the strand [Lore] Okeanos

[Bellosh]

Okeanos - The City Lost Beneath the Waves

 

Few legendary locales in Equestria have inspired as much fervid speculation and works of fiction as the lost city of Okeanos. Submerged beneath the waves of the Sparkling Sea, nopony knows exactly where its ruins now lie save for a rare marble column found in shallower waters. Even though there’s general consensus that the bulk of Okeanos’s wreckage ought to be found on the ocean floor midway between the Bridleback Shore and Unyasi, attempts to find its watery grave have thus far proven elusive.

About a thousand years ago, a large band of pegasi thought of a bold plan to create not just a simple cloud city, but an entire nation high in the skies above the Sparkling Sea. The capital city, Okeanos, was conceived as the centerpiece of this new, grand realm. Featuring a towering statue of Commander Hurricane called the Colossus of Okeanos, and an impenetrable acropolis on top of a mighty thundering cumulonimbus cloud, the city’s founders believed they constructed a symbol so mighty that it was all but invincible.

Naturally, the ponies of Okeanos ensured their own literal downfall through sheer arrogance. Despite warnings that scooping up excessive amounts of warm tropical water during the summer could destabilize the very clouds that held up the city, the citizens of the city were determined to collect as much material as fast as possible to swiftly expand their nation. As the ignored soothsayers predicted, careless management of the collected water allowed Okeanos’s cloud foundation, centered on the central thundercloud, to condense into a single ultra-powerful cyclone. In the ensuring cataclysm, the entire realm fell down into the sea without a firm support, and a series of tidal waves caused by the falling debris wiped out nearly all settlements along the Bridleback Shore.

Aside from a few dismissible pony tales, hardly anyone up on the surface has any idea that the remains of the cloud city have since found new occupants. By a curious accident of fate, the Downfall of Okeanos settled a dispute among the isolationist ocean-dwelling hippocamp tribe as to where to establish the capital of their own underwater kingdom. The hippocampi have since amended the former airborne capital for its own needs, transforming the Acropolis into their own spectacular underwater palace. The Colossus also remains intact as well, kept unchanged as a reminder of who lived outside of the ocean. When needed, the hippocami construct new buildings out of giant seashells. Thanks to skilled stewardship, the surrounding depths both teem with aquatic life and are clear of dreaded sea monsters.

It’s through the interference of the secretive citizens of Okeanos that their realm remains hidden, but their isolationist tendencies are not to be mistaken for hatred of the surface-dwellers. Unlike the three tribes of Equestria, the hippocampi of Okeanos never got a chance to integrate with the outside world, and so the hippocampi believe many untrue superstitions about their above-sea cousins. Things will certainly change though as bold hippocampi make contact with other ponies, while other species develop the means to tread into the pristine depths of Okeanos.....

~Canterlot Research Journal