below is a listing of various locations in the Sea of Flowers (mostly so i'm not dropping loads of proper nouns without context)
in its most broad (and common) usage, the Sea of Flowers is the primary landmass of the known world: a large island isolated from whatever else may exist in the world by the unnavigable Great Ocean.¹ more narrowly, it can also refer to the inhabited segments of that landmass, or to the specific lands under the jurisdiction of the Confederal Assembly, contrasting it to the Sea of Zero and the less directly-controlled areas of Camp, respectively.
a decently large chunk of the Sea of Flowers is in some way governed by the Confederation of the Sea of Flowers, a loose overarching government that various polities send assemblydudes to to help coördinate inter-polity affairs. it tends to govern at arms length, and at times is almost informal.
/'loʊ.ɛz/, LOH-ehz
Loëz is the largest settlement within the Sea of Flowers, located on the steep banks of the upper Opal River. its position as a prominent neutral point for the confederation led to it becoming the seat of the Confederal Assembly,² and it maintains uplinks with both the Tengexw and Thelexset beamrail networks on top of its own municipal system. there's a sizeable number of stores and job centers within the city, including the Loëz Hour Store and the Loëz Request Desk.
Critical Hill is a private estate on the outskirts of Loëz owned by the Tengexw Family. While Sr. Tengexw and other members of the family active in the business often move for convenience, the estate has been the center of the family for at least 3 generations.
/'kloʊ:z.heɪ.vn̩/, KLOUZ-hay-vən
Closehaven is a moderately large settlement on the coast, near the mouth of the Opal River. the Tengexw Rail Guild are functionally in control of the town, and while their main office is technically in Loëz, the Tengexw Company Store in Closehaven is their largest, and unofficially their base of operations.
the Sunbound Plain is a large meadow on the sunward³ side of the Opal River, historically dominated by the hive arcologies located within it. it remains the center of flower trade in the Confederation, and the arcologies are still fairly prominent as both population and economic centers.
/'kvɪ.vɪ.dʰɛ.zɹ̩/, KVI-vi-de-zər
Kvivitézr is one of the larger arcologies of the Sunbound Plain, mainly known for cultivating Rock Holly. its government is notable for being far more devolved than most of the hives, with the city's mingosi only controlling the flower monopoly and most other powers held by an elected citizen countil.
/'klaʃ.dʰɛ.zɹ̩/, KLASH-de-zər
Another fairly large arcology in the Sunbound Plain. it's noted for having a high heapfolk population, largely due to Klasktézr's proximity to (and good relations with) Pãnukon Meadow.
/'pæ̃.nə.kɑn ˌmɛ.doʊ/, PÃ-nə-kahn MEH-doh
Pãnukon Meadow is the primary settlement of heapfolk, built around the heapfolk spawn field by communities supporting newly-awoken heapfolk. in more recent times it's grown closer to the hive system, and there's a lot of movement of people between the two. while not nearly as guarded as the other flower monopolies, there are unique flower operations in Pãnukon Meadow as well.
/'soʊɬ.ʃən/, SOHLH-shən
Soułxén is a town in what used to be the Emusikta Court before it was dissolved around 100 years ago.⁴ while Emusikta was generally majority-hernite, Soułxén itself had a mostly keäton population at the time the court collapsed, and still has a plurality keäton population today.
/'an.sɪ.ka/, AHN-sih-kah
the Ansika Court is an old hernite court with only two settlements: Nokola-sen (/no.'ko.la.sen/, no-KO-lah-sehn), the current home of its ruling justice, and Uxkeya-kol (/ʊʃ.'ke.ja.koɫ/, uush-KEH-yah-kol), a historical capital with only a handful of people left living in it. the ruling Ansika family claims to have a documented history dating back to before the Heavenly Schism, but these are spotty at best and fully reliable records only go back to the CC 1700s.⁵ also, while the current justice, Noyona I Ansika, is still in good (enough) health, and his son Noyona II is doing fine, his elder child, who would be next in line to the justiceship, is missing.
Uxkeya-kol is of some note to adventurers due to a recent rumor that there's a relic chamber near the town. nobody has managed to find it yet tho, and the handful of people living there are kinda annoyed about the sudden increase in traffic from people trying to find entrances to it.
/'niʃ.kɯ.ɹɯn/, NEESH-kuu-ruun
Niṣkurun is a small stopover town along the Opal River, with both a ferry port and a beamrail station along the main artery of the Confederation's transit system.
Ansible Garden is a community on the shores of the similarly-named Ansible Lake, the location of the single known mass site of sleeping constructs, and built up from small encampments made by construct support networks. the town is known for its large communal gardens and arent anti-guild inclination, with a single uplink to the beamrail network going through the Institute for Meteoërgy's lines a nd most of their assemblydudes advocating for conederal management of the beamrail system.
Ansible Road is a trail connecting Ansible Garden to Noctilu, and the site of the first branch of the Institute for Meteoërgy's beamrail system that didn't just link up to a research station.
the Glass Desert is a dry basin near the edge of the confederation, marked by an anomalous thunderstorm that continuously shifts over its area, leaving large chunks of glass scattered throughout it. these pockets frequently fill with rainwater⁶ from the storm, forming glass puddles which serve as temporary hubs for people living in the basin.⁷
/'tʃar.gal.jɔŋᵓ/, CHAHR-gahl-yongw
Charkalyonǵ is a prominent hub within the Glass Desert, established around a large glass puddle formed from a particularly large⁸ movement of the eternal storm. it's a common stopover for members of various processions.
the Tengexw Guild recently opened a beamrail line connecting the town to their network, though they came into a lot of conflict with Thelexset over who would be able to do it.
Camp is an administrative region of the confederation consisting of those areas outside of established polities and near the edge of the Sea of Zero. it largely consists of independent, disconnected frontier towns with no larger ties elsewhere, mostly left to their own devices by the confederation beyond occasional infrastructure planning. due to its nature, "Camp" wasn't traditionally a place that people really identified as being from, but the recent growth of the Camp Manifest and increased consciousness of the region's political situation has led to more people adopting it.
Camp is also very much the point where the line between what's part of the confederation and what's just a place in the Sea of Flowers starts to blur and break down, as its boundaries are only defined as "the outlying areas of the Sea of Flowers" and functionally it only exists within the limited area of specific towns and routes within that. in the end, maybe it doesn't matter too much how it's delineated?
/'nɑ:k.tɪl.u:/, NAHK-til-oo
Noctilu is the largest settlement within Camp, and a notable hub for adventuring work in the area. the governing body of the city (largely controlled by the Institute of Meteoërgy) maintains a small independent beamrail network that provides easy transit to Ansible Garden. there's some debate over whether or not they should expand it further out, or even try competing with the Guilds in beamrail traffic.
/'ʃət̚.ɝs/, SHƏT-urs
Shutters is a small settlement near Noctilu with a high slime population.
the Sea of Viscera is a biome-sized mass of flesh in the far ashebound⁹ region of the Sea of Flowers which has formed a strange, swamp-like ecosystem around it. while it falls outside of confederal jurisdiction, trade between it and neighboring polities (mainly for supplies) and missionary efforts fro mthe Church of the Fallen God mean it's somewhat well-known, though not well-visited.
/ɪ:.'noʊ.ləz tʃɝtʃ/, ih-NOH-ləz CHURTCH
Inola's Church is the primary settlement of the Sea of Viscera, serving as the center of the Communities of the Church of the Fallen God. it's mostly made up of buildings connected by wooden walkways built above the viscera, with the namesake Church located in the center of town. Inola's Church is an important site for Fallen God members, and also serves as a regulatory center for the cultivation of rose hip within the Communities.
while at a base level there's nothing particularly distinct about the architectural style of Inola's Church, the specific combination of white painted wood and apathy towards washing off splatters of blood is cited as making the town's buildings stick out in the minds of visitors.
the Sea of Zero is the near-uninhabited region further poleward from the bulk of the Sea of Flowers. the terrain within it¹⁰ is strange and unstable, with structures and paths forming and shifting and disappearing between trips, though reports from scattered adventurers and myths about the Sea drive people to explore it in the hopes they'll find something far within.
/'hi:ɹ.æf.tɹ̩/, HEER-af-tər
Hereafter is a small, remote settlement just on the edge of the Sea of Zero, largely populated by veteran adventurers. due to the latent distortion of the land as far out as it is it can be hard to reach, but the settlement itself is within a comparative stable zone and the path(s) to it are fairly well marked and maintained despite occasionally shifting.
¹ - people have tried to find out what lies past the Great Ocean, but they either don't return or report extremely weird anomalies that make it completely impossible to progress, like massive barren rocks too steep to climb that stretch for miles, predatory storms, and an inability to reliably use navigation equipment for anything other than getting turned around and lost.
² - it helped that Loëz was also one of the major voices advocating for the formation of the confederation to begin with.
³ - the direction of the sunrise. traditionally this is placed at the top of maps, with the bulk of the Sea of Zero to the left, but from an Earth-equivalent perspective it would be West.
⁴ - in CC 1881, 115 years ago.
⁵ - the earliest records of any real merit are from the reign of Kaskal I, shortly before he and his entire family suddenly disappeared. it's thought that the family either only goes back about three generations before him, or that the current Ansika line just took over in the period after Kaskal's disappearance.
⁶ -"living storms" like the eternal storm produce very mildly alcohol-tasting water with the slightest amount of opalescence to it. it was originally speculated that it could be a weird form of blood, but all attempts at analysis have shown that it's somehow just water despite the apparent differences. current theories hold that it's a second form of liquid water parallel to regular liquid water but only formed in specific conditions.
⁷ - some glass puddles are large enough to persist for decades without being replenished under regular usage, though increased drainage from commercial exploitation is a bit of an issue.
⁸ - and worryingly close to leaving the basin
⁹ - in the direction of the sunset, and roughly where Ashe sits in the sky. traditionally this is the bottom of maps, but from an Earth-equivalent perspective it would be East.
¹⁰ - technially a latent amount of this distortion it present throughout the entirety of the Sea of Flowers, just on a usually imperceptible level. the Sea of Zero typically refers to the uncharted/unchartable areas beyond most settlement where the effects of this distortion are massive.