Adapted from Josh’s treatise on the forums. Onomastics from various Internet sources.
Most ships sailing the seas of Near hail from Ammeni or Inselburg, or perhaps Maldor. Fearsome pirates hail from Khale and Jošland, but none are more feared and mysterious than the Feyan rebel ships slashing at the coasts of Maldor and Ammeni. They are rarely witnessed, even more seldom warded against and always lost to the mists of the high seas when pursued.
Few know where the islands of Pere-di-Fey are, for they follow the tides. Among the vagabonds of old Maldor flow a hundred stories of the blessed archipelago and its miracles. The common saying has it that neither the rich nor the powerful are welcome on the isles, which come only to those of humility and soft heart. Escaped plantation slaves of Ammeni, homeless peons from Maldor and even refugees from Tiserian purges of the far west seek their way towards the eastern coastline and the places where the islands are told to appear when the moon is full or when the sun sets in the midsummer’s eve. For many this hope of Pere-di-Fey is their last, best hope.
The truth of the matter is somewhat more disappointing. The barren islands are sorely overpopulated by the burgeoning crowds of escapees, whose hospitality is being strained by every new arrival. Life on the moving islands is not an easy one even for the natives, and with fresh bitterness flooding the islands every time they happen close to the shore, there is ample support for the most cruel piracy, looting and murder of the continental masters.
The isles of Pere-di-Fey range from large, forested main isles to smaller islets and flat rocks jutting out from the sea. In the times before the Shadow the islands were far in the Eastern Ocean, so far so that ships from Near or the Hamouadi Empire only seldom visited the archipelago. People called Kairakau had always inhabited the islands, but few cared about them. Most important trade article of the isles were the colorful, varied crustaceans and coral growths harvested by the people.
When the Skyfire came, the Feyan islands shook. When its baleful light grew, Kairakau grew worried. Some started having dreams, many left as prophets spoke of destruction that would wash over the islands. The prophets remained, however, convinced that they would be spared.
When the Skyfire disappeared and the land shook, great waves washed over the coasts of Near. Pere-di-Fey in the deep ocean fared better than most places, but when the sun dimmed and winked out, the few people left were sure to perish.
However, all was not lost: Kairakau prophets, now called LAND-SPEAKERS, spoke to the islands themselves and had them open for the people so they could shelter themselves inside. Hundreds wintered in the moist recesses of the Feyan isles through the Shadow, guided by the land-speakers. Most of the islands sank to the bottom of the Ocean to wait out the Shadow.
After the Moon rose, nothing was the same for the Feyans. The islands themselves had awakened, and were now on the move. The large islands drifted slowly, almost imperceptibly. The smaller islets would frolic in moonlight, raising foam, but keeping close to the larger ones. Some, unmoving, were left behind, like dead carcasses of mighty beasts.
Through the years the archipelago has zigzagged over the Ocean, ranging from the subtropics to the frigid reaches. Where the islands once slept now blows the Torrid Clime, and they show no signs of returning. To the contrary, the general direction of the migration has over the generations been towards the southeast, towards Near; today individual isles may sometimes be seen from the continent, and the greater ones get closer every year. Only in the Southern Sea and the Sea of Teeth are the islands never sighted.
The Kairakau were few after the Shadow, but their numbers started climbing quickly once the landspeakers figured out how the islands could be compelled to make a beeline towards Near, a direction they were keen to take anyway. The islanders needed materials and knowledge if they were to make their bare-blown home habitable once again; they were willing to provide homes to those who would bring these things with them.
Kairakau had always valued hospitality as a virtue above others, so they were only too happy to take in wretched refugees from the wars and calamity of the slowly shattering continental empire. The first legends of Pere-di-Fey date from the first generation after the Shadow. After the Feyans, now a mixed stock of natives and mixed refugees of a dozen nations, gained a few ships of their own, they could keep in regular contact with the continental world regardless of where their island homes went.
Today the islands are densely inhabited by the discarded wretches of all the nations of Near. Many fish, some farm, some practice crafts, but most stay on their ships and engage in everything from trade to piracy to sustain themselves. The islands provide a point of contact for the crews, an opportunity to repair ships and trade for necessities. There are even towns on the larger, semi-stabile islands far out on the Ocean.
The Feyans have an adventurous and romantic reputation in many parts of Near due to their famed hospitality and “steal from the rich, give to the poor” stylings. In other places they are feared and hated for the inhuman savagery of some pirate crews. Each crew is only responsible to their captain, and the captains answer to no-one, so the Feyans have dozens of faces out in the world.
The Kairakau were taught by the land-speakers through the Year of Shadow to respect the islands that sheltered them, the HALATU; land-speakers believed them to be living creatures of a distant world. The Feyans also learned of the TALALAG, the crustacean creatures long used for food, jewelry and tools on the islands. According to the priests, the Talalag were sibling creatures to the islands themselves, coming in a multitude of forms and sizes, all of which helped the islands thrive as living biospheres. The most holy of the land-speakers became bonded to the islands when they took the Talalag into themselves, becoming a part of the true ecosystem of the islands.
Today all religions and philosophies of Near are practiced in Pere-di-Fey, but the most respect is still accorded to the land-speakers and Talal-captains, people who willingly provide a home to small Talalag in their own bodies. These symbionts range in size from a finger’s width to as large as a limb. They look weird, colorful and exotic, ugly by continental standards, scary to sea people who know what they mean. Talal-hosts gain many talents from their symbiosis, such as a protection from drowning.
However, they cannot leave the Ocean, as the Talalag die if they dry out completely. Often refugees are only accorded respect once they prove their commitment to the Pere-di-Fey by taking on a symbiont.
The Talalag symbionts are like Secrets, except that they can be taken on and shed with a simple LANDSPEECH (I) check made by the character or an attendant. However, symbiosis is physically painful and straining as the symbiont learns to live with the character: he suffers a Harm equal to the size of the symbiont each time one is attached or removed.
The symbiont’s SIZE is a simple free Effect attached to the symbiont Secret. The Story Guide may assume that most symbionts are in the 1–2 range, unless the character makes a point of looking for a particularly large Talalag of the appropriate type. A larger size makes for a more powerful symbiont, but it’s also more distinctive and straining, and more dangerous when it is removed. The group might well assume that the character’s Harm track sets a practical maximum for his number of symbionts; having more and larger symbionts than he can absorb the Harm from would mean that there’s more Talalag than human in the symbiosis, and the character would die were he ever forcibly separated from his symbionts.
The Talalag are powered by the character’s Pools, but most of them cannot sustain themselves directly: instead, they feed on ICHOR POOLS. The simplest symbionts help the character transform his Pools into ichor, which is stored by the symbiont. The player can track the ichor Pools just like he does with the character’s own Pools, and transform one into the other at his convenience.
There are four different ichors in the Talalag ecology: the RED and YELLOW are the most common; they might be understood as roughly analogical to the difference between vegetative and animal life, were a character to examine the ecology of the isles from that viewpoint. BLACK and GREEN are more rare and specialized, at least in Pere-di-Fey. I use three types of symbionts: the base ones that provide ichors, simple ones that spend one type and big ones that require a continuous supply of one type and some of another.
The various powers characters gain from symbionts are used in conflict with appropriate Ability checks. Typically this would be LANDSPEECH (R) when the issue is understanding Talalag and USE SYMBIONT (V) when it’s an issue of being used to the new senses or whatever the character has to deal with.
The Talalag themselves can be depicted as animal-like characters by the Story Guide when appropriate; some are large enough to interact with. They’d probably have an ichor-based biology, Passive Abilities and so on, but using normal animal rules is close enough for our purposes here.
The social structure of Pere-di-Fey is in tumult which only increases as the islands approach Near. Much of the population have been or still are criminals of various stripes, and some do not hesitate to prey on their own, especially in the large towns of the main islands. Even worse, any restraint they show at home is shed when the pirate flag is hoisted and a crew reaches its favored hunting waters; it is not uncommon for a crew to gather around a past wrong, such as slavery in the hands of the Ammeni, which they now avenge again and again in the most savage manner. The rewards are ample, and Feyans do not ask nor care where a returning ship went or what it did out on the sea.
Respect for elders and hospitality towards the weak is a rule on the islands, however, which restrains the most antisocial elements for now. Increasing numbers of pirates gone wild have been found drowned in unspoken circumstances, however, as the land-speakers struggle to hold onto old Kairakau values. Many captains agree and make a point of welcoming the weak even while preying on the strong; others plot to increase their own influence in the townships on the expense of the Kairakau leaders.
As things stand, it is likely that Pere-di-Fey will soon go into decline as the archipelago draws closer to Near. Some ships hire new crew from the continent, taking in outright criminals and murderers; fewer and fewer ports are willing to trade with the distinctive Feyan ships, as each has felt their attacks at least once. The Black Fleet of Inselburg is already in war with the Feyans, with only the elusive nature of the islands themselves protecting the population from a merciless revenge upon a lawless nation by ships that do not fear to leave the sight of the shore.
One person sees this all and wonders; The GOVERNOR is an influential figure in Pere-di-Fey, so called for how they tamed the port of Felag, the ancient Maldorian harbor on the Heart Island. The Governor is a highly public figure, treating with captains and land-speakers with impunity, taking on and shedding symbionts as necessary. If it were up to the Governor, Pere-di-Fey would become a real nation and avoid a destruction in the hands of the world. He or she might succeed, provided that the captains could be united and the worst of the crews brought to justice.
Never played this stuff, I’m just writing it down for future use. The closest I got was a player character who claimed to come from these isles, but I hadn’t even written any crunch for them then. The idea is originally Josh’s, I just wrote mechanics for it and honed some fluff. Do let us know if you get around to using this.
I imagine that the isles could be useful exploratory content of the sort a Story Guide throws up when characters just want to head over the edge of the map. That doesn’t happen very often in the sort of TSoY I play, but you never know.
I don’t know about the reader, but my own first reaction to something like the Talalag symbionts in roleplaying games is always that the price to pay will be horrible. It’s just part of the genre, scientists never get to inject alien DNA and find out that hey, lucky us, superpowers without consequences.
I’m saying this because I explicitly did not do this story here. I left it intentionally open, and even while I could have, I didn’t put in rules for how gaining too many symbionts makes the character into an alien zombie. The player will explicitly have to welcome that option through suitable Secrets, and even then I’d find it pretty simplistic to just assume that the Talalag all want the atmosphere to burn or something. Or even that they want anything; insofar as I know, there is no sentience in anything the land-speakers interact with.
Just so you stop to think about it. I almost automatically wrote this bit in, it’s that ingrained.
I’m intrigued by the idea of Pere-di-Fey as a refugee camp. The local culture is essentially hospitalitybased, and they can’t get too hostile towards armed newcomers as a group anyway, but the isles are not infinite in resources. Something has to give; if nothing else, perhaps the earlier arrivals start refusing new people entry.
The pirates are also interesting, especially if you need a dedicated pirate mythology for your campaign. The idea that pirate crews consist of the refused minorities of Near’s various social disturbances goes a long way towards justifying the piracy, at least as far as sympathy goes. The consequences will sooner or later fall on the isles, though.
I included the Governor as a sort of scenario-in-action, and to suggest that the pirate idyll on the isles is not a stable proposition that can just go on and on without the social dynamics going out of whack. Or perhaps it can – our own history knows of societies that successfully, continuously worked for hundreds of years on nothing but piracy and slave trade. Perhaps the original Kairakau humanism will get abased just like that.
The immigrants have names from all over the world, while the Kairakau use Polynesian-sounding names.
Ariki, Hori, Ihorangi, Kauri, Lani, Manu, Oroiti, Tane, Whetu.
Ema, Hine, Inas, Kaimi, Lani, Mahuru, Nani, Rewa, Taranga, Ulani.
Hikura, Aora, Ruahi, Tahuma, Tikiki, Whenua, Pokai. The names are often repeated from island to island and barreled together with the island’s name for specificity when needed.
Cultural Strengths - Pere-di-Fey
Many people in Pere-di-Fey are actually recent refugees from other lands; use cultural strengths appropriate to their homeland for these people.
Typical Ability SPECIALIZATIONS for Kairakau are specific types of symbionts, specific crafts, small boats, fishing, collecting fruit, dancing, hospitality towards a specific culture, keeping their temper in check.
Typical Pool CONDITIONING for Kairakau comes from frequent symbiosis, heavy drinking, cosmic visions.
Typical Ability ENHANCEMENTS for Kairakau come from specialized symbiotes.
Typical Ability SYNERGIES for Kairakau are hospitality with artistic abilities, swimming with ecology, land-speech with using symbionts.
Typical Ability RETRAINING for Kairakau involves cultural abilities with reason.
Typical EQUIPMENT for Kairakau is jewelry, crustacean items, boats, spears, shellstone totems, fishing and crabbing implements, items washed in from the ocean.
| Hospitality (I) |
|---|
| The Kairakau have built their current welfare by being willing to trust. This Ability can be used to judge intentions, give a good impression, bring strangers to your home and waste no more on precautions than necessary. |
| Swim (V) |
| People of Pere-di-Fey are skilled swimmers and divers, capable of retaining their breath for a long time underwater. The most skilled ones may even replenish their lungs from Talalag air-shells living under the islands. This Ability can be used to swim and dive skillfully and safely. |
| Ecology (R) |
| The Kairakau have a very keen sense for the struggling dual ecology of their isles. This Ability can be used to know about and understand biological processes, and to support attempts at farming plants or sealife. It’s mostly a religious thing for the Kairakau, which use it with the SECRET OF PROPHECY. |
| Land-Speech (I) |
| The land-speakers of Kairakau learn to feel and see the subtle signs of the Halatu. This Ability can be used to get vague impressions about people and events on the same island, to orient oneself on the island and to immediately know when something threatens the island’s biosphere. |
| Use Symbiont (V) |
| Laymen who get symbionts by accident or design aren’t usually that facile in LANDSPEECH (I); instead, they learn by doing and develop this Ability. It can be used to take care of a character’s symbionts and to use them facilely. |
| Throwing (V) |
| The Kairakau are not much of fighters, the boys learn to wrestle and brawl at young age, while all children, but especially girls, learn to throw stones with a mean accuracy, mean enough to make almost all Talalag retreat. This Ability can be used for all sorts of throwing activities, including games, spears, stones, boomerangs and the like. |
| Secret of the Refugee |
|---|
| The character is a relatively recent arrival in Pere-di-Fey. He can take crunch from another culture freely in addition to that of Pere-di-Fey; however, it can’t be a culture another player character is from, unless the other player accedes to it. In addition, the character always regains one extra Pool point when refreshing Pools with another refugee; this point comes on top of the character’s Pool size and is spent first. |
| Requirement: only at character generation. |
| Secret of Folk Magic |
| The hybrid culture of Pere-di-Fey has many superstitions from all over the world, some of which are actually true to a degree. When the character decides to take a superstition seriously for the moment, the player can create an Effect out of a REACT (I) check to make note of it. The Effect can later be used as either bonus or penalty dice according to the superstition, even against the character himself; the Story Guide decides when the Effect is activated. |
| Secret of Sea-step |
| Sailors from Pere-di-Fey are accustomed to boat life, and rarely miss a step in their work, play and dance. When footplay is at issue in an Ability check, the player can take bonus dice equal to the character’s REACT (I) Ability level. |
| Boomerang Imbuement |
| The item is a boomerang, used by the Kairakau now and then in hunting seabirds. This simply means that the throwing weapon returns to the character after any missing throw that was not an Ability check failure. |
| Shellstone Imbuement |
| Shellstone is a very, very hard mineral mined sometimes on the Feyan islands despite the resistance of land-speakers. Items made of it can only be damaged or destroyed by a LEGENDARY (5) Ability check. |
| Talalag Imbuement |
| The item is actually a specialized Talalag the clever islanders use as a musical instrument, digging tool or for some other specialized purpose. Whatever it is, the Talalag holds a point of ICHOR, which can be spent as a bonus die when using the item. The Ichor returns when the Talalag gets a scene of rest in a beach setting. |
| Secret of the Plank |
| When the character manages to Harm an opponent in a conflict at sea, the player may choose to cause a MINOR (2) Harm instead of his normal result. The opponent ends up in the water, which will probably end the conflict. |
| Cost: 3 INSTINCT |
| Secret of the Governor |
| Only one character can be the Governor. He has the SECRET OF EXPERIENCE, except the player gets to fill it with at most one check per Ability above MEDIOCRE (0) before play. He also has the SECRET OF THE PAST, except part of the story is already known. |
| Key of the Refugee |
|---|
| The character’s past won’t let him be, perhaps due to bad memories, pursuers or debts incurred getting to Pere-di-Fey. |
| 1xp: Your unstable position comes up. |
| 2xp: Your past comes to haunt you. |
| 5xp: Leave for another place. |
| Buyoff: Settle down finally. |
| Key of the Pirate |
| The character makes a living as a member of a pirate crew. |
| 1xp: Sail out. |
| 2xp: Attack another ship. |
| 5xp: Return home with the booty. |
| Buyoff: Quit and find a new vocation. |
| Key of Superstition |
| The character believes in all sorts of things that have rather minimal evidence. |
| 1xp: Bring up a superstition. |
| 3xp: Follow a superstition against better sense. |
| Buyoff: Brave a superstition of yours. |
| Key of the Mascot |
| The character is a virgin mascot of a Feyan ship, supposed to avert misfortune and counsel sailors. He or she might or might not be a volunteer. |
| 1xp: Advice sailors on omens. |
| 2xp: Good or bad luck befalls the ship. |
| 5xp: Your virginity is threatened. |
| Buyoff: Lose your virginity. |
| Key of the League |
| The character has joined a Feyan League, a pirate fleet. Each such has its own rules of conduct, and they might go to war against each other when not in port. |
| 1xp: Follow the Articles of your league. |
| 2xp: Fight for your league. |
| 5xp: Advance in the league. |
| Buyoff: Get out of the league. |