Need ideas for a sea based adventure

[Comert]

I need ideas for a sea based adventure taking place along the Sword Coast in Forgotten Realms. The players are going to create 1st level characters and we are thinking about playing through a few games and see how things go for the group. If we enjoy the setting, (None of us had any real experience with sea based settings, chasing pirates, raiding merchants, treasure islands...) I will turn it into a campaign. So I am asking what elements would you include in such a game? My first thoughts are to make the players the sailors of a pirate ship and the involvement of a female cleric of Umberlee, perhaps manipulating the captain to achieve certain goals. Are there any books that would be of help to me? Thanks in advance.

 

[Sanackranib]

sea adventure

it depends on weither your party is good or evil.
If good then make them privateers if evil then pirates.
do somthing along the lines of the count of Monte Cristo, and let the PC's gain control of an island.

 

[RangerWickett]

An idea for a long-running campaign. You start off mentioning that the winds have been acting funny lately, and so the party will be having to navigate some unusual routes that head farther out to sea than most sailors like to go. The truth is that a group of bad guys have found a fragment of the shattered phylacetry that once belonged to an incredibly powerful lich aeromancer. Right now all they can do is use a portion of his undead power to disrupt trade routes, but their eventual goal is to create a storm that will lay waste to most of the west coast of Faerun.

Who are the bad guys? Maybe drow, hoping to kill off many surface-worlders to make their invasion easier. Maybe bitter Elves of Evermeet, hoping to stop the occasional invasions that try to assault their sanctuary island. Maybe a group of pirates who have gotten hold of a gnomish gadget that lets their ships travel without wind (steam power, or perhaps a machine that generates its own wind).