Water is fundamental to life. Without water, life could not maintain itself. We instantly understand that both flora and fauna require water, but is the same true when the atmosphere around us is comprised of ocean saltwater instead? On a water world such as Elqua, do pisceans even need to drink?
Read the rest of this entry »While many of our lives’ little details have clear parallels with aquatic life, one glaring major difference is the lack of fruit. While plant life, like animal life, began in water, it found greater success once it spread to areas where the water’s edge slowly subsided. With water receded, what would become flora took root above the waves and spread across the world. Most of what we would consider “underwater plants” are actually algae — kelp and seaweed, most notably
Read the rest of this entry »Icthara, the Voracious
Live to eat; eat to live. Consumption is the basic need of all living things, the act of taking in nutrition to keep the body alive. It is the current of life, cyclical, that all things need to thrive. Eat, eat again, eat more, and grow. Feed, consume, gorge, for you never know when you might eat again. Next time, it might be you serving as the meal. Bottom feeder or apex predator, aquatic flora or Vastness aberration, all must obey the most primal of all urges: eat to survive.
All exists to sate the Endless Hunger. Not just food, but the living are to consume all that can be digested: drink, drugs, even detritus. She is the Goddess of Gluttony, not Pride. The sunken bodies of the dead are as much a feast to Her as the freshest roe. Even the ley line nexuses fall prey to Icthara’s ravening. She sups upon their puissance; and like ambrosia, She greedily gobbles it down.
The Queen of the Feast single-mindedly travels across the water world’s seabeds, consuming everything in Her wake with equal relish.
Icthara, the Voracious, the Empress of Consumption, Queen of the Feast, the Endless Hunger
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Symbol: Two rows of three orange hooks, facing downward and inward.
Domains: Animal, Destruction, Evil, Magic, Travel
Preferred Unguis (weapon): Claw.
Clerical Unguis of Choice: Prey catcher (man catcher).
Cleric Alignment: Chaotic evil, neutral evil, lawful evil, true neutral.
Elqua’s Blue Dragon
NOTE: The blue dragon is based on a real sea creature called the Glaucus atlanticus. When this animal was brought to my attention, the deep blue coloring and the six appendaged shape instantly exemplified my concept of what native Elquan life would look like. Its incredibly alien morphology gives it the perfect form for life in the Endless Blue, and I knew immediately I had to adapt it for the campaign setting. With only slight modifications — and a little stat creation — I’ve adapted for 3E use. The use of the Wikipedia image falls under the Wikimedia Creative Commons License and it does not qualify as Open Game Content as per the OGC document. Photo by Taro Taylor from Sydney, Australia. Used without permission.
The Nature of Kelaguen
Kelaguen is the “wonder yeast” that revolutionized aquaculture (aquatic agriculture) and serves as the basis of the culinary arts. Used extensively by the toothless Locanth for five Ages, it is a fungal derived substance based heavily on the compound lignin. Its introduction into early Known World populations was key in the rise of more than one culture into the ocean nations of today.
Culinist — Farmers of the Fathoms
Culinists are the farmers of the fathoms, wielding aquaculture to produce consumable bounties for piscean life to thrive. Through cunning manipulation of kelaguen — the tiniest wonder fungi — they can fertilize barren silt, ferment the ubiquitous ricelqua into alcohol, and infuse the unremarkable acari fruit with wonders of magic.
They are cultivators of magic in the truest sense — they raise crops infused with magic. The fruit of their art can impart spells upon the consumer much like drinking a magical potion, but only after harvest has produced the ripened bevy.
The Floating Wheel
Perhaps the third most important discovery that enabled civilization to flourish, behind language and fire, is arguably the wheel. Historians and philosophers can argue the details, but work-relieving potential of the wheel has proven itself indispensable in every culture known. An astoundingly simply invention — the simplest shape, found everywhere in nature, and refined to become the greatest mechanical tool to push civilization forward — the wheel’s practicality is a little diminished when you can move in all directions. Wheels essentially need traction to work, and when held aloft, floating in an endless ocean of water, there is little there for the wheel to roll across. Even if the pisceans of antiquity kept to the sea bed with their wheels, the topography of the ocean floor is rough, usually steep, and most times less solid than packed earth.
All is not Blue Under the Waves
Contrary to first impressions, terrain under the oceans is not a flat, featureless horizon of silt and sand. In actuality, submerged land has as varied a morphology as the land above the waves, perhaps more so. Here, with sea surrounding you in every direction, the currents that affect the formation of terrain consist of water instead of air.
Biology
Cooking Without Fire
Most animals of the world can eat their meals raw, be it chewing up plant matter or gulping down other animals in parts or in whole. Humans are different, however. While we can eat many things raw – such as salads and sushi – we actually thrive better on cooked foods – like potatoes or roasts. Cooked meat is easier for the body to process the vital proteins and vitamins necessary in the large dietary intake required for development of the brain. But in a world where water surrounds you everywhere, you cannot light a match and set the campfire necessary to cook a pot of stew or roast a coney. Further, our smaller jaws, mix of teeth, and narrow larynges make swallowing things whole difficult at best and dangerous at worst. And even if such harder foods could be swallowed, our dedicated digestive system is ill prepared to efficiently break these hardy products down into usable bits we can easily assimilate.
Endless Blue 