Undersea Realms

The waterways of the Inner Sea region are more heavily populated below than they are above. Entire cultures lurk beneath the waves, often unknown to their coastal neighbors until they emerge from the water to trade—or to drag prisoners back to the briny deep. Merfolk are quick to punish those who trespass across their invisible borders, while sadistic goblinoid grindylows and clever sea hags love to wreak havoc on coastal settlements. Other aquatic cultures are more cooperative; for example, it’s not uncommon for curious locathahs—fish-like humanoids—to trade with ships or act as guides through dangerous waters. Tentacled cecaelias often act as nomadic mercenaries or traders, traveling from port to port leading pack rays loaded with salvage from the depths. And there’s plenty of such salvage to be found—thanks to the devastation of Earthfall, the floor of the Inner Sea is littered with the drowned ruins of elven and serpentfolk cities as well as countless shipwrecks. South toward Jalmeray, the waters quickly grow more dangerous, with creatures like the eel-like iku-tursos capturing whole ship crews for the undersea slave trade.

The sea where the Arcadian Ocean meets Avistan and Garund is often thought of as two separate bodies. In the north, the Steaming Sea—so named for the fog that rises off its frigid waters—makes for a perilous home. While coastal Varisians and the Ulfen of the Ironbound Archipelago rely on the sea for survival, all know that its freezing waves can kill as quickly as the krakens, skum, and ravenous sea devils that plague ships venturing too far from their sheltering islands. In the south, the Fever Sea is warmer, but just as dangerous. For every friendly undersea group, like kraken-hunting squadrons of tritons, there are creatures like the storm-worshipping adaros who sacrifice prisoners to the Eye of Abendego. Still, the tropical waters are often worth risking, and magical salvage divers operating out of Vidrian and the Kaava Lands do a brisk business in artifacts and treasure pulled from sunken fleets or from the swampy apocalypse of the Sodden Lands.

The following are a few notable undersea settlements in the region.

Gholinom, the Passage Outward

Since the beginning of history, the eerie alghollthus have worked in secret beneath the waves, weaving plots that other creatures often find impenetrable—at least until it’s too late to stop them. Only one thing is clear to all: that any undertaking large enough to gather a city of naturally independent alghollthus together must have disastrous consequences for others. So it is in Gholinom, deep in an ocean trench west of Rahadoum. As much a factory as a city, its mountainous, twisting towers have stood atop volcanic vents for millennia, gathering magical and geothermic power that crackles in magenta rings around them as black smoke billows from their tips. Conduits of stone and skymetal weave through the palaces and laboratories of the many-eyed masterminds and their terrified slave-scholars, all leading to a vast circular gate at the city’s heart. Dubbed the Passage Outward, this gateway consists of four concentric rings, each rotating in an opposing direction from those around it and made of a different skymetal—abysium, djezet, orichalcum, and inubrix. This gateway has never opened, yet those slaves most trusted (or burdened) with knowledge of the gate suggest that it’s intended to open onto a realm beyond space and time that their masters refer to as the Final Sea. The entire project was secret until just recently, when Professor Karnvale Havillip, a halfling venture-captain thought lost in a shipwreck years ago, returned to the Grand Lodge in Absalom bearing a harrowing tale of escape and a warning that, after ages of preparation, the Passage Outward may be about to open.

Irim

Built into the edge of the continental shelf off the coast of Ravounel, this city of aquatic elves has hidden itself from surface-dwellers for centuries, communicating only with the elves of the Mordant Spire. Half-hidden by vertical kelp forests, their elegant cliff dwellings connect to a much older system of caves that have been inhabited by elven mystics since before most elves returned from Sovyrian. The majority of Irim’s residents live pastoral lives tending isopod herds or harvesting food and neurotoxins from anemone farms. The city is ruled by the Riftia, a collection of scholars who live deep within the flooded tunnels, breathing in chemicals seeping from active vents and reading portents in the movements of half-sentient tube worms. Recently, the elves of the Riftia shocked their constituents by making secret contact with the mainland—specifically the leaders of the new nation of Ravounel, offering to aid the nation in covertly protecting its ports from pirate attacks. In exchange, the elves insist that Ravounel aid them in locating a mysterious artifact called the Lornoc Catalyst, and that they must not, under any circumstances, allow any surface-dwelling elves to learn of the endeavor.

Kienek-Li

Positioned near the Isle of Kortos, the submerged city of Kienek-Li is the best-known gillman settlement in the region. The oldest portion of the city, called the Boneglade, rises up from a living reef, its buildings the bleached and branching skeletons of massive corals. The rest of the city, called the Float, consists of sprawling wooden structures anchored to the sea floor by heavy chains;

their honeycomb of passages is accessible from every direction in this environment where up and down barely matters.

Traditionally, Kienek-Li did most of its surface trading with the town of Escadar. Of late, however, Kienek-Li’s newly elected ruler, Sealord Amodjun, confused citizens of both Absalom and Kienek-Li by declaring that the gillman city needs diplomatic and economic ties to other nations. Toward that end, the government has begun hiring non-Absalomian mercenaries to guard its diplomats’ magical water-filled carriages on their journeys.

ADVENTURING UNDER THE SEA

This item is useful beneath the waves.

Swim Fins

ITEM 0

Price 5 gp

Usage worn shoes; Bulk L

These flippers attach to your feet like tight shoes—donning or removing them requires three Interact actions. While worn, you gain a +5-foot item bonus to the distance you move when rolling Athletics to Swim, not when using a swim Speed, and you take a –10-foot item penalty to your Speed.

THE FLOAT