Red Ocean

The Red Ocean is a vast, vermilion body of water that encompasses a good swath of Celerillion.

Background

Once upon a time, someone dreamed a sea, and thus a sea crashed and roared, breaking upon a beach of red sand. Unlike the vast majority of oriception events, the sea didn't fade but instead grew larger and larger, until its unknown depths had expanded in every direction for thousands of miles. The reddish waters are translucent and, just possibly, also conscious. Or perhaps it's the consciousness of numberless aquatic creatures that swim throughout it, in total creating a self-sustaining act of conceptual creation.

A tonbrium fortress lies along the edge of the Red Ocean, but otherwise most tonbrium will skirt the sea. The stories that they tell recount a drowned cerebral husk slowly crawling across the ocean floor, a story that within Celerillion must give rise to just such an entity or, at the very least, a concerning facade thereof.

A group of tonbrium calling themselves the Wayfarers sail 3 great ships of magnificent oriception, numbering 500 tonbrium in total. They all live inside the bowels of the ships, but will spend most of their time up among the rigging, watching out for dream storms, for great beasts that sometimes rise from out of the depths, and for islands of moving vegetation that can mire and pull down their vessels. They don't give heed to the Philosopher or the Insurgents, and prefer to go their own way. Of course, they'll recognize that an unruly mind is an invitation for disaster. Unlike the military structure imposed by the Insurgents or the enforced asceticism and dearth of imagination under the tutelage of the Philosopher, the Wayfarers believe that the way to live in the Unfettered Range is through experience, joy, and observation. They aren't afraid to imagine wonderful things, thus simultaneously creating those very conceptions. All of their creations are released into the sea, where they will either fade away or find themselves a new, independent existence.