Oddities for a Sailing Ship

On the high seas can be found the greatest thrilling adventures, and wherever adventurers find themselves they're sure to snoop around. This that in mind, the creators of Oddities for a Thieve's Guild and Oddities for a Creepy Old House present a new ever growing ever evolving list of random items, encounters, and NPCs designed to bring the truly odd to your tabletop campaign!

On the high seas can be found the greatest thrilling adventures, and wherever adventurers find themselves they're sure to snoop around. This that in mind, the creators of Oddities for a Thieve's Guild and Oddities for a Creepy Old House present a new ever growing ever evolving list of random items, encounters, and NPCs designed to bring the truly odd to your tabletop campaign!

1. A captive mermaid wallows in a lidded tub of salt water. There is a 50% chance she is a siren and gagged.

2. A cluster of barnacles cling to the wood of the hull, alive and well despite not having access to sea water in their current location. From this point on, there is a cumulative 2% chance more of these barnacles will be encountered every day as they spread across the ship, clinging to dry parts of the ship and even the crew.

3. A small lock box. Within the box are the flags of every nation's navy. There is a 40% chance the flags are tied together end to end for some reason.

4. A chipper monkey swings in the rigging, scampers along the floor, and begs for tidbits from the adventurers. If they monkey can get ahold of a sharp object, it scratches the word "HELP" into the deck.

5. 1d4+2 bilge rats sit around a keg of fresh water playing a game of cards, betting bits of food and shiny objects. If discovered, the rats scatter. From the cards left behind it's clear one of the rats was cheating.

6. The ships central mast was made from an old hanging tree. The ancient wood hungers for the dying breaths of the hanged. There is a cumulative 1% chance every day of the voyage that someone will "accidentally" become tangled in the rigging hanging from the mast and strangled to death in an eerie recreation of a hanging. If the roll to trigger this hanging is a prime number, the victim is a random member of the party.

7. A superstitious and temperate sailor clutches a holy symbol, praying over casks of rum, grog, and whatever libation is meant for the crew. One by one, the contents of the casks turn into pure water.

8. A sailor plays a strange tune on pipes of bone, his only audience 2d8 spiders weaving away in whatever corner they can find. Under close inspection, the spiders are not weaving normal webs. Their heavy patterns bare an strange resemblance to the jute used in the ship's blindingly white sales.

9. A large rosewood box locked with cold iron chains groans and rattles on occasion. The chest contains either the souls of the murdered crew that first sailed this ship, an undead pirate captain, or a powerful storm elemental imprisoned before it could sink the ship during a nasty squall.

10. 2d4 sailors play a dice game using three hand-carved six-sided dice made from whale bone. If any sailor rolls all threes, they quietly step overboard.

And that's only the beginning! Check back regularly as we add to this list. Let's see how quickly we can get to 100 original oddities!