its algae, its fish and swans. Made marred by virtue of being home to some— to many, in fact. In its ancient days, it was known solely as Glálasn, the Ocean-That-Pierces-The-World, but its new form, born of the Liar's dream of Life and Leviathans, is called Great Hæcýa, in accordance with the grand design. 'Neath its waves and on them lie the cradle, the blankets of breath that hold precious life in their grasp and refuse to let go. A gentle father if respected, and a cruel one if not heeded with caution. Glálasn, Great Hæcýa, thy waves are bounteous and eternal.

Glálasn, sixth of Regalion's Nine Great Worlds, was born of its dream of water, of oceans and the deep. In the amaranth sun's characteristic style, the creation of this ocean world was an extreme version of this, made in the singular unbroken image of that ideal. As such, Glálasn is an ocean of ocean, quite possibly the truest sense of an oceanic planet in all creation. Its waters reach down to the center of its core, with no solid matter for it all to rest upon.

Originally uninhabited, it now boasts a thriving ecosystem to call its own. Though there are a great abundance of species great and small, the only sapient life on the planet remains dragons, particularly aquatic dragons. Their ranks migrated there shortly after the planet was created, initially bounded by the thick air and acidic waters.

Oceanography

As Glálasn does not have any land to speak of, the regional descriptions of the world are broken up by layers of its ocean instead. The temperature gradients and amount of light that pierces the seas define these regions, but the only other difference between them is the pressure from the ocean above that is exerted on the beings that dwell within.

Surface

The surface of Glálasn is a relatively placid one. With only solar tides and consistent calm winds to shape the waves, the individual waves never get very high, further dampened by the thick atmosphere that covers the world. The only distinguishing features are a few dozen Lavwakes, floating corpses of once-living Leviathans.

The surface is relatively hot, brimming with sunlight and with average daily temperatures reaching 36°C above water. The waters at the surface are on average 27-31°C depending on the time of day and the depth. Temperatures fall off sharply at first, with the top twenty meters of water having this four-degree difference, but lower down the gradients are much less intense. Life tends to avoid this uppermost section due to the variable temperature, but the dragons on the surface find it very useful for regulating their temperatures, able to dip into the cooler waters during the hottest parts of the day.

The unique feature of the surface is its contact with the atmosphere. The wide temperature gradients of the top few meters of water are because of this contact, since the air heats up much more easily than the water. Near the equator, boiling rainstorms have been cited on rare occasions when the atmospheric confluence permits it. During polar night, the winds are cold enough that some clouds freeze and precipitate down as snow until they touch the water's surface. This atmosphere is inhospitable for the respiratory systems of all of Glálasn's native animal life, but it is easily livable for its dragon population.

Besides the somewhat lethal levels of certain solvents, the atmosphere and surface climate is neatly predictable and the sights are a wonder to behold. Sunsets form a strange gradient between the slate-blue of the atmosphere itself and the vivid amaranth hue of Regalion, and the coloration during the day is a menagerie of pastel colors. At night, the disk of Galaxios is visible from roughly midnight onward, given Regalion's position far above the disk and Glálasn's orientation in respect to it. The clouds, squeezed by the dense atmosphere, can often be seen precipitating from miles away, giving a distant look at the weather patterns that cover the planet.

Aulandag

Aulandag ([ˈœ͡y.lan.daɣ]) is the daylight zone of Glálasn's oceans, the layers which experience a full cycle of day and night. These layers extend, due to Regalion's sunlight carrying a bit of odhir of travel, down from about twenty to about five hundred meters below the surface. Strong currents pull water and living things across the world here, and the waters tend to stay between 20-26°C.

The network of vast Coriolis currents changes seasonally, dragging life to new regions and separating schools of various beings from one another. Bodies and other biological matter can be held aloft by these currents for centuries before sinking into the lower layers of the ocean.

Most of the plankton within Aulandag are photosynthetic, producing their energy from sunlight and helping to sequester some of the endless waters into their own biomass. The animals at this level tend to be distinctly colored, either bright against the waters for attracting mates or practically countershaded to avoid detection.

Kvöldur

Kvöldur ([ˈkvœld.ʏr̥]) is the twilight zone of Glálasn's oceans, the layers that experience reduced sunlight exposure and transition from the fully bright reaches of Aulandag to the pitch-black depths of Eilíþnott. These layers extend from about five hundred meters to two and a half kilometers deep. The temperatures range from about 20°C at the top of Kvöldur to just around 5°C at its bottom. Kvöldur's waters are somewhat convective, a happy medium between the chaos of Aulandag above and the eerie stillness of Eilíþnott beneath.

Kvöldur is the layer with the densest number of Lavwakes, the corpses of Leviathans taken over by plants and other life as a floating island within the seas. The pressures within are at the beginnings of discomfort for most unadapted lifeforms, namely the dragons. The lower parts of Kvöldur are painful for dragons to stay in for very long unless they use their clan-given abilities to reduce the water pressure around themselves.

Kvöldur is home to the most diverse and bizarre varieties of life that exist within Great Hæcýa's waters. Photosynthetic and chemosynthetic plankton both have much to work with here, as light is still somewhat present and the descent of corpse-matter gives plenty of fuel for the ecosystem. The increased pressures give life an incentive to move more slowly, conserving energy. While eyes are not universally part of Kvöldur's living ecosystem, they are common enough that bioluminescence provides a great biological advantage.

Eilíþnott

Eilíþnott ([ei.ˈliθ.nɔʰt]) is the vast midnight zone of Glálasn, stretching from twenty-five hundred meters deep down to the limits of where dragons are capable of reaching, formally about four kilometers deep. No light pierces the waves here, and the temperature gradient is extremely mild and still, only lowering from about 5°C at its top to 3°C at the lowest depths. Stillness is something of the theme of Eilíþnott, with the pressures causing any solid matter to sink unthinkably slowly as marine snow, with it even stopping at certain depths depending on its density compared to the black waters around it.

The pressures in Eilíþnott are enough that most dragons have to constantly use their Sunstep to reduce it around their bodies to survive. It is ill-advised for any of them to stay here for very long, though it isn't likely that much of use is in Eilíþnott for them anyway.

The life in Eilíþnott is sparse, only made up of the most hardy detrivorous plankton and extremophile animals. The exception to this rule is Leviathans, who spend much of their early lives ascending through Eilíþnott and feeding on the increasing wealth of animals as they breach into the parts of the ocean with light.

Uykremst

Uykremst ([ˈʏi.kr̥ɛmst]) is the name for the abyssal depths of Glálasn that no being has been able to reach due to the extreme pressures. Even trying to reduce those pressures locally with their applicable Sunstep, dragons that try to reach these depths are quickly exhausted and crushed by the immense weight of the four or more kilometers of water pressing down on them. In addition to the pressure, it is as totally black as Eilíþnott above it, and nothing from the two survived excursions below its defined beginning has been notable.

It is unknown how deep Uykremst extends. Whether there remains a collected ball of corpse-matter beneath it, a mantle of exotic ice, or something else entirely is a complete mystery. For all intents and purposes, the ocean is said to continue down to the very center of the world. The temperatures are also a mystery. Theorized to begin increasing from the vast friction of the water above it, the core may be as hot as 150°C.

Leviathans may be the only lifeforms capable of dipping into Uykremst's upper reaches, but even they seem to avoid it. The pressures and darkness are a specter that haunts all of Great Hæcýa's life, it would seem.

Biosphere

Much of the biosphere of Glálasn was forged in the Annautic Dream, an event occurring about ten million years ago whereby Regalion filled the seas with living beings, an entire ecosystem to feast upon the waters and each other. This biosphere has changed slowly over its history, giving rise to uniquely strange life. The cycling of usable matter is slower than other worlds, as there is much less not-water to go around.

Phytoplankton and chemoplankton fill the oceans sparsely, feeding off of trace elements in the water and their respective sources of energy to produce their energy. Several orders of heterotrophic fish feed on these plankton and each other, eventually becoming food for the grand Leviathans who rule the ecology of the world and become defining parts of it even after death.

While plant life isn't nearly as common as it would be on other worlds, it does have presence on Glálasn, usually in the microbiomes attached to Lavwakes. One particular type of plant, the Kalkoclast, is known to bind the Lavwakes together very well and cause them to be buoyant. This is due to the Kalkoclast's internal air sacs, which it grows in order to orient itself towards the light and drag whatever it is attached to further up through the waters.

Dragons

The pre-Annautic biosphere of Glálasn consisted entirely of aquatic dragons, and today they still make up a significant part of the population. As part of the ecosystem, aquatic dragons serve as primary producers, synthesizing water through elemental consumption into more usable biological compounds, namely their bodies. Dragon corpses form the basis for much of the rest of the food web, and the forty-seven million years the planet existed before the rest of the ecosystem certainly built up a wealth of matter for depths-dwelling creatures to feast on.

The Annautic Dream primarily converted sunken dragon bodies into the new life it created, and in turn the life spawned off a secondary vivacious draconic manifestation, though this only persists now with spring dragons due to the somewhat toxic composition of the atmosphere and oceans that only aquatic dragons can withstand.

Leviathans

The great beasts at the apex of Glálasn's food web, who span such vast areas that they could be considered islands unto themselves. Only a couple tens of thousands of Leviathans are alive at a given time, requiring immense quantities of food in order to stay alive and grow. In food-poor times, they are known to resort to cannibalism to sustain themselves. And in all the universe, these Leviathans are also one of the few species that can and does feed on dragons for sustenance.

Leviathans breed in the deepest depths of Eilíþnott, rising up as their hunger demands throughout their lives. Even with their low numbers, they rarely live long past their breeding cycle once every twenty-eight years. They grow quickly, feed on enormous quantities, breed, and then either slowly run out of fuel and starve or are consumed by their mates and offspring.

Leviathans are at once mild and aggressive in manner. They will not expend any energy until they have determined that it will be worth the return, and yet once they they determine that, nothing will stop them from their advancement. It is wise when encountering a Leviathan to not appear worth the effort.

Lavwakes

Lavwakes are the only "landmasses" in all of Glálasn, and are made up of the corpses of Leviathans and the parasitic life that takes them over after they perish. Plants that they consumed throughout their lives have burrowed into their flesh begin to bloom as the body and soul break down, and as they feast on its fleshly nutrients they slowly transform the Leviathan corpse into a recognizable Lavwake: a miniature floating reef or island kept aloft at a depth determined by the mixture of plants that controls the Lavwake, which in turn have their growth affected by the depth at which the original Leviathan died.

Lavwakes on and peeking above the surface of Glálasn aren't unheard of; they are in fact the only discernible landmarks in the All-Consuming Ocean. A few localized species of animal have become amphibious over the ten million years they have existed, able to take some trips onto the land portion of a Lavwake in order to evade predators or seek food. These species are entirely confined to their Lavwake, however, and are not suited for the open ocean.

Though most of the ocean seems like a vast nothingness, given how sparse living organisms of appreciable size tend to be, but around and throughout a Lavwake there is thousands of times more biodiversity. Plant and animal species of all varieties can benefit from the abundance that Lavwakes provide, and living in harmony with more species allows a more robust and balanced ecosystem to occur. Over 98% of dragons that inhabit Glálasn live on a Lavwake somewhere within the upper regions of the ocean, too. They are truly well-needed islands of difference that let the unbroken seas thrive. The monotony of the open ocean cannot support even a fraction of the life a well-developed Lavwake can, a lesson one must hope Regalion has learned well for its more recent creations.