Skip to content

Strange musings from a distant shore.
On the Claret Sea
  • Home
  • Claret Sea RPG
  • Seaside Sketches
  • The Red Goddess

Author: Ellie

Ellie began creating online games as a middle schooler. She has been a full-time professional game developer since 2006.

Traveler’s Humility

November 10, 2022 Ellie
Traveler's Humility

Focusing the project.

The Claret Sea is big, about the size of the Mediterranean. That’s way too big to detail in a small booklet even if the entire thing was dedicated to setting info. To help bring things into a reasonable scope I will be focusing this book on a single area of a single city. My adventure will take place almost entirely on a small island that recently emerged from the Claret Sea, in the bay of the “City of a Thousand Flowers”.

It is particularly important to me when designing this adventure module to have everything tightly contained. It’s so easy to get lost in the weeds with setting details and for me personally, I am worried about creating a sprawling map and getting overwhelmed. The small town or outpost is a pretty standard local for these sorts of games but they tend to bring to mind a sort of rural peasantry that I don’t want my setting to have.

My compromise is to use the city docks as the adventuring hub, with all the action taking place on an island.

The Island

“Traveler’s Humility” is an island that was formed a few days ago when Dingir-Utu, champion of the “City of a Thousand Flowers” defeated the Dingir(demi-god) of the renowned caravan company “Travels by Great Measure.” Using the magic pumped into him by the city’s religious caste, Utu raised an island from the sea floor to create a tidal wave, that pummeled his rival into a red smear on the rocks. The resulting island lifted up a pre-cataclysm chunk of the old city, and not just any chunk, one of the ancient palace complexes.

It is now sitting exposed for the first time in hundreds of years and the race is on to claim the riches inside.

Theme Workshop

I guess it is worth thinking about what I want out of this setting and how this module can support that. It’s important to me that this setting has something worth saying at the core of it. My legitimate worry is figuring out how to strike the right balance. I want to write about my feelings of erasure. How my experience as a queer woman, with an invisible disability, living in the exploitative culture of the United States, has made me feel. How I think a lot of people feel right now.

It’s hard for me even to articulate what I want this setting to say, never mind figuring out how to say it in a way that doesn’t become a crass caricature of people’s lived experiences. I fundamentally don’t want to write something that pounds the table screaming “look how bad this is.” I want to talk about how this life chips away at our soulful selves and so often leaves hollow people.

At the end of the day though this is still a game. It has to be gameable and enjoyable. I am pretty sure I am not going to fit these themes into this first module. The scope is too big and the adventure too small. That said I do want to start seeding these ideas into the module through iconography and what world-building I can fit in.

Posted in Claret Sea RPGTagged RPG stuff comment on Traveler’s Humility

Let’s go!

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 Ellie

Fuck it, I’m doing it let’s go!

On The Claret Sea is a setting I started developing along with my partner Kalin back in 2019. I’ve gone in circles for years trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it. A combination of health issues and work obligations has dragged things out far too long. Now I have decided that poorly started is better than not starting at all.

My goal with this project is to create a “zine-sized” adventure module in an OSR style. Probably compatible with OSE and B/X D&D but I am not committed to anything just yet.

My Motivations

I started creating online games back when I was in middle school. I’ve been a full-time professional game developer since 2006, but always in the online sphere. In 2010 I played my first TTRPG, and in 2018 I started working for a sizable TTRPG publisher learning a bit about the business side and doing some writing for TTRPGs. I found I really enjoy the physicality that comes with creating offline games.

Now I am looking to make my first published physical product from start to finish so I can add that to my game design repertoire.

What is the Claret Sea?

The Claret Sea is a massive freshwater sea, created by a magical calamity. The waters are red because of the high iron content and a pervasive red-form algae that blooms frequently in the warm shallows waters. Or maybe it is red because it was created when the moon goddess was violently ripped out of the sky and her blood stained the water forever. Both are probably true.

The Claret Sea is a place where I work through my feelings about my personal identity as a queer woman. It’s where I explore how my passion for ancient civilizations and religions, intersects with my own religious exploration. It’s full of sex, and drugs, and priestesses, and pirates. (The ancient kind, not the kind with the exaggerated English accent. ) So heads up that it might not be a setting you will enjoy. But hey, if you also like sword and sorcery with feminist learnings, and don’t mind art with nudity, I hope you follow along while I create my first adventure set “On the Claret Sea”.

Posted in Claret Sea RPGTagged RPG stuff comment on Let’s go!

Transforming Fire

August 8, 2022August 8, 2022 Ellie

Who is this dark mother? Great mother. Birth and destruction. She is the great wheel of time. Before the waters were parted and before the land rose, she was the void before creation and she will be long after all is dark again. She is the blackness of death. Terrible to behold. She is ambition, improvement, and the great karmic breaker. She severs false awareness and laps the blood to prevent it from spreading, from contaminating. She is the difficult path with the fullest rewards.

Demon of distraction, false ego, and faltering worth came for me. They ravished me, made me weak, made my mind a maelstrom and drove from me my divine connection. I was possessed by a crow demon who made my head swivel until I could not stomach it and demanded such vanity that I crumbled under my own self-obsession.

Oh, dark mistress, I submit myself to you. I lay down to be mounted, to be made humble. Great dancer, set right the rhythms of my life and order the beating of my heart. With gasping breath and bruising effort, I come to know your wisdom. Ring your ankle bells and bangles. Clatter your skirt of pearls and bones. Pound the drum of battle and drive these demons from me.

So tempting are these demons. Such fine spangles and foil wrappers do they offer. What they offer is paltry trade for the enlightened lessons of my Goddess. Her way is pain. Her way is transforming fire. Her way is the walk of creation, the pruning of what does not serve to better stimulate the holy way within.

She will dance upon me and burn away that which is rot. By her fire, I am made in her image.

Posted in The Red GoddessTagged devotionals comment on Transforming Fire

Little Twisted Thing

July 19, 2022November 7, 2022 Ellie

The next day he returned prepared. He had some dried fish and a rind of cheese. “I brought you some food.” He beckoned the creature forward with the smelly morsel of fish. It hunkered down stubbornly.

“I’ll right then, I’ll eat it.” He lowered his bulky body down onto the bank, easing it awkwardly into the long grass. The day was warm but dampness persevered in the lower layers of the foliage, making the whole experience just a bit sticky and unpleasant. The man casually took a nibble of the fish before tossing the rest of the chunk into the entranceway of the barrow.

“Ya know, I never knew my parents. I was raised on my own in a little shack on the edge of my village. People brought me food and extra clothes and when I was big enough I learned how to grow, and hunt and make my own things.” He stopped for a moment and weighed his next comment carefully. “I didn’t have parents because when I was just a little thing I walked out of the woods. They say my mother was a witch and that I was sent away for being a boy and unable to learn the old magic. I think your mother might be one too. Maybe we have that in common.”

The creature did not answer. Perhaps it did not know how to speak. After a few moments, a tiny blackened hand stretched tentatively out from under the pile of old stones. It picked up the bit of fish and secreted it away into dark.

Posted in Seaside SketchesTagged Matduk, Twist comment on Little Twisted Thing

The Thousand Flower Queen

July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 Ellie

The Thousand Flower Throne loomed on the dais. The throne, though rendered in gold and fine enamels by masters of a bygone age, was not as striking as the dainty figure propped upon it. Sitting in her own personal storm cloud of black silk was an austere-looking, scrub-rose-faced woman. A scrub rose that had earned its place in this garden not by the merit of its particular splendor but on the cunning of its thorns. This rose queen with her tenacious tendrils and piecing gaze cast her eyes down from her high garden perch to me.

“Well, captain?” Her voice was like pruning shears. Precise and ruthless. “What have you learned of our visitor?”

Posted in On The Claret Sea, Seaside SketchesTagged City of a Thousand Flowers, Sulaiman, Thousand Flower Queen comment on The Thousand Flower Queen

Posts navigation

Older posts

City of a Thousand Flowers devotionals Goddess Knyaginya Inarasha Matduk RPG stuff Sulaiman Thousand Flower Queen Twist

  • November 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • February 2022
  • Traveler’s Humility
  • Let’s go!
  • Pomegranate
  • Transforming Fire
  • Little Twisted Thing

© 2023 On the Claret Sea

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: x-blog by wpthemespace.com