🪽 Aetherine Skies, 1793 [Lvl 2-20 Sky Piracy Freedom]

🪽 Aetherine Skies, 1793 [Lvl 2-20 Sky Piracy Freedom]

Become sky pirates, far-flung explorers and revolutionaries in a boundless adventure through the clouds! The heavens await! Session 3 on 21/01/26.

TYPE

Campaign

LEVELS

2

LANGUAGE

English

EXPERIENCE

Intermediate

AGE

18+
2 SEATS LEFT
$20.00

/ Session

Details

Weekly / Wednesday - 10:00 PM UTC

Mar 18 / Session 12

Session Duration / 3–4 hours

Campaign Length / 40+ Sessions

3 / 5 Seats Filled

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Schedule

Wed, Mar 18 | 10:00 PM – Session 12

Wed, Mar 25 | 10:00 PM – Session 13

Wed, Apr 01 | 10:00 PM – Session 14

Meet your party members

3/5

About the adventure

For players who enjoy the rush of sky piracy, the thrill of combat, the cunning of corporate espionage, and the labyrinthine webs of imperial intrigue! This campaign suits swashbuckling rogues, visionary alchemists, and all other kind of rebellious outcast. In the ethereal heights where mist-shrouded skies conceal ancient secrets, Aetherine Skies invites daring souls to boundless adventure! 💨✨ Aetherine is a mystical substance harvested from deep earthen veins, usually as volatile liquid vapours. It is then refined through thaumaturgic rituals to grant ethereal lift to vessels that dance among the clouds. For centuries, the Highspire Empire has dominated the heavens with its power, forging floating citadels and armadas. But 6 years ago was the Year the Sky Broke Open, and the secrets behind the Empire's airships have been revealed, and pirates are challenging the Empire's dominion over the skies! Venture into imperial heartlands rife with courtly schemes, where princely councils and gilded magnates vie for control of Aetherine monopolies, or slip into the lawless Cloud Reaches — vast, untracked wildernesses teeming with pirate havens, fractured realms, demonic forces and the forgotten ruins of previous ages. Whether you're chasing epic aerial duels or tales of the forbidden arts, here you can be sky captains raiding uncharted expanses, spies unravelling monopolistic plots and explorers venturing beyond the Empire's grasp. With high-flying heists, moral crossroads, shadowy factions, mystical plunder and new horizons, the heavens await! Will you seize their infinite promise, or fall to their treacherous depths?

Game style

Hexcrawl / Exploration

Combat Heavy

Roleplay Heavy

Sandbox / Open World

Rule of Cool (RoC)

Meet the Game Master
Published Writer
Game Designer

1 year on StartPlaying

83 games hosted

Highly rated for: World Builder, Creativity, Storytelling

Average response time: 12 hours

Response rate: 100%

About me

Hullo, I'm L, British GM — it's a pleasure! PASSION is where I'm at right now. This is not only some of the most fun a person can have, it's also really important to where we are as a species. Sure, it's a window into the unknown and unfamiliar, but its real PSYCHIC BOON is how much you can learn about yourself and the people you're playing with. A writer since birth (moving gradually through fantasy/alt history/post-modern romance/pulp fiction/sci-fi), I took instantly to GMing. Being able to immerse others in such a direct and collaborative was a BREATH. After six years running games in person and online with local and worldwide friends, I became a dad, and then more of us became parents, and it became very difficult to schedule games. But NOW I find out there's a way to do what I love (and am very good at, promise!) while getting a bit of nappy/diaper pocket money? Sign me up!

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Character creation

Creating your character

If we can manage it before a session, we'll have a laidback chat so you can create your character with a bit of information about the setting. But there's no harm in preparing! The setting is eclectic and at the moment is painted with broad strokes, so it'll accommodate aaalmost any idea you have. For now, we'll stick to the D&D Beyond character creation, using 2024 species, backgrounds, classes, spells, &c. But if you have your heart set on a bit of homebrew, you can ALWAYS run it by me! For guns, we're using Valda's.

The current party

The party is currently 3rd level: a Shifter Beast Barbarian, a Gnome Artillerist Artificer, an Elf Death Cleric and an Aasimar Celestial-ish Warlock.

What to expect

Preparing for the session

You will need a working mic, Discord and a D&D Beyond account. Owlbear doesn't need an account and works grand on most devices. If you're not too experienced playing D&D, don't fret, I'm very good at helping new players!

What L Sunborn Games brings to the table

A coherent, intricate but flexible player-driven world. This means it's built and amended around the decisions you make and everything that you are interested in, and that it functions in reaction to your passions and convictions. I'm very comfortable with sudden shifts and thinking on the fly! The world, as a hex grid world map, is a massive landmass centred on the Highspire Empire, surrounded by a dense fog bank, and small duchies past that. We have a D&D Beyond campaign for everyone's character. We use Owlbear maps with custom tokens for hex exploration and combat, and voice chat on Discord with ambient/atmospheric music. I'll also provide character voices galore! At the end of each session, I sketch out the main beats of the session while it's fresh it everyone's memory, then before the next session (usually Monday), I do a proper write-up that everyone can collaborate on and will be used to introduce the next session. Combat will be pretty challenging, but always gauged by your interest in it, and against lore-driven enemies — many homebrew, but also making sure you all get to fight all the classics.

Homebrew rules

Many, but none too controversial! It's all the greatest hits (potion as a bonus, improved critical hits, secret death saves), as well as a bunch of custom-made mechanics arising from the gameplay of the players (random encounters, journeying, crafting, hireling training, and many more). With everything else, they're collaborative — I'll always be happy for critique and to make sure to bounce off you. You can read here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tg4JD95gbRCLGv0x1O4J4h-oM6tk9nDl3HwrnDrGfgg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Equipment needed to play

Internet

Computer

Microphone

Safety

How L Sunborn Games creates a safe table

The Session 0 will be set up as a character creation session and "mood board" rundown for anyone who joins. At any time you can let me know about lines and veils and I'll stick to 'em religiously. 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬. The content/trigger warnings below are not exhaustive. Basically, let your mind delve into tropes of sky pirate adventures in a corrupt and exploitative empire, and we'll probably get there at some point. HOWEVER there will be no majorly problematic content or themes, nothing outright abusive or discriminatory — if you have a concern, shoot me a line or veil.

Content warnings

Safety tools used

Frequently asked questions