A fractal coast of fractured stone, cliffs in white and bright ochre. Everywhere teeming clouds of life. Billowing flocks of pterosaurs peel from the cliffs and dive at improbable shoals of gleaming fish. Plankton bloom and bioluminesce, cut through by basking sharks while ichthyosaurs frolick a swell away. People drag in slabs of bark from the swamp and carve every kind of craft: outriggers and kiteboards, kayaks and surfboards, and playfully tussle with the uncaring sea
Whenever anyone rolls a natural 1 they get bigger fished.
Villages | Games | 1 Fish 2 Fish | Red Fish | Blue Fish | |
1 | carved into the cheeks, eyes and jowls of stone faces that spew water into the sea below | dive off cliff, swim to island, steal egg, swim back. maybe sharks | a jelly swarm, bobbing in their skirts and twining tentacles together like nervous hungry schoolkids | 2d4 wolfwhales, throwback orcas with the blunt faces and blunter humour of hyenas | finely feathered mosasaur, regal and curious, all the patience its great belly will afford |
2 | built around the rim of a blowhole, rooftop nets catch falling chunks of fish and other food | get tied to a rope and used as bait for a fish | 2d12 dartfish pop out of the water with a flash, tear through the wings of pterosaurs or nail into cliff side climbers and thrash, trying to drag them down | 1d3 sea scorpions clatter about the cliff sides and surge out of the shoreline mindlessly feeling for food | 1d100 horseshoe crabs, slowly migrating, their trails plotting lunar arcs through the sand |
3 | burrowed into the underside of a arching causeway, ropes dangling down to snare fish and haul ships | carefully scripted game of ulama, someone loses an eye or a hand probably | 20d20 writhing forms the length of your arm, catsharks and dogfish, wobbegongs and sawfish, a tumbling ball mad for blood | a motile mass of seaweed, twitching twisting limbs of green grip corpses, food for symbiotic fish | 2d10 crashing, empty-eyed dunkleosteus, as happy to shatter cliffs as ram their aggressor |
4 | atop huge raft of seaweed and guano, flocked over once a season by pterosaurs | swim through seacaves into the sweep of a blowhole | 8d6 somnolent squid regard the surface with detached, benthic wisdom, gather beneath human villages at night to share in their dreams | 1d6 morays jealously guard their porous home. poke sneering maws from their hiding holes but flee a real threat | a thousand year old nautilus drifts serenely, slow grow into indestructibility and content with the sagacity of centuries |
5 | in cave accessible via sump, lit by bioluminescent algae in the pools | surf the wake of a megalodon | 3d4 fisherfolk, their life completely at the mercy of the sea, totally laid back and relaxed | 5d10 huge-crested tapejarids, gather once a season on the guano islands to court each other | an algal bloom, a toxic wash that swirls against the current hunting hot life |
6 | nestled into the tall walls of a coral reef, kept dry by an enormous dyke | leap onto the back of a pterosaur and ride it down into the water | 3d4 skull faced, white feathered pterosaurs, like seagulls, or dingos, clamour and cajole and pounce on your back | fat, happy amoeba, smaller prey forgotten as it gloops around any new point of contact | a tentacle, the furthest tip of some beast bigger than your comprehension |
That is a bloody dense table. I love it!
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