The Great Reef
To a surface-dweller, a sparse archipelago of shoals, atolls and low islands close to the Kingdom's eastern shore. To an Undine, a single continuous ecosystem the size of a small continent. The Merrow guard it and are delighted to show it to anyone who asks nicely.
The Land
Coral gardens, tidepools and shallow lagoons supporting a diversity of marine life no surveyor has finished counting. What can be seen above the water is a fraction of what lies below, and the Reef's real geography is submarine — reef walls, channels, kelp stands and sand flats the Merrow navigate by names no chart records.
Tidewell, the provincial capital, is built half above and half below the waterline on the Reef's largest atoll. Reedmoot sits in the shallows south of it and hosts every embassy, factor and spy in the province, being the one place a landbound visitor can live comfortably. At the Reef's southern tip, where the shelf falls away, Colddoor is the dive-station from which expeditions descend toward the Abyss.
West across open water lies the Tidal Wilds, and through them the Heartland.
The Merrow
The Undine everyone means when they say Undine: fish-tailed in the water, legged on land, amphibious enough to spend weeks either way though visibly happier wet.
They are the Kingdom's most enthusiastic hosts. The Reef's tourist trade is entirely their doing, and a Merrow guide will keep a visitor out past sunset explaining coral spawning cycles to someone who only asked where the beach was. Beneath the hospitality they are serious about the Reef's fragility, and the welcome cools abruptly for anyone who treats it as scenery.
Encounters
Roll d100. Shallow, bright, and crowded. Most encounters here are tourism; the rest are the tide. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–10 | 1 Merrow guide, unpaid, unstoppable, explaining coral spawning cycles at length | — |
| 11–17 | 2d6 duckweed-raft walkers crossing a lagoon at a careful pace | — |
| 18–24 | 1d4 ducks under barge harness, and the Manywaters will not hear a word against them | 12 |
| 25–30 | tide change: the path you came by is under six feet of water and moving | — |
| 31–36 | 2d6 thrips on a shore bloom, working the last hour of the light | ¼ |
| 37–42 | 1d4 water striders owning the surface of a still lagoon | 2 |
| 43–48 | 1d3 backswimmers beneath the film of a tidepool | 2 |
| 49–54 | 1d2 bladderwort traps at a channel edge, which take a Faerie in a hundredth of a second | 3 |
| 55–60 | 1d4 diving beetles in the shallows, and they fly between atolls after dark | 4 |
| 61–66 | 1d3 newts in a brackish pool, poisonous to touch | 5 |
| 67–72 | 1 giant water bug ambushing from under the waterline at a landing | 7 |
| 73–77 | 1d2 fishing spiders running the lagoon surface | 9 |
| 78–82 | 1d2 crayfish — Reef landholders, technically, and one has counsel | 10 |
| 83–87 | 1 frog in the reed shallows | 9 |
| 88–91 | 1 bullfrog at a Terraces sluice, looking for the second one | 13 |
| 92–94 | 1 cane toad on a low island, eating whatever moves in front of it | 12 |
| 95–96 | 1 kingfisher over the lagoon, taking you off the surface without slowing | 14 |
| 97–98 | 1 garter snake hunting the shallows | 18 |
| 99 | 1 goose on the lagoon, and the Merrow are already apologising for it | 21 |
| 00 | 1 heron on the flats — motionless for an hour, and then not | 24 |