Tidewaters

In an attempt to make some sense of my own purposes, here will be a short bit of content to sate some unknown need to be productive, even if it is only in pixels and bytes of data.

Tidewaters

 This is your world

You have always been on the Ship; the Ship is life, and the ship holds back the eternal sea that laps at the edges of everything that drifts past. You, and many others like you, were pulled out of the salty bilge or from rotten shipping crates as babes—sometimes in twos or threes—by the crew who maintain the Ship as regular as clockwork, and brought up in little clades of humans or otherwise. Most everything is in the crowded storage decks, or in the labyrinthine maintenance tunnels, or the boiler and engine rooms deep below, or the navigation and captain's quarters high above. 

There are only a few of you at any given time, a few hundred at most including crew. So you are put to simple service: fishing, carrying, inventory, salvage, anything that needs help or support. Under the captain's ever watchful—but never seen—eye, life goes on.

The average crew-person, in well-used utility gear

The Ship is not alone in the ocean, however vast it may be. Flotsam and jetsam are very prevalent, storms lash at a distance and up-close, the clouds form serpents and weep liquid oxygen, and rootless plastic continents drift along covered in cannibal flightless birds, among other phenomena. Sometimes other vessels, other Ships, come into contact enough—but they are almost always dead things, devoid of even insect or fungus.

Some say that the Ship is the only safe place anywhere. Some say that the Ship is the source of the world itself, and that if it is corrupted the world around will be corrupted in turn.

However, that does not stop the Captain from organizing expeditions into whatever drifts into contact, or the smaller organizations and families from staking claim or exiling one another into these strange locales. At times there are growing pains. At times the regularity cannot sustain peace. And at times the myriad flotsam brings with it a curiosity that spearheads some great will to explore whatever comes. This is one of those times.

Two well-equipped humans salvaging ancient explosives on a drifting stony shelf

Character Creation

You start with being able to take two Wounds before death.

Roll a D6, which is your starting EP value, or Endurance. 

Roll a D4 five times, for Mind, Motion, Nerves, Luck, and Face values.

Roll a D10 for a starting trait, good or bad.

1	Hardy (+1 EP)	6	Hemophilliac (-1 Wound)
2	Lame Leg (-2 Dodge)	7	Immune (+1 Save v Poison)
3	Strong Limbs (+1 Climb Check)	8	Luckster (Re-roll failed save)
4	Unshaken (+1 Save v Fear)	9	Leader (+1 Henchperson)
5	Good Brainstuff (+2 Mind)	10	Repulsive (-2 Face)

If you wish, roll a D6 for species.

1 - Human	Raggedy. Sunburnt, freckled, or dark-skinned. Two eyes mostly. Usually uncombed. Wears a lot of clothing.
2 - Mushroom	Short symbiotic fungus-people. Have a nasty right-hook and heavy fists. Taciturn. Can spawn fruiting copies of itself.
3 - Slink	A sort of hairless cat biped, pinkish and wrinkled. Surly-looking. Likes tattoos and darkness. Long tailed.
4 - Crewperson	Unsettling and bulky. Too many teeth, too many jaws, and small hands. Usually wearing a utility suit.
5 - Bilgewitch	Somewhat human, but fused with sea life. Sometimes have webbed digits, or gills. Get less recognizable as it ages.
6 - Snail	Oversized commonplace snail that can talk. Conversational and affable. Useful mobile table or bench.