Nautilus

Nautilus

Nautilus is the smallest of the four continents of Gaia in terms of land area, though it is not necessarily small... especially in terms of the space that it takes up. It lies to the northeast of the other continents, but isn’t too far away from the residential continent of Gaia, though sea conditions are different around Nautilus. While most of the water on Gaia is salt-water, much like Earth, for unknown reasons the water around Nautilus is actually fresh-water, and is a deep black abyss containing massive creatures. As for the continent itself, Nautilus consists of a moderately small central landmass dizzyingly criss-crossed by streams and straits, and a series of small islands radiating outwards from there.

The land of Nautilus is actually temperate, and indeed quite pleasant to be on, with a cool mist wafting from the waters... at least most of the time, because the utterly wild eddies of currents on Nautilus lead to sudden but temporary climate shifts and storm fronts that can often be devastating to those not prepared. When a storm’s not tearing through Nautilus, however, it is indeed ideal, on at least the land itself to live on. The instability of the climate is one reason that it wasn’t chosen for the residential purposes of Gaia — air transport can be made quite difficult by this, and the proofing required to make life within settlements relatively normal is expensive.

The other reason is that the continent is remarkably difficult to actually get anywhere in. As aforementioned, Nautilus consists of a central landmass, itself crisscrossed by streams large and small, many of them whitewater, and straits, and surrounded by a vast wealth of islands, to the point where it is extremely difficult to tell where continent ends and islands begin... and because of the wildness of the current flow through around Nautilus, and because of those whitewater streams and because of often-extreme tides, it’s extremely difficult to actually get through the islands onto the central landmass, which one will want to do as the central landmass has resources to an extent the islands do not, although small outposts are dotted along the islands.

Specifically, the resource at the center of Nautilus is energetics — deposits very similar to natural gas, halogens, etc, are found in surprising abundance deep within the landmass, merely waiting to be extracted. For these purposes, an outpost has been set up for around three and a half decades now (some time after landing) to use drones to extract the materials. This outpost does have a population of a few hundred people, dedicated to fine but reactive work drones aren’t reliable at, and to the administration of the outpost. The name of the outpost is Gazovyy Forpost Odin — literally just “Gas Outpost One” in Russian, but the result of the original outpost administrators (and their carefully cultivated successors) being rather nationalist and simply refusing to refer to the outpost in official documentation in anything but Russian. It’s a quirk only tolerated because the administrators of the outpost are some of the only administrators both skilled enough to coordinate mostly regular shipments of energetics via drone despite the continent’s turbulence and willing to mostly isolate themselves from the rest of the world by staying at Nautilus’ center. After all, for all of its skilled proportion, Gaia’s manpower is terribly low.

Nautilus is surrounded by deep, black ocean, the depths of which have not actually been anywhere close to fully explored; space is one thing, the abyssal depths are another entirely. Deep within these waters, gigantic creatures cavort and spin, masses of alien flesh with unknown biology and unknown behaviors which the Gaian Regime has marked of great interest, and which sees constant efforts of research — who WOULDN’T be interested in titanic sea beings, after all? Yet these research efforts go slowly, as the construction and design of vessels capable of gathering data on them continues — deep-sea research had been planned for a second wave of the expedition that never came, and the loss of Earth did result in the loss of some relevant technology. These creatures are where Nautilus’ name comes from; upon finding out that there was a continent surrounded by deep abyssal water, with giant creatures in the depths, one French explorer, Jules Souspont, looked back to the author that was both his namesake and his inspiration, found his work fitting, and named the continent after [i]20,000 Leagues Under The Sea[/i].

Leviathan’s Landing (American-named, by a man with a sense of flair, when the first scientific team landing there found a truly gargantuan but half-rotting corpse on the beach) is a small but busy outpost that is the base of operations for submarine exploration around Nautilus. It is an island at the north end of the continent, where the large creatures are more often sighted, and holds a truly excellent natural harbor, making it the best spot for naval operations in Nautilus. It is tightly controlled (like Gazovyy Forpost Odin is, naming bureaucratic snarl aside) by the Regime, making a contrast to Perch Town: while both are the bases for exploring deep, strange places, the submarine design and creation required for exploring the waters of Nautilus, as well as the fact that there isn’t anything like the Rift actively inhibiting Regime technology, mean that the Regime has both the ability to and need to directly control Leviathan’s Landing, making it a sleek and carefully metered operation, unlike the individual, thrill-seeking adventurers in Perch Town.