The two seas that ring Talan behave differently, and crossings choose their water accordingly.
Conventional sailing crosses Hafra, the saltwater sea ringing Talan itself. No other continent lies on Hafra's far shore: Hafra is bounded outward by the Cloud Sea, and reaching another landmass requires crossing the vapor. Talanese ships work Hafra for coastal commerce, island-hopping between Talanese sub-regions, and the seaboard fighting that follows once Iron Tide cloudships have come down through the Cloud Sea boundary and entered Hafra to strike Talan's coasts. Crossing Hafra to reach a different continent is not possible; for that, see the Cloud Sea below.
The Cloud Sea is the boundary between continents. It cannot be crossed by ordinary ships; vessels that attempt it sink slowly through the vapor and do not return. Cloudships (vessels purpose-built for it) are the only craft that traverse it. They are expensive, rare, and strategically critical. Both off-continent powers Talan knows by name sit on the far side of the Cloud Sea: Sortalde to the east, reachable only by cloudship (Sortalde itself builds none, so every vessel in the route is Talan-made and Talan-operated, landing on the Emerald Isles' Bridgelands); and the Red Empire to the west, whose Iron Tide crosses the Cloud Sea in Magitech warship-cloudships of its own building and descends on Talan's coasts. No Magitrain line connects to either; rail is a continental matter.
Talanese chroniclers tend to write as though their continent is the world. Most of this site does the same, because the world is told from Talan's perspective. This section is the corrective: the places Talan is not, listed by their own names, framed on their own terms.
More continents and powers will earn entries as the canon makes room for them. Each is a campaign-scale undertaking to cross to, and a separate cosmology to write in.