It’s been about a month since I decided to piece together my loose notes on this campaign world and put everything together in a more easily accessible format for my current & future players. As I do so, I’ve begun to notice a few gaps that need to be patched up, even as I struggle to lay out the website. While I’m pushing forward with the basics of each “world,” I have to pick and choose where to channel my focus. With my first professional campaigns set to focus on humanity’s struggle, the surface world seems an obvious place to begin.
The Surface World
As previously detailed, three “dominant” species inhabit the surface world: humans, gnolls, and selkie.
The selkie operate as valuable traders between the surface & underwater realms, but they have no territory to call their own. This lack of territory is actually the only reason the Selkie have been permitted to exist by the dominant species of the underwater world, but that’s an underwater world issue, not a surface issue.
As a result, I don’t need to rush to flesh them out at this point. Determining their basic (surface) trade routes and patterns, and giving some thought to the kinds of products they supply to humans and/or gnolls from the underwater realm, should suffice. Add in their character creation guidelines, and they should be fine to roll out at this time.
The humans & gnolls, however, have a lot more that I need to examine.
Human Raft-Cities
While I’ve done a lot of work on Orphus, the human raft-city from which my campaigns launch, the other major raft-cities are little more than names & flavour-text. Here’s the most basic info:
| City | Basic Info |
|---|---|
| Orphus | Orphus is the most artistic of raft cities, with a strong oral tradition of passing on history through song & poetry. The city is divided into “wards,” and each “ward” manages its own food & resource supplies. As each “ward” was originally its own smaller raft city, Orphus is also the least cohesive internally, with significant political issues arising between different wards. The wards are also subject to change as smaller raft cities join or depart, depending on where the city is in its drift, politics, or other issues. Orphus has trade relations with the Selkie, Atlan, and Frostus. |
| Atlan | Atlan is a more mechanically-minded raft-city, with some memory of pre-flood engineering and “new” tech development. Successful ideas tend to spread from Atlan to other raft cities, but only when they can be reproduced. Atlan has trade relations with Selkie, Orphus, and Humber. |
| Humber | Apply an “Eastern European” or “Russian” flavouring. Humber has trade relations with Selkie, Atlan, and Nipan. |
| Nipan | Apply a “Far East” flavouring. Nipan has trade relations with Selkie, Humber, and Frostus. |
| Frostus | This raft city is located in an Arctic or sub-Arctic zone, resulting in a shorter float-realm and a heavy reliance on Arctic sea-life. Selkie never or very rarely visit, as the people of Frostus confuse them for seals. Frostus has trade relations with Orphus and Nipan |
| Various Smaller Raft Cities | There are a variety of smaller raft-cities that the major cities will encounter in their regular path. These cities tend to be anchored or follow a different current cycle. They will generally have some sort of relations & take on aspects similar to those of the major raft cities. |
I’ll have to publish a more thorough page on these locations, but this provides enough flavour to give players and other GMs an idea of where I’ll be going. Orphus will be first, followed by either Atlan & Frostus.
It’s also important to note that the floating raft-cities occasionally approach existing islands. While most are too small for them to settle on (or smaller raft-cities have already done so), others may be under the control or threat of Gnoll fleets. This does weaken the campaign world premise of a world completely submerged, but it also provides some relief & believability to civilization continuing to survive beyond the great flood.
Gnoll Harbours & Fleets
During the great sinking, Gnolls used their pack tactics against unorganized and disparate populations to force them off most remaining land masses. These few “islands” have become the stationary harbours, allowing gnolls to farm, mine, and conduct trade. However, the gnoll packs are not united, resulting in a variety of harbours and fleets of naval vessels that pillage and plunder each other and human raft cities.
Consider the Gnolls of this world to be in an “age of sea” condition. They have harbour cities, potentially with some land for farming & mining, and they have both official fleets & privateer/pirate fleets. While humanity struggled due to internal squabbling, Gnoll packs have developed a culture with cannons & cutlass.
While I’ve drawn 9 major harbours on my maps, I’ve never named them. Nor have I really mapped out any of the cities or given much thought to how they work. Given that I’ve already determined they have been mining (necessary for cannon balls & black powder), this would make them the most likely to break into the underground world of the Dwarves, Kobolds, and Goblins.
As a result, I’m going to need to give serious thought to (at least) one of these harbours in the coming weeks. That will be able to be templated across for other harbours when necessary.
There are other holes to fill.
Since a significant portion of this campaign world has already been developed as needed, there are other gaps that I need to fill. Magic, religion, technology, currents, political structures & struggles, resource sources, and even elements of world history are all areas that I will need to put in some work as I build a comprehensive campaign setting.
For now, I’m going to focus on what I need to launch campaigns in all three worlds, but I have to ensure I don’t stop there.