The Bellingshausen Sea: The Usurper’s Territory
The Bellingshausen Sea, a cold and icy body of water in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, serves as the location where Jet Mir was hospitalized and where Lumina later teams up with Maud Jakobson. This sea neighbors the Scotia Sea and supports a small community of barely three hundred residents where “everyone knows each other’s histories.” The population’s striking physical characteristics—black hair, fair skin, prominent cheekbones, emerald eyes, and dark green snake-like tails—reflect their adaptation to the cold waters. Both men and women apply translucent, fatty cream to shield their faces from cold water and air, while the scarcity of vegetation makes the color green hold immense symbolic value.
Queen Macy Jakobson rules this sea as a usurper, having ascended the throne through a coup orchestrated with the help of Harriet Rebane, a former assassin from the Ross Sea. Macy’s parents were slaughtered during a war with the Scotia Sea when she was seven, and she survived by hiding behind a curtain. After being imprisoned for insanity while her sister Maud became a pawn of the enemy, Macy staged her coup and proved herself a skilled ruler. Despite her violent rise to power, Macy’s paranoia proves useful for identifying potential problems, and her realm provides surprisingly high-quality medical care—Jet Mir was hospitalized here for an allergy to specific algae. Lumina’s decision to team up with Maud Jakobson in this sea demonstrates the complex alliances that form in the pursuit of artifacts and power, where former enemies become temporary allies in the search for treasure.
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