Delet Oceanic Abyss

Place

Place Name:

Delet Oceanic Abyss

Biome:

Oceanic Abyss

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

The underwater base in Delet is chained to an underwater mountain rising out of the abyss of Delet. All the mines are likewise chained to mountains. It makes things a little easier, since to anchor on the bottom of the abyss itself… would be possible, but somewhat infeasible. The abyss of Delet spans for many miles in many directions. If it were mapped out — and it was once mapped out — it would look like an enormous starfish, since it covers a large and somewhat round area, but also has five wide ‘arms’ made of underwater ravines that connect to its main area but also stretch out further into the ocean.

One of these ‘arms’ comes out into another abyss, but this abyss is a lot smaller than the abyss of Delet and is correspondingly less important than the abyss of Delet. The mines floating everywhere in Delet are far enough apart from each other to (generally) avoid detonating each other when one explodes. Sometimes it still happens, but it’s infrequent. These mines have simple triggers: when something as big as a ship bumps into them, they explode. Mind you, they were designed with the enormous battleships of the late Third Era in mind — they still trigger when large wooden ships bump into them.

But smaller ships might hit them and be just fine. Of course, smaller ships might float right on top of the mines without even scraping them, since the mines do float some distance beneath the water. It takes a decent-sized ship to even hit them. Okay, now for the underwater fortress itself. Where to begin? The Ageight kin’toni clan has named the fortress after the Stolen Ship, in memory of the ship they stole to get here. (They’ve sunk that ship now, by the way. But they sank it onto the mountain range that towers above the abyss of Delet.

They can still swim over to the ship quite easily whenever they need to tear a piece off it. It’s still made of metal, and metal is valuable.) Fort Stolen Ship has the appearance of about five enormous submarines welded together. It’s quite probable that they actually were submarines at one point, functional ones too — but they’ve had their interiors cleared out and their engines removed, to make space for military base things. The Ageight clan thinks it’s kind of lame that Fort Stolen Ship can’t actually move, and are looking into finding engineers capable of redesigning it to their vision of a portable fortress.

The weapons and equipment aboard Fort Stolen Ship seem to have been removed at the same time as the fort was abandoned. Still, there’s about a dozen full sets of diving equipment that apparently weren’t necessary to take. Useful things — the kin’tonis have used them to visit the bottom of the abyss of Delet. Another useful piece of tech that was left aboard Fort Stolen Ship is the oxygen pump, which can extract breathable gas from both air and water. Of course, it needs electricity to function. The Ageight clan (which scraped together the means of traversing the seas as quickly as they could) stole a rudimentary hand-generator from another land.

They attached it to the oxygen pump — but it’s not nearly as efficient as they’d like. Still, oxygen is oxygen.

Plants

Even in the deepest part of the abyss of Delet there are still some plants growing — one particular kind of plant, anyway. It’s just that this plant that grows there is extremely tall, so that it can reach up to altitudes with more light. This plant is known as the spirdeloch. Spirdelochs are tipped by a large ‘flower’ of about a hundred large green leaves. They’re not actually flowers — they’re just leaves. But they do look a fair bit like flowers. This ‘flower’ is the only place where spirdelochs grow any leaves at all, since it would be pointless for their extremely thin stems to attempt to absorb light in the dark places they’re used to growing in.

The stem of a spirdeloch may be thin, but it’s also extremely tough and flexible. It would make for ridiculously strong rope if it didn’t rot when disconnected from its leaves and its roots — at some point there were some scientists in the zu’aan empire that studied this plant, to see if they could preserve the stem of the spirdeloch somehow so that it wouldn’t rot when made into a kind of rope, but history has forgotten these scientists. Maybe they did figure something out. But I guess nobody’s ever going to know now. New spirdelochs start their lives by sprouting off their parent spirdeloch.

Just beneath their parent’s ‘flower’ — since to ask one to begin growing from the bottom of the ocean, where there is no light, would be a bit much. As it grows, it slides down the stem of its parent, so that it’s anchored lower and lower every year while still keeping its own ‘flower’ in the altitudes where there’s light. Eventually, after a really long time, the child’s stem hits the base of the stem of its parent, deep in the dark depths below, and separates entirely, delving its own roots into the ground down there. Then the child spirdeloch will begin growing its own child.

And the parent spirdeloch will begin growing a new child as well. spirdelochs do not grow more than one child at once. y’toros are plants without roots. They float around a feet beneath the ocean’s surface, and absorb light, and that’s about it. They’ve been likened to phytoplankton. Only thing is, they’re kind of big to be plankton — they look like green canvases, like green blankets lost at sea. Despite their flat shape, y’toros are infamous for snagging fishing hooks. You think you’ve caught the biggest fish to ever exist and then find out you’ve pulled up the biggest piece of seaweed to ever exist.

It’s slightly disappointing. On the bright side, though, it is possible to eat y’toros. But, back on the not-so-bright side, it tastes like a block of salt. Back on the bright side… fish will eat it if you rip it into small enough chunks, so it makes the perfect bait.

Animals

The ghostbridee fish is so named because of its pure white fins and tail, which trail behind it like a bridal veil. The rest of it, too, is pure white, and its eyes are red: all ghostbride are albinos. Theoretically it’s possible for one to be born that has colour, but none has ever been seen that does. ghostbride are deep sea predator fish, but they’re often spotted near to the surface. They’re pretty big, for fishes — bigger than some sharks. Due to the way their fins and tail trail behind them, they’re often mistaken for some kind of jellyfish.

They’re not jellyfish, but they definitely sting like a jellyfish. No kin’toni has been stung by a ghostbridee and survived, although tales have been told of zu’aan surviving their stings. If you drop anything remotely resembling food into the water beside a ghostbridee, they’ll dash upwards with surprising vigour and be gone before you’ve seen anything other than a flash of white. Don’t stick your hand in the water, trying to find your sandwich again — chances are the ghostbridee will think your hand is food as well, and bite. Fortunately, their bites aren’t lethal in the slightest.

But you might brush your hand against their white swirling fins — and it’s in the fins that the sting lies. Baby ghostbride trail after their parents in a neat orderly fashion, often swimming in different formations just to amuse themselves. If their mother seems to be struggling to catch a certain fish, they’ll join in the assault, taking nibbles out of the fish in their mother’s jaws until it’s dead (and of course, long after it’s dead, too). Father ghostbride don’t care for their children, nor do their children trail after them, but they do recognize their children when they see them out in the wild.

And will share some food if they have any to spare. If, when fishing in Delet, you pull up a red fish with orange markings around its eyes and on its fins, throw it back! Throw your whole fishing rod into the ocean if that makes it faster. What, you like your fishing rod? Your fishing rod isn’t worth your life, idiot. Throw it in, quicker, quicker —

• explosion sounds intensify*

Bah. You idiot.

b=Bombfish explode when they leave the water — it’s got something to do with air pressure. They’re designed to be able to survive the water pressure all the way at the bottom of Delet’s abyss, and though they seem to be able to survive the pressure all the way at the top of the ocean, as soon as you take them out of the water, the pressure is too light, and it triggers their self-defence mechanism. Which is to explode. Cutting a bombfish open or (with a knife, teeth, or otherwise) also triggers the explosion. Other explosions will also trigger the explosion, which is why bombfish tend to be loners.

It’s probably possible to catch bombfishes alive and then breed them into weapons of sorts — but no one’s brave enough to even try to catch one, because sometimes they explode for absolutely no reason at all.

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Ageight Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Delet Oceanic Abyss

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This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.