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The Mokai
The night was cold and quiet, Cora has first watch atop the crow’s nest. The sea was an inky void beyond the meager light of the ship’s lanterns, undulating darkness beyond her sight.
The noise came first, a sudden high-pitched yell of excitement out of the night, getting suddenly closer and in a moment, flying past her into the darkness again, as far beyond on the deck - an impact, and a yell of glee. Then more noises, more figures flying out of the darkness, some missing entirely, most landing with that same giggle, one slamming wildly into the mast and slumping lifelessly below.
Out of the night came the rafts, rough, homemade rafts of driftwood and wreckage, held together with spit and rope and tar, pulsing with numerous blue shapes, each with sharpened metal in their hands, wild eyes, and bared teeth.
The figures on the ship leap into combat, slashing and stabbing at all they can see, wild abandon, as they dart below. The rafts reach the hull and rusty, bolted-together hooks leap up onto the railings as a tide of small blue-skinned raiders washes onto the deck.
The fighting is fast, the raiders small and quick, darting from one foe to another with ease, as the ones below deck remerge, proud holding aloft a half-cooked chicken, a random pile of rope, and a crowbar. With sounds of glee, they toss them down on the waiting rafts, and head below for me, the raid of The Mokai in full swing…
The Mokai
The Mokai is a sea-dwelling species of raiders, living on flotillas of lashed-together wrecks and driftwood, sending raiding parties out to passing ships and coastal villages. They have a culture that highly prizes innovation, to take a pile of driftwood, a broken lamp, and some tar, and turn it into something useful is the highest of skills. Due to this, their raids can seem random - haphazard even, but there is a method in the madness, the more disparate the items you can turn into a tool, the greater the respect.
This being said, those inventions fail as often as they succeed, and the tribe has little worry about burning through its numerous members in the use of its works.
The Mokai has no compunction in killing those they encounter, but it is rarely their goal, and will happily run from any fight when they feel they have enough supplies to carry themselves to the next raid.
The Mokai
At the moment I'm running an in-person swashbuckling high-seas adventure for one of my parties, and whilst this is a really fun game to run, it does remove some of the traditional environments and bad guys we’d expect to see in DnD, most notably at lower levels. Hunting rats and kobolds don’t make much sense on the high seas.
But I wanted to find a way to bring the chaotic energy we often get with Goblins to my game, without forcing my players onto land and into a dungeon. I grabbed a bunch of inspiration from the Kakamora from Moana, the vehicles from Mad Max or Waterworld as well as the traditional Goblin, and kind of mashed all of them together to create The Mokai.
They are scavengers, raiders, living off driftwood and stolen materials. They raid to collect supplies and move on. They are anarchic, wild, and unpredictable, caring not for the loss of one Mokai, only the King matters, and even then only until they are dead.
As to tactics, I like to have the Mokai use their Trebuchet (also unpredictable and unreliable) as an opening salvo. Their 60ft range will put them at the edge of most players’ Darkvision, so their first sign of attack is the Mokai, landing on the deck out of nowhere, as the rest of the rafts row into sight. A Mokai attack should be chaotic, with the fighters using their Nimble Escape ability to duck and dart between foes, and the trebuchets constantly launching more and more Mokai. The players should always be on the back foot, unable to form a plan or a line of defense.
But the Mokai aren’t there to kill, they are there to steal. The Mokai that dip below decks should be rifling through the player’s kit, stealing items at random, taking the ship’s supplies, and generally ransacking. The raiding party will happily depart as soon as they feel they have got enough supplies - giving you a nice way to wind the combat up whenever you’d like!