Mages of the Caribbean--story ideas

[Dannyalcatraz]

Bah! System doesn't matter! My ideas are TRANCENDANT!

(OK, I just missed that line about using Mage!)

As for Tim Powers...well, I've not read any of his stuff, but from what I understand, he's kind of Alt-History, right? In that case, you might want to scan the Wiki for Harry Turtledove's Darkness series to mine for ideas. Yes, its from a "later" time period, but there are some interesting ideas for cultures and unusual magics.

 

[Pielorinho]

Great idea, Danny! I'll look up Turtledove; alt-history is absolutely the route I'm going here.

So I talked to some folks elsewhere, and someone made a good but devastating point:

The orchid plot kind of sucks.

It's random, it's DM fiat, it relies on PC actions being very specific, it doesn't really fit the theme, and it has a zero pirate percentage rating.

So I'm tossing that, on their suggestion. New intro adventure:

The players must tell me why their character is willing to board the Jesu de Nazarene for Hispaniola in September 1679. It's a merchant ship carrying fine goods to the Caribbean, but is also outfitted for semiwealthy passengers and is especially recruiting the intelligentsia who will need special care for instruments, books, etc.

When the ship nears Hispaniola, the captain will warn passengers about the danger of pirates, and the first time they see the sail of any other ship, he'll tell passengers to go into their quarters for their own safety as the crew prepares anti-pirate measures.

Secretly, the captain deals with the Haitian slavetraders. They've got need of educated slaves and will pay him a premium for any such slaves he delivers, especially if they have the gear they need for their profession.

Once passengers are in quarters, he and a gang of rough sailors will go cabin-to-cabin and capture the passengers, binding them for an almost immediate handover to the slavers. (He figures doing it this way lessens the damage to the cargo and lessens the chance of any sort of revolt).

Unfortunately for his plan, that first ship that he sees actually IS a pirate ship, and as he tries to capture the PCs, the first cannons will fire. PCs will then get their first real decision of the game: facing attack by pirates and capture by a vicious captain with his toughs, what will they do?

So that's the new opening adventure. Ideas?

First session will probably happen in Seville, ending with PCs boarding the ship. Here I'd like fun scenes (not necessarily combat--this could be a zero-combat session), interesting characters (including ship crew, captain, fellow passengers, and people in Seville), that sort of thing. Definitely nothing that would take more than a session to resolve.

Second session will involve the voyage, which should be pretty nonthreatening until that big scene. Ideas about life on a ship would be great, especially thoughts about sailor customs that could prepare the PCs for life in the Caribbean. Also, ideas about specifics for the attacking pirates would be great. I would like for everyone up to this point, except the PCs, to be non-supernatural, although they could work for supers or have items from supers or the like.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What a coinkydink!

The last campaign i ran, the PCs were aboard a ship that was attacked by anthro tiger raiders from another Prime Material plane.

That party stormed on board to fend off the raiders...and almost succeeded, actually. They were rolling die that almost seemed loaded, but they eventually succumbed to superior numbers and physical power.

They were awakened on a tropical isle in the raider's dimension, where they were informed that, due to their demonstration of extreme bravery and combat prowess, they had earned the right to be hunted, rather than slaughtered like livestock.

Then they were told their gear had been scattered about the island and they were set free- NAKED- and told to run for it.

Cue Kodo's theme to The Hunted...

***

OK...assuming that you're not using anthro tigers, you can still use this exact plotline by having a ship of mad pirates- essentially a crew driven mad and becoming your world's equivalents of Firefly's Reavers- be the ship in question.

Other options:

1. As above, but they get used as slave labor in a pirate encampment. This gets you the "Slave Lords" plotline
2. As above, but they get sold to a mining operation.
3. In trying to escape the pirates, the ship runs aground (as might the pirates as well, in their zeal). From there, use plotline of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island and/or HG Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau.
4. Instead of either classic book, take a more voodoo approach to the inhabitants of the island, and borrow the plot of Shock Waves- except instead of Nazi zombies, you just have a zombies. Perhaps they're the remnants of zombies raised by 2 rival Voudoun priests who managed to kill each other off...but their undead servants remained behind.

 

[coyote6]

OK...assuming that you're not using anthro tigers, you can still use this exact plotline by having a ship of mad pirates- essentially a crew driven mad and becoming your world's equivalents of Firefly's Reavers- be the ship in question.

This would be where the Nephandi come in, I believe.

So, as the PCs are about to be waylaid by their ship's crew, a Nephandi-captained pirate ship attacks the ship. Then if the PCs end up losing the fight, they get captured and go to The Most Dangerous Game on the jungle-choked island of your choice.

If they avoid capture, and any of the Nephandi pirates escape, you have future recurring villains. If they all die, then they clearly must leave evidence of being part of a larger cult. Perhaps with ties to someone among the Aztecs (because Aztec religion kind of sounds like a Nephandi thing, in many areas).

You could also use Marauders, but I'm kind of fuzzy on what the difference between Marauders & Nephandi were -- Marauders used madness to resist Paradox or some-such? And Nephandi were followers of some cosmic evil, which I always thought sounded suspiciously like Werewolf's Wyrm.

 

[Starfox]

Even in a Mage game,I'd go for classical pirate cliches. Old tropes are your friend; they players know how to relate to them and its a good way to inspire action. And at least in modern Mage, action tropes are often a good way to make your magic coincidental - perhaps your stunt would not work by physics, but enough people believe in Hollywood physics to avoid vulgar magic. I realize Sorcerers Crusade doesn't work exactly like that, but some elements of this thinking might be usable.

Anyway, the classic tropes; capturing galleons, rivalry with other pirates, maps with a large X on them and strange directions (that might actually be magical rituals), swashbuckling heroics in the rigging, alternate munitions for cannon (chain shot existed historically, but could be much stronger in this game. The players might be able to come up with alternate forms, but this is really a science mage thing), iron-shell grenades and so on.

The way I'm going to handle the science mages is to say that they're deist utopians. They believe that their work involves understanding God's machine, and that other groups of mages are purposefully mystifying people about how the world really works. They want to spread a universal understanding of science; in doing so, they'll create an egalitarian (or meritocratic) society in which mages can't rule as tyrants, not even as behind-the-scenes tyrants, since the only "magic" that works will be the magic of science, and science will be available to everyone. But they know that mages are encouraging alternate explanations for the cosmos, and that these alternate explanations present the single greatest barrier to their utopian vision; as such, science mages devote a fair amount of energy to slaughtering other mages AND to wiping out entire societies that prove to be too resistant to the science worldview.

If this game was played around here, this is what my players would pick to play!

On the pyramids - an evocative reason why the Aztec magic works that way comes to mind. Maybe they aren't just structures of ritual importance - maybe the Aztecs themselves aren't doing the magic - the actual power is exerted by whatever is trapped within each pyramid. Maybe some past people (perhaps at the end of the Mythic Age, so their powers are no longer available) trapped things in there. The blood sacrifice provides sustenance for those entities. This would solidly explain why their abilities are localized, and they can't spread very far- they cannot create new pyramids of power.

Not all the trapped critters have to be the same - maybe some are good, some are evil, some are neither. Maybe they are the things the Aztecs worship as gods, or maybe the Aztecs only think that.

This sounds like a Cthuloid angle to me. Having "good" spirits be imprisoned this way would go against my tradition of gaming. But if your players are more mystically inclined than mine usually are, having some of these spirits be good, perhaps even potentially sponsors of a PC magic group could work. Not all the Aztec gods were bloodthirsty - Quetzalcoatl was dedicated anti-sacrifice.

Once passengers are in quarters, he and a gang of rough sailors will go cabin-to-cabin and capture the passengers, binding them for an almost immediate handover to the slavers. (He figures doing it this way lessens the damage to the cargo and lessens the chance of any sort of revolt).

Unfortunately for his plan, that first ship that he sees actually IS a pirate ship, and as he tries to capture the PCs, the first cannons will fire. PCs will then get their first real decision of the game: facing attack by pirates and capture by a vicious captain with his toughs, what will they do?

Perhaps the ship represents an alliance and a peace offering between the proto-technocrats and the player's magical order? That way, the betrayal stings even further. Not knowing if it was their own order or the science mages that betrayed them, isolated in an alien locale full of magical power. This way, some of your players actually could be science mages - making it even more confusing who really betrayed them. Uncopvering the plot behind the betrayal could become a campaign theme, à la Count of Monte Christo.

 

[Nifft]

The players must tell me why their character is willing to board the Jesu de Nazarene for Hispaniola in September 1679. It's a merchant ship carrying fine goods to the Caribbean, but is also outfitted for semiwealthy passengers and is especially recruiting the intelligentsia who will need special care for instruments, books, etc.

When the ship nears Hispaniola, the captain will warn passengers about the danger of pirates, and the first time they see the sail of any other ship, he'll tell passengers to go into their quarters for their own safety as the crew prepares anti-pirate measures.

Secretly, the captain deals with the Haitian slavetraders. They've got need of educated slaves and will pay him a premium for any such slaves he delivers, especially if they have the gear they need for their profession.

What good are educated slaves? They're good as teachers. (Nobody wants to trust them with real responsibility, but educating children? Feh, who cares about children? It's a time-honored use for smart slaves.)

Once passengers are in quarters, he and a gang of rough sailors will go cabin-to-cabin and capture the passengers, binding them for an almost immediate handover to the slavers. (He figures doing it this way lessens the damage to the cargo and lessens the chance of any sort of revolt).

Unfortunately for his plan, that first ship that he sees actually IS a pirate ship, and as he tries to capture the PCs, the first cannons will fire. PCs will then get their first real decision of the game: facing attack by pirates and capture by a vicious captain with his toughs, what will they do?

So that's the new opening adventure. Ideas?

- Make it very clear that there's a small core of "old crew" and a larger number of "new crew". The "old crew" are 100% loyal to the captain, the new crew can be swayed with magic or even well-made arguments. You can do this during the first session, when a couple of very hungover (new crew) sailors asks the PCs if they can direct them to "our new ship, wossit, the Jesu de Nazarene".

- The PCs ought to have several chances to interact with -- and do favors for -- members of the new crew. The old crew ought to be taciturn and inaccessible. Only the captain (& perhaps his first mate) has the skill to chat amiably with people he knows he's going to sell.

- The pirates attacking them do have a Nephandi (or whatever "bad mage" type exists in Sorcerer), but the bad mage doesn't particularly care to intervene until he sees the PCs use magic. He'll try to attack a single PC mage, but if he sees they have more than one, he gets VERY scared and runs off (in a magically-powered lifeboat or maybe he turns into a shark). The PCs will see him on the pirate ship, using a spyglass on them the whole time, until someone goes overt with their magic.

First session will probably happen in Seville, ending with PCs boarding the ship. Here I'd like fun scenes (not necessarily combat--this could be a zero-combat session), interesting characters (including ship crew, captain, fellow passengers, and people in Seville), that sort of thing. Definitely nothing that would take more than a session to resolve.

- Highlight the ambiguity of the "deist utopian" position. Perhaps with a very visible argument between two magicians overseeing a fireworks display -- and perhaps even the ambiguity of their view of slavery. Basically, one premise of Salvation is that it must be chosen (Free Will), while the program of the deist utopian tries to remove most choices ("for the good of the sleeping children, we ought not scatter their floor with knives").
- The slavery ambiguity issue can be a bit more clear-cut. There should be plenty of rhetoric about how "we are all slaves to the Lord", and how children must obey their elders... but slavery isn't enlightening or uplifting. That's the cold, cruel reality behind the rhetoric.
-- "Ah, my brother, but are we not both slaves to the Lord?"
-- "The Lord God, blessed be His name, does not rape my daughters."

The correlation between "science" (disempowerment of individuals) and "slavery" (disenfranchisement of individuals) is left as an exercise for the player.

I dunno how the PCs are going to interact with the scene, though. Maybe just type some of these set-piece scenes up & email them out before the game.

Second session will involve the voyage, which should be pretty nonthreatening until that big scene. Ideas about life on a ship would be great, especially thoughts about sailor customs that could prepare the PCs for life in the Caribbean. Also, ideas about specifics for the attacking pirates would be great. I would like for everyone up to this point, except the PCs, to be non-supernatural, although they could work for supers or have items from supers or the like.

What's the standard reaction to overt magic in Sorcerer's Crusade? Is it "WOT THE BLEEDIN' BLUE BLAZEZ?!", by any chance? If so, the PCs may be able to cow the new crew and / or pirate crew remnants in fairly short order.

Maybe the bad guy mage ought to set fire to the pirate ship -- which is lashed to the PC's ship -- before turning into a shark. Or summon a giant, insane shark spirit. You know, some kind of a distraction.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Pielorinho]

Mmm...the captured-and-get-hunted scenario is interesting, but if I use it, it'll be later in the campaign; I'd like them pretty quickly to get accustomed to the idea of working as pirates.

Starfox, I definitely plan to play with the classic pirate tropes: buried treasure, attacking galleons, derring-do on the high seas, the life of the rebel, the bloody internecine battles among the pirates, the free pirate towns, etc. At the same time, they'll be dealing with the decided weirdness of Aztec Mexico and slave-trading Haiti. (Side-question--at this point in real history, Hispaniola had just begun to be settled by the French, and wouldn't formally be ceded to the French for another couple of decades. Should I push the French settlement up by several decades, or abandon French culture altogether there? I'm leaning toward the former, because nothing says Voudoun like a language that's a pastiche of French and Yoruba).

Your last idea, about the alliance and peace offering, is intriguing, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Could you clarify this idea?

Also, I'm going to repeat the things I'm looking for. Y'all have some great big picture ideas, but at this point I'm feeling pretty comfortable about the big picture; the ideas I'd love help with at this point are little-picture details. So here's that repetition:

First session will probably happen in Seville, ending with PCs boarding the ship. Here I'd like fun scenes (not necessarily combat--this could be a zero-combat session), interesting characters (including ship crew, captain, fellow passengers, and people in Seville), that sort of thing. Definitely nothing that would take more than a session to resolve.

Second session will involve the voyage, which should be pretty nonthreatening until that big scene. Ideas about life on a ship would be great, especially thoughts about sailor customs that could prepare the PCs for life in the Caribbean. Also, ideas about specifics for the attacking pirates would be great. I would like for everyone up to this point, except the PCs, to be non-supernatural, although they could work for supers or have items from supers or the like.

 

[Pielorinho]

Holy crap--again with the great ideas, Nifft! I'll go through these bit by bt.

What good are educated slaves? They're good as teachers. (Nobody wants to trust them with real responsibility, but educating children? Feh, who cares about children? It's a time-honored use for smart slaves.)

Hmm...I'm not sure it'll ever come up what the Haitians want with the educated slaves, but if it does, I'm thinking that they're a special order for some supernatural group who needs administrators: they plan to brainwash (or turn, if the group is vampires) the intelligentsia and then take advantage of the skills.

- Make it very clear that there's a small core of "old crew" and a larger number of "new crew". The "old crew" are 100% loyal to the captain, the new crew can be swayed with magic or even well-made arguments. You can do this during the first session, when a couple of very hungover (new crew) sailors asks the PCs if they can direct them to "our new ship, wossit, the Jesu de Nazarene".

- The PCs ought to have several chances to interact with -- and do favors for -- members of the new crew. The old crew ought to be taciturn and inaccessible. Only the captain (& perhaps his first mate) has the skill to chat amiably with people he knows he's going to sell.

Definitely in the cards to have some sort of tension in the pirate crew; I'd like the PCs to have every opportunity to take over the ship if they want that. The division between old crew and new crew might work well, or maybe it'll be slightly different: maybe the old captain was marooned for cowardice during a mutiny some weeks earlier, and with the strange events of the new captain's most recent foray (taking a bunch of hella dangerous mages aboard), some of the crew are questioning his judgment. This could lead to an interesting power triangle, in fact: the crew that's most interested in helping the PCs overthrow the current captain are those who are most loyal to the marooned previous captain, and may see a PC victory as a temporary good.

The pirates attacking them do have a Nephandi (or whatever "bad mage" type exists in Sorcerer), but the bad mage doesn't particularly care to intervene until he sees the PCs use magic. He'll try to attack a single PC mage, but if he sees they have more than one, he gets VERY scared and runs off (in a magically-powered lifeboat or maybe he turns into a shark). The PCs will see him on the pirate ship, using a spyglass on them the whole time, until someone goes overt with their magic.

I like the idea of having an Infernalist (Nephandi by an earlier name) aboard, but I think I'd prefer for him to be sneaky, seeing a chance for fresh new recruits, or at least seeing a need to observe these dangerous newcomers to the region. If I build him as being very good at hiding his craft, including some sort of way of hiding from magical detection, he could become a great enemy-within adversary.

- Highlight the ambiguity of the "deist utopian" position. Perhaps with a very visible argument between two magicians overseeing a fireworks display -- and perhaps even the ambiguity of their view of slavery. Basically, one premise of Salvation is that it must be chosen (Free Will), while the program of the deist utopian tries to remove most choices ("for the good of the sleeping children, we ought not scatter their floor with knives").
- The slavery ambiguity issue can be a bit more clear-cut. There should be plenty of rhetoric about how "we are all slaves to the Lord", and how children must obey their elders... but slavery isn't enlightening or uplifting. That's the cold, cruel reality behind the rhetoric.
-- "Ah, my brother, but are we not both slaves to the Lord?"
-- "The Lord God, blessed be His name, does not rape my daughters."

The correlation between "science" (disempowerment of individuals) and "slavery" (disenfranchisement of individuals) is left as an exercise for the player.

I like this idea, but would need to remove the anti-slavery position from it. From my reading, there's literally nobody before the eighteenth century who objected (in writing) to slavery across the board. I want to keep it that way: this is long before there was an abolitionist movement anywhere on the planet. The relevant metaphor might be the schism between Catholics and Protestants, i.e., salvation via the church, and salvation via individual faith (obviously an oversimplification; bear with me). The scientists believe that all humanity may be saved by joining their particular faith, and work harder than the Inquisition to make that happen. Each tradition basically believes the same thing, only they're willing, for the moment, to band together against the scientists, who appear to be winning that fight; as such, they bear lip service to the idea that paths different from their own are acceptable.

What's the standard reaction to overt magic in Sorcerer's Crusade? Is it "WOT THE BLEEDIN' BLUE BLAZEZ?!", by any chance? If so, the PCs may be able to cow the new crew and / or pirate crew remnants in fairly short order.

Yeah, magick is pretty far out there, and among most of the population, it's a call for terrified flight or else it's time to break out the torches and pitchforks and wards against the evil eye. Among pirates, though--well, pirates pride themselves on fearlessness and on not being tied to social norms, so they'll end up publicly being a lot more nonchalant about magic. Many of them will still fear and loathe it, however, and the PCs will watch their backs if they have a shred of common sense.

Maybe the bad guy mage ought to set fire to the pirate ship -- which is lashed to the PC's ship -- before turning into a shark. Or summon a giant, insane shark spirit. You know, some kind of a distraction.

Could work--or I might save that for later, once the PCs are getting suspicious.

 

[Nifft]

Hmm...I'm not sure it'll ever come up what the Haitians want with the educated slaves, but if it does, I'm thinking that they're a special order for some supernatural group who needs administrators: they plan to brainwash (or turn, if the group is vampires) the intelligentsia and then take advantage of the skills.

That works. Just have a reason, in case the PCs may want revenge for attempted enslavement.

Definitely in the cards to have some sort of tension in the pirate crew

Actually I meant tensions in the non-pirate crew: in the crew of the ship that the PCs are on. The PCs will spend 1.5 game sessions interacting with the crew of their ship. There's plenty of time to develop nuance for their own crew.

The pirates? I'm sure you can add some nuance to them once you see out how many of them survived contact with the PCs. I'd probably go with "driven by a secret Infernalist who ran away" unless the players gave me a better idea.

I like the idea of having an Infernalist (Nephandi by an earlier name) aboard, but I think I'd prefer for him to be sneaky, seeing a chance for fresh new recruits, or at least seeing a need to observe these dangerous newcomers to the region. If I build him as being very good at hiding his craft, including some sort of way of hiding from magical detection, he could become a great enemy-within adversary.

Sure, but you want him to do something flashy when they first meet him, so they can thereafter worry about having a sneaky enemy. (There's no point in developing a sneaky enemy who is SO SNEAKY the players don't know he exists... I've made that mistake before.)

I like this idea, but would need to remove the anti-slavery position from it. From my reading, there's literally nobody before the eighteenth century who objected (in writing) to slavery across the board. I want to keep it that way: this is long before there was an abolitionist movement anywhere on the planet.

The earliest that I know of are Quakers in 1688, but that's in terms of formal declarations, not in terms of casual discussions. I'm assuming some people would see slavery as a source of horror before abolitionism became an organized movement.

In your world, where history is playing out differently, who is to say that modern ideals about individuality -- which your players may unconsciously bring to the table -- are out of place?

Cheers, -- N

 

[Starfox]

Your last idea, about the alliance and peace offering, is intriguing, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Could you clarify this idea?

How antagonistic do you want science and order mages to be? If the antagonism is not yet overt and there are still peace talks, the players could be involved in a co-funded trip to the New World. Of course, the true plot is that one (or both) sides wants the cooperation to fail and sets up bad things to happen to the young mages taking all the risks - the PCs. The trouble is that the players do not know if they were betrayed by the science mages, the council mages, certain individuals in one or both orders, or if it was all just really lousy luck.

The point to all thi si to make the players somewhat paranoid and self-sufficient, feeling like they have best rely on their own devices.

It can also be a way to let the players be science mages particing in the joint venture and betrayed along with their council brethren - I know my players would want to.