My friend The Lemming has asked me to talk a bit about my sea-elf character I mentioned in my previous post On The Joys Of A Long Running Campaign.

Suneaco the Sea Elf

Suneaco the Sea Elf

He was originally an NPC the party rescued during one of the ‘U’ series of modules - Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh or Danger at Dunwater, can’t recall which now, the latter I think.  He’d been captured by pirates.  Name originally given in the module was ‘Oceanus’ but that was just silly, it would be like encountering someone who dwelt on land who just happened to be called ‘Terranus’.  So I reversed the letters, hence Sunaeco.

You know, I’ve never really gotten around to given him a very detailed background story as I have for my other characters.  I really should do sometime.  He comes from a village of sea-elves called Ur-Ajiin (the ‘j’ is soft) in the Azure Sea lying just on the edge of the continental shelf.  His people are not technologically advanced, they live simple lives and few of them wander as far from the village as Sunaeco has done.  He’s considered a local celebrity when he returns from time to time with tales of life on the surface.

He’s something of a Casanova, or at least he tries to be, and his tastes are not restricted to his own kind either.  Though sadly not all the ladies he encounters on the surface lands are as relaxed as he is about inter-racial relations.  The blue skin, webbed hands and feet and gills seem to put them off.  Still, he’s encountered a small handful who are open-minded and curious enough to give him a try, so to speak.  He carries a Ring of Water Breathing to lend to any fair damsel who wants to come and ‘explore the reefs’ with him ;-) .

Generally mild-mannered and easy-going, there is only one thing that gets him worked up.  He hates the sea devils (Sahuagin) with a passion - probably explained by some past tragedy the details of which I’ve never worked out.  He tends to be a bit paranoid, believing that they are behind every adventure plot he encounters.  The Sahuagin are ever expanding their hunting ranges in the Azure Sea and he believes that a decisive confrontation is inevitable.  He never tires of warning people about them and asserts that both the land-dwellers and his own kindred are too complacent about the threat they pose.  He advocates taking the fight to them and giving them such a bloodied nose that they’ll never dare encroach on the territories of other sea folk again.  He has been saving up his loot and plans one day to raise a mercenary force to do just that.  In fact this is his primary motive for adventuring.

Mechanically speaking, he is a classic sea-elf with all the limitations that implies regarding adventure on land - the maximum stay a sea-elf can endure before taking progressive damage is 1 hour per point of constitution.  In one of the 3rd edition supplements (Unearthed Arcana I think) they advocate removing this limitation for player character sea elves, but I decided to keep it.  That idea just seemed like bending over backwards to please some spoilt player who says ‘I wanna play a sea elf, sea elves are kewl’ but then gets upset when he can’t take him on an adventure set in the middle of the desert.  If you’re going to play a concept, play it to the hilt.  Not for the ‘kewlness’ of having blue skin.

So, I wanted to keep him close to his aquatic roots.  But I recognise that only having one hour per point of Con on land is a bit *too* restrictive, practically speaking.  So I have taken the ‘Landwalker’ feat (from ‘Stormwrack’) which triples the duration a sea-dwelling humanoid can survive out of water.  His 16 Con gives him 48 hours, therefore two full days, before his gills start drying out and he starts taking damage.  This means that he basically only appears in adventures that take place at sea or on the coast.

Level-progression wise he has lagged behind the original party he adventured with, and now tends to adventure with a newer generation of characters.  This is fine by him, he will live for a thousand-odd years so he’s in no hurry.  Dungeon crawling is a mug’s game when there are pirate captain’s daughters to be wooed!