What to put in the ships' graveyard?

[Kol Korran]

Hi. I'm looking to fill in a little gap in the adventure to come.

I've prepared most things to the coming session in my pirates campaign. The party (3rd level, 3 of them melee, with ToB abilities, and 1 beguiler) is sort of besieged on an island... their enemies can't attack them while on the island, but they guard the main bay. on the other side of the small island there exist a ship the party might use in stealth. (They may choose other options, but I'd like to be prepared non the less).

the road from their current position to the other side goes through a fairly massive junk yard of boats of all sizes, from all races, from all ages of history... a virtual graveyard. No one knows how They got here, especially not deep in the island. Some people who venture in come back with interesting tales. Some don't come back.

But what is in there? I'd like to avoid just putting monsters against the party (though a monster or two might be nice, if interesting enough), and I'd prefer to avoid undead. I'm looking for something a bit more atmospheric, giving flavor (Tropical voodoo islands setting, as cliche as it is). looking for 1-3 interesting things on the way, but not as the session's main attraction.

I'm thinking of some of the ships' ghosts/ spirits perhaps opening a conversation with the PCs, perhaps even giving them some token to put on their (future) vessel. But what sort of conversation do you have with a ship?

Other than that I'm really, really stumped. Please help?

(search word: piratewitch)

[Gwendol]

That damned crab?

[ILM]

That damned crab?
Alternatively, normal crabs. THOUSANDS of them, swarming out of the ships to scavenge what little meat is on the PCs' bones (there's a Swarm template somewhere, work with that).

Maybe once the PCs rid the carcasses of the crabs, the grateful spirits of the ships creak and shift, one supporting beam breaking under the weight of an adjacent ship, and a magical ship's wheel rolls down to the PCs' feet. Maybe it increases the ship's speed, or makes it easier to navigate, or resistant to fire, or whatever.

[Eldan]

Crab swarms. Look up Christmas Island. (I think it was Christmas Island).

That said, you didn't want monsters.

How about the graveyard has a magical effect of some kind that preserves ships for a really long time? Maybe even the corpses of hte crew? Let them wander around, looking at transports filled with barely composed warriors in feather cloaks and obsidian weaponry, that decay as soon as they are touched. The remains of a famous pirate, sitting on a tiny raft, still clutching a map to his chest, holding a pistol to his head. The ancient conquistadores, fallen down over the flag they wanted to plant.

[Diarmuid]

Some goblins or gnomes and some odd animated items or low powered constructs, and a bunch of traps that dont necessarily do damage but make terrain more difficult or hamper actions in some way.

With all that junk, you figure someone would do something interesting with it.

[KingOfLaughter]

Land sharks? Crazy inhabitants of the island that use the boats as homes, but are themselves unsure of how they got there? A giant tree that all the boats seem to be sort of using a center of the odd masterpiece?

[laeZ1]

If I were a player plagued by curiosity in this scene, I might want to explore the ships for treasure and answers. As the DM, you should know how those ships got there, if the captain's logs might have any hints, what cargo they were carrying (even if it's just spices and rum), just in case the players get curious enough.

If you're trying to freak your players out a bit, by coincidence, point out (if they ask of course) that all of the ships have something in common. (perhaps all of the crowsnests are busted up in a similar manner), and when they get to the ship they're looking for, make mention (even if the players don't ask) that this ship also has it in common. What would have been aplication of a level 0 (maybe level 1) spell, turns into suspicious players, and the fear of a "cursed ship".

P.S. if the ship is actually cursed, and you don't want them to know, obviously, don't do what I just suggested.

[North_Ranger]

And the Robin Hobb fanboy in me demands that I suggest the following:

A sentient ship, with its figurehead actually moving and talking. But, you know, still attached to the ship.

[Flickerdart]

Animated Objects - ships possessed by the souls of the sailors who perished at sea.

[Gallowglass]

Golems or Automotons made out of the ships remains. They spend their days hiding among the wreckage, but lumber out when the PCS wander through just trying to preserve their secrecy and safety. Picture 10-15 ft tall creatures made out of ships timbers strung together with line and sailcloth. One has a ship's wheel as a head, one has giant sail wings instead of arms so it can fly short distances. One has a cannon or ballista in its chest that it can fire. Maybe some smallers ones made out of tools and mops and swords that skitter about under their feet.

If the PCs are able to defuse the situation and trade with the golems, they might even be able to piece together a better ship for them out of scrap to improve their odds.

As for who made these automatons. Maybe a gnarled old wizard lives there in the heart of the junkyard. Maybe he used to live there but died long ago, but his creations keep fixing themselves or making new generations of golems.

[kardar233]

A Siren. Both for the mythological and FF5 references, if anyone gets the latter.

[Invader]

That damned crab?

This was my immediate thought! lol

[Incorrect]

The galleon figures of the ships might have something to say.
They are of cause stuck and they cant all hear each other, so they relay messages between each other, which has led to a great deal of intrigue, as one of the central figures twists the words of the messages he relays.
Maybe the warrior figure has fallen in love with the fair maiden figure, but she is too far away for her to hear him and he dosent trust the ram figure to deliver her messages. If only someone with legs would help him.
The fair maiden figure has always wanted legs, and would be quite fascinated by anyone who is not a galleon figure.




A crazed pirate captain and his crew have strung their ship up in ropes hanging from a cliff or tree. The wind moving the ship makes it feel like waves.
Perhaps the captain is too far out to realize that he is not on the ocean any more, and the crew loves him too much to tell him.


A crazy marooned sailor can be of great help to the PCs, but he will only help them if they can give him the one single thing he misses the most. Cheese!
He sings them a catchy tune.

[eviljav]

A few quick ideas:

Maybe this is an interplanar dead shipyards, with old abandoned vessels from other worlds, and a portal to the other world (worlds) in there.

Misty and unending - if you try to travel straight through it, it never ends (just more ships of increasingly alien designs). You might want to create a quick random ship generator for that, so it's easy to handle what they might find.

But, you need at least one ship that's built on the back of a giant skeletal turtle. :)

For more mundane encounters, things that eat dead ships. Giant termites. Demon barnacles? An animated reef, or maybe an iceberg elemental?

If you're worried about to much treasure, you can say that these have been here a very long time and have been picked over many times over the eons.

[Parra]

Birds. Seagulls. Lots of them. The longer the PC's spend in the Ship Graveyard the more of them appear and at an increased rate if they stop to investigate something.
Don't actually have the birds do anything hostile mind you. Just try to play up Hitchcock's The Birds angle on them a bit on them.

As an addition to Eldans idea for a preserving magic keep the ship and crew mostly intact and unaffected by age. If they investigate the ships have the dead bodies move while not being watched.
It could be as simple as heads facing the PC's, or dead sailors dead hands moving to rest on weapons or as freaky as the Weeping Angles from Dr. Who.

Edit.
If they investigate a ship or two let them find a dining hall with a feast prepared and all the food looking fabulously prepared. When they leave let one of them look back and have all the food be rotten. Only really works if they eat the food.

[Kol Korran]

Wow! Thanks for all the wondeful ideas. I'll furnish some of them more, and though I don't adress all posts, they have got me thinking...


That damned crab?
I heard this creature mentioned a few times, but I haven't seen it. I understand it's quite deadly, Isn't it? the party will only be level 3. I think I'll stay away from, also because...


Crab swarms. Look up Christmas Island. (I think it was Christmas Island).
The party allread has a sort of a curse on them that crabs are following them, currently they are eating at their ship's hull, but they will get bigger, and bigger... But I think that for exactly this reason the crab swarms might work wonderfully! Don't need to be that dangerous, just distrubing in the "they follow us everywhere!" kind of feeling. Thanks! (Oh, and eventually they might get to that damned crab, or a few of them?)


How about the graveyard has a magical effect of some kind that preserves ships for a really long time? Maybe even the corpses of hte crew? Let them wander around, looking at transports filled with barely composed warriors in feather cloaks and obsidian weaponry, that decay as soon as they are touched.
This might work especially well, since The campaign is still new, and this would be a cool way to introduce a bit of history, of different cultures and so on.


The remains of a famous pirate, sitting on a tiny raft, still clutching a map to his chest, holding a pistol to his head. QUOTE]
This idea got stuck in my head. Only thing i need to figure out is where does his map leads? A nice side track clue...

[QUOTE=laeZ1;13808445]If I were a player plagued by curiosity in this scene, I might want to explore the ships for treasure and answers. As the DM, you should know how those ships got there, if the captain's logs might have any hints, what cargo they were carrying (even if it's just spices and rum), just in case the players get curious enough.
I have a few ideas as how the ship got there, but nothing too concrete. i may spread a few clues, but I'd love this to be kept a mystery. I prefer not to dwell on this too much, as the players will have a bit of an emergency on their hand allready. I'll need to find my balance in how much detail there is here. The idea is to keep the place mostly atmospheric, not as a central part of things, and perhaps supply plot hooks for later.


Golems or Automotons .
Intersting idea- so shabby construct living on the island? I'll ned to think about it. I wish to keep the mysticism of the ships themselves, automatons infer powerful magic, and it's not quite the place for it here. But i'll keep it in mind, maybe it could fit somehow?


The galleon figures of the ships might have something to say.
They are of cause stuck and they cant all hear each other, so they relay messages between each other, which has led to a great deal of intrigue, as one of the central figures twists the words of the messages he relays.
Maybe the warrior figure has fallen in love with the fair maiden figure, but she is too far away for her to hear him and he dosent trust the ram figure to deliver her messages. If only someone with legs would help him.
The fair maiden figure has always wanted legs, and would be quite fascinated by anyone who is not a galleon figure.

This is an AWESOME idea! have multiple figure heads of many ships making a sort of "posting interaction". great idea! And as you suggested- they may just take one of them with them? One of them is playing the bastard lady charmer, it might be cool to hook him up with a figure head and then have her be jealous of all the rest he tries to seduce.


A crazed pirate captain and his crew have strung their ship up in ropes hanging from a cliff or tree. The wind moving the ship makes it feel like waves.
[Perhaps the captain is too far out to realize that he is not on the ocean any more, and the crew loves him too much to tell him./QUOTE]
This sounds like a cool and amusing idea, one too good to pass, it's IN!

[QUOTE=eviljav;13811962]A few quick ideas:

Misty and unending - if you try to travel straight through it, it never ends (just more ships of increasingly alien designs). You might want to create a quick random ship generator for that, so it's easy to handle what they might find.
I think i will do that. My general thought is that the party needs to cross the but the mist makes it hard to find things (though survival can help), but different "inhabitants" of the place (The above mentioned figure heads, undead, and possibly automatons) might direct the party a bit. but I like your idea of random "navigation". My only concern is that I did a similar thing in a previous campaign, which went only so-so.


But, you need at least one ship that's built on the back of a giant skeletal turtle. :) Is this a specific reference? :smallconfused:



have the dead bodies move while not being watched.
It could be as simple as heads facing the PC's, or dead sailors dead hands

Edit.
If they investigate a ship or two let them find a dining hall with a feast prepared and all the food looking fabulously prepared. When they leave let one of them look back and have all the food be rotten. Only really works if they eat the food. loved both these ideas... i'll see if i can fit them in.


Thanks a lot everyone! This looks better and better allready!

[Parra]

For images of bizarre ships you should look into some of the old spelljammer ships (a google search throws up plenty). Some of them look fairly bizarre and alien, Illithid ships in particular.

[Gwendol]

The crab is found here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a

There are some other creatures there. A word of warning is that the crab could be an unbeatable encounter, and should perhaps be run as such (PC's need to find a way to escape it rather than try and fight).

[Steckie]

Perhaps these ships are actually a water dragon's hoard?
The dragon used to collect ships while roaming the seas, using magic or a Kobold crew to direct them where he wanted them to go and to capture/purchase more ships.
One day when he sailed into a sheltered bay for supplies, the entrance collapsed after him, creating the island the players are on now.
He sent his Kobolds to dig a way out, but one by one they died. Eventually he started digging himself and got stuck.

He now wants the players to free him and his fleet, in return they will get 1 ship of their choice from his fleet.

[Kol Korran]

The crab is found here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a


So that's the crab... Hmmm, I won't be using it right now, perhaps at a later date, thanks anyway.


Perhaps these ships are actually a water dragon's hoard?
The dragon used to collect ships while roaming the seas, using magic or a Kobold crew to direct them where he wanted them to go and to capture/purchase more ships.
One day when he sailed into a sheltered bay for supplies, the entrance collapsed after him, creating the island the players are on now.
He sent his Kobolds to dig a way out, but one by one they died. Eventually he started digging himself and got stuck.

He now wants the players to free him and his fleet, in return they will get 1 ship of their choice from his fleet.
By water dragon do you mean a water breathing dragon or a specific kind of dragon? Anyway, it's way too early to put dragons into the mix, and not the appropriate place campaigns wise. Plus- there are hundreds of ship wrecks on the island, most probably bigger than even collosal dragons (the way D&D sizes for creatures and vessels work).

And I'd prefer the explantion for the ships being here to be mystical in nature. "A dragon brought them" won't do. Thanks for the suggestion though, it was an interesting one.

[Noldo]

A group of dryads? Refluffed to have ship stride instead of tree stride, each bound to single ship.

[Hopeless]

Have you ever watched the Goonies?

The Pirate ship in that movie is all I'm saying as an example!

[Hirax]

From MM3: "Beautiful and enchanting, glaistigs are fey that lurk in and around pools, lakes, and streams. They have an insatiable craving for the blood of mortals, beguiling victims to come close to their lair in order to drain them. They are commonly mistaken for vampires because of their bloodsucking technique, but they are not undead."

[Thomasinx]

Don't forget Ragamoffyns!

Those monsters catch players by surprise every time!

[Downysole]

I really like the idea of animated bowspirits / figureheads. Taking one for the PC's own ship would be amazing.

It's like they would have their very own plot hook with historical references and everything wherever they travel.