Each of the oceans has a point of no return, beyond which no sailor has come back from. So of course there is much speculation, and primarily sea monsters are imagined to be sinking boats and disabling ships, gargantuan versions of regular monsters occasionally caught in fishing nets in the depths near the Edge.
But inland, too, there is an Edge, a straight line that runs perfectly North-South, beyond which nobody from the Emergery has managed to venture. It is not a matter of desire, or strength, or determination, preparation or ingenuity. This edge is invisible to the eye, but by all other reckonings it is a wall, of sorts. You can throw things through it, and even reach through it with arms or outstretched legs, but your torso cannot. All living things, their torso, cannot pass the invisible line, they get gently stuck in place. Birds occasionally get caught, mid-flight, and pry themselves free with their little legs, as if from vertical quicksand. For the most part they steer well clear.
Near that Edge, there is not a lot going on, few reasons to be there. Without being able to range in all directions, animals and people prefer to locate themselves somewhere else. The lack of activity means thereabouts is mostly barren, and what lives there are the darkest and spiciest plants, with poisonous berries and twisted little creatures in burrows beneath.
Sometimes it has been fashionable to study this zone, and derelict viewing platforms can be found. On the other side of the Edge there is more of this world, but always in night or mist or shadows. The seasons are the same but subdued. Aside from bracken and dead limbs, there is nothing to see – no clouds, no grasses, nothing that feels warm or alive. But on rare occasions, for the patient observer, pairs of eyes come close for a moment, and in the distance, perhaps reflected, perhaps not, are lights, lights that are indications of structure and purpose, of sentience, far, far away.
Not surprisingly the margins of our society can often be found near that Edge, the Eastern Edge, the Cursed Edge, the Edge of Life. Bandits retreat to the Edge when they are incapable of planning ahead. Bootleggers and murky stills, absconders, illegal brothels, counterfeiters and spell-casters can all be found in that zone, where law enforcement mostly avoids, leaves them to their grubby dark deeds. And so it is that running up the Edge of our world is the easiest, albeit riskiest way to avoid the Sprites, who also have an aversion to that stateless strip, and get from Eastern place A to Eastern place B.
