D&D 5E Need ideas for my setting/ story

[hopeless]

Perhaps the water was largely present due to a portal to the plane of water and that's been stoppered allowing the area to be sealed off and kept in its current state?
That would suggest there might be an adventure involving locating and perhaps trying to prevent that portal from being unplugged drowning the area in the returning water...
That would make an interesting devastating event the discovery why the area has been deprived of the water it should be holding!

 

[Quickleaf]

Hi everyone, I’ve recently got back into dming 5e and I’m having a blast. One of the players is a friend of mine and the others are randos I met through discord, but I must say, I feel extremely lucky as they are engaged, thoughtful, and like to role play.

I sort of had a vague idea for this setting that just sort of sparked in my mind. I don’t have everything flushed out by any-means but I wanted to share what I had and get some feed back/ ideas on the setting.

All of the player characters hail from nations that had a summit, and at this summit among other things, they discussed a location of the world called The Vents. The Vents is a massive drained oceans made into a valley, the depth of this ocean was great so the cliffs are huge and it’s several hundred miles to get to the sea bed proper. The Vents are extremely hot, filled with a constant steam that fills the air from geysers and (once) underwater volcanos. Extreme weather occurs in The Vents like soot storms, acid rain, and treacherous wind. I wanted to make the denizens of The Vents very hardened by the land and give it a bit of a frontier feel with overtones of the primordial. The gods in the vents are different from the “abovers” ( what the people of The Vents call those from up above their valley) as they are just features of this majestic drained sea, like the cliff sides, resting mineral springs, earthquakes, etc. I’ve been having fun interpreting how the different races would survive down here and adapt.

The party has been tasked with establishing contact and learn about the Vents as they are unmapped and little is known about them in the nations up above. They found out that these 9 major cities have these communication devices called whisperfires, but 1 month ago before the party arrived to The Vents a great earthquake happened knocking much into chaos in The Vents, disconnecting the whisperfires. Creatures born of the elements have been whispered fantastical powers by a god sleeping in the earth, driving some mad with new power, towns are in recovery mode, change is on the horizon. So far the party has secured one whisperfire at the first town the came across, scaling down the cliff side ( which was in the thralls of mass agitation from a salt and steam mephit that kept two feuding groups hot under the collar with their new found power) and are now at the second town, which is a gnomish/ dwarven town. It’s called Progenitor, and it’s a mechanized city that can scale the sides of the cliff but has been too damaged to move by the great earthquake, and is currently going through some racial tensions as one of the main ruling dwarven family’s wants to abandon the mechanized city ( along with the gnomes) and tunnel into the cliff proper. The party is currently investigating the ruins of a destroyed part of the city, overrun by burrowing beasts,trying to find the whisper fire there.

Sorry for the info dump but I guess I wanted a sketch of the things happening right now and translate a feel for things. Does anyone have any cool ideas for the setting or storyline? Any ideas for the 7 other towns and how the fantastical people have adapted there or are currently going through it because of the current catastrophe. Any ideas for monsters, items, or Magic’s that would be unique to this hot land?

Lost Lofius – This town was once inhabited by sea elves (who could only survive out of water for short periods) who fell to internal corruption thanks to malenti (a type of sahuagin appearing mostly like a sea elf) manipulation within their ranks. However, when the sea elves foresaw the coming devastation with a powerful divination ritual, the malenti spied on them. The sea elves planned to conjure a portion of the Plane of Water to spare themselves the coming devastation. And the sahuagin planned to lay siege and claim the sea elven town as their own. Instead, the malenti betrayed both sides, breaking the ritual and causing many water elementals to enter existence bond to the will of the malentis. The sea elves and sahuagin perished, but the minority malenti survived by immersing themselves inside the water elementals. Over time, the malenti bred true and this strange bond developed into a type of psychic symbiosis – the malenti are kept immersed by the elementals, while the elementals are bestowed with greater individual consciousness by the malenti (usually elementals on Inner Planes are little more than beasts). The malenti, which appear as deformed sea elves with nictating membranes over milky or black eyes, with two sets of teeth and elongated smiles, and atrophied legs, travel in undulating masses of water that are the water elementals. They speak a hybrid language of (Aquan) Primordial, Sahuagin, and Elven. Several have developed psionic powers, and continue to try to unlock the secrets of the sea elves which remain confounding to the wicked malenti.

 

[77IM]

Lost Lofius – This town was once inhabited by sea elves (who could only survive out of water for short periods) who fell to internal corruption thanks to malenti (a type of sahuagin appearing mostly like a sea elf) manipulation within their ranks. However, when the sea elves foresaw the coming devastation with a powerful divination ritual, the malenti spied on them. The sea elves planned to conjure a portion of the Plane of Water to spare themselves the coming devastation. And the sahuagin planned to lay siege and claim the sea elven town as their own. Instead, the malenti betrayed both sides, breaking the ritual and causing many water elementals to enter existence bond to the will of the malentis. The sea elves and sahuagin perished, but the minority malenti survived by immersing themselves inside the water elementals. Over time, the malenti bred true and this strange bond developed into a type of psychic symbiosis – the malenti are kept immersed by the elementals, while the elementals are bestowed with greater individual consciousness by the malenti (usually elementals on Inner Planes are little more than beasts). The malenti, which appear as deformed sea elves with nictating membranes over milky or black eyes, with two sets of teeth and elongated smiles, and atrophied legs, travel in undulating masses of water that are the water elementals. They speak a hybrid language of (Aquan) Primordial, Sahuagin, and Elven. Several have developed psionic powers, and continue to try to unlock the secrets of the sea elves which remain confounding to the wicked malenti.

Now you are just showing off.

 

[ART!]

Perhaps the water was largely present due to a portal to the plane of water and that's been stoppered allowing the area to be sealed off and kept in its current state?
That would suggest there might be an adventure involving locating and perhaps trying to prevent that portal from being unplugged drowning the area in the returning water...
That would make an interesting devastating event the discovery why the area has been deprived of the water it should be holding!

I like the drama inherent in this. Some people in the Vents (and adjacent environs) will very much want the water back, and some very much like things the way they are. There's good drama in the dynamics of just trying to limit who knows about where the water is.

 

[Stormonu]

Some crazy gnome with a dwarven salvage crew has found a trove of Apparatus of Kwalish (a magical barrel that becomes an lobster construct) in a forgotten sector. He’s making coin by repairing and selling the devices to traveling merchants, who use the devices to run goods across the seabed in the armored devices. The devices are expensive and rare, but the gnome might give PCs a discount if they do some spelunking in the nearby caverns where the gnome suspects the original factory might exist. Who knows what other bizarre creatures or constructs may be protecting the ruins of the ancient factory?