The Drying

Your ship rests unsteadily atop a thick layer of seabed muck. The sea here has suddenly retreated for miles in all directions.

d4	The sea's retreat may only last...
1	a few hours - until then, the vast pearl beds a few hundred yards off the port bow beckon silently
2	until moon rise... perhaps it's linked to the tides? - about a mile or so off, you spy a large, wrecked galleon
3	for a few days. Your oddly exposed and under-defended position is almost more isolating and claustrophobic without the gently rocking waves - at dawn of the second day, someone notices the sunlight glinting off what looks like a temple about a mile away on the seabed
4	until the gods are appeased via sacrifice, after which the water slowly rises

d6	The prevailing theory on how this is caused is that...
1	the sun on these days is just exceptionally hot, and burns away the sea
2	Sea Druid pirates have been known to part the ocean in search of prey
3	the gradual surfacing of the shell of a massive, miles-wide sea turtle as she comes up for air once every few weeks
4	a great naval engagement once took place here, and the backs of ghostly mariners steeve the water away once a century as they look for comrades lost
5	briny reinforcements being press-ganged for a massive war on the Elemental Plane of Water
6	the World Whale eats but once in a man's lifetime, drawing in most of the ocean and filtering it through his baleen. Anything smaller than a sloop is destined for his gullet (where, supposedly, a thriving Green City dwells, where sailors are treated as kings, and captains forced to work the kelp fields, while the persistent fiddle music that lulls the beast back into fitful slumber permeates the air)

d8	Your predicament is not likely to go unnoticed for long...
1	by the captain, who begins hurling commands to scour the hull smooth of barnacles and biofouling during this unexpected careening
2	by a nearby tribe of spiny lobsterfolk and their primitive coral weapons
3	as merfolk monks meekly approach to swiftly trade
4	when the Reef Trolls spearing dolphins nearby catch your scent
5	as a pirate ship had closed to within a mile of you when the water receded, and now faces the same predicament as you
6	when a flock of Rocs begin to circle overhead, looking for an easy meal
7	by a cloud giant, peering down from his floating castle, who comes to investigate what has happened
8	for your ship has come to rest over the burrow of colorful Giant Mantis Shrimp, sired by a Mantis Shrimp Juggernaut