TEXT: A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  Edward Turner
  theAether Sea
  
  This adventure was made awesome thanks to our Patreon patrons at patreon.com/evilhat—thanks guys!
   
  INSIDERS
  Alan Bartholet
  Alan-Michael 
  Havens
  Alexander Grafe
  Alexander R. 
  Corbett
  Amethyst Lynx
  Andrew Sier
  Anne-Sylvie 
  Betsch
  Antero Garcia
  Arlo B Evans
  ArthurDent 
  Ben McKenzie
  Benjamin Wandio
  Brandon Burger
  Brett Abbott
  brian allred
  Brian Chase
  C. J. Hunter
  C.K. Lee
  Cerity 
  Charlton Wilbur
  Chris Caporaso
  Christian 
  Christian Svalander
  Christopher 
  Gunning
  Dan Moody
  Daniel 
  Daniel Gallant
  Daniel Linder 
  Krauklis
  David 
  David Dorward
  David Ellis
  David L Kinney
  David Reed
  Donald Wheeler
  Dustin Evermore
  Eden Brandeis
  Edgardo A Montes 
  Rosa 
  Edward MacGregor
  Elsidar 
  Amhransidhe
  Emmanuel 
  eneko zarauz
  Eric Bontz
  Ezekiel Norton
  Frederi POCHARD
  Frank 
  Gavran 
  Giuseppe 
  D’Aristotile
  Glenn Mochon
  Graham 
  Graham Wills
  Gregory Hirsch
  Griffin Mitchell
  Haakon 
  Thunestvedt
  Harry Lewis
  Jack Stephenson-
  Carr
  Jacob Moffitt
  James F Thunberg
  Jason 
  Jason Cotton
  Jason F Broadley
  Jason Tocci
  Jean-Christophe 
  Cubertafon
  Jeff Craig
  Jeff Xilon
  Jere Krischel
  Jeremiah McCoy
  Jeremy DeVore
  Jim Nicholson
  Jin Shei
  Johannes K. 
  Rasmussen
  John Beattie
  John Rogers
  John Rudd
  John Wyatt
  Jon 
  Jon-Pierre Gentil
  Jordan Dennis
  Jose Luis Porfirio
  Joshua Reubens
  Juanma 
  Barranquero
  Katie Ramsey
  Keith Stanley
  Ken 
  Ken Ditto
  Kenji Ikiryo
  Kevin Jiyang Li
  Larry Hollis
  Leif Erik Furmyr
  Marc Mundet
  Mark Miller
  Marshall Smith
  Marty Chodorek
  Matt and Nykki 
  Boersma
  Matt Anderson
  Matthew 
  Matthew Broome
  Matthew Dickson
  Matthew 
  Whiteacre
  Micah Davis
  Michael Bowman
  Michael Cambata
  Michael Green
  Michael Shea
  Michael Shumate
  Morgan Ellis
  Nick 
  Nick Bate
  Nick Reale
  Nicola Urbinati
  Nicolas Marjanovic
  Noel Warford
  Osye Pritchett
  Pablo Martinez 
  Merino
  Patrick Ewing
  Patrick 
  Mueller-Best
  Paul Shawley
  Paulo Rafael 
  Guariglia 
  Escanhoela
  Pavel Zhukov
  peter burczyk
  Peter Gates
  Peter Hatch
  Philip Nicholls
  PK 
  Randy Oest
  Richard 
  Bellingham
  Rick 
  Rick Jakins
  Riggah 
  Robert Hanz
  Robert Kemp
  Rod Meek
  Roger Edge
  Ryan 
  Ryan Singer
  Sanchit 
  Sarah Vakos
  Scott Hamilton
  Sean O’Dell
  Sean Smith
  Selene O’Rourke
  Shane Russom
  Sharif Abed
  Shervyn von Hoerl
  Stephen Rider
  Timothy Carroll
  Troy Ray
  Ulf Bengtsson
  Will Goring
  William J. White
  William Lee
  William McDuff
  Woodrow Jarvis 
  Hill
  Zach 
  ADVENTURERS
  Aaron Ross Powell
  Adam Gutschenritter
  Aidan Grey
  Alan Phillips
  Alejandro 
  Alejandro Angel
  Alex Norris
  Alexander 
  Alexander Permann
  Alexis Lee
  Allan Bray
  Andrew Betts
  Andrew Dacey
  Andrew Grant
  Andrew Lloyd
  Andrew Loch
  Andrew Turbott
  Andy Arminio
  Angus MacDonald
  Anthony Popowski
  Antoine Pempie
  Arlene Medder
  Arne 
  Baben hauser heide
  Asier Serras
  athalbert 
  Augustas Vaitkevicius
  Austin Stanley
  Aviv 
  B. Bredthauer
  Barac Wiley
  beket 
  Ben Howard
  Benjamin Welke
  Bill 
  Bjorn Steffen
  Blake Hutchins
  Brad Davies
  Brandon Metcalf
  Brandon Wiley
  Brandt 
  Brendan Conway
  Brent Ritch
  Brett Ritter
  Brian Bentley
  Brian Creswick
  Brian Koehler
  Brian Kurtz
  Brian S. Holt
  Bruno Pereira
  Bryan 
  Bryan Hilburn
  Bryce 
  Bryce Perry
  Caleb Figgers
  Carl McLaughlin
  Carlos Flores
  Carlos Martin
  Charles Chapman
  Charles Kirk
  Chip Dunning
  Chris Edwards
  Chris Heilman
  Chris Kurts
  Chris Lock
  Chris Mitchell
  Chris Nolen
  Chris Turner
  Christian Lajoie
  Christoph Thill
  Christopher Allen
  Christopher Avery
  Christopher Sigmund
  Christopher Smith 
  Adair
  Christopher W. Dolunt
  Chuck 
  Cody Marbach
  Cole Busse
  Colin 
  Colin Matter
  Craig Andera
  Craig Mason
  Craig Wright
  Curt Meyer
  Cyrano Jones
  Dain 
  Dan Behlings
  Dan Hall
  Daniel Chapman
  daniel hagglund
  Daniel Hernandez
  Daniel Kraemer
  Daniel Ley
  Daniel Markwig
  Daniel P. Espinosa
  Daniel Roe
  Daniel Taylor
  Darren Lute
  Dave 
  David 
  David Bellinger
  David Bowers
  David Buswell-Wible
  David Goodwin
  David Maple
  David Millians
  David Morrison
  David Olson
  David Rezak
  David Stern
  Davide Orlandi
  Declan Feeney
  Denis Ryan
  Derek Mayne
  Dianne 
  Didier Bretin
  Dillard 
  Don Arnold
  Doug Blakeslee
  Douglas 
  Doyce Testerman
  Drew Shiel
  Duncan 
  Dylan Green
  Dylan Sinnott
  Earl Butler
  Ebenezer Arvigenius
  Eirch Mascariatu
  Elsa S. Henry
  Eric I
  Eric Poulton
  Eric Steen
  Erik Ottosen
  Ernie Sawyer
  Etienne Olieu
  Evan Jorgenson
  Florent Poulpy Cadio
  Florian Greß
  Francisco 
  Frank Beaver 
  Frank G. Pitt
  Frank Jarome
  Frederick Perigord
  Gabriel Whitehead
  Galen Pejeau
  Garrett 
  Garrett Jones
  Gary Anastasio
  Gavin 
  Genevieve 
  Geoff 
  Geoffrey 
  Gian Domenico 
  Facchini
  Glynn Stewart
  Gonzalo Dafonte 
  Garcia
  Graham Meinert
  Greg Park
  Gregg Workman
  Gregory Fisher
  Gustavo Campanelli
  Heather 
  Herman Duyker
  HFB 
  Hillary Brannon
  Howard M Thompson
  Huston Todd
  Ian Charlton
  Ian Noble
  Ian Stanley
  Ibon Presno Gonzalez
  Indi Latrani
  Irene Strauss
  Ismael 
  J. Brandon Massengill
  Jack Gulick
  Jackson Hsieh
  Jaime Robertson
  Jake Linford
  James Boldock
  James Crowell
  James Heide
  James Husum
  James Rouse
  James Schultz
  James Stuart
  James Winfield
  Jamie Wheeler
  Jan Stals
  Janet 
  Jared Hunt
  Jason 
  Jason Bean
  Jason Best
  Jason Lee Waltman
  Jason Lund
  Jason Mill
  Jason Pasch
  Javier Gaspoz
  Jayna Pavlin
  Jean-Francois 
  Robillard
  Jeffrey Boman
  Jeffrey Collyer
  Jens 
  Jens Alfke
  Jeremy German
  Jeremy Glick
  Jeremy Hamaker
  Jeremy Kear
  Jeremy Wong
  jerry anning
  Jesse 
  JF Paradis
  Joanna 
  Joe 
  Joe Patterson
  Joe.D 
  Joel Beebe
  John 
  John Bogart
  John Buczek
  John Clayton
  John Fiala
  John Hawkins
  John Hildebrand
  John Lambert
  John Petritis
  John Portley
  John Taber
  John Tobin
  John William 
  McDonald
  Johnathan Wright
  Jon Rosebaugh
  Jon Smejkal
  Jonas Matser
  Jonas Richter
  Jonathan 
  Jonathan Dietrich
  Jonathan Finke
  Jonathan Hobbs
  Jonathan Rose
  Joonas Iivonen
  Jordan Deal
  Jose A. 
  Joseph Formoso
  Josh Rensch
  Joshua 
  Joshua Ramsey
  JP 
  Juan Francisco 
  Gutierrez
  Julianna Backer
  Julien Delabre
  Jurgen Rudolph
  Justin 
  Justin Beeh
  Justin Thomason
  Kaarchin 
  Kalle Saarela
  Karl Naylor
  Keith Byrd
  Kenny Norris
  Kenny Snow
  Kevin Flynn
  Kevin Lindgren
  Kevin McDermott
  Kevin Payne
  Kevin Veale
  Krista 
  Kurt Zdanio
  Kyle 
  LarrxX N’Gham
  Les Simpson
  Lester Ward
  Link Hughes
  Lisa Hartjes
  Lisa M
  Lobo 
  Loren Norman
  Louie Perez
  Lowell Francis
  Luca Agosto
  Lucas Bell
  Lukar 
  M Kenny
  M. Alan Thomas II
  m.h. 
  Manfred 
  Marc 
  Marc Kevin Hall
  Marcel Lotz
  Marcel Wittram
  Marcus 
  Mario Dongu
  Mark 
  Mark A. Schmidt
  Mark Diaz Truman
  Mark Gedak
  Mark Harris
  Mark Widner
  Markus Haberstock
  Markus Schoenlau
  Marley Griffin
  Martin Deppe
  Mason 
  Mathias Exner
  Matt Clay
  Matthew Gushta
  Matthew Miller
  Matthew Whalley 
  Matti Rintala
  Maurice Strubel
  Max 
  Max Kaehn
  Mel White
  Michael 
  Michael Barrett
  Michael D. Blanchard
  Michael D. Ranalli Jr.
  Michael Hill
  Michael Hopcroft
  Michael McCully
  Michael Thompson
  Mighty Meep
  Mike de Jong
  Mike Vermont
  Misdirected Mark 
  Productions
  Mitchell Smallman
  Naomi McArthur
  Nathan Barnes
  Nathan Reed
  Neal Dalton
  Nessalantha 
  Nicholas Pilon
  Nicholas Sokeland
  Nick Townsend
  Olav Müller
  Oliver Scholes
  Olivier Nisole
  Owen Duffy
  Owen Thompson
  Pablo Palacios
  paolo castelli
  Paolo Cecchetto
  Patrice Hede
  Patrice Mermoud
  Paul Arezina
  Paul Baldowski
  Paul Olson
  Paul Stefko
  Paul Tayloe
  Paul Yurgin
  Pavel Panchekha
  Pete 
  Pete Figtree
  Peter Griffith
  Peter Kahle
  Peter Woodworth
  Phil Groff
  Philip Harboe Larsen
  Philipp Pötz
  Philippe Marichal
  Philippe Saner
  Phillip Webb
  Piers Beckley
  Porter Williams
  R R Clark
  R. Brian Scott
  Rachael Hixon
  Ralf Wagner
  Randall Orndorff
  Raun Sedlock
  Raymond Toghill
  Ricardo Gesuatto
  Richard Lock
  Richard Warren
  Rishi Agrawal
  Rob Voss
  Robert Biskin
  Robert Daines
  Robert Huss
  Robert Rees
  Robert Rydlo
  Robert Zasso
  Rodrigo 
  Roger Carbol
  Roland 
  Ron Müller
  RoninKelt 
  Ross Hellwig
  Roy 
  Roy LaValley
  Ryan Burpee
  Ryan D. Kruse
  Ryan Lee
  Ryan Macklin
  Ryan Olson
  Samuel 
  Steinbock-Pratt
  Samwise Crider
  Sarah Williams
  Schubacca 
  Scot Ryder
  Scott Acker
  Scott Dexter
  Scott Greenleaf
  Scott Krok
  Scott Martin
  Scott Puckett
  Scott Thede
  Scott Underwood
  Scott Wachter
  Sean Harnett
  Sean M. Dunstan
  Sean Smith
  Sergio Le Roux
  Seth Clayton
  Seth Hartley
  Shai Laric
  Simon Browne
  Simon Brunning
  Simon White
  Simon Withers
  Sion Rodriguez y 
  Gibson
  Slawomir Wrzesien
  Sophie Lagace
  Stefan Feltmann
  Stefan Livingstone 
  Shirley
  Stephan A. Terre
  Stephanie Bryant
  Stephen Caffrey
  Stephen Holder
  Stephen Hood
  Stephen Waugh
  Steve Ela
  Steve Gilman
  Steve Kunec
  Steve Radabaugh
  Steven Code
  Steven D Warble
  Steven desJardins
  Steven K. Watkins
  Steven Markley
  Steven sims
  Steven Whitelock
  Svend Andersen
  Tabletop Audio
  Teresa Oswald
  Tevel Drinkwater
  The Roach
  Thom Terrific
  Thomas 
  Thomas Balls-Thies
  Thomas Maund
  Tim 
  Tim Popelier
  Timo 
  Timothy Seiger
  Todd Estabrook
  Todd Grotenhuis
  Torolf de Merriba
  Trevor Crosse
  Trevor/Mishy Stellar
  Tyler Hunt
  Tyson Monagle
  Udo Femi
  Urs Blumentritt
  Victor Allen
  Vincent Arebalo
  Vladimir Filipovic
  Wayne Peacock
  Wes Fournier
  Whitt 
  William Carroll
  William Chambers
  William Johnson
  William Keller
  Winston Crutchfield
  WinterKnight 
  Xavier Aubuchon-
  Mendoza
  Yong 
  Z Esgate
  Zeb Walker
  Zed Lopez
  Zolnir 
  Zonk PJ Demonio 
  Sonriente
  
  THE 
  AETHER SEA
  A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  WRITING & ADVENTURE DESIGN 
  EDWARD TURNER
  DEVELOPMENT 
  ROB DONOGHUE
  EDITING 
  JOSHUA YEARSLEY
  ART DIRECTION 
  MARISSA KELLY
  LAYOUT 
  FRED HICKS
  INTERIOR & COVER ARTWORK 
  JOHN ALVAREZ VITA
  PROJECT MANAGEMENT 
  SEAN NITTNER
  MARKETING 
  CARRIE HARRIS
  BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT 
  CHRIS HANRAHAN
  
  An Evil Hat Productions Publication
  www.evilhat.com • feedback@evilhat.com
  @EvilHatOfficial on Twitter
  facebook.com/EvilHatProductions
  The Aether Sea
  Copyright © 2014 Evil Hat Productions, LLC and Edward Turner.
  All rights reserved.
  First published in 2014 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC.
  10125 Colesville Rd #318, Silver Spring, MD 20901.
  Evil Hat Productions and the Evil Hat and Fate logos are 
  trademarks owned by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. All rights reserved.
  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a 
  retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, 
  electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, 
  without the prior express permission of the publisher.
  That said, if you’re doing it for personal use, knock yourself out.
  That’s not only allowed, we encourage you to do it.
  For those working at a copy shop and not at all sure if this means 
  the person standing at your counter can make copies of this thing, they can. 
  This is “express permission.” Carry on.
  This is a game where people make up stories about wonderful, terrible, 
  impossible, glorious things. All the characters and events portrayed in this work 
  are fictional. Any resemblance to real people, spacefaring goblins, hegemonic 
  human empires, spaceships made of wood and magic, dashing young asteroid 
  farmers, or scruffy nerfherders, is purely coincidental, but kinda hilarious.
  
  CONTENTS
  Wading into a Great Big Sea .......................................................... 2
  What is the Aether Sea? ............................................................................3
  Mapping the Aether ................................................................................... 4
  The Royal Hegemony .................................................................................5
  The Folks Who Trawl the Sea ......................................................... 7
  Creating a Character ..................................................................................7
  The Folk of the Aether Sea ......................................................................9
  Magic .................................................................................................16
  Dabbling in Raw Magic ............................................................................16
  Focusing on Raw Magic .......................................................................... 17
  Using Raw Magic ........................................................................................ 17
  Preparing and Performing Spells .........................................................18
  Schools of Magic .......................................................................................20
  The Ships ......................................................................................... 23
  Building an Aethercraft .......................................................................... 23
  Operating Your Ship ................................................................................ 27
  Surviving in the Sea .................................................................................30
  It’s Only an Elven Moon ................................................................. 32
  Getting Trapped in the Red Corridor ................................................33
  On the Trail .................................................................................................. 35
  Other Troubles in the Red Corridor ...................................................43
  Where to Next? ..........................................................................................44
  
  WADING INTO A GREAT BIG SEA
  Used to be, there was a planet that went by a half-dozen names. Nobody who 
  lived there called it Homeworld, so that’s what we call it now. It seems fair. 
  The different kinds of folks who lived on Homeworld didn’t much care for one 
  another, and they all scrabbled for elbow room; elves, dwarves, goblins, trolls, 
  humans, and orcs, all crammed together, most of ’em convinced they deserved 
  to be the rulers of this little rock. So they fought, in piecemeal skirmishes and 
  all-out wars. But there were so many sides that nobody could ever win, not 
  really; there was some comfort in knowing that, though a tribe of orcs might 
  sack your city, they’d be driven out by an elven strike force in a decade or so. 
  It was magic that caused the trouble. The better we got at it, the longer and 
  darker those skirmishes became, and the longer the damage lasted. Five hundred 
  years ago, Homeworld ended up a scorched wasteland, half of it so thick with 
  magical fallout that you could flip a coin and have a fifty-fifty chance of surviv-
  ing long enough to see it land.
  That’s when folks started fighting over little things like food and drinkable 
  water.
  But one day, a human by the name of Albus Fletcher did the thing that 
  humans are good at: he talked to people. He met with a couple of clever elves 
  who’d become hotshots in academia and pulled a dwarven artisan out of one of 
  their slums to do a little assembly. Heck, he even purchased the service of some 
  trolls and goblins to do the heavy lifting and calculations. Together, the group 
  made an aethership. It was the first of its kind, a ship that could drag itself off 
  the planet and into the sky without being torn apart by the aether. 
  And because Albus Fletcher was very, very good at talking to people, he man-
  aged to get all the patents in his name.
  It wasn’t long before every seaworthy vessel on the planet was fitted with a 
  couple very expensive enchantments, and everyone who could buy, beg, or steal 
  a ticket joined the great exodus. Folks took off into the unknown, putting down 
  roots on new planets—after centuries of killing each other, they finally got their 
  wish: ruling their own little rock. 
  …o’course, now they’re elbow to elbow in a great big sea, fighting over whole 
  planets instead of little tracts of land.
  2
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  What is the Aether Sea?
  We call it a sea, but that ain’t exactly right. Aether’s not well understood, and 
  what we know about it’s not too useful: it’s invisible, it’s intangible, it tears leaky 
  ships apart, and if you walk into the aether without protection, you’ll explode. 
  That’s what the universe seems to be made of. 
  As far as we can tell, the aether goes on forever; we know there’s at least mil-
  lions of stars and billions of worlds out there. When most folks talk about the 
  aether sea, they mean the bit we’ve colonized so far, which is tiny compared to 
  the whole deal. About a thousand worlds, we think. Not many records were kept 
  in those first few years of the exodus from Homeworld, so the numbers aren’t as 
  exact as we might like.
  One thing’s for sure, though: every planet that’s occupied is occupied by the 
  descendants of Homeworld. There’s no life in the sea outside of us and what we 
  put there—nothing that we’ve found in five hundred years of looking, at least. 
  That’s one of the things that’s put a damper on exploration: no stores, no allies, 
  and no planets you can live on without taking a year or more to make ’em habit-
  able. Don’t stop people from looking or rumors from forming, of course. 
  The biggest chunk of the sea is Royal space, the territory claimed by the Royal 
  Hegemony. It’s in the dead center of the known universe, and best guess is that 
  it’s got two-thirds of the occupied worlds within its borders. Outside of Royal 
  space is the deep sea: dozens of little territories claimed by nascent emperors and 
  warlords, and a hundred more worlds chugging along, trying not to be affiliated 
  with anyone except themselves. 
  3
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Mapping the Aether
  The aether sea is broken into quadrants, sectors, and planets. 
  Quadrants are large chunks of space, more useful for navigation than anything 
  else: crossing a quadrant is, roughly, a week’s travel time. Ages ago, Royal terri-
  tory was exactly four quadrants—hence the name—but these days it’s a bit less 
  exact. Quadrants only really matter when it comes to getting from place to place; 
  look at page 31 for more on that.
  Sectors are political divisions; planets within a sector are all part of the same 
  government. Most of the time, people sayin’ sector or star system mean the same 
  thing. Sometimes a sector will cover a few systems, but they’re never larger than 
  a quadrant; it’s hard to keep a government together over such distances. The 
  Royal Hegemony isn’t a sector itself, but a whole mess of sectors that happen to 
  fly a Royal flag above their own. 
  A planet is, of course, a planet, but things that aren’t exactly planets in the 
  scientific sense get called planets too: moons, big old asteroids, even some arti-
  ficial stations. It’s just a term for a spot in the sea where folk can live that ain’t a 
  ship. Even the largest and most colonized planets tend to be pretty homogenous, 
  culturally speaking; we’ve only been colonizing for a couple centuries. There’s no 
  colony planet that’s full to bursting, but there’s plenty whose only livable terrain 
  is overpopulated—habiforming takes a while, you know.
  Sector and Planetary Aspects
  GMs, you’ll do right by the players by making sectors and planets interesting 
  and dangerous. Part of that comes from their issues. These issues work much the 
  same as the issues from page 22 in the Fate Core System: come up with a major 
  problem for an area, and make it into an aspect ripe for compels and invokes.
  A sector issue is usually a political problem or something that affects a huge 
  region of the sea, either a current issue—such as In the Midst of a Civil War or 
  Under a Naval Blockade—or an impending issue, such as Pirates Gathering 
  at Our Borders or Slowly Dying Star. 
  A planetary issue is a problem just for one planet. It’s also either current—
  such as Constant Earthquakes or Powerful Crime Family—or impending, like 
  Whisperings of a Revolution or Running Out of Clean Water.
  A planet’s issues are in play while the PCs are on a planet, and sector issues 
  are in play while they’re within a sector, including planets in the sector. Once 
  the PCs move on, they leave their issues behind. That’s the great thing about an 
  aethercraft: there’s a lot of room behind it. 
  4
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  The Royal Hegemony
  It’s a big sea. Describing everyone who swims in it is an exercise in futility, 
  not just because it’ll take forever, but because it’s impossible to collect it all. 
  Paperwork is a nightmare within the Royal Hegemony, and usually ignored out-
  side of it. There’s self-sufficient planets out there that haven’t contacted the rest 
  of the sea in centuries. But there are some big powers who almost everyone has 
  heard of, and none more important than the Royal Hegemony.
  In the dying days of Homeworld, just before the first aethership was created, 
  a whole mess of human kingdoms put themselves together in a sort of union. 
  They figured that pooling their resources and information would work to every-
  one’s benefit. 
  Nowadays, Royal space encompasses roughly two thirds of the sea. So it seems 
  that worked out. 
  Planets within the Hegemony are technically self-governing, and on paper 
  the system seems strong: if you’re a part of the Hegemony, you pay some taxes 
  and obey a few mandates from on high—usually well-meaning stuff like “no 
  slaveholding”—and in return you get the support of the Royal Navy and a few 
  other benefits, like emergency aid and a good working relationship with the 
  Spellcasters’ Union.
  In practice, if it seems a little suspicious that a collection of starving monarchs 
  went on to run the better part of the universe—well, yeah. It is. The Royals have 
  been a relentless force of expansion for centuries, partly because they have the 
  money and power to just demand that folks obey them—plus it doesn’t hurt to 
  have the Royal Navy, who are more than willing to explain to an errant planet 
  just how dangerous life is without their protection—but mostly the Hegemony’s 
  power comes from their stranglehold on magic use in the sea.
  The Spellcasters’ Union
  In the center of every Spellcasters’ Union station you’ll find a statue—solid 
  gold and twice life size—of Albus Fletcher. There’s a plaque that says something 
  about how he founded the SCU, and how his pivotal role in the creation of 
  aethercraft is an example to us all about how all people are stronger when they 
  work together. 
  But that’s not why he gets a statue. He gets a statue because, amidst all the 
  chaos of inventing the aethercraft, he held on to the patents. History’s written 
  by the victors, right?
  The SCU is an organization of magic users, and within Royal space they 
  are the one way to legally practice any form of magic or spellcraft. Technically 
  they’re independent from any government, but they are Hegemony-subsidized 
  and have a very close relationship with the Royals. Fact is, ever since Fletcher was 
  crowned into the Hegemony, the head of the SCU has always been a member 
  of a Royal family. The SCU openly claims it’s a strict meritocracy. Make of that 
  what you will.
  5
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  On paper the SCU has no power outside of Royal space, but they still have 
  outposts where they provide magical services at heavy markups, outposts that let 
  them keep a close eye on the largest powers operating out in the deep sea.
  Within the Hegemony, the SCU is the only legal source of magical educa-
  tion, and all professional magic-users must be SCU-licensed, with the fees and 
  oversight that implies. But that’s just a portion of their influence: the Spellcasters’ 
  Union owns the spells that make aether travel possible, and anyone discovered 
  attempting to re-create those spells is tried for “actions with the potential to 
  destabilize the economy of the region.” Outside of Royal space, such folks gener-
  ally just disappear. That’s what keeps the SCU in power.
  The Great Bureaucratic Integration
  The Spellcasters’ Union is in bed with the Royal Hegemony, the Hegemony con-
  trols the planets in Royal space, and the planets mostly govern themselves, but 
  everybody lives in the shadow of bureaucracy.
  If you want to deal with the SCU, your ship must be registered and licensed 
  with the Royal Shipping Registry. You’ve got a name on top of your forms that 
  complies with the Royal Naming Statute—that is to say, a human-styled first 
  name and family name, regardless of how your folks like to name themselves. 
  Cargo gets tagged and registered with the Royal Trade Commission, and your 
  route is covered by the Board of Aether Travel—and that’s just on the govern-
  ment side; the SCU has its own internal divisions to track its customers and 
  what they move. A dozen different acronyms poke their noses in every aspect 
  of life in the Hegemony, and that’s just if you’re traveling through. Planetside, 
  those technically self-governing sectors in Royal space tend to have governments 
  made of 50% Royal red tape by volume.
  Near enough everything a person does is recorded, and filed away, somewhere. 
  A lot of money is spent on that. And a lot of money is spent keeping things from 
  being filed away so neatly. Now, part of that is because folks need illegal things 
  moved from planet to planet: drugs, people, unapproved spells, and such. More 
  than that, some things need to move quickly and efficiently, things not condu-
  cive to scrutiny by a dozen low-level employees. Royal warehouses, after all, are 
  full of rotting food and medicine addressed to dead people. 
  The closer you get to the edge, the slower the wheels of bureaucracy turn: the 
  home office for all those departments is in the Homeworld system, and they 
  don’t trust employees on the outskirts to think for themselves. The benefit, such 
  as it is, is that this runs as true for the SCU itself as for the planets and ships in 
  the area: they’re a little slow to act and a little blinder to the black markets and 
  illegal shipping in their midst. 
  6
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  THE FOLKS WHO TRAWL THE SEA
  Here’s where we get down to the business of looking at characters and what they 
  can do. This assumes you’re familiar with the basics of character creation from 
  Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE). Making characters for an adventure in The Aether 
  Sea runs much the same, with three major additions: a species (page 8), a 
  ship (page 23), and the opportunity to use magic (page 23).
  Creating a Character
  Making a character for The Aether Sea takes a bit more effort than in FAE . You’ll 
  deal with a couple more bells and whistles, but that don’t mean it should stand 
  in the way of a proper adventure. If you haven’t fleshed out every last aspect or 
  picked every last stunt, but you want to get your feet wet anyway, please do. Y’all 
  won’t be the first ones to take to the sea to figure out who you really are.
  High Concept and Trouble
  First off, how does your character, by and large, fit in the sea? The high concept 
  and trouble aspects answer this.
  High Concept: This here’s a brief phrase that sums up the core of your character. 
  Something like Dashing Freighter Pilot or Trollish Loremaster or Apprentice 
  Necromancer.
  Trouble: It’s somethin’ that complicates your life. Make sure you’ll enjoy butt-
  ing heads with it. Something like Flies Into Fits of Rage or A Whole Planet’s 
  Worth of Gambling Debts or Wanted by the Royal Navy for Spreading 
  Seditious Texts. 
  7
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Species
  There’s six intelligent sorts of people that managed to crawl off of Homeworld:
  • Dwarves: Short but sturdy underground dwellers with a particularly 
  crazy king back on Homeworld. Good at being Careful.
  • Elves: Forest folk with a knack for magic and some power in the SCU. 
  They’ve got a reputation for being Clever.
  • Humans: A widespread and altogether sociable group, they run the 
  Hegemony and can’t be overlooked. Skilled at being Flashy.
  • Goblins: The scrawny green folks, a long-time servant caste among other 
  species. Adept at being Sneaky.
  • Orcs: The scary green folks, known for being an ever-looming threat 
  among other species over the generations. Made for being Quick.
  • Trolls: Massive and ponderous and much-abused, they’ve lost most all 
  their history. Profoundly Forceful.
  Pick the one that sounds most interesting. Humans might think of themselves 
  as the default kind of person, but they really ain’t. Want to know more about the 
  species? Read “The Folk of the Aether Sea” starting on page 9.
  “RACES”
  In Royal space, the different sorts of folk are sometimes 
  called “races.” That ain’t a popular term in the deep sea; 
  it’s something used by the all-human Royals to imply that 
  everyone else is just a different sort of human at their core, 
  and that non-humans are all the same, without races of 
  their own. “Species” is a safe option, but even more pop-
  ular is “folk,” which does that “happy shared banner of 
  personhood” thing without the baggage: the folk might all 
  be different, but they’re all still folk.
  Approaches
  Use the approaches straight out of FAE: Careful, Clever, Forceful, Flashy, Quick, 
  and Sneaky. Take one at Good (+3), two at Fair (+2), two at Average (+1), and 
  one at Mediocre (+0).
  Each species has a favored approach, the way they’re used to doin’ things. Put 
  a star next to your favored approach. It doesn’t have to be your highest-ranked 
  approach, and in fact it’s better if it isn’t. Here’s how it works:
  When you roll with your favored approach, treat any final results of 
  Poor (-1) or below as Mediocre (+0).
  It’s not that a favored approach is something you’re especially good at, it’s just 
  something that’s hard for a creature like you to fail at too much. 
  8
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Name and Appearance
  Figure out what you look like and what folks call you—and, if it’s different, what 
  name is attached to your SCU records.
  Additional Aspects
  Now, you’ve got room for three more aspects:
  • Background: This says something about where you’re from. Something 
  like Runaway from a Rich Elven World or Retired Klehnaki Pirate.
  • Ship: This one ties you to the ship, something you have in common. Like 
  Rock-Solid Construction or Never Backs Down.
  • Free: This here you can make whatever you want. 
  You can fill in your background aspect and free aspect right now if you’d like, 
  or leave them blank and fill them in while you play. Your ship aspect, that’s 
  something you need to have a ship to make; you can deal with that when you 
  make your aethercraft on page 23.
  If you don’t want to be saddled with a ship of your own, 
  just take another free aspect instead of a ship aspect. See 
  page 23 for the pros and cons of going on without a 
  ship.
  Stunts and Refresh
  You start with 3 free stunts and 3 refresh, just like in FAE. If you do desire, you 
  can spend your free stunts or refresh on magic abilities. Scan over page 16 for 
  more information on what magic can do and how you can pay for it.
  The Folk of the Aether Sea
  One thing to keep in mind about folk on the sea: everyone knows the stereo-
  types attached to ’em. Stereotypes ain’t true just ’cause they exist. There are 
  antisocial humans and peacenik orcs out there, after all. But they don’t come 
  from nowhere, either. You might match a stereotype or defy it, but you can’t 
  ignore it entirely; if nothing else, it’s what other folk’ll tend to think when they 
  meet you. By the same token, even if you’re not a part of the notable organiza-
  tion associated with your species, strangers will tend to assume you are. 
  HYBRIDS
  There are no hybrids on the aether sea. Sure, there are 
  rumors and vague reports, but nobody’s ever confirmed 
  a mixed species. Plus—in Royal space, at least—couplings 
  that might produce hybrids are pretty taboo, even out-
  right illegal on some planets. Terms like half-elf do exist, 
  but only as slurs. This particular one means an elf who was 
  raised by different folk or who just isn’t “elfy” enough.
  9
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Humans
  The dominant species on the sea, humans 
  are political leaders in Royal space, and 
  they’ve got the force of numbers outside of 
  it. They’re the most social of the species by 
  a wide margin, with a reputation for being 
  nice and, honestly, a bit dopey—especially 
  given those silly-looking round ears of 
  theirs. But they’re adaptable as anything, 
  trickier than they let on, and a force to be 
  reckoned with when riled.
  Names: Human naming conventions are 
  the standard the Royal bureaucracy runs 
  on: a traditional first name and a family 
  name, like Jonathan Smith or Amanda 
  Robertson. 
  Favored Approach: Flashy
  THE ROYAL FAMILIES
  There’s no set of humans more nota-
  ble than the Royal Families. House 
  Fletcher, 
  Makepeace, 
  Beauclerk, 
  and Clarence are the best known 
  ones, but there are smaller families 
  of less renown. While the actual 
  reigning monarchs stay out of the 
  public eye, Royal statute requires 
  that every sector in Royal space 
  house a duke, who acts as the voice 
  of the Royals. The families have 
  stayed fairly small; there’s no more 
  than a thousand living humans of 
  Royal blood. Even so, they soak up 
  a lot of resources. The family, staff, 
  and servants all live tax-free, and 
  they’re all human. 
  That last bit is a major point of 
  contention on planets settled by 
  other folks, and it means there’s 
  few places in the sea that a human 
  can’t just waltz into like they belong 
  there.
  10
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Goblins
  The goblins of old were scavengers and prey animals who fig-
  ured out the quickest route to survival: hook up with a bigger, 
  tougher species. They became a servant race to the other folk 
  on Homeworld, mostly orcs and humans. Now, post-exodus, 
  some goblin groups are struggling to create their own identity.
  Names: Most goblins use the naming conventions of their 
  host cultures, sometimes pulling from different backgrounds 
  to create odd names like Mateji Fletcher or Rebecca Darkblade. 
  Favored Approach:  Sneaky
  THE SHADOW FLEET
  Ah yes, the oft-rumored, rarely encountered 
  Shadow Fleet. It’s got a couple hundred ships, 
  makin’ up a sort of mobile system circling 
  Royal space (sector aspect: Hidden among 
  the Shadow Fleet). The fleet’s run by a goblin 
  named Elizabeth Krigar, who realized that her 
  people’s long history of servitude left them 
  trusted and omnipresent in the Hegemony. She 
  spent her life building a network of informants 
  throughout the sea, and set up the fleet to 
  store all that info. Goblins work there as infor-
  mation brokers, code-breakers, spies, and such.
  The fleet’s hidden, it’s mobile, and it’s too 
  valuable to attack. And for Krigar and the many 
  goblins she employs, it’s the only place in the 
  sea they feel safe.
  11
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Orcs
  Big, green, betusked, and to most folks 
  pretty scary-looking, orcs have a not-
  entirely unearned reputation for being 
  violent, borderline feral raiders. It’s a rep-
  utation that stems from prejudice, both 
  against orcs and by orcs against everyone 
  else. They were hit hard in the dying days 
  of Homeworld, when physical might was 
  less important than magical skill, and are 
  still pulling themselves back from the edge 
  of extinction. 
  Names: Orc names are like this: a par-
  ent’s name, then a birth number, then a 
  personal name, traditionally given when 
  the child comes of age, like Marek’s First 
  Arthog, or Grun’s Third Sharn. To better 
  fit with Royal bureaucracy, orcs have 
  taken family names, often as boasts, like 
  Mightiest or Elfsbane, or with great reluc-
  tance, like Makeme or Nonegiven.
  Favored Approach: Quick
  THE KLEHNAKI
  Thirty years back, an orc named Morag’s Second 
  Klehnak gathered together a huge portion of the 
  orcs in the sea and riled them up to wage war 
  on the Royals. She was an orc supremacist who 
  thought she could take the Homeworld system 
  in one strike. And, fact is, she nearly did—but 
  she didn’t, so now she’s languishing in a Royal 
  prison somewhere. But her followers, the ones 
  who survived, they stuck together, and they have 
  an orcs-only territory that even the Spellcasters’ 
  Union won’t go near. Of course, without SCU 
  magic to keep their ships fuelled, they have to get 
  it from outside their sector. To that end, they’re 
  constantly sending out pirates and raiding parties 
  to bring back functioning aethercraft and other 
  magical goodies. Rumor is, they’re waiting for 
  Klehnak to escape and guide them for a second 
  attack.
  12
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Dwarves
  These small but stout folk traditionally lived in 
  bustling underground hives, believin’ in nothing 
  but the Stone Prophecies, which foretold their 
  names, careers, and even spouses. Not many 
  still believe in ’em, though, because they never 
  predicted folks would leave Homeworld. Some 
  dwarves still live underground, but not as many 
  as in days past. One thing to know: beards are 
  popular with many men, but they ain’t nearly as 
  ubiquitous as some seem to think.
  Names: Personal names are set by the dwarf’s 
  date of birth, and family names come from the 
  family’s prophesied role. Finally, each one’s got 
  a middle name that says where they were born: 
  Stoneborn, Skyborn, or Aetherborn. They have 
  names like Cal Stoneborn Forgefounder and 
  Mett Aetherborn Arrowsmith.
  Favored Approach: Careful
  THE STONE KING
  Here’s something the Royals don’t talk about: 
  Homeworld ain’t really part of Royal space. 
  Truly. Dead center of everything, but they 
  don’t claim it; they leave it for the magic-
  warped mutants on the surface and the Stone 
  King and his followers below. King Albrecht 
  Stoneborn is a genuine insane tyrant, con-
  vinced that the stones whisper to him and 
  have told him to go to war with the aether 
  sea. The dwarves on Homeworld are build-
  ing an engine, one massive enough to propel 
  the entire planet. Ships that move too close 
  are attacked from the surface and stripped 
  for parts after they crash. Hooded or blinded 
  dwarves have been found out in the sea, sent 
  past naval blockades on unspecified missions. 
  Folks are pretty sure the King’s plan to 
  build a planet-sized warship is impossible. 
  But the man and his people are fervent.
  13
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Elves
  Elves evolved in Homeworld’s forests and 
  have developed a uniquely magical biology. 
  It’s pretty ingenious, actually: their gut uses 
  transfiguration to extract nutrients from 
  plants. They’re known to be arrogant, and 
  once believed that Homeworld itself was a 
  sort of mother-goddess who blessed them 
  with their natural aptitude for magic. Post-
  exodus, they’re not so sure anymore.
  Names: Many elves take pride in not shar-
  ing a name with any other elf, living or 
  dead, so they craft elaborate names for their 
  children through elaborate naming ceremo-
  nies. An elf name might be Silarrianatha or 
  Zetherasias, for instance. Surnames are taken 
  from old elven community names, such as 
  Crescentmoon, from the City of Crescent 
  Moons, or Silverleaf, from the Silver-Leaved 
  Forest.
  Favored Approach: Clever
  THE EXPLORATORY  
  THEOLOGICAL COUNCILS
  Imagine you believe your planet is a literal 
  goddess. And then your planet withers and 
  dies, and you leave it. Where does that leave 
  you, exactly? To the elves in the Exploratory 
  Theological Council, it leaves you traveling 
  from planet to planet, scouring each one for 
  traces of divinity, and leaving folks behind 
  wherever you find some. Trouble is, like any 
  elven organization, it’s had a dozen schisms 
  since its inception. One group of odd-but-
  polite elves who, by definition, are most 
  interested in the areas where people aren’t 
  living? Not a problem. Let ’em poke around. 
  Two groups like this and suddenly the 
  streets are full of screaming proselytizers. 
  And if you happen to live on a planet that 
  seems “divine” for whatever reason, you’re 
  going to get swarmed with them.
  14
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Trolls
  Trolls are big. Trolls are slow. Trolls aren’t 
  stupid, even if they’ve got that reputation. 
  They came from harsh mountain wilder-
  ness, and were taught not to speak until 
  they had something intelligent and elo-
  quent to say, so they got tagged as dumb 
  brutes when they first encountered other 
  folk. They never developed a written 
  language, so when their bards who held 
  their oral tradition were killed, enslaved, 
  or driven out ages ago, much of the epic 
  poetry that was trollish culture got lost.
  Names: Most traditional troll names are 
  forgotten, so trolls take names freely from 
  other cultures. When taking surnames to 
  fit in with Royal bureaucracy, trolls went 
  simple: Moon, Rock, Desk, Sky, and such. 
  Roughly a tenth of trolls have the family 
  name Troll.
  Favored Approach: Forceful
  TROLLISH LOREMASTERS
  All across the sea there are trollish 
  loremasters. These folks dedicate 
  their lives to gathering together 
  all the stories that have been lost. 
  A fellow named Thurûn Troll is the 
  closest they have to a leader, and 
  he runs a little library on a planet 
  not far from Homeworld. 
  There’s maybe a hundred lore-
  masters across the sea, moving 
  from planet to planet, asking 
  trolls to share any stories they can 
  remember. After a year or so, they 
  wend their ways back to Thurûn’s 
  library to have them added to the 
  ever-incomplete saga of trollish 
  history.
  15
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  MAGIC
  A thousand years ago, maybe, magic was the province of great mages; it was a 
  mystical and highly valued skill that maybe one in a thousand could be said to 
  have mastered—just like literacy. Things change. Modern magic is a bit more 
  like cooking: there are great chefs who can do amazing things, but most folks 
  can put together a sandwich when they need to. 
  There are two big categories of magic: raw casting—which most folks just call 
  casting—and prepared spells. If raw casting were cookery, it would be the kind 
  where you open the pantry door and find a sack of potatoes and a jar of capers 
  and just figure something out with it. There’s different schools of casting, but 
  within each school it’s flexible. If you know how to make a fireball, you can also 
  light a cigar without lighting up the fellow holding it. You can also keep your 
  coffee warm. Probably. That’s the tradeoff, there: raw magic might not do just 
  what you want.
  The other option is preparing spells. It’s like a recipe for magic: it tells you 
  exactly what to say and how to move your hands, and it gets you an exact result. 
  Tradeoff is, they’re limited: if you know a spell that lets you, say, toss a fireball, 
  you can’t change it up on the fly. If you wanted to light a fire, you’d have no way 
  other than standing ten feet back and chucking balls of flame at the woodpile. 
  You can’t fiddle with the recipe.
  Dabbling in Raw Magic
  Most folks who know magic, they dabble in it. They ain’t got a lot of actual 
  training, they just picked up a little magic on the way. Maybe they got magic-
  users in the family, maybe they did some reading in their off hours. Maybe they 
  just got a knack. Whatever the method, they know a bit about a school of magic. 
  If you want to dabble in raw magic, you just need to take one school of 
  magic—Animation, Evocation, or Alteration—as a stunt. Don’t even need an 
  aspect to justify it; dabbling is common.
  Each school of magic can do a bunch of things: Animation can bring stuff to 
  a shambling parody of life; Evocation can yank elements out of their respective 
  planes and into the real world; Alteration can tweak the operational rules of the 
  universe and so on. Read up on ’em, starting on page 20, to get a better idea 
  of what’s in their wheelhouses. 
  There’s a tradeoff for this broad base of knowledge, though. It’s gonna take you 
  a while to figure out how to do anything: you can only use magic to overcome 
  an obstacle or create an advantage, and doing so takes ten to fifteen minutes of 
  concentration. You’re dredging up a lot of magical theory and half-remembered 
  lessons, relying on guesswork and approximation, and you can’t just do it at the 
  drop of a hat. 
  16
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Focusing on Raw Magic
  Now, there’s those other folk who focus on raw magic. If you want to, you 
  first need an aspect that represents your training, something like Former SCU 
  Member or Trained at the Academy on Risingstar. If you’ve got one, you can 
  take a focus from within a school of magic as a stunt. Each school has a hand-
  ful of suggested focuses, but you’re not beholden to that list. Players, work with 
  the GM to create something new and different, so long as it makes sense in the 
  school and is, above all, focused. If you want multiple focuses, you’ll need a 
  justifying aspect for each one.
  Unlike dabblers, focused practitioners don’t get a broad base: if you’re focused 
  on summoning fire, then you have little to no wiggle room for how it gets sum-
  moned. You could use it to light up a pipe or a house, but you couldn’t summon 
  ice no matter how you try. The good thing is you can move quickly. You’re really 
  familiar with your focus, so you can work it nearly instantly. In other words, you 
  can use that sort of magic as an action, including in a conflict. You can even use 
  magic to attack and defend in a conflict, assuming you can think up a way that 
  fits in your focus.
  You don’t have to dabble in a school to focus in it; focusing in a school that 
  you don’t dabble in just means you are so caught up in your particular field that 
  you can’t expand beyond it. 
  Using Raw Magic
  Whether you’re a dabbler or a focused practitioner, casting works about the same. 
  You declare what you’re trying to do, or what effect you’re trying to make, and 
  what approach you’re going to use. For the most part, dabblers use Careful or 
  Clever, while focused practitioners are more likely to use Forceful or Quick, but 
  it depends on the cast.
  Opposition to casting depends on many factors, but by and large it is a Fair (+2) 
  challenge to perform an obvious application of magic that don’t go outside your 
  zone and targets a willing or inanimate target. ‘course, you’ll need to concentrate, 
  too; anything distracting you much will also make the cast harder.
  Ties, successes, and successes with style work the same as in the Fate Core System.
  If you fail, you have a choice to make. You 
  can take stress equal to the shifts needed to 
  make the roll a tie. By pushing yourself, you 
  take some magical backlash. Otherwise, you 
  can create a wild magic event, where the cast 
  is too weak to take hold, but the universe tries 
  to reconcile it anyway, causing some unpre-
  dictable problems. In this case, the GM twists 
  your cast and turns it back on you. If you were 
  trying to light a fire, then you light the whole 
  place on fire instead. If you were trying to 
  summon a spirit, then you summon its bigger, 
  angrier cousin. Trouble of that nature.
  MAGICAL COMBAT
  Magic fighting magic can 
  get pretty out of hand. The 
  loser in a magical fight has 
  gotta take enough stress 
  to get to a tie, or they trig-
  ger a wild magic event that 
  makes life more compli-
  cated for everyone. Clever 
  folks learn to stay well 
  away from magical duels.
  17
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Preparing and Performing Spells
  Spells aren’t like raw magic. Raw magic involves risk; things might go awry. Spells 
  don’t: a spell works all the time, every time. You’ll never roll dice when perform-
  ing a spell, and you won’t take stress. You say they happen and they happen. But 
  also, you got no say in how the spell works; it’ll always act the same way.
  If you want to make spells, you’re out of luck. The SCU has clamped down 
  hard on unlicensed spellcrafting and enchantment. To be honest, it don’t matter 
  overmuch to the average denizen of the deep sea: making spells requires a magi-
  cally inert environment and hours of work, and that’s just to make single-use 
  scrolls. Permanent spells take years of effort to create, and true enchantments—
  magic effects which can last indefinitely and not fade out in a few hours—take 
  days just to perform. Who wants to go through all that trouble, right?
  If you want to perform spells, or otherwise use effortless magic, that you can 
  do. Performing a spell is an action that immediately generates the spell’s effect. 
  Spells used to attack or defend will specify the result they create; these attack 
  actions are actively opposed by the target, while these defense actions replace 
  any rolls you could have made.
  Getting access to a one-and-done spell or wave-and-it-happens wand isn’t too 
  difficult; in a populated area you might have to overcome a Good (+3) obstacle 
  to track down a dealer selling what you want at a price you can afford. The more 
  esoteric the magic, though, the harder it’s bound to be to find. Plus, this is all 
  single-use stuff; read the spell or wave the wand, and it’ll never work again.
  CANTRIPS
  For the most part, the folks who might most want 
  to make spells are dabblers in raw magic. However, 
  the time it takes to cast somethin’ raw tends to 
  put a damper on how much fun they can have with 
  it. Luckily, there are cantrips, partially completed 
  spells which can be unleashed at a moment’s 
  notice. While using cantrips is technically a form 
  of spellcraft, the SCU doesn’t much care ’cause 
  cantrips are inherently temporary and can’t be 
  shared. 
  PCs who want to make cantrips must take the 
  Cantripping stunt. 
  Cantripping: You’ve made a habit of preparing 
  useful cantrips. You can spend a fate point to per-
  form a spell as an action, as if you were a focused 
  practitioner. To take this stunt, you must dabble 
  in at least one form of raw magic.
  18
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Permanent magic is another matter. Creating a spell that’ll always work is so 
  difficult that a single one can cost more than an entire aethercraft. That purchase 
  will take a darn good reason.
  If you want to have permanent forms of magic, first decide what spells or 
  magical artifacts your character wants. Any effect that can be created, you can 
  get. Each piece of permanent magic costs 2 stunts and requires an aspect to 
  justify how you acquired it. It’s expensive. It’s expensive because it works.
  There’s an effectively infinite number of prepared magic stunts; spells are 
  inflexible, so even minor variations—like the difference between throwing a 
  lightning bolt at someone in your zone and throwing a lightning bolt at some-
  one a zone away—are completely different spells, each requiring a justifying 
  aspect and 2 stunt slots.
  Outside of the SCU or Royal military installations, most prepared magic 
  works at a limited capacity: the aspects they create don’t get free invokes, and 
  attack or defense spells generally create Good (+3) results. But players, remem-
  ber you can be inventive. Talk with the GM about creating permanent magic; it’s 
  a conversation, like everythin’ else. GMs, if you think an effect is too powerful, 
  then just weaken it, increase its cost, or forbid it. If a player wants a minor effect, 
  well then maybe it only costs one stunt after all, but it still requires a justifying 
  aspect.
  Some Common Spells and Artifacts
  Trusty Old Wand of Fireball: If you’ve gotta go on the offensive, might as well 
  stick with a classic. Wave this wand to toss a ball of flame at a single target in 
  your zone, dealing a Good (+3) attack. 
  Assassin’s Shroud: Developed by the goblin assassins of the Shadow Fleet to 
  help them hide in the shadows of brightly lit halls. Place the aspect Shrouded 
  in Darkness on a single willing target within your zone.
  Liaretta’s Ravening Horde: A popular item on planets in the Annular 
  Necrocracy. Animate a single, complete corpse within your zone as the aspect 
  Ravenous Zombie. This doesn’t let you give that zombie orders, so be careful.
  Gloddi’s Basic Lifeboat: Though illegal in Royal space, there’s a heavy trade in 
  this spell. Attach the aspect Capable of Surviving Aether Travel on a shuttle-
  sized vessel.
  19
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Schools of Magic
  Evocation
  If you’re an evoker, you can tear open a hole in reality and yank out what’s on 
  the other side: the elemental planes. Fire, frost, shadow, and forces of that nature. 
  This ain’t a delicate process, and you don’t actually control what you pull out. 
  You can give it a sort of vector or hold it roughly in place, but this is magic best 
  used for smashing things. 
  The obvious application of Evocation is knocking down walls with blasts of 
  elemental force, especially for focused practitioners. With enough time, though, 
  even dabblers can lay useful aspects on zones; you can drown folks in shadow, 
  freeze them solid, or set up barriers of flame to keep them at bay. 
  Evocation attacks naturally hit one target in your zone or an adjacent zone. To 
  target somethin’ further away, increase the passive opposition by one for each 
  additional zone. If you want to target everything in a zone, increase it by two. 
  If you’re attacking someone, they’ll instead add those numbers to their active 
  opposition.
  Evocation Focuses
  Fire: A classic, highly recommended. The number-one choice for focused prac-
  titioners across the sea. 
  Lightning: Less common, but no less destructive. Some SCU ships have engines 
  that run off summoned lighting. 
  Earth: The least subtle aspect of an incredibly unsubtle art. 
  Shadow: A bit of a weird’un, without much in the way of offense but a fine 
  choice for utility. 
  Frost: Lay down a floor of ice, or just freeze a friend. 
  20
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Alteration
  Alteration makes something act like it’s something else. It’s like this: say you 
  want to fly, but you can’t. But you’ve got a bird that can fly. You can copy its 
  ability to fly onto you, temporarily. If you’re good, you can even copy the ability 
  to fly from a lone feather, which still contains some of the, uh, essence of “able-
  to-fly” or whatever. 
  Whether you’re a dabbler or a focused practitioner, you can only use Alteration 
  to create an advantage: you put an aspect on something or someone, provided 
  you can justify it. Like all aspects, this one is true for as long as it’s attached to its 
  target; to strain an example, if you’ve got the aspect Able to Fly, you’ve got all the 
  narrative justification you need to hover around the room. That doesn’t necessar-
  ily mean you can fly well, mind; that’s still a matter of rolling your approaches 
  and invoking your aspects. 
  Aspects created with Alteration last for about a half-hour, tops, before they 
  fade away. In game terms, they last until the end of the scene.
  Alteration Focuses
  Shamanism: Eagle’s flight, bear strength, wolf claws; your bailiwick is animals 
  and their attributes. 
  Meta-Alteration: A practice in high demand on small ships. This lets you create 
  magical effects based on other, pre-existing magical effects, like turning a 
  ship’s artificial gravity into a sort of tractor spell, or copying a magic sword’s 
  Always Strikes True enchantment onto your own arrows. 
  Illusionist: Your wheelhouse is appearance alone. So, while you can’t change 
  how anything functions, you can drop aspects like Looks Like a Wall or 
  Looks Like an Orc.
  21
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Animation
  Animation lets you make inanimate objects act like animate objects. It ain’t so 
  hard to imagine. 
  Animating an object is like creating an advantage, except the aspect you’re 
  creating is actually a creature, like a zombie or whatnot. Mechanically, it’s even 
  simpler than a mook: it’s got a high concept of your choice, no approaches, no 
  stress boxes, and one mild consequence slot.
  Animations last for about a half an hour before the magic wears out, so until 
  the end of a scene.
  When you try to animate an object and succeed, give the animation one of the 
  following properties. If you succeed with style, give it two.
  • Keep the animation active for a full day. 
  • Give the animation a second aspect. 
  • Give the animation a second mild consequence slot. 
  • Give the animation 2 stress boxes. 
  • Give the animation an Average (+1) approach. 
  • Give the animation a directive.
  A directive is a long-term order your animation will attempt to follow. 
  Animations without a directive will stand around mindlessly unless you give 
  them an order; animations with a directive will attempt to satisfy it.
  Giving an order to an animation is an overcome action, but it’s so easy that 
  you’ll only need to roll for it if someone’s actively opposing you. It always counts 
  as your action in conflicts, though. Animations always attempt to satisfy orders 
  first, then directives. Once it’s out of orders and directives, the animation will go 
  back to standing around until it gets a new order or the spell ends.
  The more active animations you have, the harder it becomes for you to make 
  more: for each animation you have active, increase its passive opposition by 2.
  Animation Focuses
  Necromancy: Turn dead bodies—whole, partial, or sewn together into some-
  thin’ horrifying—into abominations and zombies and whatnot.
  Artificing: Turn a person-shaped hunk of clay or other materials into an obedi-
  ent golem.
  Guardian Crafting: Create self-wielding weapons that float around you, or ani-
  mate suits of armor, anything with a purely protective flair.
  Spirit Summoning: Bring forth folk’s ghosts by coalescing the energy left 
  behind in places they died.
  22
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  THE SHIPS
  The earliest aether-capable ships were just that: old wooden ships, fitted with 
  landing struts and aether screws and balloons to help them get airborne. Many 
  an early colonist took to the stars in repurposed sailing vessels, and while there’s 
  a lot more kinds of ships these days, most you’re likely to see are built off that 
  old design.
  THE RISKS AND REWARDS OF 
  RUNNING AN AETHERCRAFT
  Do the players want to have an aethercraft of their own? We’re 
  assuming they do, but hey, not everyone wants to run a ship. 
  The PCs might be crew on a ship belonging to an NPC cap-
  tain. They might be mercenaries or other folks who run with the 
  highest bidder. They might even spend their time planetside, 
  finding adventure without worrying about the sea around them. 
  In any of these cases, y’all don’t need to worry about building 
  an aethership. 
  There are advantages to not having a ship: traveling through 
  the aether can be dangerous, and if you have a ship you’re sud-
  denly obliged to keep it running. From a narrative standpoint, 
  not having a ship means it’s easy to keep the PCs confined to 
  a sector or planet they might want to flee, turning “leaving the 
  planet” into a bona fide quest. That’s alright.
  If you got a ship, though, you got the sea at your disposal. 
  You can set your own course and make your own rules, and 
  no amount of sailin’ on someone else’s craft will match that 
  freedom.
  Building an Aethercraft
  Your ship is a character in this story. It’s just as much a part of the crew as you 
  are, so you’ll create it much the same as the PCs; the only difference being that 
  you’ll all work together to create the ship. Collaborate, and make an aethercraft 
  everyone is happy with.
  High Concept
  Figure out your ship’s high concept not long after figuring out your own, before 
  you start filling in all the little details about it. As with your own high concept, 
  this is a quick summary of the most important details about the aethercraft: Is it 
  a stolen Royal yacht? Or an armored dwarven trading vessel? Or a scratch-built 
  fighter from an orcish sector? 
  Unlike your character, your ship does not get a trouble aspect. Let’s be honest, 
  if y’all are riding around in her, that ship has more than enough trouble already.
  23
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Approaches
  Aethercraft have the same approaches that folks do. What they do with those 
  approaches might be a little different, though; ships can’t exactly throw a Forceful 
  punch, but they can Forcefully ram into someone. It’s about the same thing.
  The craft starts with two Average (+1) approaches, two Mediocre (+0), and 
  two Poor (-1).
  Size
  Folks are about the same size, but aethercraft sure ain’t. There’s a million differ-
  ent classes out there, but folks agree on the four main ones: shuttles, working 
  ships, major ships, and ultramassive craft. 
  Shuttles are short-distance craft that hold less than five folks and rarely ever 
  travel on their own.
  Working ships account for nine out of ten craft you’ll see out there. Small ones 
  are the size of a house and keep a half-dozen folks in some comfort. Big ones 
  can house fifty or sixty, but they usually have a much smaller crew with a lot of 
  room for cargo.
  Major ships are usually military, with crews of a hundred or more. They out-
  size all but the largest planetside structures, and most need a dozen or more folks 
  actively running ’em at any given moment. 
  Beyond that is the realm of the ultramassive, from luxury cruisers to battlesta-
  tions. Coordinated fleets of smaller ships can be treated as a single ultramassive 
  vessel.
  The included adventure, It’s Only an Elven Moon, assumes that you’ll be 
  entering the sea with a small working ship.
  Ship Aspects
  When y’all were building your characters, there was an aspect called a ship aspect 
  which you didn’t make right away. Now that you have an idea of what your ship 
  is like, make a ship aspect, which your character will share with your aethercraft. 
  It’s somethin’ like Faster Than You’d Expect or Gets Lost in a Crowd. All in all, 
  your ship will have ship aspects equalin’ how many crewmembers it’s got.
  24
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  When someone spends a lot of time on a ship, they become part of it. 
  It’s not magic, exactly. Or, if it is magic, it’s not the kind that the smart 
  folks at the SCU can understand. It’s just how things work in the sea: 
  you meet a fellow who’s bull-headed—he never gives up, even when he 
  should—and most of the time the craft he calls his acts the same way. It’ll 
  keep puttering forward well after most other ships would’ve fallen apart. 
  Maybe it’s just that folks are drawn to ships like themselves, but some 
  folk swear it’s the other way around. That tenacious fella’s ship might be 
  made of glass and eggshells, but when he started working it, it took on 
  a part of him. 
  All this only happens when you make the ship your own. You can live 
  on a ship, work on a ship, and be listed on the crew manifest, but if you 
  don’t love the ship, then it’s not a part of you. No shame in that. 
  This is why a lot of the bigger ships out there, especially military ones, 
  seem a little bit sterile. They might have a captain who loves ’em, maybe 
  an engineer, maybe not even that. That’s one place a smaller ship has an 
  advantage: they got a personality.
  Components, Stunts, and Refresh
  A basic, by-the-numbers aethercraft can’t do much more than move through the 
  aether and keep the folks inside alive. Every ship’s got the following components:
  • An aether screw and engine, used for basic propulsion in the aether sea. 
  • A control station, used to adjust the ship’s course. Usually this is a helm 
  which is mechanically or magically connected to the rudders on the 
  aether screw.
  • An enchantment sink, used to hold the magic that protects the ship from 
  the aether and lets it move at meaningful speeds. The sink is usually a 
  block of silver kept in the bottom of the ship, sometimes called a “bilge 
  bar,” but there’s plenty of ways to keep a ship enchanted. Most of the 
  time, any other magical equipment on the ship runs off the bilge bar as 
  well.
  • A mirror or crystal for communicating with other ships and stations.
  • Life support, artificial gravity, and lights, for the comfort of the crew. 
  Most often, these’ll be air-cleaning ivy, enchantments worked into the 
  carpeting, and sealed jars of elemental fire, respectively.
  An aethercraft might have other things like kitchens and recreation areas, but 
  in terms of equipment that’s what you get. Each other component takes a stunt 
  slot.
  Aethercraft aren’t so flexible as folks; a working ship starts with 1 free stunt 
  and 1 refresh. If the crew agrees on it, they can spend 1 refresh from the ship to 
  buy it a stunt; ships can go down to 0 refresh. Alternately, a crewmember can 
  spend 1 refresh of their own to buy a stunt for their ship. The bigger a ship is, the 
  more options it has. Shuttles get 1 refresh, but no free stunts. Major ships get 3 
  refresh. Ultramassive ships get 3 free stunts and 3 refresh.
  25
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Some of the most common components for a working aethership include:
  • Landing Struts: Lets the ship take off and land on its own. Without 
  struts, a ship that wants to land planetside must be brought in by a dock-
  ing spell, which means someone on the planet knows it’s landing.
  • Weapons Station: The ship gets a station from which a crewman can use 
  attack actions. Weapons stations can be anything from massive ballistae 
  to some windows for an evoker to toss fireballs out of. Secondary or ter-
  tiary weapons stations are also quite popular.
  • Magical Warding: The ship gets another mild consequence slot, which 
  can be used to fend off magic attacks. 
  • High-Efficiency Engines: Add a box to the ship’s resources stress track.
  Ships can also take stunts to represent unique aspects of their construction. 
  For instance, Armored Bow gives +2 when Forcefully ramming another ship, 
  and Cloaking Enchantment gives +2 when Sneakily fleeing from combat.
  Name, Appearance, and Layout
  Time to decide what your ship is called and what it looks like. There ain’t much 
  agreement about what to call ships in the sea; the Royal Navy tends toward 
  expansive and abstract names like Hope or Defiance, Klehnaki raiders like threat-
  ening names like The Bloodied Fist, and plenty of mercenaries don’t bother with 
  names at all. 
  As far as appearance is concerned, you’re not exactly constrained. While most 
  aethercraft look like old ships with their sails chopped off, there are plenty other 
  varieties: the Deeprunner’s Mining Concern favors working asteroids with 
  engines bolted to the back, and the SCU builds its stations by growing a mas-
  sive, hollow tree to live in. Heck, there was some goblin a few years back who 
  managed to get from this planet to the moon with nothing more than a rowboat 
  and a lotta moxie. 
  Sketch out the innards of your craft, like sketching out the battlefield before 
  trouble goes down. This ain’t a perfect map, just somethin’ rough to keep every-
  one’s minds straight. A working ship has about 6 zones, split among rooms used 
  for commanding the ship, the engineering area, a dining or rec space, living 
  space—usually subdivided into even smaller quarters, not much more than beds 
  with curtains, a hallway to get to all of those places, and plenty of room for stor-
  age. But that’s just the general idea.
  Resources
  A small working ship starts with a resources stress track with 3 boxes, but with 
  the third box checked already. Shuttles generally don’t have a resources stress 
  track. Major ships have 4 boxes, and ultramassive vessels have 5. 
  Want to know more about Resources? Look at page 30.
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  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Operating Your Ship
  Most of the time, your aethercraft will take you from point A to point B without 
  a whole heck of a lot of trouble; after all, adventures tend to happen planetside. 
  When there’s no threat or no action, you can gloss over the things your ship does. 
  Sometimes, though, you’re going to hit some Klehnaki raiders who want to 
  scrap your vessel and, on the whole, don’t really mind if you get scrapped as well. 
  Sometimes you’ll need to sneak by a Royal patrol craft. The kinds of things that 
  require a finer touch. 
  Stations
  An aethercraft’s got a bunch of stations, places where folks can control some 
  part of the ship. They’re just components that the crew can man. Stations come 
  in all sorts of styles, from wheels that physically link up to the rudder, to boards 
  etched with runes that the user presses to control the ship. 
  To start, ships have two stations: a control station, to change its heading and 
  speed, and a communications station, to trade information with folks in nearby 
  ships. 
  You can purchase extra stations as stunts, the most common being a weapon 
  station. Each station lets the ship perform certain actions, as long as a crewmem-
  ber is operating the station, meaning the operator is in the right zone of the ship 
  and is free to act.
  A PC operating a station can decide what that part of the ship does and which 
  approach they use and the ship uses. The operator rolls four fate dice, adds their 
  approach to the ship’s approach, and resolves the action normally.
  While piloting the ship is left to just the pilot, that doesn’t 
  mean everyone else can take things easy. When the ship’s 
  in trouble, the pilot’s going to want someone in the engine 
  room diverting power, and the gunner’s going to want 
  someone spotting targets from the port window. There are 
  plenty of ways that crewmembers can create advantages 
  for the other folks on the ship.
  If you’re a crewmember of a ship, you’re vaguely familiar with all the stations; 
  you can take any seat, even if it’s not your forte. If you’re trying to operate a 
  ship you aren’t a crewmember of—which don’t necessarily mean you’re stealing 
  it, but sure carries the implication—then you’ll likely need an aspect justifying 
  your familiarity with the controls you want to use. If you don’t have one, you’ll 
  need to overcome an obstacle to figure out how to work the unfamiliar layout; 
  a mass-produced ship would be a Good (+3) obstacle, while an idiosyncratic 
  homebrew aethercraft would be much harder to use.
  27
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Ship Aspects and Fate Points
  Ships have their own refresh and aspects, which can be compelled by the GM or 
  invoked by the players. That means your aethercraft will have its own supply of 
  fate points. They can be used to resist compels the GM throws at the ship, even 
  if nobody is on the ship when it happens.
  To invoke ship aspects, including any situation aspects the ship picks up, play-
  ers can spend their own fate points or the ship’s fate points. Aethercraft tend to 
  be slow at getting fate points, so using your own might be wise. Holding onto a 
  bit of the ship’s stock might come in handy for punching a last-minute getaway 
  or handling an unexpected boarding party. 
  Likewise, anyone operating a station on the ship can invoke or compel 
  aspects—both their own and the ship’s—using their fate points or the ship’s 
  supply. 
  Ship-to-Ship Conflict
  In conflicts, folks and aethercraft all act at the same time; for the most part, 
  this means the crewmembers on the ships will be running around, creating 
  advantages for the poor sap at the piloting controls to use to get out of trouble. 
  When determining initiative, go through the motions for the crewmembers of 
  the aethercraft in the conflict. Don’t bother for the craft; they’ll act when their 
  crews make them.
  Aethercraft move through zones just like folks do. When a battle breaks out, 
  sketch out a quick map of the area, where the ships are, and where the crew-
  members of each ship are—if you find such a thing necessary.
  During a conflict, a character can spend an action to use a station, controlling 
  some part of the ship. Each station can only be used once per exchange, but any 
  number of stations can be used at once during an exchange; a craft bristling with 
  weapons stations could attack a half-dozen times, while a ship with a secondary 
  navigation station could move twice. 
  Ships not manned by PCs are constructed like NPCs, and 
  you can create important ships using the same rules as 
  those for the PCs’ ship. You can also make ship mooks: 
  ships with a couple of aspects, and couple things they are 
  Skilled (+2) or Bad (-2) at, along with any essential com-
  ponents. Ship mooks don’t have stress boxes, though, just 
  a mild consequence slot most often.
  Size in Combat 
  The bigger a ship is, the more powerful it can be, and the 
  harder it is to hurt. The scale ladder for ships is to the left.
  When ships of different sizes face each other, the larger 
  aethercraft gets +2 to attack and +2 to defend for each 
  step higher on the ladder.  
  Ultramassive ship
  Major Ship
  Working ship
  Shuttle
  Single person
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  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Consequences
  Unlike characters, ships don’t use stress boxes to represent damage; they have 
  resources stress, but that’s something different (page 30). 
  Ships do have mild, moderate, and severe consequence slots, and the option 
  to take extreme consequences. One thing with extreme consequences: they affect 
  both a ship aspect and whoever shares that aspect. It might take some finagling 
  to figure out how both parties get hit by that consequence. 
  The only way a ship can take an extreme consequence is if a crewmember 
  agrees to take the hit; if nobody is willing, the aethercraft could be taken out.
  Want to know more about extreme consequences? Look at Fate Core System 
  on page 166.
  Ships can’t repair themselves; it costs money to get them into operational 
  order again. See “Repairs” on page 30 for info on how to get your aethercraft 
  into good shape again by spending your Resources.
  Advancement
  Aethercraft hit milestones at the same time as characters. They also advance the 
  same way, except that the players need to agree on what advancements the ship 
  takes. Renaming ship aspects is a bit tricky: the crewmembers’ ship aspects must 
  be the same as the aethercraft’s ship aspects, so both a player and the ship have 
  to spend their milestone on renaming it.
  Changing Aethercraft
  A crew can buy or steal a new aethercraft and abandon their old ship if they want. 
  The crew will keep their ship aspects, but the new craft will not have them; it’ll 
  just have a high concept. 
  When the PCs hit a major milestone while operating this new ship, they’ll 
  become a part of it; in addition to all the other benefits, their ship will take 
  on everybody’s ship aspects without having to spend the milestone as it would 
  normally.
  29
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Surviving in the Sea
  Keeping a ship operational is a huge and complex job, and getting from place to 
  place is a logistical nightmare even for a dedicated captain who doesn’t have to 
  plan around where the Royal Navy patrols happen to be. 
  Don’t worry, though, we’ll run over the tough stuff.
  Resources
  Aethercraft need a lot of raw materials to keep swimming. The bilge bar needs 
  to get its enchantment topped up, the aether screw needs to be kept in coal 
  or whatever it runs on, and the crew tends to be happier when there’s enough 
  food around. And that’s not counting the hundreds of tiny repairs and tune-ups 
  needed regularly to keep the thing from succumbing to the ravages of the aether. 
  In the name of keeping things simple, all of that gets collected into one thing: 
  Resources, which is represented by a stress track that works a little different.
  Resources works just like Wealth on page 69 of the Fate System Toolkit. If you 
  can succeed at an action by throwing money at the problem, you can tick off a 
  resources stress box or take an appropriate consequence to succeed. 
  Taking a job will get you whatever the local economy considers to be cash: 
  gold crowns in Royal space, a half-dozen different currencies or barter scrip 
  outside of it. This is expressed as a parcel of goods with a certain Resources value. 
  Most often, an honest job that doesn’t require you to leave a sector will get you 
  a parcel of goods worth 1 Resources. Harder jobs, or those not quite on the up 
  and up, can be worth a bit more. 
  When you get a parcel, you can use it to clear any resources stress boxes with 
  a combined value of the parcel’s value or less. For instance, you could clear the 
  first and second stress boxes with a parcel of 3 Resources. 
  Money’s got a way of disappearing, so you can’t hold onto a parcel of Resources 
  until you need it: use it when you get it, or not at all.
  Repairs
  Resources are the only way you can fix up your ship. Removing a mild con-
  sequence costs 1 resources stress, as does knocking a moderate or severe 
  consequence down a level. You’ll have to explain how this works; erasing conse-
  quences caused by travel might be as simple as saying you squeeze a little more 
  magic out of the engines, while fixing a hole in the hull might need to be some-
  thing you just pay to get fixed.
  Even if you have the resources to handle it, you can’t reduce a moderate con-
  sequence to mild and then clear it immediately; it has to stick around for at least 
  a scene before it can be fixed for good. Likewise for severe ones.
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  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Getting from Place to Place
  The aether sea is big, but it’s mostly empty. Stars and planets and whatnot bob 
  around all over the place, but between them is nothing but aether. 
  The good thing about that is that navigation is easy. While you might want 
  some fancy piloting when you’re in a system or getting chased, most of the time 
  you just gotta point yourself in the right direction and keep half an eye on the 
  bow so you don’t crash into a sun. 
  The bad thing is that moving through empty space burns up time and 
  resources—a lot of it, at that. 
  Getting from place to place is simple: figure out how far you’re going, and 
  that’ll tell you how much time and resources you’ll need to spend. If you’re 
  moving from one point on a planet to another, or from a planet to its moon 
  or another planet in the system, that’s easy. It’s about an hour, and doesn’t use 
  enough of your energy to be worth mentioning.  Any further, just consult this 
  list:
  • Moving a short distance—from one planet to another in the same quad-
  rant, for instance—takes a few days and 1 resources stress.
  • Moving a moderate distance—like from one quadrant to another via a 
  direct route, which generally means cutting through Royal space—takes 
  a week and a bit and 2 resources stress.
  • Moving a long distance—like from one quadrant to another by circum-
  navigating Royal space—takes at least three weeks and 3 resources stress.
  • Moving a very long distance—like cutting from one end of the sea to the 
  other—takes over a month and 4 resources stress.
  Where to?
  A working ship needs a purpose, otherwise it’s just wasting resources. The 
  included adventure, It’s Only an Elven Moon, will start the PCs off with a task; 
  otherwise, the GM will need to craft a job for them.
  A job has four parts: the contact, the cargo, the destination, and the 
  complication.
  • The contact is the person who wants stuff moved.
  • The cargo is whatever the crew will be holding on to; it might be goods, 
  information, or people. It might even be the contact.
  • The destination is where the crew’s got to go and who they’ve got to get 
  the cargo to; the essential part of this is, of course, how far away it is. 
  • The complication is the reason dropping off the cargo won’t be so easy—
  and usually something the crew isn’t aware of. Maybe the cargo is illegal. 
  Maybe the destination is on fire. Something to make the job interesting. 
  For some sample jobs, take a gander at page 44.
  31
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  IT’S ONLY AN ELVEN MOON
  Folks call this area the red corridor, on account of the big red star hangin’ 
  about, which is just about the only thing of interest. It’s between the Annular 
  Necrocracy—the richest sector in the quadrant—and Finn’s Prairie, a fertile 
  farming planet and local hub for trading food. But both of those are days away, 
  and the corridor itself is a dull stretch of unaffiliated Royal space, punctuated by 
  a big red star and planets which, on all the Royal registers at least, are uninhab-
  ited. Even so, it’s traveled well enough.
  Sector Aspect: A Long Ways from Anything Interesting
  What Is the Crew Doing Here? 
  Nobody comes to the red corridor to sightsee. There’s nothing to see. The PCs 
  start this adventure on a job: they’re to meet a waiting ship and deliver some 
  cargo. Before this adventure starts, ask the players who they met and what they’re 
  loaded down with; as jumping-off points, they can consider any smuggling rings 
  or criminal enterprises named or implied in their aspects.
  The mission was supposed to be simple: find the ship, deliver the cargo, get 
  paid, and move on. No names were given because none would be needed; the 
  contact would be the only ship bothering to hang out in the red corridor.
  32
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Getting Trapped in the Red Corridor
  As the PCs approach the coordinates for the waiting ship, in the middle of 
  nowhere, instead of finding a lone ship drifting near that big red star, they find 
  a half-dozen ships of dwarven make, plenty of smaller vessels of various makes 
  and models, a full SCU station in orbit around that sun, and—the Royal Glory.
  Royal Glory
  High Concept: Well-Used Royal Navy Warship
  Size: Major ship
  Skilled (+2) at: Fighting
  Bad (-2) at: Navigating close quarters 
  Components: Two weapons stations (cannons) and a grap-
  pling station (harpoon used to grab and tow ships and other 
  objects).
  A standard Amethyst-class ship of the Royal Navy, albeit one 
  which has seen a few battles and slipshod repairs.
  Almost as soon as they see the ship, it hails them. Its captain, Glada Aetherborn 
  Shipwright, addresses them: “Attention, unauthorized vessel: by mandate of the 
  Royal Hegemony, this sector is considered high-risk. We will have to escort you 
  to a nearby station for processing.”
  If the PCs play nice, Shipwright drops them off at the SCU station Gildedfrost. 
  If they raise trouble, the Glory outclasses them by a wide margin and shouldn’t 
  have trouble taking them out. In that case, Shipwright tows them to the station 
  anyway. 
  GILDEDFROST STATION
  A massive oak tree, miles wide, whose branches and roots 
  have been woven together into landing platforms, which 
  are dotted with ships, mostly Royal Navy. The station is 
  hollow, and the wood has been shaped to form hallways 
  and thousands of irregularly shaped rooms.
  Gildedfrost is huge and immobile enough that it’s easier 
  to treat as a planet, rather than even an ultramassive ship. 
  It’s got no weapons, but its sheer size means that attack-
  ing it would be fruitless.
  Planetary Aspect: A Bustling Artificial City
  33
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  When the PCs are brought in, their ship is set on a platform in the upper 
  boughs of the tree, and they are ushered to processing. That might take place in 
  a little cubicle or a holding cell, depending on how the PCs acted before, but 
  either way it amounts to the same thing: they wait in a room for about an hour 
  until a harried elf, a man named Ariallatta Glittering, arrives and asks the PCs:
  “What, exactly, did you think you had in your cargo hold, hmm?”
  Ariallatta Glittering,  
  of the Department of Volatile Magic
  Folk: Elf
  Aspects: “I know people who know people.”, Paperwork-fu
  Skilled (+2) at: Careful use of language
  Bad (-2) at: Being in any way likeable
  THE DEPARTMENT OF VOLATILE MAGIC
  The Department of Volatile Magic (DVM) is a branch of 
  the Royal Trade Commission (RTC), itself a subset of the 
  Bureau of Goods and Services. The RTC is closely affiliated 
  with—but not, its members are clear to point out, under the 
  auspices of—the Spellcasters’ Union. The DVM isn’t even 
  the department that deals with volatile magic; that would 
  be the prestigious Magical Abuse Assessment Bureau, but 
  the Bureau is only open to SCU-certified magic-users. The 
  DVM basically just run the ship-scanners.
  Glittering is a pinch-faced sourpuss in a cheap suit who works for a small 
  department, has five bosses, and is eager to get noticed by anyone up the chain 
  in any direction. 
  Glittering explains that he’s with the Department of Volatile Magic, and that 
  the PCs were carrying a bomb hidden among their cargo: a fist-sized stone with 
  an explosive enchantment worked deep into it, able to be triggered by an outside 
  spell. Not the most deadly bomb in the sea, no—but volatile, unregistered, and 
  brought into an area declared at high risk of instability. This offense carries a 
  minimum sentence of five years in a penal colony.
  But Glittering knows that someone in the sector was trying to get the bomb 
  and that the PCs were just patsies. He offers the PCs a deal: they find out who 
  was going to intercept the thing, meaning he’ll look good to his superiors, and 
  he might just see that they don’t get officially cited.
  Glittering can hold off a report for about two days before he needs to start 
  crawling through bureaucratic channels. The PCs have that long to give him a 
  name and enough evidence to suggest that the suspect arranged to have a bomb 
  brought in. 
  34
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  In the meantime, the PCs are free to move about the sector. Don’t worry 
  about the bomb; it’s been moved to the DVM’s magic-dampening storage locker. 
  But, Glittering is quick to point out, their ship’s registry has been logged and 
  their enchantment-signature recorded, so if they try to flee, the Royal Glory will 
  find them.
  On the Trail
  Once he makes the deal—and, if necessary, lets the PCs out of their cell—
  Glittering doesn’t want to see them until they have a name. Otherwise it looks 
  bad. If pressed, or if the PCs seem to be grasping for the next logical step, he’ll 
  point out that there’s a bar on the station full of shady types, as good a place as 
  any to poke about. Otherwise, they’re on their own.
  Jack’s Bar is run by an aging troll—Jax Star—and one of the many civilian 
  operations on the station. It’s easy enough to find; the dining deck is the hub 
  of station activity, after all. Jack’s serves a number of small couriers like the PCs 
  who have been temporarily delayed by station bureaucracy. There, Jax or anyone 
  else can fill the PCs in on what’s going on with the zone, which no one expected 
  to be occupied.
  Political Instability
  The problem is a little piece of nothing much that everybody wants a part of. 
  The name in Royal ledgers is Unoccupied Planetoid G-13, but its occupants call 
  it “the moon with the verdant eyes”—Verdanteye if they’re in a rush. It seems a 
  colony ship of elves touched down here, without informing the Hegemony, and 
  have been habiforming it for the past few generations. Verdanteye is a sizable 
  moon that circles a gas giant, and from the aether looks a bit like a big green 
  eye: it’s almost all bare white stone, save for a green circle where the elves have 
  grown a forest. 
  Planetary Aspect: Undergoing Long-Term Habiforming 
  35
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Three big entities are eyeing the area:
  The Deeprunners Mining Concern: An independent business that operates in 
  Royal space, the Deeprunners are one of the biggest names in the sea for mining 
  moons and asteroids. It’s almost fully dwarf-run and the sea’s largest employer 
  of Stoneborn dwarves who fled Homeworld. There’s gold in this here moon, 
  and they’ve got a contract with the Hegemony to mine it out—they just didn’t 
  expect to find occupants there. 
  At Jack’s, there’ll be a table of sullen dwarves at all hours, sick of waiting for 
  the okay to descend upon G-13. 
  The Colonists: A group of a hundred or so elves, whose ancestors stumbled 
  across this rock a century back. Elves being a long-lived sort, some of those 
  ancestors are still around, if a bit wizened. If you ask any one of those old folks 
  why they settled on this moon, they’ll answer the same thing: “The god who 
  dwells within the planet called to us, and we answered.” So, it’s hard to argue 
  with that. These are the sort of elves who really do believe in the sanctity of the 
  planet, and even the ones who’re not sure it’s a literal god think it’s a pretty spe-
  cial place. They don’t even cut down trees if they can help it.
  As a rule, Verdanteye folk don’t drink, so you won’t find them at Jack’s, but 
  there are a few on the station, including a peaceful protest group sitting silently 
  in the center of the dining deck.
  The Royal Hegemony: Officially, Gildedfrost Station and the Royal Glory are 
  here to monitor the situation. Just to observe and keep the peace. But hey, habi-
  forming planets is a long and arduous process. Here’s a livable planet in Royal 
  space, so it seems a shame to let it be destroyed by the miners. Instead, the 
  Hegemony can wait out the Deeprunners. If waiting to mine becomes unprofit-
  able, they’ll leave; if they attack a populated planet, they’ll break their contract. 
  Either way, the Deeprunners’ll shove themselves out of the picture, and the 
  Hegemony can evict the elves and move in a duke to get the planet in order.
  If asked, Jax is more than happy to explain, at some length, why the station 
  is out there.
  Jax Star, proprietor, Jack’s Bar
  Folk: Troll
  Aspect: A Consummate Barkeep
  Skilled (+2) at: Fixing drinks
  Bad (-2) at: Moving quickly
  36
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Getting Info from the Contact
  The loudest voice at the bar at any hour is an orc named Grun’s Third Arkus 
  Darkblade. If the PCs ask around about who might be involved in the local arms 
  trade, the orc’s who’ll get pointed out to them.
  Grun’s Third Arkus Darkblade, 
  member of the Royal Navy
  Folk: Orc
  High Concept: “I’m the guy who can get it for you, what-
  ever it is.”
  Trouble: Talks the Talk, but Panics in a Fight
  Background: Spent Some Years Riding with the Klehnaki 
  Pirates
  Aspect: “I know who’s corrupt and how much they want.”
  Aspect: Classical Theater Training
  Arkus is small for an orc, and he’s got no tusks. They were 
  snapped off in a ferocious brawl, he’ll assure everyone—he 
  actually fell out of his bunk and landed on his face. He’s a low-
  level aetherman on the Royal Glory, always dressed in a poorly 
  maintained uniform. Right now, he’s out on leave and loving it.
  Where to find him: At Jack’s Bar, drinking or gambling. Eventually he’ll stum-
  ble his way back to his ship, but not until Jax forces him out. 
  What he knows: He knows how to get anything of any legality, if you have the 
  time and coin. Most pertinently, he knows who wanted the bomb delivered to 
  Gildedfrost—he’s the one who brokered that deal—although he doesn’t know 
  why. “Why” is not a question that concerns him.
  He won’t just give away that information, though, but he’ll claim to feel right 
  bad that the PCs got arrested for it. He don’t feel that bad, though.
  How to find out: Arkus will happily let the PCs purchase the information with 
  something of value; he’ll suggest that station manager Nosmo Mateji’s logbook 
  is a tempting target. If the PCs have another high-value target in mind, he’ll 
  readily accept.
  Or they can just beat the information out of him. If the PCs threaten Arkus 
  out of sight of a crowd, he’ll fight briefly but panic before long. If the PCs can’t 
  get him alone, they’ll have to contend with one or more Royal Navy Aethermen 
  (page 38) as well.
  However they work it, the PCs get the truth out of Arkus: one of the elf colo-
  nists, Lararion—she ordered the bomb.
  37
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  The PCs might be tempted to take this info straight to Glittering, but he’s 
  not stupid: they’ll need some proof. He appreciates that the nature-lovers on 
  Verdanteye are less likely to have the appropriate paperwork, but what are you 
  gonna do?
  Royal Navy Aetherman
  Folk: Various species, usually orc, dwarf, or human
  Aspect: The Strong Arm of the Royal Navy
  Skilled (+2) at: Working together, brawling
  Bad (-2) at: Self-directed activity
  Stress: 1
  Tracking Down the Colonist
  The elf protestors know Lararion: she’s the chief habiforming engineer on the 
  planet. They also know she was on the station a few days back, but she’s gone 
  back to the surface of the moon. The PCs will have to fly down there.
  Lararion of Verdanteye
  Folk: Elf
  High Concept: Habiforming 
  Engineer
  Trouble: “Don’t want no trouble 
  on my planet.”
  Background: Born and Raised on 
  a Developing World
  Other Aspects: Passionate 
  About Her Beliefs, Rich Elvish 
  Traditions
  Dabbles in: Alteration
  Focuses on: habiforming in 
  Alteration
  Lararion is in her sixties, which is 
  late-middle age for an elf. She grew 
  up on Verdanteye, and like the rest of 
  her people she has no desire to leave. 
  Like the other colonists, she wears 
  simple clothes of natural fibers and 
  is in incredible shape; Verdanteye is 
  one of those colonies where folks still 
  climb from the forest floor to their 
  treetop homes multiple times a day.
  38
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Tracking her down: Getting to the planet is easy enough—maybe, see “Other 
  Troubles” on page 43—but the PCs are strangers there, treated with suspi-
  cion. Some colonists have never seen a non-elf before. If any of the PCs are 
  orcs, goblins, or trolls, they might well see younger elves fleeing in terror. The 
  colony is small, and Lararion will be among those gathering when the PCs’ ship 
  approaches the landing platform. She’s not dumb; she knows who they’re look-
  ing for. 
  Verdanteye colonists are proud folk; if the PCs are respectful, Lararion will 
  make herself known. If the PCs try to intimidate her, Lararion will flee down 
  and into the forest, forcing the PCs to engage in a contest to catch up to her.
  If the PCs fail to catch Lararion, they’ll return to find their ship rooted down 
  with magical vines. If they try to contact Lararion, she’ll only talk to them on 
  her own terms.
  Her plan: Arkus was to pull the bomb from the PCs’ cargo, then see that it 
  made its way to the Deeprunner flagship. It wasn’t meant to kill anyone, just 
  destroy their equipment and get them to move on.
  She has no idea that the Hegemony plans to evict her the moment the 
  Deeprunners leave. No idea.
  Securing a confession: Here’s the deal. If that bomb gets onto the Deeprunner’s 
  ship, Lararion will turn herself in. She’s got no interest in seeing mostly innocent 
  people go to jail. 
  If she trusts the PCs, they can convince her that the Hegemony will just 
  roll in and evict everyone anyway. She’ll want proof. The station manager’s log-
  book would do nicely, as it contains a record of all communication with the 
  Department of Immigration and Colonization. If the PCs get the book to her, 
  she’ll give herself up without any explosions—the planet’s a loss, anyway. But 
  that’s only if she trusts the PCs; in other words, if the ship ain’t buried under a 
  half-ton of enchanted greenery. 
  Getting the Bomb Back
  …so it turns out that the Department of Volatile Magic has evidence storage, but 
  the department is so low down on the list of things folks care about, the storage 
  ain’t even guarded. A map of the station will tell the PCs that they can access the 
  evidence through Glittering’s office. Hardest part will be distracting the elf for 
  ten solid minutes so they can pick the lock. 
  Putting the Bomb on the Flagship
  This will be considerably harder than getting the bomb. Captain Arrowsmith of 
  the Deeprunners Mining Concern won’t just let the PCs onto her ship unless 
  she trusts that they have her interests at heart, though she is perfectly content to 
  communicate over a distance. 
  39
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Captain Aldis Stoneborn Arrowsmith,  
  of the Deeprunners
  Folk: Dwarf
  High Concept: “The best damn moon-miner in the whole 
  damn fleet.”
  Trouble: Always, Always Angry
  Background: “I still remember fleeing Homeworld.”
  Ship Aspect: When In Doubt, Smash It
  Aspect: Faster Than You’d Think
  Aldis spent her first twenty years on Homeworld, under the 
  Stone King, following prophecy. She won’t talk about why she 
  left, not even to other exiles. Fact is, she was ordered to shoot 
  down a ship that had drifted too close to the planet, and she 
  did. Six died in the crash, and then she decided never again. 
  Like many Homeworld dwarves, she’s especially short, with 
  pale grey skin you only see among the Stoneborn.
  Deeprunner Flagship 
  Mining Vessel #22
  High Concept: Impenetrable Fortress in the Sea
  Ship Aspect: When In Doubt, Smash It
  Size: Working ship
  Components: Landing struts and stone armor (all stress dealt 
  to this ship is reduced by one).
  Like many Deeprunner vessels, #22 is made out of hewn stone. 
  It resembles a cross between a ship and an ancient castle. And 
  like a castle, it’s meant to discourage attacks; the cargo bays 
  might be full of gold or other precious minerals, after all, so 
  appearing untouchable is advantageous.
  Getting into the Captain’s good graces and onto the ship: Like any cadre of 
  bored people at a bar, the miners at Jack’s will talk about their troubles if you 
  buy them a drink. It seems Captain Arrowsmith is in a bad mood; Deeprunner 
  Mining Vessel #325 got damaged in an altercation with a Klehnaki pirate and 
  needs a critical engine part: a rune of stasis. To make matters worse, a half-
  dozen of Deeprunner dwarves got locked up in the Gildedfrost holding cells for 
  public drunkenness. Embarrassing. If the PCs can track down a replacement 
  rune—Arkus might know where to find one—or charm the station guards into 
  releasing the miners, the mood on the flagship would certainly be improved.
  40
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  And of course, there’s the perennial problem of the colonists. Clever players 
  might be able to convince the miners that they’ve got a plan to scoot the elves 
  without earning the Hegemony’s ire.
  If the PCs can solve a problem to the satisfaction of the miners, they’ll put in 
  a good word with Arrowsmith, and the PCs will get a polite invitation to dine 
  at the captain’s table. 
  Or they can try to just force a dock with the flagship. That’s quite a challenge, 
  there. They’ll need to get close to the flagship, keep the ship on the right head-
  ing, deceive the Gildedfrost representative who hails them to ask what they’re 
  doing, and so on.
  Dropping the bomb: Inside, the ship is almost wholly cargo area, and the rest is 
  filled with dozens of miners in close quarters. Sneaking around is difficult, but if 
  the PCs get access to the cargo bay, currently full of boxes of mining equipment, 
  there’s plenty of room to run, hide, and cause trouble. 
  Deeprunner Miner
  Folk: Dwarf
  Aspects: Patient and Powerful, “I know my equipment.”
  Skilled (+2) at: Mining, moving through the dark
  Bad (-2) at: Moving quickly 
  Stress: 1
  Otherwise, the PCs can just drop their little bomb anywhere out of sight. 
  That’s going to injure or kill some Deeprunners, though, which there will surely 
  be repercussions for, but it will satisfy Lararion.
  41
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Snatching the Station Manager’s Logbook
  Maybe the PCs are grabbing it for Arkus, or maybe for Lararion to convince her 
  that her colony is doomed. Or maybe they got their own reasons. There’s lots of 
  reasons to want a logbook, and Nosmo Mateji is the goblin who has it.
  Nosmo Mateji,  
  Gildedfrost Chief of Operations
  Folk: Goblin
  Aspects: Detail-Oriented, “I’ve got a plan for this!”
  Skilled (+2) at: Fleeing from danger, knowing where he is 
  Bad (-2) at: Shows of bravery 
  Stress: 2
  Focuses on: ice in Evocation
  Nosmo is a born manager. He takes copious notes of just 
  about everything, and he’s never seen without his ledger. He’s 
  a member of the SCU, but his skill with magic is minimal. He 
  earned his position from being just plain good at coordinat-
  ing the dozens of departments who have a say in Gildedfrost’s 
  operation.
  While Mateji spends much of his time in his office, he likes to wander from 
  time to time through the open areas of the station, especially the dining deck. 
  He’s easy to follow, and his office is in a public area, near the offices of internal 
  security, down toward the roots of the station. Breaking into his office means 
  picking some locks and keeping witnesses at bay. Especially careful PCs will 
  notice that the door has a ward on it, which will inform Mateji whenever the 
  door opens. 
  Less observant PCs will see the goblin turn up while they’re rooting through 
  his desk. 
  Whatever happens, there’s a logbook in his desk, complete with clear notes on 
  how the Hegemony plans to take Verdanteye, and whatever other information 
  Arkus might find interesting. 
  Getting the Confession
  If the PCs get Lararion to read the logbook, she’ll ride with them to the station. 
  If they tell her that the bomb’s been planted, she’ll set it off and then ride with 
  them; the explosion will be immediately obvious if the Flagship is missing a 
  bulkhead. 
  Either way, she’ll let herself be led to Glittering’s office to offer a full confession. 
  In response, Glittering will tell the PCs that, in all the drama, he’s completely 
  forgotten their ship’s registry number; they’re free to take off.
  42
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Other Troubles in the Red Corridor
  If the players are starting off on a larger campaign, or if you’re just interested in 
  throwing them a few more problems, here’s some more issues to consider:
  Klehnaki Pirates: Like a pack of vultures, a group of Klehnaki pirate ships have 
  descended around Verdanteye; ships taking off or landing will have to tread care-
  fully. As it happens, though, the Aether Safety Council has put out a bounty on 
  the pirate vessel, a handsome reward for anyone who can take it out. This is a 
  good option for folks who are itching for an aether-battle.
  Klehnaki Vessels
  Aspect: Repurposed Junker
  Size: Working ship
  Skilled (+2) at: Taking hits
  Bad (-2) at: Anything delicate 
  Components: Weapons stations and a moderate consequence 
  slot.
  There’s no one description of what a Klehnaki raider’s ship 
  looks like. There are dozens of styles, many stolen but most 
  cobbled together from scrap. They all look like they’re falling 
  apart, and they’re all armed.
  Necrocratic Citizens: Gildedfrost Station was pulled from the Annular 
  Necrocracy, a sector of space ruled by a cadre of immortal lich-kings. Theirs 
  is a necromancy-focused economy and, honestly, it works really well… 
  Unfortunately, the station’s been out of place long enough that some of the 
  undead in storage have managed to escape. This is a good option for folks eager 
  to engage in personal combat against objectively evil creatures.
  Erratic Specter
  Aspects: Tortured Undead Soul, Chilling Visage
  Skilled (+2) at: Surprise attacks, facilitating long-distance 
  communication
  Bad (-2) at: Interacting with physical objects
  Stress: 2
  An undead soul intended to be used in a communications array 
  in the Necrocracy.
  43
  THE AETHER SEA
  
  Where to Next?
  There’s a few folks in and around Gildedfrost who might have work for the PCs:
  Contact: Grun’s Third Arkus Darkblade
  • Cargo: A box full of plants and other alchemical material grown down 
  on Verdanteye.
  • Destination: Julian’s Bluff, a human world a moderate distance away. 
  The customer is the Royal Alchemical Society.
  • Complication: Julian’s Bluff is currently in the midst of a civil war, and 
  the Royal Alchemical Society is in the midst of a battlefield.
  Contact: Countess Vanessa of House Makepeace, a Royal of low bearing.
  • Cargo: Several bound specters, part of some necromantic communica-
  tions equipment.
  • Destination: The Annular Necrocracy, a short distance away, to be deliv-
  ered directly to Lord Makepeace’s estate.
  • Complication: The binding on the specters is weak. They’ll unbind and 
  start haunting the ship in transit.
  Contact: Jax Star
  • Cargo: Himself, as a passenger.
  • Destination: Thurûn’s library, a moderate distance away. Jax has a story 
  to share with the grand loremaster himself.
  • Complication: Among the stories in Jax’s head is something the Shadow 
  Fleet wants kept quiet, and the crew finds themselves pursued by a goblin 
  bounty hunter.
  44
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/FATE (fudge) [multi]/World of Adventure/Aether Sea.pdf