Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9626731" data-attributes="member: 7023887">Oh, I considered the empire being multi-species as being a given. Empires tend to accumulate more ethnicities as they expand. Unless the empire wiped out the other species as it expanded, it would definitely end up having several different species inside it. My point was to give some thought as to how this would affect the empire, especially with how the depths of the ocean would affect it. Water elementals being in the military is an interesting idea. Okay, so how does the empire make sure it always has enough mages casting Sending, Teleportation Circle, and planar gateway spells? The two obvious solutions to me are either powerful magic items or a government-funded arcane university. What happens to the empire if something goes wrong? This could be the hook for a quest. Maybe the party needs to negotiate a deal with the Marids after conflict arises? Or maybe the mages in charge of teleportation keep disappearing, and the party has to find the culprit before the empire erupts into chaos? Or if they're using a powerful artifact, maybe it was sabotaged? I think organizing them by some sort of caste system would make sense. Maybe with some division based on the region of the ocean they live in. Deep sea species being of a lower caste makes sense to me, given their semi-independent nature and unpleasant habitat. Consider the effects that the different government types would have on the average person in the empire. If a Storm Giant, Bronze Dragon, Sea Elf, or other long-lived creature is the leader of the empire, there's a good chance they've been in charge for centuries. Dozens of triton/locathah/sahuagin/genasi generations could pass in the empire during a single ruler's reign. Unless there are frequent civil wars/coups that change who's in charge, that is. Imagine what it would be like living in a country that, for the last 500 years, has had the same king. Like if Spain was still ruled by Charles V or England was still on Henry VIII. And that country controls the entire ocean. How big was the empire when the current ruler took power? Or, if there's a council, how fair is it? Does it represent all sentient species in the empire? Does it represent them proportionally or is there a single representative per species? Definitely. Maybe consider what they produce and trade with the surface. And what they import. The adventurers could even meet an aquatic merchant who has come up to the land to trade. Maybe they rely on allied aquatic dragons and dragon turtles to fend off other Kaiju-esque threats?</blockquote>

Verification