# An uncrossable ocean



## Braveface (Dec 5, 2013)

Does anybody know of works that feature an ocean so ferocious that to sail upon it is a suicide mission?

If not, is there anyone who knows what could cause this kind of phenomenon? 

I mean, oceans that even big vessels would have almost no chance at crossing. Near permanent 'Perfect Storm' conditions. Also, is there any way that this could then...not be an issue? That last point is MUCH less important. 

Thank you in advance. Apologies for not posting lots and lots but I've been quite inspired lately and so I've been note-taking like crazy hahaha!


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## GeekDavid (Dec 5, 2013)

I'd say the best explanation is simply lack of charts to tell them where to go and/or vessels large enough to hold enough provisions for the trip... especially fresh water. For food you can fish, but there's no place to get fresh water out at sea without advanced technology (or equally advanced magic), which makes the available fresh water a huge limiting factor in ocean exploration.

This explanation also allows you to open a new continent across the ocean for later stories if you want/need to. Once they have charts showing a safe path, perhaps with tradewinds and ocean currents helping, and know how much food and water to store, crossing becomes relatively easy.


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## Braveface (Dec 5, 2013)

Yeah, that makes sense. But I don't especially want to have to then hobble the society technologically. If they can't chart the ocean, what else would they have then not mastered? My work is more modern as well. I considered setting it so that boats are used on a small scale but to get further afield they wait for flying technology to get advanced enough. Perhaps it could be some beast that can only be seen from above due its monsterous scale? Or a Bermuda Triangle type phenomenon.

I would like to have a newly discovered continent in there but I want it to have not been discovered until people reach roughly the kind of self-awareness we have now. 1492 postponed until the 20th Century earliest.

Thanks


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## GeekDavid (Dec 5, 2013)

Braveface said:


> Yeah, that makes sense. But I don't especially want to have to then hobble the society technologically. If they can't chart the ocean, what else would they have then not mastered? My work is more modern as well. I considered setting it so that boats are used on a small scale but to get further afield they wait for flying technology to get advanced enough. Perhaps it could be some beast that can only be seen from above due its monsterous scale? Or a Bermuda Triangle type phenomenon.
> 
> I would like to have a newly discovered continent in there but I want it to have not been discovered until people reach roughly the kind of self-awareness we have now. 1492 postponed until the 20th Century earliest.
> 
> Thanks



You can go out into the Atlantic ocean and travel a very long way without seeing any land. If you don't know for certain that there's another continent out there, you're likely to turn around and head back about the time your stores reach the halfway mark (because you have just enough to get back). Only if you're absolutely certain there's more land out there -- or are suicidally desperate -- are you gonna keep going.


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## Saigonnus (Dec 5, 2013)

There is of course the option of using a "barrier" that shrouds the continent; assuming you have magic or an odd magnetic field surrounding the planet. Imagine a ship passes through the barrier and it subtly and automatically redirects them away from the continent so they never even get in sight of land. Then think of a reason for it to fail to keep people away. (new advances in technology or whatnot)


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## Braveface (Dec 5, 2013)

GeekDavid said:


> You can go out into the Atlantic ocean and travel a very long way without seeing any land. If you don't know for certain that there's another continent out there, you're likely to turn around and head back about the time your stores reach the halfway mark (because you have just enough to get back). Only if you're absolutely certain there's more land out there -- or are suicidally desperate -- are you gonna keep going.



But they were suicidally desperate back then in a lot of cases. When they'd been funded by royalty on the grounds that they promised to bring back treasures etc, if they were taking the risk of losing face...it was because it was attached to their head! I know that this other continent is _rumoured_ to exist, so would you suggest nobody ever tried or that those who did were funded by people who tolerated failure? Because exploring on behalf of royalty, many would prefer death at sea to...perhaps...the shame of failure or even being killed for returning empty-handed.

Then again, the rumour could include a person who supposedly got across...whereas most have been forced to turn back and then people stopped trying because it was deemed hopeless. Only cranks and, like you say, suicidally desperate people ever attempted it.


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## Braveface (Dec 5, 2013)

Saigonnus said:


> There is of course the option of using a "barrier" that shrouds the continent; assuming you have magic or an odd magnetic field surrounding the planet. Imagine a ship passes through the barrier and it subtly and automatically redirects them away from the continent so they never even get in sight of land. Then think of a reason for it to fail to keep people away. (new advances in technology or whatnot)



Interesting. The folks on the new continent are the 'magical' ones. It's not the right word to use for my story but...to all intents and purposes. I like the idea that it is them doing it, but I would like it to be something tangible also. Something that can be rationalised by the 'muggles'.


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## GeekDavid (Dec 5, 2013)

Braveface said:


> But they were suicidally desperate back then in a lot of cases. When they'd been funded by royalty on the grounds that they promised to bring back treasures etc, if they were taking the risk of losing face...it was because it was attached to their head! I know that this other continent is _rumoured_ to exist, so would you suggest nobody ever tried or that those who did were funded by people who tolerated failure? Because exploring on behalf of royalty, many would prefer death at sea to...perhaps...the shame of failure or even being killed for returning empty-handed.
> 
> Then again, the rumour could include a person who supposedly got across...whereas most have been forced to turn back and then people stopped trying because it was deemed hopeless. Only cranks and, like you say, suicidally desperate people ever attempted it.



A similar method was used by Feist in his Midkemia novels to show a new continent, as well as Terry Brooks in Shannara, where the last survivor of an exploratory mission shows up shipwrecked near his homeland with a map showing the way to a previously unknown lands.


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## ThinkerX (Dec 5, 2013)

Possible solution:  A past king, backed up by the high priest, imposed a flat out ban on the the manufacture of vessels cable of a long ocean crossing.  Something along the lines of: 'we do not need to awaken the demons of the deeps or trespass in the realm of the gods' (which is believed to be across the sea).  In this case, the prohibition is entirely artificial.

Some decades prior to the time of your tale, the technological revolution really took off and the church lost a lot of its political influence.  Hence, by story time, the reason the ban still exists has more to do with bureaucratic inertia than ought else.  A couple of reforming political types out to strike out the 'absurd laws of old' would be all it would take to fix things.

Of course, I would also throw in real 'seeds' for the original ban, like the giant tsunami which devasted the coastal region a year or five after an explorer fleet left centuries ago.  (And was declared 'divine retribution for mans affront' by the high priest of the time).  A rumored or actual 'sargasso sea' or 'bermuda triangle' type area is also a possibility, tales brought back by deranged fishermen or coastal traders who ventured a bit too far from land.  Again, this is the sort of thing the priesthood would play up to justify the existence of the ban.


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## Asura Levi (Dec 6, 2013)

Taking the tsunami and 'magical' people a bit further, it could be that, someone once did managed to get there, only to be back with a tsunami on its wake. even if the tsunami wasn't generated magically by the people across the pound, the people on this side could just interpret that 'mankind disturbed a sacred land of gods and had being punished', therefore the people and its rulers would simply be afraid, the folk by the tsunami memory, the rulers by the mob.

You can add also that some other ruler tried to start a new exploration and the people revolted with drastic results.


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## Saigonnus (Dec 6, 2013)

Braveface said:


> Interesting. The folks on the new continent are the 'magical' ones. It's not the right word to use for my story but...to all intents and purposes. I like the idea that it is them doing it, but I would like it to be something tangible also. Something that can be rationalised by the 'muggles'.



Anything resembling "magic" might easily be dismissed by those without the understanding as "advanced technology" compared to what they have. It would be equal to (assuming aliens have visited earth) of how the disks fly compared to how our planes fly. It would simply be taken as advanced tech.


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## Svrtnsse (Dec 6, 2013)

In my setting it's not practically possible to cross the equator.

It's based on how magic works in the world. Magic is used by drawing on and manipulating the aether. How easy magic is to wield depends on the state of the aether. If the aether is calm and stable, it's quite difficult to draw on it, but once channeled it's easy to weave it into magic. The more volatile and chaotic the aether becomes the easier it is to channel and the more difficult it is to weave controllably. 
The stability of the aether varies with the distance to the poles. At the north pole the aether is practically solid and it's extremely difficult to channel even small amounts. Once channeled however, it's very easy to control and weave.
The further from the pole one gets the less stable the aether is. At the equator it is completely chaotic. The closer you get to the equator the easier channeling gets and even people with no magical abilities or training will be able to channel aether without effort. However, due to the volatility of the aether, weaving it into magic is exceedingly difficult. Aether that gets channeled but not woven ca technically dissipate harmlessly, but due to how volatile it is around the equator that is unlikely. Rather, violent magical discharges are common and often fatal.
As such, people in general have learned to avoid the area.

On land, the equator is covered by vast, impenetrable jungles, filled with plants, creatures and insects who have evolves to make use of the volatile aether in their daily lives. It's a place of nightmare and insanity and those sentient beings who venture close and make it back alive are rarely willing to attempt it again.
On the sea and in the air, the wildlife is not too much of an issue. The travellers themselves are though. The mental discipline required to traverse the equator without initiating magical disaster is significant and it has so far not yet been practically possible to successfully crew anything larger than very small craft.
In that way, it's technically possible to cross the equator and make it through to the southern hemisphere, but in practice it's just not done.


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## Snowpoint (Dec 6, 2013)

One Piece has the "Calm Belt" Water in the tropic belts around the Equator have no current. No boats can make it beyond that point. also SEA Monsters.

Some who the equator does have a current, so... their ocean is weird.


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## Shockley (Dec 7, 2013)

I am curious as to what you mean by 'self-awareness.'

 I would say go with the same thing that prevented the passage in our own history for so long - a relatively accurate understanding of the size of the world and no understanding of the Americas. Columbus insisted on his voyage because he believed that the then-current projections of the world were wrong (they weren't that far off) and that they world was way, way smaller than the scholars of the time thought. So, he thought he could make the journey to the other side of the world in half-time, when instead he just found a new continent. 

 If you have the belief that the journey is just impossible, no one would want to attempt it.


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## wordwalker (Dec 7, 2013)

Lots of great stuff. I agree, it often comes down to there being just so much difficulty and then nobody taking the plunge (or having the backers to put them out there) to sail the rest of the way.

One other thing nobody's mentioned: besides monsters, magic, and maelstroms (or calms), what about disease? Not only the usual wearing-down of a long voyage with bad nutrition, but "plague mists" out there in the ocean. They'd have to be partly magic to be a plausible threat that's distinct from the rest, but it would be different.


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## Braveface (Dec 8, 2013)

A lot of great suggestions, thanks 

I like the disease mists idea. I think spores are one of the squickish things since seeing ones on a wildlife documentary which would then grow out of the hosts (ants and wasps but, up close, still pretty raw). Moulds and sporish things are excited by moisture too...like damp...so that could be a pretty good reason to never go near the sea. 

The polar idea is cool too. I think for me, since I gradually reveal the magical element, I would perhaps still have pockets of activity. I suppose ideas like ley lines and certain sites such as Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor are built there for a purpose that relates to this aspect of the site, largely ignored by us it seems. 

But yeah, great, a lot to think about. Thanks.


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## UnknownCause (Dec 10, 2013)

MAGIC. *Jazz hands*


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## topazfire (Dec 10, 2013)

I don't know what you are thinking of for your map layout, but couldn't a short polar route cut off the need for long ocean journeys? Like how the Vikings discovered Newfoundland hundreds of years before Columbus hit the North American continent. It was a matter of route rather than ocean size. 

There could be some cultural reason not to travel (or attempt to travel) until this point in your story; isolationism as the reigning ideology? 

Just thinking of holes to plug


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## crash (Dec 11, 2013)

Have you ever looked at the Skeleton Coast of Namibia/Angola? It's pretty interesting. Basically, there's a current along the northern coast of Namibia/southern cost of Angola called the Benguela Current and it's _really_ cold. This causes a really dense fog that's around most of the year, there's a constant wind that blows off the sea and the Namibian coast gets barely 10 mm (0.39 in) of rain/year. Furthermore, there's this constant, heavy surf that makes it possible to come in to the shore just form the surf, but it's nearly impossible to launch from the shore. On the bright side, the Skeleton Coast is one of the best surfing locations in the world. So you could do that, and have sea monsters and magic involved, too


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## KC Herbel (Dec 15, 2013)

Four things come to mind:
1) Sea Monsters!
2) Maelstroms
3) The end of the world. In other words your world is flat(ish) and the ocean just drops off into outer space, the ether, etc.
4) You actually can cross it, but no body ever comes back because it's just so great "over there" or the people on the other side are really bad (or really hungry) and don't let anyone go back with news of their utopic land.


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## Scribe Lord (Dec 16, 2013)

While I'm not entirely sure to what extent, but I assume that if you had enough moons orbiting your world it would mess with the oceans enough to prevent traversing them. Then again that would mess with all of your large bodies of water.


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## Braveface (Dec 21, 2013)

Scribe Lord said:


> While I'm not entirely sure to what extent, but I assume that if you had enough moons orbiting your world it would mess with the oceans enough to prevent traversing them. Then again that would mess with all of your large bodies of water.



This was my original idea, though I didn't want to have to full-on explain the science. Mostly because I don't really understand it. 

I have got closer to what I want though, perhaps I could get some feedback?








So the dotted lines horizontal are where the north and south arctic circles begin and the diagonal lines are ley lines of sorts that contain the energy. Where they cross over with the equator and the lines of longitude. The prime meridian is actually not arbitrary but determined by this energy pattern...but that's a BIG secret. Where they cross is powerful juju and the conditions get more intense toward the centre. I plan on having land encircling these two centres but all the action takes place on a small area of land near one of them. 

So, with the land being centred around these on opposite sides of the globe, that leaves one big ocean and the arctic circles are impossible to cross. I think the moons could work this way? Then whatever is in the middle could be causing storms and whatnot as well.


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## KC Herbel (Dec 23, 2013)

I think what Scribe Lord was referring to was tidal forces. Multiple moons can create much larger extremes than what we see on earth, especially during times that they all align with each other, the planet and the sun. Not to mention the hell they would play with tectonic forces - especially the close moons - and that could lead to some crazy tsunami action too.

As for the above:
Not 100% sure I get your drawing and your description seems to be missing some information, but I'll give it a go and see if anything sticks: What if the energy in your "ley" lines had different polarity (think electrical current or magnetism)? That brings up another idea: What if these lines played havoc with the magnetosphere of your planet - so that enormous amounts of solar energy not only came down at your poles, but in your oceans.
Well, anyway, if you can think of a way to clarify your drawing and your description maybe we could help you more!


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## Braveface (Dec 23, 2013)

Oh yeah. Would they have to orbit in opposite directions? 

Still, I don't feel like that kind of exposition is something I'd really like to get into. It would detract from the story or I am sure researching that to make it right would take away from something more critical to plot that I should have been studying.

Hmm...it is a little unclear but it makes sense to me..._ish_.

Basically, you can develop a tolerance to this 'energy' that would kill the average person should they stray too far near to the centre. The most intense points, that would vapourise an average person, are in the middle...where the diagonal lines cross over. The equator is also 'energetic', as are the two lines of longitude. So these points in the middle create a kind of 'fallout zone', represented by the circles.

Ohh...DUH! Well, if the equator is permanently choppy, and the arctic circles too difficult to cross, then it is the point where you meet the diagonal that is very difficult to cross. The rest of the ocean can be plain sailing but when you get to that point you had better be ready. There is no way to circumnavigate the globe without crossing those diagonals or the arctic. One is energetic and so requires that tolerance I mentioned. The other would require such physical effort and ability that you really would be better off trying to develop the tolerance. But both present horribly difficult hurdles. 

I am not concerned about this energy being scientifically accurate asuch. 

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice once again!


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## Bruce McKnight (Dec 23, 2013)

Possibilities:

A giant volcano or chain of volcanoes in constant eruption that blast any ship that gets near
A perpetual whirlpool, possibly the source of all the waves in the world
A giant sea monster
A race of sea creatures that could be friendly (and convince all the sailors to stay) or hostile (and always attacks everyone)
A coral reef (maybe it's blue and hard to see) that grounds all passing ships, starving the sailors
A mystical "wood magnet" at the bottom of the ocean that pulls ships under
A wind god that lives in the middle of the ocean and sets the four winds across the world, but if you get to close to him/her/it, ships are torn apart
The edge of the world where ships just fall off
Time slows down as you reach the center of the ocean, making it only seem like no one ever returns
Old myths and legends (possibly true a long time ago, but not any more) stop people from even trying - everyone just assumes its uncrossable even though it would be really easy if they tried

...or the old Xena Simpsons standby: "a wizard did it."


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