The Great Ocean

## Landmarks in the Great Ocean

#### Terabitia

A magnificent artificial island fortress constructed/grown out of Sombra (which is an old coral reef inhabited by barnacle-encrusted Ningalu). It has seawalls East and West, and it's tapered North and South to mitigate wave damage from these directions. The island is a startling and artificial shade of holographic white, but can change colour on special occasions.

##### Landmarks

At the top of Terabitia is a huge observatory tower, which stabs directly upward in blinding white and which is only accessible by magical elevator.

At the north tip of Terabitia are special walled quarters - for House Pontevecchio on the East side, and for Cartel del Flor on the West side.

The port district has modular walls that can change to accommodate ships of different sizes and drafts. When a storm comes, the walls can almost fully enclose a docked ship. Temporary dry docks can also be created by sealing a ship in, winching in supports and then draining the water away. The colours in each dry-dock are usually changed to reflect the livery of the visiting vessel.

The temple of Shaundakul is in the south corner, a more organic and pointy building than the rest of the island. Its pagoda-like roof is hung about with bunting and anchored to the island with old ship's cables. Travellers have hung pairs of worn-out old boots over the cables as an offering to Shaundakul (it's one of his emblems)

The biggest of the taverns in port district, to the southwest of town, is called the Rusty Trumpet (and instead of a sign, there is in fact a very beaten-up horn hanging above the door). It's a dive, and it also has various advertisements and posters that can tell the party a bit about the seedier side of life in Terabitia. The rooftop hosts the odd drum circle for the Cult of Lene. If the cult finds out about Yiuri's moon rock they will be very keen to get hold of it.

There's an interesting shop called The Tiny Oak near the main observatory tower. It's made of daub and mud brick and run by a red elf (Two) called Brice (pron. 'Bric-a'). Brice trades in bartered goods and can do spellwork, including scrolls, as part of their trade. Like other Red Elves, Brice is midldy allergic to metal but likes to trade in opals and other nicknacks. They have quite a thriving pawnshop. The eponymous Tiny Oak grows in a large planter tub on top of their hut.

The basement levels of Terabitia - between the drydocks - hold several large water cisterns, it's not super clear how water gathers there but it may be funnelled down off the buttresses that support the main observatory. There's also an illicit eel fighting ring (like cockfighting but with vicious sea eels), a small drug den that trades in chunks of crumbly New Albion rock, poppy tea and whatever else the sailors bring through.

Sombra is more at the mercy of the storms, but a growing population of Ningalu have swum or found passage across the Depths and are either growing the local reef to fit, or constructing makeshift pontoons and fale to set up their own independent trading base. Terabitia was meant to be terra nullius, but these enterprising Ningalu are emerging with an ancestral claim to the underlying reef system. Brolga has no idea if this is a valid claim or just a clever bid to capitalise on trade routes.

###### Local names:

* DomNa Caramia del Flor - Cartel representatve, a real 'iron lady'. Lackey = Gennaio
* Penombra - mage from House Pontevecchio. AMAB but transfemme, has leucistic skin (pale splotches, white haired but with very dark eyes). Magic School: Cross-disciplinary: all ray/linear spell shapes. Performs powerful divination along latitude or ley lines only.
* Astuto - magus from Cartel del Flor. Attempts to grow a spindly elven goatee and wears a complicated set of modular spectacles. To his shame, is not as good at magic as Penombra. He conducts repairs and lights the 4 cardinal lighthouses as needed. He's also a conjuration mage, and has a bet both ways worshipping Lene and his cartel's Patron, Orcus.
* gangers from gli Scarsi down at the docks, may try to disrupt Yiuri's trade plans, snoop or steal cargo
* there is a small cult of Lene presence on the island, mostly centred around the tavern and port district. They do hippie moon drumming and make wolf calls at night.
* Fra Girolamo Falo may be visiting. He looks extremely Santa-like, with a red nose and cheeks, a large white beard and a warm laugh. Fra Girolamo venerates Wakeen/Glimmercoin, the god of commerce, but he's staying in a temple dedicated to Shaundakul/Turms, the god of travellers. Neither Yiuri nor Elek will be able to get a read on him - his god protects him against manipulation.

#### Garland

An archipelago of seven islands around a huge central crater (called le grand guyot). Garland city is on the northernmost island. Each island has enormous trees growing out of it, stacked on each other up to 20 storeys high. The lower layers are full of rotting vegetation and teem with amphibious life and the mutated descendants of various stranded creatures. Garland's mascot is the ibis - each one is very large. There are also storks and spoonbills - a lot of large black and white birds that all came from New Albion or the Hot Lands originally. Garland is also home to a larger and more feral ancestor of the poguana which is more like a komodo dragon.

The locals of what is now Garland refer to themselves as Lankans, and call their motherland Lanka. They used to trade extensively with the Desh Empire, when it was a single, very large volcanic island. Unfortunately, during the Second Era of the Desh Empire a cataclysm broke Lanka apart and most of it sank into the ocean. The huge mutated trees are traces of plant life from that era, loosely related to the monster trees in the Heath and infused with chaotic magic. The largest of them are kapok trees, they have spiny buttress roots and bear great heavy pods full of fibre - and they are as tall as skyscrapers.

Explorers know of the odd sunken ruin or root-bound hollow that holds evidence of a Desh presence. The local Ningalu would far rather ally with the Desh than with elves, and have faint traces of Desh-like physiology like large eyeteeth, mild light sensitivity and a tall muscular build. Their tales of yore are quite rosy-tinted however, and probably don't align with history.

#### Ningalu and The Catch

A riot of colour and life, the warm oceanic waters of Ningalu look welcoming. The seas are as shallow as ankle-deep in places, but beware! The coral beds are extremely sharp and treacherous. At low tide, the tips of reefs can be seen jutting out of the water - and the bleached ribs of sunken ships. It's dangerous to sail in these parts without a guide.

Ningalu sits near the edge of a large continental shelf. New Albion is the mainland to the East, and the intervening strait is called The Catch. All sorts of wondrous sea creatures come there to breed and feed. Watch out for giant conger eels, hungry anemone and Megalodon. Fortunately, the Elnade and Ningalu are close at hand to protect visitors from some of the chaos.

To the West lies the Depths - a vast and profound oceanic trench. Gillies live in the shallower reaches of the abyss: few landlubbers have ever seen a gillman, and they guard the secrets of the Depths very closely.

## We Are Sailing

The party's journey between Ladinh and the Great Breath

#### Notes:

Roquette is playing dress ups and sleeps in a hammock, has an 'open' arrangement with Brolga. Yiuri has a Viking style enclosed bunk.
Weekly motherwort calls: how is the crew going to keep the motherwort alive on a sea voyage?
Ship to ship communication via flags and loudhailers, so far

#### Week One: Exiting the Eastern Basin and reaching the open ocean

Encounter: Tomaso and Bembo, divers exploring the wreckage of the Latin Fleet. Tomaso gave Yiuri some 250 year old wine and an antique coin as a souvenir.
Encounter: A floating ocean graveyard of elven corpses, overseen by a weird sexton with a crystal obsession
Incident: The Great Wave hits the flotilla, during otherwise calm waters, and there is a small storm
Curiosity: the kobolds make pretty lights on deck at night sometimes.

#### Week Two: getting to Terabitia

Curiosity: Roquette leads the crew in some exercises on deck. Encounter: a shard of Lene falls into the ocean and the crew fights a couple of weresharks retrieving it. They sacrifice a net and a bunch of lead to salvage and contain the magical energy of the shard.

SIDEQUEST from Astuto: go find what has happened to The Cornucopia, a Cartel del Flor ship that was meant to be transporting live plant and animal samples to Terabitia but that appears to have got in trouble. The Observatory saw a signal flare go up in the South, soon after the Great Wave went past; they sent some local Ningalu in outrigger canoes to investigate but they didn't come back. The Cornucopia should have an elf captain called Valeria and a human merchant called Pedro Cavallo on board, along with a fresh crew and a few alchemical supplies.

The party found a stranded Ningalu clinging to part of an outrigger canoe, and followed their directions South. They found the Cornucopia near sunset, it appeared stranded however Elek spotted a motionless figure at the helm. The party decided to wait overnight before boarding, and nearly fell into an unnatural sleep, which was quite traumatic and painful to awaken from. Roquette was able to awaken Yiuri (roughly) and Elek (nicely).

#### Week Three: More Terabitia, and the Depths

Yiuri has decided to loiter in Terabitia for a few days and try to establish a Motherwort colony there, in the TIny Oak's upper level, to help him confront Itria. The party took a serpentine artifact back for identification by Astuto and Penombra. The idol is associated with a god-like entity called Asmodios, one of the four Patrons connected with the elven Cartels. The Art of transforming people into wild beasts is a signature of the Cartel and specifically Itria's family, the LeLouche clan. Penombra was able to drop hints about the other Cartels' patrons, though she only knows the name for Asmodios - the others can be recognised by their epithets and ways of manifesting.

While Yiuri and the gang cool their heels, the kobolds and Volumnia won't be idle. Up until this point, Volumnia's been content to stay a quiet passenger on board the Golden Samovar, but she will be keen to spend some shore time getting to know her kobold cousins and causing some magical mischief. She'll officiate a marriage ceremony between two kobolds, one of Vestfalian origin and one of Ladinh origin: Hedy and Julietta.

###### **Things Volumnia has experienced:**

* Volumnia was alive before the moon broke, and can offer some insight into the old cult of Selene. According to goblin lore, Selene was supposed to be the child of a God and a Titan - titans being some kind of rebellious immortal entity that the gods kept in check. Selene's parents were supposed to be Usil (the goblin version of Mitras or Dajbog) and a figure called Pale Night: Usil cheated on his spouse Uni to shack up with her, it seems. Volumnia will be curious about the madness prevalent among the current cult.
* Volumnia may also have witnessed one or more than one of the Patrons in action, when they were less powerful and more like demons or other minor evils - perhaps something involving a massacre between the Duende and Desh back in the Second Age of the Desh empire - something like Garagos or Bane possessing the minds of berserk warriors, and battle being called to prevent more losses on both sides?

Itria will have some pretty strict limitations on what she can disclose to Yiuri, but we can make it clear that she set up at least some of the Cornucopia incident as a way to tip off the party about her Patron's identity. She will also appear quite sickly and de-glamoured on the motherwort call. Marcus will be waiting on Itrai and he, on the other hand, is scrubbing up very nicely, to the extent where it is difficult to distinguish between him and an elf, aside from his auburn hair and sturdier arms. The cut of a good doublet can disguise a lot.

Yiuri dropping the name of Asmodios will earn him an interesting night-time visitation by Kyric, the so-called 'Prince of Lies'. Kyric is on the hunt for Coulisse, the former headman of Delemont - and has no love for the Patrons, who he considers to be rivals. Kyric will manifest while the Golden Samovar is over an area called The Depths. This is a great undersea trench. Crossing The Depths is hard on the Ningalu sailors.

#### Week Four: Garland through to Ningalu

Garlander party. Sharing outlandish myths about the Desh (hard to tell the difference between the gods and the royals pretty much). Something about Garuda carrying an Ancestor over the ocean to Garland. Main drink is ‘Ava - lots of sticky sweet treats and coconut soaked damper bread, plus raw fish prepared in coconut and citrus.

Overnight incident: Desh-venerating Ningalu try and commandeer one of the kobold ships (the Dugong?) to sail West and meet the Ancestors. They do this by getting the kobolds plastered onshore.

##### Ningalu reef

The reef curves round in a huge crescent that spans miles.

In the lee of this spectacular reef, protected from the Great Wave to the North and South, there’s a Sargasso-like, tranquil sea full of floating seaweed and teeming with little sea critters. The locals call it the Inner Sea. This is the breadbasket of the Ningalu people and it’s well patrolled by the locals - who visitors will see on standing boards / gondolas or in patrol towers all around the perimeter of the Inner Sea.

Very small humps of dry land only - covered in toi-toi like, tufty flax bushes and clusters of coconut palms. Lots of colourful coral, which has been grown into intricate designs under the water. There are maze-like channels for vessels to sail through, many of which are too narrow for ships.

Where the coral forms small round lagoons, there’s usually a circle of faleiti and shallow jetties for land-faring visitors to take a rest. Decommissioned ships are moored for use as shops and to store dry goods - they are painted in bright block colours to identify their purpose. A distinctive seaweed ‘island’ with an entire witch’s cottage, complete with tiny chimney, is tethered at one of the lagoons and really sticks out among the other dwellings.

The whole reef is dotted with lots of tall towers constructed out of a mix of ship’s timbers, coconut palms and fronds, kapok tree branches and large bamboo poles (grown in New Albion). They’re not really for living in, but act as geographic markers and anchorages for ships.

There are a couple of thousand vessels on the reef, ranging from tiny coracles to Ladinh galleons, Ros longboats and a Vestfalian two-decker of considerable draft. The Vestfalian ships have a more square profile and are chunkier and slower than the Ladinh ships, and have a bit more firepower.

Tame sea creatures tow parcels around, or bring in bundles of seaweed and fish from the open sea. The local wildlife includes eels, dragonfish, lion fish, mournful looking seals with long grey faces, lots of seabirds and enormous shoals of tiny silver sprats. The odd enormous jellyfish also just chills out in the Inner Sea.

Ningalu defences are a bit of everything. The outer seawall of the reef is reinforced with slabs of bleached coral and sections of ancient shipwrecks. Many locals just have spears and tame fish, and wear sharkskin armour. However there are also a few well maintained swivel guns and old cannons which they’ve liberated from shipwrecks, kept in emplacements on dry land or on the decks of the storage ships. Many of the coral channels can be closed at a moment’s notice to trap invaders, as well.

The locals look super cool and diverse! In addition to Orca and Eel people, there's a very fancy tribe of Ningalu who look like lionfish / sea perch, with bright spotted skin, ornate fins and toxic spines. They appear to be important to the reef in some way and generally look fit and well fed. It seems like maybe they are some kind of warrior caste, They spend far more time in the sea than on land, and have fins connecting their thighs to their powerful, ornate tails. There are also a few much more ocean-specialised Ningalu with lighter skin on their backs than on their undersides, prominent foreheads, rounder eyes and no legs at all. They don't really bother to talk with anyone who isn't also a Ningalu, though they can speak a bit of halting Linguafranca if pushed.

##### Ningalu side quest time

A couple of shady human alchemists are accused of dumping their waste on the reef and polluting some coral. There's a very rowdy and anarchic trial by mob going on, and unless the party can persuade the locals to back down, these people are going to get impaled and left for the birds. (this is apparently a disgraceful way to go if you're Ningalu). Not just the local Ningalu, but resident humans and elves, are all very angry because the reef keeps them all safe from storms.

The party meets a younger Ningalu called Peni (M). An old Ningalu sage, Viliame, is unwell and Peni wonders if the party can pay him a house call and see if they can help him. This involved diving under the surface and inside a room that's shaped a bit like a beaver dam or a diving bell. Inside, Viliame (M) is a lionfish Ningalu, very old looking, propped up on sealskins in the warm and dry. He has something wrong with his gills, they are inflamed so that he can't breathe properly underwater, and seem to be covered in a white fuzzy substance. It hurts him if he goes in the salt water. He also complains of having very sore fins - his tail fins look colourless and ragged, as if something had scraped them.

Options for treatment include: persuade/bribe the priestess of Baba Yaga to supply medicine: approach the kobolds and see if they can help: try to corterise the infection and coat it in copper antifouling paint (impressive INT roll needed).

Viliame's rewards (depending how the party got on): a sac of puffer fish venom (+2D6 poison to the first stab of a bladed weapon that draws blood, 1D6 to the second stab): Coral grenade: A hunk of living coral with a stick of kelp in it. Pull out the kelp and throw: it turns everything within a 10 ft circle radius to coral.

#### Week Five: New Albion, The Mad Isles and landfall in The Great Breath

##### The Great Breath

We have a large main volcano and a smattering of little dormant islands behind, forming a long tail for an archipelago. The main island is called Pele. Smaller islands are named after distant corruptions of famous Red Elf druid names. Bethnal (Bodhmall), Wetland (Gwench’lan) and Melon (Myrddin). Pele's main settlement is called Cannon, which might be a corruption of the druid name Cernunnos - there is a huge wicker statue of a person with big deer-like horns, set up down near the beach, which is big enough to be visible from out at sea.

The main volcano is a tall, active cone. Around it there’s quite a large and fertile land mass. Golden beach sand near the sea, lush jungle vegetation and plantations of leafy root vegetables, bamboo gullies, turning to palm trees and bright red patches of Fire Tree blossom closer to the ocean. There used to be sweet cane plantations here but it isn’t farmed for trade any more - New Albion’s crowded out the market for sweet cane.

West Indies inspired. The predominant flowering plant is the Fire Tree, which has fern like leaves and lots of bright red flowers. The Great Breath’s insignia is a large turtle, but stylised Fire tree flowers and a triangle for the volcano also feature heavily in local art and heraldry.

The current season is a dry season, so the locals are spreading bracken and other mulch over their fields and getting ready for wet season - which will come when Winter comes on. There are lots of dry creek beds, ditches and embankments all topped up and ready for the wet season’s rains.

Lots of small, brightly coloured tropical birds, which people eat and keep as pets too. Really warty, ugly fat toads that people also eat (though you have to singe the skin off before you can eat them safely). Large blue geckos are kept around the house for insect control. There are land snakes (black and white striped) and a native poguana variant, the Munguana, which hunts the snakes. It’s skinnier and has shorter, more yellowish fur.

Overall the culture is vivid, bountiful and precarious. The climate has extremes and the weather can change fast. If there’s a volcanic eruption or landslide, that would spell trouble, so instead of one city there are lots of settlements spread around the main island in a ring. A few smaller settlements are scattered on the ‘long tail’ of islands, mostly unoccupied, that act as evacuation points for the locals if a storm or disaster hits the main island.

What do our locals look like? The population is super diverse. This is a trading hub populated by the descendants of human/halfling sailors and castaways. Society operates on a bit more magic and a bit less tech than in Ladinho culture. The true 'locals' are called Breathmen, and they dominate anywhere outside the towns. They appear to share some ancestry with the original halflings (the Brittons). They have very dark skin like Hotlanders but share the halfings' vivid blue eyes, they are shorter and littler than the average human and they have very curly, thick black hair.

For visitors and more recent migrants, there are humans of Ros, Quin, Kubernetes and Erebi extraction - the Kubernetes will have a base on one of the smaller islands. There are also a couple of distinctively Vestfalian faces in the town crowds, probably refugees given how bedraggled they look. A coterie of Janjarri and Red Elves wanders around Cannon city, looking dishevelled, drugged up and clearly touristy. They're all wearing vibrant, scanty clothes and strings of distinctive red beads, which appear to be made of dried beans.