The Logathriad Sea is sheltered water, and the most traveled sea in the world. It opens to the ocean at a single mouth in the east and reaches west and south in a long, irregular sprawl of bays, inlets, and half-enclosed arms.

Civilizations grew up on its rivers and bays and reached one another centuries before anyone crossed an ocean. The Logathriad Sea still carries more trade, news, and travelers than any other sea.

Settlements ring the coast, and their outlying towns and villages reach only a short way inland. The interior of the continents is full of monsters, so people live on the shore and along the rivers, and everything moves by ship.

Settlements

The cities below are the largest and most powerful on the sea. Many smaller settlements sit along the coast between them. Most of these settlements are fishing towns, river landings, and market villages.

This list runs counter-clockwise from the northern side of the mouth.

Ambar

Ambar sits at the mouth of the sea, on the northern side. It is the largest market in the world and the gate every cargo entering or leaving the Logathriad Sea runs through. The city is hot and loud, with desert dust in the air, every people on Khora in the streets, and a waterfront that works day and night.

Oskeld

Oskeld stands on the northern shore of the sea's eastern half, at the western end of a great T-shaped bay, where a strong river comes down out of the interior. It works the richest farmland on the Logathriad Sea and supplies much of the food the other cities depend on, in ground that is lost and retaken most years. The country is hot and open, boundary stones stand far out in empty land, and Oskeld holds its land in shares that outlast the ground itself.

Pallas and Rann

Pallas is on the northern shore at the middle of the sea, where the northern tropic crosses and the Penthis mountains stand inland. Pallas is the only nation on the Logathriad Sea rather than a city-state, and Rann is its capital. Rann is bright and formal, with terraces of pale Penthis marble built up the gray cliffs, painted statues at the head of every stair, and enough colonnade to cross the city in the shade.

Ilmarash

Ilmarash stands at the head of the long inlet running north, the northernmost city on the sea and the coldest. Hakaan founded it and still run it, and it is the gateway to the inland lake country. The city has cold mornings and a real winter, river craft on every dock, and most of its people between twenty and forty upriver through the summer.

Vethis

Vethis stands on the western shore, at the far end of a lake that meets the sea through a channel narrow enough to see across, with the Korrath Range rising sharply behind it. A dwarven clan carved the city and still runs it, and it is known for metalwork no one else can match and for vaults in the rock that rival cities both use. The city is cool, loud, and vertical, with waterfalls you can hear anywhere and more of it inside the stone than outside.

Anjalu

Anjalu stands at the western end of the sea, on a deep bay fed by a river that runs far inland into savanna. It breeds horses and fields the only force on the Logathriad Sea that can meet a monster wave in open country. The country is hot and wide, the city is a camp more than a capital, and the population and its leadership move with the season.

Talhedu and Talmeru

Talhedu & Talmeru stand at the far southern tip of the Logathriad Sea, in two bays about 300 km apart, close enough to the equator that the sun is nearly overhead and the country between them stays dry. They are one Leonid people holding two cities, known for the migration between them and for the road it runs on. The road is lined with cisterns, waystations, and graves. Most of the nation moves from one city to the other twice a year, and caretakers hold whichever city stands empty.

Nirakh

Nirakh stands at the head of a deep bay in the crook of a great peninsula, where the Nir and the Akh reach the sea together. Orcs founded it and make up most of it. It is the most isolated city on the sea, and it is known for the floods that take the lower town most years and for a consecrated bay that carries its dead. The city is hot, the rains in season are severe, and flood marks are cut above head height on every wall still standing. Most of the bay is closed to shipping, and ships use one narrow channel.

Ossivar

Ossivar stands on the southern side of the mouth, roughly opposite Ambar. Its pilots know channels nobody is permitted to chart, and the city keeps a grievance against Ambar. The delta is narrow and fertile with desert immediately behind it, and the waterfront is full of small pilot craft owned by the families that work them.

Sailing Time, City to City

Times are in days for a merchant ship making passage, sailing through the night, at about 750 km per day.

Faster ships built for speed make about 1,250 km per day.