The continuous continent that rings the globe and splits it into two halves is called the Red Line. Now, imagine there’s a perpendicular line that intersects the Red Line starting from Reverse Mountain.
That would be the Grand Line.
The Grand Line and the Red Line split the world into four seas: the East Blue, West Blue, South Blue and North Blue. Two windless stretches parallel to the Grand Line called the Calm Belt separate it from those seas and prevent sea travel across them. Thus the world has five major seas, with the Grand Line as a central axis.
About eight hundred years ago—over a period called the Hundred-Year Void, according to the Ponegliffs—a great kingdom was laid to waste by twenty kings and their clans. Those kings enacted a new World Government, and ruled over the capital city of Marijoa as a new sovereign class—the Celestial Dragons.
This story is simply cobbled together from the theories of renowned historians and those exiled from the sacred capital; the truth is quite unclear. All texts and records have been lost to time, and the only medium relating the voices of the past are words carved into ancient stone that is not broken down by the elements.
At present, the government’s order is preserved by the Navy’s military power through the ultimate authority of the Five Elders, who serve at the pleasure of the supreme class, the Celestial Dragons. Member nations of the World Government acquire rights, responsibilities, and security through attendance at the council meeting known as the Reverie. But unaffiliated countries and lands exist in more remote regions. The most distant of these are the territories of the Four Emperors, with occasional examples of dual affiliation, such as member states that are also under the influence of major pirates.
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Sacred Marijoa is along the Red Line on the opposite side of the world from Reverse Mountain. Ten thousand meters directly below it is an underwater cave on the seafloor that acts as a relay point between the first half of the Grand Line and the second half, known as the New World.
This relay point is none other than the Ryugu Kingdom, often called Fish-Man Island.
The main island of Ryugu Kingdom was inside a gigantic air bubble. At the end of the little interior harbor, a ship that had been coated for undersea travel was docked. Up above was a smaller bubble containing King Neptune’s palace, connected to the island by special travel tubes.
“I’ve never witnessed such a sight… It’s so beautiful…my word…” muttered a masked man, jotting notes in a little memo book.
It was light, pale orange from the sunset.
The grand sun tree, Eve, stood over ten thousand meters tall and brought the light from the surface down to the seafloor through its trunk. It was nearly nighttime up there. Down here, inside a special, resilient bubble made from tree sap, the combination of light and oxygen supported a unique ecosystem. Coral, plants, even forests—ten thousand meters below the surface, Fish-Man Island was its own special biotope. Because of its oxygen, it could support not just fish-men, who could breathe in the water, but humans as well.
“‘Beautiful, scary’… ‘Maybe this is what aquarium fish feel like’…”
“Don’t read that, Wallace,” snapped the masked man, closing his book when someone started reading it out loud over his shoulder.
“You should let me read that sometime, Deuce. What d’you call it, an adventure journal? Mihal taught me how to read.”
Wallace was the curious type. His spiked fins made him look menacing and mature, but in fact he was closer to boyhood. He was a weedy stingfish fish-man.
“It’s good that you’re learning. But this is more of an outline for my own benefit than something to show others. I’ll look for a good, proper adventure book to give you later.”
“Books are rare on Fish-Man Island. The water ruins the paper.”
“I see. Yes, that’s a very clever observation.”
The man in the mask—appropriately named Masked Deuce—liked to write story ideas in his book, too. His dream was to write a nautical adventure novel one day, in the style of Louis Arnot’s Brag Men.
“At any rate, I’m glad we made it safely. They say 70 percent of human ships trying to reach Fish-Man Island sink in the process.”
“Your homeland is a beautiful place, Wallace. I can see why so many pirates risk their lives for a chance to visit it.”
Deuce’s pirate crew was traveling the Grand Line, and after causing a major incident at Sabaody Archipelago, they had made their way under the waves with their ship properly coated. Their vessel, the Piece of Spadille, successfully completed a voyage that failed 70 percent of the time and docked at Fish-Man Island. This was surely thanks to the help offered by Wallace, a former resident of the place who knew how to manage the seafloor.
“Sure, but I wasn’t raised here. I grew up in the Fish-Man District.”
“Huh? There are other islands?”
“You saw that enormous sunken ship on the way here, didn’t you? It’s called Noah…”
Next to the mammoth ship was another island, a giant clamshell in a bubble. This place was more of a slum for fish-men of low repute, such as pirates and thieves.
“A slum, huh? I guess every country is the same. That Sun crew—they were fish-man pirates, too?”
“Yes, many of them were from Fish-Man District. They were like heroes to us street urchins. But you humans shouldn’t go anywhere near there. You’d be throwing your lives away.”
People still remembered the Sun Pirates, who became infamous enemies of humanity when they launched an attack against the Navy Headquarters itself.
Relations between humans and fish-men were not good.
Humans saw the fish-men, with their innate physical superiority, as a threat. Some fish-men saw humans as an inferior species. So the humans, with their numerical advantage, oppressed the fish-men with the power of the World Government.
At the start of the Great Age of Piracy, a wave of human pirates rushed through Fish-Man Island on their way to the New World and abducted many young mermaids on the way. They made for preposterously expensive slaves.
The Sun Pirates were still active after the death of their captain, the fish-man hero Fisher Tiger, but several years before his successor had joined the Seven Warlords and now did the World Government’s bidding. Apparently, the upshot was that Fish-Man Island was safer and more open than before. But it did nothing to solve the actual issues between humans, fish-men and mermaids.
At any rate, it wasn’t a place for pirates to linger long.
“Master Deu,” said another member of the crew, a man wearing a skull mask and an abundance of skeleton-themed accessories. He looked quite ominous.
“Hey, Skull.”
The man’s name was Skull. He loved to collect pirate gear, and one of his hobbies was boarding pirate ships he took a shine to and working as a menial deckhand as they sailed. His knowledge about pirates was encyclopedic, and he had a better ear for the latest intel than a beat writer does for a scoop.
“We finished up with the cargo. These fish-men are nicer than I expected. Rip-off prices, but still…”
“Hey, it’s ten thousand meters under the sea. You’ve got to expect some import fees. Where are the others?”
“They rushed right off to the Mermaid Café.”
“Dammit,” Deuce sighed.
One of the crowning attractions of Fish-Man Island was gorgeous mermaids. There was no end of men willing to risk their lives by diving to the bottom of the sea to fulfill their dreams of frolicking with vivacious, mostly bare-skinned young mermaids. When the only thing separating you from death was a wooden plank, this was a paradise worth making your life’s final destination.
“You mean they went to the bottom of the sea just to visit a rip-off café? Our captain’s with them, I assume?”
Skull mumbled and took a while to find the words. “Master Ace…was with them…until recently.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again.”
He had wandered off. Normally, you’d call this “getting lost,” but their captain was the type of man who claimed that the Spade Pirates were wherever he was, so he didn’t realize how bad his problem really was.