About this universe
As the Nautilissa descends toward the legendary sunken city, Dr. Celeste Dumont must lead her crew through an abyssal ecosystem where the laws of nature, and sanity, are breaking apart. Ancient beings stir, love and loyalty fray, and the only way forward is through the heart of cosmic darkness.
Tone
Atmospheric and claustrophobic, with undertones of longing, dread, and wonder.
Themes
knowledge vs. madness, desire and forbidden love, liberation, confronting the unknowable
Protagonist
Dr. Celeste Dumont
Celeste stands tall, her sharp blue eyes taking in every anomaly with restless skepticism. Auburn hair pulled back, she moves with precise, almost academic poise, yet tension radiates from her slender frame. Her lab coat, already stained with ink, contrasts with her steady voice and the flicker of haunted hope beneath her resolve.
Goal: To successfully navigate the Nautilissa through the abyssal trench and document the unique ecosystem, while maintaining command and control.
How it begins
Dr. Celeste Dumont steadies herself against the rattling brass console as the Nautilissa’s hull shudders with the strain of descent. The red glow from emergency lamps paints her hands as she charts the coordinates of the abyssal trench, voice taut.
“Pressure’s rising. We’re nearing the city’s perimeter.”
Across the control room, Captain Nia Santiago clutches the wheel, sweat beading on her brow as spectral shadows drift past the forward viewport. Prof. Ada Kowalska, notebook trembling, jots feverish symbols while her reflection blurs in the glass. Mila Torres ducks in from the engine corridor, oil-smeared and wild-eyed. The sonar sings an irregular, keening note, something in the deep is moving, impossibly vast. Celeste feels the crew’s eyes on her as the lights flicker. Her next order might mean crossing a threshold that none will return from. Water creaks in the pipes overhead, a sound almost like breathing.
About this world
In 1890, the ocean’s abyssal trenches remain largely unexplored, concealing wonders and horrors undreamt of by the surface world. The Nautilissa, a brass-plated, steam-powered submarine crewed entirely by women, seeks both liberation and discovery in the endless dark. Ancient sunken ruins and Lovecraftian beings twist reality the deeper they venture.
Stretching beneath the roiling Atlantic, the abyssal depths are a world apart, cold, pressurized, and utterly lightless. Here, leagues below the surface, hydrothermal vents create ghostly gardens of pale life, while obsidian slopes lead toward uncharted trenches. The Nautilissa, cobbled from gleaming brass and humming with the labor of pistons and boilers, glides through these realms, its hull flickering with the last touch of gaslight before true darkness swallows all. Above, the world is dictated by the rigid hierarchies of Victorian patriarchy, driving women like Captain Nia Santiago and Dr. Celeste Dumont to rebel through exploration and science. Life aboard the Nautilissa is cramped and tense, but marked by solidarity and purpose; the crew is united by shared exile and ambition, forging their own society beneath the waves.
Yet the abyss is more than hostile nature. Rumors of sunken cyclopean ruins, carved before any known civilization, swirl through the crew. Some nights, the lines between dream and waking blur: impossible marine life appears in viewing ports, and whispers echo through the metal corridors. The deeper the Nautilissa dives, the more reality seems to slip: perception twists, logic unravels, and the true age of the ocean presses in. Rival factions form as some push for caution, others, like Prof. Ada Kowalska, are drawn dangerously close to the abyss’s forbidden knowledge. Technology here is steam-driven, fragile, constantly in need of Mila Torres’s uncanny repairs. Magic is not a system, but a presence: ancient, cosmic, and unknowable, seeping from ruins and the trench’s invisible denizens. Daily life is a mix of scientific rigor, camaraderie, and the creeping dread that the abyss might gaze back, and reach for them.
