The Gaming Den

So, I'm laying groundwork for a 3.Tome game, partly in case my group promotes me to GM for their next campaign, mostly for lols personal satisfaction.

I needed a name for the pile of merfolk-dominated islands that form one of the major political powers, and Grand Archipelago wasn't cutting it, so I thought of adding "of the X Sea"... and settled on X being White.

See, part of my vision was that the merfolk maintained dominance of the White Sea by preventing sea travel other than "carried by merfolk" within its borders, and then this image of a whitewater sea came to mind.

Is there a way that an army of casters could pull that off? Preferably with no higher than 4th level spellcasting because reasons, but once that's jumped I'm not fussed about how many are needed.

Control Water for clerics and druids. Although I kind of like the idea that maybe the entire see is a labyrinth made of floating walls of ice and only the merfolk know the hidden paths through the shifting maze.

In 3.tome?
11th level fire mages build permanent underwater bonfires everywhere. The sea is white because it's boiling.

I imagine that would piss off the merfolk though.

Ancient History wrote:Control Water for clerics and druids. Although I kind of like the idea that maybe the entire see is a labyrinth made of floating walls of ice and only the merfolk know the hidden paths through the shifting maze.

By walls of ice, I'm hoping you mean enormous icebergs because those are visually way cooler than slabs of ice.

Using Control Water to cause a big enough chunk of ice to calve and slide into the water could create some nasty rogue waves that would doom most boats.

Merfolk could have underwater ice-cities inside and beneath enormous floating former ice shelves that they renew with wall of ice/etc. to keep from slowly crumbling to pieces.

The 3rd-level Drd spell coral growth. Enough castings could create complex, possibly evn enclosed coral mazes. Combine with the 6th-level Sor/Wiz spell hardening--which I know is beyond the listed limits--or the 3rd-level Drd spell augment object--which would require a whole mess of merfolk Drds guarding the coral maze to periodically renew the spell--, and you've a decently difficult navigation issue.

Alternate mazing methods include columns of ice and at higher levels columns of stone.

In the Napoleonic era, which probably is more advanced than your setting, a swift black squall from an unanticipated direction could easily catch ships and turn them on their beams and capsize them.

Hidden shoals, uncharted reefs,, nasty fucking weather... It doesn't take much to sink an age of sail ship.

Rolling things back to an earlier period, say pre-renaissance, and leaving sight of land suddenly becomes a risky proposition.

Here's one... Without the sun, moon, and stars, navigation is impossible. Fog would be enough to screw you over.

Second, most merchants travel well-known routes because... well... the ocean is a big fucking uncharted place. And you have merfolk. Who can swim under water.

Druid 2- wood shape, and suddenly your nice boat has a fucking hole in it 20 feet wide and you sink in 5 minutes. Good luck plugging that hole or posting scouts...

Of course, you do have your crazy shallow-draft privateers and smugglers who dip in and out of the waters of the merfolk- but that's awesome because that's how legends and tall tales spread around. You want that.

And as for why it's the white sea, why even come up with something magical? Why does everything have to be fucking magic? Just say that it's a particularly treacherous body of water where the rollers get to say 40 feet high and the wind is known to veer course suddenly (usually the wind and waves sync up if given enough time) and cut the water up until everything is foam and spindrift and spray.

Also, if it's a sea, it's a body of water significantly encircled by land. Which means that such a community who wants to illicit what you want via trade is going to probably have an "under siege" cultural mentality to it. Patrols of merfolk swimming in the known passages and spies watching ships in the harbors, perhaps it even extends to a total war/Japanese aesthetic where the entire nation is going to be contributing to the "siege" effort- tending coral and sapping ships and poisoning stores and whipping up wind and other ill weather.

A druid casting control weather would probably have the easiest time of it. Oceans are big, but being able to plop down 6 mile wide hurricanes in strategic locations could bring surface shipping to an end pretty quickly. Hell, if you're not worried about war, drop the hurricanes on major harbors.

Shutting down teleportation-based trade would be a lot more difficult.

Most teleportation magic has weight limits. It's one thing to teleport a pile of gems around, and quite another to teleport enough grain to feed a city of a million people.

From the looks of it, Control Water could drop a ship by its entire height, although apparently it wouldn't cause the water to collapse inwards and swamp the vessel at the end of the duration. With proper positioning and maybe combining raise and lower, through, it might be possible to capsize the target. Or just pin it in place while mermen take axes to the waterline.

Lots of creatures have infinite teleports, and one work-hour of teleporting is ~15k pounds. Transporting anything that can be divided into less than 50lb increments through teleport is still really easy.

One weirdstone stops a shitload of teleportation.

If the merfolk can get some permanency scrolls then silent images can probably keep people out easily. It's HAUNTED!

Grek wrote:I imagine that would piss off the merfolk though.

Possibly. More likely they have concentrated areas which send up enough steam to have constant fog and surround their borders, then also have a bunch of fire-resist gear for working near it.

Everywhere else, the water is pleasantly mild, except maybe where they pipe in hot water for comfort. If you're worried about it, set it far north that there are also chunks of ice about, and bonfires suddenly seem like a great idea.