Dungeon: The Fleetbreaker’s Bones
“More than three hundred years dead and rotting and it’s still going to kill us all. That’s dedication right there.”
-Tousu, hapless deckhand moments before a wreck
The remnants of this great kaiju turned fossil-reef has been swallowing up ships for centuries, a habit it’s not managed to break despite a great hero spearing it to a volcanic atoll and founding a prosperous kingdom over the territory it never would have ceded in life. Underwater lava flows create boiling mists and unstable weather patterns making sailing anywhere near the island a gamble. Ships lost in storms throughout the region seem invariably pulled towards the reef, leading many in villages along the coast to speculate that not even death can sate the great beast’s hunger.
In more recent years a ramshackle band of corsairs has decided to make the Reef their home, having suffered a disastrous defeat while raiding the mainland and needing somewhere, no matter how inhospitable, to regroup. The Fleetbreaker ironically provided the perfect safe harbour, close enough to the trading lanes to raid, far enough out of anyone’s way and into unfriendly waters that reprisal was unlikely. They’ve had such success that they’ve been able to cobble together dwellings and fortifications across the reef, as well as a knocked together shipyard in the sheltered caverns that were one the kaiju’s belly.
The Fleetbreaker Pirates have managed to chart the rhythm of the atoll’s seemingly unpredictable weather, following in the wake of storms like scavengers after a bloodthirsty predator. With the party’s vessel having barely survived the night battling a sulfurous smelling gale, they’ll have to act quickly as first light and the hope that comes with it is dashed by the appearance of enemy vessels on the horizon.
Captured at sea (or perhaps after having one too many rounds of grog while in port) the party find themselves clapped in irons, stripped of their gear, and locked in a series of muggy stone cells. The Fleetbreakers deal in slaves as well as plundered goods, and it’s only a matter of weeks or maybe even days before their buyer shows up to trade in flesh. They have to escape, but how? Sneak out just their friends and disguise themselves on an enemy ship? Break out the other innocents and risk detection?
There are many sections of the great fossil reef where the pirates do not go, tidal warrens inhabited by skittering things made monstrous by generations of feeding off kaiju flesh, boiling caverns where lava vents glow just beneith the surface of the water and odd shapes move in the mineral vapour, lofty and winding passages leading to the lonlely spinal cliffs where the sound of strange birds causes hallucinations. Somewhere among all of this is the hero’s spear, a divinely invested artifact that has the power to found, and perhaps destroy kingdoms. The party may unwittingly stumble across this artifact while escaping captivity, or find it in a dramatic moment as they pursue the last of the pirate captains into the caverns in their final push to oust the corsairs once and for all. What they do with it after that is all up to them.
dailybridgerton
titsay
annaxmalina
kaledo-art
stormborns
izzy806
ellievsbear
