Fabled Taurea, perhaps you've heard of her? Now there's a story. The Kingdom of the Nine Cities, long lost and gone to dust. Golden hued and jade roofed her spires, powerful her heroes and sage her elders, beautiful her maidens and rare the studied craft of her artisans. Tales were told far and wide of such as the Temple of the Reflections, which contained only one chamber although a man could get lost for a lifetime within it, or the singing fountains which drew the snow-white moonbirds to light the night as though it were day. Colonnades and market squares where a thousand voices rang out in a hundred tongues, marbled avenues, and even the meanest beggar went to sleep with a morsel of bread and a good bowl of broth.

The sun once shone on mighty Taurea.

Greatest of all these wonders, they say, were the guardians of the cities, enormous wardens formed in the bitter fires of battle and strife, one for each city and each made of a different metal. Taller than five men standing on one another's shoulders they were, remorseless eyes of bloody red, grinders of bones and crushers of armies, none could stand against them, marvels of grim might, swift and sure as the grave.

For centuries they had kept the cities and the realm safe from invaders and threats, so as you can imagine nobody was more surprised than they when the cities fell.

It started, as most dark things do, at night, hidden from decent eyes, when the wind blew from the west, which it never does as everyone knows. At first there were the dreams, long fingered things of fever delusion, part wormknot, part man, tormenting the weak and young. It spread quickly, like fire in dry grass, and soon the uproar reached from one border of the land to the next.

No clear account remains of those days, only rumours of smoke and fire, brother turning on brother, blood and terror, but a rising madness plagued the cities and a darkness from the dreamlands passed into the world of men. It knew when and where to strike, baffling the wisest tactician, knew the weaknesses of the cities as if they lived within the minds of the their defenders, it was as if they fought themselves. Dream fed upon dream, and dark rumours spawned more and more of the nightmares among those who heard them, taking sustenance from the fear of the dreamers.

None could find peaceful rest or walk in safety, lords in their halls and the poor in their cots were afflicted alike, and in the end even the baffled titans staggered and fell, beleaguered by half seen things of slavering distended jaw and impossibly sharp talon, wise with evil. All save one.

And so the great felldrums sounded througout the cities and the last song was sung amid the rising cinders and fumes, a call went out out to take to the ships, although none knew where to go for the world was much different at that time. The elders prophecised that they would find no safety in this place, only forestalling the day until the end swallowed up all that had once been good.

But one came forth as the great vessels gathered around the last standing city of Ben-Taur, as the lines of torches wound slowly like ruddy snakes to the harbour, lit to keep the darkness back from the hollow eyed and huddled survivors, as long as they lasted.

A Badjao sea gypsy he claimed to be, of that short and swarthy folk whose low and swift vessels coursed fearlessly under multicoloured sails, travelling far and wide. He told tales of dodging the Sultan's Crescent on the Moro sea, selling yellow pearls in the Lordcity of Istar, knowing which way was what around the Thousand Isles by the height of the waves as his hand trailed through their crests on his way to Roke, stealing a kiss from a noble's lady in Thyatis, and other such pretty nonsense as I'm sure you think it, and so did the last of the elders.

But something in his manner gave them pause, and he drew from his belongings a strange map, which he claimed showed the way to fairer shores where the encroaching night could no longer touch them. A map across not just wave and water but through the very fabric of the real itself, past reefs of impossible and beyond maelstroms of fancy. It was an odd thing, for no matter who looked upon it, no two could agree on the exact directions therein.

The man declared with pride that he could show them a way through darker waters to a new home where even though much diminished and reduced, they could rise once more. One price only he claimed, and that was a great emerald from the brow of the king's crown, which caused much consternation and muttering among the worthies present. At that the last elder from the first city to fall, himself reputed to have a more than passing familiarity with the dark arts, leaped forward and with a word chained the gypsy in a black binding.

Struggle though he might, the Badjao could not escape, and so he agreed to spare the royal dignity and and see them through the tangled passage. Thus it came to pass that the tattered remnants of once-mighty Taurea set sail under a moonless sky towards the unknown across a heaving sea, twelve great ships and a flotilla of smaller vessels, until they came to a place they did not know.

Storms and lightning lashed the fleet, many were lost, and the skills of the sailors were pressed to their limits to preserve what they could against riptides and enormous waves, before eventually they emerged from the ocean's maw under strange stars. Candles burned a different colour and the cries of strange seabirds none had heard before echoed back from a nearby shoreline, on which a city could be seen in the far distance. As odd as this was, even odder was that the blackbound gypsy had vanished leaving only an indecipherable map behind! A midshipman swore by the powers that he had heard mad cackling at the height of the storm, but beyond that no trace could be found.

Lost and abandoned by their reluctant ward, the fleet of Taurea wanders from realm to realm, each stranger than the last, hunted yet by the nightmares they sought to escape.

What further adventures did they have? Well, that's for you to tell me!

[ *** This is a Battlestar Galactica Meets Alternate Universes Meets Spooky Meets Fantasy Roleplaying riff, think Pirates of the Caribbean style creaking hulls dark with age - I'd enjoy reading any settings or inspirations that might occur to anyone inspired along those lines, whether internal politics or islands or weird laws of physics or cities or whatever, like say a place where rain falls upwards from the sea.

The fleet can't just do the traditional thing and find somewhere weaker to conquer and colonise as they are still being pursued by the nightmare things - exactly how and in what form they are being pursued is still up in the air... oh yes and they still have one city guardian stored in the largest ship *** ]

I don't usually read this type of thread to completion, but I really like this premise, and your presentation.  Thanks, I'm seriously considering cribbing this for a game of my own.

I'm glad you liked it, just trying to see if we can fan the embers into something fun.

Quote from: The Traveller;682964[ *** This is a Battlestar Galactica Meets Alternate Universes Meets Spooky Meets Fantasy Roleplaying riff, think Pirates of the Caribbean style creaking hulls dark with age - I'd enjoy reading any settings or inspirations that might occur to anyone inspired along those lines, whether internal politics or islands or weird laws of physics or cities or whatever, like say a place where rain falls upwards from the sea.

The fleet can't just do the traditional thing and find somewhere weaker to conquer and colonise as they are still being pursued by the nightmare things - exactly how and in what form they are being pursued is still up in the air... oh yes and they still have one city guardian stored in the largest ship *** ]

I can accept wierdness more for Galactica, because... well, planets, man. But islands I'd expect to have more fixed physical laws. Are they really real? Have our colonists accidentally sailed out of the planet?

If I was GM'ing this, I would definitely want some sort of random island generator, an Islands Without Number if you will, and I'd probably play it as an adventure-of-the-week road story; safe, but there's still a lot of mileage for gaming there.

Quote from: Ladybird;683208Have our colonists accidentally sailed out of the planet?

Yes, or out of their dimension/universe anyway. It should be a lot weirder than Galactica really. Almost anything goes, Elric's wanderings through the planes of Chaos mightn't be a bad place to start. They can travel to other realms but have little control over where they end up. They might conceivably show up on a foggy autumn evening just off Anchorage, circa 2013, then travel to Camorr to match wits with the Gentleman Bastards a few days later. Time and space aren't fixed factors when you slide into the corners of reality. Nor, indeed, is reality.

Back in the 90s, AEG (the guys who made Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea and later SpyCraft) put out a magazine called Shadis. There was one issue of Shadis that had an article called TimeShip Titanic. The concept was the Titantic did not sink, but got caught in a wormhole and flows back and forth through time and alternate universes having adventures.

I don't know what issue, but Shadis in general was worth reading.

Cool, thanks, I'll check it out.

Quote from: The Traveller;682760Lost and abandoned by their reluctant ward, the fleet of Taurea wanders from realm to realm, each stranger than the last, hunted yet by the nightmares they sought to escape.

Makes me think of the Odyssey, or Sinbad, even the Flying Dutchman -- doomed to sail forever.

The concept of islands where mysterious things happen is ancient in our mythic tropes. Even Jack the Giant Slayer climbs to an island floating in the sky where giants live (there's one right there -- islands floating in the sky). How about islands that can only be seen in their reflection and you have to dive into the water to get there? Then of course all the classic Homeric islands: gorgons, harpies, cyclops, witches, sirens, etc. How about Gulliver's islands? There were many more than little people and giants

They never really did a good job in Pirates of the C with the Tim Power's book: On Stranger Tides. That had wonderfully creepy magic associated with the fountain of youth.

And of course there are sea monsters to encounter between islands: leviathan, kraken, mer maids and men -- things that fish up into the air from under the sea trying to catch passing sailors with marvelous bait.

Very cool setup I think.

On the Dungeon of Signs blog the author has an ongoing feature about his HMS Apollyon setting... an enormous ship that sails between worlds and is itself a sort of floating megadungeon.
I think it's based on the comic series Leviathan which is also quite good.

The Scar by China Mieville is a must read. A floating pirate city made of hundreds of ships chained together in a weird magic/steampunk setting.

This thread title lied to me... I thought it was about Pirates of Dark Water...

Once again, my reading comprehension leads me to disappointment...

Quote from: teagan;693549things that fish up into the air from under the sea trying to catch passing sailors with marvelous bait.

That's a nice image which I'm stealing.