Post by Pawel on May 17, 2021 15:41:55 GMT
Buffet Lagoons
The myth of buffet lagoons can be dated back to the early days of the Abandonment, when Poseidon colonists were forced to transform their then still technologically advanced food infrastructure into a network of fishing villages, scattered across Pacifica Archipelago. It was a challenging time, to say the least. Sustainable aquaculture practices were employed to feed the small, but gradually growing, communities. Supply routes were established to support newly built settlements. Sail-powered fleets, led by cetacean tutors, brought home just enough edible catch to allow the decentralised colony to thrive, plus maybe a little bit more, for a rainy day.
But rainy days happen often on Poseidon, fisheries have to be carefully rotated to avoid overexploitation, and there are always surprises lurking over the horizon. Native hunters and foragers rely on their knowledge of the sea, passed down from one generation to the next, but occasionally they do set out further into the ocean, in search of particularly fertile waters. And they do eventually find them, thanks to their seamanship skills or maybe luck, and ever so rarely thanks to a distant, ray-shaped silhouette guiding them.
Multiple sources, none of them fully trustworthy, describe buffet lagoons as shallow bodies of water measuring no more than five hundred metres in diameter, encircled by flat, sandy islets. The coral structures supporting them are standalone, with no larger reefs in vicinity and no significant currents to feed them. The polyps themselves are remarkably homogeneous and fast-growing, their colonies capable of sprouting out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, and then disappearing within a single season, if the legend is to be believed. The lagoons teem with life well known to hungry cetaceans and native cooks: dense schools of jump jump and echo/fish, swathes of rubber shrimp clinging to every square metre of the coral, swirling masses of hard spurts seemingly trapped in place by an invisible force. The reason why these impermanent reefs are so overcrowded should be obvious: all atolls provide shelter from larger predators and resource scarcity of the open ocean. But there are other, more outlandish explanations to consider too. Vent-like outcroppings can sometimes be found underneath crammed piles of rubber shrimp, exuding oily chemicals. Small, fluorescent objects, flashing their dim lights in unison, dot the lagoon floors in rotationally symmetric patterns. Bursts of sonar pulses echo around the shallow pools, their origins unknown.
There is another myth, embedded in the collective psyche of some of the more isolated native communities, that tells of the alleged sentience of seawater - for lack of a better Interspecies translation. Dolphin mystics refer to it as the inscrutable intent of the depths. There was a time, perhaps not that long ago, when Poseidon’s oceans were something more than just indifferent observers of evolutionary relays, and the arrival of humans and cetaceans, the sudden emergence of brand new, complex life on the planet, has reawakened their studious nature. Have these atolls been erected by some unfathomable intelligence so that their visitors can be watched and hopefully released when the day is over?
Buffet lagoons are said to be found in the most remote waters, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest settlement, if they can be found at all. With the Recontact intensifying its pace and new outposts and towns cropping up all around Pacifica Archipelago, they are becoming an even rarer sight than ever before. Still, GEO HIST researchers and Incorporate surveyors are ready to pay top scrip to anyone who could help them locate one of these probably fictitious phenomena, even if the price of such discoveries is often much higher than most guides would be willing to pay.