Black Brine world illustration - Fantasy theme
Fantasy

Black Brine

P
ProdigiousMaps

Black Brine’s a rotting tooth on an island of darkness, slick with salt, sin, and secrets best left buried. The mist never lifts, the gods never sleep, and no one dies clean. Power belongs to cutthroats and cults, and coin buys less than a well-placed knife. Taverns drip with blood and confession. Deals are struck in whispers, broken in screams. Out here, loyalty’s just leverage, and survival’s a sacred art. Welcome to Black Brine—hope you brought something sharp.


Author's Note: Black Brine is a dark, character-driven D&D setting set on the cursed island of Sedna shrouded in mist and ruled by superstition, secrets, and ancient gods. Blending nautical horror, occult mystery, and intrigue, it’s a brutal sandbox where power has a price and loyalty is ever-shifting. Players take on the roles of rogues, mystics, and mercenaries fighting to survive in a world drowning under its own forgotten sins.
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16 days ago
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4 days ago
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Black Brine Library

Black Brine Library

The Black Brine Library is where the city pretends to remember, and quietly hopes to forget. A monument to knowledge carved from the bones of older empires, it serves as a public archive, schoolhouse, and refuge for the ink-stained and mad. Scribes, scholars, and charlatans rub elbows under its vaulted ceilings, all chasing truths sharp enough to cut. It’s the only place in Black Brine where questions outnumber weapons. Classes are held beside reading rooms, street urchins scribble beside philosophers, and the scent of wet parchment clings to every robe and cloak. Beneath it all lies the Deep Locker—warded, sealed, and whispered about—a vault of tomes too cursed, dangerous, or divine for daylight. In a city ruled by coin and superstition, the Library is the only temple that worships thought. But knowledge here is never free. And some pages, once turned, won’t let you go.

Broadside Tavern & Bath House

Broadside Tavern & Bath House

Once a sanctum for saints, now a sanctuary for scoundrels—the Broadside Inn serves as the west bank’s answer to Black Brine’s highborn dens. Cheap drink, hot soak, and no questions asked. Locals haunt its barstools like barnacles, sailors dock here when they’ve got coin to lose, and fugitives find the bathhouse waters oddly... forgiving. It’s where debts are drowned, grudges settle over dice, and mercs nurse bruises in geothermal pools that still bubble with holy warmth. The gangs don’t run it, but they respect it—a trucehouse of sorts, too useful to burn, too wild to claim. If you’ve got secrets or scars, the Broadside has room, ale, and a quiet place to bleed in peace. For a little while.

Captains Club

Captains Club

The Captain’s Club is where the salt-crusted elite of Black Brine go to remember they’re better than the rabble—and remind everyone else, too. Moored like a bloated corpse in the canals of Mistwalk, it’s a hollowed-out brig refitted in velvet and smoke, where the wine flows richer than blood and the coin clinks louder than truth. Entry requires clout, coin, or compromise—sometimes all three. Inside, it’s all low candlelight and whispered threats. Cards slap, dice tumble, and deals are struck with smiles sharp enough to cut rigging. Musicians play behind gauze curtains. Servants never speak. And the backroom vault? It’s seen more betrayals than the gallows. The Club isn’t just a place to drink—it’s where captains trade secrets, pirates court power, and fortunes are made or vanished over a single wager. In a city run on superstition and scheming, the Captain’s Club is the closest thing to nobility Black Brine allows.

City Hull

City Hull

At the rotted heart of Black Brine squats City Hull—a ship that outlived the sea. Once a grand galleon, now gutted and rebuilt into the crooked throne of the Captain’s Council. Its hull houses chambers of law, vaults of coin, and rooms where knives mean more than votes. Every creak in the timber is a secret, every groan a threat. Gun Deck Rosy rules from the aftcastle like a storm in still water—quiet, but deadly when stirred. Around it sprawls Mistwalk, where coin and rumor slip hand-in-hand down alleys slick with brine and old blood. Priests mutter beside smugglers. Merchants haggle over relics and curses alike. It’s the place deals are sealed and betrayed in the same breath. Here, power is worn like perfume—strong, expensive, and meant to cover the stink of fear. City Hull is where the Captain's Council meets to decide the fate of Black Brine.

Cutty's Blades

Cutty's Blades

In Mistwalk’s well-manicured heart sits Cutty’s Blades, where the shine of steel blinds the eye and the price of a single sword could buy a year’s loyalty from lesser men. A duelist’s temple below, a war room above—every inch scented with oil, blood, and cold ambition. The Windowmakers nest here, the Governor’s unofficial knife in the dark. Six sleek sloops lie hidden in the fog, each crewed by silent bastards who never miss, never warn, and never leave more than one corpse breathing. A warning, that breath. One only.

District of Keelhauls

District of Keelhauls

Keelhauls Harbor is where Black Brine does its grubby business—dockside deals, leaky hulls, and backs broken under crates of rotting produce and powdered vice. No gleaming sails here, no sleek hulls—just rusted cranes, crooked piers, and ships held together with spite and tar. It’s the cheapest berth in town, and the filthiest. But without it, the city starves. Every barrel of grain, every salted fish, every bolt of stolen silk drags its sorry arse through Keelhauls first. It’s the gut of the city. And guts are never pretty, but gods help you if they stop working.

District of LIttle Sedna

District of LIttle Sedna

Little Sedna sits quiet beneath the shadow of crumbling giants—ancient stone remnants of a long-dead people, now shouldering the weight of new lives. Here, the poor and pious scrape by in the half-light, their homes tucked beneath shattered arches and vine-choked columns. Rainwater runs through carvings no one remembers how to read. It’s a district of murmured prayers and heavy silences. Of pickled fish, threadbare linens, and stubborn faith. The Temple of Sedna rises at its heart like a barnacled leviathan, part cathedral, part warning. Folks here worship in whispers, offer blood in basins, and fear the sea as much as they need it. Little Sedna doesn’t bustle, it broods. No street cries, no sharp steel. Just the hush of tides, the watchful eyes of forgotten statues, and the quiet dread that one day the old stones might wake and remember what they were built for.

District of Salt Crown

District of Salt Crown

Salt Crown sits like a blade’s edge above the harbor—gleaming, honed, and always a breath from cutting deep. It’s where the captains count their spoils, merchants count their losses, and the smart ones keep their mouths shut. The district thrums with quiet menace, where every handshake hides a deal, and every smile might cost you. The Lending House bleeds gold for those brave or foolish enough to ask, its rooftop garden a petri dish of decadence and whispered threats. Rita’s forge lights the street like a second sun, hammering steel into stories with every swing. The Chase Gun Condos loom above, a stacked powder box of hard-bitten sailors, dock queens, and quick-fisted gunners, where disputes are settled on the roof—or off it. In Salt Crown, money talks, steel listens, and no one forgets a debt.

Dry Docks

Dry Docks

The Dry Docks aren’t just where ships are made—they’re where debts are hammered out, grudges sharpened, and futures mortgaged plank by plank. This is the true heart of Crosswater, where sweat is currency and every splinter tells a tale. Captains come here trailing smoke and broken promises. Shipwrights come with fists like anvils and eyes like ledger books. It’s where the desperate drag their wrecks for a second chance, and the powerful commission sleek monsters to carve their names into the sea. The Guild keeps one eye on every rivet and rope, making sure dues are paid in coin or blood. Deals get made under the echo of hammers—loud enough to hide threats, quiet enough to carry secrets. To build here is to buy survival. To fail here is to vanish without splash or eulogy. The Dry Docks are where Black Brine's soul is laid bare—rough, loud, cruel, and still somehow standing.

Gallows Market

Gallows Market

Gallows Market is where Black Brine wears its prettiest mask and bares its sharpest teeth. The rich come here to posture and preen, to drop coin like blood in the water and hope someone notices. Perfume clings to the air like rot beneath a silk sheet, masking the stink of desperation and old money turning sour. The chained god watches from above, looming huge and pious, hauled from the mainland like some righteous cargo. His temple feeds the hungry, shelters broken pirates and swordless old killers, all in the name of mercy. But the sermons slip in with the stew—talk of order, obedience, salvation through service. The rich smile tight at the influx of the unwashed, dragged into Mistwalk on church charity and cultish fervor. Now there’s tension humming beneath the cobbles. The nobles don’t like the stench of sanctity mixing with their wine. But the temple’s growing, and the chained god never blinks. Not once.

Powder Keg Tavern

Powder Keg Tavern

The Powder Keg Tavern clings to the southern cliffside of Salt Crown like a barnacle blessed by gods and pirates alike. Built atop towering **blackwood pilings**, the tavern stretches out over the crashing surf, with gangways and rope nets allowing small ships to moor directly beneath its stilted belly. The first thing visitors see is the colossal stone skull carved into the jungle cliff—its eye sockets black with shadow, its grin choked by creeping vines and orchids. From cracks in its cranium, plumes of sulfurous steam hiss skyward, the breath of some ancient volcanic force still rumbling below. At night, it glows with amber light, giving the whole tavern an unholy halo. Inside, the Powder Keg is a riot of smells and color: grilled eel on citrus leaves, curried stingray, and drinks with names like Dream of the Leviathan and Sedna’s Mercy—some smoking, others glowing faintly in the dim, lantern-lit haze. The crowd is just as wild: sailors, mystics, criminals, and sea-blooded nobles.

Red Chain Bridge

Red Chain Bridge

The Red Chain Bridge is more than stone and rusted links—it’s the spine of Black Brine’s soul, and the fracture that never healed. Stretching across the Daggerflow, it binds East to West, law to wilds, and past to present. The old red chains, dangling like bloodied vines, clatter in the wind with secrets. Locals claim they were once shackles, though no one agrees whether they held prisoners, gods, or something worse. It’s the city’s only bridge, a bottleneck of coin, gossip, and quiet dread. Crews pay toll in silver or scars. Rosy’s men guard it like treasure. The statues at its midpoint—faceless, weather-worn—never move, yet shift when no one looks. And sometimes, when the mist rolls thick, the Nameless Watcher stands between them, still as sin. Even the fishing fleet is split by it. North fishers brave the deeper waters and darker omens. South fishers call them fools and say they drag ill luck back with their nets. The two sides drink in separate taverns. Pray to different saints.

Salt Crown Shores

Salt Crown Shores

Salt Crown Shores is where the city exhales—just enough space between coin and claw for schemes to breathe. Merchants linger longer here, scribes stroll with purpose, and sea-slick boats bob in quiet coves like eavesdropping drunks. The jungle presses close, as if listening. The Charter House is the gatekeeper of trade and tether. Captains climb its marble steps to beg, bluff, or barter for licenses they can’t afford. Inside, the air hums with ink, law, and sweat. Outside, it stinks of compromise. Sinker’s Curiosities draws the desperate and the damned. Someone’s always leaving with a jar of whispers, a dagger that cries, or a map to nowhere. Sinker never haggles—just smiles like he knows how your story ends. Here, Black Brine balances its ledgers not just in gold, but in secrets. Salt Crown Shores is where futures are mortgaged, favors sold, and fate bartered away on salt-wet paper.

Sinker's Curiosities

Sinker's Curiosities

Sinker’s Curiosities is where Black Brine’s luckless, desperate, and dangerously curious go to bargain with their better judgment. Perched like a vulture on the cliffs of Salt Crown Shores, the shop is part reliquary, part rumor mill, and part trap. Sailors come seeking lost memories. Warlocks come sniffing for power. The smart ones leave empty-handed. Sinker—half myth, half hoarder—runs the place with a sly tongue and no sense of mercy. No price is ever straight, no item ever safe. But when the gods go quiet and the mists press close, folk crawl down to Sinker’s door anyway. Because sometimes, what you need to survive Black Brine can’t be bought in coin. Only consequence.

String and Powder

String and Powder

The Gunderson home is where precision meets powder, and fraternal love sounds a lot like shouting. One brother crafts bows so fine they hum with tension. The other builds guns that cough thunder and spite. Together, they supply Black Brine’s best—and argue like it’s a sport with no off-season. Every merc, pirate, and duelist worth their salt has walked that cobbled path, either for a custom grip or to settle a feud with steel or shot. Deals are struck in sawdust and smoke, payments taken in coin, favors, or grudging respect. In a city where ranged weapons mean survival—or advantage—the Gundersons don’t just sell tools. They sell the promise that the next shot might be the one that changes everything. And if it jams? Well, you can always blame the other brother.

Temple of Sedna

Temple of Sedna

The Temple of Sedna is less a place of worship and more a pact scratched into stone and sealed with salt. Here, the desperate kneel beside the devout, offerings clutched in shaking hands—shells, teeth, blood, breath. Sedna is not a kind goddess, but in Black Brine, kindness is for fools. She gives luck to sailors, silence to the dying, and visions to those mad enough to seek them. When the tide’s out, they gather in the cavern’s maw—lowborn, smuggler, cutthroat, all equal in the wet dark. When it comes in, the temple floods, swallowing their voices whole. To the eastside faithful, she’s salvation. To the westerners, a whispering curse. But none deny her power. Not openly. In Black Brine, everyone pays the sea’s toll eventually—and this temple’s the box they drop it in.

Wet Bar

Wet Bar

“Where seafoam kisses crystal, and the tides carry whispers of intrigue.” The Wet Bar is Black Brine’s most elegant aquatic lounge, nestled at the edge of the Crosswater docks and built into the curve of an ancient stone quay. It rises like a coral bloom from the shallows, its graceful spires and slickstone arches swaying faintly in the ocean breeze. The building blends renaissance architecture with fluid, organic design, as if shaped by tides rather than tools. Lanternlight shimmers across tide-polished walls, and the smell of salt and citrus drifts through the open air.

This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC . The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
We are not affiliated with Dungeons & Dragons or Wizards of The Coast in any way.
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