Vanessa Laurant

The Judas Sea’s most powerful villain is Vanessa Laurant, a pirate captain who serves a primordial abomination. 

Vanessa Laurant 

Vanessa Laurant is the most dreaded pirate captains operating on the Judas Sea. Captain Laurant is justly feared; not only is she a vicious combatant with a reputation for relentless and remorseless bloodshed, it is also well-known that her command of voodoo is without equal—fully half of the crew of her ship, the Dawnrazor, are zombie sailors under her control. 

Vanessa Laurant is not content with her role as the Pirate Queen of the Judas Sea. Theft upon the high seas enables her true calling—she searches for the whereabouts of a fabled weapon known as the Brineblade: a legendary blade empowered by Scylla, the monstrous Lady of the Drowned. Once the Brineblade is in her hand, Vanessa Laurant plans on waging an even more vicious war of terror against the sailors, fishermen, and merchants who rely upon the sea for their livelihoods as a way of offering Scylla a rich banquet of fear to feast upon. 

    • Appearance: Horrific scars crisscross her face and body, though her long red hair is strikingly beautiful. 

    • Personality: She relishes causing terror.

    • Motive: She wants rule the seas in Scylla’s name.

    • Flaw: She cannot get over a grudge or perceived slight.

The Trilobite and Vodyani Isle

Two final adventure locations on the Judas Sea. The Trilobite adds a mobile location and a different spin on "mad scientist" and "fearsome captain" as found elsewhere in the setting. Vodyani Isle is a seafaring take on Stephen King's "Children of the Corn"--the potential for a little island folk horror, if you will.

The Trilobite

Crewed by hardened revolutionaries liberated from oppression, the Trilobite is a submarine that serves as the ambulatory fortress from which Captain Jaivati Drakkar wages war against tyranny.  

    • Born to noble a family in a distant southern land and educated at Creedhall University, Jaivati Drakkar’s genius for science, engineering, and artificer magic led her to create a submersible vehicle bristling with weaponry. 

    • Horrified at the conflict that tears her homeland apart, Jaivati has devoted herself to fighting autocrats who abuse their power—she seeks to free the people of Krevborna from cruel despots and tyrannical rulers. 

    • In the heat of the moment, however, Jaivati cannot resist succumbing to her own authoritarian urges. 

    • Jaivati's nights are haunted by regret over the violence she has perpetrated in the name of liberation.

Vodyani Isle

Vodyani is a little-known jungle island surrounded by a razor-sharp, treacherous coral reef.

    • Vodyani is inhabited by a tribe of feral children and teenagers—visitors will be surprised to learn that no one over the age of eighteen lives on the island.

    • Indeed, when one of Vodyani’s islanders reaches their eighteenth birthday they are taken down to the reefs at midnight and left as a sacrifice for “the Hungry Ones.”

    • The Hungry Ones are rusalkas who devour the sacrifices brought to them by the youths of Vodyani alive.

    • Any strangers who happen upon Vodyani are also captured and offered to the Hungry Ones.

    • In return for the human flesh they crave, the Hungry Ones leave fresh fish on the beaches of Vodyani to keep the children of the isle fed and healthy—so that they might live long enough to reach their eighteenth birthdays, of course.

Skalloche Isle and Thornlight

Two more adventure locations on the Judas Sea! Skalloche Isle is as yet unexplored in any of my campaigns, but it might be fun to run a mini-game in which the players all take on the roles of Skalloche's raiders. Thornlight, on the other hand, is the location of one of the best adventures I've ever written. I think I've used it in three different campaigns so far.

Skalloche Isle

Skalloche Isle is a snowy, mountainous island in the northern waters of the Judas Sea. 

    • The island is home to merciless barbarians who set sail in dragon-prowed long ships to engage in piracy and raid Krevborna’s coastal settlements.

    • Skalloche Isle is also inhabited by a groups of outcasts, the Corvidians, who have been warped by supernatural forces.

    • The corvidians—crow-like birdfolk—are the descendants of humans who were cursed by the Word and the Light due to their heretical beliefs; they live within ruined cathedrals that they jealously guard against outsiders.

    • The island’s corvidians adopted the folk saint Vionka as their savior long ago.

Thornlight

Thornlight is a supposedly abandoned lighthouse standing on a lonesome island near Piskaro. 

    • Only the pirates contracted to supply the lighthouse’s owner, Doctor Hesselius Reichman, with foodstuffs and the “raw materials” he puts to macabre purpose in his laboratory visit the island and leave safely. 

    • Doctor Reichman uses the lighthouse’s beacon to trick ships into dashing themselves on the rocky shore; anyone who washes up alive on the island’s beach is used in his disturbing experiments.

    • Reichman experiments with vivisection and artificer magic, following notes left behind by Doctor Moreau, to create tortured hybrids of man and beast. 

    • Reichman uses the threat of pain and dismemberment to keep his creations subservient and docile.  

    • Although Reichman is clearly mad, his research has a tragic purpose—he hopes to find a technological or magical innovation that will allow him to restore his comatose wife to consciousness.

    • Until Reichman can find a cure for her condition, his wife Rebecca is kept alive by magical machinery of his own invention inside a glass coffin. 

Fathom's Reach and Flotsam

Two more adventure locations on the Judas Sea in Krevborna! The first one, Fathom's Reach, was invented as a location the characters visited in my previous Krevborna campaign. Flotsam, on the other hand, was inspired by the (criminally underused) Saragoss from the Ravenloft setting and the floating city of Armada from China Mieville's novel The Scar.

Fathom’s Reach

Though its presence is unknown to most, Fathom’s Reach is an accursed city lurking beneath the waves of the Judas Sea.

    • Fathom’s Reach is an undersea city whose buildings are made of a strange, greasy black stone. 

    • The black stone used in its construction leeches an inky miasma into the water surrounding Fathom’s Reach that obscures it from view.

    • Fathom’s Reach is inhabited by fish-like greshnik who were once human.

    • The first residents of Fathom’s Reach made a compact with Scylla, a primordial creature of the depths, in order to survive a terrible shipwreck; as part of their pact, they were transformed into their current degenerate, amphibious forms.

    • The greshnik of Fathom’s Reach continue to worship Scylla as their patron “goddess.”

Flotsam

Flotsam is an unnatural island east of Piskaro comprised of an amalgamation of seaweed, wrecked ships, the bones of the drowned, broken chunks of coral reef, and other bits of ocean-borne detritus. 

    • Flotsam's nutrient rich soil, made fertile by the rot of the island’s accumulation of refuse and debris, births a verdant jungle spreading over much of the island. 

    • Some claim that the overgrown jungles of the island’s interior are vaster than its spatial boundaries should allow for and that ruins belonging to ancient civilizations are hidden within them.

    • The isle serves as a neutral meeting ground for Piskaro’s pirate captains.

    • Many believe that a number of legendary pirate captains buried their treasure on Flotsam; maps purporting to lead to their hoards sometimes surface, but thus far all who have flowed their paths have failed to return.

    • Captain Laurant maintains a plantation farm on Flotsam, but its location is a closely guarded secret; the plantation is worked by zombie laborers under Vanessa Laurant’s control.

Abrigor's Triangle and The Annalise

Two adventure locations in Krevborna's Judas Sea.

Abrigor’s Triangle

Abrigor’s Triangle is an expanse of the Judas Sea regarded as its most dangerous and mysterious region.

    • An unusually high number of ships disappear without explanation in Abrigor’s Triangle.

    • Superstitious sailors attribute the treachery of the triangle to numerous causes: a demon named Abrigor who pulls ships to the bottom of the sea, magnetic and temporal anomalies that render traditional navigation methods useless, or a preponderance of sea serpents and krakens.

    • Many vessels that travel to or from Krevborna via the Judas Sea go out of their way to avoid Abrigor’s Triangle, even though it lengthens their voyages to skirt its edges.

The Annalise

The Annalise is an infamous ghost ship crewed by the undead that prowls the Judas Sea.

    • Legend has it that the Annalise was a pirate ship captained by a greedy cutthroat, now known only as the Phantom Mariner, who betrayed a coterie of buccaneer captains he was partnered with.

    • He absconded with the ill-gotten wealth meant to be split between them, leaving them to be captured and executed at the hands of privateers. 

    • The gold and jewels the captain hoarded did not serve him well; when a sudden storm cast its net over the sea, the Annalise was too heavily laden to maneuver to safety.

    • The Annalise sank with all hands on board dying amid the thrashing waves. 

    • However, during storms at sea, the Annalise is spotted cutting a ghostly path through rough waters; bathed in ghastly green light and crewed by the barnacle-encrusted dead, the Annalise attacks other vessels who stray into its path. 

    • The accursed captain of the Annalise is compelled to add to the wealth that doomed him to a watery grave.

The Judas Sea

The sea off Krevborna's coast only got a cursory mention in the first edition of the setting book, so I'm aiming to change that with the forthcoming revised edition. Here's the starting point for what's going on with...

The Judas Sea

The Terrifying Ocean and Its Hidden Monstrosities

The waters of the Judas Sea are often rough and choppy, and the weather at sea is frequently temperamental. Vicious storms arise without warning and heavy fogs can obscure Krevborna’s coastline. The conditions conspire to make travel by sea to other lands perilous; few can boast of seeing foreign shores.

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define the Judas Sea:

    • The storms that fall on the Judas Sea are tempestuous and unrelenting. 

    • Reports of spectral ships and undead mariners abound.

    • The waters of the Judas Sea teem with monsters such as sea serpents, krakens, and horrible hybrids of man and crab.

    • Sailors mourn their compatriots who were lured into the depths by mermaids and sirens.

    • Legends speak of a city within the sea that is populated by once-human abominations.