Currently, Yorck indeed finds herself in the mid-Atlantic ocean, though her exact location within that...well, it is more than a bit hard to discover where the bloody hell you are when there is only seawater for many thousands of kilometres all around you with no defining features. Though, the convoy seems to be going, according to Yorck's bridge compass, from the west to the east.
Well, most of this has already been told OOC'ly - while Yorck doesn't yet know, we do. For propriety's sake, kindly let me post it again in a more concise format - but allow me to massively expand on the Abyssal segment.
The general state of the world, 20XX
Many of the world's naval forces have been effectively neutered after the Abyssal Emergence, though the ill-fated Operation Retribution also contributed to the extensive losses suffered by countries worldwide, and while shipgirls exist, there has been a...lack, so to say, of modern vessels.
No shipgirls have appeared representing ships built after the Cold War, technology for shipgirls is weird in how selective it can be in cases, and it appears that no ship has been summoned that was built after 1940. At least, for now. The French have summoned Strasbourg of Dunkerque-class fame, the Germans are employing the battleship Bayern as their heaviest surface combatant together with Kronprinz Wilhelm, Japanese efforts to appease the Kami resulted in the summoning of the battlecruiser Kongou and her three sisters, whilst the American summoning attempts resulted in the arrival of the Nevada-class battleships and, strangely, USS California - strange, because it is usually the lead ship of a class which is summoned first. The British have the most powerful carrier in the world at present - HMS Illustrious (87) - but lack severely in dreadnoughts, fielding mostly pre-dreadnoughts and the four Iron Dukes.
Carriers in particular are rare, for some reason. Some have theorized it represents the natural development of the navy in the 20th century, but that was quickly shot down by the appearance of HMS Illustrious, the lead ship of the class of the same name, and the successful summoning of battleships by the major navies. The only carriers currently fighting against the Abyss are the following:
IJN Houshou
USS Langley
HMS Argus
HMS Illustrious
Abyssal ships largely control the vast, empty stretches of ocean, but while some armchair military 'officers' online have argued that it is inconsequential, this has made participating in trans-Atlantic trade as a ship-borne captain - unless in large convoys and escorted by shipgirls - utterly suicidal. The Pacific is similar, but with Hawaii and Midway remaining in the hands of the United States of America - and as such, humankind in general - trans-Pacific trade is more viable than its Atlantic counterpart, but not by much.
However, several events of note have occurred in the Pacific - events which have proven to be foreboding indeed.
The Abyssals, post-Emergence, have been consolidating control.
Narvik Princess has established herself in, well, Narvik and turned it into her Territory, and everyone in Europe is watching her nervously. She has squadrons of powerful destroyers, an excellent force of light and heavy cruisers, but seems somewhat weak in the capital ship department: Only one Wo-class aircraft carrier and what has been termed a 'Demon'-class Abyssal are in her service, but reconnaissance has been hampered by the supernatural red-black-grey smog that has descended on, and begins some distance away of, Narvik Princess' Territory, so accurate reports have been scarce. Also notable for deploying 28.3cm coastal guns seemingly based on those from Gneisenau, which were landed in Norway during the Second World War.
Imperial Scuttling Princess...has been more than a bit on the nose with which event she represents. She is based in Scapa Flow, and for rather justifiable reasons has become a priority target for the Royal Navy and the British Army to vanquish, with British hopes to expunge the Abyssal taint and to then use Scapa as both a base and summoning point for Royal Navy shipgirls...after rebuilding it entirely, given that it was closed since 1966 and the Abyssal presence has not been kind to the structures there.
European Carrier Princess and her small group of destroyers are also somewhat of a threat, but they have largely been confined to the rough area around Narvik, though she and Narvik Princess do not really interact with each other. Noted by aerial reconnaissance to frequent the location where HMS Glorious sank in the Second World War, it is unknown if it is a symbolic act or 'merely' her claimed Territory.
There are a couple of Princesses and Demons in the Mediterranean, but so far, these have kept their existence quiet and shot down any attempts at in-depth reconnaissance. Italian efforts have cleared the Adriatic Sea completely of the Abyssal menace, but the damage done to the Balkan coastline and the local political situation...
Well.
In the Pacific, both Isolated and Fortress Island Princess form large nuisances. Their fleets, while not massive or even very powerful, are nonetheless threatening, and unlike their European counterparts, are much more active in hunting down convoys, performing coastal raids, and doing whatever it is that Abyssals do to raise their number. Fortress Island Princess is the most dangerous of the two though, as she has access to - according to the Japanese - a pair of carriers, battleships, and a veritable flood of other ships, forming the main pillar of Abyssal strength in the western Pacific and the Sea of Japan. It, however, seems that the Princess has little experience in fleet deployment, and fleets either hyper-specialized for one specific task or too small for anything resembling combat operations are common.
Meanwhile, closer to American shores, German Raider Princess is running around in the western and southern Atlantic sinking whatever cargo ships still dare leave port, together with a Heavy Cruiser Demon and their combined submarine wolfpacks - the pair form a threat, but direct confrontation is often avoided and SnR efforts by the USAAF often allowed to happen unmolested, suggesting that the Abyssals are not one homogeneous entity: Other Abyssal Demons and Princesses murder whoever they come across, while some reportedly use the bodies of dead Humans to... [REDACTED]. More powerful, humanoid/human-like Abyssals often pop up soon after, like the extremely rare Re-class.
In other, less horrifying news, there is an Abyssal Emergence Event going on near South Africa and the Indian Ocean, and Antarctica and parts of the Central Pacific have been covered for months now in the same blood red-black-grey smog as Narvik Princess' Territory, so the Abyssals are up to something.
