Sociology

Vastness Hunters

There are those among any society that seek the thrill of physical exertion.  When sane means of reaching a physical high have been depleted, they seek activities only the mad would entertain.  A form of extreme sports, meant to be the ultimate adrenalin rush, the idle athlete might turn to becoming a Vastness hunter.

Vastness hunting is the most lethal incarnation of safari hunting.  But instead of just preying on the most dangerous game swimming the Endless Blue, they take on the aberrations that scour the Vastness above the waves.  It is a very lethal sport, and the aberration gets away more often than not.  Still, the specter of death is not enough to deter the truest athlete.

The original Vastness hunters were a group of sahaguin anatomists that simply sought new animus vitae to autopsy.  While much of the allure of the extreme hunting is for the thrill and notoriety, there is strong impetus to understand how life above the water operates. As expected, anything having to do with the hell above the waters is considered the greatest of taboos.  Even the Sekolahite Church denounces the hunter’s actions — a church whose clergy participate in hunting monsters as part of their service.

Those Vastness hunters that are not Resurrectionists themselves will sell the corpses of their hunt to other anatomists.  The anatomists, in turn, sell the skin and claws to black market artisans as exotic materials for their crafts.  Such items are general reviled in public, but will fetch a high price for the indulgent collector.  Maelstrom cultists are one of the few organizations that will bear Vastness-sourced items with no regard to social stigma.  Otherwise, these items have no intrinsic difference in quality or ability from a mundane version.  Penalty for owning/selling such items or materials is generally excommunication and ostracization.

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The Vastness of Elqua

It is well known that life began in the waters of Elqua, and there it remained.  Flourishing, the piscean races evolved, the Fluid Nations formed, and civilization thrived.  But not all life remained in the water, and the resulting aberrations that came of that divergence make life above the waves a true damnation.  This is the hell that is known as the Vastness.

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.

Aerology

The Vastness

The oceans of Elqua cocoon the world in a thick, cool embrace that nurtures a complexity of life unparalleled.  The majority of the intelligent races are content to swim in their mostly borderless world, encapsulated in their blue underwater haven.  But there are few — those with inquisitive minds and more daring natures, that seek to peer beyond the one border no one dare to cross: past the surface, into the Vastness.