This concept actually came to mind when someone asked for songs pertaining to concepts of “death at sea” and my recommendation of Great Big Sea’s “Safe Upon The Shore” from the album of the same name, about a young girl who pleads with the powers that be to return her lover safely to the shore, only for the sea to answer her by washing his wrecked ship with his lifeless body aboard it upon the rocks. It’s a hauntingly beautiful song, sung a capella by the incomparable Sean McCann, and as I thought about it I realized that it could be the seed of a D&D character.
Serenna was born in a small coastal village and lived a life of relative peace and prosperity. She fell in love with a fisherman’s son at an early age and was to marry him when life had other ideas. A war with the neighboring kingdom saw him and several other young men taken aboard the king’s navy as sailors. Every day she went down to the shore and prayed for his safe return, until the day a king’s messenger showed up with the news that the ship was lost with all hands during a monster attack. Despondent, Serenna ran down to the shore and pleaded with the ocean to return her love to her, crying and screaming at the gods in their indifference until at last she fell asleep. When she woke up, she saw a ship in the distance, floating ever closer. As it got closer, she saw that it was a wreck, but there was a figure on the spar, and with joy she soon recognized that it was her fiancé. She ran out into the waves to meet him, swimming to the wreck.
After tearfully telling him of the message the village received, he confirmed the story. The last thing he remembered was being thrown overboard in a battle and the sensation of drowning. The next thing he knew, he was back aboard the ship as it drifted towards the coast. Serenna didn’t question their fortune and brought him back to his home, got him cleaned up and fed. But over the next few days she noticed some things that were… unnatural. He wouldn’t drink fresh water, instead insisting that she fetch him a bucket of sea water, drinking only from that. Furthermore, he had a persistent cough, hacking up water, even if he hadn’t drank anything. He grew pale, and his hair began to fall out.
And then one night the transformation completed, and he became a lacedon, the same monster that had attacked his ship and threw him overboard, but not before inflicting a wound with their terrible claws. He rampaged through the village, killing dozens before he was finally brought down by several retired soldiers that had made the village their home after they managed to arm themselves. Once again Serenna rushed down to the shore in terror and disbelief at what had happened. And while she screamed at her second loss of her fiancé a voice spoke to her in her mind, but as if it came from deep under the surface of the ocean. It said that her fiancé was already doomed. He had sustained a mortal wound from the ghouls and would have turned into one of them regardless. But the voice said that it had heard her pleas and healed as much of the wound as it could to give her a few more days with him. And in return, it required a task from him, or the rest of the village would be at risk from the rest of the ghouls that followed the shipwreck home. She must go to her fiancé’s body and dig out one of his eyes and bury it in the sands to prevent the rest of them from emerging. She refused and fled away from the village in horror at what she was being asked to do.
When she returned, she found the village destroyed, everyone dead along with the bodies of several other ghouls. Shattered, she returned to the shore and entered the water, intent on drowning herself and joining the rest of the village. But as she went under, and prepared to take a deep breath of water, the voice returned, telling her that she could make up for her mistakes by agreeing to be the voice’s vessel on the surface. And before she knew what was happening, she found herself able to breathe the sea water that she had intended on using to take her life as easily as she could air. The voice promised her that this was just the first of such gifts that it could offer her. Finding no other option, she agreed. When she awoke back on the shore, she found her appearance had changed somewhat. Her complexion had taken on a pale and pallid look and her hair had turned a frost white color. The voice introduced itself as a creature of great power from the distant past, sealed within an ocean prison near the dawn of time. She would use its power to help redeem herself and in exchange make way for its return to the material plane. Thus a bargain was struck, and Serenna, the Drowned One was born.
Ben Erickson
