Limáni, the City of Wharves

City of Wharves

Limáni was once a small crescent shaped atoll, barely sand bars at low tide but with sturdy (and treacherous breakers) keep the worst of the surf off. Located just to the southwest of the patrolled waters of Minoan Republic, these sand bars were used as a way for traders to exchange goods and avoid Minoan taxes before entering the Republic's domain.

It started small, a few boards lain in the sand and a few crude moorings. Through time docks were built in the shallow water, and pilings were driven into the sand. Not through careful engineering but sheer weight of  convenience and shortcuts a lattice of gangplanks and derelict vessels formed the bones of the floating town.

An atoll
Source unknown

In the modern era hardly anything is built on the shifting sands of the atolls, they are used more like a unstable foundation upon which the rest of the city is tethered. There are no great structures in the City of Wharves, nothing is taller than decks of the ships that make up her body and the masts swaying above. The bulk of living and business actually occurs below the waterline in the hulls of ships, where psári oil lamps burn in damp claustrophobic cargo bays never built to be used as a tavern in the sticky humidity.

Few people call Limáni home permanently, most of the stable population is of descendants of merchant exiles from the Republic and pirates. Most are just passing through, though they may stay for a night or a year they are all trying to get their ships free and sail to less rank waters. 

Hazards in the City

Limáni'sBreath

As the tide rises and falls, so does the City of Wharves. You may go out to dinner in the central part of town, and find you have to hike up to the rim and down the other side to return to your ship. The city is only roughly level at hightide, and with three moons the tide in Ánemos are erratic at best and extreme and deadly at worst.

Because of the extremely flexible topography of the city navigation can be difficult, the path you took out will look very different if it is there at all when coming back the same way. The decks of ships moored in the city are considered open to the public, there would be no other way to get around if everyone kept each other off their decks.

Think of the city as a large net, at every node a wooden block of variable size and buoyancy floats, and there are little people trying to get their little block out of the net all the time while other little people try and shore up sagging parts of the net. Its chaos.

Medieval Venice was much too organized
Source

Use the below table for generating random events when chasing across the decks of the city:
2d6:
2: Rapid low tide! As you jump from deck to deck the sea seems to drain like a bathtub, and a great rip sunders this part of the city. A successful Dex/Reflex save will get you on the far side of the rip away from your pursuers, a failure will trap you on with no where to run from your pursuers.

3: Falling mast! +6 to hit, 2d8+4 bludgeoning damage to the (1d3): Pursing party, the pursued party, or the deck (it may smash open!) between the parties (this makes the pursuers loose a turn to clamber over it)

4: Dead end! Either dive into the water of face your pursuers.

5: A crane is lifting cargo crates, if you jump you might be able to grab on and get swung far ahead of your pursuer. This is an Str/athletics check, on a failure you 1d3: get thrown into the water, get thrown right into your pursuers, or you miss to no adverse effect.

6: Popup market! Roll on the goods table a few times and thats whats being sold. Make it effect the chase: resins means people might get stuck to the deck, silks can be hidden behind, pottery can be smashed, etc.

7: No chase event

8: You dash into a tent-tavern on the deck of a large ship. Its very dark compared with the glaring sun outside, giving you enough time to hide. The party all roll stealth checks, using the highest, against the pursuer's perception checks, again using the highest. Even if caught here a tavern brawl can be easily started.

9: Float Patrol gang sinking a ship directly in your way! You can try and dash over it as it sinks, a Dex/reflex check; or you can face your pursuers.

10: Rotten gangplank! A random party member of the either the pursing or pursued party must spend the next 2 chase turns struggling to get free, or 1 turn if their party helps them.

11: Rouge wave! You can see it coming, the decks a few ships away violently surge up and then down. Dex/relex save or be thrown into the drink.

12: Fire! As you run someone accidentally kicked over a lantern and the inferno is burning brightly behind! 2d6 fire damage, Dex/reflex save for half. Loose all pursuit but their is a 2 in 6 chance someone saw it and thinks it was you that started the fire, they will report you to the Float Patrol for justice, which in the case of arson means death. They will come looking for you in 1d4 days.

*Its very hazardous to swim in the middle of Limáni, you are always at risk of getting crushed between rocking ships. Smaller players have it a little easier. Everyone is vulnerable to drowning if they get tangled in the many nets/mooring lines in the murky water.

The Float Patrols

These roving bands of  "public servants" are half police force, half protectionist racket, half public works crew, half vigilante mob, and half fire brigade. They haphazardly patrol the city tightening lines between ships, adjusting gangplanks, maintaining pilings, condemning sinking vessels by cutting them loose, collecting "docking fees", and generally working twords keeping the city afloat.

Think of them like douchey lifeguards: they are doing something important for public safety, but you can't help but roll your eyes at them.

What they Sought in the Great Desert

If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture—that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.

-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitare

...And even when a road hazards its way over the desert, you will see it make a thousand detours to take its pleasure at the oases. Thus, led astray by the divagations of roads, as by other indulgent fictions, having in the course of our travels skirted so many well-watered lands, so many orchards, so many meadows, we have from the beginning of time embellished the picture of our prison. We have elected to believe that our planet was merciful and fruitful. But a cruel light has blazed, and our sight has been sharpened...

Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Mojave Desert, CA, source

1d10 Things You Might Find When Crossing the Great Desert

1: Heaven's Gate
They say that out in the rock and sand, where the sky curves under the great weight of the Heavens, on windy days the hangings that veil mortals eyes from the glory of Heaven brush and dance across the lonely sands. Patient pilgrims wander the high places sometimes meditating on the zenith of a mountain for a weeks at a time, hoping to see the parting of the veil and glimpse Paradise. They sigh with contentment, their souls soothed by the promise of glory, and they pick up and leave the desert better than they entered.

Other, less scrupulous seekers wait below. They wait for the drapery of Heaven to skim across their dunes, after them they gallop on black horses lean from hard years and water scarcity. The legends say that if you ride fast enough even the foulest of sinners can grab a hold and climb their way into the Heavens.

Or perhaps it was simply a passing Sky City built on a lump in the sky...

2: The Book of Dreams
It is well understood that in the Great Desert you can sometimes find the Book of Dreams. You'll see it when you sleep first, sitting on a desk behind your grammar school teacher or in your parent's basement that you have to clean. You might not even notice it those first few nights, but if you happen to be headed to the book in the material realm it will start to take more... noticeable... roles in your nightly ethereal wanderings. You may be crushed by it or fall off of it, you may be chasing it down endless corridors or trying to keep it from sinking in a lake of shell-less snails. You know, anxiety dream stuff.

The Book of Dreams is not trying to sell you stuff like a Dream Merchant, it wants you to find it in real life and read it.

Most stories say that you will find the book in the possession of a noble knight or wise priest, but usually its just a sleepy person. They generally will glad to be rid of it, others will fight you ferociously for a chance to glimpse its pages.

Everyone's experiance reading the Book is different: 1d6
1-3: It reads like someone else's dream journal, mildly interesting but mostly incoherent. Makes you drowsy
4: Get sucked into a nightmare! The Book is gone when you awake
5: Fall into a deep sleep and wake up knowing a new random spell. You can no longer read the Book, its just gibberish. Compelled to check the book often just in case you can read it again
6: Gain the ability to enter the Realm of Dreams, but only when you have the Book in your possesion

3: A Place to Find Yourself
Austere landscapes separate the wheat from the chaff. Long hours in the warm sun and under the bright stars can elevate the spirit and cleanse the body of evils. Sweat can cleanse, and a simple diet and quiet habits can expel disease and other maladies of the body and soul.

Some simply wander, looking for a modest water hole and some shade to heal and grow. For every year spent in the desert only doing quiet and contemplative actions (no adventuring, item creation, spell research, etc) you can get a re-roll on a single failed disease check, or you can use these rules for personal growth.

4: A Place to Loose Yourself
Not everyone finds solace in the hot sun and the cold stars. Life in the desert can bend the back and and break the will. As life becomes more desperate those that were once strong turn to stone licking and cannibalism for survival.

Perhaps they turn to ghouls that walk the dunes at night looking for travelers, and if you don;t keep close watch you may awake with gritty hands strong and desperate in their strangle hold around your sweet warm neck.

Worse yet a spirit of hunger and famine could be born in such despair, a wendigo could hunt in the dunes. This is especially common of the souls upon large failed expeditions where they lingered in starvation for months while they consumed their brothers.

5: Star Children, to Raise Them in the Light of the Lord
There is a high desert plateau, far from any watering hole where the caravans and tribes to not trek, upon which the stars fall. At their cores sleep giants made of molten glass who breath radiation and death. After cooling they begin to crack open their vessels and to behold this new world they have come to with mute horror or confusion.

Are they beings from another place, crashed on our planet out of desperation or long intent? Are they the stars themselves, sick of watching terrestrial affairs from far above? Are they fallen angles, cast out of the Heavens? Are they cast aside experiments from some higher being living on a moon?

Who knows!

All that matters is that the faithful find these dripping behemoths and make sure they are converted. Word of a Star Child fetch a fine fee at any pilgrims church on the outskirts of the desert, a living and walking one will provide you with favors from the Church, perhaps even an audience with a bishop... For what better examples of the ever-forgiving light of the Church than to tour the civilized world to demonstrate that anyone can be forgiven?

6: The Sands of Time
You can see the bent figures scouring the dunes in the heat of the day, mirages dancing about them while they remain sullen dark smudges. With noses bent nearly to the ground their many lenses flashing in the abundant light, they search. With delicate tools they pick up individual grains of sand upon which the focus their lenses. Their hauls hang at their belts in pitifully small sacks.

They are collecting Time.

Wretchedly small amounts of Time, but Time none the less. And when their sacks are full they leave the desert to sell their haul to the wizards who wish to make hourglasses.

Up close the Tardy Sifters, as they call themselves, are a sun burnt, bent over, leathery, squinty eyed, and slow moving bunch. They aren't great conversationalists, but they do have a wizard contact at the nearest oasis they could get you introduced to for some water skins and food. Or, if you are feeling a little more murderous, you could kill them and take their sack of Sand. What kind of Time is it? You'll have to inhale some and find out...

7: Meet the Devil and Know His Temptations
...and perhaps strike a deal.

On cold nights when there are no moons and the scavengers cackle just out side of you camp's dungfire light, the Devil dances across the sand and plays his xalam to the beasts of the night. Should the Devil spy your fire he will approach and with utmost courtesy ask to share in your hospitality and companionship.

If you refuse the Devil you must extinguish your fire and flee into the night, running from his tune until you cannot hear it. As you flee the Devil will haunt you until dawn or your death, inciting the creatures of the desert into a wild hunt. He will call your name and know you have defied him. If you brave the darkness and elude the Devil as dawn breaks he will forget your name and you will have defied him.

If you accept the Devil you must offer him food and drink, then regal him with song, verse or story. If he is pleased we will offer you a boon from his shoulder sack. If he is displeased he will offer you a boon from his hip pouch. Both contain wondrous things, both at the cost of your soul to be collected at your death or in a year and a day's time, respectively. Refusal is incredibly impolite.

8: A Wise Hermit

There are a lot of cooky people that live out in the Great Desert. Prophets and madmen are often driven for well watered lands, they find that their persecutors stop when the dunes and rocks begin. They might be siting atop a column. Or just hanging out. Or maybe they are all wizards?

I dunno, but one of them probably knows something you want to know, best to talk to them all.

9: Bones from Eons Past, Exposed by Wind From Cold Stars

Bones are pretty useful. You can use them to make stocks.  You can use them for fertilizer. You can use them for spooky decorations.

Or, if you have the inclination... and the time... and the finances to fund a multi-month expedition... and the required skills... and an evil intent... and tenacity, you can search the Great Desert for and excavate the bones of long dead terrors to tap their ancient power for your own benefit. If you are lucky, or just rich, you can obtain a complete skeleton to animate.

But that is terrible bad luck.


10: Simply Find an Oasis and Rest

The desert is a hard place to travel. The ground can be soft and make walking and pulling carts hard or be hard and make footing uneven and rough. The wind blows constantly with no vegetation to slow it, sandstorms range from irritating to deadly. The sun bears down intensely causing sunburns and dehydration and exhaustion, and when its not in the sky warmth flees from the desert for bitterly cold nights. Foraging and hunting all day may not yield even a mouthful of edible material and leave you tired and demoralized.

The Great Desert is not a place for the weak.

Oases are.

Star Child, source

Plying the Seas for (Some) Adventure and (Mostly) Profit

"Hey kid, wanna buy some sheep?"

So I have a player in one of my Ánemos games that worships Oros, god of trade and mercantilism. Literally ever time they are in a port or meeting a random guy on the ocean he trys to make a business deal, its great. I didn't really have a good way to handle this at first, so I wrote up a random goods table, assigned each good a value per ton and a rarity and have been using it ever since. And since I wrote it I guess I could share it here, I even mentioned it in a post from months ago!

I use these by rolling on the d100 table when the party encounters a merchant ship (most of these are either common galleys (150 tons of cargo space) or trading cogs (300 tons of cargo space)) (ship stats here) to figure out what goods they have aboard. If you want to really systematize this you could roll a d100% to determine how full the trader's cargo hold is and roll on the goods table and the quantity per rarity table to fill up their hold to their current level, but I have found that that level of detail is often not super important.

I have found this table to be pretty useful for determining the primary industries of islands or even the domains that Gods and Spirits are interested in. So that's cool.

Random Good Table:

Livestock Head to Ton Conversion Rates

Quantity Per Rarity Rates

I also wrote a little calculator using Excel's random number generator to simulate a variable price when selling goods in market. The math is pretty simple, and it seems to work well:

Selling Price= Common Price*(1+x)

Where: x=(random value between -25% and +25%)/y

Where: y=1(if very rare), 2(if rare), 3(if uncommon), 4(if common) 

[I especially like that the rarity controls how big the price variation is. Common goods are only ever -6.25% to +6.25% above or below the common market price, they are more stable good because they are common. Rarer goods can have bigger swings in price, like in real life! Economics simulation tirade over]

Or you can just say fuck it, Connor you wrote a god damned math for D&D what the fuck, give me the math in a little calculator for fucks sake. Okay.

The Ivory Island

According to the locals this is the resting place of all dead souls (and no one has been able to prove them wrong yet).

This island of marble has been completely carved into shrines to the dead.Centuries ago when they realized that the Spirits of their ancestors slept in the very stones beneath their feet they began to pay them homage with tombs. Back then they had the space for "true" tombs, and the monuments were magnificent in scope if rudimentary in execution, and even a modest man could buy his own sepulcher to lay his bones in once he died.

As time slipped on and more Spirits began to reside there in ever and ever more grand housing, the Tomb Builders reached the height of their craft. Indeed, many of the architectural advances of the modern Age come from the Tomb Builders being confronted with the challenge of cutting more houses for bones out of the living white stone of the island.

Almost fractal now in its complexity, every nook and cranny has been utilized and memorialized. The narrow pathways wander over hill and artificial valley, every step you take is on an intricately carved tile for the Spirit of some poor man or woman, around every corner is a little alcove with a hundred shelves where the ashes of those long dead are laid for eternity. Every fountain is an homage to the beauty of a youth cut down too soon, every column a solemn memory of a parent much missed, and every bench a tribute to the hospitality of a generous entertainer long dead.

Now the few living Tomb Builders that are left tend to the graves of their ancestors and quietly work on their own. All arable land has been dug out till good solid white marble was hit, the island is now devoid of vegetation expect for the lichens and moss that crawl on the older tombs. The water table now purely serves the ever murmuring fountains, and the Tomb Builders import all of their food from other places as the Sea around the Ivory Island is poison to sea life from the run off of the marble. Other than the Tomb Builders and visitors, this is truly an island for the dead.

How to Use the Ivory Island

Now in its waning days the Ivory Island has become quite the destination for tourists from the not so distant Chalcis Chain, many sages and sorcerers of considerable potency have been interred here from centuries ago when it was still fashionable lay your Spirit to rest on the island.

For this reason one of the many wizards of Chalcis may ask you to fetch them the pinkie toe bone of some ancient mage so that they can enhance their scrying rituals. And of course there are untold but well rumored whispers of riches laid to rest beside the bodies of the dead, and it is said some bold blasphemous soul could simply wander into their tombs and liberate their artifacts.

This is also a popular destination for the descendants of the many people that are buried on the island, they are given special attention when summoning and bargaining with the Spirits of the dead. It would really help your bandit prince's claim on the throne if you can convince his long dead great-great-great-great-great-great-grand pappy to say that he is the heir.

In summary the island can serve as:

• A fetch quest destination
• A megadungeon littered with undead (the Spirits of the dead do not like grave robbers)
• A place to get information or quests from your ancestors

I like the Ivory Island a lot, I may write a follow up post if my players ever find themselves in that neck of the sea...

Drawn by reddit user /u/AxelAbraxas

Creatures of the Deep

My players met one of the biggest baddest creatures on my random encounter table last session, "the kraken" (not actually a kraken, just had that name in there as a placeholder for giant squid beast.). They handled it amazingly well by fleeing to the nearest island with a shallow reef to get away from it. They then convincing a Spirit to help them distract it so they could sail away, by making up a song and building a small shrine in praise of the Spirit.

Part of their roleplay discussion with the Spirit was about the nature of the kraken and what it feared. It came out that the kraken is locked in an eternal hunt with what was implied to be a legendary Kētos. Both prowl the Sea looking for the other. This got me thinking about creating simple movement rules for the Kētos and the "kraken" to map and keep track of their struggles against each other.

In the amazing Joseph Manola's post about the Triple Crown he describes three cosmically damned beings wandering the world. The PCs have to find and interact with these beings in order to retrieve the Triple Crown, a stunning example of his romantic fantasy philosophy to gaming. This got me thinking about how one might keep track of these wandering agents on a hexmap as a way for players to concretely get and use information about their quarry, and so these rules for wandering titanic sea creatures were born...

But First, Some Lore!

So we have two ancient sea creatures hunting each other. One is squid like, the other is "The Great One", an ambiguous large animal implied to be one of the Kētos. Since Kētos already exist as an identifiable group with my players, I want to distinguish this as another creature, and my random encounter table says it should be a "dragon turtle" what ever that really is. So we have a "kraken" and a "dragon turtle", lets write something more interesting than their generic D&D counter parts.

Like this...

...plus this and massive and old.

The Great One:
This massive sea turtle is the last of its kind. It once had mates, brothers and sisters, but that was an Age ago before the world changed and before its ancient enemy ripped them from fin to shell. This relic of the ancient ocean cruises the shallow waters of Ánemos with powerful strokes of its fins, grazing on kelp forests and fish when it is not taking long naps near islands. Often mistaken for a reef or a small island the people of Ánemos have many stories of the "island that awoke" or the "reef that lived".

When it catches the scent of its enemy in the water it rises in a flurry of activity, bent on entering a final battle with its ancient foe. This has happened many times before, each ending in a draw were they both flee to lick their wounds and fight another day.

You know, classic kraken but....

...also horrifying gold worm beast.

The Tentacled Fiend: 
Resembling a giant squid or octopus in appendage only this fiend of the deep lays in wait in the deep ravines between the shelves of islands, letting its rubbery arms drift with the currents. Perhaps it slumbers, each tentacle with enough autonomy to grasp and wrestle whatever poor creature happens to graze it. Then the tentacle pulls the poor thing to the depths to its gaping maw, all with out the greater beast awakening. Few sailors have sighted the true beast, though the stories are many of the piece of drifting flesh that would rise up and drag men to their graves.

After its long months of quiet rest the Fiend again extricates itself from its deep crevasse in search of its ancient enemy, either in a deep-seated pattern of predator seeking natural prey, or ancient vengeance for broods lost to the fell beaks of a scavenging enemy.

Their "True" Nature

Legend has it that the Tentacled Fiend and the Great One are halves of the same whole. The Fiend is the incarnation of the terrors of the deep, the Great One the mildness of the shallows. They are the rent asunder Avatar of the Spirit of the Sea. Some say when they finally commit to it their final battle will be their reunion, and as they are locked in each others death grips their blood will mingle with the sea foam and the Spirit of the Sea will be whole as in the ancient world.

This must never be allowed to happen. As every channel, bay, reef, and shoal has a splinter of the greater Spirit, they are short sighted and self interested fragments. Would a unified Spirit of the Sea tolerate the presence of Civilization on her shores? Would she let people fish her bounty to eat her children? Could a man ever feel safe aboard a ship again? No, humanity would crumble underneath the fierce apathy of the Sea.

But these are just stories...

Tracking their Movements

So when the PCs encounter the Great One or the Tentacled Fiend on the random encounter table for the first time you start tracking their movements (or when they start caring, perhaps to hunt them or to commune with them). On your hex map they can move three hexes each week, rolling a 1d6 to determine their heading, discounting results that have them back tracking. They also have a 1 in 10 chance of settling down in a hex and "sleeping" for 1d6+2 weeks.

Information about their movements only reaches the PCs if they:

• Enter civilized waters, there are sightings by trade/military ships
• They encounter each other and engage in titanic combat, some poor fisher man is bound to see that
• Get rolled on the random encounter table again

I like this system because its simple enough to keep track of, and should give the PCs enough info to track them, but still gives them an element of surprise with them showing up unexpectedly as random encounters. I'm implementing this system right now, so I'll report back with how it goes!

The Kētos and Their Strange Ecologies

The Kētos

Some say that the Psári grow even too large for the islands, and they flee their deep channels in favor for the Deep. Here in the wide ocean they can grow into even greater monsters of the sea, the mythical Kētos.

Kētos are so large it is said they carry whole reefs on their backs as they slowly wander the world. They can trail miles of kelp behind them that is rooted in their thick hide, and that a mere flick of their massive fins could send any ship flying through the air and then into the depths. Only the foolish and the mad sail in the Deep, so these reports are rarely given credence.

Sometimes, the giants of the deep oceans wander into the shallow Sea around Ánemos. They are strange and deformed leviathans, often with whole ecological communities clinging to their bulk. They can only comfortably navigate the deepest channels, though in such shallow water they often get lost and irritable, they will likely lash out in fear and frustration...

Their Strange Ecologies

Kētos types (1d6):
1: Coral Reef: Coral has grown in the hide of the Kētos  and shelters many animals... Inhabitants will protect the Kētos if attacked, -10 ft of movement +2 AC

All of those little fish are going to come out and fight you

2: Kelp Forest: Kelp creates an entangling cloud slowing ships in 50 ft radius around Kētos, -10 ft of movement

3: Mollusc Armor: Mussels, oysters and clams armor the Kētos and make their tails more deadly, +4 AC and 10d8+12 bludgeoning damage with tail smash

Just ready to cutsmash the shit out of you

4: Mangrove Forest: A mangrove forest grows on this Kētos's back sharing sugars and proteins between them; cannot dive, heals 10 HP per round, -20 ft of movement

Like this, but rooted on the back of a massive fish

5: Sea grass prairie: A living green fur covers these Kētos, and grazing their backs are territorial dire dugongs. Dire dugongs will fight for their pastures.

But giant and sucking off your face

6: Merfolk nomad settlement: The merfolk have settled this Kētos, serving as both home and mount. They are the traders of the undersea world slowly plying the depths between merfolk settlements.

Thoughts

The Kētos is the like final form of the Psári, they should be really scary and more of an environment than a creature. It should also be really hard to kill them (unless of course you land on their backs, get in their ears and stab their brains or something, but who knows what weird creatures make their homes beneath the flesh of a leviathan?) They should be so tough and scary I am not even going to give you a stat block.

Think about the bad ass wizard who lives in a lair made of living trees in a mangrove forest on the back of a Kētos prowling the deep channels around the world, mind controlling his pet/island/home to steer. I wanna meet him.

If your players ever get a few ships and hire a large crew of competent harpooners it's conceivable that they could kill one traditionally. Boy oh boy, all that lard would fetch a hefty price...

It Is Not the Destination but the Journey... Part II: Island Travel

This is part two of my random travel tables, see part 1 here.

I haven't really used this table yet, land travel has been relatively rare so far in the Ánemos. I'm not in love with it, but I like that it folds a lot of social/combat/environmental challenges into one table for the day.

Roll d6	Encounter	Sub Roll	Sub-Encounter/Effect
1	Weather Event	1	Lightning Storm: Take cover and loose a day of travel
		2	Mudslide: Loose a day skirting it
		3	Earthquake! No real effect, but scary
		4	Especially beautiful day, travel two days distance
2	Sign at a crossroads	1	Aids in navigation, travel two days distance
		2	It was wrong! Loose a day of travel
		3	Crone selling herbs and offering advice, may actually be horrible creature in disguise
		4	Ancestor Spirit shrine
3	Wander into Spirit’s sanctuary	1	Roll on Spirit generator!
		2	Find spirit’s shrine
4	Wandering Monster	1	Giant animal out hunting, will try and flee
		2	Magical beast out hunting, will stare from on far
		3	Humanoid defending territory
5	Other Travelers	1	Trading caravan, trade or gossip!
		2	Highway men! Lives or money!
		3	Hunting party: Rations for sale and tips on area, travel two days distance
		4	Wandering cleric/paladin as appropriate
6	No Event	--	Normal day

Epsen Olsen Saetervik

Also Epsen Olsen Saetervik

Xiaodi Jin

Rytis Sabaliauskas

Also Rytis Sabaliauskas

Also Rytis Sabaliauskas

It Is Not the Destination but the Journey... Part I: Sea Travel

After reading a flurry of blog posts by other great writers on the "problem" of making travel in tabletop RPGs fun/interesting/story serving/useful I have tried my hand at making a travel table that I can use in my Ánemos campaign.

I've used it for about a month or two now, and it seems to work pretty well. The important thing to keep in mind is that each of these events can be interacted with, they aren't the end all be all. If you roll a 4 and a 2 you get "sneaky sand bars" the ship is beached and it takes all day to wait for high tide and digging in the sand to get it out. Now say that the party wizard has some sort of spell that turns things into water, they could use it and unbeach the ship in a jiffy, successfully addressing the issue with problem solving. So encourage and allow for creative solutions.

Roll 1d8	Encounter	Sub Rolls	Sub-Encounter/Effect
1	Coral Reef	1	Abundant fish! Extra rations
		2	Hull stuck on the reef, day lost waiting for low tide
		3	Mermaids (gossip or food?)!
		4	One roll on ingredient table
2	No safe harbor	--	Sail another day farther, but point of exhaustion the next day
3	Heavy Winds	1	Make good head way, travel two days distance, but point of exhaustion the next day
		2	Blown off course, loose a day of travel, and point of exhaustion the next day
4	Small Inlet	1	Light House: Aids in navigation, travel two days distance
		2	Sneaky Sand Bars: Grounded, loose a day of travel
5	Other Ship	1	Trading Galley, trade or gossip!
		2	Pirates! Lives or money!
		3	Shipwreck! Loose day of travel if searched
		4	Wandering cleric/paladin seeking nearby Spirit
6	Psári pod	1	Adolescents (1d8+2), migrating
		2	Adolescents (1d8+2), hunting!
		3	Adults (1d4), migrating
		4	Adults (1d4), hunting!
7	Sea Monster	1	Kraken
		2	Dragon Turtle
		3,4,5	Giant: Snake/shark/octopus/other animal
		6,7,8	Spirit! Roll on Spirit Generator
8	Ship Board Event	1	Normal day, so roleplay!
		2	Supplies have spoiled, loose half the rations
		3	Crew is exhausted, demand a few days in port
		4	Shipwreck! Beached on near by random island

Floating islands optional

A tidal wave is a good reason for a ship wreck

Probably not Ánemos, maybe Vindjord