The Lost Sea

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About ten thousand years before the present time a vast continental shallow sea covered over 800,000 square miles of the Northern corner of a continent. Its North Coast was above the Arctic Circle, but the warm water transported heat from the South, creating intense fogs in Spring and Fall and warmer winters than the latitude would otherwise have enjoyed. A Boreal Forest grew on the flanks of the mountain range that separated the sea from the Arctic Ocean, which was about 150 feet lower than the freshwater sea.

On the Eastern Coast, a series of mountain ranges formed where the Eastern Ocean's continental plate has been subducting under the continent, forming an Andes-like barricade between the sea and the Eastern Ocean.

In the South a high plateau dotted with the remains of long-dormant mountains and hills is heavily wooded and when the sea was present it offered a nearly sub-tropical climate to the forested weathered highlands.

In the West there were three ancient mountain chains: remnants of tectonic activity hundreds of millions of years before when a far Northern subcontinent and an Equatorial continent sequentially impacted and merged with the continent, leaving a gulf between them that rivaled the inland sea in size.

The inland sea and its islands and coastlines became the realm of several elfin kingdoms. The High Elves of the Middle Kingdom were the most advanced, and their gull-winged ships sailed the inland sea uncontested for an age. The Cold Elves of the North lived a tribal nomadic life in the Boreal Forest. They traded with the High Elves, but otherwise had little to do with outsiders, save that some went West along the Arctic Coast and married into the tribes of humans who lived a similar lifestyle. Later additions of High Elf blood as the nomadic half-elves became herders, farmers, and eventually city-builders resulted in a sub-group of Grey Elves.
The Southern Elves were at that time wild, isolationist, and extremely clannish. Their cooperation with the Middle Kingdom was erratic, but violence was more along the lines of ritual displays than actual war.
The Eastern Mountains were home to giants and humanoids of various sorts who had little in common with each other except enemity for the elves.

About 5000 years ago a powerful wizard emerged in the East who tried to displace the Middle Kingdom. The mobility of the elfin armies and their near invulnerability at sea quickly ended any hope of a military victory. The wizard learned from captured maps and tortured captives, and devised a new plan.

He transported a goblin host to the Western Gulf and, following a fault between two low mountain chains, mined a broad sea-level tunnel for 100 miles. From that point on the mining became more difficult as water flooded and undermined the goblins' efforts. One day the pressure of the Inland Sea proved too much and the tunnel erupted in a flood that lasted for days. The level of the sea dropped twenty feet before the outflow was temporarily dammed by the collapse of the tunnel.

The High Elves tried to stop it, but the collapsed tunnel allowed underground springs to carve channels that continued to drain the sea. And as the sea drained, the sea floor beneath the water sprang up, giving the water table elevation to allow further drainage. Within a century the vast sea had become two lobes of increasingly saline water that left behind salt pans as the water continued to drain.

The Middle Kingdom collapsed. Elements of the former kingdom migrated North or South or West, or remained on their now indefensible islands to be overwhelmed one by one by the Eastern raiders who migrated West with the receeding coastline.

Without the heat of the sea the Boreal Forest froze, and glaciation of the Arctic further reduced sea level. What became of the Cold Elves is unknown.

The influx of High Elves into the Northwest Subcontinent created a short renaisance for them at the cost of some angst among the Grey Elves, but Arctic encroachment soon isolated them. Only those who returned to the nomadic lifestyle survived, unless rumors of magically defended Grey Elf cities are to be believed.

In the South a truce allows the remnant High Elf population to live alongside the Wild Elf clans. Only the commitment of the High Elf king to defend and to maintain the isolation of the still vast, but now temperate forest keeps the peace.

About three thousand years ago along the old mountain chain between the continemt and the sub-continent five dormant volcanoes reactivated. Their ash-fall south and east along with the dense white cloud cover they geneiated accelerated the freezing of the North and contributed to further reduction of oceanic sea levels as ice sheets build up in the North.

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The survivors of the goblin horde scattered and populated the Northwestern mountains, but were further scattered when the volcanos erupted and rendered the mountains uninhabitable.

Humanoid tribes migrated across the salt-deserts that were once sea floor.

Dragons moved into the abandoned island cities, or the nearly abandoned ones.

Animals living in the sea either died or adapted. With the concentration of the seawater came a concentration of magic. Some of the adaptations were magically amplified. Some sharks became saline tolerant while others became air-breathers. The air-breathers adapted further and learned to swim in sand.

Seals that had adapted to fresh water were forced to adapt back to land life, then to subnivean life as the snow and ice encroached.

In hundreds of ways creatures and people adapted, some by evolving, others simply by moving to better lands.

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On one of the smaller abandoned islands, surrounded by miles of salt sands, is a small abandoned town of the Middle Kingdom. The town is made of marble and terazzo, but from a distance appears to be made of salt. It is largely intact; a few stone roofs have collapsed and a wall or two has cracked. From its condition one might guess it has been empty for a few years rather than 5000.

Pink and black birds one might recognize as seagulls flock in great numbers around the central spire of the town. In mornings and evenings they form huge, chaotic swarms around it before flying off to the northeast or finding their nests in the tower or the buildings of the town.

The spire itself is one of fifteen great lighthouses that guided sailors of the Middle Kingdom across their sea. It occupies what was the southwest lobe of the Inland Sea. A huge plaza of lapis lazuli in front of its door is adorned with jade and other ornamental stones. A bit of examination reveals the plaza to be a map, and the locations of each lighthouse is marked with a mother-of-pearl symbol.

A fountain offset from the center appears to represent an archipelago adorned with tiny castles. Fresh water still trickles down the sides of the fountain's center spire but the broad shallow depression it fills is defiled with gull feathers, droppings, and remains. Tiny pink bugs, (brine shrimp,) swarm in the warm, foul water.

Ruined ships and boats line the quays, half devoured by and half preserved by the salt-sand. A tunnel into the base of the island is still sealed by its steel gates. Beyond is another quay, and here the hulls of several ships are well preserved. None will ever sail again, even if they could be carried a few hundred miles to the ocean, but they are intact enough for an interested persnn to figure out how the wing-like sails work.

In the back can be found the abandoned attempt to build a wagon-frame beneath a ship. The shipwright kept careful notes and daily logs. The attempt was deemed a failure because the wagon's wheels kept getting mired in the sand.

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The pink seagulls are ordinary seagulls that have subsisted for their entire lives on brine shrimp, which in turn have lived on pink algae. If these gulls were fed a more normal diet through a moult, their pink feathers would turn white.

There are, among the gulls, larger gulls, the elfish name for which translates as Traveler Gulls. They are a distinct breed that cannot interbreed with the regular gulls. They are about twice the size of ordinary gulls. Between 8 and 10 pounds, their wingspan is over 8 feet. They are strong enough to take off from a standstill with no wind. They can land on water and duck-paddle, or they can dive down to about twenty feet, usually when hunting, and function for up to two minutes underwater before requiring a breath. The elf seamen used to train these birds from hatching, and they could scout, carry messages, or perform other acts their trainer had taught, but though intelligent for an animal, none could speak. Seafaring wizards preferred them as familiars. Now they thrive primarily as hunters on the brine seas, often predating the gulls and their nests.

There is a small sand-colored hawk that terrorizes the gull colony. With a 36 inch wingspan it is about the same size as its primary prey, but its muscular physique and aggressive attitude allow it to thrive. Its first fledging usually coincides with the gulls' annual nesting cycle.

Insects and lizards thrive in the moisture of the fountain and its drains. Some of them grow large enough to predate gull hatchlings. Most thrive on the droppings and other wastes of the colony.

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The Devourer

On the brine sea and its salt-rime shore a basking-shark twisted to gargantuan mass ploughs the salt crust to extract its food.

Long, meandering channels of brine slice through the sandy salt-flats, making travel difficult. On both sides, low levees are notched in three-foot intervals, and the u-shaped channels are about 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Older channels have slumped. Newer channels lead to their maker.

The bulk of the Devourer may mislead the unwary when the 50 foot long, 12 foot wide creature is first seen grazing on the salt-shelf at the end of a channel and ejecting the ground up salt and brine through its gills and using its fins to 'paddle' down the canals it digs.

Detecting the party, the beast uses its strong fins and serpentine motion, the fish can give a barbarian a run for his money. The creature gladly gobbles anything it can catch. Because of its respiratory system, the fish must end its fifth round in water, and may no longer attack. It may move toward water at half speed for another five turns before entering a torpor that can only be relieved by wetting the gills. A devourer can live up to 20 years in this state, but they cannot defend themselves.

They tend to groom the area where a large creature was slain, forming a brine pond that may crust-over with a film of almost perfectly pure salt.

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While the Ice Elves were never explored in game, one remnant group of the Grey Elves did come into play.

This group lived in a city beneath the ice where a warm spring and magic were combined to maintain a habitable bubble roofed with ice. It was formerly a u-shaped valley that began where a natural hot spring created a series of pool-terraces that formed the headwater of a stream. The area was first a winter layover for a nomadic tribe, then the secret refuge of the tribe as it became sedentary. As the tribe began to build towns the refuge became a retreat for the wealthy, construction of mansions and gardens in the sheltered valley began and over time became ever more ostentatious. By the time of the onset of the new ice age the valley was a playground of the wealthy. Great magics were performed to preserve and protect the valley and to sustain its inhabitants.

The gardens were converted from playgrounds to food production, and as the ice began to block out the sun two great lamps were forged and placed at either end of the valley. They have a 24 hour cycle, (over 3000 years they have gotten out of synch with the real day/night cycle and with each other.

Each produces sunlight for 12 hours, then fades to a pale white glow before going completely dark for four hours. They then begin to brighten for the next day. The lamps are about four hours out of synch with each other, and dawn for the early lamp is about two hours late.

This is not a problem for the inhabitants, who have grown to ignore the outer world. Instead, they have developed two castes: wizards and farmers. Farmers feed and maintain the city while wizards study and hold mock duels to test themselves. The wizards believe that a life spent in pursuit of magic is worthwhile even if the only contribution made was a very minor tweak to an otherwise useless spell. Thus, they have become great preservers of magical lore, but lousy practicioners.

A very small group of druids and rangers are actually part of the farmer caste, but they take in fighter/wizards, ranger/wizards, and rogue/wizards, and these are most likely to be found if encountered away from the city.

The city is hidden beneath snow and ash in the foothills south of the southwesternmost volcano.

An interesting facet of this splinter culture is their obsession with treasure. Wealth determines rulership. There are a dozen large hoards and many dozens of smaller in the hands of families that form the city's aristocracy. The grey elves put a price on every service and commodity, and wealth flows continually. A great loss or influx of treasure would destabilize the social equilibrium the society currently enjoys. On the other hand, wealthy adventurers would be treated as royalty while the locals strive to gain maximum benefit from them.

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The Neo Otyugh

Having adapted to tolerate the intense salt of the Western lobe of the remnant sea, an Otyugh has created a home in a cavern beneath what was once a reef of soft corals, sponges, sea-stars, and urchins. It hides from the sun by day and forages for food by night. Anything killed or crippled by the brine or anything seeking a safe refuge on the exposed rock for the night will satisfy it.

A medium-sized chamber under the rock is half-filled with stale air. A pile of bones and other remains from it's meals mixed with the creature's filth rise above the waterline at the back of the chamber, and the creature lairs in a cup-shaped depression in it. Access to the chamber is underwater, through a twisting tunnel.

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At the Eastern end of the Southernmost mountain range in the West, where once the inland sea made it's Western shoreline, there stands a huge blank tower without windows or doors. It has an eighty-foot-wide base which constricts as it rises to about sixty feet in width at about one hundred sixty feet high. Above this waist, a seventy-foot-wide cylinder that rises up another forty feet to two hundred feet has a forty-foot conical roof atop it.

The wall is seamless and apparently carven from a single piece of the native grey granite. The roof, even when seen by flying up for a closer look, is of similar construction. Although it detects as magical, it cannot be dispelled. It appears to be a single magical artifact of unknown purpose or nature.

It stands at the branching of a ridge that slopes down from the last mountain of the Spenit Mountains, and the valley they enclose holds a wide, bottomless pond from which a broad creek flows, eventually forming the headwaters of a great river which flows West to the sea along the foothills of the mountain range.

The dwarves who migrated North six centuries before have avoided the place, claiming it is Elf Magic. High Elves who have studied history or cartography say that it was not made by elves. They claim it is older than the founding of the Middle Kingdom, and that none have ever been known to enter or exit. It is far too regular and symmetrical to be natural, but to all examiners it appears to simply be a part of the mountain.

In my campaign over forty years ago humans came into the area and created a series of short-lived frontier encampments until Trader Vic moved farther into the Badlands to set up a permanent trading post. About twenty-five years ago the Wizard Beeser, (my brother's character, level 12 under 1st ed rules,) found the way in and opened it's doors.

Inside he found The Orb Of Possibility, a massive crystal ball that showed what might happen and what could have happened. It was a long time before the PCs determined that the orb didn't exactly predict the future, but showed many possible results of any particular event. Eventually the wizard learned to predict the most likely outcome from the possibilities, or to choose a preferred outcome and manipulate events to make it the one true future.

With the establishment of the tower, a small town grew around the pond, and pole barges began to bring frontier goods downriver and manufactured goods up. Dwarven hydraulic engineers were hired to channelize the Argenflow, later the River Argen, and create locks and barge ladders to facilitate trade. Several smaller towns began as encampments of bargemen then grew into farming communities.

The typical barge is flat-bottomed and about five feet wide. They range from fifteen feet long in the upriver segments of the river to forty feet long Southwest of the last barge ladders. Because the barge chutes were constructed to maintain water levels in the channels during the long dry summer and the winter snows, the barges cannot have a total width exceeding seven feet, and a draft of greater than twelve inches is a serious issue often requiring goods be disembarked and portaged past shallows.

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The Banisis, (not the name of the forest, but the human version of the Elfish word for their guarded perimeter,) extends Eastward for about eight hundred miles. It's long Northern fringe is a roughly straight line from West to East, following what was once the coastline of the sea. It's Southern fringe is much more convoluted and irregular, but seldom exceeds more than two hundred miles in width.

This band of forest is jealously guarded by the elves. The native Sylvan Elves will evade intruders, fighting only as a last resort, but the High Elves will respond to intrusion with a credible show of force. If intruders do not choose to heed their warnings, forcible eviction will be used. If that fails, the High Elves will apply military force. They will not tolerate intrusion, or even the appearance of willingness to do so.

In the East, where the forest becomes tangled in the foothills of the Eastern Mountains, swift military responses are the rule when giants and humanoids get too close, but in the West, where humans have settled in the river valleys West of the Banisis, the Elves are less likely to respond with a military campaign.

In the West, dwarf clans began, in the last thousand years, to move North into the mountain chains north of the riverlands, and in the last three hundred years humans, gnomes, and eventually halfling followed. While the dwarfs engendered some hostility, the humans have proven to be a buffer between what might have erupted into hostilities.

The elves have kept their fences manned, and have no tolerance for intruders, but in the West they will try everything short of lethal force first.

North of the forest, what was once shoreline is now a salt-grass plain which supports abundant game. This makes it prime real estate for the migrating tribes of humanoids which, because of their proximity to the elf homeland, often come under attack from the many High Elf cavalry units stationed on the border. The region is littered with old battlefields long forgotten by the migratory tribes, but etched into the history of the elf kingdom.

To the South where the arid high plains limit the availability of water, game is far less plentiful, except around watering holes and seasonal rivers. In this land there are many halfling and gnome communities that grew up around water, and their presence deters Westward expansion from the tribal mountain folk of the far East. Golden plains of dry grass lie unbroken by trees or shrubbery, turning green in the winter months when fogs and misty rains are less uncommon. Massive grass-fires bake the clay into a hard, cracked surface which prevents virtually any seed from germinating, but at the first sign of moisture the dessicated roots of the grass surge to life again, turning the massive burn-scars back into lush green prairies again, until the dry South winds dessicate the land and turn the grass golden again.

Only very mobile creatures or creatures capable of burrowing deep enough to find groundwater can survive there. Pegasai are found in this land and virtually nowhere else in the world.