Coactian Sea

The Coactian Sea is a large sea in the continent of Serania, and largely divides the continent into its two recognised component parts of Serania Major and Serania Minor; access from it to the wider ocean is through the narrow Dovgorodine Strait at its northern end. For most of the period since its discovery it has been regarded in geopolitical terms as part of the Joriscian sphere of influence; almost the entire Coactian coastline is held as territory by either Azophin or Terophan, with a small area in the north-eastern corner being part of Savamese Felicia.

Geography

The Coactian sea is roughly circular with an average diameter of x,000 km; due to its fairly large size some people refer to it as an ocean. Another common name is the "Interior Sea". The Coactian is unique in the World due to its isolation from the rest of the world-ocean, only connected by the single outlet of the Dovgorodine Strait. Tectonic movement is pushing Serania Major and Minor together, so the Coactian sea is slowly closing. While the current form of the Dovgorodine Strait is only a few million years old, the sea has been isolated from the greater oceanic circulation for at least 30 millions years.

The Coactian Sea encompasses many medium and large-sized islands, especially in its eastern half. The underwater geography is roughly divided between a shallow western half hosting the vast Siadjon continental shelf, and a deeper eastern half where abyssal plains still subsist as remnants of the ocean that formerly separated Serania Major and Serania Minor up to 40 million years ago; the deepest point in the sea is 4,863 metres. Volcanic islands forming a north-south line separating the western and eastern halves of the sea are the remnant of a formerly active convergent boundary. The western half is shallow with an average depth of less than 300 metres, and many reefs and sandbanks; the Siadjon shelf is actually one of the largest continental shelf in the World.

The curiously regular shape of the western half of the Coactian has led at times to theories that it was formed by meteor impact at some time in the planet’s primordial past. These have essentially been discounted by modern scientific analysis; the purportedly-affected area forms a rough oval 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) on the long axis and 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) on the short axis, and studies have indicated that any object large enough to create such an impact crater would almost certainly have rendered the planet uninhabitable, and possibly have shattered it into fragments.

Climate

Due to its position in the tropics, the climate around the Coactian Sea is almost entirely tropical, with the exception of small areas of Prasinian and Median climates in the north around the Dovgorodine Strait

The dominant feature of the Coactian climate is the Coactian Deluge, a virtually continuous low-pressure weather system created by thermal heating on the Siadjon shelf and taking the form of a permanent tropical cyclone that rotates anti-clockwise around the sea throughout the year (reaching its northernmost position around Dominy or Empery and its southernmost position around Petrial or Animare). The Deluge is typically at its strongest in the northern summer, and at its weakest in the southern summer.

Its movement around the sea creates a band of tropical monsoon and tropical wet and dry climates around the sea's shore which in some locations is counter-inituitively located regarding what climate would be expected to occur in the absence of the system. Some of the highest precipitations in the World are located along the Deluge's track, also allowing proper tropical rainforests to exists in various locations in coastal regions, especially in the centre-east and the south and south-southwest coasts.

Geopolitics

As with other parts of Joriscian Serania at different times, the loose governance of the region by its supposed overlords has led to drastic divergences from home rule. Parts of the northern Coactian coast were home to the so-called Pirate States which exercised practical rule in the region during the late 18th and most of the 19th centuries; while the Joriscian use of the term “pirate” covered a wide range of criminal and heretical activities, the region was a hotbed of piracy – in the general sense of this term – for much of the period, and was not seriously countered until as late as the 1880s.

The eastern fringes of the Coactian coastline have historically been even more lightly held than the west coast and, at their extremities, have been strongly pushed back by expanding Messenian powers in Serania Major. Azophin’s influence on the east coast, in particular, was sorely diminished over the course of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the appointment in 1743 of a government plenipotentiary based in Bes Adshek doing very little to alter the position given little practical support – or, indeed, interest – in the homeland. The current Bes Adshek territory covers only a fifth of its original claim, with the remainder having been detached by Savam and Zeppengeran.