Under the Sea: Part I
Greetings once again everyone, and welcome back to Grave Plots, the best place on the net for adventure hooks and plot ideas to enhance your campaign. This week we’ll begin a short series of articles taking a look at some potential ideas for adventures set in partly, mostly, and wholly aquatic settings. Included will be plot hooks for aquatic adventures as well as some general advice for running an aquatic game. This week, we’re going to focus on partly aquatic campaigns.
Partly Aquatic Games
Running a partly aquatic game can be an interesting experience and provide a nice change of pace for players. I recommend partly aquatic adventures primarily for existing campaigns looking for an occasional breather from constant marches through abandoned keeps (though you can do this underwater too), or for campaigns looking to distinguish themselves from the rest of the games your group has been running. So how do you make a setting partly aquatic? The short answer is by including a handful of underwater adventures in your existing game. As for how best to carry that off in a game where no one has really considered underwater travel is up to you. Personally, I recommend going with one of the below adventure ideas as way to get your players (and their characters) comfortable with the idea before making it a semi-regular feature of your game.
The Ruin Expedition
This is a hook designed to get your players used to the concept of underwater adventures without taking them too far out of their comfort zone, and is recommended for a campaign where the PCs spend a lot of time dungeon delving. One day, while the PCs are between dire perils, they are approached by Adrian Quinn, noted archeologist, researcher, and sage, with a unique opportunity to explore the fabled ruins of Dalvius (or whatever name fits your setting better), which legends say sunk beneath sea thousands of years ago and is rumored to contain many great treasures. Mr. Quinn claims to have discovered the location of these ruins and is willing to tell the PCs where to find them, and to provide them with the means to reach them if only they return with an artifact that he has long wanted to study. This artifact is known as the Apparatus of Dalvius (aka the Apparatus of Kwalish, aka the Apparatus of the Crab). He’s even willing to part with the Apparatus after he’s done studying it. If the PCs still need more convincing, he offers gold in obscenely tempting quantities. Once they accept, the PCs are gifted with the location of the ruins, a necklace of adaption (or an ioun stone or a ton of water breathing potions as appropriate to their level), and perhaps an oil allowing them to swim more quickly or some such, and are sent on their way. What the ruins are like depends on your group’s play style: either a rough and tumble battle royal with a myriad of rarely used water breathing creatures, or a nearly deserted struggle with ancient and deadly traps/puzzles. Do it however you fancy – I won’t tell you how to build dungeons (well, not this week anyway). Develop the dungeon however you want, but be sure to put some memorable moments in; after all, this is your intro to a whole new campaign element. Perhaps include a desperate escape in the Apparatus of Dalivius from a collapsing tower, or the sudden appearance of a massive sea dragon angry about *his* treasure being stolen. Feel free to play around with Adrian Quinn as well – does he work better as crime boss, or a merchant? Would the PCs respond better to a demonic figure, or a king’s messenger? Perhaps the adventure would function better if the PCs discovered the ruins location on their own and had to set about finding a good way in. However you choose, be sure to have some fun with it.
The War Council
This hook is designed to get players used to the idea of underwater adventures without straying too far from their comfort zone, and is recommended for groups who spend more time in the king’s court, scheming and brokering deals, than they do hacking away through hordes of monsters. The PCs are approached by a foreign but allied power and asked to lend aid to their kingdom. As it happens, this foreign nation has long been at war with a race of seaborne creatures (I like sahuagin for this, but you could use whatever you want: merfolk, merrow, the almighty nixie legion… really it’s just a matter of preference) and after much negotiation they have convinced the other side to agree to peace talks. However, after years of warfare neither side trusts the other, and so the sea folk have demanded as their condition that the meeting take place on their turf, an undersea palace where the sea folk make their home. Your allies demanded the right to elect any ambassadors they chose and so, knowing of the PCs reputation both as wise counselors and stalwart heroes, the PCs made the top of the list. Treachery is suspected so the PCs should be ready to do battle as well as to negotiate with the seaborne creatures. From here development is all up to you: is there treachery afoot or is all as it appears? What are the consequences of this action or that? What’s going on behind the scenes and what’s happening at home while the PCs are gone? You know what you’re doing – it’s basically the same deal with a twist, and a few more options open to the NPCs. For instance, this time, if they want to off the PCs all they have to do is set up an anti-magic zone and watch them drown.