Demi-Kraken In-Depth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Ships Of The Gray Mists

Barge
Barges are very rare on the open Gray Seas, but more common in Pocket Seas.  While they can haul large amounts of cargo they are best suited to calm waters.  Many of the ships that make of the City-Fleets are old barges.

Caravel
Carvels are small ships that are fast and nimble and designed for long times in the open seas.  Carvels are the earliest ships designed to sail the Gray Seas.  They are decked and have small forecastles and sterncastles and two or three masts.

Cog
Cogs are ships with a single square mast and partial decks with just the bow and stern being decked.  These decked compartments are more of platforms than a forecaste or sterncastle.  While seaworthy they are mostly used for intersea trade.

Coracle
Made of hide stretched over a wicker frame, a coracle is one of the simplest ships.  Most coracles are so light that they can be carried on ones back.  Many of the Orcs who live on the Honu use coracles made of shark skin stretched over a bamboo frame.  Coracles are not ocean going vessels, and have a crew of one.

Dhow
The dhow is a moderately sized sailing vessel with a single lateen mast and a full deck. Their hulls are long and thin and are very popular for intra sea transport.  Most Cattie ships are Dhows.  Many have a rear deck house or stern castle.  Dhows general have between 12-30 crew members depending on the size of the ship.

Launch
Launches are small open boats with rounded hulls that are meant for traveling in open seas.  They are typically carries by larger ships and used for fishing, whaling, or landing.  The Shattered Isles makes the best Launches.

Elvin Catamaran
Elvin sailing ships are made from two hulls and made from the same growing bone substance that many elvish structures and armor are made from.  These ships can vary in size from single man craft to colossal frigates.  Extremely fast and with shallow draft Elvin catamarans are extremely popular with pirates and smugglers.  Unfortunately they are few and far between, extremely expensive, and require a skilled Elvin bonecrafter to maintain.

Galley
Galleys are large oared vessels.  They come in a variety of designed, some decked, some undecked, some may have a forecastle or sternccastle.  Many also have a single mast to catch the wind when the weather allows.  Galleys are only as fast as their rowers, and can only row for so long befor they must rest.  Galleys with two banks of rowers are known as biremes and those with three banks or rowers are known as triremes.  Galleys are not suited for travel in the Gray Seas because they flounder easily in bad weather and exhaustion of rowers.

Carrack
Fitted with three or four masts along with forecastles and sterncastles carracks are less ship and more floating fortress.  While not nimble carracks are both heavily armed and armored.  Carracks have multiple decks, massive cargo capacity and can carry hundreds of people.  The majority of ships that sail in the Gray Seas are carracks, albeit usually stripped down armor and armament wise for speed and cargo space.

Galleon
Galleons are very large carracks that have had their forecastle greatly reduced and their hulls elongated.  This gives them unprecedented stability and massive cargo capacity.  While most galleons have about 500 tons of cargo capacity the massive Azorian Galleons have upwards towards 2,000 tons.  Due to their size and complexity galleon construction is extremely expensive, involving the work of hundreds of skilled laborers, this keeping them out of the hands of all but the most powerful trading companies and the navies of the major powers.

Ironclad
Lined with thick iron plates and powered by an internal engine ironclads are extremely slow and clumsy ships.  They are also nearly indestructible.  Very few ironclads exist, and none of them can be found on the Gray Seas. 

The Shattered Isles keeps two on station at the mouth of the Fugue Sound as a show of might and as protection for the capital city and has more ironclads in the works.  Vardoux has one, in disrepair from the years of neglected caused by the revolution.  The United Empire has three under construction.  The Azorian Kingdom thinks that its massive galleons are good enough.

Junk
A junk is a type sailing ship with a flat bottom, high stern and bamboo reinforced sails.  Junks have a unique hull design that allows water to come in and out of the ship, with goods and people protected by watertight compartments making it excellent for use in rough weather.  Junk does not refer to a size of ship or number of masts but a design.  The smallest junks are less than 10 meters in length with a single mast, the largest are over a 120 meters with five masts.  Dowa ships are all based on the junk design.  The rough waters of the Ruby Sea make this almost a necessity.

Longship
Longships are long narrow vessels with a single mast and often rows of oars.  While they do not have decks many may have platforms or cabins built into the stern and bow.  Longships also have a very shallow draft, allowing them to go up rivers, estuaries and deltas, even allowing the land on beaches.  Longships do surprisingly well on the open seas and on long voyages.  Often they are inscribed with protective runes and have elaborate animal heads carved into the prow.  Solvangers use the longship almost exclusively.  Longships are highly prized by raiders and pirates as well.

Pinnace
The pinnace is a small ship, equipped often with a single mast and oars.  Pinnaces are used as a ship to ship or ship to shore service boat.  Pinnaces are typically decked with a single small cabin.  While sturdy enough for travel on the open seas a penance is rarely seen very far from its dock or ship.  Pinnaces are very popular for pirates and smugglers.  Most of the Gnat Fleet of the Shattered Isles is made of old pinnaces.

Theurgemes
Theurgemes are ships that are powered solely by magical means.  Theurgemes should not be confused with ships that have a weathermancer onboard to help fill sails, or other means of arcane supplement.  Theurgemes are powered in any number of ways, from bound elementals (undines in particular), undead or construct rowers, or bizarre magical devices.  Theurgemes have the advantage of not being bidden by wind or crew exhaustion, or by convention hydrodynamics or ship design, however they are very difficult and expensive to construct.  As such only the wealthiest of individuals have access to Theurgemes.  Due to their unique nature, no two Theurgemes are alike.

Theurgemes are arcane rat rods. Most look like a combination of a Wacky Racer, rocket ship, and a wizard tower. Universally over engineered, and universally individual each is one is representative of the wizard who crafted it. They burn fuel, but as theurgeme engines are strange things they burn strange things like, milk, sugar, coffee, books, fungal alcohol, bones, dinosaur blood, for fuel. Many have a device known as a 'concept booster' that gives a huge boost of speed in exchange for eating a concept from someone. Concepts can be things like hopes, dreams, nightmares, history, secrets, etc. Theurgeme engines are easy to track as they leave strange contrails.

Turtle Ship
Turtle Ships are essentially heavily armored junks.  A shell of plated iron is placed above the deck of an existing junk, essentially adding another deck.  This second deck is often heavily armed, with cannons and baristas.  However due to the added armor and weapons most turtle ships are very slow and top heavy making very poor choices for long sea voyages.  Most Turtle Ships will also include a chemical thrower in the front that spews either a noxious sulfurs smoke for concealment or gouts of fire.  The Dowa Shogunate is the only power to have Turtle Ships in a significant number.

Sea Chariot
Sea Chariots are ships that are pulled by ocean creatures.  At the smallest are dolphin chariots, coracles attached to a team of dolphins, not unlike a dog sled.  The largest is the city-fleet of Inkhorn, who is drawn by a school of singing squid.

Beast Riders
Beast riders are not technical ships, but creatures ridden much like a horse.  Sharks, seahorses, dolphins and whales are common.  Fin-Folk prefer Hippocampi, while the Koa-Toa prefer large Man o’ Wars and other purpose bred jellyfishes.

Outrigger
Outriggers are typically long narrow canoes that have one or more lateral supports fasten to the hull.  These lateral supports allow outriggers to be very long and narrow, yet surprisingly fast and stable even in rough water.  Given their odd shape outriggers have a unique way of rowing that is often difficult for even trained rowers to pick up.  The Orcish people heavily use outriggers.

The Jonah Ships
Jonah Ships are essentially hollow undead whales that have been fitted with oars and retractable sails.  The oars are made from scrimshawed bones from the beast’s insides and the sails made from its own tanned hide.  Crewed exclusively by ghouls from Gant, Jonah Ships are some of the most dangerous ships in the seas.  Because the undead crew had no need to breathe, Jonah Ships are able to go underwater for extended periods of time, however pockets of corpse gas prevent them from diving more than a few meters below the waters.  While their crews use this ability for great stealth Jonah Ships are easily betrayed by the flocks of gulls, sharks, and other opportunist scavengers that follow in their wake. 

Jonah Ships carry no arms, except for their crews.  The ghouls are armed with the bone plate and shard swords hone from the shell of Gant itself.  The Ghouls must be fatted on meat from the great turtle or else they have a chance of turning on the Jonah Ship, devouring it from the inside.  In combat Jonah Ships flail wildly attempting to ram ships.  Any sailor (or ghoul) that manages to fall into the waters is devoured greedily by the undead whale.

The Traveling the Gray Sea

The Traveling the Gray Sea
As one might suspect traversing The Gray Sea is no easy task.  Many lives and ships have been lost in exploring and crossing The Gray Sea.  Just sailing into the mists could put you anywhere, or worse, nowhere.  There is no knowing where you could be or how long it might take you to get somewhere if lost in the mists.  Starvation however is a much preferable end then to fall prey to the creatures that reside in The Gray Sea or to wind up consumed by it yourself.  One might question why one would ever brave The Gray Sea, but just a reminder of the great wealth held by a Graywater trader is enough to answer that question.

However there are stable passages in The Gray Sea.  This ribbons of reality are known as Mistways and without them travel between the seas would not be possible.  While stable traveling a Mistway is still fraught with danger.  Mistways are hard to map as they have a tendency to wander, much like river on a flat plane.  They also in many places double back or coil upon themselves like a snake.  That said, they generally stay in the same area and have relatively similar travel times so travel can be done quite regularly on these lines.  This stability however does not offer protection against the denizens of The Gray Sea.  Many used the Mistways themselves to feed or raid. 

The entrances to the Mistways are also obstructed, often by the mists themselves or by weather or other natural phenomena.  Shimmering heat mirages, blizzards, whirlpools and even the mouths of volcanoes are all said to hold hidden Mistways.  It’s also said, but this may be more myth than truth, that both the Screaming Sands and the Eternal Blizzard both hide Mistways.  Cultures near both of these places have legends of great heroes braving the storms and finding hidden paradise and hidden hells.  Little was made substance of these tails until large icebergs were found beached in the jungles of the Jade Sea and a remote valley in the Dowa Shogunate was found filled with sand and a destroyed temple with pictographs of creatures that resembled the Catties of the Amber Sea. 

Knowing the Mistways is vital to any sort of crossing of The Gray Sea.  Captains will horde and swap information about the Mistways like precious gems.  Specific information about a Mistway, like if there have been sudden storms, new phenomenon, or things attacking ships can make or break a trip.  To many of the captains the information that they learn while sailing a Mistway is often more valuable than they cargo that their ship may hold.  Many trading companies and navies will pay small fortunes for ships brave enough to chart and observe some of the lesser traveled or more dangerous Mistways. 

Sailing on the Gray Sea
Sailing the Gray Sea is no easy task.  Trips are expensive and harrowing journeys.  Even on short trips you can expect your ship to come under attack at least once.  Many times it is just warning shots from rival nations or trading companies, pirates testing the crew’s mettle, or sea creatures more inquisitive than harmful trips in the Gray Sea are never uneventful.

Officers and Crew on the Gray Sea
In the Gray Sea having a good captain can be the difference between life and death.  Even the most liberal of ships, those whose crew make most of the decisions, still elect captains.  While sailing the captain is the unquestionable leader of the ship.  Their orders are to be followed and no questions are to be asked (if you are an officer you might be able to get away with a question, but push comes to shove an order is and order and you are to follow.)  Only the most skilled or the most foolish captains command vessels in the Gray Sea. 

Captains often designate an officer who serves as their first mate, their go to liaison to the other officers and the crew and who can serve in their place if otherwise preoccupied.  The first mate is typically in charge of maintaining order of the crew, settling arguments, and dividing up loot and supplies.
Almost as important as having a good captain is having a good navigator.  Navigation in the Gray Seas is difficult, to say the least.  Not only does one have to have excellent raw navigational skills, they must also be knowledge about the locations and phenomenons of the Gray Sea, along with its peoples, plants, and creatures.  In short a good navigator in the Gray Sea is more than just a navigator, they are a good historian, geographer, meteorologist, diplomat and biologist as well.

After the captain and the navigator comes the master-at-arms.  The master-at-arms is in charge of the ships weapons and defenses.  This includes not only what is on the ship but the guards hired to defend it as well.  Masters-at-arms are often skilled warriors.

Cooks and doctors are also common, not just for making rations palpable and for treating wounds but for creating healing potions and salves.  These officers often serve other duties, like being the barber or carpenter.

Sailors in the Gray Sea are just like sailors from the Known Seas, if made out of a bit more hearty stuff.  They spend their days maintaining the ship and sails.  They complain about the grog and their ship biscuit.  They sing shanties and tell sea stories.  Sailors in the Gray a much more superstitious than those in the Known Seas.  They are also always armed.  You will never find a sailor for the Gray Sea without his weapons.  Most keep a staggering amount of weapons hidden on them, hold out pistols and boot knives are popular. 

Trade and Travel on the Gray Sea
For someone booking passage on the Gray Sea the trip depends a lot on what ship they booked passage.  Every ship and every captain has a reputation on the Gray Sea and making sure that you pick the one that best suits you is key to having a good voyage.  Some ships treat their passengers as little more than crew that have paid the luxury to come along on the trip.  Others treat their passengers as royalty with rich meals (as rich as one can get on the rations for Gray Sea voyages) and lavish private quarters.

Passengers are alright money for ships, but the real money is in trade.  In the Gray Sea lay wonders that can only be dreamed of in the Known Seas.

The Gray Seas

Introduction
The Gray Sea (or Seas) a nebulous ocean of pseudo-reality filled with strange islands, creatures, and even its own pockets of smaller seas.

Everything outside of the Gray Sea is the Known Seas.  The Known Seas are the ‘safe’ places where the rules work right.  The Known Seas are where maps work and routes are charted.  The Known Seas are the waters of your home setting.  You can point to the known seas on your world map.  The Known Seas are whatever you want them to be.

You can easily fit the Gray Sea into any sort of setting, all you really need is ocean.  It could be the areas off of the world map.  It could be an-extra dimensional plain of existence.

The Nature of the Gray Sea
The waters of The Gray Sea are cold and salty, no matter which sea a ship may have come from.  Dense heavy fogs dance over the glassy surface of the water.  It’s rare for crew to see more than a mile in any given direction and quite often captains are faced with fog so thick that it is hard to see from bow to stern.  The sun is but a large pale dot in The Gray and the stars are even more difficult to see making navigation very difficult.

By their very nature it is hard to define The Gray Sea.  Visually the mists are (typically) a dense and heavy fog, thick and Gray, that lies atop a vast blue Gray ocean.  The Gray goes by many names, The Gray-on-Gray, the Aether, the Soul Sea, the Foglands, The Gray Nothings, but most just refer to it as the mists.  The mists are constantly rolling and changing and are home to a number of weird phenomena and creatures.  While constantly in a state of flux, the mists to have some constants and the key to understand the mists is to first understand these constants.

First, The Gray Sea borders all Known Seas on all sides.  While most of the Known Seas transition into The Gray Sea by open oceans, the borders of The Gray Sea can take other forms, like in the case of the Screaming Sands of the Amber Sea - the vast constant sandstorm in its south - or like the Eternal Blizzard, north of the lands held by the Solvang Clans in the Blue Sea.  The borders of The Gray are not a firm thing.  There is no clear defining line between the Known Seas and The Gray Seas.  This nebulous area is known as The Borderlands.  The Borderlands are in a state of flux, constantly growing and shrinking, shifting and moving.  It is never quite clear when one has fully entered The Gray Sea as it always just seems to happen, one moment you are in a vast blue ocean, the next you are in a vast sea of gray.  While the border does flux, it is rarely if ever less than a three day or more than a week’s sail from the border to land in the sea.

Second, time and space does not work in the mists like how it does in the Known Seas.  The mists are not bound to standard geometry and physics.  Distance in particular seems to fall victim to the mists effects. Time often does not flow correctly while in the mists.  The Sun, while dimmed, still rises and sets, however; the speed at which it does is not constant.  Time in the mists has pockets where time travels faster and where time travels slower than in the know seas.  This phenomenon is typically referred to a ‘temporal fugue.’  Ships that cross the mists may have experienced a few weeks of travel, but in the Known Seas it has been only days, or even months.  Conversely the same is true, a ship may experience months of travel, only to be gone a few days.

The temporal fugue phenomenon has a number of strange features and side effects.  Of particular note, people who have spent significant time in the mists and have been affected by the temporal fugue possess unnaturally long lives, if not cut down first by the perils of the mists.  Particular strong ‘gales’ can blow through relatively stable areas wreaking havoc.  Strangest of all is that some fugues are even able to bend time back upon itself, sending one to the past.  There have been very few recordings of this sort of fugue, and most are only a few days at the most.

Third, the mists are home to strange creatures.  Despite what many think, the mists are not empty, nor are they entirely filled with madmen and monsters.  There are quite a few creatures that are docile, but still strange in the mists own way.  Pink eyeless dolphins that play in ships wakes, sharks with long whiskers known as beard-fish, bright blue parrots with three sets of eyes, tumble urchins, jelly slicks, and the great Gray armored whales can all be found in the mists.  The waters are also thick with seaweeds and vegetation.  Large patches of sargassum and thick mats of fungal mycelia can be found floating all over The Gray Sea.

Fourth, the mists are home to strange phenomena.  Rarely if ever do the ships that cross The Gray go without experiences some sort of odd sights or sounds.  These individual phenomena are never the same and can vary in intensity and ominous intent.  Some of the phenomena experienced are people hearing voices; sometimes a whisper, or a distant scream.  Some have seen movements in the corners of their eyes, or have felt rapid changes in temperature, both hot and cold.  Clouds make move in strange ways or take odd shapes, with the features of men and animas and even words.  Strange smells may waft through the air; the scents of burning flesh, of pine trees, of baked goods, of summer rains, of a lover’s perfume, of old books, have all been recorded.  People have noted their skin tingling and a sense of wrongness all over.

This phenomenon is not limited to just the senses, but many odd little encounters as well.  Flipped coins may land on their side.  Six sided dice might roll a seven.  Spoons and cups may not be able to hold their contents.  Ropes may rear up like cornered snakes.  Telescopes might peer forwards or backwards in time.  Small objects may float in the air for a moment then fall.  Sailors have all sorts of charms and rituals designed to ward off these phenomena while in The Gray.

Much of these phenomena however are quite harmless, if unsettling.  The most harmful thing in the Gray Sea however is the fact that healing does not seem to work correctly while in it.  Cuts and scrapes of course will clot, but open wounds will never close.  Unless kept clean infection sets in quite easily and many sailors opt to lop of a limb rather than risk infection.  No matter how much time one spends in the Gray Sea, the never seem to get better, only worse.  This ‘unhealing’ affects spell casters too and even the most powerful of mages and priests can seem to recall only the most basic of incantations and spells.  However this effect seems to be in place only in the open waters of the Gray Sea.  Ghost Islands, some floatresses, and land in the Pocket Seas seems to be immune from this effect.

The lawless nature of The Gray Sea had a tendency to infect those that spend too much time in it.  While this may have some benefits, like longer lifespan, and needing to eat and drink less traveling into the Known Seas for people that have spent too long in Gray Seas is like coming under a great burning pressure.  Those touched by the Gray Sea liken it to an intense headache mixed with sunburn.  Many of the objects that are imported from The Gray Sea have a tendency to fall apart or just stop working if exposed to the Sun of the Known Seas for too long.  For instance, the Paper-Folk of the Origami Isles will turn to pulp if exposed to direct Sunlight for extended periods in the Known Seas.  The Psychoactive Honeys from

Yet all is not water and wind in The Gray Sea, objects and lands exist too.  The Gray Sea seems to have an abundance of wrack and detritus floating in its water.  Anything from simple driftwood, animal carcasses, ships, icebergs, and buildings have been found bobbing in the waters of The Gray Sea.  Much of this wrack drifts aimlessly in the water without any sense of direction, eventually finding its way to The Rat Sea, however this rubbish has a tendency to congeal  into large clusters, that have been given the name of ‘Floatress’ by mariners.

There are also a ‘pockets’ of safe waters, spaces that are solid reality and obey (most) of the rules or reality.  In fact, all of the Known Seas are just the largest of ‘pockets’ in The Gray.  While this may sound welcoming these pockets, particularly the smaller ones are relatively unstable, appearing and disappearing seemingly at random.

One last note, the effects of The Gray Sea often creep into the Known Seas is vast fog banks and mighty storms.  These storms are quite similar in intensity and length of an afternoon’s thunderstorm, but occasional large cyclones will whip out to devastating consequences.  The most minor of these storms manifest as strong winds with an eerie howl or banks of thick fog and have little effect beyond strange behavior for animals and sending strange feelings of dread down ones spine.  Objects can be sucked up from these storms and drawn into The Gray to fates unknown.  The smaller storms are just take debris, unattended objects, and the occasional hat but the large cyclones may take up livestock, people and even whole buildings.  The Gray seemingly has a tendency to draw in objects.  Old salts say that all things eventual get pulled into The Gray's invisible currents.

Many objects found in the Gray Sea have strange, often reality deifying properties.  The floatress of Hoarfrost and the Frostbergs are made of ice that never melts.  Statue Stone, carved from the colossi in the Sea of Statues are made of a stone that is immune to blasting and most impacts.  The psychoactive honeys of the Floral Sea can induce false memories and emotions. These products fetch large price tags in the Known Seas for these strange properties.  However exposure to the Sun of the Known Seas damages the products and if not outright destroying the products begins to degrade them.  This degradation takes place over a period of time

Simply put the best way to understand the nature of The Gray is this: The rules of reality while in The Gray are not hard rules, like in the Known Seas, but merely suggestions.  This lawlessness infects everything found in this vast ocean, from the waters, to its islands, to even its peoples and creatures.

The Deep Gray
The Deep Gray is where the sea starts and the sky ends, or where the sky starts and the sea ends. It has gray water on a gray foggy sky. It is were the weird stuff comes from. Leviathans and Whales come from the Deep Gray. Ships that wander too far from the Known Seas of Gray Ways get consumed by the Deep Gray. Sometimes they come back but all wrong. Ships that sail on the wrong side of the water. Ships made of crystal. Ships that are living creatures like some sort of sick faux-golem. Ships that are alive, their masts trees their ropes vines. Ships that are alive, their masts bones their ropes veins and sinew. This however is nothing compared to what happens to their crews.

Sites of Interest of the Fumigated Sea

Quartz Town: In many places in The Fumigated Sea giant geodes can be found, some of which are as big as houses. A small settlement on one of the volcanic islands has broken into a number of these geodes and has turned them into literal houses. The settlers here have dragged the geodes to above the smog line to found one of the best defended towns in this sea.

The Toupee: At a distance The Toupee looks like a kilometer wide field of blond hair, moving softly in the breeze. A closer inspection shows that these are very thin worms that look like cooked noodles. The worms excrete clean water, a rare commodity in The Fumigated Sea, and small puddles can be found all across the Toupee. Unfortunately the worms try to tangle up anything that comes near them. Chitin shells and bones are scattered all across the Toupee.

The Caldera Curatio: This island is dominated by a vast collapsed volcanic cone that has filled to become a lake. The waters here are said to possess curative properties. Every day a slow parade of bandaged shapes come down from the lodges and shacks that dot the lake shore to bathe. The pus filled, the pox marked, the scabrous, and the bleeding, the lepers, the coughing, the wheezing and phlegmatic all come when all other cures have failed. Some are simple paupers coming with little more than fresh bandages and ship biscuits. Others are wealthier, with retinues of physicians and healers armed with all the cures money can buy.

The Caldera Curatio is unofficially run by the Leper King, the son a wealthy merchant who in his youth came here to be cured of a skin diseases that left lesion and pox marks all over his body. Now cured, he has traded his bandages for silk cloths, but he still wears his silver face mask. While he charges no fees for access to the caldera, he does ask that they wealthy visitors donate.

Rainbow Bay: This settlement is dedicated to the clothes dyeing business. The inhabitants here do brisk business training with the Painted Gnolls for their pigments. Run off from the workshops and warehouses run down from the hill the town is located on and bleed into the waters surrounding this island forming into a frothing rainbow tide.

God’s Mouth: By far the tallest point in The Fumigated Sea, God’s Mouth a large volcano that’s constantly spewing smoke. Arcs of lightning dance in the ash clouds lighting up the smoke. This mountain services a navigation landmark for sailors and as a place of worship for the Painted Gnolls. As the Gnolls believe that the vapors emitted by the land are spirits escaping the underworld to the heavens this volcano is seen as the primary exit from the underworld. The smoke that the volcano emits changes color from time to time, and these changes deeply affects Painted Gnoll behaviors.

Maloeufs: This vast sulfur plain in home to an eponymous mining settlement that was abandoned suddenly and without warning. Once the largest settlement in the Fumigated Sea the ruins of Maloeufs dot the plain like a lonely archipelago in a sea of yellow. The Painted Gnolls go to great efforts to avoid this place, and the other setters refuse to talk about the ruins.

Freemont Pits: These three pits are in fact large lakes that lie well below the waterline. Of all the toxic places in the Fumigated Sea, these lakes are the worse. The water here is so acidic that anything organic that comes in contact with it is devoured in moments. The harshest punishment in Painted Gnoll culture is to be stranded in an iron boat in one of these lakes. With no oars one is left with the choice between a slow death of starvation or a painful death by acid. At night faint blue lights glow on the bottom of the lake, but due to the murky and inhospitable waters, no one has been able to find out why.

Aschendorf: This settlement is dedicated to gathering alchemical reagents and chemicals from this sea. This is a holy city of a minor god of alchemy, The Transmuted One. The residents here are all worshipers and they see the art of alchemy as a divine act. The settlement is guarded by a small army of artificially created, mercury based, Quicksilver Oozes.

Flora and Fauna of Note of the Fumigated Sea

Thermadors: These creatures look like a cross between a lobster, a spider and a horseshoe crab. Thermadors have eight legs, the front pair of which are large pincers which they use to scrape the bacteria from rocks from which they feed, and the back pair are a set of large flat flippers they use to propel themselves through the mud pots and boiling lakes of the Fumigated Sea. They are a long as a man is tall and can weight up to 300 pounds. They are covered in a hard armored shell dotted with spikes that is incredibly resistant to heat and have a large tail that ends in a sharp spine. Their flesh is very sweet and delicious, if cleaned properly.

Ash Yams: These tubers grow in abundance near the smog line. Earthy and slightly sweet baked or boiled Ash Yams, along with Thermador flesh, serves as the cornerstone of most settlers and the Painted Gnolls diet.

Spitter Crabs: This creatures name is actually a misnomer, being related more to spiders than crabs. Unlike spiders Spitter Crabs have hard chisel like front legs and rather than excreting webs they excrete a concrete like substance that they build their nests out of. They use their front legs to dig into the ground then cover their nests with a thin layer of their secretions allowing their prey to fall into their nests where they coat them in their spit.

Yeti Crabs: These crabs are the most numerous of the many types of crab in the Fumigated Sea. They have extremely long pincer arms and legs that are covered in downy fur that they use to cultivate the bacteria on which they feed. To cultivate the bacteria Yeti Crabs spend most of their time in and around the various hot pots and chemical pools common in this sea.

The Awoken: Not all of the mummies entombed in the spherical coffins of the Iron Hail slumber. Some, after untold eons of slumber have awoken and they are pissed. As twenty foot tall hulking undead monstrosities the Awoken wander the Fumigated Sea crushing anything in their nigh unstoppable warpath. As undead the Awoken do not need to breath, an asset in the Fumigated Sea.

Rock Worms: These long tube worms that live in the geothermic cracks and vents and can grow up to ten feet in length. The have red beaks on their tips that open when the noxious gas clouds appear to absorb nutrients. As these beaks open before the clouds appear they can give some advanced notice to those that are paying attention.

Painted Gnolls In Depth

Painted Gnolls are tall and lean creatures, the shortest adults are rarely less than six feet tall and most are around seven feet tall weighing in around 275 lbs. Their oily fur, when not painted, is a light brown, with darker stripes or spots, very rarely a Gnoll will be born with pure white fur. A slight mane runs from their heads down their backs. Female Gnolls have a tendency to be slightly larger and more powerful than the males. Gnolls have a quick maturity cycle becoming fully adult around eight years. Most Gnolls only live to their early thirties, due mostly to the conditions of the Fumigated Sea, warfare, and starvation. Given optimal conditions Gnolls have the same life span as humans.

Painted Gnolls have a number of adaptations that have allowed them not only to survive in the Fumigated Sea but thrive. They have a translucent extra set of eyelids that they can deploy and retract at will. The eyelids, known as a nictitating membrane, allow the Gnolls to see while in the many gases and vapors common here. While they can see, the vision is somewhat blurred, and they are only able to since movement and bright colors. This membrane also gives off a bright red reflection whenever they catch the light.

The respiratory system of a Painted Gnoll is much stronger than any other humanoid. They have extremely keen noses and are able to tell from sniffing the wind which gases are in the area and where they are moving. They also produce large volumes of thick mucus which wile giving them temporary protection from most of the noxious vapors causes them to be clearing their thought almost constantly. Gnolls do this by a series of high pitch fast coughs often mistaken for raspy laughter.

The society of the Painted Gnolls is based around the pack. Gnoll packs are tribal like extended families. Blood ties are central to Gnoll culture, or as the Gnolls themselves refer to it ‘Kin above all, Kin above self.’ Gnolls view other pack members and brother and sister, and are fiercely loyal allies. While Gnolls may squabble, even come to blows among fellow pack members (as all siblings do) these conflicts are quickly forgiven and forgotten. This desire for a pack will cause isolated individual Gnolls to form their own surrogate packs from close friends and group members. Gnolls will also sometimes ‘adopt’ individuals, both fellow Gnolls and other humanoids, into their packs.

The packs are ruled with a combination of matriarchy and egalitarianism. Gnolls are not monogamous, and it is very difficult to tell who the father of a litter of pups is. Rather they trace decent from the mother. Leadership rolls however are decided solely by skill and ability and not by gender. The leader of a pack is known as the ‘color-keeper’ as they control who gets access to the various dyes and colors the Gnolls hold sacred.

The Painted Gnolls make their homes in the isolated mesas and hills that exist above the smog line. These havens are few and far between and often no larger than a hundred square meters. The packs go to great lengths to fortify and defend their homes. Improvised walls made from large rocks and scrap metal jut with spikes, pit traps dug deep and lined with scrap and broken rock, lava tubes are used to create ambush points and escape routes. Gnolls will defend their homes to the death, but will occasionally allow visitors to their mesas and hideaways if they are on good terms with the pack.

There is very little arable land in these settlements and what is arable is usually dedicated to growing ash yams or other starchy tubers. Painted Gnolls are primarily meat eaters, but will rarely turn down anything edible. The majorly of their diet comes from hunting, mostly spikey crabs, rock worms, and Thermadors. Unlike many humanoids Gnolls have no cultural taboo regarding other humanoids, save for eating other Gnolls as that is an extremely spiritually impure act.

The Gnolls reputation for savagery and violence is an unfortunate stereotype born of from their first interactions with humans. With resources being so limited in the Fumigated Sea, Painted Gnolls are fiercely territorial. Hunting and scavenging parties of anywhere from four to eight Gnolls can be found wandering below the smog line. Most of these parties will go out of their way to avoid conflict with other humanoids, however explores into the Fumigated Sea say that there are few things more disturbing than sets of red eyes peering out of a poisonous fog bank, watching and cackling.

The reputation of Gnolls being scavengers however is much more deserved. Very little metal occurs commonly in the Fumigated Sea and even if it did the Painted Gnolls do not have the technical understanding of smelting and iron working. Rather than mining, Gnolls harvest the Iron Hail. Large teams of Gnolls will tear the spheres apart, after ritualistically disposing of the corpse inside. Every metal object that the Gnolls have is derived from either the grave goods from the Iron Hail or from the Iron Hail itself. In particular they covet the parts stained rainbow from exposure to high heat.

The Painted Gnolls use this scavenged metal to make their arms and armor, as well as their tools and fortifications. The metal that the Gnolls harvest is not easy to work with and most Gnoll objects are rather primitive looking each piece being unique. Their armor is made of overlapping connected plates, similar plate mail adorned with the many jagged scraps of salvage they make as primitive spikes. Their weapons are equally crude, are often just large pieces of scraped sharped to a rough edge. Most Gnolls are armed with a shield and either a sword or a spear. While Gnolls prefer melee combat, slashing with their swords and spears and basking with their spike shields and armor, they also keep a sling and a small pouch of rounded scrap shot. They mostly use their slings to hunt prey or to harass when inside one of the many noxious clouds that roll below the smog line. Gnolls prefer hit and run tactics, darting in and out of poison clouds and ganging up on a single target, preferably the weakest first.

The noxious vapors and the many colors of the Fumigated Sea form the basis of the Painted Gnolls spirituality. Gnolls believe that vapors, smokes, and clouds are spirts. They also believe that the spirts must be cleansed within the bowels of the earth, before escaping to the sky to become white clouds. When a Gnoll dies, or whenever they encounter a mummy in the Iron Hail, the Gnolls will ritualistically flense the corpse in one of the many geysers and hot pots that dot this sea. The then cleaned bones are then laid to rest within the great fumaroles and smoking chimneys so the spirit may descend into the underworld to be spiritually cleansed before they can ascend to the sky as hot white vapors. In other words, steam. Steam is one of the few vapors that will rise above the smog line. The noxious vapors and poisonous clouds that dot the landscape are impure souls that are seeking a new host to lie in.

Color also plays a large role in Gnoll spirituality. Each color has a complex set of meanings and emotions tied to it. For instance, white is the color of death, bones, finality, purity, and escape. Red is the color of violence, food, vision, and hiding. Transitions from one color to anther make for nuances emotions and ideas. Gnolls also believe that the spirts leave colors on the surface of the ground during their purification process. These substances are not minerals or bacteria in the mind of the Painted Gnolls, but are comparable to the human concept of ectoplasm. They also believe that these colors bring protection and good luck. Gnolls harvest this material and dry it out to make dyes and powders. Gathering large handfuls of the colors the Gnolls with blow the dyes on their arms and armors before battle, on new born pups, on homes and on fortifications, on just about everything that possess. Most notably they rub the dyes into their fur giving them a blotched rainbow appearance; it is from this appearance that the Gnolls earn the painted moniker.

Very few Painted Gnolls exist outside of the Fumigated Sea. Given how deeply engrained the pack is in Gnoll culture there are very few individual Gnolls who are willing to leave. Most of individual Gnolls found outside of this sea were either adopted into another culture at a very young age or are outcasts. Given their preference for color Gnolls make surprisingly good artists, if they can learn technique. Their hearty constitutions and nigh immunity to most noxious vapors has made the Painted Gnolls a particular target for slavers for use in mining.

The Fumigated Sea

The Fumigated Sea is a geothermic active sea dominated by hot springs, fumaroles, mud pots, geysers, sulfur fields, thermal vents, and volcanoes. The only thing that matches the hellish inhospitably of this sea is its vast pallet of color. Vast systems of caves belch out various color smokes. Coral like chimneys spew pastel smokes, rainbow striped tufas dribble boiling water rich in dissolved minerals and heavy metals into pools of boiling kaleidoscopic sludge. Metal rich waters have dried into yellow sulfur, green coper and red iron fields. The Fumigated Sea can be best described in two words: Technicolor nightmare.

These raging hot spots spew out gasses, fogs, and smokes that merge into vast clouds of strange colors and chemicals that flow through valleys and lowlands and move from island to island. While some of these are just warm humid fogs that smell like rotting eggs, some are rolling waves of boiling acid death that can turn the exposed into a melting and blistered mass within moments. Worse yet these clouds move fast and can change course unpredictably. Some days a bright and blue, while others are chaotic nightmares of swirling clouds. These clouds often engulf everything below ten meters. This ten meter mark is referred to as 'the smog line' and only the territory above that line is considered safe to the residents of this sea.

Traveling anywhere in The Fumigated Sea requires one to be entirely covered head-to-toe in layers thick cloth or leather. This suiting will protect for a small amount of time, just enough for the quick to run to cover or higher ground, before degrading from the acidic fogs. Unfortunately this means that they need to be replaced constantly. If one needs to spend any extended time in the in the low lying areas of this sea a specialized masked is required. This headgear is made from leather, if you are wealthy, or canvas, if you are poor, goggles, and is fitted with container filled with activated charcoal that one breathes through. The cheapest look like a feed bag for animals with eye holes, the best are finely engraved with bird like beaks stuffed with potpourri made from dried herbs, spaces and flower petals.

Below the clouds of poisonous gasses much of the life in The Fumigated Sea is either bacterial or extremophile in nature, each evolved to be well suited to their own biome in this hellish landscape. The bacteria in this sea are incredibly diverse most notably in the colors that they produce. Vast geysers and smoking chimneys will be covered in layers of what to the uninformed, look like paint, but are in fact vast bacterial colonies feeding of the chemicals and heat from the rampant geological activity. Vast areas might be mistaken for strange prismatic deserts but it could not be farther from the truth, as the colors or thick blankets of bacteria and other microscopic life. Greens, reds, yellows, browns, and blues are all common. Smoking chimneys are stripped with a rainbow of colors and large bubbling mud pits look more akin to an artist’s palette than to a geological feature.

Above the clouds of poisonous gasses is a different story. Dotted across this sea are small mesas and volcanic mountains that are safe from the fumes. The constant downpour of chemical rich rains act like a constant fertilizer and above the smog line much of these formations are lush and thick with plant life. These formations are the safest places in The Fumigated Sea and on clear days one can watch the smokes and gasses roll across the painted plains.

Most of the animal life common in The Fumigated Sea bears more in common with deep sea creatures than terrestrial ones. Vast armies of spikey crabs roam the bacterial flats feeding on stone like mollusks. Creatures that look like a cross between a lobster and a scorpion that are the size of wolfs hunt the crabs. Large worms with sharp red beaks thrive in the many holes and cracks in the ground here and attack anything that walks near.

The only intelligent life native from The Fumigated Sea and the only inhabitants from outside of a few small settlements of this hellish landscape are the Painted Gnolls. Gnolls are hyena-shaped humanoids that prowl the fields and islands, hunting and scavenging in cackling packs. Well suited to the hazards of this sea, Gnolls have an additional set of eyelids, keen noses, a tough oily coat of fur, and a robust and especially mucus filled respiratory system that allow them to cross this sea without protection required by the weaker races. This is not to say that they go unarmored. Gnolls wear scavenged plate armor fixed with many spikes, similar to the crabs common to this sea. Color is very important in Gnoll culture, and Gnolls can often be found at the various mud pots dipping their armor plates into the mineral rich sludge to stain them and scraping off the colored striations on chimneys to make into their sacred dyes. Before venturing from their holdings above the smog line, they ritualistically toss handfuls the dry dyes all over their bodies and armor, giving them a chaotic painted appearance. One can tell how long a Painted Gnoll has been out from their holds by how much the colors have bleed into one another.

The strangest phenomenon in the Fumigated Sea comes not from its geology or strange inhabitants, but from the skies. Periodically large metal spheres rain down from the sky devastating vast sections of the landscape in events known as ‘Iron Hail’ to the settlers and ‘Spirit Falls’ to the Painted Gnolls. Inside each sphere is a massive corpse dressed in a white cloth set in a fetal position. If the bodies could be stretched out to their true height they would stand about twenty feet tall. Filled with grave goods like gems, jewelry, and highly advanced tools and weapons and serving as the only real source of metal in this sea, these spheres are fought over by Gnolls and settlers alike. While the setters view the corpses inside as a curiosity as best, the Gnolls revere them and go to great efforts to flense the corpses in geysers and entomb the bones in the caves and smokes they hold sacred.

The most of the small settlements in this sea are dedicated to resource extraction. The chemical pools common in this sea can often be boiled down to their base elements, particularly copper, lead, mercury and iron. The vast sulfur fields are also mined in large chunks, typically exported back to the Known Seas to be made into gunpowder. The dyes and pigments that stain the landscapes are also coveted, both as paints and clothes dyes. The Painted Gnolls however take offense and will often attack anyone harvesting these materials, as they see this as an act of defilement. They will happily trade the dyes that they collect for metal goods, dried meats, and other exotic goods.