I may be nothing to you but I am a king beneath the sea. This is a line from the song Arthur Curry, by Ookla the Mok. It summarizes the well-known reputation for ineffectiveness of Aquaman and other aquatic super-heroes (Namor seemingly being an exception). This is even more blatant in supers campaigns, where these kind of characters can quickly become the laughing stock of the party.

But how can we fix that? How can we create a campaign where being native to the sea doesn't limit the character and, in fact, plays to his or her strengths? Well, the very next line in the song provides an alternative: Let's see you get by underwater as well as I do on the ground.

Yes, make the characters arrogant sons of... err, no, I mean, let's set the campaign under the sea!

Pitch

A campaign set under the sea, with aquatic or amphibious characters.

Premise

Super-hero worlds have loads of land-based protectors of truth and justice, but the seven seas usually are the province of a single hero (sometimes accompanied by a handful of lesser-powered sidekicks). This makes sense only because most of the population of the planet is on land and, therefore, all the action is located above sea level (plus: comic book buyers live on land).

But we can change that for this campaign. There can be more civilizations in the oceans and supervillains, aliens, supernatural threats and assorted weirdness can be more common below the waves. This doesn't mean we can't bring problems from the surface world to enrich our aquatic heroes' adventures - quite the opposite. The difference is that the dramatic focus is moved to the ocean depths.

Who are the PCs?

Not all characters in an aquatic campaign need to be royal scions of Atlantis (although they can, if you feel like injecting a little Game of Thrones in your game). However, if your players have a desperate need for watery blue-bloodedness, remember that there are other mythical realms that might have sunken as well, such as Lemuria, Mu and Ultima Thule. All of them can have noble lineages to appease your players' royal thirst.

But the nobility of submarine realms are not the be-all/end-all of character options for our oceanic campaign. Deities are a possibility as well - it's not like there's a dearth of sea gods in our world's many mythologies. A character could be a deity, an offspring of one or a mortal empowered by said god.

Merfolk become more practical, since that pesky little problem of not having legs is irrelevant in this campaign. Other supernatural characters with connections to the sea are also available, like the many weres (wereshark, wereseal, weredolphin etc.).

Aliens are fair game too. It is quite probable that at least a few extraterrestrial species are not strict air-breathers. Any science fiction setting will have a couple (or more), like the Quarren and Nautolans of Star Wars.

You don't need to go to the stars to find aliens, though. Earth's fiction offers some alternatives, like Lovecraft's Deep Ones. If they are malevolent, like in the original work, a Deep One character could be a renegade or exile. If they are friendlier, she becomes an ambassador to the outside aquatic world, like Wonder Woman for Themyscira.

Of course, it's not obligatory for all the PCs to be natural water-breathers. Comic book worlds have a long tradition of super-soldier programs for all sorts of things. Why not have one for submarine combat? The character could be an escaped prototype, trying to live his life away from the pressures of a military program that wants to turn him into a weapon.

And let's not forget science! In his original origin (yeah, I know), Aquaman gained his powers through "training and a hundred scientific secrets". A robot designed for underwater operation or an uplifted sea creature, like a dolphin, are all viable options as well.

But how do they become a group?

Like most other super-hero teams: by uniting against a common threat. The PCs in this campaign function as the Avengers or the Justice League would, but instead of considering the United States or the planet their turf, our aquatic super-heroes would limit themselves to the oceans of the planet.

They might come from different cities, civilizations or even worlds, but they all share a sense of responsibility for the seven seas and those who live in them. So, when a threat endangers the submarine realms as a whole, they band together and fight it.

This founding mission can be an invasion by an alien force, the awakening of an ancient evil or an attack from the surface world, but it should be something that threatens all of the PCs' lives. After that, the stories can have a more focused scope.

I want run a street... a seafloor-level campaign

Not a problem. Let's take Atlantis, the archetypical undersea city (just as an example, it could be Lemuria or even Oystralia). Usually, we see it represented as a uniform domed city with no mention of neighborhoods or specific buildings. It doesn't need to be like that, your submarine city can be as large, diverse and complex as New York, Hong Kong or Rio.

In a regular city, neighborhoods give different colors to the urban environment. These can be based on ethnicity (Little Italy), activity (Government Center), income (Beverly Hills) or any other characteristic you want. Transposing it to our Atlantis, we can have a Deep One neighborhood (Deep City), a government block (Neptune's Circle) and a rich district (Blue Reef).

You can also make them geographically distinct. If you set Atlantis next to a trench or on the side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the top-most neighborhoods are richer and more important - and also get more light. The lower ones become progressively more shady and dangerous. Abyss Alley could be the Suicide Slum of Atlantis, riddled with criminals, but also watched over by the Manta, the dark avenger of the seas.

Obviously, your ocean metropolis will have celebrities, high society types, politicians, regular citizens, crimelords etc. You can people it with as diverse a set as in a land-based city. In fact, you can just port one of your campaign cities to the seafloor.

Remember, though, that the peculiar environment may call for some adjustments. For example, in an undersea city, everybody can "fly". I imagine there are buildings, but no need for elevators or ground floors, and windows are like balcony doors.

Because of that, architecture is probably similar to Star Wars', with rail-less platforms (there's no danger of falling) that project out of the buildings and where you can land your vehicle (not everyone can swim at hundreds of miles an hour).

Finally, you can have more than one city. Aquaman's Atlantis is a nation composed of Poseidonis and Tritonis (or was, I haven't been following Orin's comic book). Thus, you can have your Sub-Metropolis, Sub-Gotham, Sub-Central City and so on.

The opposition

Like in any other four-color supers campaign, enemies from "under the sea" run the gamut of lowly crimelord to mad god. Of course, if the PCs are dispersed throughout the seven seas, even if they are a group, having trouble based on local enemies may become problematic, as there won't be a strong incentive for Aquaro, hero of the Artic, to swim down to Oystralia to help Anemona deal with the Clown Fish gang.

But who knows? Maybe Aquaro and Anemona are an item and the artic hero spends a lot of time in Oystralia because of that. Hmm... I guess the good citizens of Artica may start to doubt the need for a defender who spends half his time in another city.

Anyway, here are some villains that can fit different foe niches in the campaign:

Barracuda "Barry" Osklen: Nothing happens in Abyss Alley without Barry getting his piece of the action. Drug trafficking, technomagical black market, prostitution - he has his fingers in all of the pies. But Barry is no dummy. He makes sure nothing can be traced back to his estate in Blue Reef. For all intents and purposes, Osklen is a respected citizen who uses his considerable wealth to promote charities and further the political careers of many of the city's more prominent elected officials (or even the royal house, if he lives in a monarchy).

Mako: Udrin never really took off: he ran with the wrong crowd, his schemes didn't pay off, his love life was inexistent. So finding himself being abandoned by his "colleagues" in shark country after a deal gone bad wasn't really a surprise for him. Though resigned to die, Udrin decided not to make the sharks' job so easy and swam deep among the reefs where he found an ancient temple dedicated to his pursuers. Inside, there was a gold medallion that conferred the ability to control sharks. Udrin used his new power to avoid death and get revenge on his erstwhile allies. From them on, he became Mako, superpowered criminal of the oceans, taking whatever he wants from others through force or helping other villains attain their goals in exchange for more power.

Albion Petroleum: On the surface (pun intended), AP appears to be just another greenwashed oil company whose catastrophic spills are the result more of greed and cost cuts than of any ulterior agenda. But certain people of the deep know that AP is after more than just profit. Its CEO, Terry Howard, is aware that ancient civilizations that inhabited the planet millions of years ago have collapsed into the ocean, leaving wondrous artifacts and forbidden knowledge abandoned below the waves. Howard wants them. He disguises his attempts at salvaging these as AP drilling and exploration operations, or even accidents sometimes. If the people of the sea lash out in anger at these, so much the better, for Howard can paint himself and his company as victims of subaquatic terrorists. That's an excellent excuse to beef up his security with legal (and illegal) metahuman muscle.

Pyaray: The Tentacled Whisperer of Impossible Secrets (thank you, Michael Moorcock) is an unknown quantity for most inhabitants of the seven seas. Some don't even believe he exists. Rumor has it that Pyaray comes from another reality where he was a god, but was forced to flee, losing most of his powers. Now he wants to regain his former glory and to that end uses a vast network of agents and spies, including super-humans, some of which gained their powers thanks to Pyaray's arcane knowledge. The Tentacled Whisperer rarely appears in public, but when he has need to do so, he assumes different guises, like the dreadful Sea Witch.

Tiamat: For now, the primordial goddess of chaos slumbers in the deepest reaches of the ocean. Tiamat dreams, literally, of waking up and destroying the world so she can recreate it again. And her dreams become reality, in a way. When the psychic emanations of the sleeping goddess find a worthy candidate, they empower her, creating an avatar of Tiamat. Throughout history, several of these have emerged, always causing great chaos. One of the first ones created a cult to help bring about the awakening of her divine mother. The Cult of Tiamat exists to this day and its current goal is to locate an ancient artifact rumored to be able to not only find the exact place where the goddess rests, but also end her sleep.

Some Under the Sea seeds

I try to cover most power levels with these seeds, but it's easy ro scale up or down the seeds for your own particular group.

Rise of the Deep Ones: The Deep Ones have declared war on all other submarine civilizations! Thousands (maybe millions) of them march upon Atlantis, Lemuria and Oystralia armed with blasters and tridents, not to mention magic. Resisting the Deep Ones' armies would be an adventure in itself and the PCs will get a taste of that at the beginning, but they are soon recalled to the war council. It seems Dagon, the spiritual father and supreme leader of the invaders, is preparing to open a portal to another dimension and summon eldritch monstrosities to help his people's war effort. The PCs must get past the front line and swim deep into Deep One territory to find Dagon and stop the gate ritual. Plus, if they capture him, this will most certainly sap the Deep Ones will to fight and, at the very least, enable a ceasefire.

That Sweet Black Kelpie: A new drug is all the rage in the club scene: Black Kelpie. It's cheap, pleasurably hallucinogenic, highly additive and, of course, distributed by Barracuda Osklen's organization. Barry was contacted a month ago by a mysterious old woman, who convinced the crimelord to give her product a try. He was very pleased with the results and marketed it without asking any other questions besides how much of the product could the old woman deliver. The PCs initially get involved because of the drug boom, but the real problem only starts after Black Kelpie becomes really popular. At midnight, on the 37th night after the drug has been released, all who have experimented it become mindless killing machines with superhuman strength and glowing black eyes. The PCs now have to contain an uprising of zombified drug users, find out where Black Kelpie came from and confront the old lady, who is actually the Sea Witch, a powerful sorceress and one of Pyaray's guises. The Tentacled Whisperer is testing Black Kelpie as a way to create a superarmy and wants to test the effectiveness of the transformed users.

Sharks & Spills: The PCs notice or are informed of some strange going-ons in the Caribbean sea involving Albion Petroleum, but their investigation is cut short when there's a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It's the greatest accident in history and a gigantic number of sea creatures - not to mention an Atlantean city - are endangered. What do the PCs do? Rush to save everyone from the spill or keep on investigating another sinister AP venture? What is really happening is that Terry Howard was about to put his hands on an ancient and powerful artifact. Unfortunately, the heroes were getting close, so he ordered the chief of his rig complex in the Gulf to sabotage the installation in order to draw the attention of the PCs and gain enough time to conclude his operation. Just to be on the safe side, Howard hired Mako. The villain's sharks will provide additional security at the site in case the heroes come back to snoop.

Beyond the Sea: While traveling through the ocean, the PCs encounter an aquatic lifeform unlike any they have ever seen, although it does resemble a squid. The creature, after noticing the heroes, flees at high speed. If they pursue, they cross a hyperspatial gate (don't describe the gate, talk about how the temperature and texture of the water changed, how light seems different etc.) into another planet, a water world located several light-years away from Earth. As the PCs explore the new environment, they are secretly observed by the local intelligent species, a squid-like race. The aliens have discovered a natural passage between their world and Earth and sent a bioengineered (they excel at biotech) scout to collect data - the creature the PCs encountered. Naturally xenophobic, the aliens will attack the heroes, not only to defend their lives, but also to learn what kind of resistance they will face when colonizing Earth.

Inspiration

Here are some sources of inspiration for this campaign.

Aquaman & Namor: Aquatic super-hero comics are a good source of under-the-sea plots, but remember that the theme of this installment is to expand the concept of a submarine campaign. So, any super-hero comic book should, in theory, provide useful fodder for your imagination.

Man from Atlantis: This 80s TV show was comprised of four TV movies and 13 episodes. Although the series itself wasn't successful (and had some weird episodes, like the Romeo & Juliet one), the four movies were a hit and had interesting plots that can be yoinked for your campaign.

Blue Planet: A science fiction RPG about Earth's colonization of Poseidon, a water world in the Lambda Serpentis system, 35 light-years from our world. Blue Planet is hard sci-fi, but has so much detail that it can provide a lot of inspiration for an under-the-sea campaign. It also includes uplifted dolphins, orcas and sea lions as characters, allowing a player to flesh out one of these for his own use. Plus, the aborigines could function as alien invaders (or allies). The Beyond the Sea seed above is totally inspired by Blue Planet, in case you hadn't noticed.

I hope you liked it. Feel free to share any comments, suggestion and criticisms on the forum. If you ever run this, let me know too.