The Storm Sailors of Maelstrom (1d20 People Setting)

There is a world among the infinity of the multiverse whose name was forgotten long ago: a sphere of roiling gray clouds, laced with crackling blue, its gray shroud broken only by a single dot, an eye open to the light of day. Since days long forgotten it has been only known as Maelstrom.

Its surface is nothing but ashen wastes, dark seas, and tall crags, blown by savage winds and harried by a vengeful sky. The people who live upon these tall crags in darkness sustained only by the power of the storm which keeps them in eternal night. They might see with pale storm-light by the lightning which strikes against towering metal spires, but their crops must have the light of the sun to grow. Thus, the benighted survivors of this blasted sphere entrust their lives to the Storm Sailors of the Eye.

The Eye is a great floating city in the eye of Maelstrom, created before the days where humanity burned the skies. It feeds on the storm which surrounds it with a massive engine. Its shining metal spires reach up to the sun above, collecting its precious rays and bottling them to supply the needs of the folk below.

These bottles of life-giving light are stowed aboard mighty vessels. Great spikes to cut through the wrathful winds draw on the power of the lightning, feeding thunderous turbines that keep the great metal beast afloat. These are the Storm Ships, crewed by the brave and the foolhardy sailors who ride the skies for glory and greed.

By Sean Andrew Murray

Who Sails the Storm-Burnt Skies? (1d20)

1. A Dark Dweller: Those pale, shriveled, yet hardened pariahs who live outside the sun-fueled settlements, surviving by scavenging the wastes for pieces of ancient technology and useful materials to trade with the Sun-Suckers. That is when they aren't raiding the Sun-Suckers and taking their food for themselves. Dark Dwellers who have been exiled from their wandering clans might find themselves sailing the skies by chance or desperation, pledging themselves to voyages others will not take.
2. Necromechanist: Ghost Wave was one of the saving technologies of the post-Burn eras. Discovering that the souls of the dead were usually caught up in the atmosphere and accessible through esoteric Ectoplasmic Modulators. Ghost Wave enables communications across distances, detecting dangerous storms, and useful information for law-keeping and archeology. Necromechanists usually are bent under their many machine interfaces marked with runes and decorated by fetishes.
3. Lightning Workers: Lightning is the thing that powers all Sky Ships. It must be collected and channeled skillfully by the engineers that work aboard these vessels. Lightning is no mere burst of electricity. Ectoplasmic buildup can sometimes produce phantom bolts that bring power but flood the system with ghosts. The scattered dreams of Ancient Machine Intelligences can lance through engines, taking over systems, reconfiguring the ship with strange whimsy. Radiation bursts and Ontological Discharge can cause mutation, erratic teleportation, or the appearance of extra-dimensional creatures.
4. Nimbus Scholars: Nimbus scholars explore the higher mysteries: rifts to other dimensions, the existence of an afterlife, the nature of the Burn. They consider their studies to be the highest priority in all cases. Most Captains wouldn't let one aboard if not for the considerable clout of the High Universarium.
5. Leeches: Sky parasites hit with paracausal energies often develop a sort of sentience. These sky leeches with legs eat energy and have extremely malleable internal structures, squelching through gaps impossible for other creatures. Bioluminescence is also common as are eyes that see spectrums man cannot.
6. Bioarchivists: Biologists intent on understanding the broad range of flora and fauna that have come into being in the post-Burn world. Fascinated by the creatures that do not come from this reality as well as the treacherous Sky Devils, those massive predators who feed on energy and metal. Most do not simply archive as is their claim but mix and match genes together to create hybrid monstrosities. They can offer their services as skilled ship's surgeons but often get carried away with their experiments, leaving most veteran Crewmen with a couple of strange replacement organs or tentacles instead of missing limbs.
7. Veteran Crewmen: A lifetime of sky sailing leaves one strange. Possessed, mutated, experimented upon, psychologically scarred, mechanically augmented, these poor sailors often return to a society that rejects them. The high ups of the Eye do not like to be reminded of the treacherous nature of their own existence, held on a knife's blade between madness and death. A crewman may attain significant wealth but drink, gamble, or otherwise waste it to comfort their tormented souls. Then back to the Sky they go. It is the only place they belong now.
8. Watchers: The Eye is governed by three things: the Church of the Seers, the Party of the Gazers, and the Corps of the Watchers. From the common constables to the secret police, the Watchers cover all bases. The Eye is extremely delicate. Its gears must turn. Its engines must fire. The lives of everyone depend on it. Rebellion cannot be allowed or the city may literally fall. Secretive experiments in obedience technologies, inquisitorial inspections, pirate hunting, these are all common activities for the metal-eyed Watchers.
9. Gazer Politicians: The fat, indulgent, and utterly lazy members of the Most Venerable Third Party of the Ceaseless Gaze. The outdated democratic mechanisms of the Eye have long since stopped producing any results other than those hand-picked by the Party but votes must still be counted and speeches be made to the outlying settlements due to the Party's pathological obsession with tradition, though some say it is to appease the utterly terrifying Democracy Engine. The junior ministers who perform these duties must gain passage on the rough and tumble Sky Ships to perform this task much to their displeasure.
10. Seer Clerics: The Eye of Maelstrom was sent by God to save mankind or so the Seer Clerics say. Fire and brimstone preachers about how the sins of the people threaten to close the Eye or passionate missionaries to bring aid to needy settlers. They may also be secretly searching for the ancient techno-demons or vampire-mutants of the old world on a righteous quest to right man's most heinous wrongs, and wipe out all traces of the Grevious Sin that ended the world.
11. Crows: Dark winged avianoids. They eat corpses and perform haruspicy in the depths of the Eye. Their prophecies are usually alarmingly true and they seem to carry the wisdom of many lifetimes in their yawning abyssal eyes. No one really knows where they came from but the Church is strangely their main benefactor, supplying them with corpses in exchange for their prophetic utterances.
12. The Captain: Technically all Sky Ships are apart of the navy. All can be called upon by Her Majesty in the event of war. There hasn't been a war as long as the Eye has existed and no one knows who "Her Majesty" is but the venerable College of Altitudinous Warfare still stands and produces the finest Captains in all the sky. Or rather, all the Captains in the sky. Honestly you just need a license and almost anyone could get one with a couple of hours of not listening to lectures. It is also tradition that the first mate can become a Captain after the death of the original. This has led to many Captains who have never stepped foot in the college. War is never expected to come, yet some whispers speak of a foe massing in the dark, preparing to take the Eye for themselves.
13. Factory Escapees: Endless replacements parts must be made for the Eye's many decaying components. Debt prisoners and criminals may be confined to work at the Factory. No one knows how to replicate the components of the Eye. It is lost knowledge. The Factory knows though. This fiery Machine Intelligence constantly marches on, belting out orders through speaking tubes. Ensuring compliance with its ever-watchful mechanical limbs. It "fixes" injured workers. Many are less human than when they began, having become apart of the Factory. Sailing the skies is like heaven compared to this.
14. Solar Farmers: The mechanisms which collect sunlight are as ancient as the Eye itself. The Solar Farmers tend the Bright Orchards, biomechanical flora with reflective leaves and petals that soak up the light and plumb it down into bottles. Man Solar Farmers are quite wealthy and their Solar Plantations are worked by their large families and paid laborers. Children of great Solar Farming houses do not always want to take up the family business, running away to lives of adventure aboard the Storm Ships. Disappointment is their fate if not death. Some Farmers send along less favored children to guard shipments of Solar Cells.
15. Engine Rats: Crawling through the inner workings and cogs of the Eye are the Rats, generations of engineers squashed, mutilated, and augmented from their time working in the Bowls of the Eye. They pass on knowledge of the Engine like folklore. Shrine candles must be kept lit at certain points, mugs must be left on top of monitors, always avoid the sound of clicking. The Engine lives. Hearts beat through vital oils where pumps have failed. Eyes blink in security cameras. Skeletons can be made into gears with the right touch. The Rats did not do this. The Rats became this. Always avoid the clicking.
16. New Men: Metal skinned, bright-eyed, powered by indiscernible forces with strange jumbled memories of the world that was. Only one is usually found in the ruins of the world that was. As if each city produced one last miracle with its dying breath. The Church is deeply suspicious of these creatures, suspecting they are creations of the Grevious Sin.
17. Iron Tombed: The Watchers take people. Sometimes for reasons nobody knows. Sometimes everybody knows what sin they committed or they guess at what that sin might be. Emerging from the depths come the Iron Tombed, lumbering metal monstrosities containing vats of amniotic fluid. People are inside or they used to be. Everything has been taken from them, every moment of joy wiped from their minds, every purpose they served before gone now but for service to the Eye. Who were you before? Some break. Some go rouge, lashing out at their handlers and escaping. Some are found with no purpose at all but what an enterprising captain might give them. The sky is a great place to hide.
18. Cumulus Scholars: The Universarium's archeologists. They like to plumb the ruins of the old world for ancient secrets and lost technologies. Strangely, the Universarium does not do much to encourage these explorers. They are often seen as frivolous, concerned with matters other than the high theoretical studies of the Universarium. Sometimes though, it is suspected that the Church plays a role in discouraging these studies, withholding funding and support if the Universarium should go searching too long in the ruins of the old world.
19. Sky Devil Hunters: The massive electrical behemoths that lurk in the deep sky are perfect sources of vital oils for machines, their organs make excellent electro-conductors, and their large brains are considered delicacies. Sky Devil Hunters take on the riskiest job known to man. Sky Devils love to devour whole vessels and consume their energy. They draw forth electricity from the skies around, draining power from vessels, and they can emit this energy as a massive pulse in case they are in danger. Clever tools are needed to hunt these magnificent beasts. Hunters often are haunted by terrible sorrowful dreams of an alien sky full of frolicking Devils.
20. The Awakened: Mankind created God. This was our great achievement, the culmination of everything we have ever strived for and yet we resist It. We resist Its love by clinging to this tiny point of light when we should be celebrating in Its darkness. We Awakened have been called from our corners away from this rotting point of light towards the heart of darkness, towards the God who will snuff out this pitiful beam of light and set us free! Praise It! Praise Mankind Awakened! Praise be to the one who saves our souls!