The Bubbling Madness
It is sodding hard to find cutter, but yeah, I know the place. That reef in the Silver Sea, the bubbling madness. It's like someone put a chunk of Pandemonium at the bottom of the Silver Sea and let the winds bubble up from there. I'd tell you more but my glass is empty and I better be getting… ah thank you cutter, another round eh? Well the place as you can guess sticks out like a big sore spot on the plane. You're sailing out on that ocean down on the first layer of Celestia, and suddenly you come to this place where the sea is bubbling like an over-shaken bottle of Champagne. The reef comes up quick there, and you can walk on it, knee deep in places. Best to have a sturdy ship or go in with a shallow-hulled boat; things are not that deep and neither are they even. Anyway, the reef is in the shape of a ring, and in the middle of that ring the waters boil with streams of sediment bubbling up every now and then. I've dived down once, and can tell you I won't do so again. I can't afford the resurrection costs. Inside the reef there are some nasty currents and through the bubbles and sediment you can't see very far even at the top. Lower down the muck in the water turns to pebbles and then rocks, jagged ones at that, and the currents just get worse. The one thing I do know is that when you're down far enough you start hearing 'em, just like on Pandemonium, those winds. I dunno if it is a planar rift or just a chunk of that cursed plane stuck there but that is what the reef is made out of, bits of pandemonium that have dissolved and recombined together.~Almat, Water Genasi Paladin Origins and HistoryThe reef wasdiscovered by sailors several years ago, though from its size and from the coralgrowth on the reef itself it is several millennia old. Most graybeards examining the place believethat it is the result of a planar rift between the howling plane of Pandemoniumand Mount Celestia that is either currently active or that once left a slowly-dissolving chunk of that plane behindin the Silver Sea. They believe that thesediment and raging currents are all from this rift in the heart of the reef,as well as the rift being the source of the reports of screams being heardinside the currents. Of course,the theory that Pandemonium or a lower planar rift is the source for the reef'scurrents is only a theory. No one has apparentlybeen able to get down into the heart of the reef far enough to discover itstrue source. Other theories call for anevil artifact or creature, dissolving slowly in the blessed waters, to be the source. Whatever it is all the 'beards agree that theheart of the reef is a source of great evil that the plane is slowlyneutralizing and dissolving away. The nativesof Mt. Celestia so far do not seem to have taken much action with regards to thereef and the evil deep inside it. Some scholarsspeculate that this is merely because the celestials view the reef itself as the plane's healing reaction to the rift. The coraland sediment wall surrounding the reef's heart does contain the raging chaoticcurrents and makes sure that the waters mix thoroughly losing their taintbefore flowing out into the wider sea. Whilethe waters on the top of the reef do not exhibit the same properties that attackevil creatures as the rest of the Silver Sea, they also don't exhibit any ofthe properties of some of the tainted currents deeper in the heart of thereef. Currents at the bottom of the reeftend to flow in towards the heart; the shape of the reef, graybeards believe,acts as a chimney pulling fresh blessed Silver Sea water into the reef. The reefitself is about six miles in diameter with a coral and sediment shelf making upthe first two and a half mile and the center cauldron where the taintedcurrents run strongest and the reef is deepest being about one mile indiameter. The seabed around the reefranges from a mile deep to four miles deep moving down in a gentle slope. The top of the reef shelf is nearly levelwith the water ranging from the depth of the seabed to a few feet above thewater line. Rumors and Darks Many sages speculate that more water is being drawn into thereef than is flowing out over its top. Thus those sages believe that the rift that supposedly formed the heartof the reef might run both ways, and that some of the blessed waters areflowing out into the howling plane, flooding those tunnels. Still no one has managed to find a spring ofSilver Sea water anywhere in Pandemonium. There have been reports of strange creatures living in andaround the reef, far removed from the native Good creatures of the plane. Several explorers have spotted huntingparties of celestials working to keep these creatures from escaping the reefsince they seem to be both evil and unaffected by the Silver Sea's waters. Some explorers have reported spotting strange debrisand runes embedded in the reef's corals and sediment. There are a few parties very interested infinding out just what kind of things might be found in the reef. |
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