Sample Encounters for the Sea of Wrecks

• Crashed ship converted to a shrine to an Aboleth. A lick layer of sticky mucus oozes from a rough hone statue of a tentacle in the center of the ship. It’s sticky and hard to move it. 1d6+1 cultists and their wizard priest leader.
  
• Crashed whaler ship infested by ghouls. They are feasting on the corpse of a whale. While it smells bad a casual glances shows a large hunk of ambergris at the center of the whale corpse. A better glace shows that the ghouls are once the whalers. 2d6 ghouls. Large hunk of ambergris (200gp to the right buyer) and an enchanted harpoon (counts-as +1 spear).
  
• Friendly Koa-Toa have set up shop in a ruined barge. They sell raw seafood, chum stew, and coral charms. They are kind of backwards, easily distracted, and easily hoodwinked by fast talkers. They are also extremely vengeful once they relies they have been tricked.
  
• Hermit wizard is looking to buy paper at a very high price. He has a few minor magic items. The exterior of his ship is covered in a thick layer of seagull guano. He is always yelling at the gulls and says that he has been cursed by cheating on a sea nymph with her sister.
  
• Sauhagin breeding layer. Huge masses of translucent eggs bob in the water of the half sunk hull. They look like leather pouches and a tiny silhouette of a Sahuagin tadpole can be seen if you hold it up to the light. 50% chance that there will be adult Sahuagin guarding it. The eggs are considered a delicacy by many races (think of it as a cross between an egg and an oyster). Sauhagin can be distracted if you throw the egg pouches at them. Hang on to them for too long and they may hatch.
  
• A water elemental got trapped in this ships hull during the last storm. Will attack anyone who enters but will make a break for the nearest open exit (trap door or porthole) if given the chance. There is a large cache of non-soluble treasure (mostly copper bars with a heavy patina)
  
• A Golem Ship (living ship that is a remnant from a long forgotten war) is stuck in some rocks. It promises a reward (hidden treasure, some of its weapons) if freed. 50% chance it attacked the PCs when freed, 25% is zooms off to attack the nearest ship, 25% chance that they never see the Golem Ship again, but here rumors of a ghost ship in the future.
  
• A single canoe lies moored to a large rock. THEY ARE COMING in over a dozen languages are carved in the stone along with the symbol for a dark god/pirate fleet/pelagic nightmare creature/the PCs names. Close inspection of the rock shows it to be hollow with a hidden supply cashed, for fighting said prophesied entity.
  
• A wreck has been converted to a fish and chips shop. But the fish that’s being fried is Koa-Toa. It has been so long since the PCs have had anything besides ship biscuits and brackish rum and the fish and chips smells great and the price is right. Eating it will fill their bellies (and hp) but eating an intelligent creature is an immoral act.
• A massive anemone has begun to grow in the hold of a ship and is now seen as an object of worship by a Koa-Toa family. Unfortunately there is a hole in the hull of the ship, and the family must keep adding more seawater to the hold or else the anemone begins to dry out and begin to die. The hold in addition to the anemone is also filled with treasure and supplies. Letting it dry would make the hold easy access, but would also involve most likely killing the Koa-Toa family. Maybe if the PCs are willing to help patch the hole, the Koa-Toa, long scene immune to the poison will share some of the bounty
  
• Sargaussm tangled webs cover this ship. A seal wriggles in wrapped in webbing. The faint sparkle of treasure can be seen through the webbing. Then you see up in the masts. Eight wall crawling tentacles, eight eyes, black beak, bright poisonous skin, shoots web or ink as needed - Arachnopuss. Thankful it is sleeping. Maybe if your careful you can get that treasure without tangle in the web and waking the beast. Maybe it's best to let a sleeping arachnopuss lie.

The Aquatic Races in the Sea of Wrecks

 (I'll do in depth versions of these sometime in the future, but this is just for the Sea of Wrecks)

Koa-Toa

"Yummy Yummy Yummy Chummy for my Tummy! ssssp"

Koa-Toa, are fishmen, are not insane, merely have a religion that is very alien to land dwellers.  They have a deep reverence from the sea and Koa-Toa religion is a mix of shamanism, animalism, and polytheism.  They see spirits everywhere, their gods or spirts are often other sea creatures or aspects of the ocean themselves, and they have a divine right to protect the oceans and its creatures.  To what extent they are to protect the ocean and its creatures (along with what creatures) vary greatly from Koa-Toa to Koa-Toa.  They are best thought of as man like fish.  They are semi amphibious - they can breathe air, but need to constantly be wet with salt water.

Sahuagin

Jawsome

Sahuagin, are sharkmen, and are very insane.  They are related to the Koa-Toa, (much like how a human may be related to an orc), they also worship things from the sea, but focus more on the might makes right and apex predators of the ocean.  They ritualistically butcher and then devour their captives.  They like Koa-Toa have legs with webbed feet but are much better swimmers than the Koa-Toa and are much worse on land then they are.

Fin-Folk

This is the closest I could find

Mermaids are known as Fin-Folk.  They live near the bottom of the oceans in great cities made from coral.  They rarely come to the surface, typically only to trade for metal goods.   They can survive out of the water only for moments at a time.  They do not have legs but big tails.  They are best thought of as fish like men.  They do not like most land dwellers.  The Fin-Folk in the Sea of Wrecks are on the fringe of Fin-Folk society.  They are rugged survivalists and fierce individualists.  They herd Seacows and ride Hippocampi around.  They wear cowboy hats. (They are !notTexans)

Bestiary for the Sea of Wrecks

The Sea of Wrecks is a rocky and broken seascape, a vast ship graveyard, dominated by ravaged ships, jagged rocks, and marine detritus.  Below are some of the animals that live there.

Long-Necked Seal

 

Pinniped is a very fun word to say.

Long-Necked Seals are pinnipeds with a long streamlined body with four powerful flippers. They have an elongated and flexible neck and a long powerful tail. They have a thick layer of blubber and a fine water wicking fur that together keep them both warm and dry. They eat mostly shellfish and small fish but it is not unheard of them to eat sea birds or other creatures if they get close. They use their long flexible necks to probe crags and holes in the sea floor (of which the Sea of Wrecks has many) where food might hide. They are mostly aquatic, but will bask on the rocks and beaches when it is warm out, or when it is mating season. They have strange and complex barking songs (the Inked Mages think that it might be code). They are hunted for their fur, blubber, and their meat. All of the major wrecking crews eat seal meat. They also all do not hunt the pups. Most lamps and torches in the Sea of Wrecks burn thanks to Long-Necked Seal blubber.

Sea Centipede
 

Everything about this guy is real except the last two sentences.  Nature is the best DM.

Sea Centipedes are horrific looking aquatic centipede. They grow anywhere from one to two feet in length, have segmented bodies that are a dark, greenish-black color, and long pale legs. Underwater they swim powerfully like an eel with horizontal undulations. Water will roll off of their body and they will dry in seconds. They have a large set of mandibles and a venomous bite. While a single bite is not deadly, the venom is excreted along with a pheromone that attracts other Sea Centipedes, causing them to swarm over the wound. When not in the ocean they like to hide under rocks and pieces of driftwood. If the internal organs of a Sea Centipede are all mashed together and fermented they make a powerful psychoactive known as ‘bug meat.’ Inked Mages take bug meat to ‘better understand the universe’ and Dragur mix it in their berserker brew.

Arachnopus

Arachnopusi sounds like a knock-off Bond villain

Arachnopusi are large amphibious cousins to octopuses. They are larger than their sea based cousins, often growing to an arm span of 30 feet. They have a thick toad-like skin that must stay damp with sea water that is a deep reddish purple with bright blue rings. Eight large eyes ring around the base of their bulbous heads. Eight powerful tentacles with suction cups allow Arachnopusi to walk on land, even upside down, albeit slowly. In the water they are extremely fast using jets of water to propel themselves. They have a black beak that hides no only their mouth but two different glands, one that shoots black ink, the other that shoots webbing. Arachnopusi are known for coating their webs in their ink making them all but invisible in darkness, then dropping on their entangled prey. They are prolific breeders laying dozens of egg sacs at a time, each one with thousands of eggs. Thankfully they have relative short lifespans, the upper limits of which are about five years.

Hippocamp:

Aqua horse, not the part of your brain.

Hippocampi are aquatic horse like creatures that are not originally from the Sea of Wrecks. They have the head of a horse, with two front legs that come to great translucent fins, and a long and powerful tail. They general have green-blue scales except for their bellies that are a pale blue. They sometimes have dark blue stripes or patches of gray scales. They live in herds of about twenty members, including foals and are spooked easily. They munch on the abundant see weeds and kelp that grow on the wrecks. The Sahuagin despise them, a mixture of fear and loathing, as the Fin-Folk use Hippocamp riders to hunt down Sahuagin that get to close to their domain. The Hippocampi in the Sea of Wrecks are all feral; either escapes from deep sea Fin-Folk domains not far from the Sea of Wrecks or the descendants of wrecked sea carriages.


Other animals and plants that you may find in the Sea of Wrecks:

Tidal Pools are cool as heck.

Brilliant green and yellow anemone that are squabbling for dominance in the tidal pools, squat ugly fish the color of the rocks, colonies of algae that look like a diminutive copse of palm trees, hairy crabs with tufts of white fur, starfish all the colors of the neon rainbow, slicks of green algae that when dry bloom with small white flowers and smell like a corpse, huge clusters of blue mussels with thin white stripes, pale shells with fractal shapes, sea snails leaving a slimy trail on a wreck, parasitic clusters of barnacles hanging from smashed ships hulls like tumors, jumping limpets that can hop from host to host, fat red blood worms that wriggle now exposed by the waves, cephalopods that scurry into the gaps between submerged rocks, razor clams that pop out of the sands like a switchblade, schools of striped prawns growing fat on plankton, sea roaches that scurry from the rocks when you pick them up, nearly unseen jellyfish with poisonous tentacles, bulbous spiny urchin the colors of a fresh bruise, slow sandcoins that bury into black sands, gray birds that looks like the bastards between a pelican and a pigeon, flocks of flying fish that skip on the crests of waves.

Wrecking Crews

Wrecking Crews

Wrecking Crews is the colloquial name for the various groups of pirates, shipwreck survivors, bandits, and madmen that inhabit the Sea of Wrecks.  Most wrecking crews are tied to a single ship or area and will rarely venture outside of their domains.  However there are three primary wrecking crews, The Ironclads, The Inked Mages, and The Dragur, who hold domination over vast swathes of territories and their machinations and influence can be felt all over the Sea of Wrecks.  The information for these groups is as follows:

Ironclads

Ironclads are a wrecking crew that wears heavily modified scavenged diving suits.  They look something like a cross between a set of full plate, a wet suit, and a robot.  While few in number each Ironclad is a juggernaut.  Their suits are heavily armed and armored.  They fight with equally heavily modified spear guns (counts as heavy crossbows/ballista/etc.).  They have modified Jarred Sun tubes that project light out in front of them (essentially a powerful headlight). Many have rebreathers or hookups that allow them to connect to an air pump station, so they can spend extended amounts of time underwater.

Aspirants are unarmored Ironclads.  They are young and often new to the Sea of Wrecks.  They do a lot of menial tasks for the Ironclads, like scraping off barnacles and rust, making minor repairs, and doing much of the work a traditional squire might do for a knight.  They are all armed with spear guns, but much smaller versions.  Each hopes to get their own suit one day.  Each Ironclad typically has 3-4 Aspirants that work underneath them.

Much like their suits, each Ironclad is very individualistic.  Each Ironclad also views their suit as an extension of themselves.  They will never get out of their suit unless they have too.  They move with a slow and deliberate certainty.  They university dislike it when someone tells then what to do.  They do not believe in charity and expect some sort of payment for any action.  They are cocky, but not arrogant.  Each has earned their way into a suit, and each Ironclad respects that.

Ironclads spend most of their time either scrapping wrecks and adding to their suits or hunting squids and sharks.  Their settlements are open, but at  visitors own risk.  They barter for most of their supplies and will take scrap above gold.  They sell squid jerky, fish meat, shark leather, and strange things they find below the surface of the water.

Inked Mages

Inked Mages are a  wrecking crew that is obsessed with tattoos and magic.  Most are either shaved completely bald (including eyebrows) but may have a single ponytail or top knot.  Inked Mages are covered head to toe in magically infused tattoos that serve as their spell books.  As paper fairs very poorly in the Sea of Wrecks they have their spell books tattooed into their skin.  They wear loose fitting armless robes made from dyed scavenged cloth and armor made from shark leather.  Most keep a dagger hidden on them, just in case.

Inked Mages fight almost exclusively with spells and magic items.  They prefer to fight from range and to blast their opponents apart with magic before closing in.  They make wands and staffs out of heavily scrimshawed and inked bones.  They also have ‘scrolls’ – slaves that they have captured and inked spells on to that they drag out into battle.

Acolytes are young Inked Mages that still have significant portions of virgin skin.  They do a lot of the grunt work for the full mages saving up for new spells and new inks.

The Inked Mages think that if they can figure out how it works, they can control La Luz.  They have a bunch of rumors about the lighthouse (superweapon, mind control, teleporter, space beacons, planar gate, etc).  They collect mirrors, lenses and other glass stuff for experimenting with Jarred Suns.  They will also pay for reports into the lighthouse.  They take slaves which they then tattoo with whatever books they can find, they call these slaves 'fleshbooks'.  You dont want to know what a 'fleshscroll' is.  Sometimes they extract the ink from the books that they find before the degrade thanks to the effects of the Sea of Wrecks.

The Dragur

Early in the history of the Sea of Wrecks a fleet of sea raiders, a Viking like people, were caught in a storm and dashed upon the rocks.  A number of the sea raiders lived through the ordeal.  Those that lived envied the dead as one of the sea raider myths was of a place similar to the Sea of Wrecks.  This mythical land was a sort of purgatory where sea raider warriors who die cowardly deaths before landing for a raid go.  This purgatory traps the souls of the warriors, forcing them to reincarnate, unless they are given a proper sea raider funeral; in a boat loaded with treasure that is then burned.

The Dragur are a wrecking crew that consists most of people who believe that they are reincarnated sea raiders, and who are seeking a proper funeral.  The view the Sea of Wrecks as some sort of purgatory something that has denied them a proper death.  They think that they are caught in a preputial state of reincarnation and if they can have a proper Viking funeral then they can finally leave the Sea of Wrecks.  They abduct new arrivals to the Sea of Wrecks, believing them to be reincarnated versions of their fellow Dragur.  They are not shamed, as each Dragur thinks that they themselves have failed a few times on the reincarnation trick.



One 'original' sea raider still exists in the Sea of Wrecks, Ulf the Black.  Ulf was the navigator for the great sea raider fleet that spawned the Dragur.  Ulf is now a ghost, caught in karmatic limbo for his actions while among the living.  Ulf the Black is the reason why the great many sea raider ships ended up being caught into the grasp of the Sea of Wrecks.  Before the fleet meet its fate Ulf had behind the backs of the other sea raiders brokered a deal between himself and the target of their raid.  He promised to lead the fleet into a storm in exchange for his own princedom.  Unfortunately for Ulf his ship was also claimed by the storm.  His ghost now haunts the ruins of his longship.

Ulf despises The Dragur, as they remind him of the sea raiders he betrayed, and the The Dragur are terrified of him because well, he is a screaming Viking ghost.  He was given a down payment on his betrayal; his hold is filled with silver ingots and whale ivory.  He pays handsomely for anyone who brings him the head of a Dragur.

La Luz: The Burning Heart of the Sea of Wrecks

This is a real place is Spain (minus the blue light)

(La Luz lies at the center of the Sea of Wrecks, a rocky and broken seascape, a vast ship graveyard, dominated by ravaged ships, jagged rocks, and marine detritus.)

La Luz looks like no other lighthouse in any other sea. Dozens of angular columns, each made of pale white stone and of unequal and increasing heights rise out a central triangular base. The columns culminate in a final square pillar reaching just above 150 meters in the air. While at sea, no matter what direction you face the apex column always seems to face towards you. While on the small island where the lighthouse sits, the apex column always appears to be facing away from you.
The oldest reliable records of La Luz are almost 800 years old, reported by some of the earliest Gray Sea sailors. Their description of the tower matches nearly word for word how it looks today. The stone that the lighthouse is made of appears to be immune to the pitting and weathering that plagues other structures located by the salt water. The tower stands in stark contrast above the rotting and rusted hulks below.

The tower emits an incredibly bright blue light that is painful to look directly at. This light can be seen from any given point in the Sea of Wrecks at any given time. The light itself appears to have some sort of hypnotic effect, sailors that stare too long into it become mesmerized and absentminded, steering their boats towards the light like moths to a fire. It is difficult to break a sailor out of the spell of the azure light of La Luz. It seems only the violence of a hull smashing into rocks seems to break the trance.

Strange still is the source of the light. No fire burns at the apex, nor is there any sort of spell or magical sources. The only thing at the top of the tower is a large mirror set at a 45 degree angle and a large focusing lens. The light of La Luz comes not from the top, but from the bottom.
A great pillar of blue light issues forth from the center of La Luz. Entering the lighthouse, even during day, is like emerging from a dark room into the bright sun. Even with eye protection it would take you a moment for your eyes to adjust to the light. A great triangular staircase goes both up and down the tower. Climbing up the tower the light gets less intense and at the top eye protection that would be required on the ground floor is no longer needed.

Climbing down, the light is brighter the farther down one goes. After a few meters most eye protection is useless and one needs to close their eyes or else be blinded by the light. Many of those who have attempted to delve the depths of La Luz beyond this point have carved instructions, warnings, and their own names into the stone.

KILLROY WAS HERE

A few more meters and any exposed skin will begin to tan turning quickly to sunburn. Farther still and closed eyes no longer keep out the light, it has become bring enough to blind through eyelids. Special fully enclosed helmets are necessary to make any further progress without suffer permanent eye loss.

Going much further than this requires a full reflective suit as it has become so bright that anything capable of absorbing light will burn. No one has been able to make it to the bottom of La Luz. Even the most reflective of suits fail after a point and no magic spell or alchemist’s potion seems to halt the burning of the light.

The light of La Luz can be harvested. Past the point where a protective suit is required special mirrored jars and boxes know as Jarred Suns are filled with captures of the light. These Jarred Suns are particularly prized by hunters of the undead and by adventures alike. If opened a Jarred Sun will issue forth bright blue light, much like that of La Luz, but unfocused. The light is comparable to a torch, but has the benefit of required no fuel, issuing no smoke, and being able to used where a normal fire would be unable to be made. Destroying a Jarred Sun creates a burst of light, the issuance of which is like that of a thousand noons, which besides blinding most will severely harm most light sensitive creatures, if not outright annihilate.