LANSTALL SEA

The continent of the HFX setting is roughly the size of Australia, Brazil or the Lower 48; all of which measure about 3 million square miles in area, give or take a couple hundred thousand square miles. However, the Lower 48 is its closest analog geographically. The main differences are that without the greater mass of the rest of North America in the form of Canada and Alaska attached to its north (and Mexico to it's south), the jet stream and prevailing winds and rains sweep across the country further south. Because every point in the continent is closer to the ocean, the climate is considerably milder than the Lower 48 as well; even in the north the winters are not as long and cold as they are in Montana, Minnesota or Maine, for instance, and the south is not as hot as Florida or Louisiana or southern Arizona. This also causes the continent to be kind of reversed east to west from the Lower 48; the wettest parts are in the farthest west; the kind of rain that Alaska and the Pacific Northwest gets extends to the southern border of the continent, causing the farthest southwest to be the swampiest and largest wetlands. Old mountains like the Urals or Appalachians cause the first rain shadow as you go further east. However, here is where we find another major discrepancy from the geography of the Lower 48; the Lanstall Sea is a large interior sea that keeps the middle of the continent temperate and causes localized rain to form even in the rain shadow of the mountains to the west.

Much like a super-sized Caspian Sea, the Lanstall Sea is fairly temperate most of the time, except in the far north and where it borders high elevation. The lands around it are fertile and get enough rain to be very arable, but not so much as to be a hindrance to development or travel. The waters are (relatively) calm, and storms are not often too dangerous or frequent. As such, it is a highway of shipping and trade. It is also sometimes a magnet for piracy, which is the greatest danger most voyages could potentially face… most of the time. 

The nations that border the sea do have navies that patrol for piracy, but they are reluctant to venture too far beyond the shores of their sovereign nations lest they be seen as a provocation against their neighbors.