Large Block of the Solid Ocean

Large Block of the Solid Ocean rests on the desk, a hulking slab of deep blue stone carved with glassy facets that catch lamplight and reflect it as if the sea itself were turning inside a bottle. Its surface stays cool and dry to the touch, yet a whispering dampness clings to the edges where salt has etched micro-crystals into the rock. Veins of lighter azure braid through the block like tidal rivers, and along one side a line of runes, half-eroded, hints at a purpose older than the harbor towns. The block’s name is almost a rumor among shopkeepers and sailors—the Solid Ocean, not water, not ice, but something that has learned to hold a memory. If you listen closely, you hear a distant hush, the sound of deep currents sliding beneath rock and reef. In tavern corners and market stalls, the artifact is spoken of as a relic of a drowned forge, a vessel’s heart captured when the sea decided to keep it. Some say it was shaped by hands that could bend storms, others that it formed where a ship’s hull was kissed by a siren’s sigh and never let go. What survives in the stories is a sense of weight—literal and moral—that makes any buyer pause before hefting it into a sack. It isn’t merely a thing to possess; it is a token of the ocean’s stubborn memory. In the world where merchants and mariners barter with equal fervor, the Large Block of the Solid Ocean has a practical, stubborn life of its own. It is prized by artisans who temper enchantments with earthly matter and by shipwrights who want a hull that remembers to resist the sea’s bite. Crafters grind a shard from the block to blend into waterproof seals, and when fused with resin, the material grants a ship a steadier voyage through squalls. Enchanters value it as a stabilizing anchor for water-aligned sigils, a counterweight in spells that would otherwise drift away with the tide. And for those chasing relics or prestige, the block becomes a story’s centerpiece—a nod to a past where currents could be bottled as easily as a wind in a bottle, now repurposed into present-day craft and quests. Market chatter adds color to the narrative. Along the docks, a rotating chorus of vendors and buyers moves closer as the block changes hands, sometimes perched on a wheeled cart, sometimes leaning against a stall’s weathered post. Saddlebag Exchange, that itinerant marketplace where prices drift with the moon and the wind, treats the Solid Ocean with the respect due to something that could seal a leak in a sunken vessel. On a brisk afternoon you’ll hear whispers of “two gold and a spare compass” or “three gold if the buyer proves steady-eyed,” and a few brisk counteroffers slide across the tabletop as if the sea were answering with a ripple of coins. The price’s rhythm ebbs and flows with festival crowds, shipwrights’ needs, and the odd storm tale that circulates through the marketplace. To own the Large Block of the Solid Ocean is to carry a small, pulsating memory—of wrecks, of quarries, of trades that cross the world’s imagined map. It sits at the intersection of lore and labor, a tangible reminder that in this world, even a stone can hold a tide.