IN> Panthalassa

[Moe Lane]

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Panthalassa

It startles people when they notice: Heaven has no oceans.

There's a space for one... sort of.  To one side of Jordi's Savannah
is an area best described as "not defined."   It isn't empty, because
"empty" is a definition, as is "blank," "vacant," and "formless."
There should be something there, and there isn't, but nothing else can
take up the space.  And it's definitely supposed to be an ocean.  It's
obvious by looking, although "looking" is the worst word - except for
all possible others - to use to describe the action.  More to the
point, a sufficiently old enough denizen of Heaven will remember the
days when there was an ocean there.  It was called Panthalassa, and it
supposedly stretched forever.  In a very odd way, it certainly
stretched from Heaven to Hell - at least, old records show of fights
between Oannes' Servitors and Vephar's that took place upon it, and
Hell once had an ocean of its own.  There is a section of Hades that
still looks unmistakably like a seaport, complete with long-dry
canals.

Panthalassa had several unique features to it.  To begin with, it was
the only place on the celestial plane where one could see the sun,
moon, and stars.  It was never determined whether these were the same
as the ones on the corporeal plane.  While there was never a
configuration of celestial bodies that would have been impossible to
find on Earth, there was no consistency.  A traveler could go from
bright noon to star-laden midnight in an instant, and the
constellations were never the same way twice.  Despite this, travel
was actually fairly easy.  Compasses would always point to either
Heaven or Hell, and those trying to use the stars and the sun to
navigate somehow could get just enough information to chart a proper
course.

The other major feature was that Panthalassa was not simply ocean;
there were also islands, ranging from very small to several times the
size of Eurasia.  The records indicate that one could find, or at
least hear of, anything there.  Strange ruins, odd cultures, wildlife
not seen on Earth in eons (or ever seen at all), rumored colonies of
Outcasts and Renegades and Grigori and ethereals and entities not so
easily catalogued, hidden fortresses of Archangels, Demon Princes (or
both!), legendary outposts of different celestial planes, wild
Tethers... Panthalassa was an adventurer's Dream, and that wasn't even
taking into account the life found in the ocean itself, or the
mysteries found at its bottom.

It is suggested - even dead, Oannes' and Vephar's nature clouds the
issue - that Panthalassa was some sort of mass hallucination that took
humanity's subconscious collective perception of the Far Marches and
filtered it through the dynamic tension of two Superiors engaged in
Word-conflict.  The ocean would be the Marches itself, the islands all
Domains, and naturally one could always find one's way back to one's
Heart. That would explain why the ocean disappeared some time after
both celestials were dead, although it does not explain how an
Archangel and a Demon Prince could collectively have sufficient
influence to bring it off.  For that matter, it does not explain why
there was an ocean before the Rebellion, either.  On the other hand,
the alternative explanation (Panthalassa was simply a very large
forked Tether) is not especially satisfying, either - if not outright
impossible under the laws of metaphysics.  The very silly explanation
- it was a "real" ocean that God drained in order to bring about the
Flood - would be dismissed outright, except that the dates match up
exceptionally well.  However it worked, there are angels and demons
who would like it to work again.  Some interesting things on the
islands were lost when Panthalassa disappeared; some want those things
back, and some just want to see them for themselves.  The military
aspects of having a sea route to Heaven or Hell appeal, too.

And, of course, there are those who simply loved the ocean itself.
Not all of them were angels.


-- 
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