Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finder’s Archives.
In this column, we take some of the lands from Magic: The Gathering and turn them into something you can use for your fantasy games.
The stats given in each entry assumes that you’re using Pathfinder or 5e for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. Today we take a deep breath and dive into the waters near the Coral Atoll!
Coral Atoll
The Coral Atoll is a beautiful area, but also a dangerous one. While the reefs around here are covered in corals, they are able to change their color. When it is dark, they’re all the colors of the rainbow, a beautiful display of the colors of nature, but during the day, when they’re subjected to sunlight, they assume the same color as the water that they grow in, but without being transparent. Unfortunately, this masks the dangerous jagged reefs that they cover, which stretch from about 10 feet below the surface to some 300 feet down. Underneath these beautiful corals are sharp and strong rock formations. These are more than capable of ripping through even armored hulls and are greatly feared by the sailors who ply these waters.
As a result of this natural camouflage, numerous ships have sunk here, and their wrecks cover the bottom of the ocean, often bedecked in the very corals that caused them to sink in the first place. The area is also home to a number of predatory creatures, especially sharks (5e / PF2) and reefclaws (PF2) who voraciously devour the unlucky sailors that meet their end here.
Lay of the Land
The Coral Atoll starts at about 10 feet below the water’s surface before eventually dying out some 300 feet down. Within those feet are an incredibly diverse area of beauty and danger. The flora consists mostly of anemones that are hidden further down in the darker depths, as well as plankton. The reefs themselves are strong stone covered with living corals that give the area its name and dangerous reputation.
Around the area swim numerous small fish, often with a similar color-changing property to the reef itself, as if something nearby is infusing the area with this strange property. Like the corals, the fish change color during the night and become bright vibrant colors, in many cases neon bright and emanating their own light.
The area is littered with shipwrecks, ships that have run aground at some point, and then, during the frequent storms that batter the seas, blown and torn off the higher peaks of the corals, to break apart and sink into the depths below. Most are fishing vessels, but a few are war vessels that have survived beneath the waters for hundreds of years, and at least one ship was carrying a great treasure before it sank. No one knows which ship this is, but rumors persist that the ship was carrying either tribute or payroll for the country’s armies when it sank. Occasionally coins are washed up on nearby shores, and another treasure hunt is on.
Dangers
Sharks and reefclaws are the most common threat found here, but they are not the only ones. The area is occasionally scoured by a nearby sahuagin tribe in the hopes of finding victims or valuables (especially just after a storm), but more worryingly is the fact that the coral atoll is home to at least one small family of giants though no one knows what kind of giants they are. Most believe that they’re a particularly reclusive band of storm giants, but there are rumors of marsh giants and ocean giants.
Regrettably, all of these are wrong. What lives here are a corrupted group of giants, who, in a similar manner to deep ones, have interbred with ichthyoid creatures which have left them in a disfigured and horrible state. They’ve yet to connect with any deep one groups on land, but if they do, they would serve as formidable shock troops or leaders for such a group, and pose a significant threat to any society situated near water.
See you back next time. 😊
Kim Frandsen
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