ARGOS • REGION IX OF XIV

VELMOOR COAST

Western Maritime Kingdoms — The Ocean-Facing Face of Argos

The sea here is watched. It has always been watched. What watches it is older than the watching.

Ruler: Saltborn Throne (north) / Tide Court (south) Species: Human Maritime, Vampire Aristocracy, Merfolk (undersea) Climate: Maritime Temperate, Heavy Fog, Fast Storms LeviathanKrakenSaltborn ThroneTide CourtThe MerfolkAbyssal Throne Destabilizer
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The Watched Water

The Velmoor Coast runs the entire western coastline of Argos. The ocean does not belong to anyone who lives on the shore. Leviathan — God of the Seven Seas — maintains the tectonic equilibrium that keeps coastlines stable, the pressure systems that regulate ocean currents, and the Abyssal Throne destabilizer that anchors deep-world balance.

His presence is felt rather than seen. Sailors describe it as a pressure change — not atmospheric, something else. A sense of scale. Of being next to something whose size cannot be comprehended from the available evidence.

Leviathan & Kraken

Kraken does not accept that Leviathan is the God of the Seven Seas. He has never accepted it. He will not accept it. This is a metaphysical conviction — Kraken believes the title, the function, and the authority belong to him, have always belonged to him, and that Leviathan's existence in that role is an ongoing injustice the universe has failed to correct.

The storms that come in fast from the west and hit the coast before inland warning systems can respond are sometimes natural weather. Sometimes they are the turbulence generated by the edges of a conflict conducted at a scale the surface world cannot perceive directly.

The Saltborn Throne & The Betrayal

Sixty-three years before the canon present, the Saltborn Throne and the Tide Court were a single maritime civilization. The Betrayal of the Unbroken Promise — when the Saltborn government revised reconstruction funding terms after a catastrophic storm destroyed the south's primary harbor — ended it.

The revised terms came with loans from vampire financial institutions, two of which were partially owned by Saltborn noble families. The Tide Court declared independence within six months. The Saltborn Throne declared independence illegal. Both positions were legally defensible and politically irrelevant.

Harrowgate — the Saltborn capital — is built into a natural harbor formed by two opposing cliff faces, with bridges spanning the harbor mouth and buildings that use cliff rock as their back wall. Salencia — the Tide Court's capital — is built on reclaimed delta land where three rivers meet the ocean.

The Merfolk Kingdom

The Thalassic Sovereignty occupies the underwater shelf and upper deep water along the entire coast. Their culture is organized around depth — social standing associated with how deep a merfolk individual can go and function. Their oldest figures can reach the border of Leviathan's direct territory.

The merfolk are aware of the Abyssal Throne destabilizer's general location. The Fracture has been trying to determine it for two years. The merfolk have noticed. They have informed Leviathan, in the sense that they communicated the relevant information into the deep water and trusted that it was received.