The Three Seas of Meridea
To the very ancient Greeks, the world appeared to be a flat or concave surface. It consisted of the sea of middle-earth, the Mesogeios—which the Romans would later call Mediterraneus—the land mass which ringed that sea, and Oceanus, the great river which circled around the world.
The Greeks being clever sorts, they did eventually work out the whole “earth being round” thing, and in the meantime, we can forgive them for believing that their little corner of the globe was at the center of everything. They were only human.
But, still… what a world they imagined: all the land of the known world hugging the Mediterranean at the center, and encircled by a vast unbroken body of water.
The world of Meridea looks much like the ancient maps of the world. In its center lies the relatively tranquil, relatively shallow Inner Sea, surrounded almost completely with land, with straits to the east and west connecting it to a wilder and wider Outer Sea that extends all the way out to the edge of the world and then stops.
Suspended above the circle of the world are a series of floating land masses, ranging in size from a few acres to the size of mountain ranges. These “skylands” and the air between them form the Upper Sea of Meridea, though there’s little traffic between those who live on and navigate between the skylands of the Upper Sea and the people they know as “downlanders.”
These are the three seas of Meridea, which give the story its title: the Inner Sea, the Outer Sea, and the Upper Sea.