The Art of Jamming

This section will be fleshed out more with roll tables and more detail on bonuses/malluses mentioned. Stay tuned.

How do jammers move?

Moving a ship of any size through space requires a great deal of energy. Jamming ships tap the endless energy of the Chaos for their movement. The methods to do so are thought to have been a gift to mortals from the god Wameed and involve attaching a magical device to every ship which can tap through dimensional space into the Chaos and essentially harness a mote to the ship. The mote is controlled through the helm of the ship by a spellcaster.

The longer a mote is harnessed, the more restless and unpredictable it will get, so the process of harnessing motes is a regular one. Normally a mote will be content for about a week before starting to cause problems, but some factors may make that last longer or shorter. Harnessing can be attempted by a spellcaster through the ship helm as a ritual and takes 10 minutes, expending no spell slots. At the cost of a Level 1 spell slot, the action can be taken in a combat round. Chances of success depend on the spellcaster's skill level (spellcasting bonus and proficiency) as well as distance from the Aluvia. Motes further away from the calming effects of the Celestial Vine are more frenetic and harder to catch.

There are different types of motes out there. Some offer bonuses or malluses to the spelljaming ship in areas such as speed, maneuverability or toughness. What type of mote gets caught is random, but usually the bonus vs mallus is decided by how well a job the caster did at harnessing it. Using a Level 2 spell slot, the type of mote can be selected rather than rolled for.

What deities do jammers commonly associate with?

Jammers are a varied bunch and you could probably find devotion to every known creed among them. But there are three gods who dominate their attention.

The first is Wameed, God of Travel and Commerce, who is thought to have gifted mortals with the secrets of jamming ships. Wameed can be a bit of a trickster, though his tricks are usually done in service of some point he wants to make, rather than the gleeful chaos with which the other trickster god Bajmer approaches the craft. It is thought that Wameed gave jamming to mortals in defiance to Maluk who was attempting to impose too much order throughout the Zeit.

The other two gods jammers commonly observe are Nerga and Veeda. Both are goddesses of the tempests, observed by traditional sailors for aid in calming the seas. The distinction between them is that Veeda is evil aligned and tends to draw the same types of followers, while Nerga is not.

Some jammers believe that beseeching these two goddesses to see them through the Yon Squalls is useless, as those are driven by the Chaos outside the Zeit, and not even Alu himself has much sway over what transpires there. But the jammers who do observe these goddesses are a superstitious lot and they just shrug at this argument with the retort, "But what if you're wrong? Doesn't hurt to do it anyway."

How do jammers navigate the Yon Squalls?

Only jamming ships with sails have any chance to navigate in or near a Yon Squall. It is the foolish helmsman who maintains a harness into the Chaos during a storm. All motes near a storm are so frenzied, that if a ship is still harnessed to one, it will literally be ripped into pieces.

Thus jamming ships are on their own in a Yon Squall, and can move and steer only by harnessing the winds of the storm with their sails. Larger ships, such as the flying fortresses and cathedrals of the Sovereignty and the trade barges of the Crook and Flail Kingdoms do not have sails, which forces them to stay very close to the Aluvia at all times.