Blood and Sea-Races

Section I: Introduction & Story Elements

The basis of this tabletop RPG is ancient Roman ship-racing, with the twist of semi-competitive gameplay; there are two players co-captaining each ship, and this ship may be working with or against other ships. The twelve major gods play a key part, as they toy with the circumstances of each race for their entertainment. Typically, the gods also desire bloodshed and drama on the racecourse, so they often encourage and reward combat and destruction, valuing it equally or higher than just winning the race. However, the gods also revive and rebuild anything killed or broken over the course of the race – they treat their hijacked ship-races like a living Valhalla.

This format works best in a one-shot format, with one session being one race. But if the gods decide to toy further with a group of racers, they can always just be revived and made to race again…

Despite being designed as an ancient Roman system, this system can also be easily adapted to work in an ancient Greek setting; simply change the names of the gods to the Greek variants, and you’re set for a whole new racing adventure.

For optimal gameplay, you will need a coin, two d4 dice, and two d6 dice. If these aren’t available, substitute them with online coin flips or dice rolls.

Section II: Player & Ship Setup

One person takes the role of “the gods” – the game master. Everyone else takes the role of a player.

It is recommended that the number of players is even, as players are to be in pairs. If this is not possible, the odd player out should create a second character and play as both.

Each pair of players are joint captains of a racing-ship. They should create their characters on either side of a Character/Ship Sheet individually, then jointly decide on what their ship should be like in the middle.

Character creation includes:

• Name of captain

• Identity of captain (pronouns, personality, appearance, etc)

• Relationship/connection to other captain (to be jointly decided)

Ship creation includes:

• Name of ship

• Overall shape of ship (pick one of three options)

• Stats of ship (Speed, Accel, Steer, Tough, Vigor, Craft)

(Note that the ship cannot innately have any weapons, as its primary purpose is racing. If you want weaponry, you’ll have to build or invent it yourself mid-race. Also note that the ship should be primarily wooden or flammable.)

The three options for the ship’s shape are:

• Narrow: Less ship health, easier to repair. Best stat can be Speed or Accel.

• Balanced: Average ship health and ease of repair. Best stat can be Steer or Craft.

• Bulky: More ship health, harder to repair. Best stat can be Tough or Vigor.

The ship also has six stats. These vary from having 1 point (worst) to 5 points (best). You must choose one stat to be your dedicated “best stat” (based on the ship’s shape) with 5 points, then assign 15 total points across the rest of the stats. Each stat must have at least 1 point assigned.

• Speed: The top speed of the ship. Also used for general forwards movement.

• Accel: The acceleration of the ship, used to gain speed. Also used for slowing down.

• Steer: The ship’s ability to turn, manoeuvre and dodge obstacles.

• Tough: The ship’s defensive capabilities, to resist damage and loss of speed from impacts.

• Vigor: The stamina and skill levels of the ship’s crew, for tense moments and recoveries.

• Craft: The eccentric stat, for construction, executing crazy plans or achieving miracles.

Section III: Health & Damage

There are two separate health systems to be mindful of: the health of each ship, and the health of each individual player.

The ship is split into three segments, like a pie chart into thirds: the bow (front), port (back left) and starboard (back right). Each third starts with a set amount of health. Players can also use their action to repair a section of the ship, essentially healing it – this requires no stat rolls.

The amount of health starting/maximum health, as well as the amount restored by repairing, are defined by the shape of the ship:

• for Narrow: 15 health, repair restores (2d4 + 1) health

• for Balanced: 20 health, repair restores (2d4 - 1) health

• for Bulky:  30 health, repair restores (2d4 - 3) health (may cause damage!)

Players always start with 15 health, but can’t easily heal without any special circumstances.

Each player is always standing on one of the three sections of the ship – bow, port or starboard. Within your ship’s turn you can freely move to any section at no cost.

If a section of the ship is hit, any player standing in that section will take half the damage the ship takes, rounded down (e.g. if the ship takes 5 damage, the player would take 2 and a half damage, which rounds down to 2 instead). However, on a blow that destroys the ship section, the player takes full damage instead.

If a section of the ship reaches 0 health, it is beyond repair and the player can no longer stand there. If all three sections of the ship are beyond repair, the ship is destroyed and sinks, wiping out both of its players for the rest of the race. Separately, if one of the players reaches 0 health, they die and will not be resurrected by the gods until the next race, leaving the other player to manage the ship alone.

Section IV: Turns, Rolls & Combat

Turn order is based on ship positions – the ship furthest ahead moves first, and the ship furthest back moves last. A ship getting a turn means both players on the ship get a turn in no particular order. If ship positions are unclear, anyone can go first but the other person on their ship must then be next – effectively, turns take place in pairs.

Within a player’s turn, as mentioned before, they are completely free to move around their ship. The player can freely do any reasonable action – if something would take a long time, it could take multiple turns to complete, as decided by the gods.

For a cost of (D4) health as over-exhaustion, the player can perform both a free action and one motion action: steering, accelerating or decelerating the ship. (Note that you can already do these motion actions as a free action – this would let you move twice.)

Also, for each race, each player gets a total of three “wishes”. These are done in addition to any turn for no cost. These are detailed in Section V.

When a player does an action, the gods decide on two of your ship’s six stats, which are most relevant to your action (e.g. Speed and Tough to ram the ship into something head-on).

To calculate a stat roll, roll (d6 - 1). This gives you a value from 0 to 5 for each roll; add on the relevant stat to get a value from 1 to 10.

For each roll:

• 1 is a complete failure with no positives. 2 and 3 are still failures, but getting better and better.

• 4 is a compromise where you succeed at the cost of something. The player can choose high-risk high-reward or low-risk low-reward. 5 is the same, with better outcomes.

• 6 is a small success. Anything above 6 is a better and better success, until 10 is perfection.

Both rolls matter – for the ramming example from before, a successful Speed roll and a compromised Tough roll means you easily have the speed to ram with, but you’ll have to sacrifice something if you want the ram to have impact, e.g. take damage to the bow for it.

Combat is continuously active throughout the race – at any point you can attack anyone. But remember: your ship can’t start with any conventional weapons, so you’ll have to get creative with non-weaponry or build your weapons as you sail.

If you’re doing anything damaging, the rolls determine how generally hard you hit via logic. From there, damage numbers are calculated like so:

• Trivial damage: coin flip. Pick a side – that’s 2 damage, the other side is 1 damage.

• Weak damage: Roll (d4).

• Medium damage: Roll (2d4).

• Strong damage: Roll (2d6).

Section V: The Wish System

In Section IV, it was said that a wish can happen at any point in a turn for no cost. These “wishes” are special rolls based on the main 12 gods. You can only wish to the same god or goddess once per race.

Decide who you wish to, and roll (D6) – if it’s a 3, 4, 5 or 6, they aid you, and you can freely choose what to do with their powers, within reason. (This is enforced by the person playing as the gods.) If, however, you roll a 1 or 2, the god or goddess is cruel and refuses to help you, wasting your wish.

Note that since the gods play a role in the story, different gods may be made generally more or less helpful depending on the circumstances. For example, if a race is organised by Diana to take place at night, since she’s goddess of the moon, she may be more effective. 

• APOLLO: God of healing, light and truth. Can fulfil wishes based on recovery, sight or revealing something.

• CERES: Goddess of agriculture and marriage. Can fulfil seasonal or temperature-based wishes, or can make any enemy temporarily cooperative with you on their next turn.

• DIANA: Goddess of the hunt and the moon. Can create darkness, and assists with paralysing enemies.

• JUNO: Goddess of childbirth and fund protection. Can birth baby creatures out of nowhere, or fulfil roundabout forms of defence.

• JUPITER: God of the sky and thunder. Can fulfil electrical wishes, or change the weather of the skies.

• MARS: God of war and virility. Can fulfil wishes relating to sheer strength, attacking, or showing off.

• MERCURY: God of travel, communication and trickery. Can help with movement or dodging, and with misleading others through words.

• MINERVA: Goddess of wisdom, arts, trade and strategy. Can assist with any deception or distraction, or give wise advice.

• NEPTUNE: God of the sea. Can greatly assist by manipulating water or the ocean.

• VENUS: Goddess of love, beauty and desire. Can fulfil any wish as long as it’s stylish, but it will always have a small consequence to make you desire a better result.

• VESTA: Goddess of the domestic. Can create slow regeneration effects, or instil a false sense of security in an enemy.

• VULCAN: God of fire, volcanoes and metal. Can fulfil wishes based on fire or metal, or create islands and obstacles via volcano powers.

Overview

This one-shot module is for the ship-racing TTRPG “Blood and Sea-Races”. It involves Jupiter raising the racecourse up into the sky where he is the dominant god, while all the players are tasked by Vulcan to sabotage the race for fun. The optimal goal is to work together in destroying the three enemy ships (non-playable), and to try and win the race as an individual ship.

This document is for the gods’ eyes only (that is, the game master’s). Text in green italic is for reading out to the players – within this, [bold square brackets] are used to indicate something that needs to be substituted in, and (normal brackets) are situational/optional.

General Details

• The race takes place entirely on clouds until the final stretch – wishes to Neptune are useless until the end section, and wishes to Jupiter are effective but fair. Wishes to Vulcan are also effective since he’s the one you’re aiding.

• This module contains names and details in Latin, so this module cannot easily be used if choosing to play in an ancient Greek setting.

• There is no specific map or concept of space in this module – positions are just roughly relative to each other’s ships and the major section of track. Feel free to be creative with this flexibility.

• Enemies drop items, usually single-use in nature. These are given to whoever dealt the final blow to the enemy.

Contents of Module

⬤ Culture of the Module

⬤ Common Situations

• If a ship is too far behind...

• If a ship falls off-course before the Pipe of Clouds...

• If a ship is sunk or knocked on its side, via any means other than destruction in combat…

• Thrusters

⬤ Prologue: Vulcan's Skyborne Deal

⬤ I: The Race Begins

• The Very Beginning

⬤ II: Whirlwind

• Approaching the Turn

• Into the Whirlwind

• Halfway Turned

• Wrath of Jupiter at the Whirlwind

• Early Onset Illness

⬤ III: Shining Split

• Blinding Choice

• The Left Path

• The Right Path

• Wrath of Jupiter at the Shining Split

• Paths' End

⬤ IV: The Pipe of Clouds

• Entering the Pipe

• Pipe Dreams

• Tubular Thunder

⬤ V: Plummet to the Final Stretch

• Dispensed from the Pipe

• Splashdown: Scramble to the Finish

Culture of the Module

The culture of the “Rome” in this module is essentially that of the real-world ancient Rome, but not any particular era of it, and with far more frequent ship-racing – while ship-races existed in the real world too, in this world it far surpasses the popularity of chariot-racing or gladiatorial combat.

Moreover, the ancient Roman gods, while not physically present, are celestially present and omnipotent in their specialties. They enjoy messing with the ship-races for their own fun, so Jupiter’s sky race and Vulcan’s revenge are relatively normal events. While common, it’s still exhilarating both for the viewers and those lucky enough to be racing in particularly strange circumstances.

If anyone “dies” during the race, the gods will revive them afterwards and fix their ships as if nothing had happened, as they were not at fault for being caught in the gods’ games.

Common Situations

If a ship is too far behind...

A path appears ahead of the ship, leading to near the otherwise backmost ship. If trusted, the ship can use a Steer/Vigor roll, which guarantees them to catch up if one of the rolls is a compromise or better.

A path of cloud forms ahead of [ship], branching off the edge of the clouds. It looks to be a direct pathway to [relevant area]. Do you trust the path and sail along it, or do something else?

If a ship falls off-course before the Pipe of Clouds...

You can choose either to save the ship with a group of rising clouds, or let the ship die and be destroyed. It depends on whether the fall was fair or unpredictable.

As [ship] falls, it’s caught by a set of rising clouds and saved by Jupiter’s mercy… this time.

[ship] plummets from the heights of the sky all the way down into the sea, broken to shreds in the process. [character1] (and [character2]) were obliterated in an instant as they were smashed into the depths of the water.

Don’t worry, they’ll be conveniently back in one piece by the next race.

If a ship is sunk or knocked on its side, via any means other than destruction in combat…

The clouds are more buoyant than the seas, so the ship gets to do a free Craft roll. If the roll is successful, the ship bounces back, but the player has to find a way to explain how. This deals trivial damage unless the roll was a 10 – to port/starboard if it was knocked on its side, and to the bow if it was sunk downward. If the player can’t explain, it bobs back up but deals weak damage.

Thrusters

Each player ship starts with thrusters, which can be activated to guarantee a minimum of 8 in any Accel roll. If they are active while the bottom of the ship is not within clouds, Jupiter confiscates them, dealing trivial damage to all of the ship, and grows angry. Players must explicitly deactivate them first, or else:

Jupiter catches sight of the thruster at the bottom of [ship] boosting it forward! In a fit of rage, he snatches them off the ship. The clouds that the course consists of darken in his anger into jet-black thunderclouds, and thunder curses the race…

If this happens, electric sprites can start appearing at specific parts of the race.

Prologue: Vulcan's Skyborne Deal

Immediately after character creation…

Today’s ship-race is about to begin. Swarms of crowds cover the cliff-faces of the Mediterranean, bustling in a peaceful cheer to support their chosen ship, while gamblers already watch the two distant rocks marking the finish line, hoping they chose the right ship to bet on.

(Here, go through the details of each player ship, then seamlessly continue into the enemy ships.)

There are three other ships in the race, too. The first of these is the Congregor Bradium – it only has one captain, Solumnus, a former slave now obsessed with wealth, focused on maximum speed to win the race as fast as possible.

Next is the Arator Machina – it has two women as captains, Cornelia and Fabrice, who are deeply in love. Cornelia used to own farmland and has a full farming setup on the ship, but she gets easily seasick, relying on the craftswoman Fabrice to sail. Fabrice would like nothing more than to destroy all the enemy ships to win by default, but doesn’t want to show that side of her in front of Cornelia.

The final ship is the Felix Oculus, with the blind Caecillius, extremely tall and cunning, who is accompanied by Faustina, accustomed to river water and a haver of very good luck. She prefers cheaper solutions to problems and doesn’t want to expend supplies on fighting other ships, but the expert tactics of Caecillius may require some violence to be dealt.

As the captains of each ship await the horn that signals the race beginning, they are caught off-guard by a rumble. Did the ship start moving on its own? Not quite. The spectators stare in awe as every ship in the race raises up all of a sudden, higher and higher, out of sight among the clouds.

All of you, bewildered, now hear a growling voice speak directly into your minds:

“Captains, I am Vulcan, god of fire. Jupiter of the sky just hijacked this race for fun, but me and the other gods want fun on our own terms. You’re all about to race across the clouds, but [list names of player ships]… you’re in a secret group together. The three other ships are your enemies – annihilate them in a blaze of glory, so that one of your ships wins the race.”

“Oh, almost forgot. I’m also the god of metal – so at the bottom of your ships, there’s tubes of metal from the distant future – these will grant you powerful speed. Use these to burst forwards, but don’t let Jupiter catch sight of them when they’re active.”

The voice disappears, but before anyone has time to think, a booming horn echoes across the heavens, louder than any human could have sounded it. Jupiter’s sky race has begun.

I: The Race Begins

The Very Beginning

All of your ships burst forwards along the clouds, finding it surprisingly smooth despite expecting to race on water today. The speedy Congregor Bradium takes the lead, with everyone else close behind. What will you do?

The Congregor Bradium is ahead of the group to begin with, while the Arator Machina and the Felix Oculus are on the group’s left and right sides respectively. Here are the stats for those ships:

• Congregor Bradium

Crew: Solumnus Denarius

  15 health. 5 Speed / 5 Accel / 2 Steer / 4 Tough / 2 Vigor / 2 Craft

  Can repair ship one time to recover (2d4 + 1) health.

  Can roll Speed/Steer to skim past an obstacle without touching it.

  DROPS: Lonely Coin (single use) – flip a coin for any action. If heads, choose one of the two rolls and set it to 10.

• Arator Machina

  Crew: Cornelia Tritica, Fabrice Marella

  30 health. 3 Speed / 4 Accel / 2 Steer / 2 Tough / 5 Vigor / 4 Craft

  Can repair ship one time to recover (2d4 - 3) health.

  Can roll Accel/Craft to slow down and grow a plant barrier ahead of the ship.

  Cornelia loses her turn if ship is moving very fast.

  If either captain dies, the other gets extremely aggressive.

  DROPS: Erratic Palm Leaf (3 uses) – where the gods said a noun in the last few sentences, freely change it to the name of a plant. Example: “a whirlwind directly ahead” -> “a vine directly ahead”

• Felix Oculus

  Crew: Caecillius Celsus Maximus, Faustina Tiberia

  20 health. 2 Speed / 1 Accel / 4 Steer / 5 Tough / 3 Vigor / 5 Craft

  Can repair ship two times to recover (2d4 - 1) health each time.

  Can roll Steer/Vigor if near another ship to orbit to any position around it.

  Can roll Speed/Craft to move ahead, sacrificing 1 health for 1 extra point onto the speed roll.

  DROPS: Guide to River Strategies (single use) – make your ship burst far forwards at any point, whether your turn or not.

Progress is made to section II if players sail forwards; otherwise, there’s gaps in the clouds either side of them, so they’re likely to fall off. It’s best to rescue players if they choose to sail off the course this early. This section should only take up the first turn of each ship, unless something drastic happens this soon.

II: Whirlwind

Approaching the Turn

As you sail ahead, you see a whirlwind directly ahead. The cloudy path you’re sailing on twists counterclockwise around it – it’s a hard left turn. You can already feel the whirlwind tugging you along the right path with its winds, though.

Players ought to try and slow down here to try and take the turn. Their speed will be kept up by the whirlwind pushing them around the turn, so they won’t fall off into the whirlwind. However, if players speed up, especially with the thrusters, they ought to be very careful. Check for Steer as part of the roll if players are still accelerating – if they don’t steer well enough, they’ll fall onto an outer path.

Your ship overshot the turn and the pull of the whirlwind wasn’t enough to hold you back. [ship] careens off the side of the cloudy path, fortunately onto a second path further from the whirlwind. The turn is much less narrow here, but it’ll take longer for you to get around it.

If a ship falls like this, deal weak damage to port. It should take about two turns for a ship to get around the whirlwind unless they’re rolling perfectly, but if a ship falls it comes to a standstill, so it should take two more turns after the fall. Also, note the Thrusters section in Common Situations – the thruster is exposed as the ship falls.

Into the Whirlwind

If a ship decides to sail directly towards the whirlwind, include Vigor in their roll. If this succeeds, they can use the winds of the whirlwind to launch around and skip taking the corner, landing into section III.

Your ship charges directly into the whirlwind, and skilfully uses its wind currents as if they were water currents, to twist around in one fell swoop onto the next part of the course. A bit of a rough landing, but nothing damaged.

However, if it doesn’t succeed, deal medium or heavy damage and let the whirlwind throw them back to the start of the turn at high speed. If they Steer exceptionally well they get to stay on the normal track. Otherwise, it’s onto the outer path as mentioned above, or with a complete failure, off the edge of the track.

Your ship charges directly into the whirlwind, and predictably gets a large chunk of it ripped off by the strong winds. To add insult to injury, it flings you around twice before throwing you back around where you started, now heading dangerously fast into the turn.

Halfway Turned

On their second turn in the… turn, the whirlwind is pushing ships quite strongly – give ships a +1 bonus to their Speed if it’s 3 or less. If a player tries to repair their ship at this point, due to the windy conditions, any health restored will be 2 less than it otherwise would be.

Trying to move into the whirlwind is no longer possible on purpose, but if a ship is attacked into it, it plays out as normal for the most part. One difference is that on failure it flings you halfway into the turn, so it’s more comfortably possible to coast along the turn – if they fail at Steering they’ll be sent near the end of the outer path, but otherwise they’ll stay on-track as normal.

Wrath of Jupiter at the Whirlwind

If Jupiter is angered by spotting a thruster, no electric sprites spawn here yet. However, the effects of the whirlwind as described in Halfway Turned are doubled; the speed increase becomes +2 and the repair reduction is 4 less than usual.

Early Onset Illness

If not much exciting ends up happening at the whirlwind, Caladrius could make an early appearance here. See where it’s meant to appear, in section III, for how it behaves.

A dark shape suddenly emerges from within the eye of the whirlwind, up and over the swirling gusts. Is it a bird? Yes, it’s Caladrius – the familiar of a distant land’s ruler. It absorbs its master’s sickness and flies away to spread it to others instead, and it just so happened to arrive in the middle of this ship-race. You could try to defeat it, but be very careful not to get too close.

III: Shining Split

Blinding Choice

Having gotten past the whirlwind, you quickly realise the course is now facing the sunrise, as it glints into your eyes. Squinting, you can see that the path ahead splits into two… will you go left or right? 

Vision on this stretch of the track is restricted, because the sun is brightly shining directly ahead. What’s more, each ship needs to choose whether to take the left or right, narrower, path. By default, the Congregor Bradium goes left, and the Arator Machina and Felix Oculus go right.

The Left Path

Taking the left path may allow you to easily take out the Congregor Bradium, likely the weakest of the three enemy ships. However, the Caladrius also appears here.

As you take the left path, through the bright shining of the sun ahead, you see a shape flapping towards you. Is it a bird? Yes, it’s Caladrius – the familiar of a distant land’s ruler. It absorbs its master’s sickness and flies away to spread it to others instead, and it just so happened to arrive in the middle of this ship-race. You could try to defeat it, but be very careful not to get too close.

• Caladrius

20 health. Takes double damage from long-ranged attacks.

  Inflicts sickness to anyone that gets near it; this deals no ship damage, but every character takes 2 damage before each turn. Effect removed by any form of character healing.

  Auto-heals to full health if any sickness is inflicted.

  DROPS: Toxic Feather (permanent) – if you inflict 2 or less damage on an attack, get the option to deal +4 damage but take 2 damage yourself.

[ship] came too close to Caladrius! It expends its sickness onto [players], fully recovering itself. This is going to need a different approach…

The Right Path

Taking the right path means sharing with the two larger enemy ships. Fabrice and Caecillius will make a push to attack despite their more peaceful fellow captains, so players are likely to take damage. Because of the narrow path, ships are easy to knock down the edge, which you may or may not choose to save, whichever creates the more interesting situation.

Wrath of Jupiter at the Shining Split

If Jupiter has caught sight of the thrusters and is thus angry, both paths have Electric Sprites on them – the left path has one, and the right path has two.

• Electric Sprite

10 health. Deals 1 damage in return to any attacking character.

  Can attack ships; roll d4. 1/2/3 are medium damage to the  bow/port/starboard respectively, 4 is weak damage to all parts.

  Can attack multiple ships if they are close – guaranteed trivial damage to all parts of all targeted ships.

  DROPS: Thundercloud Clump (single use) – use an action to deal guaranteed weak damage from afar, no checks needed.

Paths' End

The paths reconverge by the left path veering further left, and the right path having a ramp and a jump to follow the left path. After reconvening, the sun is no longer in the eyes of each character, and they can see clearly ahead. Since the right path is a jump, thrusters must be turned off during the jump or they’ll be confiscated. The path leads directly to section IV.

IV: The Pipe of Clouds

Entering the Pipe

The path of clouds abruptly ends, dropping your ship into a humungous tunnel – a circular pipe of clouds, slanting quite sharply downward. You land safely, and are now hurtling down the pipe at uncontrollable speeds.

In the Pipe of Clouds, each ship is constantly moving forward – decelerating is only effective to some degree, and ships can’t stop completely. The clouds are whirling around, so ships could carefully do a loop around the circumference of the pipe to stall if they wish, and would then be moving even faster from their momentum. For maximum speed, one would have to snake across the pipe in long S shapes, to keep moving ahead while building momentum.

Pipe Dreams

After a brief time in the pipes, the crew of each ship begins hallucinating.

Floaty, blurred greenish wisps suddenly materialise directly ahead, out of the air itself. You don’t know what these are, but something about them feels… off. What will you do?

These wisps can deal weak damage to parts of ships in the Pipe at random. However, when a player tries to attack them, they phase out of existence and so can’t be attacked.

Floaty, blurred greenish wisps suddenly materialise directly ahead, out of the air itself. You don’t know what these are, but something about them feels… off. What will you do?

This is a small puzzle based on the players finding the right action by listening to you carefully. Reiterate to the players continuously that they need to “wake up” the wisps. Also note that the tunnel became silent ever since the wisps appeared. Hint, but don’t give away unless absolutely necessary, that the players need to shout loudly to proceed. Once they do, the wisps disappear.

Tubular Thunder

The wisps suddenly vanished on hearing the shouting, and their green glow fades, no longer illuminating the edges of the clouds. Just as soon as the mystery ended, you all hear the voice of Jupiter himself roaring out:

“Somnus! Why do you riddle my race so, with dreamy sprites?! You were not invited, so I demand that you leave!”

(With this, the clouds turn jet-black with Jupiter’s rage, electricity sparking among it.) Fuelled by the thunder of the dark clouds, a massive spark of electricity appears ahead, blocking any way past in the pipe of clouds. Vulcan decides it’s time you faced an obstacle – a massive metal shield slits through the clouds and absorbs the electricity save for two electric sprites, all of them ready to lash out and attack!

This is a mini boss fight against the Barrier-by-Jove, an electricity-fuelled sentient shield, accompanied by an Electric Sprite either side (see section III). If players don’t already have methods of attack, they’d better get ready to figure some out. While the fight goes on, the ships continue to hurtle down the tunnel, effectively chasing the Barrier, and players can continue to try and attack enemy ships if they wish.

• Barrier-by-Jove

40 health.

  Can directly attack; deals heavy damage to one part of a ship.

  If one of the electric sprites dies, it will always go to revive it; it turns its back for the turn, taking double damage, and a new electric sprite appears – it can only revive one at a time.

  DROP 1: Electric Conductor (single use) – assign to one section of your ship. If this section is hit, it deals 10 damage to the attacker.

  DROP 2: Barrier of Jove (permanent) – assign to a character. This character has (d6-1) damage reduction from electric attacks.

If defeated, any remaining Electric Sprites disappear without their drops. If players take too long, the Pipe eventually ends, and the Barrier leaves without granting its drops either. Either way, players continue to section V.

V: Plummet to the Final Stretch

Dispensed from the Pipe

After that electric encounter, light is finally visible ahead – tinted very blue. All the ships hurtle down towards the exit of the Pipe of Clouds, splashing hard into the seas beneath. The pipe led all the way to the original finish point of the race – well, a distance away from it. Victory is very close, so get moving! 

Splashdown: Scramble to the Finish

The ships are now in open seas, keeping their high speed from hurtling down the Pipe. The finish line is directly ahead, the goal being to go between two small islands of rock first to win. This final scramble should go on for as long as it’s interesting, and then the order of the ships should determine their placement in the race.

The winner of the race gets a special item from Jupiter – The Cloudcaster. This is a tool that lets you “draw” a small line of cloud somewhere, and use it to block off paths or as a ramp to “jump” with. It has 5 uses total.

However, secretly after the race proceedings end, whoever destroyed the most enemy ships (if any) gets Vulcan’s special prize – a Steel Candle. With a single use, you can light something on fire, including your ship, but it only burns with an illusion – once it’s fully alight, it will temporarily turn to solid metal until your next turn, making any attack only deal trivial damage to you for that turn.

The module ends once the race concludes.