Aesthetics

Mer: Illustrated

Of all the pisceans of the Endless Blue, the Mer are the most varied.  While variation of the other Elquan races is minimal if at all, the Mer are an explosion of color and diversity.  Their coloration ranges across all the colors of the spectrum, and their personalities match.  New ideas pique their interest far more than clinging to old traditions, and you can find home for just about any fad somewhere in the Mer Currents.

Male Mer and Female Mer, by Naiche Washburn

Naiche’s work on the Mer helped me solve a minor problem I’d been having for a while: the gill slits.  From almost the first day of creating the Endless Blue setting, I had decided to put the gills of pisceans along their ribs instead of the more traditional location, the neck.  The problem with that choice is that typical clothing as we know it would interfere with breathing.  Naiche came up with the idea of using a patch of netting over the gills  that would not interfere with the breathing process.  Netting can be made of somewhat elastic fibers, allowing clothing to follow the contours of the piscean form and thus saving the intelligent races of the Endless Blue from all wearing nothing but robes.  As netting already has a preexisting connotation with water, it seemed a natural choice.

Naiche’s DeviantArt gallery shows some of his other work, and I’ll be showing of some more later this week!

Mythology

The Lernynge Lax, or the Salmon of Knowledge

The tale of the Lernynge Lax is thought to be folklore inspired to help keep the masses of the Known World uneducated.  By shedding personal illumination in a negative context, the more educated hope to keep the population from seeking enlightenment.  Without education, the wealthy keep the advantage in survival to themselves.

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In the fall of 2013, I had the pleasure of commissioning a series of nine digital paintings by Vincent Coviello (V4m2c4 on DeviantArt).  Each image has a tight line drawing, a full color illustration (as seen below), and a final background composite.  Many of the magnificent details in these drawings came from Vincent himself, and his input was spot on.  During the whole process I could not help myself from checking my email compulsively for the newest sketch or update.  I may have suffered a little bit of withdrawal when he finished the project.

Illustrations of the player races in the Endless Blue Campaign Setting.

 

This and some of his other work has been recently featured on IO9.com in the article “Can We Please Have More Diverse Dragon Designs Like These?”  His hard work and talent are plain to see.  It was a pleasure working with Vincent, and hopefully, someday I will again…

Sociology

Societies Submerged in Shadow

Just as there are great dangers lurking in the dark of the ocean abyss, there are conspiratorial organizations hiding among the pisceans of Elqua.  Spoken of in hushed tones, these manipulative groups seek power and wealth for their own purposes, and are quite willing to sacrifice anything, or anyone, that tries to impede them.  They are the shadow societies of the Endless Blue, the moving dark that works for its own sake.

Economics

The Pecuniary Stream

The major flow of trade amongst the Fluid Nations takes place via a route known as the Pecuniary Stream.  This jet stream is like the Silk Road or the Oregon Trail — a lengthy yet well-travelled course across the Known World that caravans frequently follow, bringing trade goods to settlements along the path.  The branching route covers over 9,000 kilometers and has tributaries in each of the eight homeseas, making it a major factor in the flourishing of civilization on Elqua.

Biology

Vitruvian Locanth

Situated south of the vast Cetacean Ocean and north of the deep Lumulus Basin, the Gulf of Locanth is a large spread of tropic shoals.  The relatively shallow depths over great expanse keeps the area bathed in sunlight.  As a result, the native flora and fauna flourished in bountiful waters.  Over the eons the balance of life has become fine tuned to the point that some describe the bay as “paradise amongst the waves”.  The few top tier predators that prowl the seas here are mostly loners and not generally over aggressive.  Intermediate animals have enough plankton and plant life to thrive, which themselves have the plentiful access to sunlight to bloom.  The waters between the equator and the Tropic of Kraken are consistently mild in temperature, and provide a stabilizing environment for the spread of coral and pelagic sea creatures.  The overall effect is an ecosystem of myriad creatures co-existing in a tranquil sense of equilibrium.

Biology

Vitruvian Yaun-Teel

In the cold, northern reaches of the Known World are a series of bights where the Yaun-Teel call home.  These shallow bays are the central hub for the vast mercantile organization that powers the Yaun-Teel government.  With little natural resources of their own the Yaun-Teel have set themselves up as masters of trade, and positioned themselves as one of the most economically rich of the Fluid Nations.  As such, they are afforded much more leniency when interacting with the other Piscean races, and their practice of slavery is many times endured in order to maintain favor.  The influence of the Yaun-Teel mercantile caste is far-reaching and deep.  Perhaps only the Locanth are beyond the financial manipulations of the Merchants of the Grand Bazaar.

Biology

Vitruvian Sahaguin

Prowling the waters south of the Creche of Civilization are the aggressive Sahaguin.  The area is known as the Sahaguin Lagoons, and is most notable for its shallow, submerged plains.  These plains support a disproportionate amount of life that straddles the border between the waters and the Vastness.  Great trees grow up out of the water, breaking the surface and blooming in the Vastness.  The ecosystem here has evolved in such a way as the lines between surface aberration and aquatic society have become blurred.  Great, massive creatures, like extraterrestrial dinosaurs, wade through these waters.  And among their footsteps, the Sahaguin hunt.

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For those hesitant to read through the ENDLESS BLUE website and its in depth exploration of the water world known as Elqua, I have provided a short synopsis of the 9 playable races you can choose from in the game:

Elqua is a unique world in many ways.  Larger than our own, it possess only a fraction of the land surface, and thus life had little choice but to develop fully beneath the waves.  The result of this isolation produced not one, but nine sentient races to colonize the planet, each one vying with other eight for resources, opportunity, and even simple room to grow.

Physics

The Colorful World of the Endless Blue

“A big blue marble in the Vastness” is an obvious image of Elqua, the world of the Endless Blue Setting.  A world covered 95% in water, the seas appear as a single all-encompassing ocean.  When so little land breaks the surface of the planet’s encompassing oceans, such expansive swaths of blue veritably swallow the world into a giant sphere of blue.  But such a bias is unfair to the spectral wonders of the world, because Elqua is home to some of the most colorful vistas the mind could ever imagine.