Drowned Isles: The Ship and Navigation

The Ship

The Wardens collectively own a small catamaran sailing vessel. It has a capacity for 10 Supplies (see Gear and Equipment) and enough room for all the Wardens on a voyage. It moves at around 5 knots assuming there are no adverse or beneficial weather conditions.

Other sailboats may have greater capacity, mounted weapons, or specialized instruments. Generally they all sail at the same speed. A vessel with an engine can move at twice that speed, as long as it is powered (different engines may require fuel, solar charging, Aether, etc).

The Drowned Isles cannot be mapped, which makes navigation quite difficult. Any sailor with experience knows that you need an Atlas, a powerful relic that allows the user to encode certain locations and routes. The crew starts with an Atlas that is blank, except for the location of Twill.

Whenever the crew arrives in a location, they may take an hour to record the route taken in their Atlas. Entries can be copied between Atlases, at a rate of half an hour per route.

Routes may have specific costs (such as Supplies or Aether) or dangers (such as harmful weather or lurking pirates) associated with them. Learning new routes can be a good way to bypass expensive ones.

Entries in the Atlas erode over time. At the end of each month, add 1d6 to the Erosion for each route (routes have 0 Erosion by default). When traveling to a location transcribed in an Atlas, roll 1d6. If the number is greater than the Erosion for that location, the journey is safe and by-the-book. If the number is less than or equal to the Erosion, the travelers are waylaid by a random encounter (as determined by the roll).

The first page of an Atlas is usually coated with gold leaf and imbued with fixing spells, ensuring those routes do not erode. The starting atlas for the crew can fit five routes on that page; it takes a watch (six hours) to painstakingly re-inscribe the routes and re-imbue the spells on the page.

Whenever the Wardens take a route, reduce its Erosion to 0. All other routes to the destination location should have their Erosion reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0).

Travel to locations without any Atlas entry is nigh-impossible. It requires sailing through the dense fog that coats the Drowned Isles, with only a compass and your own speed to guide you. When embarking on the voyage, the Referee should roll 2d4 for close-by targets, 2d6 for two islands in the same region, or 2d10 for two islands in different regions. This roll forms the length of a track. Roll 1d6 to determine an encounter and the progress along the track, until the end is reached.