Back to the Endless Sea

This might be the last of my Endless Sea posts for now. I’ve more or less established all the facts I need to run a game, except for an adventure.
I’d actually be happy to borrow a bit from FATE for that, and maybe have the players put their home port using the location building rules, and then work from there. There’s room for exploration and intrigue, and I can always throw in pirates, mysterious ruined dungeons and so forth for combat options.

So, much like my summation of where I’m at with Cambria, here’s where I’m at so far with the Endless Sea.

Available races include Humans, Changelings, Genasi, Goblins, Gnomes, Kenku, Kobolds, Minotaurs, Shifters, Tabaxi, Tieflings, Tortles and Triton. I’m not bothering with half-breeds – this world is peopled with races from a host of different worlds, both as recent arrivals and natives born from arriving ancestors. I have an idea that a couple of the races are actually native to the Sea, but the nature of the setting means their history is all but gone.

The Endless Sea is always changing, but a handful of locations remain constant for much longer, and become more permanent settlements with fortifications and so on. These locations are known as Burh, and there are several at present.
Names of some of the current Burh include Buyan, Dvaraka, Iram of the Pillars, Kitezh, Long Sault, Lyonesse, Nan Madol, Reimerswaal, Ravenser Odd, Rungholt, Saaftinge, Skaghane, Sri Vijaya and Tantravellon.
The most unusual Burh is Baochuan, the moving city. Formed from a fleet of ships and focused around an ancient and massive vessel, it is the only mobile Burh.

The Elder Isles are a handful of places of legend in the Endless Sea which survived a long time, unlike many of the locations players could visit. The last remaining Elder Isle is Aiaea, the Isle of Magic, and home to the witch queen Circe. All magic-using characters in the setting have been to Aiaea.
The most recent lost Elder Isle is Ys, a great city. Those survivors of this greatly advanced Burh have dispersed throughout the Sea, but can be recognised by their habit of wearing masks while out in public.
Other Elder Isles once known to exist but now disappeared include Avallon, Bulmer Skreme, Cantre’r Gwaelod, Domreis, Godelia, Hybrasil, Llys Helig, Quivira, Roccabarraigh, Sarkel and Tech Duinne.

Technologically, the setting has access to some gunpowder rifles and pistols. These are possible by harvesting the Aetherium Salts from the glowing waters of the Endless Sea and combining them charcoal and sulfur to form a blue powder.
With little access to mineral mining on a long-term scale, much of the technology necessary to refine the rifles and pistols isn’t possible, so they require a long time to reload but can be used effectively as an opening gambit.
Lots of different sizes and styles of ship and boat are used, from sloops to dhows to cutters to feluccas to ketch to catamaran. Small canoes are even used, though mostly used for fishing.

Magic plays an important part in protecting everyone on the Endless Sea, from divine help from the various sea gods to arcane abilities of storm sorcerers. Many different styles of magic from shamanism to careful notation and experimentation to various natural knacks are known throughout the Sea.

As for wildlife in the Sea, from sea serpents and giant crab the size of a person, to islands populated by dinosaurs, displacers beasts and harpies, I think I have most of the bases covered. I know I also want options for sphinxes and medusae and probably sylphs and nereid and djinn and stuff, but I can come back to that.

I have a few organisations in the back of my mind too, free trading companies and wealthy merchants, agents from foreign Burhs, and pirates called the Black Flags that live by ‘The Code’, that sort of thing.

And that’s all I’ve put together so far, but I think it’s enough to get something off the ground, if and when I want to get it going.