The Sirens of the Open Ocean

 

This post is dedicated to the lovely PRIME. 

Out in the western islands around the Lantern Berth there are many stories of the strange beings and monsters that make their homes in the dreaming, sun-drowned seas of the Barony. Some of these are not really stories at all - the raider 'salt drinkers' that plague the sea caves and sand bars of the outer islands are very real, and kill and eat lone travellers and isolated families from time to time, and the monsters and great serpents hunted by the whalers of the Lantern Berth are infamous across the world.

But others are myths and stories, something like dreams themselves, and the Islanders keep on their secret face when land-dwellers ask after them. The fierce and terrible Sea People who live in silver towers and hold court with sailors who stray too far, and can never return to waking shores; the millions of drowned children who attend to the King of the Isles; fragments and echoes. 

None of these stories are as important to the culture and history of the Islanders as the sirens that live in the open ocean. 

In appearance they are human-ish, but very large - most around four metres long - and fat with insulating blubber. Their fingers and toes are long and webbed, and their bodies are covered in downy hair. Their eyes are very large, protected by translucent films, and in the darkness of the deep water the pupils dilate across nearly the whole of the surface. They are a good omen for a sailor, and harming or, god forbid, killing one, brings down the most terrible curses.

Sirens are also fickle, like the sea is fickle, and beautiful and strange, and dangerous, like the sea is dangerous. Their skin takes on the colours of the water they swim in; they reflect the moods of the oceans.

Sirens are intelligent, and some of them - those who spend their time close to the shores and enjoy the company of sailors - can speak, in pleasant whistling voices. Their temperaments tend towards curiosity, coquetry, flirtation, and humour, but when enraged or fey and high-handed they can be as terrible as any serpent. Whether or not they can communicate with language, all of them sing. 

Many are the stories of sailors who choose to follow those songs out into the west, to fates uncertain. 

Siren of the Open Ocean

HD4, unarmed attack as medium weapon + bite as heavy weapon, can also ram or breach against a boat as a gigantic weapon (against the boat) which always hits, and which deals d4 damage to the Siren, blubber and tough hide protect as leather, see also: Siren Song and A Bottomless Curse, A Bottomless Sea, movement: swims about as fast as a dolphin, which is about 5 times as fast as a human in the water. On land they are ungainly, like a seal: half human speed. Disposition: see moods of the ocean, below. Will always disengage when wounded, and never fight to the death. Fears whalers' harpoons attached to floats, and if threatened will target carriers of these weapons preferentially. 

Siren Song: a siren's song is beautiful, even when it is terrible. You must save CHAR every time you wish to attack a siren: on a failure the attack is wasted. 

A Bottomless Curse, a Bottomless Sea: one of the first laws of the sea: don't hurt sirens, and definitely, definitely don't kill them if you can avoid it. Every adventurer knows this. Those that do kill a siren are cursed forever: all monsters of the sea will target you preferentially for the rest of your life. 

Moods of the Ocean: instead of rolling reaction on encountering sirens, your DM will note the current state of the ocean. Note that you don't roll for this, it is dependant on the weather and time of day in the game world, and as such, a sailor with experience will be able to accurately predict the mood of any approaching sirens. The colour records both the sea itself, and the skin of the siren or sirens. Note also that angering or attacking a siren can shift its skin colour as it becomes angry, frightened, or vengeful - this will change the mood of the ocean around it. 

• Bronze-Green: the mood of the sea on a fine day, in good sun. Perhaps a wind and sometimes calm and dreamy. Happy, chirping, playful, inquisitive. No additional effects.
• Burnished-Lightning-White: the highest sun, the water iridescent, both extraordinarily clear, and with a surface that holds so much glare that it blinds you. Tranquil, unmoving, watchful, aloof. Will not speak even if able to. To the Islanders, this is their most beautiful and painful aspect. A hot, aching clarity. If you are accompanied by Islanders in your boats, any who do not blind themselves with rags and similar will test CHAR with advantage, or dive into the ocean and never be seen again. Their song in this aspect deals one fear damage per minute, or per round if combat is joined.
• Blodsombre: the Islander name for the periods in the morning and evening when the sun rises and sets crimson, and the sea turns a rich blood-red. The aspect in which the sirens become most interested in humans, and often also when they will choose them for husbands and wives. Their voices and songs are brash and trumpeting, and those that they choose will be given the choice of joining their new spouses, and harshly mocked, insulated, and cursed (just verbally, no magical cursing here) if they refuse. Sailors who marry sirens usually disappear, but not always. Those who return sometimes do so with children, more on which below. The songs of the sirens in Blodsombre are proud and warlike, but possess no specific special effect. 
• Grey-Hard-Clear: a sea of storms and chopping winds, of scudding clouds and a sky like slate. A serious, brooding aspect, during which sirens often will not approach ships at all. If they do they will be mercurial and brief with their words, and also easy to anger and quick to violence. The songs of the grey sirens deal one fear damage per minute, or per round if combat is joined.
• Skies-Like-Dreams: purple, but also pink, orange, green, phosphorescence. Time seems to slow and stretch, and certainties collapse. Purple sirens are on their way back to dream, and they will allow you to follow them if you wish to. They will say nothing, but form up around your ship as you sail out of the world forever, chasing the purple-orange sky and the sun at the western horizon. Those who hear the siren's songs in this aspect must save CON per hour, or fall asleep, which will take them out of the dream. If your captain (or someone else steering the ship) can make five of these saves in a row, you arrive in the western archipelagoes of dream - for each success, the consequences of an eventual failure will be more dire (ie passing two saves before you fall out of the dream might leave you off course but in familiar trade winds, failing four will leave you in unknown seas, becalmed, and soon to die). Sirens in the dream shift under the gaze; they seem even bigger than normal, impossibly big beneath the ship. Their black eyes are kind and terrible and their smiling, shark-toothed mouths are heavy with mirth and hunger.
• Black-Killing-Storm: the terror aspect, when the sea rages and tears at the boats, and when the sirens hunt men like prey, and laugh and sing their terrible war songs and laments for the world that was. Sirens in the black aspect will attack on sight, grinning and laughing terribly, playing with their kills, tearing men to pieces. The cannot be reasoned with like this and, uniquely, will not flee when wounded. Their songs deals d6 fear damage per minute, or per turn in combat.
• Moon-Bright: when the silver light of the moon falls on the waves and makes the sea strange and otherworldly. Joking and flirtatious, especially fond of blue-balling sailors and other amorous tortures. Many, many bawdy Islander tales and songs about the wonderful agonies of the Moon-Bright watch. No additional effect.
• Lightless-Midnight: No moon, or clouds over the sky. An oddly horrible aspect - not immediately violent or attacking, but bullying, frightening, insulting, belligerent. Like the sea serpents, sirens of the lightless midnight will call horrible things to sailors from out of the blackness, and seem to somehow know your secrets and insecurities. They are not usually seen this way, but when they are they are reputed to move like depthless shadows, black shapes cut away from the usual stuff of the world. Their songs deal d3 fear damage per minute, or per round if combat is joined. Islanders do not sail on moonless nights unless they truly have no other choice.      

Marriage and Progeny

Some sailors are known marry sirens, and these marriages are rarely happy. Usually they are taken beneath the waves to fates obscure, but sometimes they return, pregnant or carrying children birthed at sea. 

These babies are human, but possess a specific set of physical features by which the Islanders know them: large eyes widely spaced on the face, a heavyset frame and great height, a preference for meat, and a tendency to put on fat easily. Many in the harpooner cult have the so-called 'sea face' (or 'bastard face' if you're feeling unkind, since the sailors who return with children are assumed to have divorced or run from their siren wives and husbands), but you will see these people everywhere in the islands. No particular special rules attached. 

   

Disaster at Sea, JMW Turner, 1835