Joerg Baumgartner says :
>An entire underseas campaign would be very exotic, but perhaps there could
>be a one-off for conventions. Anyone feel inspired?
At the moment my players are attempting a clockwise circumnavigation of the Homeward Ocean. They have only got as far as Teshnos and are currently beached on an island. The island is inhabited by semi-aquatic scorpion people, who have achived this state by habitualy using the Ritual of Rebirth on captured ludoch. However, here is where this becomes relevent :
A huge seashell recently washed ashore on the island. The shell is actualy the wreck of a jrusteli shell-ship, a giant nautilus shell madified to serve as a submarine hull. The shell-ship is propelled by a huge undine bound into a matrix set into the hull, and the scorpion queen has gained controll of it. She is using the undine to terrorise local ludoch and also used it to draw the player's ship to the island.
I have not finalised the details of the shell-ship's design, but I imagine it has serrated ram-harpoons projecting from the 'prow'. The ship has a crystaline 'controll console' which has a spirit bound in to it. The spirit is used to controll the undine propulsion system, casts 'projected sight' on the helmsman (for navigation and as a periscope substitute), casts 'form/set seashell' to open an iris-valve hatch on the top of the shell and casts 'evoke air' to fill the floatation tanks and controll the ship's buoyancy, and possibly also to refresh the breathable air. I imagine an intact shell-ship could carry a crew of half a dozen or so, the interior having been modified using form/set spells.
It would be a lot of fun to let the players get hold of an intact shell-ship. Of course any mer-people seeing it would attack immediately, especialy since they remember these things from the days of the middle-sea empire. Waertagi would be even more hostile, stopping at nothing to destroy the ship. The players could very easily get themselves killed.
I imagine the ships to have a similar 'look and feel' on the inside as the bullet shaped rocket ships in the old black and white Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers TV shows.
Simon Hibbs
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