When the Sojourner came to slay the hedge wizard Aragal, she commanded her legions to march into the Blossoming Sea. She was found by a fisherman three days later, face down in the surf, but her legions had long since disappeared beneath the waves. It is said that one must first be drowned before the Legion of the Deep can be summoned, but none has ever succeeded.
Trophy: Things Lost to the Blossoming Sea
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The God-Emperor’s Red Hand was not the largest ship in the Old Kaldurhrite Navy but it might’ve been the most dangerous. Designed to evade all modern scrying the Red Hand was lost at sea when it was sent out on its first mission. Not soon after that the Kalduhr Civil Wars began and the resources that would’ve gone towards recovering it went towards trying in vain to hold on to the fading imperial republic.
Are the empty coastal towns a result of a ghost ship, of pirates who have taken possession of this Old Kalduhr-tech or just bandits hiding behind another legend of the Blossing Sea?
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There is a place in the Blossoming Sea where the waters do not merge, but leave a deep swath of crimson against their luminous turquoise peaks. It is said that this marks the passage of the Dread Queen Malak during her final conquest. On land, she left a trail of blood in her wake - but on this voyage it was the blood of a mutinous crew that stained the waters as they were towed behind her fleet, kept alive by cruel sorcery until she set foot upon the shore.
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An ancient astrological manuscript depicts The Queen’s Crown, a constellation used by sailors to navigate the waters for thousands of years, as having five jewels set across the top instead of four. Treasure-hunters now think the myth about the fifth jewel falling into the Blossoming Sea may be true, and listen more carefully to the drunken sailors who swear they have sailed over it—a vast, cyclopean gem twinkling silently in the depths.
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<SORRY I know you guys wanted stuff brief but I got carried away, this was just too fun!..>
Murin ran, as fast and as far as land would allow. By horse, by cart, by foot if need be, but he could not stop his terror-fueled flight for fear of the soot-black shadows following in the footsteps of his frantic expedition. And even when the solid embrace of land fell from beneath him, Murin did not halt his quest for safety. Docked ashore the Blossoming Sea was a small vessel with no evidence of captain or crew. It was perhaps not glamorous, but glamor was not his pursuit. Taking with him merely several days supplies and a fishing pole he’d found stranded upon the ship, Murin set sail in the hopes that his shadows would not carry suit. His journey took him far upon the water - further than his scrappily rendered map depicted. Surely if he himself were lost, there would be no hope of the shadows discovering his whereabouts?
For a while he became content, but there came a day when his fishing pole dragged something more than a simple haddock or herring from the watery depths. As days went by the water continued to bless (and curse) Murin with gifts supposedly sought after by treasure-hunters far and wide. His bountiful treasures continued to amass with no end in sight, and his skills as a sailor grew ever more sharp - within several months time, he had become tact enough to fend off the occasional odd scavenging crew. With a horde of treasures in stock and a soul strengthened by months at sea, Murin set course for shore in the hopes of trading his bountiful horde for more useful provisions. And perhaps, he’d come upon a stroke of luck and discover that the shadows had abandoned their chase.
He docked his vessel and dropped to shore with a great thud, bags of gold held in both of his weathered hands. The people flocked to him, enamored by the sight of such magnificent and plentiful wealth. They clamored and gawked, begged and pleaded, reached and grappled in the hopes of swindling the strange man’s gems and gold. From the corner of his eye, however, he saw shadows flickering and shifting, drawing ever nearer through the crowd of mindless money-grabbers. With a newly returned sense of urgency and fear, Captain Murin leaped onto his ship and set out upon the Blossoming Sea once again, in the hopes that a day would come when he could safely return to his home upon land.
Legends say that Captain Murin’s ship still sails: perhaps he still roams the waters to this day, or perhaps his treasure alone still floats upon the vast expanse - waiting to be claimed by a soul seeking safety.
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The plain’s old warlocks, sipping milk in their horsehair nests around dung fires, tell of a prince of the Wode People who was gifted a glass horse by his secret father - a powerful deamon. Fleet and tireless the prince rode his magic horse to the ends of the earth. When he came to the shore of the Blossoming Sea, he was unable to comprehend an ocean’s vastness or depth believing the sea a shallow flooded plain or expanse of strange grass. Impetuous, the prince commanded his magic steed forward and quickly drowned. The glass horse wanders beneath the waves, unmarked and in need of a better master then the cursed bones of the prince still tied to its saddle.
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In your youth, the oldest sailor in your village forever tantalized you with her seafaring stories of treasure and freedom from landlocked drudgery.
But her most indelible tale was her chance encounter in the Blossoming Sea with the aimlessly forever drifting leftover carcass of the dead(?) god of leviathans. Though a thick putrid decaying fog stench obscured most of the mass, what the old sailor did see was as big as an island and pockmarked with disturbingly deep rotting holes in its husk; the last desperate salvo in the final climatic sea war, and if the tales are to be believed, bristling with magicks from the purest mana artifacts from the time of Old Kalduhr. Unnerved, her captain quickly brought the ship about to leave this forsaken area.
As the ship made haste away, the old sailor said could swear she heard laughing as beautiful and haunted as a youth losing their first love.
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Every sailor of the Blossoming Sea knows the tales of the Withering Hulk.
Floating with the ocean currents, the hulk stands as a cathedral like giant out off the ocean.
Said to be a monstrous construction of wrecked hulls, intertwined ropes, and splintered masts, the Withering Hulk is surrounded with rumor as only a few claim to have seen it. No one knows where it comes from or how all these wrecks have taken on this, almost, eldritch apearence, but tales tell of unfathomable riches hiding within its halls.
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They say that if you drop your anchor in the Blossoming Sea on the warmest evening of the year and wait, the Duke of the Deep might come to call. This ancient fey brings a retinue of revelers from the bottom of the sea to lead sailors through a night of dance and jubilation. Some captains fear this night, knowing that crews so entrapped rarely return to work. Others seek it out, wishing to lose their earthly troubles and join the dance of the waves.
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(Found on a beach, on a crumbling salty page in a frosted green bottle.)
Three little girls with little gold curls did wander by the sea.
One little girl saw diamonds and pearls, and lived quite merrily.
One little girl was taken by whirls of salt and pulled beneath.
One little girl saw fate twice unfurl, and hid from death and greed.
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Myth: If you find a sea green conch, it will tell you where to find a treasure in the Blossoming Sea.
Myth: In the darkest month of winter, the edge of the Blossoming Sea sometimes freezes. Legend says that upon the ice of the first freeze each winter, there can be found footprints of lovers that gave up waiting for their betrothed to return from their whaling expeditions and tried instead to meet them at the bottom of the sea.
Myth: On the nights of a blue moon, the outline of a woman playing the lute can be seen in the fog over the sea.
Times long ago, there existed a color that can no longer be seen by any eyes. Extracted from the shells of a now extinct mollusk pulled from the depths of The Blossoming sea, the color Dowyn has been lost to it’s waters. It is rumored that the great master Ajino’s “unfinished” masterpiece is actually painted in Dowyn.
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When King Ulfaad died, the people mourned greatly, for he was a wise and benevolent ruler. As were the ways back then, they built for him a funeral barge, and laid his bier atop a pyre. With thousands standing on the beach, two longships towed the barge away from shore, and archers lit the pyre with flaming arrows. The flames leapt high, yet did not consume: the barge drifted out across the Blossoming Sea, still burning, until its light disappeared over the horizon. Today, if you see a strange light on the distant water, know that you gaze upon King Ulfaad’s Funeral Barge. Take comfort, for it is an omen of wisdom and peace.
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Out in the far middle of the Blossoming Sea, where the blues of the depths turn a dark black, there lays a spire. Its brine stained and coral encrusted tip pierces the water, visible between the peaks and troughs of the waves. Most would mistake it for the top of a large seamount were it not for the dark gleam that reflects off the too-smooth stone. Some call it the Inverted Lighthouse; for it not warns of danger, but is said to instead draw in ships to their doom. No one knows what happens to the ships that disappear near the spire. There is no tangle of wrecks or debris caught in the stone and coral. No survivors to speak of strange darkness, whispers, and promises of long abandoned treasure. No glimpses of what waits in the deep for those who go looking. No hint at what waits within the Lighthouse; waiting to be found.
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Statues of Ophelia, the drowned Sister. Sailor-Nuns in her Holy Order drop her statues into the sea only in places where the bottom cannot be touched by any anchor or rope. Her order is known for turning grief and loss into a lens with which to explore of the world.
An ancient tale claims that on the darkest bottom of the Blossoming Sea lies a coffer containing the sea itself. If opened, it would blast off an endless amount of saltwater with tremendous pressure, as if the chest contains a portal to the bottom of the ocean. Any person unfortunate enough to find this chest, and fool enough to bring it on board, would be constantly followed by an unspeakable sea monster. The tale says the creature attacks and sinks the ship only if it comes close to any port, ensuring that the coffer containing the sea won’t ever leave its own waters.