An Academy of Records public reference article. On the limits of Coastal knowledge and the shape of its uncertainty.
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Every map drawn by the Academy of Records has edges. Some of these edges follow the water — the Coast's shoreline, the boundaries of atoll chains, the margins of charted Bleed zones. Others follow the Academy's reach. Where the Academy has surveyed, the map is detailed. Where the Academy has not surveyed, the map becomes thin, cautious, and at its furthest extent, blank. Where this blankness begins, and what it means, is a matter the Academy has thought about more carefully than a casual reader of its maps might suppose.
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What the Academy Means by "Known"
In cartographic and documentary work, the Academy distinguishes three categories of imperfect knowledge. A region is called surveyed if it has been systematically mapped by Academy staff or by expeditions the Academy formally recognizes. A region is called unsurveyed if no such systematic work has been completed, but if documentary or anecdotal evidence of the region's existence and general character is available — from Driftborn reports, merchant testimony, or historical records. A region is called unknown only when the Academy has no reliable information of any kind about what lies there.
This taxonomy sounds straightforward but has consequences that are less so. The Academy's public maps label unsurveyed regions with a conventional indication — a faint, uniform shading and the word uncharted — but generally do not distinguish on the maps themselves between unsurveyed and unknown. In practice, readers of Academy publications often conflate the two. Scholars do not. The distinction matters because the Academy's willingness to commit to claims about a region is calibrated to which category it falls under, and a claim that a Driftborn captain made a certain report about an unsurveyed region is made readily. A claim about the character of an unknown region is not made at all.
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The Three Principal Unknowns
Three regions of the greater world beyond the Coast are classified by the Academy as unknown in the strict sense above.
The Outer Deep, east and north of the Coast's outer island chains and beyond the Trench, is open water extending as far as any Academy vessel has ventured. Driftborn captains have ranged further than Academy ships, and some Driftborn songs and traditions speak of land in the far east. The Academy has not verified any such land, and its current formal position is that the Outer Deep is water of unknown extent whose further shores, if any, are a matter of speculation. Academy expeditions to reach those shores have been proposed periodically and in each case have been declined, for reasons that combine practical caution with an institutional reluctance to discover things the institution is not yet equipped to categorize.
The Deep Interior, inland from the Coast's mainland approaches and beyond the furthest agricultural regions, rises into mountain ranges whose farther slopes have not been surveyed. Hunters, herders, and traders report that human communities exist on those slopes and beyond, but the Academy has not sent formal expeditions and does not recognize those communities in its registers. What lies past the mountains is unknown in the Academy's sense. A small number of traveling scholars have returned with accounts of substantial populations, complex political structures, and languages unrelated to any on the Coast. None of these accounts has been formally accepted.
The Southern Extremity and the Northern Extremity are the open-water regions where the Coast's recognized geography ends. To the south, beyond the last atoll chain, the water opens into what Academy charts designate simply as the sea beyond. To the north, past the mainland's furthest headland, similar open water extends indefinitely. Both extremities have been approached by Academy vessels, which have returned without encountering further land. What, if anything, exists further south or further north remains a question the Academy classifies as unknown and has not prioritized pursuing.
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The Driftborn View
Driftborn tradition does not, for the most part, treat the question of what lies beyond the Coast's known geography as a question of the same kind the Academy poses. Where the Academy distinguishes surveyed, unsurveyed, and unknown, Driftborn practice tends toward a distinction between reached and not yet reached. A place that has not yet been reached may be described, in Driftborn sources, with reference to what has been seen by those who went furthest in that direction. The absence of verification is not taken as grounds for silence. A sailor who has been three weeks east of the Trench and has reported what that sailor saw is taken seriously, even if no Academy-recognized party has repeated the voyage.
The result is that Driftborn maritime tradition contains, in its songs and its navigational instructions, references to regions the Academy classifies as unknown. These references are neither confirmed nor dismissed by the Academy, which files them in the field-research archive and consults them when considering specific expeditions. How much of what the Driftborn report is accurate description, how much is interpretation, and how much is tradition accumulated from sources no longer traceable is a question the Academy has not resolved and is unlikely to resolve in the near future.
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This article is classified as a short public reference of the Academy of Records, Karath. Readers pursuing more specific questions about unsurveyed or unknown regions are directed to the Academy's field-research archive, which maintains extensive Driftborn testimony alongside the limited formal survey work extending toward these regions.
