HUNTING GROUND OF PIRATE LORDS AND SEA MONSTERS
Temperature: Tropical waters
Hazards: Dangerous creatures, piracy, storms
Resources: Ruins, trade
The most notorious of all Golarion’s waterways, the Fever Sea is home to vicious pirates, ancient ruins, and the constantly churning Eye of Abendego.
Sea Characteristics
The Fever Sea is as warm as its name implies, with tropical waters fanning out from the shoreline in clear bands of green, teal, and aquamarine. The Eye of Abendego, the enormous hurricane that never ceases to spin, dominates the northern Fever Sea. The storm is so large and so fierce that it destroys nearly any ship daring to reach its center. The fringes of the Eye of Abendego are safer, though only marginally so. Between the howling winds, the unceasing rain, the rogue waterspouts, and the frequent lightning strikes, it’s a wonder that even experienced captains make it safely through just the hurricane’s fringe.
The constant storm leaves only a narrow passage east of it through which ships can travel farther south. Thunderstorms and lightning storms continue to plague the southern waters, and crews must remain wary even when the Eye of Abendego is behind them. These storms on the Fever Sea often make landfall, tearing trees off the coastline and flooding settlements.
Weather patterns are notoriously unpredictable on the Fever Sea, a result of the ever-swirling Eye of Abendego’s effect on the winds and waves. Storms can last for weeks with driving rains strong enough to tear sails apart. Water spouts spring up from otherwise still waters without warning. Those who must travel across the Fever Sea do so with all haste, while those who live on the waters relish their unpredictability.
Pirates who work their trade on these waters have learned to read these chaotic weather patterns enough to use them to their advantage in raids or when fighting against other ships on the churning seas. Some of the most experienced sailors risk their lives and the plunder in their holds to sail along the edge of the storm for safety from other ships that might prey upon them, or to escape authorities that want to sink them in the depths of the Fever Sea.
Sea Denizens
The Fever Sea is a haven for all manner of despicable pirates and desperate smugglers. The pirate city of Port Peril stands on the edge of the sea, ruled by the Hurricane King Kerdak Bonefist. Fleets of notorious pirate ships sail boldly through the storming waters to the north, raiding Chelish trade ships and returning to port loaded with cargo. Cheliax would dearly love to quash piracy in the Fever Sea once and for all, but the Eye of Abendego protects the Shackles too well.
Tropical fish crowd the waters of the Fever Sea, though a zone of surface water around the Eye of Abendego is devoid of timid creatures, as the churning waters are too strong for them to live within. While colorful fish, dolphins, sharks, and small whales are common in the Fever Sea, the waters also house much more dangerous beasts. The fishing industry has been challenged in the Fever Sea ever since the hurricane sprang to life, the waters now too chaotic and too full of predators to support organized fishing guilds.
Devilfish are a plague within these waters. These seven-armed, cephalopod monsters are just smart enough to be dangerous, and their hunger is insatiable. They prey on smaller sea creatures but also sneak aboard ships, in the night or during storms, to drag victims overboard. A sage in Port Peril, the eccentric Kessia Timesis (CN female human wizard 10), is convinced that an enormous “king devilfish” lives in the Fever Sea, as big as a kraken with boiling-hot blood. She’s offered a substantial bounty to anyone who can bring her the king devilfish’s hearts.
The hundreds of uncharted islands dotting the Fever Sea hold their own threats. Cannibals from lost civilizations prey on explorers, offering their victims’ bones on altars of ancient Ghol-Gan. Carnivorous plants have adapted to live in the water, spreading from island shores into seemingly peaceful coves and beyond. Sargassum fiends devour swimmers, and beautiful underwater flowers wrap thorny vines around the limbs of their prey.
Water elementals are unusually common in the Fever Sea as well. Some sages theorize that the Eye of Abendego has a tie to Gozreh, god of sea and storms, and that water elementals are somehow generated from the storm itself. The water elementals seem unconcerned with aquatic life, including aquatic humanoid settlements, but act aggressively toward land dwellers who dare to descend beneath the waves.
The fiercest creatures in the Fever Sea are the notorious krakens, behemoth monsters capable of tearing ships in half with their tentacles. There are as many legends about the kraken as the beast has tentacles. A popular tale is that a kraken is the agent of a god, or something like a god, and shatters ships at its patron’s will. Some sailors scoff at these tales, claiming the kraken is nothing more than a mindless beast. But its power is too immense to deny; none treat the creature lightly or boast of having spotted it.
Aquatic humanoid colonies are common in the calmer waters of the Fever Sea. On the seafloor, creatures are protected from the fury of rain and storms. Sahuagin, the vicious scourge of the waters, live in great numbers here. The common predatory sahuagin can live in small, nomadic groups of a dozen or so, or in great cities with hundreds of citizens. Sailors tell of four-armed sahuagin twice the size of their common brethren, spiny sahuagin that resemble humanoid pufferfish, and other variations. And where there are sahuagin, there are sharks, from the small but vicious jigsaw shark to the monstrously deadly great white shark.
Tritons also live in the Fever Sea in small but well-defended communities. Tritons care little for land dwellers and keep away from the surface where passing ships might spot them. Tritons consider themselves defenders of the sea and battle against evil creatures such as sahuagin, but their greatest enemies are krakens. Tritons despise krakens, considering them living manifestations of blight, and use enchanted weapons and practiced strategies to destroy the beasts when they discover them.
The Unremitting
Stories of ghost ships fill the taprooms of every tavern and public house on the coast of the Fever Sea. Sailors relish telling their favorite tales over a mug of ale to a half-frightened, half-skeptical crowd. These tales usually change from speaker to speaker, and from port to port, but one story remains constant no matter where or by whom it’s told: the tale of the Unremitting.
The tale begins in 4651 ar. The frigate Unremitting departed from Andoran under the command of Captain Doryn Silverhull, with a mission to hunt down pirates on the Fever Sea. Silverhull’s crew comprised the finest sailors in the Andoren navy. While the ship was to sink or capture any pirate ship it could, Silverhull was under special orders to track down the wicked Captain Landia Draketooth, a pirate who had plagued Andoran’s waters for too long before fleeing to the Fever Sea.
For months, the Unremitting succeeded splendidly at its task. Eight pirate ships fell to the courage and skill of Silverhull and his crew. The frigate was due to return to port when Silverhull heard that Captain Draketooth had been spotted in western waters. Ignoring his orders, Silverhull turned the Unremitting west, determined to put an end to Draketooth.
This was to be the final engagement of the Unremitting. Draketooth was ready for the privateers and had hidden allied ships in the fringe of the Eye of Abendego. When Silverhull attacked, Draketooth summoned her allies and destroyed the frigate. She took no prisoners, and when the crew was subdued or dead, she set the Unremitting alight and watched it burn to the waterline. Shamed by his failure and consumed with a desire for revenge, Silverhull rose from the dead. He and his crew continue to sail on the black, burned hull of the Unremitting through fog-covered waters in the dead of night. The Unremitting only sails at night near the birth of the new moon, its ghostly crew searching for pirate ships to board and enemies to slaughter.
Trade ships and privateers are not safe from the Unremitting, for the long-dead crew has trouble differentiating friend from foe. Those who find a way to make peace with Captain Silverhull can barter for passage aboard the Unremitting. The Captain cares only for the blood of pirates, accepting no coin or gem in trade. If his thirst for pirate blood is sated, he will carry his passengers to any shore they wish in a single night. Legend tells that the Unremitting can even sail beyond the boundaries of the world, into other times and places, or even to the realms of the gods themselves.
Treasures of the Deep
Pirates whisper tales of a sunken temple hidden in the Fever Sea hundreds of miles southwest of Mediogalti Island, a slime-coated labyrinth many stories deep into the sea floor. The dark green stone of the temple ripples and shudders as if alive, and the sight of its guardians is enough to send most trespassers fleeing. The stories tell of drowned pirates with tentacles writhing from their eye sockets, warriors with the torsos of humans and the lower bodies of bone-white sharks, and bubbling pools of filthy, sentient slime.
Some claim the temple is sacred to Gozreh, others to Besmara or Dagon, but all tales agree that the first to fight through to the lowest chamber of the temple can claim the fabled writhing crown. Anyone who wears this sickly green crown with its constantly writhing stone tentacles can summon and command a kraken at will. Suckers adorn the writhing crown, affixing it to the head of whoever dons the evil item—and once the writhing crown attaches to its owner, only death can remove it. It is said that after its wearer is slain, the crown somehow finds its way back to the temple.
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