[TSOY] Near's Pirate Isles: Pere-di-Fey
shadowcourt:
I confess that I have a fondness for designing new nations in Near to meet the needs of my campaigns, and one that’s been a staple for a number of Shadow of Yesterday/Solar System games we’ve played has been the pirate islands of Pere-di-Fey. I figured I’d post it here, for people to critique and lift from as they see fit. As always, comments and criticism are quite welcome.
I should preface this by saying that I have a soft spot for piracy and swashbuckling, and the nation of Pere-di-Fey is an outgrowth of this. My own personal map of Near places Ammeni and Zaru as a subcontinent on its own in the Eastern Ocean, meaning that there’s a lot more sea-trade than there might otherwise be on your own visions of Near. Naturally, even if you don’t opt for this choice, there are still opportunities to place Pere-di-Fey in a useful location in your world(s), particularly if shipping vessels which hug the coastline of Maldor and the other nations can travel faster than slow-moving overland caravans. I leave it for others to decide what works best for them.
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Few names inspire equal dread in the Lords of Maldor and the Ammenite Houses as the tiny patchwork nation of Pere-di-Fey. The Feyans are a continual thorn in the side of Near’s trading nations, a ragtag group of pirate fleets who somehow manage to raid better-armed slave ships and cogs, stealing Maldorite ore, Ammenite spices and grain ships, Khalean trade goods, and riches from Qek, and harassing Ammenite slavers. The most maddening aspect of the Feyans is their continued capacity to strike at trade routes and fade into the fog—repeated attempts by Ammenite and Maldorite patrols have found no islands where the colony of Pere-di-Fey was once located, another mystery of the post-Shadow age. Some terrified sailors claim that the Feyans are nothing but ghosts or legends, but the raids continue, and the rumors of Pere-di-Fey are difficult to lay to rest. Those who dwell within port communities in Maldor, Goren, Khale, and even Qek have first-hand evidence: Feyan pirates are quite real, and ready to make their mark upon Near forever.
Time Before Tide
The truth of Pere-di-Fey is a bizarre one, but one which has protected the fledgling pirate nation from destruction by other powers. Pere-di-Fey was once little more than a trading port used by Ammeni, used to restock ship provisions and let sailors blow off steam, a chain of islands in the Great Eastern Sea. Generally a raucous series of port towns, the fear of the discipline of the pre-Shadow Ammenite Houses were sufficient to keep their sailors in line, though licentiousness, rum, and poiture were frequent vices among the population.
Maritime Ammenites and Zaru slaves were not the only denizens of the Feyan islands, however. The bulk of the population were farmers who worked the rocky and sandy islands, and the division between Zaru field-hands and the minimal wealth of local plantation owners made the normally stark contrast between master and servant in Ammeni more blurry in Pere-di-Fey. Complicating this further were the elusive Kairakau, dusky-skinned island folk who lived a simple subsistence lifestyle, alternately trading with or raiding Ammenite farms. The Kairakau possessed an eerie ability to disappear from Ammenite scouting sloops, as if they sank into the islands themselves.
As the Skyfire loomed in the heavens above Near, many of the Ammenite naval detatchments were withdrawn to consolidate power in Ammeni, dealing with unrest among Zaru and the common folks. The Year of Shadow brought tsunamis and fierce winds to the Feyan islands, which had already been all but abandoned by authority figures from the Houses. Feyan settlers died in great numbers, despite the small size of the colonies, and as the skies grew dark, the islands themselves began to shake, seeming to shrug and break apart.
Surely the collected Feyan settlers would have perished were it not for the sudden emergence of the Kairakau. Their priests, the land-speakers, said that this was a time of great change, and that the islands on which they all lived would never be the same. Only by following the Kairakau to safety would the Feyan settlers survive. Left with no other choice but perishing in storm and darkness, the colonists boarded the canoes of the Kairakau and paddled with them… into the mouths of the islands themselves. Sand and trees shook away, and the islands rose, no mere inert land-masses but great sea creatures, monstrous and vast turtles and fish who had slept for centuries as their backs gathered earth and vegetation. The Kairakau believed the sleeping islands were their gods and brothers, and had learned to find shelter in safe spaces within their dormant bodies. As these leviathans swam to warmer waters, or dove to depths where the encroaching ice was no danger, the Feyans did their best to understand the bizarre philosophies and practices of the reclusive Kairakau; in some cases, the distrustful natives were often as much jailors as saviors, tight-lipped about the body-geography of the god-islands and only willing to provide for the basic needs of the Feyans. An uneasy peace existed, occasionally erupting into violence and dooming one or both sides, as well as their giant aquatic hosts.
Out of The Belly of the Whale
While other nations tenuously began to explore their transformed world in the post-Shadow era, the Feyans were thrust abruptly into a new world. Most of the leviathans resurfaced in new waters, and as the seas thawed the Feyans were the first to explore the new wild oceans of Near. The tensions of being forced into close quarters with the Kairakau eased as both groups explored the geography around them, foraging and finding materials to build new ships amid the new islands. They were the first to learn how the moon, a strange white sphere in the heavens, ruled the more powerful tides of Near’s waters, and necessity forced them to make raids along the shorelines of Ammeni, Maldor, and Khale. Their great assets were the rough waters which other cultures had yet to fully master, and the lazy movement of their “island” homes. The leviathans seemed content to drift in a semi-dozed state, tired from the exertions of surviving the Year of Shadow. Even in places where all Feyan and Kairakau interaction ceased, the new Feyans had learned something of the strange practices of their erstwhile hosts: their symbionts.
The Kairakau who best understood the halatu, the “land-god-brethren”, were those who practiced bonding rituals with the talalag, the “body-brothers”. These creatures seemed to be crustaceans, insects, and other creatures, sometimes as small as a human fingernail, sometimes as large as a human’s limb or chest. Somehow, they were living things who existed in a relationship with the halatu, akin to pilot fish and sharks, but much more complex. The Kairakau regarded the talalag as both children and brothers to the leviathans, and had learned that the talalag could bond with men as they bonded with the halatu, becoming part of an extended family of siblings and parents at once. The most curious, intuitive, and diplomatic of the Feyans had gained some knowledge of these practices, as well, and the practice of joining with “symbionts” (as the Feyans called them in their own tongue) grew. This proved particularly advantageous when it became clear that a bonded symbiont had an instinctive pull back towards the halatu, the living islands of Pere-di-Fey. Now navigators in symbiotic relationships could find the slow drifting island-leviathans, charting unfamiliar waters to make it back home. When Ammenite and Maldorite ships eventually became ambitious enough to pursue these pirates back to their home ports, they found only empty waters.
The New Age of Piracy
As the Feyan “islands” slowly re-discovered each other over the next few years, the communities which had formed of survivors inside the bodies of the leviathans realized they had great differences, but also much in common. Meetings upon the open seas grew more frequent, and eventually small leagues of raiding vessels formed, joined together to capitalize on their mutual strengths and defend against common foes. These pirate leagues became the backbone of the scattered Feyan “nation”, which remained bound together by the maritime skill of their navigators (occasionally assisted by symbiotic links) and the occasional rejoining of the islands for reasons that were clear only to the leviathans themselves. If the Kairakau land-speakers knew more, they would not say, returning to their reclusive ways on many of their living land-masses.
While need for food and other resources increased the frequency of Feyan raids on other communities and foreign vessels, the greatest external social pressure pushing the scattered colonists into a unified status as a new nation was the contempt of Ammeni, who saw all-too-familiar colors among Feyan vessels and crews. Naval battles with Ammenite patrols and Maldorite privateers became increasingly frequent, forcing the pirate crews to band together into tighter leagues and cement stronger alliances. These leagues became the primary source of supplies for their land-bound families, and were soon looked to as the government of the islands. Families pushed their young and capable members to join the crew of a ship, knowing they would send provide wealth and prestige for the family; the most successful might even retire after a number of years to a comfortable position as one of the colony’s Council members.
A Nation of Foreigners
Expatriate Ammenites humans and goblins were the first of these Feyan pirates, some of whom held Zaru survivors of the Skyfire cataclysm as personal servants and cabin-mates. After several on Ammenite slave vessels produced large groups of slaves with no market to sell them in, the Feyans adopted a practice of liberating Zaru, allowing them to either work the living islands’ struggling farmlands or join their crews as full members. The process is far from truly democratic—some tyrannical captains still hold liberated Zaru in thrall, demanding they work off the price of their liberation in service, but these customs are viewed as impractical by many of the Feyan leagues, and too reminiscent of the Ammenites, whom current Feyan social custom view with extreme distaste as their most dire enemies.
The other new boon to struggling Pere-di-Fey was the emergence of the ratkin in the post-Shadow era. Discovered slinking around ports in Ammeni and Maldor, the Feyans first entered into smuggling relationships with the ratkin, and soon found themselves with ratkin crew members. Quick-breeding generations of ratkin ran rampant throughout the Feyan colonies, and the anger which their presence inspires in most Ammenites only endeared them to the Feyans further. There are said to be some leagues who have a vessel or two crewed entirely by ratkin acting with the single-minded intensity of their packs, though the idea that they’d be unwilling to replenish their numbers with human, goblin, or elven sailors seems unlikely.
Feyan practice has also encouraged the “impressment” of captured sailors, particularly in situations where an attacked ship is entirely stripped or taken as spoils. Captured sailors who are believed to have sufficient skill and independence to shrug off their former national ties and become Feyans in their own right are offered The Choice—“Join or die.” Those who simply can’t be trusted or refuse the opportunity are either marooned, killed, or left to drift, depending on the predilections of captain or crew.
As a result of these practices, there are Feyans of Khalean, Qek, and Gorenish origins, beyond the Zaru who have been liberated by Feyan raids. There are also Maldorites and Ammenites who have actively joined a Feyan crew, or been impressed into service. How well these foreigners are integrated into their crews and community varies from person to person. Some scholars from Maldor and surgeons from Ammeni spend their whole lives serving with a Feyan crew, longing to find a way to escape back home but fearing the bloody reprisal from their captain and boatswain. Others eventually come to accept their new lives, and even swear off any perceived ties to their former homelands.
Feyan culture has a dizzying array of social practices combed from all over Near. Ammenite and Zaru cuisine is common, while styles of dress range from the furs of the Gorenish to the simple loincloths and body painting of the Qek. Strong liquor from all nations is popular, and Ammenite drugs are particularly prized. Inventive swearing in a dozen languages is quite popular, and the common Feyan dialect contains words from tongues across the globe of Near, making it distinct to the ears of Pere-di-Fey’s enemies, albeit occasionally hard for a foreigner to fully comprehend.
By far the most extravagant mixture of foreign cultures in Pere-di-Fey comes from the superstitions and spiritual practices of the Feyans. To outsiders, Feyans seem full of odd customs and folk practices. The sea is a cruel mistress, and Feyan sailors treasure any folk tradition which has spared the life of a sailor they’ve known or heard of. Cats are seen as lucky creatures, and are frequently kept aboard a ship. The number four is an ill omen, as is the color red, the tears of a widow, walking through a spider’s web, or seeing a dog before a person upon waking. Only a fool sets sail under the new moon, or doesn’t keep a spare coin in each boot for luck. A wise man pours a few drops out from his first cup for his friends he has not seen, breaks bread and never cuts it, never tells a joke about a dead man, and doesn’t sleep with a knife under his pillow unless he wants to wake to violence. Fears about ghosts and evil spirits are common, and all manners of protective charms, amulets, and tokens are highly prized.
The most visible manifestation of these superstitions is the belief in a ship’s mascot, a living person who will serve as figurehead and good luck charm for the crew. The mascot is always a virgin, either male or female, and serves as spiritual advisor for a crew. The wealthiest captains give presents and fine clothing to their mascots, tying them to the prow of the ship when leaving port or in a storm to scatter flower petals on the waves and sing songs. Should a ship become lost, the mascot is consulted as a source of impulsive fortune, and a word of warning or a bad dream related by a mascot gives even the canniest navigator pause. Most mascots will read fortunes and interpret dreams for other crew members, and a captain looks anxiously to any sign of illness or misfortune to their mascot. Sickness or death invariably spells doom for a crew, as much from the loss of morale among sailors as anything else. In desperate straits such as those, a captain might attack any nearby vessel, hoping to impress a replacement mascot into service, even if that young person is not of Feyan origin, and even if unwilling.
The mascot’s purity is also paramount to the Feyan mindset, but that doesn’t stop the temptations of this young beautiful creature aboard the ship preying on the minds of the sailors. Many sad songs and dramas are told among Feyans of crewmen who fell in love with their mascot, and the doom which was brought to the ship thereby. Despite all the warnings—or perhaps because of how they are constantly agonized over as the greatest of all tragic romances—these things happen.
shadowcourt:
(ran out of space in my first post to include this stuff, so I'm just attaching it as a reply...)
Life in the Pirate Isles
Over a tenth of the Feyan population serves actively on board a ship in some capacity, or has done so for several years in the past. A small contingent of these vessels do little more than patrol the waters around the leviathan-islands, but most don’t relegate their time to such passive activities. In general, the drifting movements of the leviathans keep the Feyan colonies safe, giving corsairs an opportunity to actively go on raids for wealth and the resources the islands require. Sailors are required to sign Articles specific to the League they join, which operates as an extended crime family. Leagues can and do war with each other on occasion, but this is only common when personal sleights between captains become too serious to ignore (lovers’ quarrels being the most common, but competitions over prestige and legacy are also popular) or when available resources become so scarce that hungry and envious eyes turn towards one’s kinsmen. Those who sign the Articles train to sail a vessel, steal, and fight, as Pere-di-Fey conducts no real trade at sea other than piracy. A fortunate and successful sailor might find himself made first mate, boatswain, or captain of a vessel. From there, he is almost guaranteed an opportunity to retire in style and wealth, likely becoming a Councilor for his home island if he has ambitions towards politics.
The rest of Pere-di-Fey’s population works either in fishing, farming, crafts (which run from carpentry to surgery), or hospitality. The last of these professions ranges from those who maintain inns and taverns (despite the fact that many Feyan pirates have a home on the islands to return to, places for carousing or for visitors are quite common) and boarding houses (for those newly impressed into service), to musicians, entertainers, and those willing to sell their companionship. Feyan law makes no restrictions on vices, but theft and violence are matters which are turned over to the port’s Council. The Council seats are given almost exclusively to those who have held captaincy at some point in their lives, though most of these groups have at least a single Council seat which represents the land-living folk, ensuring that farmers and crafters have at least some voice. No active captain is permitted a Council seat; indeed, though the Leagues push and pull for more and more control over an individual port by trying to hold more Councilors who were former members, the one sacrosanct law of Pere-di-Fey is “port truce.” Violence among Feyans is forbidden while on the islands of Pere-di-Fey itself, and so rival captains are expected to find a way to live peaceably or else take their matters out to sea to settle affairs. In situations where only bloodshed will end a feud, dueling platforms are floated out on long tethers into open water, and combatants are rowed out to settle matters on a shifting, rocking surface. The survivor, if any, swims back to shore, confident that the matter is resolved.
While the legends the old folks tell say that Pere-di-Fey was once richer in agricultural bounty before the Skyfire, the earth and plants which were shaken from the backs of the leviathan-islands have made the Feyans into hardscrabble farmers. Each year, plantations struggle to raise enough food to supply their communities, relying on raiding to supply the rest. Some islands are naturally richer than others, but even the worst of them do not have settlers dwelling solely on the stony shell-backs of the living islands. There are leviathans who are sandier than others, but none are without life, and all are long enough (the smallest being over three miles from nose to tail) that scrounging is possible. Beyond plants, the richest islands have birds and monkeys on them, as well as rodents, cats, wild dogs, and even boars. Some of these have been deliberate attempts on the parts of Feyan pirates to stock islands with plenty of game, which has met with varying results. Aquatic life is thankfully common around many of the leviathan islands, and fish, octopus, squid, and eels make up a prominent part of the Feyan diet.
Beyond these foreign species, there are the talalag themselves, found independently or in swarms in and on the bodies of the leviathans. Those Feyans who have successfully bonded in symbiotic relationships have some insight into these creatures, but their minds are alien in the extreme. It is not uncommon to see a Feyan with a creature like a starfish, lamprey, or crab bonded to their body somewhere, a gently pulsing symbiont which shares life fluids and strengths with its host, both benefiting from the exchange. However, some Feyan communities have been attacked repeatedly by angry swarms of skittering insect-like talalag, and attempts to pacify the creatures or discern their reasoning have proved futile. The Kairakau regard those movements as signs of the god-brethren displeasure, and abandon or avoid those leviathans. As to whether these rampages are a sign of leviathan anger, or merely illness, none can say for certain.
The greatest problem for resources on the backs of the leviathan islands are the lack of metals and minerals. No ore has ever been mined from the body of a leviathan, and the shells of many of them are so dense that they might as well be granite. Some Feyans have had moderate success quarying shell-stone, but the Kairakau view such actions with displeasure, and have sometimes attacked those communities. The richest islands have some wood, but the primary source of lumber comes from scavenges and raids of other, non-living islands which the leviathans pass by in their drifting, or from ships which are scuttled and pulled apart. It is not uncommon for a Feyan home to be composed of the remnants of two or three different ships. The Kairakau use bone carefully harvested from the leviathans as a primary element of their material culture, shaping anything from spears to war-shirts to canoes. Blood and dung are used as body paint, and skin and massive scales are frequent constituents of clothing.
No other culture on Near experiences the forced nomadic lifestyle of the Feyan islands; some peoples move, but their lands remain still. Among Pere-di-Fey, the islands themselves move unpredictably—often in a slow drift, but sometimes with surprising speed and intent. Many Feyans have tried to discern the habits and predilections of their homes, and speculation as to where a leviathan will head next is as frequent a conversation topic as discussing the weather in other countries. Among the Kairakau, the priestly land-speakers serve as symbiotic shamans, whose trances and mastery over the talalag are frequently seen as having special insight into the leviathans. Nonetheless, they seem reluctant to divulge the thoughts of their god-brothers to outsiders; many of the shamans are as slow-moving and taciturn as the islands themselves, though stories are told in Feyan ports of a Kairakau shaman whose accidental murder resulted in a leviathan diving beneath the waves in revenge (or was it mourning?), drowning the entire colony that dwelt on its back.
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In Part 2, I'll get crunchy, including Cultural Abilities, Secrets, and Keys, particularly giving some note to the Symbiont Secrets, and my own take on how to handle Ship Secrets on Near, but I figured I'd start out fluffy, and go from there.
A Postscript, on Part 1
Pere-di-Fey in its current incarnation may not suit everyone's tastes. There's stuff going on in here, such as living islands and creepy symbionts, which might bend or break some people's tolerances, particularly around TSOY's old "No gods, no monsters, just people" inscription. For me, this is just the sort of thing that fits in an interesting place in that kind of "pumpkin fantasy" beautifully. I've always viewed that caveat as referring to the fact that we're getting rid of the notion of directionless, ambitionless "monsters" who exist solely to inhabit a dungeon and go "RAWR!" at the appropriate moment, and ditto for gods who are there to dictate plot and swoop down and tell people who to behave when things get ethically or emotionally complicated. I say boo to both of those, the same as Clinton did way back when. We do have things in TSOY which would be seen as "monsters" in another setting--goblins and ratkin spring to mind immediately, but consider zombie crocodiles and the like--but the difference comes from them having some emotional weight to them. In TSOY, these things don't lurk in a dungeon with no more plot relevance than to see themselves fulfilled by jumping out at adventurer types. The same is true of the leviathans and symbionts above. They interact with the plot in a more complex way, hopefully prompting harder questions than just "What gets around the gorgon's Damage Reduction again?" or "Should we use a healing spell to hurt that wight, or would it be better used to heal my players?"
Hopefully, the leviathans and symbionts are going to be real things with their own motivations, complicating the lives of the people they interact with, and having a soul and a poetry to them all their own, if treated right. Entering into symbiosis should ideally prompt questions about identity, the self, control, and what it means to be bonded to someone or something else. The leviathans are a reason to make islands move around and be a little more mysterious, but they could just as easily be "we don't know why these islands drift; we live in a magical world" scenarios. I just chose to make the organic nature of the place a factor that could be played with. Hopefully, that takes care of the "no monsters" aspect.
As to the "no gods", I should be clear that the leviathans are big fish-turtles (and symbiotic bugs that exist in a mutualistic relationship with life around them); just because the Kairakau worship them and call them gods doesn't mean they're any more god-like than the trees the Khaleans venerate or the sun which Maldorites keep worshiping. The fact that these are active big things which can theoretically be pushed around, or push other people around, hopefully becomes a fresh element to TSOY, not a mood-breaker.
But, everyone knows what will and work best for their own games. Caveat emptor.
As I said at the front, comments, suggestions, questions, criticisms, and the like are all quite welcome.
-shadowcourt (aka Josh)
oliof:
I'm actually interested in crunch that bends TSoY's assumptions, as I still struggle with stuff like monsters etc. for Solar System.
shadowcourt:
Harald,
Quote
I'm actually interested in crunch that bends TSoY's assumptions, as I still struggle with stuff like monsters etc. for Solar System.
Would you be willing to talk about the nature of this struggle, and the problems therein? Is it about how to make them more than cardboard cutouts in the system, or increase challenge? I may have faced some of the same problems, as may some of the other Storyguides and players around the forum.
-shadowcourt (aka Josh)
oliof:
Yes, I would. Is it well-placed here, or do you want another thread for that?
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