Ambition is interesting. Voyages on the Zontani Sea from The Merciless Merchants is an ambitious project because it brings two sea based adventures to 5e, Old School Essentials (OSE), and OSRIC. Writing for three systems takes a team and I was interested in learning more about what they’re creating. Fortunately, Malrex was open to answering my questions about the setting and adventures.
EGG EMBRY: Thanks for talking with me. What is Voyages on the Zontani Sea?
MALREX: Hey Egg, thanks for the opportunity! My associates (Merchants) and I are creating a world…slowly..that started in the far north called the Dragonback Mountains and we have several published adventures in that region.
But I was lucky to take a vacation down in Mexico and swam with whale sharks and the experience/area inspired me to create a new region in our world that I called the Zontani Sea. It all started with me thinking about an adventure where the party is swallowed or is able to tame a giant whale shark and use it as a submarine to travel to an underwater location/adventure. I write down all wacky ideas and sometimes they bear fruit, sometimes they don’t. But Voyages on the Zontani Sea is two adventures (with several more in the Stretch Goals) that explores this area on the outskirts of another big adventure I’ve been working on called the City of Vermilion.
EGG EMBRY: This is two adventures and you did one of them. What is yours about?
MALREX: My adventure is called “Ascent of the Leviathan.” There is so much open water out there for sea adventures and I wanted to do something different than an island or an underwater lair type thing—so I decided to bring the dungeon to the PCs. I also wanted the adventure to be suitable for low levels (levels 2-4).
The adventure starts off with pirates…an overwhelming amount of pirates, chasing the PCs across the sea where this huge, monstrous jellyfish suddenly bursts from the depths and breaches all the ships! Now the PCs can attempt to fight their way out of the pirate situation or try to flee, but through negotiations between their captain and the pirates, they are presented with a third way– in that everyone thinks it’s a great idea (except maybe the PCs) to send the PCs inside the jellyfish and find a way to submerge it and free the ships. That’s the main focus of the adventure and there are a few different options to make that happen.
I did a lot of research on jellyfish (the lionfish jellyfish especially) and was amazed that there are creatures that live inside jellyfish and thrive…like crabs that hang out and feed on scraps near the mouth/anus (which is the same thing for a jellyfish—did you know that? Well now you do!). So if creatures live in a jellyfish in real life, why not make it a fantasy ‘dungeon’? I wanted to make it a bizarre, half-submerged ‘dungeon’ with some strange creatures inside, different factions, and of course some interesting treasures from the deep. I also wanted to include some items (some mundane) that clever players could discover and potentially use them against the pirates once they returned to the surface…because who can trust pirates?
EGG EMBRY: Is there new content (monsters, magic items, etc)?
MALREX: Everyone who plays this game, no matter the ruleset, are creative and so I believe it’s a sin to just stick with book items/monsters in our adventures that anyone could pick out of a book. I make it a requirement for myself to ALWAYS have a new monster, or new magic items, or new spells, or new something or combination of all of the above that attempts to enhance the game/hobby that we all know and love. But I also mix in stuff that is familiar too. I have five new monsters in my adventure and several new magic items, including the legendary Golden Skull of Cormadhar, which may offer some interesting/amusing roleplay opportunities as well.
EGG EMBRY: Who did the other adventure, and what’s it about?
MALREX: Jon Bertani or as we all seem to have nicknames—Jonbar, wrote “The Cauldron.” He is actually my current Dungeon Master and friend and has binders and binders of handwritten material for his campaign world, the Dragonback Mountains—which started this whole publishing hobby.
“The Cauldron” is an island adventure that once had a thriving empire that was destroyed by a volcano and the survivors split up due to different religious views and now populate each side of the island. A few adventure hooks are the PCs find a treasure map that leads to one of the old temples on the island (which attracts other treasure hunters to compete with them), or the party is shipwrecked, etc. The focus of the adventure is exploration—of the island, underwater caves/lairs of the island, and the jungles, all while the PCs are in-between two warring villages.
EGG EMBRY: This is a sea-based world. Are you planning a setting book or just the adventures?
MALREX: This is just a sea-based region placed in our world. We did put out a free summarized setting on DriveThruRPG called the Zontani Sea Region Gazette at the same time as our Kickstarter, mainly to help GMs get some sense of the area and they could throw some names of the lands/towns around. I could see us one day putting together a more robust setting guide if there is interest, but we mainly just focus on adventures where GMs can easily place them in their own campaigns.
EGG EMBRY: It’s for 5e, OSE, and OSRIC? Why those three systems?
MALREX: I don’t know why I do it to myself—converting stuff is so boring! But I wrote “Ascent of the Leviathan” awhile back for OSRIC as I think it’s a pretty solid system and wanted to try publishing an adventure for it. We did start off with the For Gold and Glory—a 2e retroclone (Jonbar prefers 2e), but I became attracted to Old School Essentials (OSE)—not necessarily with the rules but its presentation and flexibility. We strive to make our adventures easy to use at the table DURING play and I felt that OSE does the same thing with its layout. So I decided to convert Ascent to OSE. And since OSRIC and OSE are somewhat similar, I just decided to throw them all in the same bag for backers as a OSR package.
Apparently 5e is all the rage. Converting Ascent to 5e is more of an experiment and an attempt to get with the times. On forums, it seems like a lot of people play both OSR type retroclones and 5e so wanted to provide some options. I hired a 5e player to convert Ascent and gave him free reign on changing and/or doing whatever he had to do to make sure it would be a legit 5e adventure. Some magic items were removed, treasure values dropped, etc. Those monster stat blocks are long…But it is an experiment and if there doesn’t seem to be much interest in our 5e material, then we may not continue trying to provide the option.
“The Cauldron” is for OSE only.
EGG EMBRY: Any ship-based rules you’re adding to the product?
MALREX: That’s a great question. I think if we were going to do a full on setting book, we would definitely come up with some ship movement/combat rules. I think there could be a way to make that fun and interesting. But we don’t have any ship-based rules in these adventures, although in Ascent of the Leviathan I did provide some optional underwater fighting/movement/exploration rules that GMs can use or ignore.
EGG EMBRY: Beyond this product, what else are you working on?
MALREX: Oh man, how much time do you got?
After Voyages on the Zontani Sea, we will keep working on Coppercore which is the main human town in the Dragonback Mountains. It’s a bustling town with a lot going on and several adventures around the town. We put each adventure, from 3 pages to 30 pages in length in Appendices and we have gone A-Z so far. We have about five taverns in the town, each with their own rumor tables/adventure hooks that lead them to different Appendices. There is a storyline that can be followed or ignored as we usually follow a sandbox approach, and all the Appendices are modular so GMs can use what they like, ignore what they don’t like, and PCs can go wherever they fancy.
The City of Vermilion needs to be finished! It’s set up similar to Coppercore, except its on the Zontani Sea and its a busy city. It was my first Kickstarter attempt that failed (although it came super close), so its a bit of a pet project for me. I decided to expand it and its a city with a chaotic mess going on. As a GM, running a city adventure always terrified me—with all the NPCS, and things happening—so I wanted to create a city that was easy to run and allowed PCs to go and do whatever they wanted, and I’d still be prepared! Numerous rumors, options, situations, hooks—those become the ‘walls’ of this city adventure as PCs will need to focus on what they want to do and ignore all the ‘noise’ or they will never get anything complete, but may still have fun in the process..heh.
I plan to work with PrinceofNothing on some more of his Age of Dusk adventures. Our first published adventure in that setting is the Palace of Unquiet Repose. He is working on the Vault of Oblivion and has several other adventures in mind. Just a quick shout out—he also ran a No Art-Punk Contest recently that focused on book items/monsters and we are going to combine the top winning adventures and publish them soon to DrivethruRPG with all proceeds going to the Autism Research Institute—in fact, I may put this together in the next few weeks.
I’ll be helping Grützi, another Merchant, with some of his adventure ideas as well. He has a great imagination and a bunch of material that’s half finished. Really hoping our first stretch goal is reached in our current Kickstarter so that people can experience his “Shell of Telvion” adventure which is a bit different and more bizarre than our usual adventures. One way or another, it will see the light of day.
Finally, I have 3-5 other adventures I’m working on that are 50-80% done, one being a Part 2 to “Tar Pits of the Bone Toilers” called “The Marrow Ravine.” We also may try to submit something for Zinequest in February. But, I’ll be taking a hiatus after Voyages on the Zontani Sea near April as I plan to hike all of the Pacific Crest Trail for 5 months or so. I do plan to carry a waterproof book of graph paper and pencils—coming up with maps and new adventures will be my entertainment along the trail and worth the weight to me.
EGG EMBRY: I hope you enjoy the hike! Thanks for talking with me. Where can fans learn more about your work?
MALREX: Thanks for being brave and giving me the opportunity—I’ve been known to be long-winded (none of the other Merchants like or appreciate my long, glorious emails). People who are curious can check out our website. They are also always welcome to ask me questions anytime on our email.
Thanks again Egg, may you roll a 20!
Voyages on the Zontani Sea from The Merciless Merchants
End Date: Fri, December 3 2021 9:30 PM EST.
“Voyages on the Zontani Sea–two adventures based on the Zontani Sea near the City of Vermilion. For 5e, OSE, and OSRIC.”
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