Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Great Kingdom, Post Greyhawk Wars

Sun May 22, 2011 8:04 am Location of the Jungle of Lost Ships

I always thought it to be in more northern waters. This article seems to offer no clues save for THIS : "Reputed to lie many hundreds of leagues eastward, hidden somewhere within the trackless waters of the Solnor Ocean, this maritime graveyard is said to have ensnared many vessels"

The Glossography mentions that a merchant on a trade route from the Lordship of the Isles to Hepmonaland was blow hundreds of leagues to the east, to find the weed-sea.

Sun May 22, 2011 9:58 am

Putting magical influences aside it's going to depend on the currents and weather patterns on Oerth. If you want to base it on that and translate from the real world, my guess would be somewhere along a band east from the Sea Barons.

Sun May 22, 2011 4:29 pm

For what it's worth, Paizo included a sargasso named Journey's End in the third installment of The Savage Tide Adventure Path in Dragon Magazine #141. It seems identical to the description of the Jungle of Lost Ships you linked to.

SirXaris

Sun May 22, 2011 7:36 pm

Indeed, it had been years since I read it, but I took it to be the Jungle of Lost Ships.
_________________
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Mon May 23, 2011 7:27 am

Dungeon #141, you mean. Not Dragon. The adventure had the sargasso filled with sentient plant monsters ruled by a sentient plant with a female human shape - the Mother of All. That adventure places the sargasso of Journey's End in the Pearl Sea, between the island of Ruja and the Isle of Dread. But it floats, and "scours the ocean," and in theory it might be found anywhere.

Mon May 23, 2011 7:58 am

Mon May 23, 2011 1:58 pm

Alas, the mentioned Core Special "The Jungle of Lost Ships" has no further information on this except that it mentions that you "pass the Tilva Strait and sail the Solnor Ocean for some weeks before reaching the Sea Weed infested waters where the fleet lies . . ." Cry

Mon May 23, 2011 3:37 pm

It may be helpful to note the location of the real-life Sargasso Sea.

The Wikipedia article also links to a movie that might be inspirational.

Mon May 23, 2011 5:06 pm

A clump of sargassum, with several hidden sea critters, was actually my first idea for a tattoo. I decided on a weedy seadragon instead - a daddy seahorse.

I'm working on notes, even now, to write up a floating city in two ways. The first will be for my current 3.5e undersea campaign. Secondly, I shall re-envision the floating city using Pathfinder/Cerulean Seas, as a standalone (floatalone?) adventure.

Envision, if you will, a long-dormant submerged volcano rising into the shallows as a seamount. "Because they project out above the surrounding sea floor, they disturb standard water flow, causing eddies... seamounts are thus centers where the fish that feed on them aggregate, in turn falling prey to further predation, making seamounts important biological hotspots." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamount ) Thus a great mat of floating seaweed and debris are caught in an endless eddy, a slowly-rotating whirlpool turning almost imperceptibly. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island )

Now turn your attention to the world beneath the waves. Envision stalks of kelp-like seaweed growing up from the surface of the seamount and the lattice of seaweed intertwined between the massive stalks as it grows down to meet the forest of kelp ( http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/efc_kelp/kelp_cam.aspx ).

Imagine two factions of subsurface dwellers, the first acting as defenders of the seaweed city. They protect its most vulnerable secret, that the heart of the city has been living for nearly one hundred millennia (borrowed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posidonia_oceanica ). The second cult secretly wishes to free the floaton from its terrestrial tether. To this end they have developed a potent poison, a disease which will weaken the stalks upon which their society is anchored.

Somewhere, in there, I'll squeeze in the "ship made of metal, with no mast or oars...", a forest of massive coral, some white smokers (hydrothermal vents), and possibly the floating prison of the krampus.

Mon May 23, 2011 7:15 pm

That sounds great, Aeolius!

Tue May 24, 2011 5:36 pm

This sounds really cool. I started writing an adventure sometime ago based off of a song by Modest Mouse called Dashboard, or, well, based off the video at least. The video caught my attention with the map that get slapped down on the table at the beginning of the song. Im not really sure what the song is about, its cool but the video is about a group of fishermen sitting around in a bar telling fish stories when one man, an amputee with a microphone for a hand, comes up and begins telling a tale the others find to be unbelievable. As the story is about him chasing a giant fish in the middle of the ocean when he is snatched off his ship by the fish and loses his hand in the process. He is taken in by a group of bizarre techno-voodoo-savages he take him in and hold him prisoner forcing him to sing for them. The others laugh at him as he tells the story irritating the bartender he is the only person who believes him.

The link to the video is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=penvn9VL32Y

Thu May 26, 2011 8:22 pm