Background for Sailors of the Starless Sea.

[cthulhudarren]

I just got the module and am excited, as I read a lot of after action reports and play sessions about it. Most of the background detail was on the back cover, however. Did anyone provide a little more depth to the story background in their campaigns and care to share?

THanks,

[themightyeroc]

Sailors was the first adventure I ran for my group. I decided all the zero levels were from the same village and knew each other. There had been rumors of "things" in the forest up near the old ruined Keep on the sea cliffs. A farmstead had been burned down the family gone! Then the village was attacked at midnight and many villagers were hauled away by the beast-men! The following morning the players were the only able bodied citizens left. They had 2 choices, go to the keep and end the raids of the beast-men or set out for the Keep of Duke Marqest some 30 miles away.

So far my world has grown to include: The Portal Under the Stars 10m outside the starting village. The Market Town of Tegel 20m from the starting village and home of the People of the Pit module we are currently in now.

[jonchappellnow2]

For our group, Sailors is the third adventure after Portal and Doom.

To address the episodic and deliberately non-sand box style of play we're employing, our basic conceit is that after completing Portal, the survivors were recruited into the "Crawler's Guild."

It is sort of a loose network of adventurers and intelligence informants who troubleshoot the dark places of the world tin order to put address any potential threats, to gather secrets and esoteric knowledge, to acquire rare antiquities.

At the beginning of the adventure, each character is privately provided a thread of information like rumors or anything that connects to their backgrounds and individual character arcs. Once completed, any survivors are debriefed and have an opportunity to liquid assets and gain access to the collective knowledge base.

Each member is expected to act as a cogent member of a unit in supporting each other, but if there are inter-party conflicts they don't care so much as the mission is completed. Any potential embarrassment to the Guild will cause the party to be disavowed.

There's also an implication that the Crawler's Guild may in fact have some cosmic agenda as well as sub factions by alignment.