Breakwater

Idea
See also: Dataspace; Palisade; Rational Ascendancy; Prophecies of the Reaping

The Breakwater is a spatial and interplanar barrier of extraordinary scale and power. The Breakwater has kept most "oddities" out of the Closeness for several centuries. The Breakwater's rise corresponds to the late Renaissance/early Enlightenment.

According to imperfect historic records, there are many reasons that the Rational Ascendancy created or strengthened the Breakwater. Planters and Reavers are near the top of the list, only behind gods and fiends.

Dwight Mackey and Elias Rossman discovered the Breakwater and ways of penetrating it (to travel beyond the Closeness). Rossman’s experiments on the Breakwater in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s eroded it. The Breakwater remained up, but weaker.

Warlocks are rare on Earth, because of the Breakwater. A warlock bond is unbreakable by something like the Breakwater. But it's harder for patrons and would-be warlocks to connect in the first place.