Coastal-Aquatic

Defending The Coast

This plot is meant as a strategy exercise to give a change of pace for high- status characters (i.e. the characters are recognize and respected).

The idea may be of use at a lower level. Characters with scrying and/or night vision capacities will be especially useful.

Plot. A coastal region about a port town has become the target for foraging pirates, based somewhere in a nearby archipelago. The lord in the town has asked the characters to assist in setting up a defense against this menace. Mostly the raids have been strictly foraging but a recent one overpowered a sleeping manor, killing its owner and with all the young women carried off. For groups so inclined this plot can easily include a simple board game based on the map, with the turn being a week, and then dicing for if and where an attack will come. The GM then looks at what the characters have put in place and adjudicates a result. The GM can control events on a more abstract level if this doesn't appeal - the fun is in devising the strategy and counter-strategies. They should be thinking up plans for watches, message passing, deployment of forces etc. A good place for the characters to get directly involved is in attacking the boats themselves while the bulk of the crew are raiding inland.

Here is a more detailed scenario as an example.

The Pirates. These are actually the losing navy from fratricidal wars on the far continent preying mostly on their own countrymen's merchant trade in vengeance. They have 12 Viking-style boats with crews of 20-40 each. The leader is a cunning captain and will order appropriate measures against defense (i.e., they will understand a lit beacon and its implications as well as the intended receivers). The coastal strip concerned is very convenient and it would be difficult to go further afield. It is only due to a botched campaign against them that they are forced to forage off the coast to this extent and the word is forage as opposed to rape and pillage. The leader did not order the attack on the manor and was not amused when he found out about it, guessing correctly that it would result in stronger defenses. The usual attack mode is to travel well offshore (though they have been slack so far) at day, then run ashore pre- dawn. The raiding party goes inland while 5-9 remain to guard the ship, usually lying slightly offshore rather than beached. The raiding party will be competent fighters though they will back off from significant resistance, particularly if it endangers the ship. Animals are driven back to the ship on the hoof, while anything else has to be carried on the raiders' backs. If a ship does not return or has encountered major opposition, then further raids will remain well out of sight of land by day. If a second ship is lost, then the raids will be carried out by two ships at a time to make a large combined force with extra guards on the ship. The loss of four ships will force the captain to move foraging elsewhere and raids will cease.

Resources. The town lord has a sizable following of men-at-arms based in the castle as well as three fighting ships, properly part of the navy. These ships will outpace the pirates on short hauls, (less than 1 hour apart), due to superior numbers of oarsmen but are no match for the longboat under sail as the oarsmen tire. There are 20 villages/hamlets scattered about the coast that can raise ill-trained militia at a push (i.e. with a backbone of real men-at-arms in command) but mostly the villagers will be too concerned with protecting family as they hightail out of it, probably driving herds if they have time. There will be one or two manors of nobles near each village though and these usually retain 2-6 men-at-arms who can be commanded. The population will be generally enthusiastic for measures to counter the pirates, particularly if they don't have to actually do the fighting. They will man lookouts and beacons reliably.

Any time a pirate is captured, there is a 50% probability of finding a chart (providing the ship isn't fired). This covers the coast and archipelago quite well and while it wont locate the pirate base, it will be noticeable that part of the archipelago is drawn in far more detail than the rest.

Ship of Undead

Player has to go on a quest to visit the high holy spot of their Good deity. In the course of the trip during a sea voyage they are beset upon by a ship of the undead. Given that the ship's complement is unbeatable, they disable it at the helm or rudder and leave it to crash on the reefs. Continue on with visiting the nice deity and when they finally arrive after whatever other challenges you choose to put in their path (I used lots of spirit things, including ghosts of monsters they had recently defeated and of dead friends) they are told by the deity/priests that though their actions were commendable they must finish their business with the undead ship. It seems that since it has grounded on the reefs whatever eldritch energies went into powering it are now slowly puncturing a hole to the plane of the undead. In my version, the ship is half filled with water and as the waves pass over/through it the battles got very messy. In the end it was a second wheel below decks that was the focus of the power, manned by a gent cursed for killing women and children on a particular ship he plundered.

Misplaced Poison

Staying in pub - landlady's daughter comes back from playing on the beach in the early morning to collapse - initial thoughts are that she's ill, further investigation will reveal she's been poisoned.

Turns out the kids (small group on beach) found a rowing boat aground, with a case in it. They nicked the case, found it was full of food, and eat it several die, all very ill (they didn't eat much of the food 'cause they didn't like it - unusual taste).

Food was being dropped off to be picked up by a caravan passing nearby, where it would be swapped for an identical case (not poisoned) and sent on to its buyer, a powerful alderman (or equivalent) in a nearby town.

So - to help out the landlady the PCs have to sort out a number of things owner of the boat, realize a caravan was going to be nearby at the time, find out from the merchant where the food was going, make all the right connections. They should then meet up with the alderman, who'll realize the attempted assassination attempt (especially if the PCs have still got a sample of the food - its a delicacy that's his favorite and that no-one else likes), and may ask the Pcs to sort out who was behind the poisoning. This will now entail crawling around the city getting the poison analyzed, tracing the boat, the buyer of the poison and so on. Who's behind it is up to you (as is everything else really) - I had his son responsible (via a long and convoluted chain.)

The Ship of Fools

One of the things I do for comic relief is have the PCs run across a particular ship full of really stupid sailors.

They are almost always in dire trouble when the PCs come across them, like the one time they were out in the middle of the ocean and their sails were on fire. The PCs had to put the fire out for them, because they didn't think of using sea water to put it out themselves.

Bottle in the Sea

This goes along the lines of finding floating debris. Instead of wreckage or junk, however, a bottle is discovered, floating in the water. This could just be an ordinary bottle, of clear, colored, or opaque glass, and it may contain a clue in a mystery or small item. It could have an S.O.S. or other sort of message inside, or a treasure map, or something more exotic, such as a bound spirit, demon, or djinn. Perhaps a wizard has cursed an entire ship, shrinking it magically and placing it in the bottle, and then casting it out into the ocean, doomed to float about at the mercy of the tides until such time as it is discovered and some means of rescue is devised. At this point, the PCs may have a new vessel in their fleet, or else great gratitude and reward from the sailors, should they still be alive. This may also be an effective way of introducing a spelljammer vessel into the campaign, if one uses that setting.

It could also be a magic item... suggestions for an bottle of endless smoke or endless water might be good (if it's a particularly ancient decanter of endless water, this item could in fact be the source for the body of water the party is currently traveling on... if so, they may need to find a way to shut the water off, so that the flooding does not cover the entire continent. Of course, shutting off the water source may also result in major geographical changes over the long term (if all the water runs off from a large, artificially-created river or lake for example, revealing an unexplored bed, possibly with all kinds of ruins to be discovered... along with deep mud

Adventures at Sea

• Someone spots a strange looking creature(s), which no one has seen before. Bigger things it could lead to... attempts to capture, communicate with, observe, or learn more about these creatures... perhaps they are just ordinary animals, or perhaps it's a dangerous sea monster that's best avoided (if so you'll probably find out the hard way)... perhaps they have their own language, maybe even a civilization, maybe they can offer information or advice, who knows. Perhaps the information gained from studying/communicating with these things can be of value to a naturalist or sage... Maybe some of the old sailors know of the things, but are superstitious and afraid of them, don't like talking about them, and act strangely when they're even mentioned... what's going on?
• Some debris is found floating in the water. Bigger things it could lead to... mystery: what is this thing, where did it come from, and how did it get here? perhaps a nearby and recent shipwreck or attack by a monster? or by pirates? is there bad weather or a hidden hazard sinking ships in the area? perhaps more is found, a location of a wreck, or a lifeboat with occupants, or a ship's log. Can a salvage operation be attempted? can the danger be stopped?
• Bad weather storms, high winds and high seas... ship could risk sinking or be damaged, people could wash overboard (and perhaps drown, perhaps be rescued by dolphins or sea elves).... or dead calm and a delay in travel. Crew grows increasingly bored and uneasy, supplies dwindle dangerously low and rationing becomes stricter. Perhaps magical weather control attempts fail, strangely. What's going on? have the gods been offended? do they demand a sacrifice?
• Funky weather you've just entered the twilight zone. Natural laws seem to run backwards, sideways, and in spirals. Strange lights, sky is an odd color, eerie silence and stillness, the stars move in ways they shouldn't, the sun sets on the wrong horizon, or doesn't set at all, for weeks... compasses behave strangely (if they exist) Direction-sense is scrambled, navigation hopeless. Odd fog, rain falling up, water spouts... a rain of mice, beetles, toads, serpents or fish... but they're all inland or freshwater species that live thousands of miles away(!) Sky does Van Gogh things, Lacy with Diamonds things... Visions (meaningful? Omens?) in the clouds that only some people can see... Then, strangely, and with no explanation, everything returns to normal. Or does it?
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• could lead to.... Perhaps you find yourself to be way off course... or that the trip has taken much longer than it seemed to.. felt like a few weeks, but you arrive years late for your rendezvous at the destination, and were presumed lost. You don't even notice until the bard sings of your lost ship's "final voyage" and of the bold adventurers (you) "who never were to be heard from again." Or perhaps upon landing on the far shore, you realize that you're no longer even on the same planet you were on when you set sail... your longitude and latitude are right, but nothing fits with your maps... or maybe the geography's all correct, but where human settlements had long stood, there are now sand dunes... or perhaps strange (alien?) creatures living there, and who claim to never have seen your like before.
• ships crew becomes restless--the captain has made some questionable decisions lately, and the crew is growing to resent him. Perhaps a mutiny is likely. Who's side are the players on? Is the captain a liability to the ships safe passage? Or are the crew members right?

• ship encounter--pirates? a fellow traveler? a ship in need? lost? low on supplies? without a rudder or broken masts? Perhaps they have news... or disease!
• The entire ship is swallowed during the night by some IMMENSE beast. Everything's fine and nothing's damaged. If anyone is on deck that night, all they see are the stars being blacked out, as though something MASSIVE has come between them and the ship. The ship continues to sail as normal, and there's even weather in the beast's belly, and no shore is in sight... Then, perhaps a few days later (who can tell?) the sky reveals itself again, and now it's a bright, clear day. Maybe the ship is completely lost (or was it brought somewhere?) or perhaps it's just outside the port of its original destination? No matter who you tell your story to (and everyone on the ship swears it to be true) no one believes a word of it. Could it have all been a mass-dream or hallucination?
• Minor mishap--a mistake in navigational measurements has put you off course. Or perhaps someone fell from the crow's nest, or was crushed by a yardarm, or fell overboard and drowned. could lead to... if there's a fatality, there could be a ghost... especially if the body's not put to rest properly. maybe the ghost won't let the ship find land again until things have been set right, or perhaps it just makes its presence felt and causes mischief.
• Stow away found on board. Put on trial. What will happen to him? What's his story?
• Someone has committed a crime on board, and everyone is a suspect. It's a mere minor theft, but the captain reacts harshly and turns everything upside down looking for clues to see who's the guilty party. People begin to get paranoid, accuse each other. Maybe fights break out?
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  Slavery

  After a fight where all the PC's seemingly died or are captured, they wake up to the crack of a whip, as they have been sold into slavery onboard a galley. They have no equipment, they have to work to exhaustion, they get very little food, but if they play well, they might be able to escape.

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  Competition! (AD&D.com)

  The PCs arrive at a small town on an island in the middle of a lake. The distance around the lake makes it a pain to go around. However, during a particularly nasty storm, one of the bridges that links the town to the other side of the lake has been destroyed. The mayor has launched a competition to find the first group to operate a crossing to the other side of the lake. He asks the PCs to ensure fair play in the competition. There are several groups.... the dwarves are building a tunnel, the elves are building a boat, the gnomes a bridge... etc... Each individual group attempts to bribe the PCs to sabotage the others... Particularly good for an evil group of characters!

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