The Sea Kingdom of Okeanos
We live for the storm.
At a Glance
| Ruling House | House Nautilus (the Nautilus Clan), holding the Sea Kingdom since before Solon's Rebellion, at the dawn of the Second Yuga |
|---|---|
| Founder | Nobunaga Nautilus, whose wife held the strongest bond with the Leviathan of her age |
| Government | Oceanic monarchy; the Sea King of House Nautilus |
| Sovereign at the Dawn of the Present Age | The Sea King Kaito Nautilus (Sea Queen: Nailani Nautilus; heir apparent: Maven Nautilus) |
| Languages | The Common Tongue and Okeanosi; its merchant sailors keep enough Khemari to trade in the Dark Kingdom |
| People | The Sea Elves, near-immortal (180 to 250 years), a sophisticated and isolationist folk of the deep |
| Bond | The Leviathan, the great beast of the sea, to which Okeanos alone is joined |
Overview
Okeanos is the Sea Kingdom of the southern waters, the realm of the Sea Elves and the oldest continuous throne on the Continent, held by the Nautilus clan since before Solon's Rebellion. It is a place apart in every sense: a people of the deep who keep to themselves, opening to the land only for the sake of trade, and a maritime power whose sailors and marines the whole Continent has learned to dread.
At the heart of Okeanos lies its great secret and its great strength: the Leviathan. The Sea Kingdom shares a bond with the beast of the deep that no other power can claim, and it is that bond, more than any fleet, that has kept Okeanos its own master through every age.
Geography
Okeanos lies in the southern sea, off the Continent's southern coast below Chandran, its royal seat at Tidalus. Its people belong to the water more than to the land, and its reach is measured not in territory but in the sea-lanes it commands, which is to say very nearly all of them.
People & Culture
The Sea Elves are a long-lived people, counting two centuries and more to a life, and an isolationist one. Okeanos speaks little with the Continent and asks little of it, coming ashore chiefly to trade and otherwise keeping its own counsel beneath its own waves. It is, above all, a people of sea and storm. Where other sailors reef their sails and pray, the Sea Elves go out to meet the tempest, and they have made an art of it: they ride the waves upon their feet, a practice they call waterwalking, and they will fight that way, blade in hand atop a running sea.
In its regard for women Okeanos has long kept to the courtly pattern of the east, women honored and given wide latitude as wards within a man's house rather than counted his equal or his property, and its throne, by ancient rule, has passed only through its men. That pattern is, in the present age, about to break.
The everyday tongues are the Common Tongue and Okeanosi, both spoken fluently; its merchant sailors carry enough Khemari besides to make their way in the markets of the Dark Kingdom.
Government
Okeanos is an oceanic monarchy, ruled by the Sea King of House Nautilus, a clan that has held the throne since the earliest days of the Second Yuga, before ever Solon rose against the Agnivansha. At the dawn of the present age the Sea King is Kaito Nautilus, and beside him reigns the Sea Queen, Nailani.
The crown's truest inheritance is not the throne but the Leviathan, and the bond to the beast does not run in the Nautilus line itself. It passes through a sister clan of the Nautilus, whose women the Sea Kings take to wife, and the name of that clan is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the state. So the Sea King rules, but it is the woman beside him, and the blood she carries, that binds the Leviathan to Okeanos.
Economy
Okeanos lives from the sea that surrounds it. Its chief exports are the plain wealth of deep water, fish and pearls, and its true fortune is its command of the trade-routes, for little crosses the southern seas without the leave, or the ships, of the Sea Elves.
Religion
Of formal faith Okeanos says little to outsiders. The sea itself, and the Leviathan within it, hold for the Sea Elves much of the awe that other peoples give to gods, and their reverence runs to the deep and its beast rather than to any temple raised on land.
Military
Okeanos fields what may be the most feared navy on the Continent. Its ships are light and swift rather than heavy, for the Sea Kingdom is no longer the great shipwright it once was, that honor has passed to Chandran, yet no realm afloat can match its crews. The Sea Elves are the finest sailors and the deadliest marines in the world, and they fear neither the storm nor the death that rides it; their marine warriors will hurl themselves into a fight with no thought for their own return.
Behind all of it waits the Leviathan, the beast of the deep whose bond is Okeanos's oldest and truest weapon, and which no enemy of the Sea Kingdom has ever wished to meet in its own waters.
History
Founding
House Nautilus has held the Sea Kingdom since the dawn of the Second Yuga, older than Solon's Rebellion and older than most of the thrones of the land. Its founder was Nobunaga Nautilus, and his wife was reckoned the greatest of all who have ever held the bond with the Leviathan, a distinction that would stand unmatched for the whole of an age.
The Kingdom That Kept Itself
Even under the Agnivansha, at the height of their Second-Yuga power, Okeanos was never wholly subject to them. It kept a semi-independence no realm of the land was granted, and the reason was the Leviathan. By right, the Kronos magic of House Suriyan should have matched the beast and mastered the Sea Kingdom through it; but by the Second Yuga the Suriyan gift for Kronos had fallen into decline, and the Leviathan, and Okeanos with it, slipped beyond the reach of the Agnivansha throne. So the Sea Kingdom went its own way through the ages, aloof and unconquered, while empires rose and fell upon the shore.
The Present Age
For readers caught up to the most recent volume of the Soulfire saga.
Okeanos's long isolation ended when the Emperor himself came to treat with it. Ash sailed to the Sea Kingdom and won what no land-power ever had, its friendship, and Okeanos joined the Outer Alliance, lending the coalition the one thing it could not build for itself: a fleet, and the crews to sail it.
With that turn comes another, greater still. Kaito Nautilus has no son, and he has named his daughter, Maven Nautilus, his heir. She will be the first woman ever to rule Okeanos, and the first in its history to hold the Leviathan in her own right, needing no marriage to claim the bond, for she carries it herself, the greatest practitioner the Sea Kingdom has known since the wife of its founder. Maven is, besides, the Fifth Apostle of the Emperor and the wife of Deimos of Chandran, and in her the oldest rule of the Sea Kingdom and its newest alliance are bound together.