Fifteen d12 tables, exactly as printed in the PDF. Roll, read down the list, or simply choose what fits.
Roll when a named person needs an immediate place in the world. This says what the person does here, not what kind of character they are.
Occupations & Roles: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Harbour pilot, navigator, or local route-guide. |
|---|
| 2 | Sailor, gunner, marine, or deck officer. |
|---|
| 3 | Shipwright, rigger, carpenter, or yard worker. |
|---|
| 4 | Engineer, regulator technician, or Éterlumin specialist. |
|---|
| 5 | Factor, broker, merchant agent, or clerk. |
|---|
| 6 | Customs officer, harbour official, inspector, or registrar. |
|---|
| 7 | Physician, surgeon, apothecary, or field medic. |
|---|
| 8 | Priest, lay religious worker, teacher, or charitable organiser. |
|---|
| 9 | Surveyor, cartographer, naturalist, scholar, or translator. |
|---|
| 10 | Hunter, fisher, guide, courier, or frontier hand. |
|---|
| 11 | Soldier, veteran, watch officer, or hired guard. |
|---|
| 12 | Smuggler, fixer, informer, thief, or deniable intermediary. |
|---|
Roll when you know who someone is but need to know why they care.
NPC Wants: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Enough money to solve an immediate problem. |
|---|
| 2 | Safe passage for themselves or someone else. |
|---|
| 3 | Protection from a person, faction, or institution. |
|---|
| 4 | Information they cannot obtain openly. |
|---|
| 5 | Someone found, recovered, or brought home. |
|---|
| 6 | A debt forgiven, transferred, delayed, or collected. |
|---|
| 7 | Recognition, rank, legitimacy, or restored reputation. |
|---|
| 8 | Revenge, preferably without being seen to take it. |
|---|
| 9 | Evidence exposed, recovered, or destroyed. |
|---|
| 10 | Access to a person, place, ship, archive, or institution. |
|---|
| 11 | Their family, crew, community, or association kept out of the consequences. |
|---|
| 12 | To know whether something they fear is actually true. |
|---|
What makes this person useful, dangerous, or worth dealing with?
NPC Leverage: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Reliable local information. |
|---|
| 2 | An introduction to someone difficult to reach. |
|---|
| 3 | Passage, transport, or a berth aboard a vessel. |
|---|
| 4 | Safe lodging, concealment, or a discreet meeting place. |
|---|
| 5 | Credit, coin, supplies, or favourable terms. |
|---|
| 6 | Skilled labour, repair capacity, or technical expertise. |
|---|
| 7 | Documents, seals, testimony, or administrative access. |
|---|
| 8 | A pilot, guide, scout, interpreter, or specialist. |
|---|
| 9 | Political or institutional cover. |
|---|
| 10 | Evidence, correspondence, charts, or records. |
|---|
| 11 | Access to somewhere outsiders normally cannot enter. |
|---|
| 12 | A favour owed by someone more powerful than they are. |
|---|
Associations & Local Institutions
These are types of organisation, not twelve universal named factions. A pilots’ house in one port is not automatically the same institution as one elsewhere.
Associations & Local Institutions: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Pilots’ house controlling local navigation knowledge. |
|---|
| 2 | Harbour council representing dockside interests. |
|---|
| 3 | Yard brotherhood of shipwrights, riggers, and labourers. |
|---|
| 4 | Mariners’ mutual-aid confraternity. |
|---|
| 5 | Independent carriers’ association. |
|---|
| 6 | Rescue and salvage society. |
|---|
| 7 | Factor house or merchants’ consortium. |
|---|
| 8 | Surveyors’, engineers’, or instrument-makers’ society. |
|---|
| 9 | Road-Keeper lodge or local route network. |
|---|
| 10 | Religious charitable house or lay confraternity. |
|---|
| 11 | Veterans’, widows’, or dependants’ association. |
|---|
| 12 | Quiet political, resistance, or mutual-protection network. |
|---|
Roll with an association to find out why it matters now.
Association Pressure: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Its charter, licence, or right to operate is being challenged. |
|---|
| 2 | A member has disappeared, deserted, or been detained. |
|---|
| 3 | Someone powerful has called in a debt or favour. |
|---|
| 4 | A rival organisation has gained official backing. |
|---|
| 5 | It needs something dangerous done without appearing involved. |
|---|
| 6 | Its records contain information someone wants destroyed. |
|---|
| 7 | A respected member is accused of betrayal or corruption. |
|---|
| 8 | The route, trade, harbour, or resource it depends on has become unsafe. |
|---|
| 9 | Its members are divided over cooperation with a foreign power. |
|---|
| 10 | It needs protection but cannot publicly ask for it. |
|---|
| 11 | It controls access to something another faction urgently needs. |
|---|
| 12 | It is preparing collective action: strike, refusal, protest, blockade, evacuation, or defiance. |
|---|
What can a local association actually do for the characters?
Association Leverage: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Local knowledge no official chart records. |
|---|
| 2 | Skilled workers or an experienced crew. |
|---|
| 3 | Introductions across the harbour or town. |
|---|
| 4 | Storage, workshops, safe rooms, or meeting space. |
|---|
| 5 | Credit, supplies, or access to scarce goods. |
|---|
| 6 | Pilots, guides, couriers, or interpreters. |
|---|
| 7 | Collective testimony or witnesses. |
|---|
| 8 | Access to records, ledgers, manifests, or technical notes. |
|---|
| 9 | Political pressure through members or patrons. |
|---|
| 10 | Quiet transport of people or goods. |
|---|
| 11 | The ability to slow, obstruct, or stop local work. |
|---|
| 12 | A connection to an institution much more powerful than the association itself. |
|---|
Roll once when a harbour needs to feel like a place rather than a backdrop.
Port Character: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Military inspection is unusually strict; ships queue under armed observation. |
|---|
| 2 | A recent Éterlumin discovery has filled the harbour with speculators, labourers, and opportunists. |
|---|
| 3 | Storm damage has left piers, warehouses, and vessels under hurried repair. |
|---|
| 4 | Refugees or displaced crews have crowded every cheap room and unused warehouse. |
|---|
| 5 | A labour dispute has slowed loading, repairs, and harbour traffic. |
|---|
| 6 | A foreign squadron is visiting, and everyone is watching everyone else. |
|---|
| 7 | A feast, holy observance, election, procession, or public ceremony has transformed normal routines. |
|---|
| 8 | An accident or unexplained loss has made sailors reluctant to leave harbour. |
|---|
| 9 | Trade is booming, prices are rising, and every berth is contested. |
|---|
| 10 | Trade has collapsed; warehouses are full and creditors are nervous. |
|---|
| 11 | Two authorities claim overlapping jurisdiction and disagree publicly. |
|---|
| 12 | Everything appears normal, but people keep lowering their voices before saying why it is not. |
|---|
Roll when someone has a reason to put work in front of the crew.
Jobs & Offers: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Escort a person, vessel, or cargo through dangerous territory. |
|---|
| 2 | Find someone who was expected and never arrived. |
|---|
| 3 | Recover property, evidence, cargo, or a vessel before someone else does. |
|---|
| 4 | Survey a route, island, reef, ruin, Source site, or disputed boundary. |
|---|
| 5 | Carry something discreetly past an authority that would ask questions. |
|---|
| 6 | Verify whether a rumour, report, chart, or accusation is true. |
|---|
| 7 | Protect a meeting, witness, delegation, work crew, or negotiation. |
|---|
| 8 | Sabotage, disable, delay, or expose something without creating open war. |
|---|
| 9 | Salvage a wreck or abandoned site before ownership is settled. |
|---|
| 10 | Deliver an offer, warning, demand, pardon, or ultimatum. |
|---|
| 11 | Find the cause of a mechanical, Fortera, environmental, or logistical failure. |
|---|
| 12 | Get someone or something out before authorities, weather, an enemy, or a phenomenon closes the route. |
|---|
What is in the hold?
Cargo: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Éterlumin in transport vessels, poorly maintained or unusually valuable. |
|---|
| 2 | Charts, soundings, survey notes, or navigational observations. |
|---|
| 3 | Religious goods, vestments, books, ceremonial objects, or authenticated relics. |
|---|
| 4 | Powder, shot, firearms, artillery components, or military stores. |
|---|
| 5 | A passenger whose presence is absent from the manifest. |
|---|
| 6 | Sealed letters, dispatches, ledgers, codes, or diplomatic papers. |
|---|
| 7 | Fortera-embedded tools, instruments, ammunition, or objects. |
|---|
| 8 | Ordinary commercial cargo with one crate conspicuously different from the rest. |
|---|
| 9 | Salvage recovered from a wreck, ruin, battlefield, or abandoned vessel. |
|---|
| 10 | Medicines, specimens, surgical material, or research equipment. |
|---|
| 11 | Valuable but perfectly ordinary trade goods. |
|---|
| 12 | A living specimen, animal, organism, or phenomenon someone believes can be transported safely. |
|---|
What counts as contraband depends on the port, flag, charter, ownership, and current politics. The same cargo may be ordinary trade under one authority and grounds for seizure under another.
Why It Is Hidden: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Import duty or harbour tax has not been paid. |
|---|
| 2 | The cargo is legal, but its owner is not supposed to possess it. |
|---|
| 3 | It was stolen, seized, or salvaged under disputed circumstances. |
|---|
| 4 | Its destination is forbidden even though the cargo itself is legal. |
|---|
| 5 | Wartime or emergency law makes it subject to seizure. |
|---|
| 6 | Someone falsified its origin to conceal who supplied it. |
|---|
| 7 | The cargo would expose espionage, surveying, or an undeclared military operation. |
|---|
| 8 | Its condition is unsafe and an honest inspection would stop the voyage. |
|---|
| 9 | Another claimant holds papers proving it belongs to them. |
|---|
| 10 | Moving it would embarrass an institution that officially denies involvement. |
|---|
| 11 | The cargo is completely legal; the concealment protects the person receiving it. |
|---|
| 12 | Customs are supposed to discover it. The hidden cargo is bait, cover, or misdirection. |
|---|
Roll when the party reaches a new harbour, drinks somewhere, or asks around. Some are true, some are bait, most are half-right. That is the point.
Port Rumours: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | A ship came in with her lift chamber sealed and her crew forbidden to speak of the crossing. |
|---|
| 2 | The customs officer at the next quay can be paid to look the other way, but the price rose after someone talked. |
|---|
| 3 | A Valdegracian synod ship is anchored offshore and no one has been allowed aboard. |
|---|
| 4 | There is Éterlumin for sale below assay price. Below assay price always means something. |
|---|
| 5 | A colony three days’ sail east has gone quiet. No signals, no ships out, no reason given. |
|---|
| 6 | An Albion officer is asking after a name, and the name belongs to someone drinking in this room. |
|---|
| 7 | Three different crews swear they saw the same unmarked cutter enter harbour on three different nights, yet no berthmaster recorded it. |
|---|
| 8 | A chart is circulating that marks a reef where there was open water a year ago. |
|---|
| 9 | Someone paid a hunter’s crew in advance to guide them inland and they have not come back. |
|---|
| 10 | A factor house is calling in old debts all at once, and no one knows who told it to. |
|---|
| 11 | A ship’s physician from Eisenmark is treating something the local doctors will not name. |
|---|
| 12 | The relay tower on the headland failed at the same hour three nights running. |
|---|
Roll when a scene is going too smoothly, when a plan needs a wrinkle, or when the world should push back. Escalate from the fiction already in play.
Complications: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | The wind or the lift fails at the worst moment and the vessel loses way, altitude, or steering. |
|---|
| 2 | Someone present recognises a character: an old debt, an old crime, an old face from another flag. |
|---|
| 3 | A faction the party wronged has arrived first and is already talking to the people they needed. |
|---|
| 4 | The papers are wrong. A seal, a name, or a stamp does not match, and someone official notices. |
|---|
| 5 | Powder is damp, a key is missing, a tool is broken. The thing they were counting on will not work. |
|---|
| 6 | A signal meant for someone else is mistaken for the party’s, drawing attention from exactly the wrong people. |
|---|
| 7 | An ally’s loyalty is tested by a better offer, and they hesitate long enough for it to matter. |
|---|
| 8 | A bystander is caught in the middle, a child, a servant, a stranger, and cannot simply be ignored. |
|---|
| 9 | The quiet way in is watched. What was meant to be unseen has a witness who must be dealt with. |
|---|
| 10 | A rival is running the same job for a different patron and the two crews meet in the same corridor. |
|---|
| 11 | Weather turns: fog swallows the signals, or a storm forces a choice between speed and safety. |
|---|
| 12 | The truth they came for is real, but so is the reason someone buried it, and that reason is here. |
|---|
Roll for a chance meeting in port, on the water, or in the sky. Some are people, some are the Golden Sea itself.
Harbour & Sea Encounters: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | A becalmed or grounded ship signalling for aid, honestly or as a lure. |
|---|
| 2 | A naval patrol of one of the powers, bored, thorough, or looking for a specific ship. |
|---|
| 3 | A hunter’s boat working a reef that turns out not to be a reef. |
|---|
| 4 | A drifting boat, empty but for signs its crew left in a hurry, or did not leave at all. |
|---|
| 5 | A rival crew or privateer, weighing whether the party is prey, peer, or problem. |
|---|
| 6 | A missionary or synod vessel, offering blessing, asking questions, or both. |
|---|
| 7 | A pod of sky rays or something larger crossing the vessel’s path, indifferent and immense. |
|---|
| 8 | A factor’s launch coming out to meet the ship before it has even docked, with an offer. |
|---|
| 9 | A colony boat trading fresh water and news for coin, and the news is worth more. |
|---|
| 10 | Wreckage and survivors from a fight that just happened over the horizon. |
|---|
| 11 | A Fortera-disturbed creature moves through the water or fog, drawn toward the vessel’s active systems. |
|---|
| 12 | Another flag entirely, far from where it should be, and pretending it is not. |
|---|
Roll between sessions, or when the party has been idle, to advance the living world. The faction most affected by recent events acts first.
Faction Moves: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | A power tightens control of a chokepoint, harbour, channel, or relay, and fees or searches rise. |
|---|
| 2 | A quiet purge: someone inconvenient is reassigned, arrested, or lost at sea. |
|---|
| 3 | An alliance shifts. Two flags that were cool are suddenly cooperating, or two friends have fallen out. |
|---|
| 4 | A public accusation, a synod charge, a scandal, a denouncement, forces people to take sides. |
|---|
| 5 | A power moves military weight into the region: a squadron, a garrison, a ship of the line. |
|---|
| 6 | An Éterlumin deposit is claimed, stripped, or fought over, and prices lurch. |
|---|
| 7 | A debt is called, a charter revoked, a favour demanded, catching someone the party knows. |
|---|
| 8 | Intelligence changes hands. Someone now knows something they should not, and it points at the party. |
|---|
| 9 | A power sponsors the party’s rival, or their enemy, giving them ships, coin, or licence. |
|---|
| 10 | A reformer or hardliner gains ground inside a faction, and its behaviour shifts accordingly. |
|---|
| 11 | A colony asserts itself against its metropole, and the archipelago holds its breath. |
|---|
| 12 | Something the party did earlier bears fruit, for good or ill, in a place they did not expect. |
|---|
Use when a Fortera working, active system, Source site, old machine, or retained pattern needs a sign. These are clues and pressures, not explanations. Lunar effects are deliberately absent: moon phases are planned from the campaign calendar.
Fortera & Source Signs: twelve d12 results| d12 | Result |
|---|
| 1 | Lanterns, lift-glow, or signal lights dim and flare out of sequence, as if a nearby system is drawing on the field. |
|---|
| 2 | An embedding nearing the end of its useful life stirs and faintly reproduces the working bound into it. |
|---|
| 3 | Two instruments that should agree settle on the same impossible reading. |
|---|
| 4 | A trusted calibration drifts. A regulator, resonator, or signal instrument begins to lie. |
|---|
| 5 | Something in the water, ruins, or fog answers a signal no one meant to send. |
|---|
| 6 | A source-marked object or surface responds to a familiar voice, touch, rhythm, or repeated action. |
|---|
| 7 | An old site, a drowned choir, or a source-marked ruin reacts to the party’s presence or Fortera practice. |
|---|
| 8 | A reading comes back impossible: too much, too little, or a pattern that should not exist. |
|---|
| 9 | A retained human pattern reproduces a remembered voice, gesture, or candle-song with unsettling precision. |
|---|
| 10 | Containment fails: pressure vents, active Éterlumin ignites, usable reserve is lost, or a connected system is damaged. |
|---|
| 11 | A recently repaired system returns to the same miscalibration, as if something external keeps pulling it out of agreement. |
|---|
| 12 | The underlying pattern shows through for a heartbeat, and everyone who saw it disagrees on what it was. |
|---|
