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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9626198" data-attributes="member: 2629">I've got this in my setting.  I can share a bit about that situation for inspirations.My setting takes place on a world that has a surface area that is 12 times the size of the Earth, with a Dyson Sphere like Underdark surface nearly as large that is about 100 miles under sea level.  The oceans are vast (80% of the surface world as opposed to the 71% of the Earth) and the surface of most oceans are riddled with powerful storms. The oceans are populated by many underwater nations.  Some are xenophobic about other species, while others are mixed with members of many different species.  Locathah, Merfolk, Sahauagin, Deep Scion-ish peoples corrupted by the Far Realm, Merrow, Trions, Water Genesai ... and my Atlantean equivolents which are just templated members of other Species that gain a swim speed, underwater breathing, and see their land speed reduced by 10 feet.  When first designing them in the 1980s, I took the Grey Box from the Forgotten Realms, mirrored it, flipped it top to bottom and then spread out the cultures over the map of the globe I had drawn.  Then I drew inspiration from this exercise to create the underwater empire.  Cormyr became my Atlantean Equivalent.  The Sword Coast and Waterdeep became an empire that ran along a long Coastline that lived on trade with the land dwellers.  Moonshaes?  Salt Water lake residents.  Calimsham?  They live beneath stormy seas in a wasteland with pockets of sheltered society living in valleys in the sea floor protected from the crazy water movement of the storms.  That was 40 years ago.  Since then they have evolved as PCs interact with them - which has been rare.  So, for the most part, they just became background lore and sources of "alien" magic or technology.  As I was a kid, a lot of the politics were modeled on Aquaman and Namor from the comics.  However, they've refined a bit over time as I've expanded the lore to make them more organized and individualized nations.  My Atlantis equivalent is the most engaged with the surface.  They have islands at the center of their empire that they use as communication and trade hubs with the surface world.  The Kingdom puts on a good show for the surface world, but over time they've become more sinister and the living conditions within the empire are seen as being pretty dangerous.  My Waterdeep Equivalent contains the greatest accumulation of information to ever exist.  It stores information in durable formats capable of surviving the seas or land ... and it is a place PCs of higher level often end up visiting to explore a mystery.  That city is unique in that it it has elements that are on islands, in the Underdark beneath the islands, and in sea coastal communities around the islands.  The library itself has sections in each of these environments.I have clans of Deep Scion-eque creatures that go on land, corrupt humanoids, and then lure the corrupted creatures to live in the sea.  Heavily inspired by Lovecraft lore from Innsmouth, these beings live in dangerous Far Realms linked areas flush with aberrations and other foreign monstrosities.  The seas within these area are filled with corruption that alters the seas into madness incarnate over time.  These areas are slowly growing and present a lingering threat to all life in the seas as these pockets pop up like infections and slowly envelope and drive off societies.  They are the 'major threat' that the sea creatures worry about that keeps the majority of them from focusing on the surface world.Then there are mighty denizens of the sea like the Kraken, Titans, Demi-Gods, Archdevils, Archfiends, Archfey, etc...  They all have their little empires that operate like border kingdoms in the surface world.  Each is twisted by their leadership.</blockquote>

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