Welcome to Black Brine!
Black Brine is a city of tide-choked alleys, half-sunken ruins, and ramshackle districts sprawling across the river delta of Sedna Island. Hidden by jagged reefs and veiled in sea-mist, it thrives as a refuge for outlaws, exiles, and dreamers. It is a port of freedom — and of peril — where fortunes rise and drown with each tide. I started working on the setting a couple of years ago and have run two campaigns on the island but there are still so many stories to tell!
Geography
The city sprawls across drowned ruins and timber piers, linked by rope bridges, barges, and causeways. Sedna’s rivers snake through its heart, carrying silt and secrets alike. Fog is near-constant, and the sea seems to whisper against barnacled stone.
Salt Crown – A salt crusted district of taverns, boarding houses, smugglers’ warrens and the Lending House of Black Brine.
Crosswater – The labyrinthine heart of trade and industry: gambling dens, black markets, and guildhalls.
Blackmire – Low and treacherous ground, rife with thieves, cults, and drowned basements, surrounding paradoxical magnificence of the Black Brine Library.
Bone Walk & Dagger Docks – The chaotic waterfront, where fleets berth, brawls erupt, and news of the sea first arrives.
Little Sedna – The old stone heights, seat of Sedna’s power and repurposed ancient structures that pre-date the city.
Government & Power
Black Brine has no king. Authority belongs to the Council of Free Captains, a loose convocation of ship-masters whose power waxes and wanes with their fleets. Yet true control lies in factional rivalries:
Gun-Deck Rosy, governor in all but name, rules by cannon and charisma.
The Miasma Fleet spreads fear with their plague-sails and merciless raids.
The Twilight Society whispers through salons and shadowed deals.
Rupert Richthorn, eccentric wizard, schemes from his tower while pretending indifference.
Culture & Life
Black Brine is loud but not “completely” lawless, a city of salt and smoke where every night holds a gamble. Its people are pragmatic, quick-witted, and suspicious of authority. Sailors, thieves, mercenaries, and hedge-mages rub elbows in dockside taverns. Food is hearty and improvised — salted fish, rum, strange stews. Festivals erupt without warning; duels are settled in alleys with sword or spell.
Who will you be?
Will you be a cutpurse with quick fingers, vanishing into the warrens of Salt Crown Shores?
A storm-scarred sailor, carving a new legend among the Free Captains?
A wandering sellsword, chasing coin through alleys that reek of rum and blood?A mage’s apprentice, tangled in the eccentric schemes of Rupert Richthorn’s tower?
A fallen noble, gambling away your past in Crosswater’s dens?
Or perhaps a zealot of drowned gods, whispering promises in the tide-soaked crypts of Blackmire?
I love to give my players innovative experience and the opportunity to make the world your own. I accomplish this by building EVERYTHING myself. The island, the city and all of the battle maps are created by me specifically for the setting. Imagine a session where we spend time adding furniture to your house or a secret door to your lair in real-time!
Want to build a ship to your specifications? We can do that!
Want to run your own business? We can do that!
Want to remodel that old carriage house into a hidden base? We can do that!
