Pirates and encounter ideas for Spelljammer

[Twichyboy]

Hello everyone! recently in my Spelljammer campaign i realized that i'm lacking in actual Spelljammer content, mostly the PC's have been flying to places, planets and stations, doing ground based adventures.

So in an effort to add more Spelljamming content to my game, i need to increase the amount of random encounters in space, the main thing i need is a bunch of interesting pirate encounters.

One idea i thought of was a pirate crew of necromancers, whose ship was a skeleton of a giant space beast and uses their crew suicidally only to be reanimated, and loads their catapults and jettisons with skeletons to launch at their victims.

So any other interesting ideas? not just for pirates, but for any interesting space encounters

 

[Zombie Toast]

Pirates use a captured and damaged ship to lure the players aboard. The ship is floating adrift and helpless with crew aboard frantically trying to get the party's attention (an illusion). When the characters attempt to help out (most likely by grappling with the other ship and sending a small group ahead to check things out) the real pirate ship reveals itself (hiding behind some convenient nearby cover or cloaked with illusion) and attacks. To be extra cruel you could try and lure most of the crew aboard the other ship before attacking, or fill the derelict ship with gunpowder and have the pirate's intentionally set it off when the party's ship is alongside in order to cripple them.

 

[Wiseblood]

Space travelling cannibals a-la Reavers.

 

[Stormonu]

What appears to be a comet is on an intercept course with the characters. As it nears the "tail" turns towards them, revealing it to be a sort of space ice kraken.

A small elvish armada approaches the character's ship. They order the ship to heave-to for inspection of "contraband" materials. At least one of the character's mundane items should be something the elves consider contraband and they threaten to impound the ship and arrest the characters as smugglers. The characters can either fight, agree to a hefty fine or attempt to negotiate their way out of trouble.

The characters pass through a "micro meteor shower". Those in the open are bombarded as if by a hail of darts. However, what comes later is even more insidious - the "meteors" are a form of barnacle that feed off magic and several have imbedded themselves into the hull and begun to grow. Unless hacked off, they could threaten to bring the ship to a halt.

The characters pass a pack of space whales. Each whale is large enough that other races have built structures upon their back. Using fireworks and other displays, they tempt the characters near with promises of pleasure and trade. There is a very gypsy-like atmosphere to those who ride the whalebacks.

Motes of colored lights race upon the character's ship from aftward, riding along the ship like dolphins made of light. Those who watch the display and do not harm the lights gain a +1 luck bonus for the next hour. After several minutes the lights fly off in random directions. This activity repeats for several days. However, after the third day a dark shark (or two) also appears, hunting the lights. The characters will need to drive the dark shark off before it chases down and devours the lights (and/or the characters). If the characters are successful, the lights surround the character(s), granting them a minor but permanent magical effect as payment for saving them. The lights are not seen again.

Off the starboard bow, the lookout spies a coffin drifting through space. If investigated, the mummified remains of a wealthy merchant are found. Grasped in his hands is a sheet of parchment that appears to be pages from a journal. The journal talks about a treasure ship encountering a strange "asteroid maze", and taking on shipwrecked members of other crews not lucky enough to successfully maneuver the strange maze. Unfortunately, the rescued passengers mutinied against the treasure ship's crew. As a final act of revenge before losing his ship, he beached the ship deep within the maze, before setting himself adrift in the coffin. His last notes plead for an individual to return and salvage the ship, asking only that a portion of the wealth recovered to be used to properly bury his remains. There is also included among the papers a crude map that shows the maze's approximate location and a safe path through the maze. Is this on the level, or some sort of trap meant to lure new victims to the maze?

 

[Lord Crimson]

Space travelling cannibals a-la Reavers.

Gith cannibals. Because that's more Spelljammer-y.

 

[Ahzad]

the spelljammer supplement skulls & crossbones has a lot of little fun encounters for wildspace, if you are looking for something quick and premade.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Pudding in space! Yep, talking stuff like Black Pudding, Cubes and so on. Also, Sargasso Seas of Shambling Mounds.

 

[qstor]

A gnome ship full of giant space hamsters? A beholder ship? Or neogi?

Mike

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Space travelling cannibals a-la Reavers.

I did something like this in a non-Spelljammer game. The raiders were crossing dimensions from one PMP to another, capturing sentients to hunt on a private island. The party got one combat that was the pirate raid itself- they lose when reinforcements boil out of the raiders' ship- then, stripped of their gear (yes, they're naked), they are set free on an island that has all kinds of hostile flora & fauna. Plus the hunting party, of course. To make it "fair", they were given a headstart, the length of which was determined by how long it took the hunters to finish a lunch of "Cabin Boy on a Stick", and their gear is scattered all over the island for them to find (along with some leftover stuff from previous hunts).

I ran that with Kodo's soundtrack to The Hunted playing in the background, starting when the hunting party began to track them. Everyone had a blast.

 

[Gargoyle]

I ran a 3.5 Spelljammer campaign once and over the course of many, many adventures dropped hints about fearful gnome pirates. Every other time we played they would run into some NPC talking about the latest gnomish attack, etc, and hear about how the local king was marshalling forces against the evil gnomes, and hear about another gnome pirate atrocity.

It was sort of a running joke, but I did actually intend to spring some very high level and nasty gnomes on them, and they even knew some names of some of the most notorious gnomes. And really they did start worrying about these wicked, powerful gnomes.

So at one point, a few levels before I planned to have them encounter the gnomes, they decided to take over a dwarven stone ship docked at port. Out of nowhere one of them had the idea to disguise the entire party as gnomish pirates, and assumed the identities of some famous gnomes (Greenbeard, etc) to intimidate the ogre magi crew and give them a surprise attack. The descriptions of each player character in their gnomish pirate disguises and the dialog at the beginning of that battle had us rolling in laughter for the rest of the campaign, as the ogre magi cowered at the sight of the 'gnome pirates'.

So anyway, sorry if that was more anecdotal than helpful, but I will say that building up something like that over the course of many evenings worked very well. The player characters ended up using that background lore in a way I certainly didn't expect, and that made it very fun for all. My only regret is that they never got to meet the pirates they were impersonating.