The San Telmo Incident · For Players · Spoiler-safe

Player Packet

Everything players need to start: the world in brief, six ready characters, crew bonds, and how rolls work.

Want pregens and handouts in one print run? Open the printable Player Kit.

Welcome to Mar de Oro

Mar de Oro is a chain of colonial islands at the warm centre of a larger world. Across the eastern ocean stand the Old Crownlands: ancient kingdoms, rival courts, cathedrals, counting houses, arsenals, reform movements, and hungry flags. In the Golden Sea, their ambitions meet free ports, local communities, plantation economies, hidden routes, and discoveries that no institution fully understands.

The world believes it lives in an age of faith and sail. It is wrong in a wonderful way. Priests, engineers, scholars, and prodigies touch the same underlying order through different traditions. Airships rise on Éterlumin. Signals travel through tuned devices. Old chambers answer patterns that modern science can barely describe.

Sea: ships, harbours, storms, trade, and distance.
Sky: early flight, fragile lift, and military advantage.
Faith: institutions interpreting wonders they do not own.
Empire: law, extraction, resistance, and contested authority.
Discovery: evidence that changes who can explain the world.

What Happens in Play

Characters investigate disturbances and contradictory accounts, cross political, legal, religious, and social boundaries, negotiate with institutions while protecting people caught between them, travel through dangerous seas, skies, ports, plantations, and hard country, and decide who controls discoveries that can alter the balance of the Golden Sea.

Pressure. A practical problem is already moving.
Investigation. Clues create access, context, and leverage.
Factions. Interested powers act on their own agendas.
Choice. No solution protects every person and principle.
Consequence. The world changes and remembers the decision.

What success looks like: information that changes the crew's options; position before a faction can react; authority, access, or permission; a person protected or persuaded; time bought before a clock advances; a consequence redirected rather than erased.

How Mar de Oro Plays

Fantastic events still happen to human beings. People rarely possess the whole truth. The setting does not ask the table to discover which side the author has declared correct. It asks: What do these people believe? Why do they believe it? What will they do because of it? And what happens after the characters intervene?

PRESSURE, ACTION, INFORMATION, RELATIONSHIPS, CHOICE, CONSEQUENCE

The rules system can change. This chain should remain recognisable.

Tone and Table Safety

The setting can include colonial rule and exploitation, forced labour and coercion, disappearance and imprisonment, religious and political pressure, and industrial injury and Source-related body horror. Agree on lines and veils before play, revisit them without penalty, and use a pause or open-door tool. Anyone may stop, rewind, fade out, or step away without defending the request.

Cruelty should create a decision, witness, responsibility, or consequence. If it exists only as atmosphere, remove it.

The Golden Sea

Mar de Oro is the island chain at the centre of the Golden Sea. Canula Prime is one of its islands. Boca Serena is the port from which the crew travels inland to San Telmo. Travel is measured in tides, watches, road conditions, convoy schedules, and access rights.

Valdegracia

Public identity: An old crown, formal hierarchy, deep ritual life, and a strong instinct that institutions are legitimate until proven otherwise.

Why it is here: Canula Prime lies under Valdegracian dominion. Crown agents claim jurisdiction over San Telmo and any evidence recovered there.

Duchy of Heller

Public identity: A martial and technically ambitious duchy founded by survivors of the Compañero expeditions. Proud, practical, and protective of its autonomy.

Why it is here: Heller owes Valdegracia wartime allegiance but fiercely guards its autonomy. Its engineers and envoys fear becoming useful scapegoats.

Albion

Public identity: A competitive island power known for speed, lateral thinking, naval intelligence, and an acute dislike of condescension.

Why it is here: Albion seeks technical fragments and political leverage without triggering open war before it has an advantage.

Stroomdijk

Public identity: A merchant republic whose pragmatism, contracts, and counting houses can conceal coercion behind respectable procedure.

Why it is here: Its exemptions, carriers, and warehouse networks touch nearly every profitable route in the Golden Sea.

Luminore

Public identity: A reforming centre of print, style, scholarship, and confidence in its own refinement.

Why it is here: Its scholars, missionaries, and commercial interests compete to define what new knowledge means.

Volkharov

Public identity: A society formed by catastrophic loss, stubborn reconstruction, networks of obligation, and an aesthetic of endurance.

Why it is here: Volkharovian specialists are valued in medicine, hard travel, engineering, and disciplined recovery.

Solarian Church

Public identity: The dominant religious institution of the Codex tradition, with ritual authority, archives, hospitals, missions, and courts.

Why it is here: Church offices seek the right to classify the San Telmo event and control the moral language around it.

Colonial-born communities

Public identity: Layered, hybrid, improvised, and skilled at reading the assumptions of people from different powers.

Why it is here: Dockworkers, guides, pilots, artisans, families, and free-port networks know the Golden Sea as lived territory rather than a map of claims.

No nation is a single personality. Use culture to create formation, expectation, and tension, never a cage.

Life in 7202

Weapons: Flintlock muskets and pistols, sabres, boarding weapons, field guns, and disciplined volleys. Reload time, smoke, distance, and morale matter.
Ships: Sailing vessels dominate sea travel. Airships combine wooden hulls, internal lift systems, sails, propellers, and specialised sky-keels.
Signals: Flags, lamps, relay posts, sealed letters, coded schedules, and tuned devices move information. Delay and interception shape politics.
Medicine: Surgeons understand anatomy, infection, shock, splinting, and practical care unevenly. Field exposure creates symptoms no doctrine fully explains.
Law: Jurisdiction depends on crown, charter, church, port, ship, emergency writ, and who can enforce the document in hand.
Class: Titles, uniforms, literacy, trade, property, and personal networks determine who is heard. Colonial life also creates gaps between authorities.
Faith: The sacred is lived through burial, vows, rites, calendars, conscience, and institutions. Discovery does not make belief foolish.
Travel: Heat, rain, mosquitoes, roads, reefs, storms, supplies, pilots, and permission can matter as much as combat.

Fortera and Éterlumin

Fortera is the underlying field behind rites, powered arts, resonance, and many effects that cultures describe in different languages. Most people do not know that these traditions belong to one order.

Éterlumin is a responsive gas and physical carrier of Fortera in the present age. It enables lift, signalling, instruments, and military systems. It is rare, strategically vital, and difficult to keep calibrated. Refinement does not create permanent purity; it slows degradation. No grade remains stable forever, even in a sealed container.

What makes it dangerous: pressure, volatility, heat, burns, rupture, unstable resonance, and miscalibration. Éterlumin is not naturally poisonous, and it does not form crystals.

A Source is a place where Fortera is unusually concentrated or responsive. Some old structures were built to interact with these sites. Modern institutions can detect and work around them, but do not fully understand how they function.

Player Knowledge and Technology

Most people know

Airships require trained crews and calibrated lift systems.
Éterlumin ages and must be inspected.
Source zones are dangerous and poorly understood.
Different traditions can produce similar wonders.
Official reports are shaped by jurisdiction and reputation.

Most people do not know

Why Fortera and Éterlumin belong to one deeper system.
Who built the oldest responsive chambers.
Why some structures listen, repeat, or correct patterns.
Whether modern institutions can safely reproduce what they find.

Characters begin inside older categories: miracle, heresy, natural philosophy, resonance, sacred trust, engineering, or forbidden practice. Let those interpretations matter.

Ready-to-Play Crew

Choose four to six characters. Each is system-neutral and includes a role, strengths, a burden, a bond, equipment, and conversion suggestions.

Shared premise

San Telmo has missed two scheduled calibration signals to Boca Serena. Reports of injured workers followed, then stopped. Conflicting requests for inspection, medical relief, technical assistance, and quarantine have produced an unusual mixed party.

Tomás carries the Crown writ and temporary command authority, but each member of the crew has an independent reason to reach the estate. Emilio Resa, the engineer responsible for San Telmo's calibration equipment, reported abnormal readings shortly before contact was lost. He is now missing.

Each of you wants to find him before one authority turns the incident into a sealed account.

Ready character 1 · Systems, calibration, repair

Greta Valen

Heller engineer

Repair what can be repaired. Name what cannot.

Public background

You were trained in Valldeila's naval workshops and sent to Canula Prime because you can read a failing lift assembly by sound. Emilio Resa once published a correction that kept your career from ending with another person's mistake.

Three strengths

Field calibration and pressure systems
Rapid repair under dangerous conditions
Technical authority with crews and workshops

Burden

You approved a shortcut during a rushed refit. An apprentice survived, but not unchanged. You now hesitate when speed and safety become enemies.

Bond

You owe Resa for defending the truth when procedure preferred a scapegoat.

Why you stay

You believe the San Telmo readings could prove that Heller engineers are not responsible for the failure. You also know proof can become a weapon.

Personal question

When does professional loyalty become complicity?

Equipment: Tool roll, calibration key, pressure goggles, work coat, pistol, notebook, two sealed gauges.

Suggestions: 5e Artificer; PF1e Alchemist; PF2e Inventor or Alchemist; FitD Leech.

At the table: Ask what the machine is doing before asking how to stop it.

One thing you know: The signal failure does not match ordinary lift equipment damage.

Ready character 2 · Command, law, firearms

Tomás Aranda

Valdegracian officer

Authority is meaningful only when someone accepts responsibility for it.

Public background

You serve the crown in Canula Prime and have been given temporary command of the inspection party. Your papers open gates. A sealed secondary order authorises seizure of any strategic device recovered below San Telmo.

Three strengths

Command, discipline, and controlled violence
Protocol, jurisdiction, and military access
Firearms, defence, and reading a chain of command

Burden

You have carried out lawful orders that later proved convenient rather than just. You still believe institutions can be better than the people hiding inside them.

Bond

The crew is under your protection once you accept command.

Why you stay

You need to prove that authority can mean responsibility rather than ownership.

Personal question

Will you obey the sealed order after learning why it was written?

Equipment: Officer's coat, sabre, pistol, field glass, emergency writ, signal whistle, sealed order.

Suggestions: 5e Fighter; PF1e Fighter or Cavalier; PF2e Fighter with Marshal flavour; FitD Cutter.

At the table: State what your authority can do, then decide whether using it will help.

One thing you know: The quarantine order was signed before the reported accident.

Ready character 3 · Leverage, contacts, documents

Marisol Venn

Free-port broker

Every document has an owner. Every owner has a fear.

Public background

You were raised between docks, counting rooms, and crews that spoke several languages badly and understood one another perfectly. You recognise the San Telmo shipment code as part of an exempt route you once used for Stroomdijk cargo.

Three strengths

Contacts, bargains, and reading motives
Documents, seals, ledgers, and commercial routes
Creating options where official procedure offers none

Burden

You carried a sealed cargo without asking what was inside. People disappeared at the destination. You have never learned whether your work helped cause it.

Bond

Luz Varela once hid your younger brother from a violent debt collector.

Why you stay

You owe the workers more than money, and you know the difference.

Personal question

What truth are you still tempted to trade?

Equipment: Ledger book, seal kit, concealed purse, small pistol, dock contacts, copy of an exemption clause.

Suggestions: 5e Rogue; PF1e Rogue or Investigator; PF2e Investigator or Rogue; FitD Slide or Spider.

At the table: Find out who benefits from the current explanation.

One thing you know: The shipment code belongs to an exempt route used by Stroomdijk carriers.

Ready character 4 · Terrain, tracking, local trust

Ivo Soria

Frontier guide

A road is a promise made by whoever expects to use it.

Public background

You are colonial-born and know the inland tracks around San Telmo better than the officials who claim the land. Workers came to you after the first signal failure. You promised not to bring soldiers along the hidden drainage route.

Three strengths

Tracking, terrain, weather, and quiet movement
Local relationships and reading fear
Finding routes that maps and officials ignore

Burden

You once guided a survey team to a place local families asked you to avoid. The survey became a claim, and the claim became armed possession.

Bond

Ordinary people are not evidence to be collected and handed over.

Why you stay

You stay because the estate families will face the consequences after every foreign expert leaves.

Personal question

Can you keep your promise when the crew needs the route?

Equipment: Long gun, machete, field cord, water skin, medical herbs, route sketch, worker token.

Suggestions: 5e Ranger; PF1e Ranger; PF2e Ranger; FitD Hound.

At the table: Ask who uses a path, who watches it, and what entering it declares.

One thing you know: Workers use an older drainage track that bypasses the main gate.

Ready character 5 · Archives, inquiry, authority

Sister Ana Cordero

Solarian investigator

Truth is sacred even when the institution fears its shape.

Public background

You serve a reform-minded office of the Solarian Church and have authority to gather testimony, inspect records, and establish whether a site requires quarantine. Your superior sent a preliminary quarantine classification before you had seen the evidence.

Three strengths

Archives, ritual knowledge, and formal inquiry
Interviewing witnesses without surrendering authority
Recognising when doctrine is being used to hide procedure

Burden

You protected an earlier inquiry by sealing it. The witnesses survived, but the institution learned nothing and repeated the same mistake elsewhere.

Bond

Conscience is not disobedience simply because procedure arrives first.

Why you stay

You remain to keep frightened people from being classified out of their own story.

Personal question

Can your faith survive an answer your office cannot name?

Equipment: Codex, inquiry seal, lamp, medical stole, pistol, archive satchel, blank testimony forms.

Suggestions: 5e Cleric or Investigator-style Rogue; PF1e Cleric or Inquisitor; PF2e Cleric or Investigator; FitD Whisper or Spider.

At the table: Ask what the rite protects, and who benefits from calling something forbidden.

One thing you know: Church offices opened an inquiry before receiving a formal report.

Ready character 6 · Medicine, composure, evidence

Dr. Nadia Volenka

Shipboard surgeon

A witness in your care is a patient, not property.

Public background

You served aboard merchant and naval vessels before taking work in the Golden Sea. The injured workers show pressure burns, tremor, and disorientation. Their lungs are clear. Someone is calling it poison because poison is easier to quarantine than a responsive system.

Three strengths

Medicine, triage, and controlled emergency care
Observation, anatomy, and distinguishing cause from story
Composure when other people need permission to panic

Burden

You treated an earlier resonance injury and concealed one persistent symptom to keep the patient out of Church custody.

Bond

No wounded person becomes evidence while under your care.

Why you stay

You stay because Resa may be alive and because the official diagnosis is being written before the examination.

Personal question

What will you conceal to protect a patient, and who pays for that silence?

Equipment: Surgical roll, medicines, respirator cloth, lantern, pistol, pressure-burn salve, patient tags.

Suggestions: 5e medicine-focused Rogue or Cleric; PF1e Investigator or Alchemist; PF2e Investigator with Medic; FitD Leech.

At the table: Describe symptoms precisely. Refuse explanations that do not fit the body.

One thing you know: The injured show pressure and resonance trauma, not poisoning.

Crew Bonds and Starting Position

Choose two shared bonds

One of you saved another during a failed crossing.
Two of you know the same official is lying, but for different reasons.
A worker at San Telmo helped your crew before the adventure began.
You share custody of a document that could embarrass a powerful office.
One character has authority; another knows why using it openly would be dangerous.

Starting position

The crew reaches the San Telmo road at late afternoon. A wagon carrying injured workers has been stopped by a crown patrol. The estate signal has failed twice. Smoke rises from the laboratory yard, but the plantation house displays a white flag of controlled emergency.

Choose the crew's public mandate

Official inspection
Medical relief
Technical assistance
Private rescue
Recovery of missing records

What failed

At fixed intervals, San Telmo sends a short calibration confirmation to the relay office at Boca Serena. It is routine evidence that the estate's Éterlumin systems remain within safe operating limits. Two scheduled confirmations have failed.

Resolution Guidance

Establish intent: what is the character trying to change?
Name the risk: body, time, secrecy, authority, trust, evidence, or stability.
Roll only when uncertainty matters.
On success, grant information, position, time, authority, access, or protection.
On failure, move the world. Do not erase the route forward.

Optional 2d6 quick bridge

Capability: Familiar +0, Trained +1, Expert +2, Master +3. San Telmo is deliberately capped at Expert; Master is for continuing play.
10+ full success.
7–9 partial success at a cost: reduced effect, delay, exposure, pressure, or choice.
6 or lower failure with a complication. The situation changes against the character, but existing progress is not erased.
Help from another character grants +1 once when the helper accepts the same risk.
Conditions: Strained (tired, shaken, exposed, or overextended); Wounded (an injury or impairment that changes available action); Broken (unable to continue without rescue, treatment, surrender, or major sacrifice). Recovery requires safety, time, care, or a specific remedy in the fiction.
Pregens: a listed strength that clearly applies is Expert +2; profession or background is Trained +1; otherwise Familiar +0.
Violence uses the same procedure as any other risky action. The 2d6 bridge has no separate combat subsystem.

A failed investigation roll changes who controls a clue, how much it costs, what attention it attracts, or which clock advances. It never deletes the clue needed to continue.

Resolution in Play

Investigation

Marisol searches an office for a missing shipping manifest.

10+: She finds it and identifies what was altered.

7–9: She finds it, but someone notices the search or part of the record has already been removed.

6 or lower: She discovers enough to keep moving, but the evidence is now in someone else's hands or her search creates immediate attention.

Negotiation

Tomás asks a patrol commander to release an injured worker for treatment.

10+: The commander agrees without demanding anything significant in return.

7–9: The worker is released, but Tomás must invoke authority, accept responsibility, owe someone a favour, or accept another meaningful cost.

6 or lower: The request exposes a conflict of jurisdiction and another authority becomes involved.

Technical danger

Greta tries to stabilise an unstable calibration housing.

10+: The system stabilises cleanly.

7–9: It stabilises, but equipment is damaged, pressure must be vented, or Greta accepts exposure.

6 or lower: The immediate problem changes rather than disappears. The system remains accessible, but the danger escalates.

Using another system? Keep the same intent, risk, and fictional consequence. Replace the 2d6 roll with the procedure your table already knows. See the Native Rules or the system conversions.

Quick Rules

Clocks: Segmented trackers for developing pressure. Advance when a named trigger occurs, not merely because a roll fails.
Leverage: Information, authority, debt, access, proof, or protection that changes what another party can reasonably refuse.
Clues: Essential facts appear through at least three routes. Failure changes cost, ownership, or timing.
Faction moves: When ignored or pressured, factions act off-screen according to what they want and fear.
Consequences: Make them concrete: who acted, what changed, and what the crew must now answer.
Éterlumin instability: Show warning before harm: warmth, pressure, repeated sound, venting, drifting gas, or instrument disagreement.
Ship or estate danger: Attack systems, access, crew, position, and time before simply reducing hit points.
Authority: A seal may be real while jurisdiction remains contested. Ask who can enforce the order here.

Tales of Mar de Oro · The San Telmo Incident · Adventure Zero