Rainy City-Underharbor

My friend is running an awesome campaign based in the water-logged island known as the Rainy City. Because I decided to play a mermaid, a race he has never had player choose before, I am helping him flesh out the details associated with the Underharbor. Here is what I came up with so far. Please also check out his blog as he writes amazing articles and has older articles pertaining to this setting:
http://superheronecromancer.blogspot.com/

Trade-

the traders of the Underharbor exchange many different types of wares to the people of the Rainy City. Foods include fish, kelp, sea cucumbers, eels, shark meat, snails, crustaceans, and many other sorts of underwater creatures. They also trade shells, pearls, coral, rare fish, sunken treasures, and any other sort of thing air-breathers may be interested in. There are also unsavory merfolk who will trade in darker things, such as the bloated corpses of the drowned for necromancers, poisons harvested from sea urchins and other dangerous fish for alchemy (to anyone who will pay well for it), semi-intellectual humanoids (sea-monkeys), and any other sort of service the seedy side of the city may be interested in (the “drowning” of certain ships for example…)

Occupations-

Farmer

Shepherd

Treasure Hunter

Warrior

Ruin Explorer

Merchant

Whale Wrangler

Monkey Tamer

Government-

There used to be a king that ruled the Underharbor with a beautiful trident made of coral as a symbol of his status, or so they say. The name of this king, who his successor was, and the trident were lost in the waves and the confusion of many different races congregating under the shadow of the rainy city generations ago, but that does not stop different prominent families of merfolk and other races from claiming they are descendants of that legendary line to this day. For the most part the Underharbor is ruled by a couple of rich and powerful families, other creatures and less wealthy merfolk are employed by these families no only to undermine each other, but also to fight against the common goal of the undead that bombard the boarders of the watery realm.

Other Things to Consider-

Just like most of the people of the Rainy City, most of the inhabitants of the Underharbor migrated/drifted here from other seas when their homes were destroyed. When waters get too high sunlight does not reach the floor and vegetation dies; when that happens animals leave, and people have little to sustain themselves from. When these worlds die, the sea engulfs all the runoff, pollution, and debris and themselves become churning, poisonous, uninhabitable places that must be left behind. While underwater inhabitants do have an advantage being that their world is wet, the Rainy City is not where most of the inhabitants of the Underharbor want to be and many long for a world with sunlight, clear water, and warmer currents.

The Seas beyond the coast  of the Rainy City drop off suddenly. Where the water turns dark one knows to turn back; the Dark Water harbors dangerous beasts, untold horrors, and unpredictable weather, making it a suicidal decision to swim out where the sea cliff drops to untellable depths. Only the mad, and the suicidal venture out to these waters, and never return to tell the tale…

Role-Playing in Historical Settings

Recently our Friday night gaming group has started a new game designed and created by one of our very talented GMs.  The setting is roughly the Bronze Age in the Endo-Asia world, and we are using the 3.5 rules and core classes with a couple of exceptions.  So far the game is fantastic and was really a pleasure playing, not only because it a new and exciting setting, but also because the way the GM has set up the zones there is actually the threat of death with every encounter.  It is truly a brave new world that we are exploring and the process is fun because it is partly based off plausible-historical events but with the familiarity of the 3.5 system.

Role-playing in an alternate historical setting can be tricky, and there are always questions as how much the GM wants to stick to historical probability and where the suspension of disbelief comes into play. Being that I am the only female in the gaming group (with not many cross-gender characters from the other players or myself) this begs the question of gender roles in gaming in historical-based settings. Our GM was very quick to establish that our setting is egalitarian in nature so characters were treated similarly no matter what gender the character chose to play, but this is a factor when trying to create a setting based in the past. While there are many examples of exemptions in history, the general population of both men and women were largely defined by their roles in society, and if one is strictly adhering to a historical setting, both genders are going to be largely ruled by the normality of the time.  Living in a world that has come so far in social rights, this can be a bitter tonic to swallow, as so much of me wants to fight every sort of gender inequality I come across.  At what point does one discard past roles and start tweaking with social structures in a historical setting in order to make players feel more at home? It is a question that I know I am glad we do not usually struggle with in our personal gaming group, as we usually do not play historical-based games, but this encounter triggered this thought process about the conflict that is bound to emerge from such a situation. I do not have a solution at this point, but I am just glad our group plays systems where this is largely not an issue, but if we do ever play a setting that attempts to immerse the players in a historical place and time, this will be an obstacle both my character and I will have to face.

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Yes, I know it is a druid, but I thought it was fitting. This picture belongs to Paizo as stated below.  Thank you for the wonderful artwork as always, you guys rock!

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