So I'm planning a one-shot for the rpgconvention in my town in a few weeks, and I'm thinking of making it happen in a Bermuda triangle/Demon's Sea/Sargasso Sea equivalent in Theah, with maybe a cemetery of ghost ships, a few marine monsters and some strange Syrneth artifact that makes the PC get there against their will...
Thing is... was there ever something of the like in the 1st edition??
Sat, 06/25/2016 - 16:55
#1
Alfredo Tarancón
Legion's Maw (working title)
idea, adventure, one-shot, convention, 2nd edition
Thought so, but after giving it a quick look couldn't find anything like that... I've been also looking at Heroes, Villans and Monsters, and take a few ideas from the Sea monsters in there, especially The Great Grey...
I've spent tonight creating the characters for the game, and it's amazing how fast it can be. I'm having a blast, and even if I'm not sure yet about what they will encounter, I have a really good grasp of what's going on at the beggining...
The characters are all part of the crew or passengers of The Blythe (to be translated to "ussuran"probably, if I find the proper translation), a ship whose main work is the hunting of whales and leviathans, but that also usually uses that work as a front-up for other "not-so-legal" activities... After a sudden storm, the ship finds itself sorrounded by a strange calmness... but the stars have dissapeared from the sky, an there's what seems to be a strange island in the horizon...
The ship captain is Zhanna Ilyanova. She is a Criminarl/ship Captain with a strong sense of honor, and a big secret.
Danil is the giant quartermaster/whaler of the ship, a strong Ussuran, who shares the property of the Ship with Zhanna, who is kind of an adopted daugter. Danil, and now Zhanna, works regularly for the Sophia's Daughters... Since he helped Zhanna escape her real vodacce family because of her little talent for sorte sorcery.... Now they travel the seas, taking jobs, and trying to undermine Vodacce oppresive system for women like her...
We also have an excentric theater writer/performer from montaigne, a noble duelist that left his titles behind to learn about life, and adventure, and write the greatest theater play ever written...
We've a crazy highlander that claims that he's a living legend, that he has seen his future, and that he will live a great many adventures before dying at the hands of the O'Bannon... but hopefully not before he remembers the past that he seems to have lost on his path to become a legend...
There's also a strange sarmatan soldier, that keeps to himself, and seems to speak to his own shadow, when he believes that nobody is watching...
and a young castillian scholar ready for action and adventure, an archaelogist decided to recover and preserve as many wonders from the old world as possible... while she also searches for his father and brother, dissapeared while they were part of an Explorer's Society expedition... The onlye things' she has left are the hat and whip from his father, find among the things he left behind after dissapearing... and a strange syrneth artifact that started to shine a few hours ago... just when the storm started....
Ooooh! I came very close to doing a Sargasso Sea environment for my intro-one shot. Instead, I went with the "mysterious uncharted island" theme. Tell you what, I'll send you mine if you send me your's. :)
I'm spinning it a little bit more, trying to find the balance between making an easy intro adventure and showing the most interesting bits about the setting. I've gone from the monster island concept to include a pursuit of a Villain Ship that ends with the characters arriving to Legion's Maw. Still fuzzy about the details, except that probably it will have something to do with a syrneth artifact in the hands of the Villain, and that's gonna be related to the backstory of one of the characters...
I'm thinking, the island holds some old treasure.... I'm thinking, there's a ring of lost ships around the island, and only the syrneth artifact let's the villain get through without much trouble... I'm thinking maybe the Losejai in the PC's group can use a minor Favor to be able to follow the trail of the villain ship...
From there I could maybe get a race to get the treasure, a fight in some old temple, assault from sirens, fighting the ghost of dead sailors, a naval battle between the villain ship and the Pc's Ship (That seems its gonna be named Blayt) ...
Still spinning possibilities, here... I've finished the PC's sheets and now I'm working on settling the basic elements of the plot, so I can submit the adventure to the convention website...
Whoa. I ran 'The Sea of Lost Ships' as a Convention social LARP at Conpulsion in 2015. Would you be at all interested in seeing what I used?
Sure! I will keep posting my musings here, and share whatever comes out from it eventually with whoever wants to check it...
Right now I've to decide who's is gonna be the Villain... There're quite a few candidates born from the pcs backgrounds, and I'm still thinking about wheter some of them should be folded into others, so maybe a few of them share antagonists...
I've been thinking of this like a quick campaign starter, to develop beyond just the initial game... mostly because I'm enjoying what the characters backgrounds have turned out to be... Maybe even try to develop it enough to eventually upload it to the explorers site...
Mmm... can ghost use sorcery??... And Legion's Maw might become also the name of the syrneth artifact, not just of the place...
(Edited for formatting, mostly)
Here's a couple of links to google docs that I used. It's slightly disorganised, since the various bits of data were distributed to the characters on the three different occupied ships at the start of the game. When playing, different parts of the room were designated as the different vessels, and people could only travel between them if they had a skilled sailor and one of the small boats.:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kxE9GlVes8qh6GzCHTjLBuEhw4f3xCvWxTZT...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14iM97wAuhi7lf88-vXtXhy2sHvaQ0ok399D7...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WwWhWXx-meYpTkHd0ZgUtPI6TMgA5RPM...
If you have any other questions, I'll see what I can do to answer
As for ghosts and sorcery, I stand by my opinion that many undead are caused by sorcerers being killed by their own magic: see Unravelled, Mirror Ghosts etc
Wow, extensive job there...You're using the rules from rapier's edge?
No, an even more simple set. This was for a pick-up Social LARP at a con, so the only rules I used are the ones in the GM doc. Some of the ship names were inspired by real or fictional ships that went missing in the Sargasso sea.
I can't think of anything official for 7th Sea but there was a domain called Saragoss for Ravenloft in the 2nd Ed book "Islands of Terror". "Darklords" also had Motette who lived on an island with little more than a lighthouse. The Fraternity of Shadows have a section in one of their free PDFs about his island http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/Library/NocturnalSeaGazetteer.pdf
http://www.impworks.co.uk/
So the planning of the adventure has evolved quite a bit... After researching a little bit I found a few poems and stories that gave me a few ideas, and after a few days I've now the basic 5 act structure for this adventure, and ideas for latter adventures as part of a GM story.
So far I have a lot of notes, but I'm planning on running it a couple of times on the convention, to see how it works. I'm having a lot of fun with this... :D
Here's an announcement I made for the con website, introducing the story in advance... In the image is in spanish, but below I made a quick'n dirty translation...
Three enemies were fighting that night on the high seas, the Blayt ship, the prey they have been trying to catch for days and the furious storm that suddenly came to life.
Great waves seemed to block the shots from the Blayt canons, mounting a defense of their prey. The uproar of the thunder silenced the orders issued by the captain, and the lightning blinded the crew...
A last lightning, and both the prey and the storm were gone...
Instead, they were in a calm sea, under a sky with no stars.
The crew of the Blayt recovered quickly, searching for any clue as to their prey whereabouts...
A cry from the lookout call their attention.
Before them, a great wall of mist, covering the acces to a big isle that could be seen afar..
And the prey was entering the mist, towards the unknown...
MISTERYOUS ISLANDS · GHOSTS · SEA MONSTERS · TREASURES · SWORDFIGHTING · DEMONS · SORCERY · NAVAL BATTLES · REVENGE · STORMS · MERMAIDS · EXPLOSIONS · SUNKEN SHIPS
And the demon's maw...