Was not expecting lore drop before I even had my coffee this morning, so was pleasantly surprised to see a new Reflections story awaited me. Ripples was wonderful, as I’ve come to expect of that series (more please!!!) and it’s been great reading all the new speculation due to some of the info drops.
One thing I immediately noticed was the passage about the star falling to earth and causing a wound. I have seen people take this as confirmation it has to do with Aaravos and the Sea of the Castout.
So perhaps I’m geologising a little too close to the sun, but looking at the map of Xadia, the Sea of the Castout does not look to me like an impact crater. It’s a flat area, with pretty ill defined edges.
If the cater caused by Aaravos falling to earth behaves like a typical crater (and considering this is a magical land with dragons and elves, it absolutely may not), you’d expect a central impact zone, with roughly equal energy radiating from it, creating a roughly circular impact crater (when viewed from above). The Sea of the Castout very much does not look like this… but not to far from that is The Spinning Sea
The Spinning Sea seems to have a central zone, with a ring of mountains surrounding it. This looks far more like a typical impact crater, though obviously the scale is much more vast (again, magic?) There’s also reference to the land bleeding, a metaphor for volcanism, perhaps?
And maybe the rift we see at the Border was chosen to take advantage of this pre-existing wound in the earth?
Perhaps even more interesting is how the ripples in the image above also remember an impact crater. Ripples that appears to be distorting an image of the moon.
If we take Zubeia’s story as truth (or near enough) Luna Tenebris disappeared suddenly, resulting in the succession crisis. Obviously this happened long after Aaravos’ arrival in Xadia, so perhaps it’s just concidence that the Gulf of Tenebris located by the Spinning Sea, but then again, perhaps not.
Which is to say, I still think the Sea of the Castout is likely to be where Aaravos is imprisoned and the Spinning Sea is where he “landed” in Xadia.
