Idle Ideas: Ghost Ships

Sometimes I get ideas I can’t put anywhere else, and if I write them down I’ll probably just forget where I put the note. So instead I’ll post them as an Idle Ideas post. This post concerns Ghost Ships in the Spirits of Eden campaign setting. Ghost Ships are mostly a phenomena of Sargasso and Periterim, the rival tropical, seafaring cultures of the setting. Periterim is stationed in the east, while Sargasso to the west. Both claim their hemisphere’s (as much as Adel HAS a meaningful hemispheric division) river trade and viciously keep the other one out of their side. Both have a culture of mercantile adventurers on ships. However, ghost ships are more a fashion of the famous, wealthy Merchant Nobility of Periterim, a culture where monied interests get to more freely indulge their energetic irresponsibility in all sorts of ways.

A Merchant Prince or Princess foolhardy enough can seek a Ghost Ship out at sea, or in the sky – for such ships fly by nature of the Spirit that guards them. A Ghost Ship is the remains of a vessel which sailed out to sea and failed to return. Sunken ships sink very deep into Adel’s spirit-populated oceans. All ocean in Adel eventually leads to the foreboding, mythical Pampas, the river that runs through all of Septinum, “The Hells Beneath All Creation.” The Pampas is filled with lost souls, and a lost ship just becomes another one. Some ships in Septinum manage an escape from the Pampas. A wandering soul with enough will anchors itself to the vessel and takes the form of its Spirit, and uses it to escape the Pampas. These ships sail or fly aimlessly around Adel, populated by the decayed and befouled corpses of the crew, or by dangerous spirits who enjoy inhabiting such maddening atmosphere. Some ships may be home to dragons who enjoy the ride, flying without doing so under their power. Others might be home to Furies, who’s dark arts commandeer the ship in their service, and they use these as horrific flying gunboats with foul weaponry. These ships are sought out, and their Spirit cleansed and employed in the service of a Merchant Prince or Princess – or whoever else did the dangerous deed.

Ghost Ships are luxurious and sought after for a few reasons. Most people will find it prohibitively expensive, arcane and annoying to solicit a vessel fueled by an Arcane Engine. Prism Ships just plain take too long and too much effort to make. Nobody really knows how they’re made, just that by praying enough, doing enough of certain things in certain esoteric ways, they may, may, manage to produce one of them. This is unacceptable to the burgeoning Merchant Prince or Princess, who’s time is money. A Ghost Ship can fly just as well as a Prism Ship can, and they’re practically free!, so thinks the foolish Merchant Prince or Princess, who needs only to lead an expedition, drive off everything inside, and get some local cleric to perform the Hymn of Hallowing for the ship and the Oaths of Siblinghood between Merchant and Ship Spirit, to become captain of one.

It is no wonder that many merchant families are in a crisis of succession, when their heirs think such foolish things and go to die. But the people who do succeed become legendary and formidable. Neris Painsley, captain of the Sapiencia, which she wrested from a veritable graveyard of such ships hidden in the furthest murk of the sea, is one of the most famous (and most patently insane) of these new class of ghost ship captains.

Finding the ship is a huge concern. With certain magic and the help of certain spirits, and with certain equipment, such as a Diving Golem, and a blessed, magic Aquatic Armor, it is possible for adelians (with enough funds to own or borrow all of this garbage) to seek out the ship graveyards in the Pampas itself, between the border of Earth and Hell, and wrest from such a place a formidable, young, energetic ship. More than likely though, the burgeoning Merchant Prince will seek out such a ship in the sky, in the forests, out at sea. Such ships are older and a bit more grumpy, but their Spirits will be thankful for the cleansing and follow the oaths faithfully, if grudgingly. A ship Spirit is a spirit – it looks more often than not like a person, sometimes even like the ship’s former captain, but with a twist of the mystical, such as fish-fin ears, or a pair of compass-instrument metal wings.

A flying ship is a great boon to business and battle, but the skies are not a lonely place. At any one time, over a dozen merchants with such ships may exist, or more. They don’t perform general services – merchant princes and princesses have lowly caravans and ships for transporting the proles’ food, clothes and toys. No, with a Ghost Ship, the merchant prince and princess can carry the most luxury cargo, or ferry well-monied passengers, or go on expeditions into the Second Sky or even beneath the ocean, with the proper attuning of the ship’s Spirit to protect from the ravages of water, and produce needed air (for all such things, a Cleric, often a cheap one, is maintained on board to appease the ship Spirit). They can go to places where the rarest of things are found, and the only competition is from local spirits (and sometimes, annoying rival Princes and Princesses picking a fight).

Ghost Ships have quirks based on the personality of the Ship Spirit, and they are mostly terrible places to live for prolonged periods of time. Even after the purification, lamenting ghosts may still prowl the ship (as they are not evil, only tormented, and therefore cannot be easily cleansed), seeking out ancient desires. Even if all the ghosts are removed, strange sounds, a tense atmosphere, and even such things as random plant growth, fish spontaneously appearing, and other random effects accompany the Ship Spirit’s eccentric personality in the large list of things likely to annoy the merchant to death.