A Sailing Campaign Approaches! Mysterious Heroes of the Seas Arrive!

[raygun goth]

I'm planning an ocean-based campaign in a long-term campaign setting. At least half the PCs own suits/dive gear, and at least one of the PCs can breathe underwater.


Think 1940s bio/manapunk, with a heavy emphasis on internally consistent magic.


I am trying to think of cool stuff for the PCs to encounter without having to actually go to land. Specific nations/flotillas/creatures work. I have gotten a suggestion to steal liberally from Sunless Sea and I will likely be doing so – and that's the kind of flavor I'm looking for anyway, just with a more 40s/50s vibe.


Other sources of inspiration include: Godzilla, Johnny Quest, Oh Brother Where Art Thou/The Odyssey (though much less The Odyssey), 20,000 Leagues, Life Aquatic, Baron Munchausen, Atlantis the Lost Empire, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Sphere (the novel), Waterworld, Johnny Cypher, Captain Fathom, Valley of the Dinosaurs, Journey to the Center of the Earth (the animated series), and Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea.


Types of places I've been thinking about have been:


SURFACE LEVEL


1. Cities of both modern and futuristic look that are partially submerged. Skyscrapers sticking up out of the water with planks and bridges between them that people live on. This stuff's been in the setting since '97 and it'll be awesome to finally show it off.


2. Coral reefs that are exposed during extreme tides. Think of tree-like corals interspersed with these giant calcium bowls formed by Siboglinids so that there are huge tide pools cresting just over the water's surface.


3. Giant swimming kaiju – technically it's “land,” but who cares, kaiju with ruins on their backs and possibly weird cults.


4. Other self sufficient boats and flotillas. Need some good ones, preferably with weird cults and weird needs on them.


5. Sargassum junk seas – think a combination of the junk piles in the Pacific and the old mariner tales of seaweed ship graveyards. Also preferably with weird critters and weird cults.


6. Pirates! and/or Spies! Obviously. Both of the air and oceanic variety. These can be underwater, too, in submarines. Also, a possible monologuist villain with strange science devices and terrible mutant minions.



BELOW WATER


1. Abyssal plains with strange grasses and stranger grazers of varying sizes.


2. Strange stone structures, natural and artificial alike.


3. Cities from the Fourth Age still operable and working – this gives a cool opportunity to do dungeon puzzles with seawater pipes.


4. Obvious, obligatory, magical coral reefs (see surface level)


5. Phoonkt cities – one of the setting's races, crab monsters from another universe on the run from enemies from other universes, who got all their organic technology, or so they claim, from humans. From an even other another universe.


_____________________________


This is where the playground comes in. What are some other cool things to encounter and weird cultures to deal with on the open ocean? What else should I populate into my crazy ocean thing? My only rule is no solid land. It's all aquatic somehow.

[BootStrapTommy]

Sounds like the only thing you haven't covered is an underwater Objectivist dystopia...

I've always courted for my campaign the idea of a city built in an atoll, with huge, metal walls built atop the outer reef's sand bar for protection (as much from wind and water as otherwise). The city itself has no real land, just a mazelike series of interconnecting docks. House boats provide most shelter, while a ring of stilt houses are built into the inner base of the wall. There's one path in and out, between two enormous lighthouses, spanned by a huge bridge (a primarily defensive feature). Never actually felt it quit fit anywhere, but it would make a great Pirate Haven or "buy anything" kind of market...

[dragonfuit88]

A few thoughts come to mind (as a diver).
I'm assuming dive gear from your time period mean big brass helmets with air hoses to the surface. Air lines can be cut, pumps tampered with, air source polluted...
Dive gear needs regular maintenance, so that could prompt some creative thinking, and/or force interactions with other groups.
Ship wreaks always need to be explored, both on sand bars and under water. Maybe they could even be hired to recover a lost treasure or even raise and entire ship off the bottom of the sea.
Lots of cultures eat hard to collect sea creatures, like sea urchins (uni). It seems mundane but, of course can lead into an adventure of sorts.
Oh, and don't forget big bad creatures with excellent camouflage
Pressure of deep waters crushing and breaking this
Air expanding too much by rapid accent (bends)


As a gamer I think Atlantis, and that's about it. Sorry if this wasn't much help. =/

[halcyonforever]

don't forget what happens to a diver under enough pressure when their pump goes out in one of those bell helmets.

Aptly titled... A helmet full of body...

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/a-helmet-full-of-body/

[Grim_Wicked]

This post finally dragged me out of my lurker's cave! Great idea! :smallbiggrin:

Have you thought about how to feed the cities? Basic needs can often make general ideas very specific and original. Maybe the cities have huge underwater pastures with kelp, or they keep shoals of trout, if that's viable. If not, just sustain that **** with magic. Or they have shark kennels for hunting and/or protection. That stuff'd make for interesting adventures.

Additionally, you could have nomadic tribes, both scouring the surface for drifting masses of kelp or some other desirable thing, and underwater, consisting of aquatic creatures like locathah or merfolk, or, in shallower parts, even something like lizardfolk? Don't know if those are good at swimming, so that might be racist...

Also, what about deep sea trenches? Lightless abysses where evil, eyeless monstrosities rule. There could be camps around the mouths of those trenches to keep the monsters from escaping, to keep adventurers from going in, or to find ancient treasures in the deeps.

What about underwater volcanoes? Ice sheets? Sandy underwater deserts with just some manta rays and mysterious earthquakes? Patches of static sand? Dangerous currents or winds that drag you down into the cold depths where lethal coral spikes and sea anemones and the half-devoured remains of previous unlucky visitors lurk?

[raygun goth]

This post finally dragged me out of my lurker's cave! Great idea! :smallbiggrin:

Have you thought about how to feed the cities?

I will part-answer with a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC5g9M5FAq4).

And a short film (https://vimeo.com/45725037).

There are things in the sea with tentacles the size of super carriers. There are creatures so vast they use hurricanes as optical camouflage. Because of some magical effects of the closest continent to the campaign, there will always be enormous and vast numbers of fish, shrimp, lobster, sea grass, jellyfish, sea cucumbers, urchin, octopus, elasmosaurs, tylosaurs, and pliosaurs.


Basic needs can often make general ideas very specific and original. Maybe the cities have huge underwater pastures with kelp, or they keep shoals of trout, if that's viable. If not, just sustain that **** with magic. Or they have shark kennels for hunting and/or protection. That stuff'd make for interesting adventures.

Additionally, you could have nomadic tribes, both scouring the surface for drifting masses of kelp or some other desirable thing

the other bits of this question! Nomadic Tribes: it's funny you mention that, I've got like eight or nine cultures plotted out at the moment? I'm looking for other ideas for some specific ones.

http://orig08.deviantart.net/efa6/f/2015/253/0/8/019_jpg_by_mr_author-d992xhj.png

Desperate-Food-Rope
These are ropes covered in the matrix for mutliple species of long-hair algae and can be dried for long periods of time. When thrown in the water, they grow into thick mats of food – it's not great stuff, but it's for lean times. The resulting algae can be mashed, dried, and mixed with flies to make patties and then fried or sauteed. It doesn't often serve large-scale operations, but if you've got a couple hundred people, a thousand feet of rope can feed them all for weeks.

Mixture of Technologies
http://orig12.deviantart.net/b8b3/f/2015/253/b/3/symbiosis_art_book_09b_by_mr_author-d992xgg.jpg
On the water, people use whatever works, and since the Niobraran sea is centrally located between multiple major sea powers, a mixture of technology finds its way into every day life. Monstrous life forms from Elohino and even Jalpa biomancy form hulls, water filters, food racks, air conditioning, power plants, or propulsion systems, using muscle of bio-aetheric emission to run Calpolli turbines. Ancient technology pulled from the sea floor gets strapped and bolted in to whatever works, and all three environments are exploited for whatever they can offer. Airships plow the skies and the seas, vessels too large or heavy to lift with sky metal and skytraps serve as floating islands for underwater and aerial operations, and submarine nomads putter around at the borders of the nonhuman empires of the Phoonkt. Summoners call up avatars and drill holes and armor them up for sea travel, anything waterproof finds itself part of a watertight system.

Kalapai
http://orig01.deviantart.net/458f/f/2015/253/b/5/98a4f4fd16d280a51caba087a2e08532_by_mr_author-d992xgm.jpg
One of many ethnic groups that live entirely on the sea; in these days, there are as many people on the ocean as there are on land. The Kalapai are descendants of a group composed of survivors from Norwago's Age and a mixture of Elohino and southwestern Calpolli/Maca peoples. The Kalapai live in loosely connected fleets of small ships centered around a large battleship or super carrier, and prefer to collect on family boats. While they have air supports in their roster, they believe the sky and the undersea were given to the holy beasts; humans may only visit such places, not live there. They tend to shy away from large-scale use of biomancy in favor of its use in salvage and personal equipment; very few people go around their day without fungus credit cards or small bio-etheric generators. They prize elemental awahee, and Earth awahee often hold high positions in the fleets. Soukous priests take the “mask” terminology from Elohino very seriously, and as they gain rank, encase their entire heads in machinery designed to warp sound and sight into that which is spiritually acceptable.



consisting of aquatic creatures like locathah or merfolk, or, in shallower parts, even something like lizardfolk? Don't know if those are good at swimming, so that might be racist...

Also, what about deep sea trenches? Lightless abysses where evil, eyeless monstrosities rule. There could be camps around the mouths of those trenches to keep the monsters from escaping, to keep adventurers from going in, or to find ancient treasures in the deeps.

Locathah, Sahuagin, and merfolk need some converting to fit the setting... but!

But, oh, man, what a great set of ideas!

Undersea Empires

Not just the Phoonkt dwell in the depths. Humans with spiritual lineages that breathe better underneath the waves, pressurized cities, and other forms of undersea survival are just as prevalent as cities in the air – which is to say, not very, but still hiding in the strangest of places. Often these are cultures limited to one or two settlements, though some span long ranges in especially shallow areas, such as those found close to the edge of the Sea of Scattered Flowers. Much of these cultures have little to do with anything higher than the surface, which they typically only enter for fresh water or metals. Those with access to pressurized buildings or cities from before the end of Norwago's age might never need to come to the surface at all, and some of them are as mysterious as the phoonkt.



Tsa'hah-dgvn (“CHA. Hah-gd-vuhn” - "deep water people in chrysalis")
http://palladium-store.com/mm5/graphics/00000002/images/Rifts-Lemuria-Chitin-Armor.jpg

To call them one people would be a mistake. Each Tsa'hah-dgvn settlement is its own culture, its own infrastructure, and its own people. They are drawn from the survivors of Norwago's Age and anyone who becomes lost and lonely at sea that they happen to find. The tribes rarely emerge from the ocean depths for anything other than salvage, pirate action, or to recover something lost. Most of them grow their homes or take over reefs from less dangerous things at the edges of the great abysses; most Tsa'hah-dgvn religion is devoted in some way to the lightless plains below, either with reverence to whatever dwells there, fear of dead and drowned gods, or service as guides so that unwary adventurers do not feed the deep, for worry that it might take a liking to the flesh of sun-baked humans. Most Tsa'hah-dgvn are never seen out of their armor, and refer to themselves as “chrysalis.” Shallower tribes refer to themselves as Lo'kat-hah, or simply "shallow water people."




What about underwater volcanoes? Ice sheets? Sandy underwater deserts with just some manta rays and mysterious earthquakes? Patches of static sand? Dangerous currents or winds that drag you down into the cold depths where lethal coral spikes and sea anemones and the half-devoured remains of previous unlucky visitors lurk?

Always.

I keep forgetting you get awesome meadows underwater sometimes.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4450522562_ff26b73822.jpg


Then there's this park in Austria that does this every year (http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/06/article-2414013-1BA76B63000005DC-2_964x632.jpg).

Anyway good stuff, this is really helping out!

[raygun goth]

More world-related stuff:

Voices and Visions

Inside everybody's head is this little niggling sensation that there's something bigger than themselves out there. It's what makes people explore when they're kids, assume intelligence behind random events, and think trees dropped sticks for them to play with. We grow out of it, of course, but that's not because we're stunted in any way – our lives become a more immediate concern. It's “the Whisper,” and in people like scientists and the like it never goes away. She's connected to us, like we're connected to her, just like everything that has a living, physical presence on this planet. When she needs to talk to us, it's through subtle changes in our day-to-day. A bunch of school kids whose tests you grade earn scores that when strung together in the alphabetical order of their first names forms a cipher that gives you the answer to a secret question in your mind. People walking in a crowded square are acoustically linked so that their footsteps cancel out and form the sounds to the back beat of a song that, when you listen to it, tells you the name of book you're supposed to read and there's notes in the margin that provide you with advice for a dilemma you're facing. Not everyone can hear it, and not everyone who does is entirely sane.

Sometimes, though, all her little messages get lost. They're misdirected, unheard, drowned out in the cacophony of life. Not always our fault. Storms go off course all the time. Jungles have even more little parts than cities, and to set things right, to talk to us directly, or to move something out of the way, she gives birth. Deep in these vast purple caverns lined with crystal and swarming teotl, creatures on a scale small enough for her to imagine directly but big enough to get the point across can be spawned. These are Voices. Clenched fist might be more appropriate, but they're the closest thing you'll get to a direct communication that she needs something.

Another sometimes. There are people who can hear and see the ciphers and the interconnectedness of everything on an instinctual level, people who can put together things that our normal brains can't even see together. They're called "visions" in common parlance, though there's names for them in every culture, and popular lore is that they can see the future. It's more complicated than that, but the smarter ones can map out the potential future fairly easily from what they see. Pretty much every government has a rigorous testing process for sorting them out from insanity, as well as for employing them. Visions tend to know what they're looking at when they see a weird pattern in crowd movement, but the problem comes in trying to get information out of them - it's often as impossible to understand what they're talking about as it would be to describe a color to someone who can't see it.

[raygun goth]

Tso'wangeh
Living on the edge of the Sehlanga Abyss, this chrysalis people are born, grow old, and die in their armor. They live in thick mud homes built from slime harvested from a species of worm that lives at the edge of the trench. They guard the outside world from the trench, and they say that everything coming from the trench is a demon wrapped in disguise, from the tiniest shrimp to the most luminescent kaiju. The Tso'wangeh believe that two brothers informed them of this fact, before they went down together and returned as demonic beings. They are currently at war with the Kalengah, who believe the same, but they say that the Kalengah's adulthood rite turns them into such beings, for the Tso'wangeh have seen children go down into the trench to battle the creatures there, and no one returns without being first replaced.


Ranger J's Rock-a-Lua
This is a shack restaurant marked by a giant googie “J” tower and made from about six other boats. On the outside, it's a mess of rust, broken glass, glued and nailed barrels, giant mechanical mooring claws, and towers of coral and sheet metal. The inside isn't much better. It's pretty obvious to even cursory inspection that it's just some reef sticking up out of the water and attendant boats strapped to the rocks. At low tide, the Rock-a-Lua sits above the water and must be accessed by staircase. At high tide, the docks are usable.
“Ranger J” is long dead, but the current owner of the joint, Jonotsi, maintains the place with a sort of post-war flair that only a machine could come up with. He's named dishes after bombs, weapons, and tragedies of the old war, and has desserts named after several nearby island (he calls them “dessert islands”). He's a great big boxy golem, with a huge domed head of glass that has turned thick yellow, and his component parts are never without little barnacle starters. The usual band on stage is the “Red Elvises,” who have a sort of thickly-accented surf rock sound.


A Prison for Something
This is just a big coquina cube sticking up out of the water. There's a little dock, some services (namely refueling stations for just about everything), and that's about it. The dockhands are always nervous and short with visitors. They refuse to let anyone into the block, call it “the prison,” and are known for asking malformed questions to everyone that comes through. Anyone who answers with anything other than confusion are typically shot.

[dragonfuit88]

First off can I say I am truly impressed by the work you have done so far. Graphic designer?
Second, a few other random thoughts about natural sea creatures that you can use to add flair to your sea cultures. 1. Parrot fish build cocoons of mucus to protect themselves at night. You could potentially have an entire culture living in little (or big) mucus bubble cities.
2. Bio-luminescence is everywhere, not just in the deep dark parts. If you were to go underwater at night and turn off all your lights you would get a natural light show much like fireflies on land.
2b. You could have a race that bio-luminescences in some way both above and below the water.
2c? on that note, at night made made lights from the surface look like the freaking alien invasion; as beams of light descend toward you.

[raygun goth]

Fish With Beaks
This community travels along the Gawabong current; it's a small flotilla, with maybe twenty boats at most. Every fall there is a festival held for any children born that year, and they are thrown overboard to the schools of beaked fish that live in the flotilla's shadow. The fish blow bubbles of air and mucous over the children and defend them from threats. As the children grow, they learn that the fish are really looking out for the best interest of the flotilla. The fish retrieve food and fresh water for the flotilla, and they let anyone in. Leaving is a whole other matter; their sharp beaks can tear holes in boats, and they have more terrible things wrapped in mucous beneath the boats - the thing they call the Violet God. The fish speak through an interpreter, Tahuca, an old man whose stomach and intestines have been removed and replaced with a fish so that he may speak with their voice.

Phoonkt Worshipping a Statue
This small outlying tribe of phoonkt – perhaps no more than fifty members – lives well into the seas that humans often sail. They have constructed a shallow-water monastery open to the sky in the center of which is a massive stone human hand that breaks the waves. At noon, standing at the base of the worship floor makes the hand appear to grasp the sun. The phoonkt here eagerly attend to anyone who visits and ask them to sacrifice something to the open pit under the monastery so the hand will release the sun each day. If visitors refuse, then the phoonkt will find something the visitors may use to pay.

[MrZJunior]

Ghost ships are a classic possibility.

But when I think 1950's ocean two things come to mind, weapons testing and tiki bars.

[MrZJunior]

Expanding on my previous post you could look into some things like the Lucky Dragon Incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Fukury%C5%AB_Maru or other such incidents for inspiration.

The US was getting up to all sorts of weird stuff in the Pacific like Starfish Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime where a nuclear bomb was detonated near the edge of space. The magnetic pulse was so powerful that it blew out streetlights in Hawaii almost 900 miles away and cut off telephone communications between the islands. Here are some pictures of what that looked like from Honolulu:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Starfish5.JPG

From the right angle in the right frame of mind that would look an awful lot like a miniature sun.

[raygun goth]

Reification Weaponry
http://img.aegen.nl/IN/Global%20Ruin.jpg
To understand reifier technology and weapons, magic must first be understood.

The first thing is that everyone uses magic, but not everyone is a magician or a wonder-worker. The very act of walking down the road or turning over a rock is filled with magic. Utilizing a skill is a form of magic; banging on the head of an axe in the forge or opening a window is a complex series of interactions between your mana and the mana of the object you are manipulating, relying on bargains and acquiescence of the world to your desires. That is the nature of things.

The power of the magician, however, is in skipping steps. Making the window open on its own, dipping hands in molten metal that does not burn because you have made a deal with it not to burn you and pulling out the head of an axe, these are the things a magician does.

Certain types of magic get what is close to a free pass: if you're higher up on the food chain, you can usually just do it. Locksmiths can open locks with some sweet talk and a tool, awahee are born with the ability to tell their elements what to do (within limits, as outlined below), and most adventurer types can tell their fire to best light itself before they do something drastic. New magicians getting into the game can temper their names by demonstrating mental and authoritative superiority over stuff. Magic is the act of getting things to do what you want by showing them you know better than they do. On the other hand, there's certain things that never get a free pass no matter how good you are, and you always need to go in and punch them wielding arguments and the armor of authority.

These include, but are not limited to: curses (because you are often not the person who placed the curse), diseases (who are just trying to do their job), mind control, mind reading (both because a person's mental geography is a place where they have absolute authority and you have to convince their subconscious mind that you are in charge of that most private of places), and shapeshifting (you are subverting the entire cycle of life itself by saying you know better).

Doing these things usually requires entering a metaphorical geographical location and punching everything you see until it relents or sweet talking it. Again, you can get better at this by cutting your teeth on spiritual things and getting a name for yourself. Your reputation can be a weapon. You also run the risk of making that thing more powerful as it becomes wise to your tricks or your fighting style, which is why this is frowned upon when it comes to the untrained fighting diseases or curses.

Aside from using mana to force an object, process, or spirit into acquiescence, whether by family line or obligation, there are methods by which processes and forces can be combined to achieve work results. Understanding these processes is very important for most forms of metal working; the more you know about how something works before you start telling it what to do, the less you'll have to actually force it to do something to behave in a way that isn't in its primary nature. The vast majority of people just don't have the mana to tell a giant stone block to fly, so they throw it on log rollers.

An item to which you've given instructions can't just endlessly repeat them forever, so utilizing the base properties of materials is often more efficient for the purposes of creating an infrastructure than doing a little song and dance routine. The wonder-workers who first experimented with such things are responsible for a wide variety of advancements and techniques, from complexities such as teotl extraction to simple solutions such as trapezoidal doorways in earthquake-prone areas.

Basically, magic is a contract between you and some aspect of the world to act within its purview on your behalf. Only if you apply your own power to that aspect can it start doing things outside its purview: doors open and close, prevent things from passing through, block light, and so on, which is the door using applying own mana – but it can't get up, splinter into a person-shaped thing and start punching your enemies unless you're willing to lend it the weight of your own mana.

In Nuwep philosophy (and in a few other places) the nature of these contracts revolves around the decay, recovery, and creation of a series of elements - these are the classic elements, of course. These elements are both physical and memetic. A meme or zoidea have elements as well - a new idea, as an example, is a Fire-based creature, not because it physically burns things, but because it is a new idea - it will become something else once it gets cemented in the noosphere properly:

Air - Leg Movement, Bravery (Enemy - Fire, Becomes - Water)

Water - Arm Movement, Wit (Enemy - Earth, Becomes - Ether)

Ether - Eye and Mouth Movement, Mysticism (Enemy - Air, Becomes - Fire)

Fire - Hand Movement, Inventiveness (Enemy - Water, Becomes - Earth)

Earth - Resting, Stoicism (Enemy - Ether, Becomes - Air)

In their cycles, each of these elements is modified by the presence of another:

Light - Maintains the current state of that element.
Darkness - Begins the transition from one element to the next.
Wood - Finishes the transition from one element to the next.

Finally, there are two methods of manifestation of negative connotations of any given element:

Poison - Causes the element to become dangerous and caustic, enhancing its flaws. Poisoned Fire can cause decay of the body through radiation in its physical form, and in its noospheric context, it can make someone obsess over new ideas or entrap them in a web of needs. Air becomes toxic to breath, and bravery becomes foolhardy blustering. Poisoned Water is tainted and thick, and it turns wit into biting resentment of all those around, and so on. Awahee from Nazro are often touched by poison, and their magic (as well as their moods) are often rather dour and extreme.

Rage - Unlike the more subtle Poison energies, Rage manifests as strong as it can in any shape it can. A jungle affected by Rage is teeming with biting insects, super-persistent predators, and deadfalls, not to mention poisonous plants and quicksand everywhere. An awahee whose manifestations are affected by Rage finds an enemy around every corner, and that enemy and her entire street need to be burned to the ground. This is said to be the Rage left behind by the turning of the wheel in the past, but as all guesses go, there isn't a whole lot to work from.

The Weapon
A reifier weapon halts the turning of the elemental cycles. It prevents change and transforms a small amount of mana into a physical object. This sets off a chain reaction in which the local cyclic elemental expressions of the area begin to halt their own processes, which causes violent disruption as multiple memes and elements attempt to resolve the expressions created by the process. It just keeps expanding - and, as the actual deployment of two such weapons outside a testing ground showed, continues to go off, essentially, forever. The two cities struck by the first in-use reifier weapons caused an instant armistice as every side in the war tried to figure out exactly what was happening both at either site and the dawning of a new era.

The Nth Country Experiment
This was an experiment performed by the All Kingdoms Authority in regards to determining the viability Three young doctorates were contracted to design a weapon of mass destruction using only publicly available information, a weapon with a militarily significant yield that can be produced in numbers capable of allowing a small nation to have an impact on their foreign neighbors. The report was largely a success, and the program designed at least eight such weapons before they were closed down following the armistice.


The Fundamental Clause

This clause in the Dresnau Act gives the All Kingdoms Authority the freedom to act on matters of reifier safety. It also lays down acceptable military and civilian uses of reification energy and associated technology. Essentially, the Authority can intervene anywhere it feels the threat of such a weapon or an abuse of the technology might be employed. Many countries have filed suit against the Authority for allowing the clause to be ratified by member nations in the first place, as they feel it allows the Authority to suspend sovereignty of any nation on a whim.

Of course, no country will claim they are testing such weapons far from human eyes.

That would start the war up again.

_______________________


Ranger J's Rock-a-Lua
This is a shack restaurant marked by a giant googie “J” tower and made from about six other boats. On the outside, it's a mess of rust, broken glass, glued and nailed barrels, giant mechanical mooring claws, and towers of coral and sheet metal. The inside isn't much better. It's pretty obvious to even cursory inspection that it's just some reef sticking up out of the water and attendant boats strapped to the rocks. At low tide, the Rock-a-Lua sits above the water and must be accessed by staircase. At high tide, the docks are usable.


“Ranger J” is long dead, but the current owner of the joint, Jonotsi, maintains the place with a sort of post-war flair that only a machine could come up with. He's named dishes after bombs, weapons, and tragedies of the old war, and has desserts named after several nearby island (he calls them “dessert islands”). He's a great big boxy golem, with a huge domed head of glass that has turned thick yellow, and his component parts are never without little barnacle starters. The usual band on stage is the “Red Elvises,” who have a sort of thickly-accented surf rock sound.

[AceOfFools]

I'm going to admit to not having read all that's been published, but here's a few more ideas for adventure hooks:

Migration or just seasonal boom in population of food fish or crustaceans can present options for profit and drama as people following the fishing money seek oUT an easy winfall.

Tsunami and other freak waves or storms could do a number on one of those partially submerged cities. Imagine a climatic duel on a bridge where every few rounds a wave nearly washes away those that don't have cover...damaging the bridge.

A partially submerged ice fortress has interesting implications in such an environment. Not only does it seve as a testament to its makers power, the cooling effect on the surrounding oceans can disrupt lifecycles, maybe even currents.

Aboleth, or similar psyche monsters, could be running around breaking into people's minds and turning them against their homelands. Think Battle Star Galactica Cylon (anyone could be one), coupled with red scare paranoia. Only those who are turned have psychic power.

Deep trenches, down where the sunlight never reaches, are a compelling adventure location. Even aquatic species may need some gear to help with the extreme pressure messing with them, which suggests a science adventure of its own.

[MrZJunior]

Ranger J's Rock-a-Lua
This is a shack restaurant marked by a giant googie “J” tower and made from about six other boats. On the outside, it's a mess of rust, broken glass, glued and nailed barrels, giant mechanical mooring claws, and towers of coral and sheet metal. The inside isn't much better. It's pretty obvious to even cursory inspection that it's just some reef sticking up out of the water and attendant boats strapped to the rocks. At low tide, the Rock-a-Lua sits above the water and must be accessed by staircase. At high tide, the docks are usable.


“Ranger J” is long dead, but the current owner of the joint, Jonotsi, maintains the place with a sort of post-war flair that only a machine could come up with. He's named dishes after bombs, weapons, and tragedies of the old war, and has desserts named after several nearby island (he calls them “dessert islands”). He's a great big boxy golem, with a huge domed head of glass that has turned thick yellow, and his component parts are never without little barnacle starters. The usual band on stage is the “Red Elvises,” who have a sort of thickly-accented surf rock sound.

The important thing for a Tiki bar isn't the food or the music, it's the drinks and the ambiance. The ambiance gets them in the door, and once you've had a couple zombies who cares what the food tastes like?

[raygun goth]

The important thing for a Tiki bar isn't the food or the music, it's the drinks and the ambiance. The ambiance gets them in the door, and once you've had a couple zombies who cares what the food tastes like?

The island theme is pretty much a given, it's made of boats. Ranger J's owes a lot of its inspiration to Louie's Place from Talespin, of course, and food is important because we tie up so much cultural ambience to the available food in a place.

The zombies, of course, definitely help.

[MrZJunior]

The island theme is pretty much a given, it's made of boats. Ranger J's owes a lot of its inspiration to Louie's Place from Talespin, of course, and food is important because we tie up so much cultural ambience to the available food in a place.

The zombies, of course, definitely help.

Certainly food is important, but Tiki restaurants live and die by their bar offerings.

[LudicSavant]

Fish With Beaks
This community travels along the Gawabong current; it's a small flotilla, with maybe twenty boats at most. Every fall there is a festival held for any children born that year, and they are thrown overboard to the schools of beaked fish that live in the flotilla's shadow. The fish blow bubbles of air and mucous over the children and defend them from threats. As the children grow, they learn that the fish are really looking out for the best interest of the flotilla. The fish retrieve food and fresh water for the flotilla, and they let anyone in. Leaving is a whole other matter; their sharp beaks can tear holes in boats, and they have more terrible things wrapped in mucous beneath the boats - the thing they call the Violet God. The fish speak through an interpreter, Tahuca, an old man whose stomach and intestines have been removed and replaced with a fish so that he may speak with their voice.

Awesome! Reminds me of Sorrow Spiders from Sunless Sea in the best way. Great job! :smallsmile:

[Rogem]

Some general ideas:
A large number of small ships, collected together in a city of sorts. Just drifting along with the currents, the city remains in a certain season all-year round. At times, ships leave and new ones come, with the whole thriving as a center of trade that allows all comers to partake. Could work as a hub for monster hunting jobs as well.

And why not have a city of zeppelins while at it? Just imagine describing the cloud of vibrant colors and the mass of balloons, floating high above the sea and visible from far, far away.

Then, there's the Rock of Gibraltar. You could have a former mountain, carved into a military base, serve as a city to a people that refuse to seafare in a world with naught but the sea. The sides of the mountain could bear farms and orchards.

Sorry if I repeated some of your ideas, I just barely eyed through most of your massive and wonderfully detailed description.

[raygun goth]

Sky Cities
Just like flotillas on the water, airships from Calpolli, Maca, Arna, Itqi, and other points surrounding the sea make their way out into Arcadian and Macamo waters. Even airships from places as far as Nazro often find themselves drifting over the sea; the open waters are, after all, one of few places where the Nazro tribes are ignored or even welcomed. Collections of airships are safe from most of the depredations of the massive creatures that swim in the Aescan sea, though they put themselves in the line of fire from overzealous countries protecting their secrets and airspace, ancient weapons still looking for enemies from the sky, and whatever creatures plow the skies. Wild biotechnologies, airborne kaiju, and aggressive sky-people are just a small handful of the the dangers that the sky presents. Sky cities are often bound with rope and crane hooks, and are often more locked in to one another tighter than oceanic flotillas.


Nazro Formations
The people of the poison continent are as fractured as any other group, having a wide variety of religious practices centered around a collection of seven books called the Goweli, and each denomination ignores one or more or has their own particular set of interpretations based on them. When they collect in flotillas, it is often due to a particular sect's inability to meet up with and join to a mixed-culture flotilla, likely due to incompatible teachings with outsiders. Such formations are almost invariably pirates. There are more peaceful flotillas, largely comprised of monks or biomancers plying their trades. Most Nazro airships are earth-tones: yellow, red, black, and brown all working together. Ships tend to be made of ceramics, living creatures with thick plates or scales, or wide bones. They use very little rope, going for hooked platforms and small ships for transfer instead.


Walgoag
This Nazro flotilla runs between the eastern side of the Tsowadai current off the coast of Itqi and the Cradle of Storms. It's formed of Jalpans, about eight periphery tribes, and some bandit tribes that originally operated in the Desert of Bleached White Bones. Their primary source of income other than their harvests of kelp and entire aquatic kaiju come in the form of biomancy supplies, mostly running to personal aircraft, rocket packs, and power supplies. The flotilla is comprised of two large gunboats, five repurposed destroyers (two of which have been turned into factory labs), and countless smaller craft. One destroyer boat that is not an official member of the flotilla meets up with the town during its arrival on the easternmost point of its yearly migration to trade tools and materials from the home continent. Walgoag is a decent place to stop if you need to get some cosmetic surgery, body modifications of any kind, or if you have Nazro biomancy components on your boat.


The Wasting Eye
The tribal Ma'agru are a criminal network of various gangs that operate along the periphery of the toxic jungles so as to avoid international investigation into their activities. They tend to deal in extortion at home, and are the tribal response to depredations by large nations back home. Outside of Nazro, they form small networks that work on smuggling goods in to the periphery that simply can't be found or manufactured, the most important being glass. They're biomancers and ichor/teotl worshippers, and have no problems deploying their biomancers to their operations. The Wasting Eye, the branch of Ma'agru operating in Walgoag, in particular participates in biological weapons manufacturing and selling, prostitution, counterfeiting, contract murder, illegal talismongering, weapons smuggling, gambling, and money laundering. The Wasting Eye uses a symbol that resembles a crying eye with five tears.
Tilly runs the Wasting Eye and dresses traditionally for her people, in thick clothing in deep earth tones and a breathing mask and helmet. She does not take threats well, but does not immediately respond to them, preferring instead to let custom viruses or bacteria do the work of "inducting" the victim into her stable of servants or biomass. however, she is also a fair trader and fiercely loyal to those that have earned her trust or respect. She has a more friendly rivalry with Nibiru than she should, and the two groups often cooperate while sharing mutual hatred.


The Awakened
In the Empire of Jalpa, there are the Nindagru, whose name is “the beautiful and righteous people.” These people undermine the priesthood and smuggle people out of the country so that they might not become victims of the Priests of the Crypt of Rojag. By the same token, however, they often charge their clients with carrying plasm, becoming monstrous enforcers, or submitting to experimental mutations very similar to the types of experiments performed by the crypt. The local Jalpan Nindagru, the Awakened, came after learning of the Wasting Eye's presence. They have biomancers of their own, and sell their services to the highest bidder, and really don't care what it is that they're doing. The Wasting Eye would like to see them gone, but treats them better than the other gangs.
Nibiru is a tall and rugged man for a Nazro, a sign of his having been raised outside the continent. He doesn't understand Tilly's calling him “Umagu,” thinking it a sign of respect, not knowing it means outsider or ignorant boy. He thinks the Wasting Eye fears him and his men, and operates openly in their territory. He has a bit of a thing for crystal sculptures, especially ones made out of glowing seeds. He likes using his biomancers to remake people into living sculptures incapable of defending themselves or fighting his control, typically through biochemistry, but he will have his men sculpt arms and legs off is he's feeling particularly unimaginative.


Zolago runs the Walgoag flotilla's security details. An old sailor's son, he dresses in traditional ceramic wasteland armor. He has a deal with Tilly that the Awakened have their more vociferous boys get flagged for arrest through “random” raids or busts. His family is from Maihath and believers in the apology song from the Book of Extinction. He's a little more liberal in his faith than his family, and it means he deals with outsiders on their own terms, rather than what is expected of them.

[raygun goth]

Crocker Land

This is an anomaly in the tropical seas, an island shrouded in ice and populated by a strange city. The strange people living here amidst the great modern ruins are pale-skinned and have hair on their faces. They make claims of madness, that visitors are mirages or demons, perhaps from beneath the earth. There are rewards to be found here – ice that never melts, materials made of the light of the setting sun, and strange artifacts from some world just beyond the “Fata Morganas,” the mysterious ships that flicker on the horizon like a broken television set. The dangers here are just as numerous – six-legged hairy monsters and the aforementioned men with their odd rifles and songs that lose travelers in the snow.

[raygun goth]

Calpolli Humans

In the continent region of Calpolli, down through the Sea of Rage and across the colonies of the continent of Macamo, humans share their blood with spirits known as orahjoo, blood which manifests on their bodies in the form of tattoos on the primary shoulder that slowly shift and grow with the strength of the possessors' mana. Some humans, of course, do not, having a faith that hinges on the worship of the Sun and does not use mana marks.

Ayohlee: Clown, Trickster

The trickster is a sacred figure among the people. They make people laugh, they take advantage of loopholes, and mercilessly mock systems that are in place. The trickster clans often have license and legal authority to undercut, interrupt, and indulge themselves in whatever policies or laws have loopholes exist that they could possibly exploit. Most tricksters in the modern age make themselves available for hiring, rather than openly disrupting the flow of modern life, which can often have drastic consequences, though it is their ritual duty to point out flaws in the status quo, and few would question their right to poke fun when it's certainly right to do so.



Life in a happy family is not a constant joy; being a trickster or a clown, despite the laughter they are supposed to generate, is a deadly serious business that carries great spiritual weight. In the strict society of the confederacy, the clowns exist to portray antisocial tendencies and rebellion while still being tightly controlled by their roles in society. They shake society with clever lampoons and skits so that the people are aware of the foolishness of their surroundings even while they remain strong in their traditions.


The Clown does this by openly mocking or flaunting tradition: wearing winter clothes in summer, summer clothes in winter, washing with dirt and drying off with a shower. The goal of the clown is to point out inconsistencies and hypocrisies by making the rituals of life seem silly. A sense of humor in Calpolli is subtle and sometimes outright dangerous, and it should be borne in mind that this lampoon should be facing society, culture, and political machinations. It is not enough to simply be funny; there must be wit, wisdom, and a lack of shame on the part of the clown, unless the joke calls for an excess of shame. They are a mirror to life, and it is in the mirror that one may see their own flaws and boils.


The Trickster does this by rabidly exploiting the system. Trickster families do not often enjoy the social protections of the clown families, and many times are seen as troublemakers and dangerous folks. A lot of people leave such families because the lifestyle is a little rough, and still others leave their own families to join them. While clowns are not exactly slapstick characters, tricksters often are, though their sense of humor is much more self-deprecating. This is something that is important to remember, a trickster's job is often to get caught rather than get away with their trick.
Some of the most reviled families in the confederacy are trickster families, such as Frog, who is a servant that louses up his job on purpose to teach others that unsupervised work is the worst kind, or wild hopper, who steals food and kills those who walk off into the woods alone, and Brumtumbler, who tears apart anything he finds.



Ayohlee tattoos are often brightly colored, and as they grow, display bright contrasts, weaving over and amongst each other, filling up with hidden symbols and meanings, and containing backwards phrases or tattoo artist mistakes filled in with half-forgotten deeds. Sometimes they are even as animate as those of a magician, other times they are still and stark and hard to tell if their off-centered nature is purposeful wabi-sabi or an honest accident.



Nahkweesee: Wonder-working Families, Corn Families
The families of the stars and magicians are less in number these days, but that is because they hark back to a darker, more dangerous time. Everyone uses magic in all the things they do, but to handle it all day requires a special kind of madness. To be a magician begins with making new, simple bargains or, as reputation grows, demanding services of spirits in exchange for mana. This is a difficult path, seeking out broken or flawed parts of the world machine and getting them up and running again, cleaning out pollution, guiding lost souls, and changing the landscape by reliving its dreams and resolving the memories they fail to relax from themselves.


The Wonder-working families concern themselves with matters of universal proportions. They are the stargazers and dancers, magicians who wield the powers of the heavens and work on astronomy, astrology, and tie their actions to the moon. Among them are Hornhead, who is said to have dreamed the world into existence, Spider, whose web holds up the stars, Horned Snake, who watches over magicians as they learn their trade and offers up its forehead-stone to new practitioners, and Moon's Road, a mystic path where the previous ages lay out like cairns on the roadside. Their homes are often stuffed with strange patterns and piles of research, and sometimes they even take on obscure or lesser-known orahjoo such as Peacock Spider and Tri-Colored Night Heron.


Corn-family magicians are those that concern themselves with worldly matters; while the Hornheads speak of walking among dreams and times, Maize fiddles with the spirits that make crops grow, or see to the dead, or engage in taboo magical practices that are necessary for day-to-day function, such as scapegoating for more powerful families or pawing through dung to find out tomorrow's forecast. Their ancestors once sacrificed people during old ceremonies, and some still do, creating jackets out of the subject's skin to honor their duties and prevent the soul from being transformed horribly in the underworld. They are call Death families because they serve such orahjoo as White Bird, Maize, Raven, and the cold, quiet gaze of Winter.


Nahkweesee tattoos are often started with fish bone needles, and only grow more hand-woven with each iteration. Deeds are marked in violet tones where they are not dull reds, yellows, and browns, and the borders take on the demarcations of a spider web. Images of the night sky often predominate, and as the tattoo grows, those distant stars begin to twinkle and clouds in the night drift by.



Tchahssgahyah: Builder, Innovator
With every world, there are buildings that must be made, shelters from the elements erected, and tools forged. The story goes that people used to be savage creatures with short lives until they started making tools and putting up buildings, cleaning their water, and wearing pants. The yellow-jacket families are the builders of machines, creators of new ideas, engineers, pipe-layers and trade skill workers of Confederate society, and unlike the Tsakwohladeh, who concern themselves with matters of paper, the Tchahssgahyah are people of steel, concrete, and copper. They ride the great trains, truck with spirits of Fire and molten metal, and live in the beating industrial heart of society. In ancient times, they designed doorways to defend against earthquakes and built the great pyramids and mounds at which the people worshiped. They still do that, but now they build the massive cities that rise hundreds of stories into the sky, as well.


Builder families maintain those things that have been built, or who build old things with a strong sense of tradition and style. These families also contain those who do the jobs that make modern living possible at an infrastructure level. They build and maintain dams and sewers, clean skyscrapers, pick up trash on the city streets, build bunkers and walls in the wilderness in case the magicians make a mistake, and operate the power plants that keep electricity flowing. They are good, strong families such as Iron Turtle, Potter Wasp, and Cypress.


Innovator families exist to challenge tradition with newer ideas. They contain artists devoted to raising quality of life; while not the same sorts of artists as clowns or tricksters, these families produce artists who show the world as it should be, not what it is. Whether it be commissioned sculpture or illegal tagging, such brightly colored wasp families make sure that life in the modern world is never dull. They produce actors, set designers, inventors without peer, and makers of tools.


Tchahssgahyah tattoos are often elaborate to begin with, hiding smaller fractal patterns inside the traditional shapes. They are often handmade, and put the machine-printed city family tattoos to shame in regards to their detail and intricacy.



Tsakwohladeh: City Folk, Predators
A cultural and social backbone upon which to build peace and a sense of community is the centerpiece of any civilization. Every society needs leaders, homebodies, and organizers, and for this, the predator families have stepped forward. Made up of the old merchants who were once considered nothing more than a tool by which the Tourmekian empire could move goods and services, in recent times, amid the government and economic collapse, these families have moved in to the kill, to rip and tear at the open and exposed belly of the Confederacy, feasting as they do. Once a firm middle class, the predator families are now nouveau riche in their own right, and spend their nights placating their terrible orahjoo, who sometimes likes to hunt them just to see if they remember right how to be a true predator, trimming the weak and helping the entire herd to prosper. They are certainly wealthy, and they are slowly growing in political power due to their rapid fiscal recovery.


There are a great many families who live in the cities, but are not artisans or craftspeople. They are busybodies who concern themselves with systems of government, management, and retention. These families run restaurants, small businesses, and make sure society stays flowing by opening their shops and stores and making sure goods and services are distributed efficiently and broadly. In ancient times, these families were messengers, busybodies, and matchmakers, and they have changed as rapidly as society. The entire goal of a city family is to stay moving, shifting, working, changing, and reacting with aplomb and sincerity; they contain such families as Green Snake, Cicada, and Computer.


Predator families, on the other hand, share their blood with the great tyrants of the plains and jungles. The hunter-families have a strong, powerful lineage that dates back at least to the formation of the Unahlassgee plateau, and carry with them power and prestige. While they're not exactly magicians, they're not powerless in that regard, either. In the old days, the hunter families prevented the great tyrant kings from entering into cities, and as the world moved on, they began to trim society – removing those parts that were broken or useless, watching lagging sales and snapping up broken organizations, companies, and social circles and breaking them. Some build them up, or take the resources of the wreckage and insert them back into society, while others sit among the ruins and watch it rot. Their family spirits range from the large and dangerous gariax, deathwalkers, cutters, necrotyrants, skelarigs, and other such big hunters.


Tsakwohladeh tattoos tend to be somewhat grand; they reflect the mechanization of the cities and modern society, and are often done with machines, in sharp contrast to fishbone tattoos, and often have scarring or embedded stones that glow. As they grow, they tend to grow in discrete stacks and radiate out from the center instead of becoming a sleeve. It is not uncommon to see even young and inexperienced city clan members with facial markings.



Wohahlee: Thunder People, Adventurer Families
There are always people walking, moving among the ruins. The eschew cities entirely; they are said to move like clouds or waves across the roads, and they gather in short-lived villages by the roadside. The jungle is their friend, and the sky and campfires are their brothers. They pick through the remains of city-dreamings and sing at quiet dances and have their own sort of happiness tempered by their will to live.


The Thunder People are the small town folks, the ones who live in small cities and towns across the countryside, collecting in rural communities. They're generally seen as braving elements no one sane would dare try, often more so than adventurer families. They build up their homes, work the land, and were often the bulk of the population during the Confederacy's early years. Families like Summer Rain, Thunder, Walking Fish, and Theryx River have a lot of power, especially since their blood is so vital to the workings of the world, not just in their populations, but in the great cities, as well.


On a smaller scale than even the Thunder People, adventurer families take up space on the open road. Many of these families were once strong warriors, producing great braves and might heroes, but in the tense paranoia of the Cold War, they serve as a constant reminder of something terrible that may happen again. The Scarlet Sea family, for example, has always said that the sky turns the water red with the color of their enemies, and they ferry souls to Death at the blade of an axe, and Long-Necked Sea Lizard plucks birds from the sky with stone arrows. Even so, such families as Turtle and Spiny Orb Weaver have always been wanderers, and many of their members live in the depths of the Dreaming Land as Isolators, and are the equal of any magician on matters of practical magical knowledge.


Wohahlee have the most slapdash tattoos, often started with fish bone or sewing needle and acquiring symbols with more personal meaning than social meaning as they grow. They often depict the open sky with dancing figures, and rarely have the triangles of a professional. The jagged squares of clouds and thunder are common, as are figures with wings, and animals found in the depths of the wilderness course across rolling hills and strong trees depicted amongst nature. These tattoos are often as animate as magician tattoos when the wild-clan member is pressing her mana.



Muscora

The Muscora faith group contains a variety of smaller cults, but their primary belief core is that no human can share blood with spirits, for they have no blood to share. The belief that a spirit never appears in its whole state before a human being suffuses a majority of their practices. They're a generally patriarchal group that inherits a name from the father, rather than the mother's orahjoo spirit. These are people who belong to no clan, and have names like Smith and Cooper and Frederickson. It should be noted that most faith in Calpolli runs the spectrum, and Muscora faithful come to Quahanu mounds and shrines to have their wishes heard and to wash their hands, and the Quahanu faithful come to Muscora temples to burn offerings for the dead or hear wisdom from the meditants.