Tidbits from a Pirate World

July 30, 2012 § Leave a Comment

A Traveling Witch

A new character is joining our sessions, playing a witch named Annika. Annika hails from the Taldor of two hundred years in the past. I’ll leave it up to my next play report to explain exactly how or why she is in the present day. (And not two hundred years old.) But it’s lead me to filling out a bit more of the past for the Campaign.

Annika’s accumulated treasure was figured separately of everyone else’s as well. She’ll be starting with:

A Traveler’s Long-Coat [Wearer may cast Endure Elements and Traveler's Pace (Pass Without Trace + Longstrider) 1/day and may act as if she possessed the Endurance feat as long as she has not slept with a roof (tents do not count) above her head in the last 24 hours. 3/day the wearer may cast Cultural Adaptation on herself. CL 5] made of grey and green tattered leathers, with dozens of places to tuck coins and hide satchels.
A red-suede satchel full of Marvelous Paints.
Three books wrapped in a single white swath of a clothlike substance that seems to be made without
- Thin, bamboo pressed, fifteen foot long scroll written in Draconic language, with Aquan text. Both languages required to read it and decipher. A single blue and green watercolor of a dragon dominates the center of the scroll – showing him crushing a whale’s skull.
- A book with iron, hinged, cover and a single amethyst circle in lieu of title. Pages are a fine parchment. Book is written entirely in a swirling, not immediately identifiable, text. It is filled with illustrations of the cosmos and various star formations and what appear to be constellations.
- A green leather copy of the “Nakse Ki Toma”…with different notes, that seems in better shape but with fewer notes. Different ones than the copy found in the Grindylow’s cavern however. This seems to have more detailed notes on the waters near Taldor and Andoran.
18 platinum pieces, each one minted in a different principality, vassal state or former state within Taldor.

The Witch Knives

The rat-folk’s answer to the Magus, combining the dark pacts of the Witch with the subtlety of the rouge. Witch-knifes were largely hunted to extinction after the wars that bear their name. Their knife hexes have gone mostly dormant in the world, until recently rewakened in the mind of Saeche.

Troubles from the Past

The current year is 4707.

The Goblinsblood wars were not the first of their kind. Nearly two hundred years before (4490) – Goblins rose from out of the Chitterwood. The knife-seers of the ratkin, seeking wealth from the bloated nation, banded with them; teaching their violent sorceries to any willing to learn and embracing the power that it brought. These were the Witch Knife Wars. En masse the goblins were easily put down, however, lead by rat-kin and savvy hobgoblins; the creatures festered in the landscape for years – evading capture and wreaking havoc. Following the immediate aftermath of the wars, witchcraft and magic were treated with some distrust. An organization of druids and witches calling the Timeless spent a great deal of effort to repair the appearance of magic, seeking to bring about a balance to the atrocities committed by those of their craft. A balance maintained in the region until the House of Thrune rose to ascendancy in Cheliax and brought diabolism to the forefront of their empire.

Before the Wars at the beginning of the Wars of Expansion (4305) Cheliax began encountering strange raiders calling themselves “Trahk” up and down the coast. Along the border, between Taldor and Qadira, both nations began encountering wandering bands of people calling themselves Gothii.

The Gothii were an extremely fractious people, and apparently held to the belief that every single one of them was the center of an epic saga or song. They lived accordingly. Large, rarely peaceful, but when peaceful usually pacifistic. They were known briefly for their lack of any sort of moderacy. Except those who somehow made moderacy and compromise a dramatic point. They began appearing around the same time as the Trahk who assaulted the Cheliax.

The Gothii managed to secure mercenary contracts and territory from both Taldor and Qadira,forming an informal buffer state between both nations that bore the brunt of tension quite well. Until the entirety of the Gothii people disappeared in 4580. With no apparent magical or divine interference. They were simply gone. There are many theories, including that the Gothii were never real at all and simply a global hallucination, and that the Gothii were in fact a god masquerading as people and whom dissolved back into its true self. In the ensuing twenty years, conflict on the border exploded into bloody contention until Taldor and Qadira reached their own peace in 4603. Trahk sightings petered out after the Gothii disappearance, and the last was seen only months before the final death of Aroden.

The Hurricane King

For as long as anyone can remember, Phayu Buhawi Hexireken has plagued the seas. Hundreds of years ago, he did so in his true shape, raiding the coasts of Taldor and Andoran – one of the most feared and active of his kind. He disappeared for nearly fifty years after a climactic battle off the coast of Cheliax with one of the last Trahk-ships ever sighted. Now he reigns as the Hurricane King, The Hari Tuphana, Captain of the dread-ship Talon, First Captain among the Free.

Few except those close to him, or his victims, have ever seen him in dragon form, and rumors abound as to his actual nature. The most common rumors touch on Sea, River, Brine and Blue. A few of the more outlandish claim he’s something all together different; some sort of fallen Sovereign dragon, or something entirely unique and changed by the Pirate Queen herself.

He’s known for being decidedly more pleasant than most of the other Free Captains, jolly even. He never stopped smiling as he devoured the first fleet to assault his kingdom, for example. He wears a devil’s grin, wields a “sword he stole from angels” and clothes himself in djinn-craft garments. (His taste for djinn wear and imported goods of genie make is moderately legendary.)

Phayu built the Shackles from the ground up, lashing the Free Captains together with threat and bribe; forging them in the places the Eye touched that other feared to go. He has rarely left the waters of his Port since then. His sword appears on the material plane as a shaft of blue-green light; it’s true shape hidden in the fabric of the world itself. He tucks it inside one of his earrings, where in the other he supposedly hides as storm.

It is rumored that Phayu has a great deal of influence amongst his kind, a powerful mate and a large brood somewhere. The only acknowledged children of his, however, are a pair of half dragon gunslingers who wander the Shackles as enforcers and all around thugs. Nayu and Sei.

Tagged: DnD, Dragons, golarion, hexes, History, knives, pathfinder, pirates, rats, role playing games, rpg, time travel, witches

Days With a Knight