Sea of Stars RPG Design Journal

One of the things about the Sea of Stars is that there is always yonder, another place to go, if you are willing to take the risk; many who serve as sailors aboard the starships and no small number of venturers started out as people who just needed to leave their home for whatever reason, hunger, ambition, fear, curiosity, even wanderlust.  Some people just cannot stay at home because of external or internal pushes or a mixture of the two.

While most rulers make some attempt to keep their labourers, well, labouring and not running off to seek a better life, a few actively encourage troublemakers to leave and find their fortunes far, far, away.  It is the wisest of the rulers that seek to channel such people where they can be useful and be grateful for such guidance or, at least, not harbor ill-thoughts towards their homeland.

Though such worries are generally misplaces, once someone sets out for yonder, they rarely stop, for while yonder is a destination, it is not a place.  You can never reach it, not for long, there is always more yonder to wander to.   Even some young dragons become enchanted, or obsessed, with discovering what lies over yonder and spend decades or more doing just that.  For there is always another mountain range to cross, a new town’s streets to walk down, another island to visit.

After all, there are no lack of new places to see, people to meet and wonder to experience across the Sea of Stars.

Notes: Yonder has become an underused word, let us change that.

Photo by Virtual_Raider and used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The Sea of Stars is rife with odd and bizarre things, from dog folk to fish trees, cows that can read and eternal snow falls, and other ever stranger things.  Much like the way that people think of venturers, it depends on a group’s recent experience with strange things on how welcoming or hostile they may be towards the next unusual thing that comes visiting.

Generally, the more cosmopolitan and urban, the more likely an area is to have strands of xenophilia, embracing the strange, and welcoming the opportunities presented by new and exotic things even if they occasionally prove dangerous.  There will always be a market down some alley in a big enough city for any strange and unlikely thing that comes through.  Novelty is welcomed in such places especially if it seems to give the possessors of such novelty some sort of social (or other) advantage.

Conversely, small towns and isolated rural area tend to a natural conservatism and fear of things from outside, xenophoby.  After all, change means uncertainty and danger and small communities do not usually have much in the way of reserves in case things go wrong, so better safe than sorry.  Now, this is not to say that all such communities are hostile to strangers and new ideas, just that they are more cautious, often much more, when it comes to trying new ideas and letting strangers do stranger things.

Of course isolated and distant communities may have their own strangeness which to them is now just traditional and the way things always have been done, there are many of such places that resulted from the first century after the Sundering which turned everything upside down.  “You don’t eat beetles?”  “Where you come from potatoes do not grow in the shape of human faces?”  “But all goats have two heads.”  “You didn’t hatch from an egg?”  “Of course you grow a new set of teeth each year.”

Notes: Yes, xenophoby and xenophobia are essentially interchangeable words but I like using obscure words when I find them so there you go.

More on xenophily here.

Photo by Susanne Nilsson and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Even in the Sea of Stars, taxes are inevitable arguably even moreso than death what with the existence of immortal dragons and the unliving beings and spirits.

The draconic houses collect taxes, tariffs and tribute from the lands they rule and the Empress takes one tenth of what the draconic houses gather.  The Empress does not care what level the draconic houses tax their subjects at, only that she gets her share.  Few Imperial officials are more feared by draconic houses and lesser governments alike than the Imperial Auditor who ensures that the Empress gets her share of all things, precisely and without fail.  The standard penalty for failing to pay the proper amount of taxes is a fine equal to four times the amount withheld plus the original sum though auditors can adjust this under exceptional circumstance which must in turn be justified to the Empress herself.

The various draconic houses and the states that they directly and indirectly control pursue a wide range of taxation and tariff strategies, trying to maximize their receipts and deny money to their rivals.  Merchants and travelers do their best to maneuver through these barriers to trade and travel while losing a minimal amount of money.

Naturally, corruption is endemic to collectors of taxes, outside of the Imperial Auditors, though it is harshly and routinely cracked down upon due to the costs and inefficiencies it imposes by the states and houses, it persists.  Almost inevitably, the more complex a systems of taxes becomes, the more corruption it spawns partly why the Empress keep her share of taxes so simple that there is no misunderstanding of what belongs to her.

Notes: Taxes should not be neglected and remain as a threat even to venturers.

Photo by Jeff Belmonte found on Wikimedia Commons and used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Skyships, or flying ships if you prefer, existed before the Sundering but they became so much more valuable in the shattered world.

Before the Sundering, the elves controlled most of the manufacturing of skyships with their knowledge of and access to magic woods and ancient enchantments, but the aftermath hit them hard and their ability to increase production was limited.  Some of the elven techniques were acquired by humans but while the human made skyships do not have the grace or speed of their elven counterparts, they do fly though their manufacture is also limited by the availability of woods and magic worker.

The dwarves developed their gemforge powered skyships, but as they consumed gems to fly, they were only used in times of crisis.  Their crystal ships were perfected later, they only require sunlight to fly but they take centuries to grow to a useful size and only a few of such exist due to their expense to manufacture.

Experimental alchemists found that treated bones of the giants of the sky could be bound into ships to provide lift, but such bones were rare and the available supply was quickly used up.  The bones that empower such skyships have been carefully maintained and the ships they lift are still encountered even today.

The process of binding air elementals to ships is also used, but the elementals will often try to escape, requiring constant maintenance of the ward and bindings.

There are occasionally skyships build by suspending them from balloons, lifted either by alchemical processes or elementals, but they have not been overly successful but wizards and alchemists keep trying, hoping for a breakthrough.

Owning a skyship is a symbol of wealth and success, but very few of them are used as pleasure craft they are just too expensive to be allowed to sit idle, so most are working ships either transports, carrying both high value cargoes and passengers, or warships.

Notes: I just really like the idea of flying ships, it gives a nice magical feel and it is an exciting way to travel.

Art by Theo Evans and owned by me.