Demi-Kraken, also known as Cephalopoets,
or Marlow’s Decopods, are large squid like creatures that feed on
stories. They look much like a giant squid, but their bodies are more
stout and rounded with larger mantle fins and shorter tentacles. They
have large expressive eyes and powerful bony beaks. They can ‘hear’
with their tentacles. Their skin is unblemished and changes color
depending on the mood of the story that they last fed on. Their hungry
color is a pail gray-blue, not dissimilar to the color of the mists on
the Gray Sea.
In the wild you can find Demi-Kraken in a number
of places; following sailing ships listening for sea stories and tales
of distant shores, chasing whale pods, drinking deep of their alien
melancholy story-songs, or even sifting through shipwrecks combing for
mementos and keepsakes, imagining the stories behind them like vultures
scavenging a corpse.
For sailors it is very bad luck not to give
a story to a Demi-Kraken if you see one. Wild Demi-Kraken will become
increasing aggressive when they have not fed over a period of time and
will attempt to climb aboard ships or come ashore if truly desperate.
While not outright harmful the sight of a thousand pound squid creature
attempting to board your ship to ease drop is enough to cause even the
saltiest of sailors to panic. Whole squads of starving Demi-Kraken have
been known to attempt to board a ship at once causing the vessel to
capsize.
Demi-Kraken are the best listeners, and if enthralled by
a story, will chase the storyteller to hear the end of the tail. It is
not unheard of for a squad of Demi-Kraken to chase ships hundreds of
miles to hear the end of a story. This attribute can be capitalized on
and Demi-Kraken can be used as a pack animal; provided one has a large
and diverse library. By attaching lines to their bodies and by moving
the storyteller away from them the Demi-Kraken are able to pull vast
loads, even whole ships.
A Demi-Kraken sea chariot consists of a
lead ship, and a follow. The lead ship is independent and where the
storyteller resides. Often large megaphones are affixed to the back of
the lead boat to amplify the voice of the storyteller. The lead ship is
always independently powered, either by sail, oar, magic or another
type of sea chariot. The follow is all ways attached to the
Demi-Kraken.
The Demi-Kraken produces a number of products useful
to people beyond use as a means of transportation. Their ink is highly
coveted as it is a deep black and is absolutely water proof. Their
mucus can be used as a book binding. But strangest of all is their
scat. Demi-Kraken scat looks just like a message in a bottle, small
undigested pieces of story that are inscribed on a papyrus like material
is encased in a thick translucent glass like substance. The glass of
which will shatter when dry. Writers covet this paper as viewing a
piece always seems to bring on bouts of extreme productivity.
Unfortunately they do not last long before crumbling to dust,
unfortunately sapping the user of their productivity. Many writers have
become addictive to these scraps and many will travel to Inkhorn as the
city-fleet has a near limitless supply of fresh Demi-Kraken scat.
Friday, February 16, 2018
The City-Fleets
City-Fleets are man-made artificial islands, comprised of hundreds of boats; barges, warships, freighters, iron sides, and rafts all lashed together. Some of the hulls in a City-Fleet are hundreds of years old some are brand new. Ruined rigs and broken ships get piled up upon one another making the City-Fleets into labyrinths. Everything that one could find in a city one can find in a City-Fleet, residences, schools, workshops, libraries, factories. Also like a city most City-Fleets are separated into districts each centered on a flagship.
For many cutthroats and other social outcasts the City-Fleets are the closest thing they get to civilization. Their ability to navigate and move in and out of The Gray Seas and the Known Seas allows them to stay one step ahead of hostile authorities. Most of these cities are free of any laws save for the pirate code, but most of the lord admirals of the City-Fleets are brutal in their punishment of anyone would might disrupt the civic order.
The economies of the City-Fleets are dominated by piracy and illicit trade. Pirates come here to trade and repair ships. Captured ships are often sold to the City-Fleets for assimilation. Captures passengers and crew are press-ganged into joining the City-Fleets.
Pickled Pete's
This City-Fleet gets its name from its founder, a legendary red headed Halfling captain who's last wish was to be pickled in a large tankard of rum. His specialty crafted glass and bronze is still installed at the helm of his flagship which serves as the center of the city-fleet.
Peacock's Roost
Peacock's Roost gets its name from its single large sail made up of dozens of green and blue sails. It also may have gotten its name from a rumor that its founder, a Dowa thief by the name of Nezumi the Branded One, stole two breeding pairs of the Dowa Emperor's Sacred Peacocks.
Inkhorn
Like many of the city-fleets, Inkhorn is a collection of derelict boats and a den of pirates, rouges and ne’er-do-wells. However what separates Inkhorn apart from the other city-fleets is what they prize. The people of Inkhorn do not prize gold or vice, but the written word.
Pirates gather a huge amount of literature with their captured ships. To most this is just useless scrap, but to the people of Inkhorn it is worth more than gold. The population of Inkhorn is made up of rouge scholars, warrior-poets, guerilla bards, and scandalous playwrights. This is not to say that the citizens here are pompous dandies, in fact quite the opposite. Accusations of plagiarism meet with fisticuffs and blades. Criticism is harsh and as the citizens say, ‘hacks are met with attacks.’ Truly awful works are punished by ‘inkboarding’ the author; a public form of waterboarding where the water is replaced with Demi-Kraken ink, staining the victim’s mouth permanently, while their offending work is read aloud as poorly as possible.
Inkhorn is by far the safest and best organized city-fleet. Ruled by a group that refers to themselves as ‘The Editors’ they enforces the rule of law of literature with an iron efficiency. New visitors are well served well by learning the rules, things like mispronunciation, sentence structure, and contractions are all met with swift justice.
Inkhorn has a unique method of transportation. Unlike the other city-fleets, who may float with the currents, are propelled by great sail collectives or by magical means, Inkhorn is pulled, much like a sea chariot, but on a much, much, large scale. Inkhorn’s is pulled along by a large school of Demi-Kraken,
Inkhorn is famous for its vast private libraries, theater troupes, and book markets. Index is the district where one can find all of the public, and most of the private, libraries along with the printing press. The Bard’s Quarter, even though it’s more than a third of the city-fleet in volume (unsurprisingly there are very few number people in Inkhorn), is home to the theaters. Papyrus and Quills is the district that lays host to the book markets. There is also the Opus-In-Flesh, a tattoo parlor that can inscribe arcane power words that with a command word change into weapons and armor, the Writers Block Tavern, famed for its literal liquid inspiration, the Pun-ishment, the combination comedy show/torture dungeon, and the Out-Damned Spot, the Demi-Kraken ink milking farm.
Inkhorn refers to its citizens as either cast members or wordsmiths, depending on who you ask. They are a motley crew who believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, but swords are still pretty damn good at killing someone. Some of the more infamous cast members/wordsmiths are the Uncensored, an animated printing press for hire, willing to print any literature anywhere, if the price is right, the roving Jacks-of-Diamond, a subversive surrealist theater troupe wanted for ‘guerilla thespianism’ in most of the Known Seas, the Marquis Robischon, famed for saving the Bibliothèque Noire by bringing the profane library to Inkhorn during the Vardoux Revolution, and Sanders Branson, the verbose current poet laurate of Inkhorn and its effective lord admiral.
Inkhorn has a unique method of propulsion. The city-fleet is essentially a vast sea chariot pulled by Demi-Kraken. Demi-Kraken, the story eating squids, are attracted to Inkhorn like sharks are to blood. When the city-fleet needs to move great harnesses are attached to the creatures and the poet laureate is used as a sort of ‘carrot on a stick’ forcing the Demi-Kraken to follow, pulling the city along. When the city is stationary the Demi-Kraken are freed of their harnesses you can see them swimming between the hulls, their hearing-tentacles occasion eavesdropping out of the water or clapping along with a plays audience.
For many cutthroats and other social outcasts the City-Fleets are the closest thing they get to civilization. Their ability to navigate and move in and out of The Gray Seas and the Known Seas allows them to stay one step ahead of hostile authorities. Most of these cities are free of any laws save for the pirate code, but most of the lord admirals of the City-Fleets are brutal in their punishment of anyone would might disrupt the civic order.
The economies of the City-Fleets are dominated by piracy and illicit trade. Pirates come here to trade and repair ships. Captured ships are often sold to the City-Fleets for assimilation. Captures passengers and crew are press-ganged into joining the City-Fleets.
Pickled Pete's
This City-Fleet gets its name from its founder, a legendary red headed Halfling captain who's last wish was to be pickled in a large tankard of rum. His specialty crafted glass and bronze is still installed at the helm of his flagship which serves as the center of the city-fleet.
Peacock's Roost
Peacock's Roost gets its name from its single large sail made up of dozens of green and blue sails. It also may have gotten its name from a rumor that its founder, a Dowa thief by the name of Nezumi the Branded One, stole two breeding pairs of the Dowa Emperor's Sacred Peacocks.
Inkhorn
Like many of the city-fleets, Inkhorn is a collection of derelict boats and a den of pirates, rouges and ne’er-do-wells. However what separates Inkhorn apart from the other city-fleets is what they prize. The people of Inkhorn do not prize gold or vice, but the written word.
Pirates gather a huge amount of literature with their captured ships. To most this is just useless scrap, but to the people of Inkhorn it is worth more than gold. The population of Inkhorn is made up of rouge scholars, warrior-poets, guerilla bards, and scandalous playwrights. This is not to say that the citizens here are pompous dandies, in fact quite the opposite. Accusations of plagiarism meet with fisticuffs and blades. Criticism is harsh and as the citizens say, ‘hacks are met with attacks.’ Truly awful works are punished by ‘inkboarding’ the author; a public form of waterboarding where the water is replaced with Demi-Kraken ink, staining the victim’s mouth permanently, while their offending work is read aloud as poorly as possible.
Inkhorn is by far the safest and best organized city-fleet. Ruled by a group that refers to themselves as ‘The Editors’ they enforces the rule of law of literature with an iron efficiency. New visitors are well served well by learning the rules, things like mispronunciation, sentence structure, and contractions are all met with swift justice.
Inkhorn has a unique method of transportation. Unlike the other city-fleets, who may float with the currents, are propelled by great sail collectives or by magical means, Inkhorn is pulled, much like a sea chariot, but on a much, much, large scale. Inkhorn’s is pulled along by a large school of Demi-Kraken,
Inkhorn is famous for its vast private libraries, theater troupes, and book markets. Index is the district where one can find all of the public, and most of the private, libraries along with the printing press. The Bard’s Quarter, even though it’s more than a third of the city-fleet in volume (unsurprisingly there are very few number people in Inkhorn), is home to the theaters. Papyrus and Quills is the district that lays host to the book markets. There is also the Opus-In-Flesh, a tattoo parlor that can inscribe arcane power words that with a command word change into weapons and armor, the Writers Block Tavern, famed for its literal liquid inspiration, the Pun-ishment, the combination comedy show/torture dungeon, and the Out-Damned Spot, the Demi-Kraken ink milking farm.
Inkhorn refers to its citizens as either cast members or wordsmiths, depending on who you ask. They are a motley crew who believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, but swords are still pretty damn good at killing someone. Some of the more infamous cast members/wordsmiths are the Uncensored, an animated printing press for hire, willing to print any literature anywhere, if the price is right, the roving Jacks-of-Diamond, a subversive surrealist theater troupe wanted for ‘guerilla thespianism’ in most of the Known Seas, the Marquis Robischon, famed for saving the Bibliothèque Noire by bringing the profane library to Inkhorn during the Vardoux Revolution, and Sanders Branson, the verbose current poet laurate of Inkhorn and its effective lord admiral.
Inkhorn has a unique method of propulsion. The city-fleet is essentially a vast sea chariot pulled by Demi-Kraken. Demi-Kraken, the story eating squids, are attracted to Inkhorn like sharks are to blood. When the city-fleet needs to move great harnesses are attached to the creatures and the poet laureate is used as a sort of ‘carrot on a stick’ forcing the Demi-Kraken to follow, pulling the city along. When the city is stationary the Demi-Kraken are freed of their harnesses you can see them swimming between the hulls, their hearing-tentacles occasion eavesdropping out of the water or clapping along with a plays audience.
Floatresses
All sorts of objects can get caught up in the invisible currents of The Gray Sea. Flotsam, jetsam, driftwood, animal carcasses, all get bound together with seaweed, mycelium, and other marine organic material. There are other stranger things that The Gray pulls in that get drawn into these hodgepodges; everything from old ships and docks, ruined fortresses and citadels, sea-beasts both alive and dead, and even whole parts of islands can be found. These masses are not uncommon to mariners and have been have been given the name of ‘Floatress,’ a portmanteau of float and fortress.
Most Floatresses are small, rarely more than 100 meters in diameter and made from sea wrack, but the largest can be massive, exceeding well over 100 kilometers in diameter. Due to the unstable temporal nature of The Gray Sea the debris that makes up most Floatresses can be both from the very far past and from the very far future. Many fantastic devices and artifacts have been pulled from Floatresses and many an adventure has found their fortune on a Floatress, however; many more have found their ends among the wrack.
At first glance an untrained eye might pass a Floatress off as nothing but junk but Floatresses are home to strange and complex ecosystems. Sea birds deposit seeds in their droppings that grow into mighty forests. Sea creatures of all sorts are attracted to the nooks and crannies of a Floatress. Floatresses also play home to the strange creatures that inhabit The Gray serving as both lair and transportation. Yet, not all Floatresses are organic in nature, and a sub-set of Floatresses are man-made and known city-fleets.
These wandering islands are the scourge of the seas. Large enough to pose a navigational hazard and home to dangerous creatures a Floatress is rarely ever a good encounter. However the most dangerous factor of a Floatress is the fact that they wander. While Mist Islands may change locations, they do not move around rather, they stay in one place, even if that place changes location from time to time. Floatresses however, seem to follow the invisible currents of The Gray Sea. This makes Floatresses unpredictable, changing speed and direction apparently at random and even worse these currents may pull Floatresses into the Known Seas posing a major threat to the civilized lands. These Floatresses that get pulled into the Known Seas pose major threats to not only shipping but can occasionally make landfall providing transportation and a layer for dangerous creates and malevolent organizations from The Gray Sea.
Known Floatresses
The Wandering Forest
The Wandering Forest is a forest made of impossibly large pines, the trunks of which extend down deep into the waters below. There does not appear to be a bottom to this Floatress, just the roots of this forest getting more and more dense and twisted upon one another until impossible to thread through. The trees themselves are lashed together with great vines with large purple flowers that give of a faint luminescence. The verdant canopies hold host to a staggering array of wildlife, birds and insects of all types find home among the needles. The treetops are also home to a number of small settlements, made in the tree themselves.
Corsairs and pirates have long known of this forest and have used this Floatress as a respite, harvesting the lumber for ship repairs and hunting the wildlife that live in the canopy proving some much needed variation from their rations of hard tack, salt pork, and thin watery grog. The most dangerous inhabitants of this Floatress however are a branch of The Tangleroots, the violent eco-terrorist group. They are rumored to have a large village centered on a vast pine tree. The sap from this tree is said to be able to extend one’s life and is also said to be the source of much of the Tangleroots funding.
The Iron City
The Iron City appears to be a number of small islands lashed together with large iron chains and covered in tall iron towers. Little is known of the city as no contact has ever been successfully made with the Iron City. Ships that approach nearby are fired upon from the iron towers and find themselves ripped to shreds by fine iron particles shot from large turrets near the base of the towers. Everything that is known of the Iron City has been hard earned and many lives have been lost trying to crack its secrets. The city is populated, faint reddish man sized things can be seen at a telescopes distance. There are shimmering shining gardens of metal at the bases of the towers along with the city’s main defense its vast cannon system. Some artifacts have been found from the city, advanced clockworks, complicated gearing systems, and plant matter, particularly roses, made of brass.
Hoarfrost
This floatress appears to be a castle hone out of a massive iceberg. The temperature surrounding the castle is always well below freezing and can kill the exposed in moments. The castle itself appears to be made from blueprints from an architects fever dream. Spiraling stare cases lead to nowhere, balconies and walkway lacking railings connect to needle like towers hundreds of meters in the air. Everywhere light dances through the ice like ten thousand prisms bickering. It is silent here, save for the stinging wind, unnerving reverb screams of cracking ice, and distant slow footsteps. Something stalks the halls. Something cold. Something hungry.
The ice that the castle is made up never appears to melt and is hard as steel, even when removed and exposed to high temperatures. This Never Melting Ice fetches high prices in the Known Seas both for its use in industrial and alchemical applications and as source of refrigeration. Like all strange products of the Gray Seas this ice only melts after being exposed to the Sun of the Known Seas for too long.
Occasionally small portions of Hoarfrost will break off. While much smaller these hard-to-spot ice chunks that are the bane of many sailors are known as Frostbergs. Frostbergs are dangerous and malevolent things actively seeking and freezing whatever life it can find. Each seems to have a will of its own and will seek out ships to ram almost out of spite. Creatures of all sorts can be found entombed in a Frostbergs icy clutches, their faces locked in a state of fear in the heart of the ice, their hearts still beating, albeit very slowly. Frostbergs bring their captives back to Hoarfost. How Frostbergs can find Hoarforst no matter where it and they are in the Gray Sea and just what it brings those captives back for are a mystery.
Honu Turtles
The Honu Turtles, or ‘The Islands that Wander’, are mountain-vast turtles that wander the Known Seas and the Gray Seas and are considered the traditional homeland of the orcs. The Honu superficially resemble sea turtles with a few main differences, most noticeably their size. Roughly each is about the size of a small island, typicality no smaller than a few square kilometers and no larger than a thousand square kilometers. They have six large fins, spotted with brown patches that they use to slowly push themselves in the waters. Each Honu has grown differently to its own needs, so no two Honu look alike. Their backs are covered with a stone like shell are relatively round and flat and are covered in lush rain forests that are pitted with holes and divots. Most of the shells have a gentle slope leading to a ‘peak’ typicality no higher than thirty meters above the ocean’s surface. Their heads have a think bony horn that resembles a tusk with the point end cut off.
Much like regular sea turtles Honu are unable to hide in their shells. The flesh of a Honu is very tough and can regenerate quite rapidly but their underbellies are home to vast beds of parasitic shellfish. It is not clear if the Honu eat anything, as they do not appear to prey on anything, despite consuming large volumes of water through the beak like mouths.
The Honu are so vast that they provide their own weather patterns. The Honu are massive creatures and therefore their bodies give off massive amounts of heat. This heat produces a constant updraft and cooler air from the surrounding area is drawn in on all sides. The incoming water vapor that comes in on the cool winds meets with the warm air and falls around the Honu as frequent rains. The result of this is that the Honu and the surrounding waters around them are in a year-round tropical climate, no matter where they are.
In addition to making their own weather, the Honu are also their own self-contained ecosystems. The undersides and the fins of the Honu are covered in shellfish and barnacles. Long strands of seaweeds find home on the underbelly as well. This has turned the waters around the Honu as a veritable oasis in the desert of the vast oceans. Abundant schools of fish find home in the seaweed and oyster beds. These fish, in addition to being the basis of most of the diets of the shell dwellers, attract a variety of predators. Sharks stalk among the seaweeds, seals bask in the sun on the slow moving fins with bellies full of fish, and pink dolphins frolic, chasing fishy bullets of silver in the wake of the Honu. Just like the underside, the top of the Honu have their distinct ecosystem. The shell of a Honu is thick and hard and is far more stone like than it is bone like. Years of guano and detritus has formed a layer of black soil on the shell backs about 50cm deep. This soil along with the constant rains and high humidity means that the backs of the Honu are rainforests. This forest is made mostly of tree ferns, moss, vines, dwarf shrubs and broad root trees, like coconuts. A number of mushrooms and tubers can also be found scattered in the back forest, of particular note the purple yam and the taro root. The shell back forest is irregular and hard to navigate and are also home to numerous colonies of birds, the cawing and chirping of which can be heard all across the great turtles.
The Honu are considered to be the traditional homeland for the Orc peoples. All recorded encounters with the Honu make some sort of mention of ‘its green skinned folk’ living on their backs. The life of the Orcs on the Honu is a rather simple one; most of their days are spent foraging, farming, or fishing. The shell back forests and the rich ocean life around the great turtles provide a large bounty and provide the Orc with most of what they need. Their raiding parties provide what cannot be gotten from the Honu.
However the establishment of stable trade routes and advances in sailing technology has led to numerous other communities finding home on the Honu as well. Whole villages and towns have risen out of the shell back jungles. These villages are often home to outcasts and people who don’t fit in well with mainland society. Many strange societies and radical ideas have found roost on the great turtles. The Honu are apathetic to the creatures that live on its back, provided they don’t try to harm or control the beast. The Honu appear to dislike spell casters and using too much magic, arcane or divine, on the turtle is enough to invoke its wrath. If a Honu is unhappy with its current riders, or feels threatened by them, it will just dive under the surface, often for days at a time until the pests on its back have been washed away.
The Honu are constantly moving, albeit very slowly by using their immense fins for locomotion. The Honu appear to follow no set path and are not bound to a particular sea or to the Mistways like a regular ship or a Floatress. Generally the Honu stick to the outer reaches of the seas, in the border of the Gray Sea, only occasionally swimming in to the more open areas of the seas. Their path is slow and winding, like a drunken river, with weaves, wobbles, and horseshoe turns. The Honu don’t general get near major land forms, but will often pass near smaller islands. To date there has been no recovered evidence of a Honu ever crossing a major land form. The Honu will also cross into the Deep Gray of the Gray Sea, but due to their immense size and resistance are able to cross, an act that spells certain destruction for anything else.
Little is known about their life cycle (or if they in fact have one) They do not appear to grow old or die. If they do it must certainly be on more of a geological scale than a biological one. Yes there are younger Honu but they mature fast.
No one has ever been able to successfully control a Honu or even lead a Honu in a particular direction (with one distinct exception). There is no clear set path that they take and the Honu have been known to make dramatic changes in course, slow down, and speed up unexpectedly. Presumably this is due to whatever invisible force it is that the Honu subsist on. A few brave and foolish souls have tried the control the Honu, by both mundane and magical means, yet each have been met with failure. The Honu seem to have a way to reject any sort of control over them, often just by slipping under the waves for some time or trashing about. Some of the native orc shamans are able to predict the course of the Honu with quite a degree of accuracy, but none would dare to think to interject or try to influence they Honu from that course.
Gant
Gant is one of the Honu, the island-sized turtles that wander about the Known Seas and The Gray, that has been taken over by a cult of necromantic parasite-priests. Gant is controlled by seven towers made from its own harvested bones, each run by a different lich-priest. Each tower controls seven rune-cursed harpoons of ever-burning brass embedded into the creature’s six fins and head. The harpoons are connected to the towers by sinew rope and the great turtle is controlled much like a puppet on strings. This however requires coordination of all seven towers and all seven lich-priests, no small task, as each is locked in a violent theological debate with one another over the nature of their vermin-god.
The wounds that the harpoons dig into must constantly be maintained by lesser priests, lest the Honu’s regeneration grow over them rendering them useless. The once vast forest on the creatures back has been clear cut and the parasite-priests vile testaments to their vermin god has been carved into its raw exposed shell. The scripture must also be constantly maintained and the parasite-priests keep a host of slaves constantly chiseling the profane words into the shell. The parasite-priests also use Gant as a host to a small army of ghouls. Great tunnels have been carved into the turtle and the priests keep the ghouls sated on the regenerating flesh of the beast until it is time for them to pick up their bone swords and shell shields to raid in their Jonah-Ships, the undead whales turned into shell-armored dreadnoughts. The pain from the constant chiseling and the ghouls feeding causes the great creature to periodically scream out in pain, a defining bass roar that can be heard for miles. This roar and the smell of carrion on the wind is a dead giveaway that Gant is near.
Most Floatresses are small, rarely more than 100 meters in diameter and made from sea wrack, but the largest can be massive, exceeding well over 100 kilometers in diameter. Due to the unstable temporal nature of The Gray Sea the debris that makes up most Floatresses can be both from the very far past and from the very far future. Many fantastic devices and artifacts have been pulled from Floatresses and many an adventure has found their fortune on a Floatress, however; many more have found their ends among the wrack.
At first glance an untrained eye might pass a Floatress off as nothing but junk but Floatresses are home to strange and complex ecosystems. Sea birds deposit seeds in their droppings that grow into mighty forests. Sea creatures of all sorts are attracted to the nooks and crannies of a Floatress. Floatresses also play home to the strange creatures that inhabit The Gray serving as both lair and transportation. Yet, not all Floatresses are organic in nature, and a sub-set of Floatresses are man-made and known city-fleets.
These wandering islands are the scourge of the seas. Large enough to pose a navigational hazard and home to dangerous creatures a Floatress is rarely ever a good encounter. However the most dangerous factor of a Floatress is the fact that they wander. While Mist Islands may change locations, they do not move around rather, they stay in one place, even if that place changes location from time to time. Floatresses however, seem to follow the invisible currents of The Gray Sea. This makes Floatresses unpredictable, changing speed and direction apparently at random and even worse these currents may pull Floatresses into the Known Seas posing a major threat to the civilized lands. These Floatresses that get pulled into the Known Seas pose major threats to not only shipping but can occasionally make landfall providing transportation and a layer for dangerous creates and malevolent organizations from The Gray Sea.
Known Floatresses
The Wandering Forest
The Wandering Forest is a forest made of impossibly large pines, the trunks of which extend down deep into the waters below. There does not appear to be a bottom to this Floatress, just the roots of this forest getting more and more dense and twisted upon one another until impossible to thread through. The trees themselves are lashed together with great vines with large purple flowers that give of a faint luminescence. The verdant canopies hold host to a staggering array of wildlife, birds and insects of all types find home among the needles. The treetops are also home to a number of small settlements, made in the tree themselves.
Corsairs and pirates have long known of this forest and have used this Floatress as a respite, harvesting the lumber for ship repairs and hunting the wildlife that live in the canopy proving some much needed variation from their rations of hard tack, salt pork, and thin watery grog. The most dangerous inhabitants of this Floatress however are a branch of The Tangleroots, the violent eco-terrorist group. They are rumored to have a large village centered on a vast pine tree. The sap from this tree is said to be able to extend one’s life and is also said to be the source of much of the Tangleroots funding.
The Iron City
The Iron City appears to be a number of small islands lashed together with large iron chains and covered in tall iron towers. Little is known of the city as no contact has ever been successfully made with the Iron City. Ships that approach nearby are fired upon from the iron towers and find themselves ripped to shreds by fine iron particles shot from large turrets near the base of the towers. Everything that is known of the Iron City has been hard earned and many lives have been lost trying to crack its secrets. The city is populated, faint reddish man sized things can be seen at a telescopes distance. There are shimmering shining gardens of metal at the bases of the towers along with the city’s main defense its vast cannon system. Some artifacts have been found from the city, advanced clockworks, complicated gearing systems, and plant matter, particularly roses, made of brass.
Hoarfrost
This floatress appears to be a castle hone out of a massive iceberg. The temperature surrounding the castle is always well below freezing and can kill the exposed in moments. The castle itself appears to be made from blueprints from an architects fever dream. Spiraling stare cases lead to nowhere, balconies and walkway lacking railings connect to needle like towers hundreds of meters in the air. Everywhere light dances through the ice like ten thousand prisms bickering. It is silent here, save for the stinging wind, unnerving reverb screams of cracking ice, and distant slow footsteps. Something stalks the halls. Something cold. Something hungry.
The ice that the castle is made up never appears to melt and is hard as steel, even when removed and exposed to high temperatures. This Never Melting Ice fetches high prices in the Known Seas both for its use in industrial and alchemical applications and as source of refrigeration. Like all strange products of the Gray Seas this ice only melts after being exposed to the Sun of the Known Seas for too long.
Occasionally small portions of Hoarfrost will break off. While much smaller these hard-to-spot ice chunks that are the bane of many sailors are known as Frostbergs. Frostbergs are dangerous and malevolent things actively seeking and freezing whatever life it can find. Each seems to have a will of its own and will seek out ships to ram almost out of spite. Creatures of all sorts can be found entombed in a Frostbergs icy clutches, their faces locked in a state of fear in the heart of the ice, their hearts still beating, albeit very slowly. Frostbergs bring their captives back to Hoarfost. How Frostbergs can find Hoarforst no matter where it and they are in the Gray Sea and just what it brings those captives back for are a mystery.
Honu Turtles
The Honu Turtles, or ‘The Islands that Wander’, are mountain-vast turtles that wander the Known Seas and the Gray Seas and are considered the traditional homeland of the orcs. The Honu superficially resemble sea turtles with a few main differences, most noticeably their size. Roughly each is about the size of a small island, typicality no smaller than a few square kilometers and no larger than a thousand square kilometers. They have six large fins, spotted with brown patches that they use to slowly push themselves in the waters. Each Honu has grown differently to its own needs, so no two Honu look alike. Their backs are covered with a stone like shell are relatively round and flat and are covered in lush rain forests that are pitted with holes and divots. Most of the shells have a gentle slope leading to a ‘peak’ typicality no higher than thirty meters above the ocean’s surface. Their heads have a think bony horn that resembles a tusk with the point end cut off.
Much like regular sea turtles Honu are unable to hide in their shells. The flesh of a Honu is very tough and can regenerate quite rapidly but their underbellies are home to vast beds of parasitic shellfish. It is not clear if the Honu eat anything, as they do not appear to prey on anything, despite consuming large volumes of water through the beak like mouths.
The Honu are so vast that they provide their own weather patterns. The Honu are massive creatures and therefore their bodies give off massive amounts of heat. This heat produces a constant updraft and cooler air from the surrounding area is drawn in on all sides. The incoming water vapor that comes in on the cool winds meets with the warm air and falls around the Honu as frequent rains. The result of this is that the Honu and the surrounding waters around them are in a year-round tropical climate, no matter where they are.
In addition to making their own weather, the Honu are also their own self-contained ecosystems. The undersides and the fins of the Honu are covered in shellfish and barnacles. Long strands of seaweeds find home on the underbelly as well. This has turned the waters around the Honu as a veritable oasis in the desert of the vast oceans. Abundant schools of fish find home in the seaweed and oyster beds. These fish, in addition to being the basis of most of the diets of the shell dwellers, attract a variety of predators. Sharks stalk among the seaweeds, seals bask in the sun on the slow moving fins with bellies full of fish, and pink dolphins frolic, chasing fishy bullets of silver in the wake of the Honu. Just like the underside, the top of the Honu have their distinct ecosystem. The shell of a Honu is thick and hard and is far more stone like than it is bone like. Years of guano and detritus has formed a layer of black soil on the shell backs about 50cm deep. This soil along with the constant rains and high humidity means that the backs of the Honu are rainforests. This forest is made mostly of tree ferns, moss, vines, dwarf shrubs and broad root trees, like coconuts. A number of mushrooms and tubers can also be found scattered in the back forest, of particular note the purple yam and the taro root. The shell back forest is irregular and hard to navigate and are also home to numerous colonies of birds, the cawing and chirping of which can be heard all across the great turtles.
The Honu are considered to be the traditional homeland for the Orc peoples. All recorded encounters with the Honu make some sort of mention of ‘its green skinned folk’ living on their backs. The life of the Orcs on the Honu is a rather simple one; most of their days are spent foraging, farming, or fishing. The shell back forests and the rich ocean life around the great turtles provide a large bounty and provide the Orc with most of what they need. Their raiding parties provide what cannot be gotten from the Honu.
However the establishment of stable trade routes and advances in sailing technology has led to numerous other communities finding home on the Honu as well. Whole villages and towns have risen out of the shell back jungles. These villages are often home to outcasts and people who don’t fit in well with mainland society. Many strange societies and radical ideas have found roost on the great turtles. The Honu are apathetic to the creatures that live on its back, provided they don’t try to harm or control the beast. The Honu appear to dislike spell casters and using too much magic, arcane or divine, on the turtle is enough to invoke its wrath. If a Honu is unhappy with its current riders, or feels threatened by them, it will just dive under the surface, often for days at a time until the pests on its back have been washed away.
The Honu are constantly moving, albeit very slowly by using their immense fins for locomotion. The Honu appear to follow no set path and are not bound to a particular sea or to the Mistways like a regular ship or a Floatress. Generally the Honu stick to the outer reaches of the seas, in the border of the Gray Sea, only occasionally swimming in to the more open areas of the seas. Their path is slow and winding, like a drunken river, with weaves, wobbles, and horseshoe turns. The Honu don’t general get near major land forms, but will often pass near smaller islands. To date there has been no recovered evidence of a Honu ever crossing a major land form. The Honu will also cross into the Deep Gray of the Gray Sea, but due to their immense size and resistance are able to cross, an act that spells certain destruction for anything else.
Little is known about their life cycle (or if they in fact have one) They do not appear to grow old or die. If they do it must certainly be on more of a geological scale than a biological one. Yes there are younger Honu but they mature fast.
No one has ever been able to successfully control a Honu or even lead a Honu in a particular direction (with one distinct exception). There is no clear set path that they take and the Honu have been known to make dramatic changes in course, slow down, and speed up unexpectedly. Presumably this is due to whatever invisible force it is that the Honu subsist on. A few brave and foolish souls have tried the control the Honu, by both mundane and magical means, yet each have been met with failure. The Honu seem to have a way to reject any sort of control over them, often just by slipping under the waves for some time or trashing about. Some of the native orc shamans are able to predict the course of the Honu with quite a degree of accuracy, but none would dare to think to interject or try to influence they Honu from that course.
Gant
Gant is one of the Honu, the island-sized turtles that wander about the Known Seas and The Gray, that has been taken over by a cult of necromantic parasite-priests. Gant is controlled by seven towers made from its own harvested bones, each run by a different lich-priest. Each tower controls seven rune-cursed harpoons of ever-burning brass embedded into the creature’s six fins and head. The harpoons are connected to the towers by sinew rope and the great turtle is controlled much like a puppet on strings. This however requires coordination of all seven towers and all seven lich-priests, no small task, as each is locked in a violent theological debate with one another over the nature of their vermin-god.
The wounds that the harpoons dig into must constantly be maintained by lesser priests, lest the Honu’s regeneration grow over them rendering them useless. The once vast forest on the creatures back has been clear cut and the parasite-priests vile testaments to their vermin god has been carved into its raw exposed shell. The scripture must also be constantly maintained and the parasite-priests keep a host of slaves constantly chiseling the profane words into the shell. The parasite-priests also use Gant as a host to a small army of ghouls. Great tunnels have been carved into the turtle and the priests keep the ghouls sated on the regenerating flesh of the beast until it is time for them to pick up their bone swords and shell shields to raid in their Jonah-Ships, the undead whales turned into shell-armored dreadnoughts. The pain from the constant chiseling and the ghouls feeding causes the great creature to periodically scream out in pain, a defining bass roar that can be heard for miles. This roar and the smell of carrion on the wind is a dead giveaway that Gant is near.
Ghost Islands, Part 2
The Obelisk of Wonders
A white obelisk with veins of gold towers over this small jungle coated island. This obelisks float about two meters above the ground in a small clearing in the jungle. The clearing appears to have once been part of a large building, perhaps a temple, as it is covered in large while tiles with strange writing carved into it. The obelisk has a faint glow to it at all times and serves often as a beacon and navigational aid for nearby ships. Periodically a beam of golden light shoots up to the heavens. A small village has formed on this island run by a small cult that worships the obelisk. The jungle is thick with fruit and the village has a clean and plentiful spring along with a decent boarding house. While friendly they are odd and keep referring to the obelisk as ‘her’ and speaking of ‘her upcoming arrival.’
Fields of Keld
At a distance this cold island looks as if it is covered in trees. As one gets closer they see the trees for what they really are, large carved totem poles. Thousands of totems dot this island and each marks the site of an ancient barrow mound. A few brave grave robbers had plundered some of the barrows. The grave robbers have reported vast treasure hordes guarder by elaborate mechanical traps and hordes of undead warriors. They have also reported that at night ghost roam the island looking for bodies to possess.
Excavation
This island is dominated by a vast ancient quarry. A gentile ramp leads down from tier to tier to the basin below. The rock that makes up each tier is radically different from the last, and after the sixth layer begins to exhibit strange features unnatural to normal geology. After the twelfth first layer, strange text is carved into the stones. After the eighteenth layer, strange fossils of bizarre sea creatures appear embedded in the stones. At the very bottom of the quarry, a single round metal hatch with a valve. Glowing red runes are inscribed on the metal and it is cold to the touch even during the hottest summers. No one has opened the hatch and anyone who has spent time near it hears distant whispers and is overcome with an overwhelming sense of dread.
Dry Corals
All around the Gray Sea are small settlements made on bunches of giant coral that jut from the sea often supplemented with structures made from salvaged shipwrecks. At night the coral that makes up the majority of these settlements glows with a faint bioluminescence. These settlements are populated almost exclusively by Koa-Toa and are quite friendly to visitors and ships. While these settlements have little in the way of accommodations they Koa-Toa do sell fish and freshwater, as well as totems and fetishes carved from the coral. Much like coral in the wild strange and dangerous creatures often lurk in the coral below the water line and many of the corals are poisonous. The Koa-Toa are used to these creatures and immune to their poisons and often fail to mention their presence to outsiders. Unfortunately many of these settlements are vulnerable and fall under attack for pirates and sahuagin.
Saltland
Considers an island by most Saltland is technically a very large pile of salt. A village made of large salt blocks sits near the shore. The village consists of houses, an inn, shops, storehouses, and even a temple. Only two of the buildings remain occupied, the inn and the store. The shop sell large blocks of salt, salted candies, and various salt cures. While the villages take coinage, fresh vegetables and clean water prized more than gold.
Kender Isles
This small chain of forested atolls and small islands is covered in ruins of a long forgotten, or soon to be created, empire and populated by a small degenerate race known as the Kender. The trees here are rich with fruits and the lagoons are thick with schools of fish. The tribal inhabitants of these isles look much like the Halflings common to the Blue Sea and there is even speculation that they are descended from a common ancestry. The Kender welcome travelers to their land often by traveling into The Gray Sea to invite expecting ships to their islands in their dugout canoes. By day the Kender are quite kind hearted. They lack any sort of concept of property, so they let guests take what they can from their islands (they also try to take whatever they can from their ships). However come nightfall the Kender descend into madness becoming violent and vicious cannibals. The Kender do not eat their victims right away rather capturing them, they instead consume them in a ritualistic fashion on the ruins that dot their islands to the profane gods.
Steel Eater Island
This island is covered in rusted and broken machines. Large corroded cogs and pipes stick out of the island and the surrounding waters. Vines and small shrubs cover many of the deteriorating parts on the island and everywhere there is a faint high pitched hum and the scent of copper and ozone on the wind. Small shimmering pools of a prismatic corrosive substance cover the island like pox marks. Most avoid the island as the mechanical degradation that affects the objects on this island is caused by the corrosive saliva from numerous packs of a small hairless six legged creatures with long snouts known as Steel Eaters. Steel Eaters eat the metal rich slurry that their corrosive saliva produces. More interesting their droppings are made of the more corrosive resistance metals, particularly silver, gold, and platinum. There have been more than a few brave sailors who have defied their captain’s orders and braved the pools of acid and jagged metal pieces of the dead machines for as much Steel Eater scat as they could carry. Rumor has it that the Steel Eaters are not natural to this island and that the eco-terrorist group The Tangelroots breed them here as part of a weapons project.
The Zeniths
The Zeniths are unique in that they are not true islands, nor are they an individual set of islands. Zeniths can appear as a singular instance, or more commonly as a cluster. The Zeniths are large hexagonal stone pillars that seem to grow out of the oceans floor then collapse over a short period of time. One day just the top of the Zenith will poke out of the waves, then a few months later it may tower more than a 100 meters above the waters, then a few months after may have collapsed back into the sea. Few Zeniths last for more than a year, but there are exceptions. These pillars also bring up whatever is on the ocean floor from where they sprout. While this is mostly sand, ooze, and rock, there have been instance of old shipwrecks, massive skeletons, ancient temples, and coral structures (with residents) being uplifted from the depths.
Brass Onion Island
Brass Onion Island was once a gleaming beautiful metropolis, its name long lost to time, filled with painted towers and covered walkways of shades of blue and green topped with brass domes but is now drowned under meters of ash. The people who inhabited this city made great inventions that used power harvested from the geologic power of the earth. In their hubris the people of this city drew too much eventually causing the cataclysm that engulfed their island. Now just the onion shaped brass domes of the city’s tallest towers jut from above the ashes, giving the island its name. A few brave treasure hunters have set up camps on this island using the few exposed towers to dig down to the lower levels of the city. Tails of both treasure and terror in equal measure have come from below the ash; stories of gardens with tress that bear gems, of restless dead that still burn from the inside, of mechanical menageries filled with flocks of clockwork animals, of an armored shark like creatures that hunts the ashes using sound.
Origami Isles
When approaching the Origami Isles the first thing one might notice is the abundance of loose papers floating in the sea. Strange currents seem to draw all the papers that fall into The Gray Sea towards this island. The second thing that one would notice is that all of the plant and animal life on this island is made from folder paper. This island in inhabited by a small society of origami Paper-Folk. The Paper-Folk are a friendly lot and are always looking to trade. While the Paper-Folk do not eat food like other creatures they consume paper and ink. The Paper-Folk and the origami creatures that inhabit this island ‘hatch’ from large balls of crumpled paper. Even stranger any paper brought to this island, and isn’t consumed by the Paper-Folk, has a chance to become one of these paper eggs. They only have one real resources for trade, but it is one that is extremely vital to inter sea trading, Sending Cranes – letters that when folder shift into birds and fly to any address written on them at an incredible rate of speed.
Last Rites
When old gods die, their shrines and the last of their followers make their way to the island of Last Rites. Here all of the vestments and altars of gods no longer worshiped are laid to rest in the sandy byways trapped in the perpetual twilight. Carved totem poles, metal icons, painted statues, and etched obelisks jut from the dunes like a petrified forest to dead gods. Little grows on this anti-sacred island save for dune grass. The last of the clergy from these dead gods makes up the population of Last Rites. This island is somber and quiet, save for the Market of Atonement, a marketplace that specializes in the fetishes and charms of obscure religions. Also on the island, The Books of Midnight, a library built into a perpetually sinking spiral staircase, that catalogs the collected holy books of all of the religions of the Gray and Known Seas.
The Eye of Al-Dren
The Eye of Al-Dren, names for the navigator who first discovered this island, is in a perpetual night. Nothing grows on this rocky island, save for small patches of faint bioluminescent blue mushrooms. At the center of this island is a complex consisting of a large stone observatory and a few out buildings all carved from a single block of red sandstone. The out buildings are stuffed to the brim with racks of star charts, cosmological texts, drawings of astral bodies, and various constellations. The telescope at the center of the facility is an overly complex chamber of whirling gears and leavers and aligning the machine required the inputs of hundreds of variables across various stations. This said, the telescope itself does not move when activated, but the sky around it does. This telescope is able to view the skies not only of any of the Known Seas, but also numerous other skies as well.
Tarchipelago
Great gobs of a tar float in the waters near the shore of this cluster of small sandy islands covered in vast bubbling tar pits. The pitch from these pits is known as being the best caulk and waterproofing agent across The Gray and the Known Seas. Ships of all stripes and all makes stop here for repairs and touchups and a small village of shipbuilders, known as The Stop, has sprouted up to serve this industry. The Stop will take on any job, and serve any ship, regardless of how unscrupulous or amoral the task or crew may be. However, cutthroats and sea dogs are not the most hazardous things on these islands. The great tar pits have a tendency to disgorge not only large animated oozes of the sticky noxious substance, but of vile agglomerations of tar and the bones from dozens of skeletons.
Bullet Bottom
Nodules of metal are common around the floor of this atoll. Most are knobby, roughly the size of a hens egg, and made of iron, lead, or rarely phosphate. Very rarely nodules of other metals, like gold, platinum, and even the god metals like mithril and adamantium have been found. The nodules must be harvested by hand or else risk disturbing the large schools of electric eels that live in this area. A number of small weapons shops and workshops have formed on the nearby atoll. Most are dedicated to rounding out the nodules to make bullets and bolt heads, but a few manufacture weapons themselves.
Al-Barshed
This island has but a single ruin on it, an ancient collapsed watchtower made of red sandstone. There is no plant or animal life on the island, save for some scrub grasses and the occasional washed up shell. Hundreds of names and dates have been carved into the ruined stone by passes by. This is a popular stop for ships; the island is relatively safe and the anchorage nearby is good. Few dare stay more than a night however, the longer one stays on the island the more of an overwhelming sense of pessimistic melancholy seems to affect their mood.
Hospital Island
This forested island was known to cartographers but uninhabited for centuries, until the Barnacle Pox hit the Known Seas and became a pandemic. A hospital was quickly erected here for the sufferers, providing a place where they could undergo the painful and bloody process of scraping themselves cured. The pox, while it has come and gone, seems to have had a lasting effect on the island. Great colonies of barnacles, formed from the discarded scrapings from the pox sufferers, can be found all over the island. If hurting for sustenance the barnacles can be boiled into a soup, but run the risk of getting infected. The brick hospital has been left to go fallow, now collapsed in many sections but still have cashes of medical supplies for those brave enough to navigate the dilapidated ruins and colonies of barnacles.
Merchants Court
This island appears to be plucked right out of the Shattered Isles and deposed in the mists of the Gray Sea. A huge brick great house, now just a burnt shell, was built in the style of the great manor houses popular over a century ago. This manor at one point was ravaged by a fire destroying most of its wings. Now the only intact buildings are the rickety stables and a small temple, its altar long removed. A fountain near the center of the island supplies fresh water and close inspection of the overgrown gardens will yield wild versions of some of the crops cultivated here years ago. Rumor has it that the ruins hide the vault of the patron of the manor and are still guarded by his ghost.
Ashen Shores
An island, more of a flat hill, juts out of the water. Its beaches are hard-packed ashes and broken pumice and chunks of obsidian. Buried just inches from the soil is thousands upon thousands of skeletons. Each skeleton is still alive, as much as a skeleton can be alive. Each is swimming, up from some unknown depth, trying to break the black surface. They rarely make it. When they do make it the scramble desperately trying to pack the ash and stones on their boney frame like a child packing a sand castle. These ash packed will try desperately to leave the island but if they touch water they fall apart. They cannot speak, they have nothing of value, and will try to stowaway if possible. Rumor has it that if kept away from the island for extend times they will eventually grow a pale skin that allows them to blend in with regular humans.
A white obelisk with veins of gold towers over this small jungle coated island. This obelisks float about two meters above the ground in a small clearing in the jungle. The clearing appears to have once been part of a large building, perhaps a temple, as it is covered in large while tiles with strange writing carved into it. The obelisk has a faint glow to it at all times and serves often as a beacon and navigational aid for nearby ships. Periodically a beam of golden light shoots up to the heavens. A small village has formed on this island run by a small cult that worships the obelisk. The jungle is thick with fruit and the village has a clean and plentiful spring along with a decent boarding house. While friendly they are odd and keep referring to the obelisk as ‘her’ and speaking of ‘her upcoming arrival.’
Fields of Keld
At a distance this cold island looks as if it is covered in trees. As one gets closer they see the trees for what they really are, large carved totem poles. Thousands of totems dot this island and each marks the site of an ancient barrow mound. A few brave grave robbers had plundered some of the barrows. The grave robbers have reported vast treasure hordes guarder by elaborate mechanical traps and hordes of undead warriors. They have also reported that at night ghost roam the island looking for bodies to possess.
Excavation
This island is dominated by a vast ancient quarry. A gentile ramp leads down from tier to tier to the basin below. The rock that makes up each tier is radically different from the last, and after the sixth layer begins to exhibit strange features unnatural to normal geology. After the twelfth first layer, strange text is carved into the stones. After the eighteenth layer, strange fossils of bizarre sea creatures appear embedded in the stones. At the very bottom of the quarry, a single round metal hatch with a valve. Glowing red runes are inscribed on the metal and it is cold to the touch even during the hottest summers. No one has opened the hatch and anyone who has spent time near it hears distant whispers and is overcome with an overwhelming sense of dread.
Dry Corals
All around the Gray Sea are small settlements made on bunches of giant coral that jut from the sea often supplemented with structures made from salvaged shipwrecks. At night the coral that makes up the majority of these settlements glows with a faint bioluminescence. These settlements are populated almost exclusively by Koa-Toa and are quite friendly to visitors and ships. While these settlements have little in the way of accommodations they Koa-Toa do sell fish and freshwater, as well as totems and fetishes carved from the coral. Much like coral in the wild strange and dangerous creatures often lurk in the coral below the water line and many of the corals are poisonous. The Koa-Toa are used to these creatures and immune to their poisons and often fail to mention their presence to outsiders. Unfortunately many of these settlements are vulnerable and fall under attack for pirates and sahuagin.
Saltland
Considers an island by most Saltland is technically a very large pile of salt. A village made of large salt blocks sits near the shore. The village consists of houses, an inn, shops, storehouses, and even a temple. Only two of the buildings remain occupied, the inn and the store. The shop sell large blocks of salt, salted candies, and various salt cures. While the villages take coinage, fresh vegetables and clean water prized more than gold.
Kender Isles
This small chain of forested atolls and small islands is covered in ruins of a long forgotten, or soon to be created, empire and populated by a small degenerate race known as the Kender. The trees here are rich with fruits and the lagoons are thick with schools of fish. The tribal inhabitants of these isles look much like the Halflings common to the Blue Sea and there is even speculation that they are descended from a common ancestry. The Kender welcome travelers to their land often by traveling into The Gray Sea to invite expecting ships to their islands in their dugout canoes. By day the Kender are quite kind hearted. They lack any sort of concept of property, so they let guests take what they can from their islands (they also try to take whatever they can from their ships). However come nightfall the Kender descend into madness becoming violent and vicious cannibals. The Kender do not eat their victims right away rather capturing them, they instead consume them in a ritualistic fashion on the ruins that dot their islands to the profane gods.
Steel Eater Island
This island is covered in rusted and broken machines. Large corroded cogs and pipes stick out of the island and the surrounding waters. Vines and small shrubs cover many of the deteriorating parts on the island and everywhere there is a faint high pitched hum and the scent of copper and ozone on the wind. Small shimmering pools of a prismatic corrosive substance cover the island like pox marks. Most avoid the island as the mechanical degradation that affects the objects on this island is caused by the corrosive saliva from numerous packs of a small hairless six legged creatures with long snouts known as Steel Eaters. Steel Eaters eat the metal rich slurry that their corrosive saliva produces. More interesting their droppings are made of the more corrosive resistance metals, particularly silver, gold, and platinum. There have been more than a few brave sailors who have defied their captain’s orders and braved the pools of acid and jagged metal pieces of the dead machines for as much Steel Eater scat as they could carry. Rumor has it that the Steel Eaters are not natural to this island and that the eco-terrorist group The Tangelroots breed them here as part of a weapons project.
The Zeniths
The Zeniths are unique in that they are not true islands, nor are they an individual set of islands. Zeniths can appear as a singular instance, or more commonly as a cluster. The Zeniths are large hexagonal stone pillars that seem to grow out of the oceans floor then collapse over a short period of time. One day just the top of the Zenith will poke out of the waves, then a few months later it may tower more than a 100 meters above the waters, then a few months after may have collapsed back into the sea. Few Zeniths last for more than a year, but there are exceptions. These pillars also bring up whatever is on the ocean floor from where they sprout. While this is mostly sand, ooze, and rock, there have been instance of old shipwrecks, massive skeletons, ancient temples, and coral structures (with residents) being uplifted from the depths.
Brass Onion Island
Brass Onion Island was once a gleaming beautiful metropolis, its name long lost to time, filled with painted towers and covered walkways of shades of blue and green topped with brass domes but is now drowned under meters of ash. The people who inhabited this city made great inventions that used power harvested from the geologic power of the earth. In their hubris the people of this city drew too much eventually causing the cataclysm that engulfed their island. Now just the onion shaped brass domes of the city’s tallest towers jut from above the ashes, giving the island its name. A few brave treasure hunters have set up camps on this island using the few exposed towers to dig down to the lower levels of the city. Tails of both treasure and terror in equal measure have come from below the ash; stories of gardens with tress that bear gems, of restless dead that still burn from the inside, of mechanical menageries filled with flocks of clockwork animals, of an armored shark like creatures that hunts the ashes using sound.
Origami Isles
When approaching the Origami Isles the first thing one might notice is the abundance of loose papers floating in the sea. Strange currents seem to draw all the papers that fall into The Gray Sea towards this island. The second thing that one would notice is that all of the plant and animal life on this island is made from folder paper. This island in inhabited by a small society of origami Paper-Folk. The Paper-Folk are a friendly lot and are always looking to trade. While the Paper-Folk do not eat food like other creatures they consume paper and ink. The Paper-Folk and the origami creatures that inhabit this island ‘hatch’ from large balls of crumpled paper. Even stranger any paper brought to this island, and isn’t consumed by the Paper-Folk, has a chance to become one of these paper eggs. They only have one real resources for trade, but it is one that is extremely vital to inter sea trading, Sending Cranes – letters that when folder shift into birds and fly to any address written on them at an incredible rate of speed.
Last Rites
When old gods die, their shrines and the last of their followers make their way to the island of Last Rites. Here all of the vestments and altars of gods no longer worshiped are laid to rest in the sandy byways trapped in the perpetual twilight. Carved totem poles, metal icons, painted statues, and etched obelisks jut from the dunes like a petrified forest to dead gods. Little grows on this anti-sacred island save for dune grass. The last of the clergy from these dead gods makes up the population of Last Rites. This island is somber and quiet, save for the Market of Atonement, a marketplace that specializes in the fetishes and charms of obscure religions. Also on the island, The Books of Midnight, a library built into a perpetually sinking spiral staircase, that catalogs the collected holy books of all of the religions of the Gray and Known Seas.
The Eye of Al-Dren
The Eye of Al-Dren, names for the navigator who first discovered this island, is in a perpetual night. Nothing grows on this rocky island, save for small patches of faint bioluminescent blue mushrooms. At the center of this island is a complex consisting of a large stone observatory and a few out buildings all carved from a single block of red sandstone. The out buildings are stuffed to the brim with racks of star charts, cosmological texts, drawings of astral bodies, and various constellations. The telescope at the center of the facility is an overly complex chamber of whirling gears and leavers and aligning the machine required the inputs of hundreds of variables across various stations. This said, the telescope itself does not move when activated, but the sky around it does. This telescope is able to view the skies not only of any of the Known Seas, but also numerous other skies as well.
Tarchipelago
Great gobs of a tar float in the waters near the shore of this cluster of small sandy islands covered in vast bubbling tar pits. The pitch from these pits is known as being the best caulk and waterproofing agent across The Gray and the Known Seas. Ships of all stripes and all makes stop here for repairs and touchups and a small village of shipbuilders, known as The Stop, has sprouted up to serve this industry. The Stop will take on any job, and serve any ship, regardless of how unscrupulous or amoral the task or crew may be. However, cutthroats and sea dogs are not the most hazardous things on these islands. The great tar pits have a tendency to disgorge not only large animated oozes of the sticky noxious substance, but of vile agglomerations of tar and the bones from dozens of skeletons.
Bullet Bottom
Nodules of metal are common around the floor of this atoll. Most are knobby, roughly the size of a hens egg, and made of iron, lead, or rarely phosphate. Very rarely nodules of other metals, like gold, platinum, and even the god metals like mithril and adamantium have been found. The nodules must be harvested by hand or else risk disturbing the large schools of electric eels that live in this area. A number of small weapons shops and workshops have formed on the nearby atoll. Most are dedicated to rounding out the nodules to make bullets and bolt heads, but a few manufacture weapons themselves.
Al-Barshed
This island has but a single ruin on it, an ancient collapsed watchtower made of red sandstone. There is no plant or animal life on the island, save for some scrub grasses and the occasional washed up shell. Hundreds of names and dates have been carved into the ruined stone by passes by. This is a popular stop for ships; the island is relatively safe and the anchorage nearby is good. Few dare stay more than a night however, the longer one stays on the island the more of an overwhelming sense of pessimistic melancholy seems to affect their mood.
Hospital Island
This forested island was known to cartographers but uninhabited for centuries, until the Barnacle Pox hit the Known Seas and became a pandemic. A hospital was quickly erected here for the sufferers, providing a place where they could undergo the painful and bloody process of scraping themselves cured. The pox, while it has come and gone, seems to have had a lasting effect on the island. Great colonies of barnacles, formed from the discarded scrapings from the pox sufferers, can be found all over the island. If hurting for sustenance the barnacles can be boiled into a soup, but run the risk of getting infected. The brick hospital has been left to go fallow, now collapsed in many sections but still have cashes of medical supplies for those brave enough to navigate the dilapidated ruins and colonies of barnacles.
Merchants Court
This island appears to be plucked right out of the Shattered Isles and deposed in the mists of the Gray Sea. A huge brick great house, now just a burnt shell, was built in the style of the great manor houses popular over a century ago. This manor at one point was ravaged by a fire destroying most of its wings. Now the only intact buildings are the rickety stables and a small temple, its altar long removed. A fountain near the center of the island supplies fresh water and close inspection of the overgrown gardens will yield wild versions of some of the crops cultivated here years ago. Rumor has it that the ruins hide the vault of the patron of the manor and are still guarded by his ghost.
Ashen Shores
An island, more of a flat hill, juts out of the water. Its beaches are hard-packed ashes and broken pumice and chunks of obsidian. Buried just inches from the soil is thousands upon thousands of skeletons. Each skeleton is still alive, as much as a skeleton can be alive. Each is swimming, up from some unknown depth, trying to break the black surface. They rarely make it. When they do make it the scramble desperately trying to pack the ash and stones on their boney frame like a child packing a sand castle. These ash packed will try desperately to leave the island but if they touch water they fall apart. They cannot speak, they have nothing of value, and will try to stowaway if possible. Rumor has it that if kept away from the island for extend times they will eventually grow a pale skin that allows them to blend in with regular humans.
Ghost Islands, Part 1
Scattered throughout The Gray Sea are small islands commonly known as Ghost Islands. The changing nature of The Gray Sea is felt strongly in these islands. While the rules of reality on these islands are not as strong as those in the Known Seas, they are also not as weak as the rules out in the middle of The Gray Sea. These islands are home to all sorts of strange creatures, organizations, and phenomena.
Ghost Islands have a tendency to disappear and reappear, some will appear randomly and some will appear at set intervals. The location at which these islands reappear at can also change, however; most Ghost Islands stay in the same general area. For instance, Hjalmar’s Spike can be found most often in the northeast of the Blue Sea, but rarely in the same location more than once. Some claim that there are certain triggers that will cause a Ghost Island to appear or to disappear, yet this is unproven and mostly just baseless speculation and superstition. It should also be noted that these islands, when they appear, are locked into the spot that they appeared until they disappear again. If they moved, either by the currents or their own volition, then they would be considered a Floatress.
Most of these islands are found in The Borderlands or off of Mistways, but there are others, more remote and more vague, that appear only deep in The Gray Sea. Mariners have a host of superstitions, sea stories, and rumors based on these islands. Adventures and fortune seekers disregard these superstitions seeing them as mere rumor created by captains who want to prevent crew from running off. Coastlines around a Ghost Island are often hazardous and poorly charted owing to their dynamic geography. Yet it is not all doom and gloom on many Ghost Islands. Some lay home to small villages and settlements, often quite peaceful. Others have treasure hoards ripe for plundering. Others are thick with spices and alchemical reagents. Most are just small rocky islands, atolls or sandbars, to insignificant to be named or claimed by any great power.
Sofi Island
Sofi Island is a small island inhabited by a race of peaceful turtle-men. Alchemy is considered sacred to the turtle-men on this island and all of the inhabitants are skilled practitioners capable of creating any sort of potion or poison. They are all however hopelessly addicted to a substance known as ‘Un’ a psychoactive substance derived from the pollen from a small blue flower that grows only on the island. Un expands the consciousness, is said to allow one to communicate with the divine, and its withdrawal symptoms include stopping ones heart. Although this isn’t that much of an issue for the turtle-men whose hearts beat extremely slow anyway. The turtle-men are always trying to get visitors to try Un. Un, in small amounts in addition to its mind altering state, also gives its users a literal high, allowing them a slight buoyancy in air. The turtle-men do not walk about their island, but float-scoot about. The terrible secret of the Un, a secret that the turtle-men protect at all costs, is that the flower grows only in the corpses of Un addicts.
The Jaw
The Jaw is a string of small rocky islands inhabited by a group of Solvang raiders whose descendants were trapped here when the islands disappear into The Gray. These families still keep up their old traditions and their old gods, these are not the Solvang raiders of the modern era, who are out for wealth and adventure and little more than young men drunk on machismo and imported wines, but the old savage Solvang raiders, bloody and violent, looking for sacrifices for their bestial and savage gods. The coastline by The Jaw is treacherous and filled with jagged rocks and swirling jetties that make navigating past this island a test of skill even for the most experienced captains. The Jaw has a habit of appearing the middle of a Mistway, posing a large hazard to ships making a crossing. The biggest of the ‘teeth’ that make up the jaw is home to a somewhat friendly storm-witch that is willing to clear a path for captains, provided they give her the youngest boy on their ships. While the voyage past the Jaw is then calm, screams and cackles can be heard from her roost.
Whalebone and Scrimshaw Islands
These twinned islands are littered with colossal bones, believed by many sailors to be Astral Whale bones. No intact skeleton has ever been found on the island nor has any complete skull, just individual bones and bone fragments leaving the true nature of the bones a mystery. The strange tides here wash up the old bleached bones already cleaned of meat. A small settlement of scrimshaw artists live on this island, in a great lodge suspended over the channel between the two islands by vast rib bones, trading their art for supplies from passing ships that pass right under the lodge. Their bone charms and particularly valued by whalers.
The Isles of Silence
These islands are inhabited by an industrious group of monks that have a vast library filled with arcane and divine tomes. The library is truly massive with dozens of wings and multiple stories extending both above and below the island. The deeper in one goes, the farther back in time they go, the upper floors contain more modern bound books, while the bottom levels contains dusty papyrus scrolls and even older forms of writing. Talking is forbidden on the island and the punishment for speaking is death. When visitors arrive on the islands the monks hand them chalkboards with a single piece of chalk. When the chalk is gone, it is time for the visitors to leave.
The Spur
The Spur is a barren island, save for some strange and pitiful mosses that grow on its bleak stones. What is most remarkable about this island is its sky. The sky when viewed from this island is a dark purple even during the middle of the day. The air above the island is alive with electricity, large bolts of lightning dance in the cloudless sky. Lightning strikes are common on the island and small scorch marks can be seen all over the stones. At the center of The Spur is a smooth stone tower the color of a deep rusty red which seems to deflect the lightning. Rumor has it that the tower, if hit by a bolt or other suitable source of electricity, will open a portal to another world. This island is sacred to the madness touched Starburn Corsairs who preform strange rites at the towers base.
Mycelia
Mycelia is an Ubershroom, one the mountain-vast mushrooms that are common to the Formless Sea. What makes Mycella unique that it appears to be growing out of a small sandbar. Normally saltwater is poisonous to the mushrooms but Mycelia seems to be immune to its effects. Long white sticky hyphal strands descend down from the gills of the mushroom, floating lazily in the water below. These strands catch all sorts of sea creatures in their grips and are Mycelia’s primary way of gathering food. Passing ships have observed creatures as large as whales caught in its fungal grips. Unfortunately for passing sailors these strands also have a tendency to catch unwary ships. A small colony of Fungaloids lives on top of Mycelia, led by a single massive fungal queen, and guards a vast hoard of treasure from the ships that Mycelia has caught over the years.
Uhrberg
Uhrberg is a perfectly symmetrical town inhabited entirely by painted wooden clockwork people known as Tick-tocks. The city is peaceful and tranquil, the perfect simulacrum of idyllic peasant life. The cobblestone streets are smooth and even, colorful wooden flowers sprout from neatly kept window boxes, a pleasant symphony of bells rings out every hour (never missing a note) from the central clock tower, and not a single spot or smudge can be found on or in any of their white half-timber homes.
While accommodating to visitors, life in Uhrberg is dominated by routine, symmetry, and precision. The Tick-tocks live on time, quite literally. Everyday they are wound up and if they are ever unwound they die. As time and punctuality is a matter of survival the citizens of the city like everything in its place, even their visitors, for whom they have constructed a hostel, shop, and tavern all near the city’s one dock. Interruptions to this routine and violations of their constructed symmetry are met with ire from the populace. It does not take much to for the Uhrbergers to take issue with. Little infringements, like leaving your beer stein pointed the wrong way, not wiping your feet, or causing someone to be late are all capital offenses in Uhrberg. Visitors who disrupt their routine the first time are politely scolded and warned of dire consequences if they further interrupt. The second offense involves jail time, measured down to the second. The third offense is death.
Cursed City of Xar
This island is covered in a sprawling jungle that hides the remnants of a city made of massive white stone blocks. The creators of this city are mysterious and from examining the disturbing bas reliefs found in many of the ruins, appear to have been a race of giant cyclops who performed graphic live sacrifices to their unnamed and alien gods. Colossal ziggurats sink into the soft earth and many creatures have made their lairs among the ruins including pirates. Three rumors exist about this city. The first, more mundane, is that it is preferred place for pirates, particularly the Starburn Corsairs, to store treasure. The third, more sinister, is that the alien gods of the fallen city are still out there sleeping and waiting for the time when the blood flows from the tops of the ziggurats again.
Ghost Islands have a tendency to disappear and reappear, some will appear randomly and some will appear at set intervals. The location at which these islands reappear at can also change, however; most Ghost Islands stay in the same general area. For instance, Hjalmar’s Spike can be found most often in the northeast of the Blue Sea, but rarely in the same location more than once. Some claim that there are certain triggers that will cause a Ghost Island to appear or to disappear, yet this is unproven and mostly just baseless speculation and superstition. It should also be noted that these islands, when they appear, are locked into the spot that they appeared until they disappear again. If they moved, either by the currents or their own volition, then they would be considered a Floatress.
Most of these islands are found in The Borderlands or off of Mistways, but there are others, more remote and more vague, that appear only deep in The Gray Sea. Mariners have a host of superstitions, sea stories, and rumors based on these islands. Adventures and fortune seekers disregard these superstitions seeing them as mere rumor created by captains who want to prevent crew from running off. Coastlines around a Ghost Island are often hazardous and poorly charted owing to their dynamic geography. Yet it is not all doom and gloom on many Ghost Islands. Some lay home to small villages and settlements, often quite peaceful. Others have treasure hoards ripe for plundering. Others are thick with spices and alchemical reagents. Most are just small rocky islands, atolls or sandbars, to insignificant to be named or claimed by any great power.
Sofi Island
Sofi Island is a small island inhabited by a race of peaceful turtle-men. Alchemy is considered sacred to the turtle-men on this island and all of the inhabitants are skilled practitioners capable of creating any sort of potion or poison. They are all however hopelessly addicted to a substance known as ‘Un’ a psychoactive substance derived from the pollen from a small blue flower that grows only on the island. Un expands the consciousness, is said to allow one to communicate with the divine, and its withdrawal symptoms include stopping ones heart. Although this isn’t that much of an issue for the turtle-men whose hearts beat extremely slow anyway. The turtle-men are always trying to get visitors to try Un. Un, in small amounts in addition to its mind altering state, also gives its users a literal high, allowing them a slight buoyancy in air. The turtle-men do not walk about their island, but float-scoot about. The terrible secret of the Un, a secret that the turtle-men protect at all costs, is that the flower grows only in the corpses of Un addicts.
The Jaw
The Jaw is a string of small rocky islands inhabited by a group of Solvang raiders whose descendants were trapped here when the islands disappear into The Gray. These families still keep up their old traditions and their old gods, these are not the Solvang raiders of the modern era, who are out for wealth and adventure and little more than young men drunk on machismo and imported wines, but the old savage Solvang raiders, bloody and violent, looking for sacrifices for their bestial and savage gods. The coastline by The Jaw is treacherous and filled with jagged rocks and swirling jetties that make navigating past this island a test of skill even for the most experienced captains. The Jaw has a habit of appearing the middle of a Mistway, posing a large hazard to ships making a crossing. The biggest of the ‘teeth’ that make up the jaw is home to a somewhat friendly storm-witch that is willing to clear a path for captains, provided they give her the youngest boy on their ships. While the voyage past the Jaw is then calm, screams and cackles can be heard from her roost.
Whalebone and Scrimshaw Islands
These twinned islands are littered with colossal bones, believed by many sailors to be Astral Whale bones. No intact skeleton has ever been found on the island nor has any complete skull, just individual bones and bone fragments leaving the true nature of the bones a mystery. The strange tides here wash up the old bleached bones already cleaned of meat. A small settlement of scrimshaw artists live on this island, in a great lodge suspended over the channel between the two islands by vast rib bones, trading their art for supplies from passing ships that pass right under the lodge. Their bone charms and particularly valued by whalers.
The Isles of Silence
These islands are inhabited by an industrious group of monks that have a vast library filled with arcane and divine tomes. The library is truly massive with dozens of wings and multiple stories extending both above and below the island. The deeper in one goes, the farther back in time they go, the upper floors contain more modern bound books, while the bottom levels contains dusty papyrus scrolls and even older forms of writing. Talking is forbidden on the island and the punishment for speaking is death. When visitors arrive on the islands the monks hand them chalkboards with a single piece of chalk. When the chalk is gone, it is time for the visitors to leave.
The Spur
The Spur is a barren island, save for some strange and pitiful mosses that grow on its bleak stones. What is most remarkable about this island is its sky. The sky when viewed from this island is a dark purple even during the middle of the day. The air above the island is alive with electricity, large bolts of lightning dance in the cloudless sky. Lightning strikes are common on the island and small scorch marks can be seen all over the stones. At the center of The Spur is a smooth stone tower the color of a deep rusty red which seems to deflect the lightning. Rumor has it that the tower, if hit by a bolt or other suitable source of electricity, will open a portal to another world. This island is sacred to the madness touched Starburn Corsairs who preform strange rites at the towers base.
Mycelia
Mycelia is an Ubershroom, one the mountain-vast mushrooms that are common to the Formless Sea. What makes Mycella unique that it appears to be growing out of a small sandbar. Normally saltwater is poisonous to the mushrooms but Mycelia seems to be immune to its effects. Long white sticky hyphal strands descend down from the gills of the mushroom, floating lazily in the water below. These strands catch all sorts of sea creatures in their grips and are Mycelia’s primary way of gathering food. Passing ships have observed creatures as large as whales caught in its fungal grips. Unfortunately for passing sailors these strands also have a tendency to catch unwary ships. A small colony of Fungaloids lives on top of Mycelia, led by a single massive fungal queen, and guards a vast hoard of treasure from the ships that Mycelia has caught over the years.
Uhrberg
Uhrberg is a perfectly symmetrical town inhabited entirely by painted wooden clockwork people known as Tick-tocks. The city is peaceful and tranquil, the perfect simulacrum of idyllic peasant life. The cobblestone streets are smooth and even, colorful wooden flowers sprout from neatly kept window boxes, a pleasant symphony of bells rings out every hour (never missing a note) from the central clock tower, and not a single spot or smudge can be found on or in any of their white half-timber homes.
While accommodating to visitors, life in Uhrberg is dominated by routine, symmetry, and precision. The Tick-tocks live on time, quite literally. Everyday they are wound up and if they are ever unwound they die. As time and punctuality is a matter of survival the citizens of the city like everything in its place, even their visitors, for whom they have constructed a hostel, shop, and tavern all near the city’s one dock. Interruptions to this routine and violations of their constructed symmetry are met with ire from the populace. It does not take much to for the Uhrbergers to take issue with. Little infringements, like leaving your beer stein pointed the wrong way, not wiping your feet, or causing someone to be late are all capital offenses in Uhrberg. Visitors who disrupt their routine the first time are politely scolded and warned of dire consequences if they further interrupt. The second offense involves jail time, measured down to the second. The third offense is death.
Cursed City of Xar
This island is covered in a sprawling jungle that hides the remnants of a city made of massive white stone blocks. The creators of this city are mysterious and from examining the disturbing bas reliefs found in many of the ruins, appear to have been a race of giant cyclops who performed graphic live sacrifices to their unnamed and alien gods. Colossal ziggurats sink into the soft earth and many creatures have made their lairs among the ruins including pirates. Three rumors exist about this city. The first, more mundane, is that it is preferred place for pirates, particularly the Starburn Corsairs, to store treasure. The third, more sinister, is that the alien gods of the fallen city are still out there sleeping and waiting for the time when the blood flows from the tops of the ziggurats again.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
OSR Mount Rules
While Mounted:
You move at the same
speed as your mount.
You have two moves
and one action. You can take these in whatever order you want.
To get your mount
into dangerous terrain or to perform a maneuver like jumping a hedge,
test CHA.
If this fail, the
mount refuses to go, and costs a move (you can keep attempting this
check).
To get your mount
into combat, test CHA. (Ignore this if the mount is War-Trained)
Mounting and
Dismounting takes a move action.
Mounted Combat:
Unless hit, you move
freely through foes in melee.
While mounted and
moving, Enemies have Disadvantage to hit you with melee.
While mounted and
moving, you have Advantage to hit enemies in melee.
You do not get these
bonuses if the enemy is mounted or Very Big (like a giant or dragon)
Unless you have
Stirrups/Chariot/Howdah, suffer Disadvantage when attacking with
ranged.
Moving and attacking
an enemy in the same round triggers a Morale Test for the enemy.
Getting
Dismounted:
If while mounted you
are hit by a Critical hit, test STR (or save v. breath) to stay on
the mount.
Likewise if are hit
by an attack when under half HP (or would bring you under half HP).
If dismounted, take
d6 dmg and be stunned for a round.
Ignore the damage if
you are wearing a hard helmet.
Lances:
You can use a Lance
only while mounted.
Lances deal 2d6
damage.
If attacking massed
enemies, you can keep attacking with a Lance until you miss, as one
attack.
When you miss with
your Lance it is broken or dropped.
You do need
weapon proficiency to use a lance.
Polearms:
Polearms may be
‘set’ to take a charge from mounted enemies.
Set polearms ignore
the ‘Disadvantage to hit mounted enemies’ rule (attack as
regular).
Polearm users may
also declare before attacking that they are attempting to dismount a
rider.
If they hit, the
rider has to test STR (or save v. breath) to stay on the mount.
Non-polearms can
also attempt to dismount a rider, but attack at Disadvantage, and
rider saves at Advantage.
You do need
weapon proficiency to use a polearm (non-proficient users can use a
polearm as a spear.)
Mounts Attack:
Some Mounts provide
a bonus to the PCs attack on certain rolls.
There are two kinds
of these attacks “Charge Attack” and “Static Attack”
Charge Attacks are
used when the mount has moved already this turn.
Static Attacks are
used when the mount has not moved already this turn.
These are triggered
by the PC rolling above a natural number on the d20 attack (i.e.
16+/18+/20+) on their melee attack.
Think of these as
bonus damage for the PCs attack.
Mounts without
Riders:
When in combat and a
rider is Dismounted, roll on the Mount Morale Table below.
Mount Morale Table
| Roll | Result |
| 2 | Killed |
| 3 | Killed |
| 4 | Killed |
| 5 | Flees, Injured |
| 6 | Flees, Injured |
| 7 | Flees, Injured |
| 8 | Flees, Uninjured |
| 9 | Flees, Uninjured |
| 10 | Flees, Uninjured |
| 11 | Flees, Uninjured |
| 12+ | Stays and Fights |
Roll on the Mount
Morale Table every round the mount stays in a fight, subtracting the
number of turns it has not had a rider.
Also subtract if
there is any loud or strange noises or sights (i.e. magic) at the
Judge’s Discretion
A mount will flee at
full speed until it gets somewhere it thinks is ‘safe’.
If for some reason
you took your mount into a dungeon, this means very far away from the
dungeon.
Mounts that are
‘Injured’ are unable to be ridden or able to fight until healed.
How badly the mount
is hurt and how much they need to heal is up to the Judge’s
Discretion
Mounts that have not
fled or have been killed mat be remounted.
They also still give
their Mount Attack if the rider is near.
Mounts automatically
flee if their rider is killed.
Barding:
There are only two
kinds of barding Light and Heavy.
Rather than granting
an AC bonus, they grant a +1 or +2 to the Mount Morale Table.
You can get
“Imposing” barding which grants a penalty morale tests trigged by
the mount
(If
Law, this is imposing holy symbols)
(If
Neutral, this is ornately detailed armor)
(If Chaos, this is
spikey and rune scribed)
(Everyone
gets bitchen’ caparisons, that’s some universal badassery right
there)
Breaking a Mount:
To break a mount you
must pass a test for every stat, in sequence. (STR DEX CON WIS INT
CHA)
Add the mounts base
mount morale as a penalty to each test.
If you fail, get
dismounted - take d6 dmg and be stunned for a round.
You can attempt to
redo a break.
Start at the stat
before the one where you failed previously.
Breaking a mount is
not a common skill that any adventure would have.
Just because you can
break a mount doesn’t not mean you can break every mount (horse vs
tiger)
Unskilled
individuals may attempt to break a mount, but roll at Disadvantage.
Pony/Mule
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 60 | -1 | 20+/1d4 | 20+/1d2 |
Special:
Not War-Trained
Rouncey (‘Horse’
or Camel)
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 60 | +0 | 18+/1d6 | 18+/1d4 |
Special:
n/a
Courser (Warhorse)
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 60 | +1 | 16+/1d8 | 18+/1d6 |
Special:
n/a
Destier, (Heavy
Warhorse)
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 50 | +2 | 16+/1d8 | 16+/1d8 |
Special:
Lances deal double
damage while on a Desiter
Tiger/Wolf
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 50 | +0 | 18+/1d6 | 16+/1d6 |
Special:
6s explode from
mauling
Bear
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 40 | +2 | 16+/2d6 | 18+/2d6 |
Special:
n/a
Horned Animal (Deer,
Elk)
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 40 | +1 | 18+/1d6 | 18+/1d6 |
Special:
Unicorn/Nightmare
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 60 | +3 | 16+/1d8 | 18+/1d6 |
Special:
Both: Triggers a
morale test in Chaos/Law aligned individuals respectively on sight
Unicorn: Can Heal
for 1d8hp or Cure disease or poison 1/day
Nightmare: Flaming
Hoofs deal +1 Fire damage on Mount Attacks
Chariot/War
Elephants/Wagons
Chariots, War
Elephants, and Wagons function similar to other mounts, providing the
same bonuses.
Riders can still get
Dismounted.
They also provide an
AC bonus to their riders via the basket, wagon, or howdah
They are assumed to
have Barding included in their stat block.
Unlike Mounts they
require a Driver to function.
Mounts are ‘tied’
to their Driver.
Their morale tests
are triggered when the Driver is Dismounted, not other riders.
Their attacks are
ONLY associated with the Driver, not other riders.
The Driver cannot do
any other actions but drive the chariot/war elephant.
While Driving a
chariot/war elephant, a Driver can do no other action besides move
and melee.
If a Driver is ‘out
of action’ another rider may attempt to become the Driver.
Being a Driver is a
skill and not something known to most adventures.
Warriors with a
military background might know how to Drive.
Chariot
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 40 | +2 | +18/2d6 | +18/1d6 |
Special:
Seats 2 to 3,
including driver.
Grants a +1 Bonus to
AC
Can be equipped with
War Scythes – giving the Charge Attack +d6 dmg
War Elephant
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 30 | +6 | +16/2d6 | +16/2d6 |
Special:
Seats 3 to 7,
including driver, depending on the size of the howdah.
Very large howdahs
might even be able to equip siege weapons
Grants a +2 Bonus to
AC
Can be equipped with
Tusk Swords – giving and extra 2d6 to both attacks.
Will always provoke
a morale test on sight
Wagons/War Carts
| Speed | Morale | Charge | Static |
| 40 | +2 | +18/2d6 | +18/1d6 |
Special:
Seats 5 to 7,
including driver.
Grants a +3 Bonus to
AC
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