Looking for some help to add colour to my game. I’m starting a new campaign that follows a group of deserters who have fled a war zone and are trying to find their way home (by sea). They’ve been swept off course by a magical storm and have ended up in a mysterious archipelago. Hit me with your best seafaring/island-hopping impressions (sights, sounds and smells)!
Looking for some help to add colour to my game.
Looking for some help to add colour to my game.
the ship’s keel strikes the rocky periphery of an entirely invisible island; hanging in the air high above: an open window.
The relentless crash and roar and rush of waves upon the shore.
Gulls, thousands of ’em, squatting on rugged knobs that overlook the sea, squawk-squawk-squawking, disapproving.
Gulls, hundreds of ’em, hanging in the air over the hills, just perched there on the wind with wings outstretched.
Sea-lions lazing about a low beach.
Rocky juts of cliff, punching out of the sea, slick and wet and glistening in the sun.
A “raft” of tiny penguins, thousands of them just below the surface and just off shore, gathering up the courage to storm the shore and return to their nests.
Standing high on a cliff, looking out at a lonely, cave-pocked prominence, utterly lonely, like looking out upon the very end of the world.
A southerly wind lashing cold and constant across your face, broken only by stinging spray.
Low, smooth succulents clinging to the steep hills and tops of sea-cliffs, their green stalks fading into red bulbs, red from all the salt they absorb.
Roiling waves pounding a rocky shore, launching geysers of spray each time they hit.
Huge rocks, all smooth curves and sharp angles, strange and unnatural but serving no purpose, left high atop a sea cliff like the building blocks of some forgetful titan’s child.
A half-dozen natural, rocky towers, each the size of a castle and a mile or so from the next, jutting up from a smooth expanse of beach.
a sudden right angle in the plane of the sea
two great and sinewy eels, entwining in joyful and reckless play
tattered prismatic sails hovering on the horizon
A low but rocky coast, rising quickly to lush green hills.
A stairway, carved in stone and ending abruptly a few feat above the water.
Old foundations right along the coast, some half-flooded, others above the water but cut clean through, like some great force sheered through them and dropped half of the buildings into the drink.
Ruins on the coast, just beneath the waves, seaweed growing between cracks in the stones, waving and swaying in the tide.
An eel, it’s head poking out from under some toppled edifice, mouth slightly open in anticipation, but patient, endlessly patient.
A lagoon, so deep and blue and still you think you’re dreaming it.
A pen built into the lagoon, penning off a small part of it, with a crude dock leading out into it. A prophetic dolphin is trapped there, a crude, cruel man and his son keep it and sell prophecies. Even if it was released, the dolphin is so broken in mind and body that it would never survive.
An old amphitheater, small and intimate and largely overgrown with long, stiff grass. From the top seats, you can see across the sea to the next island.
sunlight falling through crystal blue water onto ruined golden towers; mermaids play.
an eclectic murmuration of exotic birds, rushing past and through the sails in terror or ecstasy
a black-robed pilgrim, walking barefoot on the waves
a ship, replica to your own, encased in floating ice
Jeremy Strandberg we aren’t getting paid enough for these 🙂
Dirk Detweiler Leichty Except in love. Thanks guys!
You get paid in “exposure” like any good artist 🙂
now I really want to play or run this game, haha
One of the islands has a coast that consists of verticle rocky cliffs that go up hundreds of feet all around its border. Nearby, gradually shorter natural stone pillars rise up at odd intervals from the nearest island, like massive stepping stones. Are those rickety bridges extending between them? And what are those shadowy silhouettes darting about near the tops?
Every morning, one of the islands seems to have moved. At night, a sorrowful sound, like a great whale singing, rolls across the waves.
Drums can be heard from one of the islands around the same time each day.
Upon reaching a new island, the group discovers skull and bone fetish totems hanging from trees and stuck in the ground with spears.
Water elementals splash and play in a small cove, creating beautiful patterns and fountains.
An island is plagued by numerous small tremors every day. Or are those footsteps…
A dragon calls an island home, taking roost in a volcano. All of the other islands’ natives pay tribute to it in different ways… or else.
The natives of an island have domesticated giant water striders as a means of travel around the archipelago.
Birds of paradise seem like an easy way to get more rations for the party, that is until the natives come looking for blood after the death of one of their sacred birds (whether it was the party’s fault or not).
A volcano houses the prison of an ancient god of fire.
A huge crab hides beneath the surface of a black sand beach, waiting for unwary prey.
Triton raiders plague the inhabitants of the islands with their sea monsters.
One of the islands is a magical trap created by a wizard to contain… something. The party must find a way to escape before the resident finds them.
Tidestalker Golems (made from a mix of sand, seashells, driftwood, coral, etc) patrol the beaches of one island. A massive tower can be seen rising from the center of the island.
Mermaids splash and play from a distance, but be wary if you plan to take a closer look.
The party finds a magical conch that causes the islands to shift when it is blown.
(I could go all day, but I’ll stop now lol)