Formed many centuries ago when a massive earthquake, a long delayed after affect of the splitting, dropped the land by several hundred metres and the sea rushed in to fill the hollow. The area around the sea is quite fertile and a number of city states have established themselves. Beginning life as fishing villages they grew rapidly at the turn of the seventeenth century OT. Competition between them is very fierce. The rulers of the various cities relish their positions and set up and dissolve alliance after alliance. The waters of the sea swarm with pirates and privateers and trade ships will normally only sail under the protection of a flotilla of warships. East of the Sea are impenetrable jungles inhabited by cannibal pygmy Lizard Men and others. Then the wall of the Shios’ii Mountains loom up shutting all off to the east, although these mountains have no such name in the Inland Sea Area where they are simple referred to as the Barrier.