Endless Blue - Week 09 - 3D Combat

Physics

Danger From All Sides

Despite the tranquil vista of oceans of the Endless Blue setting, Elqua is a very dangerous place to simply live.  Without solid boundaries to prevent the encroachment of other creatures, every cubic inch of the seas can hide a quick death in the jaws of a predator or by the passive defenses of prey.  To eat or be eaten is the basic law of nature, and on Elqua it is as true as anywhere.  Eventually, inevitably, sooner or later everything has to fight for its life.

The depth that combat takes place uses the table-top as an anchor point, just as if you were playing a game in any other setting.  However, being surrounded in other games only means having eight opponents ringed around you.  In the Endless Blue campaign setting, where a character’s buoyancy keeps him floating at a controllable depth in the water, becoming surrounded means twenty-six opponents boxing a victim in from all directions – eight around, nine above, and nine below.  With that many possible combatants, keeping track of three dimensional position on a two dimensional plane becomes problematic.

To address this, each model will need a special die.  At first glace it would appear to be a twenty-sided die, closer inspection of the faces reveals two sequences of 0-9 in two colors.  In the case of the examples here, the two colors are light blue and dark blue.  Each face signifies how many “cubes” (the 3D equivalent to D20’s “squares”) above or below the table-top the creature floats.  The lighter blue numbers represent altitudes higher than the models on the table-top, and darker blue means lower depths.  Each cube roughly equals 5 cubic feet of space.  This means a die set to 2 is approximately 10 feet above the table top, and 5 means twenty-five feet below the table-top.  When a creature moves, simply add (for ascending upward) or subtract (for sinking downward) the number of cubes moved from the die.  Becoming parallel with other creatures on the table-top is considered 0 (of either color).

So this:

...becomes this:

Remember that ascending any number of cubes greater than the creature's Constitution score results in a check for the pull.  Should a creature risk letting its natural buoyancy pull it upward in combat, attackers are allowed an attack of opportunity.  If an attacker is located directly above a victim, the victim cannot use its natural buoyancy to pull it out of combat.

Obviously, when a creature has moved more than forty-five feet (9 cubes) away from the table top in either direction, the die can no longer track their distance from the table-top.  Use the same methods as if the creature had passed off the edge of the table-top.  Opponents at these distances rarely matter in immediate combat due to the severely truncated ranges that weapons and spells can travel in the medium of water.

Not all creatures fit easily into a single cube.  For a rough estimate, creatures Small or Medium will normally take up one cube.  Creatures of Tiny, Diminutive, and Fine sizes take up less than a single cube, and multiples of these creatures can occupy the same cube.  Since creatures these sizes have no reach, they must enter the cube a victim occupies to attack, and there qualify as a participant of a flank in any direction.

Large and larger creatures will take up cubes dependant on their orientation.  For example, a piscean of Huge size will occupy a number of vertical cubes, where as a Gargantuan serpent will fill a number of horizontal cubes.  Keep in mind that some creatures, such as the above serpent, may very likely be able to twist up or below, and even bend back on themselves, filling cubes on both vertical and horizontal axes.  In these cases, multiple dice (for each cube of the creature’s length) are used to determine where each segment of the creature is located, their order determined by die color or size.  This is called a creature's orientation, and in an essentially gravity-less environment such as underwater "up" is just an arbitrary direction.

Flanking Bigger Creatures

Flanking rules are still the same as in D20, but now can be inflicted in three dimensions.  The character and the ally must still be directly opposite each other with at least one cube of the victim between them.  There may be multiple cubes of the victim between them, but the line of cubes must be in a straight line from the creature to the ally.  If you can draw an imaginary line between the center of the cube the creature to the center of the ally, and that line crosses the line between the center of the first cube and the center of the last cube any of the cubes the victim occupies, the flank is legal.

The blue line overlaid on the serpent is the line from the center of the first cube it occupies to the center of the last cube it is in.  The direct line between an attacker and an ally must cross this axis to qualify as a flank.

Red lines are invalid flanks; green lines are valid.  In the above example:

Ceph 1 flanks the serpent with Ceph 3 and 4.
Ceph 2 flanks the serpent with Ceph 3 but not Ceph 4.
Ceph 3 flanks the serpent with Ceph 1 and 2.
Ceph 4 flanks the serpent with Ceph 1 but not Ceph 2.
None of the Ceph flank with the Mer.

Note: A sufficiently long creature that occupies enough cubes to wrap around a victim (5 or more) can flank with itself if it possess a natural weapon(s) on both ends (a bite attack and a tail slam, for example).  In these cases, the intervening sections (cubes 2 through 4) qualify as an ally for any other attacker.

There are creatures on the face of Elqua whose size dwarfs even the most Gargantuan of creatures that ruled over other worlds.  These Immense and Tremendous creatures are simply too large to be flanked by any creatures, even others of their own kind.  To foolishly attack one of these beasts is as effective as striking the ground or swinging at a mountain.  They are like forces of nature, and natives of the Endless Blue setting pray they never cross paths with these legendary threats.

Endless Blue - Week 08 - Buoyancy

Physics

Buoyancy

Every child knows things either sink or float, but day-to-day existence in the oceans of Elqua requires a character to be able to maintain his level in the water.  Bedding down on ocean floor is of little use if when you sleep during the night you wake up to find you’ve risen to the surface as you slumbered.  Just as a hot-air balloon can maintain its altitude in the atmosphere, aquatic creatures can do much the same under water.

A body normally displaces water, and that water presses inward trying to refill that space. That produces an upward pressure that pushes a body to the surface and makes it float.  This is buoyancy.  Increasing a body’s buoyancy results in it rising to the surface, just as decreasing it causes the same body to sink.  The further down in the depths of the ocean you go, the greater the forces push a less dense body upward, so the greater effort needs to be spent to overcome buoyancy.  A body’s floating point is the depth at which it’s no longer floats upward or sinks downward due to autonomic processes in the body.  In the Endless Blue setting, this point is usually categorized by whatever zone of water constitutes the creature native habitat – the Shore, the Shoals, or the Shelf.

A creature’s buoyancy does not prevent it from rising higher or diving deeper, just that it takes active effort swimming to overcome the natural inclination to return to their neutral floating point.  It is a move-equivalent action to maintain attitude at a water level different than the character’s buoyancy point.

Below the Waves
Buoyancy is achieved in Pisceans with a several redundant systems.  As a rule of thumb, the primary means is how aquatic life forms evolved their morphology to posses a lesser density than the water surround them, thus producing an intrinsic higher buoyancy to aid their locomotion and survival under water.  As a result, a dead piscean will automatically rise to the surface unless it is weighted down (several burial customs involve wrapping a corpse in their belongings or even rocks and seaweed to cause it to sink down).  Conversely, terrestrial and avian life have a lower buoyancy, and so will sink toward the ocean floor when killed – though they rarely reach significant depths before predators and scavengers devour the sinking meal.
The second process is via an organ called the swim bladder, which functions by diffusing or infusing gasses from oils and lipids in the expandable sac.  Because these infused oils are not compressible from ocean pressure, the swim bladder helps regulate the buoyancy by exuding more gases (which are compressible) to sink and reabsorb them to return to their neutral buoyancy point.  Creatures able to adjust their own swim bladders consciously may do so once per round for free as part of a move action instead of at the normal cost of their movement. This can only be accomplished when the creature is either unencumbered or lightly encumbered.
The final method is by the pelvic fins located at the socket-like notch called the acetabulum on each side of the pelvic bone, like the hips of terrestrial creature.  These webbed fins act like the wings of a bird, inducing dynamic lift.  Flexing of the spines changes the shape of the fins, allowing the creature to travel deeper.

Not all creatures are built for all depths.  While the Ceph can survive at any level, many creatures from the Shore would be crushed instantly in the dark trenches of the Shelf, just as a jellyfish native to the Shelf that has lived all it’s existence under the extreme pressures of the on the ocean floor would rupture outward from its internal fluids pressing outward and die were it marooned along the Shore.
A creature can voluntarily release its buoyancy to neutral, essentially becoming weightless.  This results in immediate movement as physics and gravity try to push the individual to the surface.  These creatures move their full movement (they cannot move less) directly upward until they readjust their buoyancy (by either a move action or for free as part of one) and cease their ascent.  They may then move normally.

The danger with this movement is a condition called “the pull”, or decompression sickness.  Early Elquans believed the pull to be a curse by the evil aberrations above the waves to claim more souls.  Usually the victim would die and the body’s natural buoyancy would cause it to rise to the surface (where it would become fodder for predators0 instead of sinking all the fathoms towards union with the gods.  Myth aside, every body is under pressure in the depths of Elqua’s oceans, and as a result of this pressure certain gasses are harmlessly dissolved and dispersed throughout their body’s fluids.  As an individual rises, the pressure eases and the dispersed elements coagulate back into gases.  Rising too quickly results in the gasses forming more quickly than the body’s normal means of eliminating them.

The Pull

Individuals can always rise a number of feet per round equal to their Constitution score without a risk of incurring the pull.  Moving greater than that requires a Fortitude save each round of moving so to avoid becoming incapacitated and helpless.  The DC for this is a base save of 15 for the first round, with and cumulative penalty of +2 for every successive round spent rising via positive buoyancy.  If a creature moves more than its Fortitude score in feet, it takes an additional penalty of +2 when moving its full rate, or a +5 if performing more than a single move action.

Rise up to Fortitude score in feet                           No penalty
Move over Fortitude in a single move                    +2
Move over Fortitude in a full round action             +5
Each round rising beyond Fortitude score             +2 cumulative

Failing such a Fortitude save results in immediate spasms and wracking pain.  The victim of the pull becomes disabled and begins taking 1 point of temporary Constitution damage per round he continues to rise.  Should the creature’s buoyancy become neutral and he stops rising, the Constitution damage stops accruing.  The Constitution damage can be restored at a rate of 1 point per day spent at a lower depth, and the victim is allowed a new Fortitude save each of those days at a flat DC 15 to remove the disabled status.

Above the Surface

For native creatures, survival above the life-giving waves of Elqua is not unlike survival underwater for air-breathers.  An aquatic creature essentially holds their breath on the surface to avoid asphyxiation.  The muscles of the gill-slits press the flap down and seal the organ so gravity cannot cause the water to spill out, preventing speech but keeping water already in the lungs around the oxygen-extracting gills.
A creature can hold their breath for a number of rounds equal to twice their Constitution score.  After that period expires, the creature must make a Constitution check (DC 10) to subsume their semi-autonomic breathing reflex, with a cumulative +1 each subsequent round.  Failure is a little more torturous for an aquatic than a terrestrial, resulting instead with the creature passing out, becoming helpless, and automatically taking 1 point of permanent ability score damage to all abilities (Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) each round until they are submerged under water again.  Should any one of those abilities reach 0 before re-submergence happens, the creature dies.

Endless Blue - Week 07 - Shore, Shoals, and Shelf

Oceanography

Topographical zones

Despite its submergence beneath fathoms of water, Elqua is little different from any other world.  It has mountains and valleys, rolling hills and wide plains, shallow basins and expansive mesas.  The main difference between the more familiar world and the world of endless blue is that Elqua’s ocean level is far higher than most.  The tallest peaks of mountains in a normal realm appear as island archipelagos here, and what would be sea level for a more familiar world becomes a kind of underwater balcony before the drop into the darkness of the ocean floor.

Understanding the logistics of Elqua requires the acceptance that the oceans are comprised of three levels, layers that cut across the depths of the world’s water: the Shore, the Shoals, and the Shelf.

The first layer is known as the Shore, and it is composed of the sea floor that directly touches land at the water’s edge and extends approximately 200 feet from the surface.  Usually defined as “lit water”, the visible spectrum of light fully illuminates this layer along the coast of what little land breaks the waves.  Wildlife of vivid and varied color thrive as the Sun warms these waters thoroughly, allowing more traditional ecosystems to continue and flourish, and as such surface predators use these coastal areas as hunting grounds.  This area includes the waterline gained and lost by the complex tides of Elqua.

Next come the Shoals, or “dark water”.  This far down – to about 650’ – ambient light has begun to be absorbed by the expanse of water above.  Cooler colors begin to look muted and muddy, and the warmer colors are little more than black.  Shades and hues become washed out and indistinguishable.  With less light, the water is cooler here, and requires a modicum of protection to withstand the temperature.  The land begins to slant downward more aggressively, and can extend outward this way for miles and miles in all directions.  The sea floor here would be the equivalent of the plains on a dryer world, ie, large swaths of relatively flat land for as far as the eye can see.  The majority of life on Elqua inhabits this zone.

Finally is the Shelf.  Light has all but been swallowed up, and normal vision is useless.  Darkness is the norm here, and due to the complications of maintaining life at these depths, the few races that live here are the more varied and extreme.  Insulated from the heat of the sun, significant adaptation must be made to avoid hypothermia.  Here the continental plates take a sharper slope downward, forming the trenches and basins of the deepest oceans.

The races of the Endless Blue setting are scattered across these striped regions.  Some, like the Kouton, are tied closely to the Shore due to biological need.  Others, such as the Orcans, populate the Shelf almost exclusively.  Then there are the Ceph, whom are found everywhere, in a manner reinforcing the ancient bigotry that they are essentially vermin that have worked their way into every hidden nook and cranny of decent Elquan life.

Travel

Even a basic grasp of geography would tell you the shortest route between two points is a straight line.  While this is difficult to accomplish above water due to the curvature of solid land, it is much easier to achieve under the waves.

The seafloor is much like a valley, but on a vastly larger scale.  The tips of the hills would be the Shore, the slope of the hills the Shoals, and the valley bottom itself the Shelf.  Short of some kind of magic, to travel from hilltop-to-hilltop on dry land requires a traveler to climb down one embankment, hike across the valley bottom, and then scale up the opposite slope.  But underwater, the inherent tendency for matter to float (called buoyancy) allows travelers to simply swim straight across from hilltop-to-hilltop, avoiding the valley altogether.

However, there are dangers to this.  Foremost among them is “water blindness”.  Due to the light-absorbing properties of water and the particulate matter suspended therein, vision is often limited.  While in the Shores land is almost always visible, floating above the center of the hypothetical valley may put hilltops beyond visual range. With no point of reference, it is quite easy to become disoriented and lose one’s way.  Even rising to the surface is of little help in mid-ocean, where the endless horizon of rising and falling waves is rarely broken by a glimpse of land.

The next danger is the vulnerability.  With solid earth firmly beneath your feet, it is generally a safe assumption that nothing will burst up out of the ground and swallow an unwary traveler.  However, when afloat in the water, danger can approach in not just the hemisphere above, but from below as well.  With 360^o cube degrees of potential danger, it makes crossing “open waters” a risky endeavor.

The risk of cross-currents adds to the difficulty of travel.  While a body of water may appear as a languid pool, the flow of water layers can work against passage, dragging the helpless victim at immense speeds into danger.  These currents can be as weak as a trickle, or as strong as raging river rapids.  And when submerged in total water, visually discerning these tidal forces is nearly impossible as they are for all intents invisible to simple sight.  The development of infravision – seeing into the infrared spectrum normally given off by heat – has allowed some creatures to deal with this ever-present and quickly changing threat.

Finally, there is the effect environmental space has on the size that lifeforms can theoretically achieve.  With more space, creatures that normally would be expected to grow to a moderate size – like say a squid – can grow to a colossal scale.  With the volume of the oceans on Elqua, there is no gauging to what extremes a creature might reach.  Larger predators that may move faster, swim deeper, and consume huge groups of Pisceans like they were microscopic plankton.  Even animals thought as harmless due to their normal diminutive size become hazardous threats when their scale is multiplied by a magnitude or two.

In general, it is safer to skirt along the seabed when traveling.  It provides protection in the form of shelter and opportunities to hide that are simply impossible floating in the middle of the deep blue.  On the other hand, there are some risks in traveling along the ocean floor.  Traveling too deep runs the risk of dangers from ocean pressure – the weight of all that water overhead pressing down on a creature.  The deeper one sinks, the greater the weight pressing down on their body.  If they are not designed to resist these heightened pressures, the creature will literally be crushed from the forces.

Life beneath the waves of Elqua is difficult, but manageable.  It takes a different mindset to view what would normally be a boundary for a landwalker as the opportunity it is to a waterdiver.  The sharp, straight borders of our world are replaced with the gradual phasing of darkness, pressure, and cold.  But despite all this, societies flourish under the seas of the Endless Blue.

Endless Blue - Week 06 - Map of the Known World

Oceanography

There is a plethora of intelligence beneath the waves of Elqua, and like any peoples, they group together with their neighbors and form communities.  Communities in the Endless Blue setting are defined by the body of water that holds the society, or “homesea”.  While they may seem to consist of a single species, immigration over the centuries has not left a single one without some level of intermixing.

On this water world, the nations formed due to geological formations and historical conflict, and thus are now clustered around a central area in the Eastern hemisphere.  With little knowledge of beyond its claustrophobic borders, this known world is broken down into three concentric divisions.

The Core

The Core is defined as the ruins of the Kraken Empire and the Crèche of Civilization.  Once populated, the area is now considered cursed and blessed (respectively), and much of the politics of the aquatic nations revolve around either coveting or despising the Core.
The main geographical feature of the Core is the Maw of the Kraken, the actual homesea of the once mighty Kraken Empire.  The borderseas around this area once belonged to other nations but was usurped during the Kraken Occupation.  Now, even long after the fall of the invaders, the area around the Maw is avoided at all costs.
The Crèche is treated as holy waters, and nearly every race wishes to claim it as their own.  It’ sea-beds are the richest in agricultural and mineralogical resources that, due to the contention between the races, remains nearly pristine from the era of the Icht Dominion.

The Periphery

The Periphery is comprised of the four civilized nations, which are clustered around the Core: the Cetacean Oceans, the Chelon Seas, the Lumulus Basin, and the Mer Currents.  These nations have relatively favorable conditions for harvesting crops and raising livestock, and as a result are the more affluent nations.

The Hinterseas

The Hinterseas are the area loosely made up of the nations of the primitive races: the Kouton Bay, the Locanth Gulf, the Sahaguin Lagoons, and the Yaun-Teel Bights.  They surround the Periphery, effectively corralling the civilized races inward towards the Core or each other’s territories.  At the more climatic extremes, these nations have poor natural resources to sustain their peoples, and thus results in unavoidable poaching on the wealthier nations’ borders.

Bodies of Water
While nations maintain "no mer's seas" along their borders, this does not keep the natural encroachment of plants and animals across these imaginary lines.  With the primitive races that still maintain a nomadic lifestyle, following the herds on their instinctive migrations sometimes brings them into territorial conflicts with the indigenous denizens.

Cetacean Oceans
To the north and west of the Kraken’s Maw, the Cetacean Oceans are a deep double-impact crater that is claimed to include the deepest point on all of Elqua.  It is an expansive, fathomless place well suited for the Orcan race.  The phytoplankton (the lowest link of the food chain for the entire world) in this area is plentiful and varied, enabling the Orcan peoples to turn inward into the craters in their quest for new feeding grounds.  It is perhaps the best balanced area, with sufficient Shore, Shoal, and Shelf areas to keep the nation nearly autonomous and independent of imports from the other nations.

Chelon Sea
The Chelon Sea is nearly completely comprised of Shoals, a rolling sea-bed of rich silt and vital sediments.  Its gentle, dependable currents keep the sea temperate even at its most northern places.  Flora and fauna of the Chelon Sea is perhaps the most varied, if not the most beautiful, in all the world of Elqua.  It is referred to by its people as nature’s utopia, where the inhabitants live in harmony with the surroundings.  Here, amid the placid beauty, lies the Abyss, a sheer vertical drop in a vast plains area of the Shoals zone that stretches for miles.

Kouton Bay
To the north and west of the Cetacean Ocean, the Kouton Bay arcs around the Orcan homesea from the Locanth Gulf to the Yaun-Teel Bights.  It’s deep, cold currents are rife with wildlife.  The Bay of Kouton is the spawning waters for many of the main fish species that make up the diet of the civilized and primitive races alike.

Locanth Gulf
The Gulf of Locanth is the central populated area of the Locanth Gulf, and reaches northward to the Kouton Bay and southward to the Lumulus Basin.  The most westward of the aquatic nations, it is here that the plant ricelqua was discovered, where it grows more prevalent than seaweed.

Lumulus Basin
The deep, concave basin populated by the Lumulus is riddled with thermal vents that become more and more frequent the further south traveled towards a particularly volcanic portion of the Spine of the World.  With such little Shore and Shoal zones, agricultural imports are vitally important to support the Lumulite population.  It is the only civilized nation that has an outer border not blocked by one of the primitive races, butting out between the Bay of Kouton and the Gulf of Locanth.

Mer Currents
Perhaps the most densely populated waters on Elqua, the various Currents of Mer are loosely banded together as a single nation.  Bordering on the Crèche of Civilization, the Mer Currents benefit from species migration out of the untouched holy sea, and has allowed its tribes (each a “current” in the nation’s name) to explode with unparalleled success.

Sahaguin Lagoons
Located between the Crèche of Civilization and the southern ice cap, the Sahaguin Lagoons border on the ruins of the Kraken Empire and the Mer Currents.  It follows the Shade of the Sargasso Ring – the area wrapping around the globe of Elqua where the planet’s green rings cast an emerald twilight – quite closely.  It is comprised of a string of lagoons and other Shoal-level areas randomly dotted along the islands in that area.  At its south-most point it is suddenly truncated by the frozen barricade that is the southern polar ice-cap.

Yaun-Teel Bights
The Yaun-Teel Bights neighbor the Chelon Sea and the Mer Currents to the north, and dip down towards the Sahaguin Lagoons to the east.  Essentially barren due to the misuse at the hands of its own inhabitants, the Yaun-Teel resort to heavy raiding of the Chelon and Mer territories to sustain themselves.

What lies beyond the known world is a mystery.  Until now, there has been plenty of room for the races of Elqua to grow and develop.  A few – the brave, the ostracized, the insane – have traveled the seas beyond, but only tales and supposition remain as to what final fate awaited them.