animatedamerican:

transfjord:

i’m playing a sailor in my new campaign and i love sailor superstitions, so i made a bunch of dnd sailor superstitions/traditions! (some might be weird/bizarre, but a lot of ours are too so i felt it fitting)

• having a water genasi on board is good luck, even better if they’re higher ranked (captain, first mate). however, if they’re a prisoner, it’s extremely bad luck for the crew that has them imprisoned. 
• holy people of sea gods closely follow water genasi in good luck/bad luck.
• sailors tend to get tattoos of a land god’s symbol in hopes that if they drown, a land god will get them back safely. however, sea gods find this extremely rude and disrespectful, so sailors have to find ways of hiding the tattoos at all times, whether with magic, clothes, or makeup. 
• every port city has a shrine or temple to a sea god. the very last thing sailors do before heading out on the ocean and the very first thing they do when they get back on land is pray at one of these places. bigger port cities have special roads for sailors to take.
• the only time it’s okay to sing sea shanties on land is if you have a vial of seawater on you. if you don’t have any, sea gods think you’re singing for the land gods instead of themselves. and if they think that, things will turn nasty when you get back to sea.
• sailors don’t talk about their families/friends/loved ones while at sea. the sea could get jealous, and try and keep the sailors all to itself–by whatever means necessary.
• there are various tattoos one can get for certain accomplishments (ie. defeating a monster, sailing for a certain amount of time/for a certain distance, which port you hail from, etc)
• every ship brings a small animal that’s special to a sea god on board (ie a crab). that animal has all priority–in food, in defense, in healing. it’s said that if that animal dies, the rest of the crew will soon follow.

bonus sea shanties:

• dwarf and orc shanties have a very steady rhythm and often involve drums–meant to keep rowing easy and sailors focused.
• tiefling and elf shanties are melodious and often eerie to hear from another ship–especially in foggy/stormy weather. they’re meant to simulate the sound of the wind, waves, and those who died at sea.
• dragonborn and genasi shanties often involved overlapping lyrics and melodies, causing them to sound like the storms out at sea. they’re meant to pay tribute to and appease the gods.
• halfling and gnome shanties are cheery and peppy, meant to keep things interesting after monotonous days at sea and to make sure morale is up.
• human shanties are as wide and varied as the race itself. they often tell stories–of the crew, of other ships’ adventures, or of history.

A little more on sea shanties because this is my jam, my butter, and my entire fluffy biscuit:

• Dwarf sea shanties historically started out as modified mining chants – the sort of thing haul-together you sing to keep everybody on-rhythm. There are still several shanties and mining chants in use today that have identical tunes and some of the same lyrics.
• Common themes of halfling shanties are “what will we eat first chance we get when we’re back on shore” and “weird/delicious/terrible things I’ve eaten in different ports of call”.
• One well-known elf shanty is meant to be sung in both Elven and Common, in alternating verses. Most versions, unfortunately, have hopelessly distorted the verses in Elven – some to nonsense syllables, some partially intact but riddled with wrong words, some rendered into almost-nonsensical Common that sounds vaguely like the original Elven words. As a rule, it’s a bad idea to sing it around elf sailors unless you know the real words.
• Because their seafaring songs are meant to pay tribute to the gods, dragonborn sailors find it exceedingly weird and inappropriate that humans and dwarves and gnomes so often sing shanties that are basically about sex.